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

[rj]

TF:
> What is "the balance"? 

The balance is between humans using tools/machines and the
tools/machines using the humans.

> For example, when humans add
> grasshoppers to an environment that did not have and support
> them previously, we do not get environment plus
> grasshoppers, but a new environment. 

Just the same as if we had added a bulldozer to that original
environment, in fact.

> New technologies change
> what we mean by "knowing" and "truth"; they alter those
> deeply imbedded habits of thought which give to a culture
> its sense of what the world is like--a sense of what is the
> natural order of things, of what is reasonable, of what is
> necessary, of what is inevitable, of what is real. Think of
> how language is changed by new technology and how language
> affects thought, action, and expression.

Yes, yes and yes.

> This is why I think
> Pynchon insists that humans not be put on the scale.

No. To read Pynchon's literature as insisting on anything is grossly
incorrect imo. The insistence here is your own.

best