Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, July 28, 2006
Is technology truly "neutral"?
Okay man, you’ve successfully made me appreciate even more fully the monthly miracle that is the check I send to my landlord here in west midtown manhattan. Great collection of anti-tech articles and links all around.
And Amelopsis talked me into it:
http://www.theppk.com/veganbaking.html
All you need to know about avoiding eggs and all that. Everyone should buy her Isa’s book, Vegan With a Vengeance.This is the only good vegan cheese subsitute; all others give vegan stuff a bad name:
http://www.imearthkind.com/Probably out to a daytime temp job today…
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 07/28 at 04:47 AMGood morning, James.
Good topic, Mickey. There are so many things that should be uninvented...the first that always comes to my mind is nuclear power, but also many pharmaceuticals, factory farming, factory schools, GMO’s that were developed with the complicity of the USDA, on and on. Technology is designed to benefit the ruling class and one of the big issues now is that it is often combined with some minor benefit to the civilian population. I am referring to the growth in the micro-technology area. This is providing new jobs in the usa. Upstate New York has a large, new “campus” in the development stage now. It is being heralded by everyone because of the promise of jobs. What they don’t talk openly about is the fact that most of the technology being developed will be for the war machine.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/28 at 07:15 AMI oppose the idea that technology = progress as much as anyone. I have strong neo-Luddite tendencies and my relationship with this here computer and some forays into digital music and video rarely feel healthy.
That said I should correct the symantics of part of your comment RMJ; technology cannot be “designed to benefit the ruling class”. I’m not making the argument that the problem is merely the use of certain technologies, just that technology itself is an abstract noun (like terrorism). Much like we cannot be “at war with terror” we cannot blame “technology”. We could blame its improper uses, but as one of Mickey’s quotes clarifies, some technologies favor the bad people. So it is the kinds of technologies we develop that are the problem. I have thought about this a lot. We need to be able to distinguish creativity from destructivity. No matter how apparently “creative” the people who dreamed up the atom bomb were, there contribution to human technology was ultimately, and severely, destructive.
Spoons and wheels and guitars are good. Gun powder and napalm and microchips are not.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 07/28 at 08:19 AMGreat topic today...here’s my piece:
The worst thing about human beings creating and building new technology are the waste products that are created and dumped into the earth and water ways.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 09:22 AMCouple of links…
Woops, they made a law that could possibly tie up some US military and government officials in trials for war crimes. I am sure they wiil be able to correct that mistake:
“With New Yorkers already fuming about reports that the feds downplayed the danger of Ground Zero dust, the White House gave EPA chief Christie Whitman the power to bury embarrassing documents by classifying them “secret."”
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 09:46 AMKeir...I stand corrected, partially. I think that the thrust of technology itself is often directed to benefit a certain few. But maybe it would have been more accurate if I had said that the products of technology are designed to benefit the ruling class. That is only part of the problem. Too often it is the same science/technology that produces both good and evil. One of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project ( I forget which one) was quoted as saying that his responsibility ended with the “science” and how it was used was the responsibility of others.
JOS...your point is a good one, especially when applied to nuclear power. The cost of decommissioning the plants and the costs of storing the used rods has usually not been taken into consideration when the industry is trying to sell the population on more plants.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/28 at 09:51 AMhello again good people. been busy this week (its not like anyone missed me). anyway, i implore you to take a minute and read this on topic passage from the book i am reading at the moment. i haven’t read by the first 40 pages yet so i don’t know yet where he is going with it but right or wrong he writes brilliantly and seems to be profound. its from roughly 100 years ago…
“As I look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside about me, which stretches miles and miles, with its green fields, and bushy treetops, its red roofs, its banners of steam from twenty railways, its huge, grim, furious chimneys, its still, sleepy steeples, I also see two worlds, the same two worlds over again that I saw in the churchyard, except that they are all jumbled together—the complacent, capable, cut-out, homeless-looking houses, the little snuggled-down old ones with their happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke. I see the same two worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way I turn.And when I slip out of the churchyard from those two little separate worlds of the dead, and move slowly down the long bustling village street, and look into the faces of the living, the same two worlds that were in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of the faces of the living too.
