Re: virus: Technology (was manifest science)
Joe E. Dees (joedees@bellsouth.net)
Wed, 2 Jun 1999 16:59:03 -0500
Date sent: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 00:54:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dylan Durst <ddurst@levien.com>
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re: virus: Technology (was manifest science)
Send reply to: virus@lucifer.com
> > Mommy and Daddy Innovation?
> > Innovation requires intentionality and creativity; evolution is a dumb
> > blind process, possessing neither of these.
>
> I can look at someones CAT scan (or whatever) and call someones
> thoughts dumb and blind (just reactions to their environment, imho).
>
You can call a rat an elephant; that doesn't make it so.
>
> I can
> look at the world from age 0 to now with my Objective Glasses on and see
> it the same way.
>
No pet scan is necessary to inspect in the absence of a brain
(although we can perform experiments upon animal brains we
cannot ethically perform on human ones, and these teach us a
good deal about the lower functions of our own), so your glasses
will do fine - but they are not objective, but intersubjective. You
may share standard perceptions with many others, but they are
still all registered inside individual brains.
>
> I can become conscious and learn to make tools and toys
> and all sorts of material organizations that comes out of my head, but
> I'll still look at an Anteater and think of it as a 'hella' creative way
> for evolution to work.
>
That is a metaphor (and a confusing one), not a verity.
>
> I'm looking for a word that describes all of this in one. One that
> refers to technology as just another trail of evolution.
>
Such a term would be confusing because it would combine and
conflate two dissimilar things, one requiring intentionality and
purpose, one not.
>
> ... fodder cut <snip> ...
>
> - dylan
>
>