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Bits And Bytes Online Edition Volume 1 Number 13
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." A. Einstein
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BBB III TTT SSS BBB Y Y TTT EEE SSS ONLINE EDITION:
B B I T S B B Y Y T E S =THE ELECTRONIC
BBB I T SSS AND BBB YYY T EEE SSS =NEWSLETTER FOR
B B I T S B B Y T E S =HIGH-TECH
BBB III T SSS BBB Y T EEE SSS =DUMPSTER DIVERS
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Volume 1, Number 13 (October 26, 1993)
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SPECIAL ISSUE: THE DARK SIDE OF TECHNOLOGY =
Editorial: The End is Near -|- The Judgement of Thamus =
Civilization is Like a Jetliner -|- The Cult of Information =
The Disenchantment of the World -|- The Rhythms of Life =
Growing Up With Technology -|- We All Live in Bhopal =
Viruses as Weapons of War -|- Gifts to Posterity =
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Civilization Is Like a Jetliner (T. Fulano)
Civilization is like a jetliner, noisy, burning up enormous amounts
of fuel. Every imaginable and unimaginable crime and pollution had to
be committed in order to make it go. Whole species were rendered
extinct, whole populations dispersed. Its shadow on the waters
resembles an oil slick. Birds are sucked into its jets and vaporized.
Every part, as Gus Grissom once nervously remarked about space
capsules before he was burned up in one, has been made by the lowest
bidder. . . . Civilization is like a jetliner, an idiot savant in the
cockpit, manipulating computerized controls built by sullen wage
workers, and dependent for his directions on sleepy technicians high
on amphetamines with their minds wandering to sports and sex. . . .
Civilization is like a 747, filled beyond capacity with coerced
volunteers -- some in love with the velocity, most wavering at the
abyss of terror and nausea, yet still seduced by advertising and
propaganda. . . .
Jetliners fall, civilizations fall, this civilization will fall. The
gauges will be read wrong on some snowy day (perhaps they will fail).
The wings, supposedly defrosted, will be too frozen to beat against
the wind and the bird will sink like a millstone, first gratuitously
skimming a bridge (because civilization is also like a bridge, from
Paradise to Nowhere), a bridge laden, say, with commuters on their way
to or from work, which is to say, to or from an airport, packed in
their cars (wingless jetliners) like additional votive offerings to a
ravenous Medusa.
Then it will dive into the icy waters of a river, the Potomac
perhaps, or the River Jordan, or Lethe. And we will be inside, each
one of us at our specially assigned porthole, going down for the last
time, like dolls' heads encased in Plexiglas. (SOURCE: T. Fulano,
"Civilization is Like a Jetliner," Fifth Estate, Fall 1983, p. 1,
reprinted in Questioning Technology (QT) [see B&B Bookshelf])
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EDITORIAL:
It's time to bite the hands of the dogs that feed (and clothe and
shelter) me, and to indulge my deepest fears about the technology I
love to go on about. These are scary times we're living in. The
Chinese are recruiting unemployed Russian physicists to speed up their
ballistic and nuclear weapons programs. (Wall Street Journal,
10/14/93, p. A12), Russian nuclear weapons and materials are being
sold on the black market to the highest bidder, and "Peacekeeping
forces" are fighting bloody skirmishes around the world. Closer to
home people are being killed in their homes and cars and on the
streets in rising numbers, often for no apparent reason. Terrorist
cells are hatching plots to bring the great Satan (that's us, and the
reputation is not entirely undeserved) to its knees. Children kill
their parents, men kill their girlfriends and grandparents. Striking a
blow for women's lib, women are striking back, killing their
boyfriends and castrating their husbands. There are fears that
unpopular court verdicts will spark rioting in the streets. Let's not
even discuss what tends to happen around millenniums, the next of
which is less than 7 years away. The natives are restless, and with
good reason: things are going to hell in a handbasket by most any
objective measurement. Lester Thurow's Worldwatch Institute issues a
yearly State of the World report, available at your library or better
bookstores, that gathers socio-economic, environmental, political, and
industrial and other data and statistics in an attempt to put the big
picture into perspective. It ain't pretty. You may disagree with
Thurow's analysis, but the facts and figures speak for themselves, and
are there in black and white for you to draw your own conclusions. We
are doomed, I tell you, utterly and irrevocably doomed. Head for the
hills I tell you! The end is near!
