IVIV (12): 195-197

[alice wellintown]

>
> I've spent 40+ years around a lot of scientists and technologists, from
> Nobelists to run-of-the-mill, talking to them about their work. My
> experience just doesn't tally with the notion that as a group they are more
> morally obtuse, or less alert to unintended consequences, than your average
> citizen... or your average Sensitive New Age Humanist.


All humans are scientific and technological beings. We make tools and
we use them. All humans are spiritual or cultural or religious beings.
But machines, according to those Pynchonian Texts,  are not tools. And
those texts are correct. The often misquoted Luddite Essay describes
the process of the merging of the spirit and the machine. It's not a
scientific or technological process.

Also, and Again, a misreading of who THEY are in P-texts confuses
matters and reduces the issues raised by the texts to political ones
and mistakenly attributes the evil of the machine cult to a human or
group of humans.  Nixon and the CIA are only human(s). There were
humanists, artists, scientists, businessmen, authors, film makers,
teachers, mothers, Gentiles, Jews, Catholics, Atheists  who worked for
IG Farben. Ordinary men and women.  Scientists are nice. Scientists
are not so nice. Same with Bus drivers. Same with pilots and nurses
and authors.