File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 407


Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 01:44:01 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-I: Yoshie unmasks a cyber-vangelist


Reading Yoshie's comments on Ben's mode of argument, I was struck by the
similarity of Ben's style and all-inclusive rhetorical gestures to the
media-evangelists.

Perhaps he could take an evangelical aptitude test and earn himself a few
bucks to take his cyber-crusade to the televiewing spiritually thirsting
masses.

Cheers,

Hugh


Yoshie wrote, for instance:

>After reading your work at your website, I was struck by the frequency with
>which you use analogies between society and nature as well as those between
>human beings and computers. But you never seem to get around to *arguing*,
>instead of just asserting, *why* such analogies are valid when considering
>questions at hand. You seem to assume that your analogies will be accepted
>by your readers without your explaining why we sould. I, for one, find such
>analogies to be of limited significance. Moreover, such analogies can be
>quite dangerous, in that they tend to naturalize or instrumentalize human
>agency.
>
>You seem to teat all kinds of complexity similarly. Nature, society,
>individual human beings, and computers may be said to be all very
>"complex," but are they "complex" in the same way? If you think so, isn't
>your theory of "complexity" rather too simple?




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