There's an App for that Desire

[alice wellintown]

The more powerful a technology, the more it fabricates, re-makes the
world in the form, in the patterns of what humans Desire. More and
more, Science is developing technics that don't simply function as a
means to realizing our Desires, but reconstruct the world in the shape
of human order, and under human control. So, a common enough trope in
P's best and recent novels is the mapping of the world, a mapping and
remapping of the world to fit the rules, the order Desired. The
frustrations of this project, for example, of mapping the Wedge in M&D
or the slippery and protean land-sea scape around the Bay off
Maryland, and so on, Slothrop's sexual conquests...is, often
humorously so, a critique leveled at enlightened western Man, but more
specifically at Science and Technic.

Science is not the study of nature, the discovery of the laws and so
on, but the project to transform the world with technics, to make it
conform to orders and to efficiencies that are viewed as virtues from
a mechanized point of view. Science falls in love with its machines,
its techniques because Science can handle these truths, solve these
problems. So, something has happened to Science. Where is the
discovery? Where is the mystery? These too are essential to Science.

Now, there may be a few Faradays out there. Ironic, for those who
watch Lost, that Faraday is Oxford Educated and so on. For the real
man of Science was brilliant but not educated in this formal manner.

Most, are not Faradays. Most are funded by big data, big money, big
business, big university, military industrial complex. Most have
become, as Norbert Weiner complained, button pushers, technology men.

If Science has value, and I think it does, and I'm inclined to agree
with MalignD, P does love Science, who doesn't?, isn't that why we are
so sad to see it handed off to the new-Science?, it is outside of
technology.

So, some have argued that we must keep these seperate if we are to
have a clean and honest look at the question, consider the ugly and
yes, the beautiful truth in Science, but can we? Wellto find value in
Science, and there is, obviously, much value there, we need to look at
it outside of technic.

On 6/19/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> "ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the
> delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness
> they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of
> sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not
> going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything
> else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know
> and brings to light many differences between things."
>
> -Aristotle
>