GRGR(10) Control, and a Dostoevsky anecdote

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Juan Cires Martinez writes:
> Of course, I also think that the questions about the real nature of
> control and synthesis are unanswerable.  But thinking about them is
> pretty interesting.  The obvious line of thought, to me, is about how
> these two "technologies" are important in the development of industry.
> And control is specially important in order to eliminate humans in the
> control loop.  All manner of unmanned vehicles require the development
> of sophisticated automatic control systems.

I think this passage and these questions are perhaps the crux of
Pynchons critique of Western culture. Note that Rathenau's questions
arise from a criticism of technology-based development which relegates
control theory and automata (i.e. the Frankenstein/Golem approach) to
the dustbin as pathetically crude and which throws back at the
technologists their dependence on carbon compounds culled from oil.
Oil is dead creatures and plants, dead life. And all the scientists
synthesis really achieves is to rearrange these dead fragments into
alternative dead configurations with no hope of reaching the
complexity of the living original. More hope, truth be told, of
producing a Golem-like chemical monster which will kill some if not
all of us (Jamf's switch to psycho-active chemistry is perhaps due to
a desire to bring life, the human subject of the experiments, back
into the equation - was he at the seance? did he hear and understand
Rathenau's message?). A technology of death used by the death-obsessed
to promote death.  Ditto for genetics - can we really hope to mimic
that `intricate weaving' of living molecules passed down from
generation to generation? and if so to what end? Ditto for rocketry -
yearning to fly into dead space to visit a dead moon? Ditto for
computers, the `thinking machines' the acme of whose learning
capabilities includes the stupidities of `smart' warfare.

No, the only real act of synthesis mankind has performed is the one he
was preprogrammed for, multiplying, polluting and poisoning - `our
mission is to promote death', by creating yet more human life? And
maybe the only control man can (should) hope to attain is enough
self-control to stop despoiling our world in the search for God-like
powers. Maybe control lies not in making things happen but in not
being tied to responding to what does happen. Maybe those Herero are
God's chosen people after all.


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.