The faces go hurrying past me, worlds apart. Most people, I imagine, who read these pages must have noticed the people’s faces in the streets nowadays—how they seem to have come out of separate worlds into the street a moment, and hurry past, and seem to be going back in a moment more to separate worlds.
There is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where one cannot see these two worlds, or the spirit of these two worlds, flitting past one through the streets in people’s faces, and nightly before our eyes, struggling with each other to possess, to swallow away into itself human souls, to master the fate of man upon the earth.
One of these is the World of the Hand-made; the other is the Machine-made World.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------As day by day I watch these two worlds with all their people in them flocking past me, I have come to have certain momentary but recurrent resentments and attractions, unaccountable strong emotions; and when I try afterward to rationalize my emotions, as a man should, and give an account of them to myself, and get them ready to use and face my age with, and make myself strong and fit to live in an age, I find myself with a great task before me. And yet one must do it; one cannot live in an age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some other age, or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make up one’s mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and live in it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment I begin to try to decide which of the two—the Hand-made World or the Machine-made World—I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused, groping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of all its ugly ways—a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody, its magnificent heartlessness—I find I have come to take in the Machine-made World a kind of boundless, half-secret pride and joy, for a terrible and strange beauty there is in it. And then, too, even if I wanted to give it up, I could not: neither I nor any man, nor all the world combined, could unthink to-day a hundred years, fold up a hundred thousand miles of railway, tuck modern life all neatly up again in a little, old, snug, safe, lovable Hand-made World. There must be some way out, some connecting link between the Hand-made and the Machine-made. We have merely lost it for a moment.
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 10:27 AMHello Expendables. I think someone has sucked out all the air in NYC and replaced it with soup.
A quick addition to the war crimes link from JOS:
http://tinyurl.com/kuab7I’ll be back soon and perhaps by then someone will have noticed the video of a whale taking out a kayak.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 10:28 AMJOS # 5...That is a good link about the war crimes. I have been following the issue closely and think that it is a perfect example of how those in power pervert the legal system for their own agenda. Recently every time that I have been with legal “type” people and I use the words “justice’ or “truth”, they become very angry with me. Then I get the standard lecture on how truth and justice have NO place in the legal system. They are right. What could I have been thinking ! At one of this year’s graduation ceremonies, Catherine Crier was the speaker. She spoke about truth and justice in the legal system. I read her speech on the Internet. They were rare and excellent words coming from a lawyer.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/28 at 10:30 AMSorry, Michael...simultyping. Thanks for the prophetic excerpt. And yes, I did miss you. I always notice when an Expendables goes AWOL but I don’t always comment on it for fear of pressuring someone to comment.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 10:30 AMi noticed it but the guy comes back up
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 10:31 AMHi Michael and Mickey....we were symultyping.
I like the passage from the book, Michael.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 07/28 at 10:36 AMGreat post today!
The Chellis Glendinning interview was thought provoking and very timely for me. I’ll have to find some of her books. Thanks
My Wife and I are hoping to get some land out in the country in an area where we have family with farms. If all goes as planned we’ll someday soon be raising our kid(s) in a more sustainable environment. I personally really enjoy city living and the people I’ve met in them. But the city mentality is draining and damaging on an insidious hidden level. I believe that 90% of the problem in getting people to think about what’s going on in this world, is fighting the mind numbing poison of our current “civilisation”.
In the Chellis interview did anyone else think this was a little bit telling?
“It (a cell phone relay tower) was put up right in our village. It’s very obvious, and the act of putting it up was very obvious. But nobody did anything. I was the only one who seemed to be appalled at this thing. I had a lot of information on the health effects of microwave radiation. I can’t fully explain what happened to that can-do attitude that was so prevalent before.”
This was in a town where they shot the new ATM machine to pieces! Not to get all “Rensey” but, perhaps there’s more going on with those frequencies then cell phone transmissions.....
