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

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:
> 
> TF:
> > What is "the balance"?
> 
> The balance is between humans using tools/machines and the
> tools/machines using the humans.

How can a hammer use a man? Do you mean man using machines
to use men? 
> 
> > 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.

Not what I had in mind here, but Yes, the bulldozer can be
used to form a new environment, it can, for example, cause
the extinction of a species which might have an equally
profound impact on the environment, making it a new
environment.

> > 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

I know, we disagree here. It is my insistence. If I claim it
is Pynchon's too, I must demonstrate why.