Date: Sun, 1 May 94 01:14:48 CST
From: "tiel0001-AT-student.tc.umn.edu" <tiel0001-AT-gold.tc.umn.edu>
To: technology-AT-world.std.com


Two things:

1.) Malgosia's proposal for how to do the reading sounds good to me.

2.) Vincent Berdayes' posting made me reflect a bit on how technology does 
more than simply grant us more and more 'freedom from necessity'.  
Technology places demands upon us, too, after all.  I remember reading 
somewhere about some 'primitive' group of hunter-gatherers, the average 
member of which had more leisure time per week than did the average 
American.  I wish I could reference this, but of course I can't.  I also 
certainly wouldn't trade places with a Bushman, but it's an interesting 
fact (if it's true).  Affluence, in addition to being unevenly 
distributed, doesn't just increase our power to pursue some 
antecedently-held goals of ours.  It imposes the necessity of pursuing 
certain ends as well.  Now, to say that technology is not always a 
freeing thing is certainly nothing new, but now I wonder if it must 
always be something that takes away as much freedom as it grants.  I've 
never read Marcuse or anything else Vincent mentioned, but I'd like to hear 
more about how affluence and authoritarianism are (or aren't) 
connected.                                                
                                        Erik Tielking