Peace and Love,
LunaPosted by Luna_C on from The Delta 07/28 at 10:57 AMYes, that was some back flop by the whale.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 11:02 AMI love that passage, michael, who is the author?
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 11:16 AMNo truth or justice? Don’t you love those “legal” type people, RMJ?
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 11:17 AMKeir, the guitar was a great invention.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 11:18 AMAs the only local Expendable I must concur with MZ #8-- I can’t focus on whale videos or anything else, this is a complete nightmare. My people come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow. Not the amazon rain forest. I just got in and both cats theatened to use my whole apartment as their litter box if I didn’t put the a.c. on. It’s still not helping.
So I can’t rail against quite ALL tech at the moment…
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 07/28 at 11:23 AMJOS? Know who I’m quoting above, speaking of guitars? Hammer of the…
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 07/28 at 11:27 AMthe book is
CROWDS - A MOVING-PICTURE OF DEMOCRACY
BY GERALD STANLEY LEE Editor of “Mount Tom”
IN FIVE BOOKSand i am not yet convinced it isnt going to be a pro corporate thing because in the 40 pages i have read he says many social responsibility things but also repeats that he wishes to see “inspired millionaires” who inspire for the common good, rather than personal profit.
in other words, from what i have read i dont know where he is going to end up with up it but there is no shortage of excellent points either way. this is one of the things the post 9/11 mentality is doing. absolute right or absolute wrong mentality. in general it is something to be guraded against. i am enjoying the book but i don’t know yet if i will agree with the dude
long story short.. you can read it free here…
i hate reading online, i always print it off and read on paper. i know it is not enviro nice but i really can’t read it any other way and i do reycle. and i don’t have a printer at home so it takes a while to get thru something!
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 11:30 AMone of the best essays I´ve read on the manipulative aspects of technology is Wired to the Data Hive by Michael Hoffman.
Posted by owen on from barcelona 07/28 at 11:42 AMJames, #19 - Led Zepplin...Immigrant Song.
AaaaaAaaahh, AHHHH!
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 11:49 AMIs anyone else here old enough to have seen Zep in concert as I did?
Btw, it is beyond hot in NYC. I know our Texas friends will mock me but I need a new word. Hot doesn’t do it.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 11:52 AMThis is sad, but I saw Robert Plant in concert in the 90’s. He actually wasn’t bad.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 12:07 PMOff topic: any of y’all see this? I’ll get to the links later on---nice to see the Tubthumper and Owen back over here.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 07/28 at 12:09 PMPS: Led Zeppelin rules. (Although these days I gotta remind myself they were like 18, 20 years old when they were saying all that shit about sex and women like they were 95 year old black men living in Mississippi in the 1930’s.) Favorite album...I would have to say Physical Graffiti, although the first album is pretty damn good too.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 07/28 at 12:12 PMkeir, its not as if it comes as a surprise
if u r looking for the mysterious “we” that have been posting on your site you have you answer.
try this one courtesy of http://www.spinwatch.org courtesy of someone else before that…
THE VIDEO ISRAEL DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE…
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 12:13 PMWho’s a good boy!!! Yes you are!! Ah yes you are!! You been keeping the house safe today from intruders? Have ya boy? I bet you have!! Yeah you are a good dog!!! Go get the ball....c’mon guy, go get it. Bring it back to Daddy!!! Gooood Boy!!!! Here is a old bone to chew on! (Scratches dog behind the ears) You like that buddy? I bet you do!!! There ya go....Thata Boy!!!!
Posted by man talking to his dog on from texas 07/28 at 12:13 PMits actually very mild considering some of the things that are going on but it is a mainstream media organisation stepping “out of line” hence the furious reaction and unless i have misunderstood things hence the rather bizarre reaction in the previous post which attempts to be ironic but genuinely fails to understand what irony means
dude
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 12:19 PMReally hoping #28 is Mudge… what have I started. Rock on my friends. I’m not sure of my favorite album, but right now Fool in the Rain is my favorite song. Or will be later tonight, if the forecast is any indication. Also, D’yer Mak’r, that odd calypso thing going on with it.
