From: strength@milton.u.washington.edu (Julian Bleecker)
Subject: Re: Sci-VW: Re: Virtuality and the Dominant Culture...
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1992 18:54:48 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle



In article <1992Jan10.061516.26412@milton.u.washington.edu> Daniel G Mintz 
<70322.1065@CompuServe.COM> writes:

>I have not had the time to work through all of the comments on the review
>but was interested in your comments.
> 
>What would be your solutions, action steps to protect the simple American
>culture from technocracy gone wild?

I'm not sure who this is directed to, but i'll start.

My opinions:  

Well, first there is nothing simple about the American culture.  But
culture is an excellent place to begin to understand why "technocracy"
has gone "wild".  I must point out that I can't realistically propose
any solutions or action steps as my pursuits into understanding
technoculture are embryonic.  Although I am writing a masters thesis on
just these issues, I probably won't be comfortable with saying I have
some proposed solutions until (well) after my doctoral thesis.  These
are tough issues, no doubt. 

It seems as though the American culture (lets stick to that turf, given
its current if crumbling technoindustrial strength) is a culture of
choice, but choice driven by false needs.  The choices we are given are
irrational and false given the vast levels of paucity and scarcity
throughout the nation.  This mechanism of choice is ultimately what
drives our technology development crazy in what our politics calls the
"spirit of competition". 

The choices it seems are driven by our ambition to realize all of our
dreams.  Not everything is possible or should be possible.  There are
some sacred values that have been stomped upon in our wild reliance and
encouragement of technology development to realize our dreams.  My
feeling is that these sacred elements need to be integrated into
technology development to help regain control over our increasingly
complicated and crumbling society.  No New Age politics here: By
"sacred" I mean elements such as insightful dialogue on emergent
technologies (which in my opinion does not happen nearly enough), a new
curriculum structure in the sciences and engineering disciplines that
puts an emphasis on ethics and critical thought (as is beginning to be
seen in the medical disciplines), a sense of true professionalism in
these same disciplines and so forth. 

There are some technology developments that are firmly rooted in
millenia of human myth and dreams; flight, high speed travel,
communication, control over "reality", etc.  But dreams of flight most
certainly did not contain overbooking, noise and air pollution and
midair collisions.  Same with regards to high speed travel. 
Communication dreams weren't chock full of annoyance calls, 1-900 ads,
pay phone drug deals or phone card abuse (maybe your nightmares).  These
are the realities of the world of scarcity, not of abundance: the waking
world which is a *sacred element*.  

The dialogue I mentioned earlier must focus on the reality of technology. 
What nightmares might we expect with the control of reality we are
collectively dreaming about with the emergence (perhaps emergence with a
vengence) of virtuality? I actually don't want to just wait and see. 
The dialog needs to start *now* to help direct development so it *does*
manifest virtuality closer to our dream image. 

irreverantly,

-julian