progression of technologies (almost a satire)

dan at geer.org dan at geer.org
Sat Jun 27 19:04:08 PDT 2015


 > *** Thank you for this interesting opinion.

And to you, in turn.  You are, of course, correct that only humans
can tame human impulses.  Keying to what, to me, is the centroid:

 > Nietzsche declared God dead, and here we are mechanizing Its
 > omni-science in search of omni-impotence, and soon we'll be
 > declaring humans dead as well, obsolete, parasiting the good
 > working of the machine.

Are not Greek and Norse mythology (at least) fairly predictive of
what happens when human nature is merged with godlike power?  ("I'll
turn you into a frog!" ... "Not if I turn you into an eel first!")
Or is the more likely prediction that of Steve Wozniak, that humans
will be the house pets of robots in due course?

I am no more kidding than you are, your closing

 > In conclusion, as a final tongue-in-cheek comment: if we can't
 > stop progress, we can at least try and make it worse.

being most well taken.  I, for one, would gladly paraphrase John
Perry Barlow's declaration of independence of cyberspace and say
that the "weary giants of flesh and steel" should leave me alone
but only if the "technology [that] is being imposed on a global
scale without restraint" will do likewise.  A pox on both; may
they fight to a standstill somewhere other than my front room
or my backyard.

--dan




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