Wait, I know-- you have to find this thing released a few years ago called How the West was Won. 3 disc live set, featuring a 25 minute brilliant version of Whole Lotta Love. Yes, one of the most misogynistic songs ever written, but no less brilliant for it.
God help me, but I’m out to the gym now. The really better have all their fans working.
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 07/28 at 12:24 PMFirst Sherpa Tribesman: I foresaw your death last night.
Second Sherpa Tribesman: Stop Saying That!!!
Posted by sherpa tribesmen talking on from himalayas 07/28 at 12:27 PMSo there I was, balls deep in this guys ass, when I went to give him a reach around. The dude had a hard-on!!! I thought to myself, what a faggot!!!
Posted by Eric the Red on from Florida 07/28 at 12:29 PMis that a threat?
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 12:31 PMI step out for a minute to finish the laundry and look what happens. Based on IP address, our new friend appears to be from the same army base in Arizona as a previous guest named Wayne.
So, here’s the question: Do I delete the comments or leave them up as the official U.S. Army statement?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 12:34 PMall i was gonna say was free speech seems to be a pretty weak value for some of its most supposedly vehement defenders sometimes doesnt it?
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 12:36 PMAnd to think, we were just discussing how old Led Zep lyrics were potentially offensive…
I don’t know, but #32’s screen name gives Vikings a bad name.
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 07/28 at 12:37 PMIt’s all the same G.I. Joe demostrating how U.S. taxpayers turn boys into real men. It’s not just a job…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 12:38 PMWayne seems to be some sort of bestiality freak with strong homophobic prejudices. I say let the comments stand...the US military sure has loosened its requirements, hasn’t it?
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 12:41 PMI don’t know if it’s Wayne, JOS. Doesn’t sound like his style. I’m thinking he told his comrades about this blog and one of them wanted to show off his army training.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 12:44 PMhey if its good enough for sheep ranchers, its good enough for soldiers...Giddyap!!
Posted by Wayne on from arizone 07/28 at 12:44 PMWhere’s Mudge when we really need him…
Late, can’t wait to see how this turns out.
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 07/28 at 12:47 PMsince he mentioned a reacharound i wonder if he was thinking about jeff gannon/gukert
check this link and laugh yourself silly..
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 12:49 PMOh Wayne (or Billy-Bob)...sex with animals is wrong, even if you do give them a reach around. OK, I hope that’s time “reach arounds” are mentioned for today.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 12:53 PMI say we stop encouraging Wayne. You know those U.S. military types. Once they start an occupation, they never leave.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 12:55 PMfair enough
i still u still watch the vid
its funnneeeeeeee
Posted by michael on from exile 07/28 at 12:56 PMHow about a taste of a Led Zep article tin Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/long_shadow_of_led_zeppelin
captcha : physical (graffiti)
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 01:02 PMYour article on the black-out here in Astoria struck a cord.
I think there is a parallel in the possible effects of the blackout, and the experience of travel that I’m fixated on. This commonality I’d say is the aspect of learning obvious lessons through direct exposure (to various environments and conditions). For some in this neighborhood, maybe it will cause them to rethink their rock-solid confidence in the technology surrounding us, as well as the competence of elected representatives.
I have to say that throughout the black-out, I was also wishing that the issue of not having power would in some way shake the “all-deserving” attitude that also permeates. Personally, I didn’t find any of it all that bad. In fact, it reminded me of distant places and times. Not having hot water reminded me of washing with a bar of soap and a bucket in a back yard in Southern India. Walking up to the sixth floor to my apartment (as opposed to taking the elevator) reminded me of a year living in a little one-room shack above a three story building, on top of a steep hill overlooking Seoul Korea. Nothing like scrambling up that hill, walking over sheets of black ice, in sub-zero temps, after a night of ample rotgut soju. Lights out, and the hum of generators reminded me of nightly black-outs in Varanasi, and life continuing without a flinch.
