Prosthetic Paradise (was Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1012

[rj]

> I can poke a man in the eye with a duck and I can
> communicate human thought with my eye. A pen is just like a
> finger, a duck, an eye, ....?
> 
> Nonsense, how are they all just like a pen? 

Sorry Terrance, but it's your duck.

The earliest humans painted on cave walls with their fingers in order to
communicate with the gods/future generations, and thereby transcend
personal mortality. The pen is simply a technological extension of this
basic human need, or desire.

> Humans are not born with
> tools as part of their biology. This was the claim being
> made, a finger is a tool. 

If this was the argument then of course I agree with you. I didn't
realise Frodeaux, David and Nabokov were trying to say that babies
nowadays are born replete with pens and combine harvesters!

> to say that man does not
> still fashion tools to adapt and create them to serve his
> current needs and wants is not accurate.

But I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that the tools/machines are
now irrevocably a part of the human environment and unless the newborn
human quickly adapts to this realm of technology which we now inhabit
then they and theirs will not be fit enough to prosper or perhaps even
survive in it.

> These are Pynchon's claims! 

Nonsense.

> Why don't we discuss some
> examples from GR or any other Pynchon book or essay and I
> will support my position with his texts.

By all means.

best