How much is technology to blame for this dismal state of affairs? And
what can technology (and we, its creators and users) do to help solve
these problems? These are questions we desparately need to think
about, just in case it's not already too late. This time around, I'm
going to accentuate the negative. As long as this issue is, I realize
I didn't get to a some topics I would have liked to have covered, like
the dangers of electric radiation, and health problems like carpal
tunnel syndrome. For some comic relief, I've compiled a list of
horror/monster movies you may want to enjoy around the Halloween
season, and which also relate somewhat to the topic at hand.
Just for the record, on good days I think we're going to make it
through to the next millennium and onward to the stars, but those good
days are getting fewer and further between. Let me know how *you*
feel. Please see the administrivia section for important new access
information. We'll be back in about a week with latest news. See you
then, and - have a nice day.
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The Judgment of Thamus (Neil Postman)
You will find in Plato's Phaedrus a story about Thamus, the king of a
great city of Upper Egypt. For people such as ourselves, who are
inclined (in Thoreau's phrase) to be tools of our tools, few legends
are more instructive than his. The story, as Socrates tells it to his
friend Phaedrus, unfolds in the following way: Thamus once entertained
the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including number,
calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth exhibited his
inventions to King Thamus, claiming that they should be made widely
known and available to Egyptians. Socrates continues:
Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went
through them expressed approval or disapproval, according as he
judged Theuth's claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too
long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and
against each of Theuth's inventions. But when it came to writing,
Theuth declared. "Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which
will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have
discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom." To this, Thamus
replied, "Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art
is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those
who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing,
have out of fondness for your offspring attributed to it quite the
opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to
exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing
to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by
their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt
for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils
will have the reputation for it without the reality they will receive
a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in
consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most
part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of
wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society."
I begin my book with this legend because in Thamus' response there
are several sound principles from which we may begin to learn how to
think with wise circumspection about a technological society. In fact,
there is even one error in the judgment of Thamus, from which we may
also learn something of importance. The error is not in his claim that
writing will damage memory and create false wisdom. It is demonstrable
that writing has had such an effect. Thamus' error is in his believing
that writing will be a burden to society and nothing but a burden. For
all his wisdom, he fails to imagine what writing's benefits might be,
which, as we know, have been considerable. We may learn from this that
it is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has a
one-sided effect. Every technology is both a burden and a blessing;
not either-or, but this-and-that.
Nothing could be more obvious, of course, especially to those who
have given more than two minutes of thought to the matter.
Nonetheless, we are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous
Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do
and are incapable of imagining what they will undo. We might call such
people technophiles. They gaze on technology as a lover does on his
beloved, seeing it as without blemish and entertaining no apprehension
for the future. They are therefore dangerous and are to be approached
cautiously. On the other hand, some one-eyed prophets, such as I (or
so I am accused), are inclined to speak only of burdens (in the manner
of Thamus) and are silent about the opportunities that new
technologies make possible. The Technophiles must speak for
themselves, and do so all over the place. My defense is that a
dissenting voice is sometimes needed to moderate the din made by the
enthusiastic multitudes. If one is to err, it is better to err on the
side of Thamusian skepticism. But it is an error nonetheless. And I
might note that, with the exception of his judgment on writing, Thamus
does not repeat this error. You might notice on rereading the legend
that he gives arguments for and against each of Theuth's inventions.
For it is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with
technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is
struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away. The wise
know this well, and are rarely impressed by dramatic technological
changes, and never overjoyed. . . .
Had King Thamus been as wise as reputed, he would not have forgotten
to include in his judgment a prophecy about the powers that writing
would enlarge. There is a calculus of technological change that
requires a measure of even-handedness. . . .
