MDDM Ch. 38 Summary & Notes

[Dave Monroe]

A quick (quack?) comment on last week's not-so-quick
commentary (such as it was) on Vaucanson's Duck ...

--- jbor <jbor@[omitted]> wrote:
> 
> 384.11 "an erotic Life"  I think Pynchon's point
> with Vaucanson's duck's intertextuality with 20th
> C. cartoons might have something to do with the
> Warner Bros character's apparent  androgyny/
> asexuality....

I'm obviously not one for the grand summation, much
less the concise statement, or even the plain ol'
complete sentence, but ...

But among the several things I hoped to hint at (and
not counting on all the myriad things I might have
hinted at nonetheless), was the interesting take on
artificial intelligence here.  AI as embodied,
emerging FROM embodiment (digestion, defecation,
reproduction), rather than as abstract, transcending
the material, leaving it behind, denying it, even ...

A countergnosticism, perhaps, here countering the
not-always-so-implicit gnosticism of much AI research,
Wired-style techno-optimism and, in particular,
cyberpunk.  Hence my citations from Kurzweil, Gibson,
Teilhard de Chardin.  A gnosticism which filiates as
well through, say, Pentecostalism, with its emphasis
on the Holy Ghost (in the machine), on Resurrection
vs. Incarnation ...

Gnosticism vs. kenoticism ...

Kenosis

"A term derived from the discussion as to the real
meaning of Phil. 2:6 sqq.: 'Who being in the form of
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But
emptied [ekenosen] himself, taking the form of a
servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in
habit found as man.'" 

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08617a.htm

Kenoticism

"A form of Christology which lays emphasis upon
Christ's 'laying aside' of certain divine attributes
in the incarnation, or his 'emptying himself' of at
least some divine attributes, especially omniscience
or omnipotence."

http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/RELIGION/Glossary.htm#K

Interesting resonances here ...

http://www1.umn.edu/lol-russ/hpgary/Russ3421/kenosis.htm

http://www.incommunion.org/incommunion/webster.asp

http://wesley.nnu.edu/Wiley/wiley-2-22.htm

And then there are those various interpretations of
the Eucharist ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0111&msg=62831&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65194&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0203&msg=65343&sort=date

But I'll get back to that shortly.  Anyway, some of
the more pertinent Duck posts here ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65203&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65202&sort=date

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0203&msg=65454&sort=date

And note esp. the angelic, the androgynous ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65282&sort=date

And see as well ...

Brown, Peter.  The Body and Society:
   Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
   Christianity.  NY: Columbia UP, 1988.

Davis, Erik.  Techgnosis: Myth, Magic + Mysticism
   in the Age of Information. NY: Harmony, 1998.

http://www.techgnosis.com/techgnosis/index.html

E.g. ...

"The animating archetype of the information economy,
its psychological spunk, lies in a gnostic flight from
the heaviness and torpor of the material earth, a
transition from the laboring body into the
symbol-processing mind....

[...]

"Like the Holy Ghost, an invisible medium which allows
us to plug into the spirit of God, the incorporeal
machineries of media and information offer to port our
data-souls out of the body and into a virtual
otherworld...."

http://www.techgnosis.com/techgnosis/tgamer.html
 
At any rate ...

"If our world survives, the next great challenge to
watch out for will come - you heard it here first -
when the curves of research and development in
artificial intelligence, molecular biology and
robotics all converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and
unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass, let us
devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed. It
is certainly something for all good Luddites to look
forward to if, God willing, we should live so long."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

Hope that helps ...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email!
http://mail.yahoo.com/