Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 20:42:23 -0500
From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net>
Subject: Re: ON COMPUTING WITH DNA


JF Koh wrote:
[snip]
> They're still some way off from actual organic computers, but one of the
> imagined applications is weaving smart circuits into the fabric of
> clothing.  I imagine technology would then become ever more an invisible
> part of our daily lives.
[snip]

Will technology *remain* an all too invisible part of our lives,
i.e., will we continue to have to commute to work, and, when
we get there, will we be subjected to such primitive things
as pressure of deadlines?  

So far, that's the way it's been: As Joseph Weizenbaum wrote 
some quarter-century ago: The computer, by bailing out
bureaucratic social structures when the quantity of data
to be processed exceeded what human clerks could
handle, *prevented* social revolution.  The computer has
(so far!) been one of the most powerful forces
for social reaction (or at least "conservatism") in the
past 100 years.  I am not impressed by the thought of
wearing an "intelligent" suit to [over]work.

Yours in the hope for a future in which all persons
shall have that which, in the past, the well-to-do had,
but today even many of the rich cannot afford:
To quote the title of Josef Pieper's magisterial
essay: "Leisure [is] the basis of culture".

\brad mccormick

-- 
   Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
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