[Thalmus knew] . . . that the uses made or any technology are largely
determined by the structure of the technology itself -- that is, that
its functions follow from its form. . . . we may learn from Thamus the
following: once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it
does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that
design is -- that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the
culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open. (Excerpted from
Chapter One of "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology"
by Neil Postman (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)
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The Disenchantment of the World (Morris Berman)
The story of the modern epoch, at least on the level of mind, is one
of progressive disenchantment. From the sixteenth century on, mind has
been progressively expunged from the phenomenal world. At least in
theory, the reference points for all scientific explanation are matter
and motion -- what historians of science refer to as the "mechanical
philosophy". Developments that have thrown this world view into
question -- quantum mechanics, for example, or certain types of
contemporary ecological research -- have not made any significant dent
in the dominant mode of thinking. That mode can best be described as
disenchantment, non participation, for it insists on a rigid
distinction between observer and observed. Scientific consciousness is
alienated consciousness: there is no ecstatic merger with nature, but
rather total separation from it. subject and object are always seen in
opposition to each other. I am not my experiences, and thus not really
a part of the world around me. The logical end point of this world
view is a feeling of total reification: everything is an object,
alien, not-me; and I am ultimately an object too, an alienated "thing"
in a world of other, equally meaningless things. This world is not of
my own making; the cosmos cares nothing for me, and I do not really
feel a sense of belonging to it. What I feel, in fact, is a sickness
in the soul.
Translated into everyday life, what does this disenchantment mean? It
means that the modern landscape has become a scenario of "mass
administration and blatant violence", a state of affairs now clearly
perceived by the man in the street. The alienation and futility that
characterized the perceptions of a handful of intellectuals at the
beginning of the century have come to characterize the consciousness
of the common man at its end. Jobs are stupefying, relationships vapid
and transient, the arena of politics absurd. In the vacuum created by
the collapse of traditional values, we have hysterical evangelical
revivals, mass conversions to the Church of the Reverend Moon, and a
general retreat into the oblivion provided by drugs, television and
tranquilizers. We also have a desperate search for therapy, by now a
national obsession, as millions of Americans try to reconstruct their
lives amidst a pervasive feeling of anomie and cultural
disintegration. An age in which depression is a norm is a grim one
indeed.
Perhaps nothing is more symptomatic of this general malaise than the
inability of the industrial economies to provide meaningful work. Some
years ago, Herbert Marcuse described the blue- and white-collar
classes in America as "one-dimensional". "When technics becomes the
universal form of material production", he wrote, "it circumscribes an
entire culture; it projects a historical totality -- a 'world"' One
cannot speak of alienation as such, he went on, because there is no
longer a self to be alienated. We have all been bought off, we all
sold out to the System long ago and now identify with it completely.
"People recognize themselves in their commodities", Marcuse concluded;
they have become what they own.
But keeping free from the System is not a viable option. As
technological and bureaucratic modes of thought permeate the deepest
recesses of our minds, the preservation of psychic space has become
almost impossible. "High-potential candidates" for management
positions in American corporations customarily undergo a type of
finishing-school education that teaches them how to communicate
persuasively, facilitate social interaction, read body language, and
so on. This mental framework is then imported into the sphere of
personal and sexual relations. One thus learns, for example, how to
discard friends who may prove to be career obstacles and to acquire
new acquaintances who will assist in one's advancement. The employee's
spouse is also evaluated as an asset or liability in terms of their
diplomatic skills. And for most males in the industrial nations, the
sex act itself has literally become a project, a matter of carrying
out the proper techniques so as to achieve the prescribed goal and
thus win the desired approval. Pleasure and intimacy are seen almost
as a hindrance to the act. But once the ethos of technique and
management has permeated the spheres of sexuality and friendship,
there is literally no place left to hide. The "widespread climate of
anxiety and neurosis" in which we are immersed is thus inevitable.
