lolitas, dope, and robots

[Jules Siegel]

At 09:38 PM 07/8/97 -0400, paul.murphy at utoronto.ca (Paul Murphy) wrote:

>Actually, my suggestion is to go read a lot of Jacques Ellul, and maybe
some Marcuse, if pseudo-sociological anti-technology jeremiads is what
you're after.

Why would I want pseudo-sociological jeremiads? I want anecdotal examples of
human robot behavior that I can use to dramatize the concept. Technology
isn't the issue at all. I am a technocrat. I earn my living using state of
the art imagesetting equipment. I'm a graphic designer, not a Luddite.

The Human Robot is about the emotional states created by industrialism. My
thesis is that technology is beside the point. Industrialism is a set of
beliefs, policies and practices industrialists use to achieve specific
goals. Machines don't always crush the human spirit. The high priests of
industrialism do that as a business routine. I'm looking at the symptoms and
tracing them back not to the machine, but to the way industrialists forced
drastic changes in the way we raise our children.

I'm not a sociologist. I am a journalist. I don't want tired old text book
footnotes. I want kids of all ages playing show and tell. Pynchon-l provides
all the contrasts, from Hal the Robot to autistic outbursts of repetitive
name calling. Setting all this off is a kind of chorus of animated
intellectuals expressing their differences with each other and the robots
and me.


--Jules Siegel Apdo 1764 Cancun QR 77501
http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm