Technology: making humanist arguments almost irrelevant

alice wellintown alicewellintown at gmail.com
Thu Jun 6 20:36:17 CDT 2013


Technology has steadily and insidiously improved. AND, the anti-humanists
are using technology insidiously.




On Thursday, June 6, 2013, Markekohut wrote:

> Alice,
>
> This is a nice reminder-find again. As one who has made a bit of an
> argument about P p'raps
> Actually dissing technology and science more than some think, I think this
> excerpt can be more easily seen as one in which P expresses fear about "
> State" ( or THEY ) power....( keeping the truth that WE are also the THEY )
> more than disses technology, in my opinion today....
>
> BUT the line in this that strikes me today is...." Making humanist
> arguments almost irrelevant"
> Wow......that is some phrase from TRP......what do we think it means (
> deeply)?
>
> Is this line a cornerstone of your argument about TRP's beliefs?
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 6, 2013, at 4:48 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
> > What has steadily, insidiously improved since then, of course, making
> humanist arguments almost irrelevant, is the technology. We must not be too
> distracted by the clunkiness of the means of surveillance current in
> Winston Smith's era. In "our" 1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip
> was less than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly primitive next to the
> wonders of computer technology circa 2003, most notably the internet, a
> development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old
> 20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches could only dream about.
> > from the Foreword to 1984
>
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