The statistics that reflect this condition in America alone are so
grim as to defy comprehension. There is now a significant suicide rate
among the seven-to-ten age group, and teenage suicides tripled between
1966 and 1976 to roughly thirty per day. . . . Dr. Darold Treffert, of
Wisconsin's Mental Health Institute, observed that millions of
children and young adults are now plagued by "a gnawing emptiness or
meaninglessness expressed not as a fear of what may happen to them,
but rather as a fear that nothing will happen to them". . . .
In the early 1970s, it was reported that 25 million adults were using
Valium; by 1980, Food and Drug Administration figures indicated that
Americans were downing benzodiazepines (the class of tranquilizers
which includes Valium) at a rate of 5 billion pills a year. . . .
one-fourth of the American female population in the thirty-to-sixty
age group uses psychoactive prescription drugs on a regular basis.
Articles in popular magazines such as Cosmopolitan urge sufferers from
depression to drop in to the local mental hospital for drugs or shock
treatments, so that they can return to their jobs as quickly as
possible. "The drug and the mental hospital", writes one political
scientist, "have become the indispensable lubricating oil and
reservicing factory needed to prevent the complete breakdown of the
human engine". (Excerpted from "The Reenchantment of the World" by
Morris Berman, Cornell University Press, 1981, reprinted in QT)
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When asked by a reporter what he thought of modern civilization,
Gandhi was said to have replied, "I think it would be a good idea."
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The Rhythms of Life (Stanley Diamond)
In machine-based societies, the machine has incorporated the demands
of the civil power or of the market, and the whole life of society, of
all classes and grades, must adjust to its rhythms. Time becomes
lineal, secularized, "precious"; it is reduced to an extension in
space that must be filled up, and sacred time disappears. The
secretary must adjust to the speed of her electric typewriter; the
stenographer to the stenotype machine; the factory worker to the line
or lathe; the executive to the schedule of the train or plane and the
practically instantaneous transmission of the telephone; the chauffeur
to the superhighways; the reader to the endless stream of printed
matter from high-speed presses; even the schoolboy to the precise
periodization of his day and to the watch on his wrist; the person
"at leisure" to a mechanized domestic environment and the flow of
efficiently scheduled entertainment. The machines seem to run us,
crystallizing in their mechanical or electronic pulses the means of
our desires. The collapse of time to an extension in space, calibrated
by machines, has bowdlerized our natural and human rhythms and helped
dissociate us from ourselves. Even now, we hardly love the earth or
see with eyes or listen any longer with our ears, and we scarcely feel
our hearts beat before they break in protest. Even now, so faithful
and exact are the machines as servants that they seem an alien force,
persuading us at every turn to fulfill our intentions which we have
built into them and which they represent -- in much the same way that
the perfect body servant routinizes and, finally, trivializes his
master. (Excerpted from "In Search of the Primitive," by Stanley
Diamond [Transaction Books, 1974], reprinted in QT(see B&B Bookshelf))
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Faster Faster -- Make It Perfect (Jerry Mander)
In our society, speed is celebrated as if it were a virtue in itself.
And yet as far as most human beings are concerned, the acceleration of
the information cycle has only inundated us with an unprecedented
amount of data, most of which is unusable in any practical sense. The
true result has been an increase in human anxiety, as we try to keep
up with the growing stream of information. Our nervous systems
experience the acceleration more than our intellects do. It's as if we
were all caught at a socially approved video game, where the
information on the screen comes faster and faster as we earnestly try
to keep up. (Excerpted from "In The Absence of the Sacred: The Failure
of Technology & the Survival of the Indian Nations" by Jerry Mander
(Sierra Club Books, 1991)
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We All Live in Bhopal (George Bradford)
The industrialization of the Third World is a story familiar to anyone
who takes even a glance at what is occurring. The colonial countries
are nothing but a dumping ground and pool of cheap labor for
capitalist corporations. Obsolete technology is shipped there along
with the production of chemicals, medicines and other products banned
in the developed world. Labor is cheap, there are few if any safety
standards, and *costs are cut*. But the formula of cost-benefit still
stands: the costs are simply borne by others, by the victims of Union
Carbide, Dow, and Standard Oil.
