V-2nd - Chapter 10, Part II: What is Man?

[John Bailey]

I think it's also true that these comparisons involve things which at
the time are both understood and still mysterious - automata were
regarded with suspicion and wonder in 18th century, with plenty of
tales of clockwork people coming to life or endowed with agency;
similar stories about engines and rays linked with ghosts and the
divine; and now, while we all use computers etc there's still a sense
that most of us don't actually know how they do what they do. Of
course all are knowable, and we know that, but we also suppress an
idea of their strangeness. The 'inanimate' in V. is not just the dead
or inert but the mute and recalcitrant thing that stymies our desires,
perhaps deliberately so.

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:28 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Monroe did a big show on this theme. That monster in the Machine book
> became, for me, the makings of a course I used to teach and I plan to
> teach again next year. Learned a lot from Monroe;s postings on this
> subject over the years. Not that that means I still don't dislike
> Monroe or nothing like that.
>
> from Zakiya Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic,
> Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific revolution
> (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000), Chapter Three, "Monstrous Machines,"
>
> From Klaus Benesch, Romantic Cyborgs: Authorship and
> Technology in the American Renaissance (Amherst: U of
> Massachusetts P, 2002), "Introduction: Authorship,
> Technology, and the Cybernetic Body,"
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 12:43 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Too lazy (too human) to type this all out, but another wonderful, thought-provoking Pynchon passage (p. 310):
>>
>> "In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton..."
>>
>> 19th century: heat-engine with 40% efficiency
>>
>> 20th century: something which absorbs x-rays, gamma rays and neutrons
>>
>> Why has Man been so intent on comparing himself (ourselves) to an inanimate object?  Kind of the opposite of positing a religious deity, which gives us the luxury of accepting without understanding.  If we're merely machines, we can be drawn, dissected, predicted and completely known.  Not to mention that gives us, as machine-creators, a godlike status.  A seductive metaphor for anyone with a reasonably large ego who's willing to truncate the nuances of human emotion and experience.
>>
>> The 21st century version is undoubtedly "Man is a computer."  Lots of sci-fi on the topic, anyhow.  Questions such as:  can human memories be downloaded?  "Whether we're based on carbon or silicon, we all deserve the same respect."
>>
>> Laura
>>
>