There was one news segment where this hysterical woman was screaming “Queens is a war zone!” I have to say that if I were there at that moment, I might have promptly applied a painful yet sobering, old school Full-Nelson. To sign off, strip us down, and nobody is better or more deserving than anyone else. Personally, I think they should shut the lights out on us more often.
Posted by rich on from Astoria, Queens 07/28 at 01:04 PManyone else notice how anyone can put any name up here, make some comments and cause such a ruckus? Actually the folks who were writing in the comments are a couple of wayne’s coworkers, me and another guy. He is back in South Dakota on leave.
Posted by johnjohn the jumping bean on from New Jersey 07/28 at 01:06 PMThanks for chiming in, Rich. I just read where one of the local Astoria politicos called this whole power outage thing a “hellish nightmare.” It sucked, sure...but “a hellish nightmare”? He needs a full-Nelson, too because “hellish mightmare” should be reserved for places like, say, Beirut or Baghdad.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 01:11 PMOh my god...there’s a ruckus going on in here!
Sorry, Mick, last response.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 07/28 at 01:12 PMWow - 50 comments, and it’s early times for Helga - 4:30 am, to be precise! Thanks for this post with its perceptive comments on technology, Mickey - and a hello to James, Rosemarie, Keir, JOS, Michael, Luna_C, Sherpa Tribesman, Eric the Red, Wayne, Rich, johnjohn .. Quite a few new names - your blog is gaining more support, Mickey. Good on you and good for us expendables.
I hope all the expendables have a most pleasant weekend.
Best wishes from Daylesford, Australia
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 07/28 at 01:30 PMMickey I hereby nominate Helga the Expendable princess of peace.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 07/28 at 04:24 PMConsider your nomination seconded, Keir.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 07/28 at 04:25 PMRich (#47): “Personally, I think they should shut the lights out on us more often.”
You’re on to something here. Take a densely populated urban area in the US. Turn the electricity off for 18 or so hours a day. Let the water run brown. Fly F16’s low. Occassionally bomb apartment blocks (kill whole families). Repeat ad nauseum. Gaza!
Less cynically: why does electricity flow all the time? Last winter, on a visit to a small mining city in Poland (Nowa Ruda), I learned that it had been perfectly normal and acceptable for years that hot water would not be available during certain hours (late at night, I think). Our freedom to take hot showers or power our computers at all hours (freedoms I admittedly excercise, er, freely) mean resources to do so are extracted elsewhere and denied to others. I think it is a crime that shops and businesses keep their lights on when they’re closed. Wars are fought and countries invaded to light up McDonald’s after hours, to power us all up 24/7. Why is that normal? I don’t trust anyone to ration electricity or water for me, but it is a good practice to do it oneself.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 07/28 at 06:16 PMKeir,
On that note, was having a conversation with a neighbor last night. We are in for another heat wave this weekend, and the issue of the power came up. She told a story of speaking to her friend who recently returned to Pakistan. Her friend reminded her that in Pakistan, there are black-outs every night. Her reaction was “well, that’s great, now we both live in 3rd world countries.” I don’t think I showed any reaction, but at that moment I’m thinking “if this is now the 3rd world, then we’ve just joined the conditions of the other 80% of the world’s population.... What makes us more entitled than them? Than anyone?”
I know it is cliche to say but we don’t know another person’s life until walking in their shoes. So obvious, yet so often discredited. I think exposure to what this other 80% is dealing with can break the common person’s indifference here in the first world. With that said, it doesn’t help us one bit having a president who prior to being initially elected had never been out of the country. Very dangerous.Posted by rich on from Astoria, Queens 07/29 at 07:11 AMRich: absolutely. Too many monoglot (?) Americans see Europe as an amusement park, Africa as a shithouse, Latin America as a narcotics factory, and Asia as a factory for everything else (flu, cheap petro-chemical based household utensils, and labor). And everything from Morocco to Pakistan except the few acres between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean is the domain of bearded boogeymen. There is unfortunately some truth to this.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 07/29 at 07:56 AM
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