From: BrettMan35@webtv.net (Brett Robertson) Date sent: Mon, 31 May 1999 15:12:56 -0500 (EST) To: virus@lucifer.com Subject: virus: Technology (was manifest science) Send reply to: virus@lucifer.com
> RE: Technology
>
> Websters uses the definition "a manner of accomplishing a task..."
> (especially regarding the way knowledge may be applied).
>
> My understanding allows that a technology is a NATURAL process.
>
You understanding is at odds with the definition of the word.
Technologies are developments of self-aware minds for the purpose
of altering the natural world - this is why there may be many
different ones created to perform the same tasks. Although less
arbitrary than language (since the technologies have to "work" in
the physical world), there are nevertheless multistable solutions to
practically all technological problems. There are many ways to
skin a Brettster.
>
> Eyes, immune systems, etc. (while seeming to be types of "tools") are
> more the PRODUCT of a technology than a technology proper. Thus,
> *specialization* might be the technology which produces such biological
> products.
>
"Technology" implies a self-aware and intentionally purposeful
Creator of it, clearly not the case with evolution through natural
selection.
>
> Actually, biological systems (eyes, etc.) seem a BYproduct of the
> technology. I would relate such side-effects of a technology to the
> *institutions* established in a society (church, school, home, etc.).
> As such, we might talk about the immune-system "institution" (and the
> immunization "industry"-- implying by this that an *industry* is the
> means by which an institution, in this case the immune system, might be
> "put to work").
>
You once again commit the intentional fallacy and reveal yourself
as a closet theist, one who desires to believe rather than to know.
>
> Institution and industry, together, form a "bureaucracy" implying the
> means by which what is mechanized is objectified and/or how what is
> objectified contingently (by way of institution and industry) might be
> empowered.
>
Pseudo-Marxian mish-mash, and completely contradictory to your
previous theistic assertions.
>
> I might then contrast this particular bureaucracy (the "immunities
> bureaucracy") to the "technology of specialization". This is to say,
> the technology of specialization suggests a natural way of doing (a
> process) and so involves a force for mechanizing which does not REQUIRE
> particular institutions or industries to have its intended effect.
>
This is not comparing apples and oranges, it is comparing
elephants and pebbles, and throwing in an illicit elan vital, besides.
>
> That is, specialization-- as a technology-- is the process by which
> matter and energy use positives and negatives to balance entropy with
> synergy for mechanizing order (by way of specialization) for the
> production of life:
>
Specialization and generalization are NOT TECHNOLOGIES; they
are goals which may be pursued in specific fields by
TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS. I know from sad
experience that it's useless to ask you to distinguish between
nouns and adjectives, but I'll nevertheless once again try.
>
>This life force may then be EXTERNALIZED in a way
> which empowers the functioning of organic byproducts-- such as the
> industry of immunity and the institution of immunization (or the
> bureaucracy of immunities). To THIS degree, specialization may also be
> said to have been hardwired into a human immune *system*... as long as
> such "works"
>
"Hardwired" surreptitiously implies a "HardWirer." There systems
evolved through natural selection-driven coevolution with the bugs
against which they defend the body.
>
> The "bureaucracy of immunities", on the other hand (as contrasted from
> the technology) may cause the overall system to internalize resistance
> to its own technological advancement. This might occur, for instance,
> when what is institutionalized (immunity) and industrialized
> (immunization) uses the force of a technology (medicine as life
> specialization) to mechanize itself within the system (the survival of
> the fittest/ destruction of the least fit) allowing that antibiotics and
> super-germs arise which act COUNTER to the immune force.
>
This is simply evolution continuing when presented with novel
circumstances. Confronted with antibiotics or the antibodies the
development of which vaccinations prompt, most microbes
comprising an infection are killed. Those which survive and
nevertheless manage to continue to infect are ipso facto more
resistant/resilient than the rest, and so will their progeny be. This
is basic textbook shit, but I am not surprised that you have no
understanding of it whatsoever.
>
> Brett Lane Robertson
> Indiana, USA
> http://www.window.to/mindrec
> MindRecreation Metaphysical Assn.
> BIO: http://members.theglobe.com/bretthay
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