Date: Thu, 24 Mar 94 00:07:49 EST
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject: Re: Avoiding technology


Well, let's see if I _can_ get closer to what's eating me.  One way of
looking at technology is from the point of view of a craftsman
inventing a tool which will help him ply his trade.  I have no problem
with this; that's why it's an attractive view.  The tool invented by
the craftsman may have various undesirable side effects.  This still
presents no problem; the craftsman weighs the positives and the 
negatives and makes some kind of a decision.  He may decide to discard
his invention or to use it.

Unfortunately, this is by far not a correct model of my relationship
with technology.  The technology which permeates the fabric of my life
is not invented by me and rarely springs from any real need of mine.
I have essentially no influence upon what gets developed and how it 
gets used, and yet my life is profoundly shaped by it.  In order to
regain a semblance of the unproblematic situation of the craftsman,
I construct myself as a member of some group -- such as "humanity" 
-- and by this stratagem regain, mythically, the unity between 
inventor, desirer, user, and master of technology.  I say, like 
Boreas, "_we_ must rethink... _we_ must re-evaluate...", and derive 
from this a sense of control over my technological fate.  If
I said, instead, "_I_ must rethink... _I_ must re-evaluate...",
the net result would be one of Beckettian grotesqueness.  
Who is this "_we_"?  David's essay, too, is written from 
a perspective of assumed collectivity; but
this seems to me, in the final analysis, a fiction.  In reality,
technology seems more akin to a natural disaster, an alien fate
which we are constantly compelled to adjust to.