Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 10:21:43 +0100
From: Dominique Vaugeois <jdf-AT-hol.fr>
Subject: Re: utility & fetishism


Robert Scheetz wrote:

"Phenomenologically, the PC can only be experienced iconically, either
under opposing-thumb-and-forefinger, or vishnu.  In itself it obscures
"being"."

I just wondered if there wasn't another way to consider the PC's
relationship to being, that is by posing the question of the things the
PC "makes be" (being as transitive verb).  Are not toolbars, icons,
shortcuts, or procedures such as cutting and pasting, "things" that
cannot "be" without a PC?  Taken this way, the PC, however it may thing
or be a thing, is also a sort of ontological substrate for other ontic
"things" - toolbars, etc.  We would then have to consider it as a source
of "being", and perhaps as a source of a new kind of "being".  

This said, I think that the idea that the PC obscures "being" could
still be valid if we consider that the "being" the PC obscures is not
the same as the "being" for which it is a "substrate" (excuse me if this
isn't the correct heideggerian use of substrate).

Just an idea.

Joseph Fahey


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