Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 18:17:31 -0400
From: SBronzell-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: technology and control


Ha! :-}  Very amusing.  Seriously, I'm ROFL.  I did say somewhere in one of
these threads about getting a PHd for grunting.

I think you're right about the dangers of scoundrels, especially when being a
scoundrel is just another ideal.  I think that's the main point we keep
hovering around: to not be acting out of an ideal.   It is crucial to go the
distance with this, or perhaps it might be better not to even start.  To live
without permission means *without my own permission* as well.  That is the
central point to be dismissed or leaped or understood or hurdled or pierced
or enfolded or...

I don't think you are wrong about the dangers.

What I would suggest, perhaps erroneously, is that when one is really a
scoundrel living without permission one is good.  That goodness is ferocious.
 I mean, you know, we get to a point where the words are only giving us
pieces or glimpses, refractions...

And it certainly isn't lovely.

And that this living with an unsettled mind, again not troubled, changes
one's relationship with technology.  So that an artificial life form or
cyborg is not basically in any better situation.  More control perhaps but
still a "person."  It's the same age old story.  King, queen, or beggar.  All
people, all mortal.  And mortal can mean not just one's time running out (we
can avoid getting back into that discussion), but also just that we are not
all; we have limits; we end.

And if an artificial life form is not in that position, I would hem and haw
and consider carefully before calling it intelligent or a "person."  I don't
think, if I can make such a bold statement, that being a "person" has to do
with ability, with a computer program for instance being able to surpass a
human.  I might suggest it has to do with this living in the midst of
ambiguity or dilemma or...

And that we ourselves perhaps are not always safely "persons."

Anyway, I just am thinking or considering that this changes one's whole
approach to technology.  And I think gives technology a real boon.

Sean


Patrick wrote:

>Responding to Sean is like responding to a swarm of gnats, each of which
is bearing a PHD dissertation and/or a epic poem all of which demand 
attention.

[snip]

>And what, really, is the goal of all this--what shall we call it, freedom? 
unpredictability? anarchy?  Being a scoundrel and living by one's own 
changing rules sounds lovely as long it is an ideal generated in response to 
real or perceived unjust and unpleasurable limitations placed on us by
others.
But these ideas are attractive because we really are being
limited/constrained/
oppressed/etc, then we're back to wanting control to protect ourselves.  If
these ideas are attractive because we just want to do whatever we want to do,
then we run the risk of becoming the one who limits/constrains/oppresses
others.
Not many more than three or four people can live as scoundrels, without
permission before people (scoundrels or not) start having bad things happen
to
them.  If all of this is supposed to be an alternative picture to a 
(somewhat caricaturized) fetish of control, then it seems equally dismal and
perhaps more dangerous.

>Then, again, I could be wrong.

>Patrick



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