A powerful image: industrial civilization as one vast, stinking
extermination camp. We all live in Bhopal, some closer to the gas
chambers and to the mass graves, but all of us close enough to be
victims. And Union Carbide is obviously not a fluke -- the poisons are
vented in the air and water, dumped in rivers, ponds and streams, fed
to animals going to market, sprayed on lawns and roadways, sprayed on
food crops, every day, everywhere. The result may not be as dramatic
as Bhopal (which then almost comes to serve as a diversion, a
deterrence machine to take our minds off the pervasive reality which
Bhopal truly represents), but it is as deadly. When ABC News asked
University of Chicago professor of public Health and author of The
Politics of Cancer, Jason Epstein, if he thought a Bhopal-style
disaster could occur in the US, he replied: "I think what we're seeing
in America is far more slow-not such large accidental occurrences, but
a slow, gradual leakage with the result that you have excess cancers
or reproductive abnormalities."
In fact, birth defects have doubled in the last 25 years. And cancer
is on the rise. In an interview with the Guardian, Hunter College
professor David Kotelchuck described the "Cancer Atlas" maps published
in 1975 by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. "Show me a
red spot on these maps and I'll show you an industrial center of the
US", he said. "There aren't any place names on the maps but you can
easily pick out concentrations of industry. See, it's not Pennsylvania
that's red it's just Philadelphia, Erie and Pittsburgh. Look at West
Virginia here, there's only two red spots, the Kanawha Valley, where
there are nine chemical plants including Union Carbide's, and this
industrialized stretch of the Ohio River. It's the same story wherever
you look." (SOURCE: George Bradford, "We All Live in Bhopal," Fifth
Estate, Winter 1985, p. 1, reprinted in QT)
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Viruses as Weapons of War (John McAfee and Colin Hayes)
Officials tend to be scornful of suggestions that viruses will become
an important terrorist weapon or threat to national security. A
Congressional report on the issue acknowledged that the possibility of
terrorist computer virus activity has disturbing implications, but it
paid little attention to this topic because there have been few
recorded instances of viral assaults directed at specific targets --
so far. In fact, the terrorist threat is being taken far more
seriously by the authorities than they are
revealing. Fortunately, there is now an awareness among those
advising government agencies on their computer security that, contrary
to some well-publicized expert opinions, terrorists can pick
vulnerable targets for viruses with comparative ease.
It should be a cause for concern that high-level terrorist groups are
studying the use of viruses, just as governments are worried that
terrorists may one day use nuclear devices or chemical and biological
technology to further their political aims. The computer virus is
especially tempting for them. They could put together a team of people
with software engineering skills who, with very little risk, could
launch an electronic offensive with the potential to seriously disrupt
the affairs of any nation.
Indeed, computer viruses could begin to change the political balance
of power in a remarkable way. They represent the first weapons that
could be deployed at both low cost and comparatively little risk by
individuals, groups, or small countries against big business or the
major powers. A hostile Third World government can readily acquire the
potential ability to cause serious damage to computer installations in
Moscow, Washington, or any other seat of political, military, or
economic power. A country that is not critically dependent on
computers could unleash viruses with capabilities to paralyze data
processing in more technically sophisticated nations. Such a
government would not need to concern itself with targeting those
viruses accurately to contain their spread and thus protect the
perpetrators from the risk of being infected themselves. (SOURCE:
"Computer Viruses, Worms, Data Diddlers, Killer Programs, and Other
Threats to Your System" by John McAfee and Colin Hayes (St. Martin's
Press, 1989)
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The Cult of Information (Theodore Roszak)
Is it wise to commit the society so massively to a technology that is
so vulnerable to widespread breakdown, error, sabotage, and criminal
tampering? The computer makers and computer scientists have no doubt
that it is. And having won the commanding heights of the economy, they
are moving rapidly to find other frontiers for investment. The current
effort is to graft the microcomputer on to as many aspects of daily
life as possible, so that our homes, workplaces, and schools will soon
be no less dependent on the flow of electronic information. Without a
steady supply, the children will not be able to learn, checkbooks will
go unbalanced, appointments will not be scheduled, taxes will not be
paid...possibly dinner will not reach the table.
