Date:     Wed,  27 Apr 94 22:34 +0300
From: MARSHLU-AT-vms.huji.ac.il
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject:  involvement



4/27/94

in reply to: Erik J Tielking <tiel0001-AT-gold.tc.umn.edu> of 4/25

All technology boils down to the same thing, "a way to do
something," which implies change and influence, for better or
worse.

>I suspect it is no more possible to be 'meaningfully involved' in
>the development of technology in general than it is to be meaningfully
>involved in politics in general.

As said in a prior post, the best way to be involved with
technology is directly, with trying, through creative vision, to
give birth to a new reality that releases us all from some, at
least small, degree of restriction. Still, total involvement is
also possible in politics and in technology. For instance,
someone who invents a new political system and dedicates his
life for its realization. Or someone who envisages a new way to
do science and dedicates his life to that. Even a commitment to
some limited aspect can embrace totality by keeping in mind the
whole "range of issues" and the meaning of the particular issue
I am committed to within the context of the whole. Some people
call this holism.

The problem is that,
the strategic level of our
involvement, our participation is less than total. It is this
that is the source of our ills. Almost nobody really cares and
it shows in the fragmented way our world functions, especially
as concerns science and technology where one might expect more
coherence.

>It ought to be possible to organize in such a way as to influence
>the relevant economic and political forces in advance of the development
>of particular technologies in order to get results closer to those
>desired, but I must admit I'm not sure how that would work in practice.

Since budget contol won't stop the mavericks, why not mind
control? But first you'll have to develop an appropriate
technology to impose it. Then we can all be restricted according
to the lights of one person or worse, a committee. Can you not
see that the only effective point of influence is to increase
the quality of creative vision from which all technology
emerges?

>(Maybe in fact I'm wrong, and there's no way to do it, either because
>Americans can't be organized on a large scale for that sort of thing
>or because such an effort would require something logically impossible
>such as the ability to see into the future.)

Why just Americans? And yes, technological forecasting, in any
significant sense, is impossible. Only the inventor has the
vision of what he will bring into reality. Everyone else has to
wait and see if his vision is realizable and whether, once born,
the brain child is healthy or deformed.

Cheers,
David S. Devor
Project Mind Foundation

 Just as the restriction of mind by matter occludes mind,
 the restriction of matter by mind reveals mind. - T.Kun