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

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:
> 
> > 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.

Are you claiming that Technology does not exist without the
human intent that drives it? 


Would you also say that "nature" is a meaningless term apart
from our will to define it? 


> 
> > 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!

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I don't think so. David said
humans are born with tools, like hands, some are born with
better tools, that humans can refine the tools they are born
with. I don't think he was talking about pens. 


> 
> > 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.

This has always been the case, to be human is to
technological. 

> 
> > 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


I knew I get a nonsense for that one, but I will argue my
point and you can reply as you see fit.