The office work force is currently one of the major targets of the
data merchants. . . . The fully computerized office will do for white
collar work what the automated assembly line has done in the
factories: it will "save labor by eliminating it, starting with the
file clerks and secretaries, but soon reaching to the junior
executives and the sales force. Possibly these casualties of progress
will find work at Burger King down the street, where the cash
registers come equipped with pictures, not numbers, or as the janitors
who clean up whatever there is left to clean up at the end of the day-
at least until these jobs are turned over to robots. There may soon be
no one left in the high-rise ziggurats of our cities but a small elite
of top-level decision makers surrounded by electronic apparatus. They
will be in touch around the globe with others of their kind, the only
decently paid work force left in the information economy, manipulating
spreadsheets, crafting takeover bids, transferring funds from bank to
bank at the speed of light, arranging "power lunches." As time goes
by, there will be less and less for them to do, for even decision
making can be programmed. . . .
At that point, even the corporate leadership will not have to report
to the office. Most of what needs to be done by way of human
intervention will be done out of the home. One forms an eerie vision
of the high industrial future: a vista of glass towers standing empty
in depopulated business districts where only machines are on the job
networking with other machines. (SOURCE: Theodore Roszak, "The Cult
of Information" (Pantheon Books, 1986). pp.)
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Growing Up With Technology (Jerry Mander)
The new value system that was sold in the forties and fifties was
designed to fuel the most massive expansion of the U.S. industrial and
marketing sectors in history. The "American way of life" became an
advertising theme; it drew an explicit equation between how much you
consumed and how American you were. During the Truman-Eisenhower years,
the American ideal of consumerism was directly juxtaposed with
Russia's emphatically nonconsumerist stance. In the I950S, buying a
washing machine was a blow against communism.
This value system incorporated certain key attitudes: Technological
innovation is good. It is always good. It aids health. It saves labor.
It is the engine that drives economic growth, which in turn drives the
American standard of living upward, which benefits all people.
Technical innovation promotes democracy, freedom, and leisure.
Technical and scientific progress will spread around the world and
relieve all people of the awful toil that has oppressed them since the
dawn of time. Someday, every place will look like the World's Fair. It
is inevitable. You can't turn back the clock.
For me, going through my teenage years in that period; for my family
and neighbors; and I believe for most Americans, there was the
disposition to go along with it all. Swept along by the rhetoric and
hype, it was as though we found ourselves living within a gigantic
environmental theatre. We sat and watched while they rolled away one
diorama and replaced it with another and then another. While our world
was being dramatically transformed, while places we loved were fast
deteriorating, while lifestyles were
sharply altered, while the forest receded, while open land was paved
over and built upon, while pollution and smog became commonplace,
while small towns began to look like New York City, and New York City
began to resemble Fritz Lang's Metropolis, we watched as if it were a
movie.
To say that we, the public, had no participation in these vast changes
would be inaccurate. We lived in the world; we interacted with the
changing environment. By our silence we gave our tacit approval. But
no one ever inquired into what we thought about it all. No one ever
indicated that there could be a question about the process. It all
happened so fast, and with so much power, it was difficult to grasp
what was changing, as it was changing. The process itself overpowered
all doubt. We asked no questions. We never had time to think it
through. Even if we'd had the time, we didn't have the thoughts or the
words by which to articulate our concerns. There was no language of
technological evaluation, nor is there one now. The parameters of the
discussion, even the parameters of thought, were predefined by
corporate, governmental, and scientific institutions. No formal means
existed by which ordinary people could engage in discussions or
debates, or could hear the pros and cons of what was happening. There
were no national referenda, save for what appeared in the media. And
the media reports were mainly confined to advertising or government
predictions. If there existed an alternative view, it remained within
intellectual and cultural circles not visible to the average American.
