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INFOWAR: Re: Wiggling into temporary organisms
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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
http://www.aec.at/infowar
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How soon they forget... Go look up Greg Bateson's work, where he draws
distinctions between 'react' (kicking a stone) and 'respond' (kicking a dog).
No need to reinvent the wheel, and Bateson had a lot more interesting things to
say relating to behaviour, information, and cybernetics.
Michael Wilson
http://www.7pillars.com/
On Wed, 6 May 1998, Douglas Rushkoff wrote:
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
> INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
> Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
> http://www.aec.at/infowar
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> I like what Fisher just said. I just published an article in the Guardian
> about this, that helps explain why I'm attempting to distinguish between the
> "deadmatter" of information and the "aliveness" of human beings. (Attached
> below). Also, Geert Lovink has defined a new term, "Extramedia", which I
> believe will help dilineate these ideas a bit better, if he has a mind to
> share it here.
>
>
> The Sorcerer's Apprentice
> By Douglas Rushkoff
>
>
> There's a terrific moment in Walt Disney's Fantasia -- you know the one I
> mean. Mickey Mouse, playing the Sorcerer's Apprentice, is charged with
> sweeping up the workshop. He figures he can make his task a little easier
> by reading out a spell from his master's book, activating the broom to carry
> a bucket and clean by itself. Mickey gleefully directs the broom with a
> wave of his arms.
>
> Then the broom goes out of control. Mickey can't make it stop. In a panic,
> he takes an axe and chops up the broom into hundreds of tiny pieces. But
> animated by a force incomprehensible to the young apprentice, each piece
> turns into a tiny broom, and the phantom army pursues him. The entire
> workshop is in chaos, consumed by flood and flames, when the Sorcerer
> himself awakes to solve the crisis.
>
> Many people, with personal experience to support them, believe our
> relationship to technology is just as passive as Mickey's to the magical
> broom. We may have set this stuff in motion in the hope of making our jobs
> a bit easier, they'll tell you, but now technology has a life of its own.
> It is, like nature itself, "out of control." Technology will evolve
> forward, with or without our help. Save for a divine intervention on the
> order of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the tide of change sweeping
> across the world is unstoppable. All we can do is get out of the way, or --
> at best -- enjoy the ride.
>
> On the other side of the spectrum are those who believe technology is
> absolutely in the control of human beings. Each and every new development,
> and its adoption by our culture, is a choice. No single technological
> advancement dictates anything about our future, because we always have the
> freedom to use or not use the device.
>
> Inventions like the automobile and the highway would seem to contradict this
> point of view. We bought automobiles for the feeling of freedom and
> convenience. This allowed for the development of suburbs, which then
> depleted the cities, exacerbated segregation, created air pollution,
> empowered an oil industry, led to a war over Kuwait, and so on. Although
> technology may not absolutely determine our future, it certainly has a nasty
> habit of pushing it along in one direction or another.
>
> This doesn't mean we need to admit that an alien, independent spirit
> possesses technology like it did Mickey's magical brooms. By granting our
> machinery a life and will of its own, we remove humanity from any role in
> directing it. We passively allow things like "market forces" and
> "evolution" to take credit and responsibility for the fate of human affairs.
> We refuse to recognize our own part in the adoption of new technologies,
> exploitation of certain resources, and reshaping of the global economy.
>
> Being able to see the expression of nature and spirit in our technology is
> terrific thing. To me, the Internet is teeming with life, buzzing with
> thought, and reasserting some very basic laws of nature. All of this
> terrific spirit, however, comes from us. *We* are the life coursing through
> our datasphere's veins.
>
> At the very least, we are active participants, with a right to intervene in
> the evolution of technology whenever we choose. Each leap in technology so
> far has followed a clear decision point, during which protocols were
> established, interfaces designed, standards approved, and features marketed.
> To those of us relatively new to the world of computers (anyone who got
> started after the 1970's fits into this camp) it seems as though our laptops
> seeded themselves, according to some predetermined laws of nature. They
> didn't.
>
> But even if the PCs on our desktops *did* sprout like mushrooms, this is no
> reason not to take part in their evolution. Human beings are a part of
> nature, too. Just as we developed agriculture to favor the vegetation that
> supports human life, we can steer technology in directions that favor human
> values.
>
> However automated our technology or the processes by which it marketed to
> us, our computers, satellites, and telecommunications networks are not
> living forces with wills of their own. Yes, we waved them in motion -- but
> not with a Sorcerer's magic wand. We built them with at least a partial
> understanding of their function. If we couldn't fully predict the impact
> our inventions would have on us, this is no reason to deny it is we who are
> still in charge, with the ability to change them now.
>
> So, as St Augustine might have urged had he know modern technology, "do not
> despair: we are not mere apprentices at all. But do not presume: there's no
> sorcerer to save us, either."
>
>
>
>
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