In the absence of an alternative vision, the paradigm was confirmed
that technological innovation was good, invariably good, and would be
the principal means by which our society would solve its problems and
produce a better world.
Fifty years later, however, as the world hurtles toward its greatest
environmental crisis since the dawn of human life, a crisis driven by
the insatiable need to feed resources to the technological machine,
and to consume them as commodities, we are at an appropriate moment to
question whether this path we have chosen and celebrated has lived up
to its promise, and if not, if it ever will. (Excerpted from Chapter
One of "In The Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology & the
Survival of the Indian Nations" by Jerry Mander (Sierra Club Books,
1991)
======================================================================
Bits and Bytes Bookshelf:
Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant Edited by John Zerzan
and Alice Carnes (New Society Publishers, 1991. 222 pp. $12.95)
- If you enjoyed this issue of B&B, you will enjoy this critical
anthology of writings on issues related to the downside of
technology. This book is from a small press, so you may have trouble
finding it. It can be ordered directly from the publisher at: PO BOX
582, Santa Cruz, CA 95061. Add $1.75 for shipping and handling.
======================================================================
Thirteen for Halloween: Some Horror/Scifi/Monster Movies Worth Renting
1) Alien (1979, dir: Ridley Scott) A very scary sci-fi horror movie
that takes place in a claustrophobic, dilapidated spaceship.
2) The Andromeda Strain (971, dir: Robert Wise) Great techno-thriller
based on a Michael Critchon novel. A virus from outer space
threatens to wipe out mankind. Can science save the day?
3) Blade Runner (1982, dir: Ridley Scott) A cyberpunk sci-fi vision
set in Los Angeles in the 2st century. Harrison Ford must find and
kill Rutger Hauer, a superhuman replicant. A visual feast.
4) A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir: Stanley Kubrick) Government mind
control experiments, a nihilistic future where young "droogs" roam
the street committing random acts of violence. Sound familiar?
5) Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(1963, dir: Stanley Kubrick) Not a horror film, but the blackest of
black comedies, with Peter Sellers playing 3 different roles.
"Hey, you can't fight in here -- this is the war room!"
6) The Fly (1958, dir: Kurt Neumann/1986, dir: David Cronenberg) Both
versions have their charm. Mad scientists run amuck! The remake is
quite gross and disturbing. I liked it.
7) Forbidden Planet (1956, dir: Fred Wilcox) Great special effects!
Robby the Robot! Vanished alien civilizations! The monster from the
Id! Space vixens! Leslie Nielsen! Entertaining fluff!
8) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Dir: Don Siegal) The pod
people are coming! This chilling tale is a metaphor for the domes-
tication of the American Spirit during the Eisenhower years.
9) Metropolis (1926, Dir: Fritz Lang) A visual and emotional
masterpiece. And an accurate projection of futuristic society.
This is a movie that will stay with you long after you see it.
10)Road Warrior (1981, Dir: George Miller) In a post nuclear future,
Mel Gibson drives around a desolate landscape battling a tribe of
punked out killers on wheels. Great chase sequences, good fun.
11)Robocop (1987, Dir: Paul Verhoeven) Extremely violent, nihilistic
view of the future. Sharp digs at corporate greed abound in this
black comedy. Make sure you get the first one.
12)Them! (1954, Dir: Gordon Douglas) Needed at least one giant
mutated monster movie, and this is one of the best. The atomic
critters in this case are ants. Great cheesy fun.
13)THX 1138 (1971, dir: George Lucas) George "Star Wars" Lucas'
directorial debut is an atmospheric sci-fi movie set in a
chilling, dystopian future.
======================================================================
Gifts to Posterity (Bruce Sterling)
We're already leaving some impressive gifts for the remote future
of this planet. Nuclear wastes, for instance. We're going to be
neatly archiving this repulsive trash in concrete and salt mines
and fused glass canisters, for tens of thousands of years. Imagine
the pleasure of discovering one of these nice radioactive time-bombs
six thousand years from now. Imagine the joy of selfless, dedicated
archaeologists burrowing into one of these twentieth- century
pharaoh's tombs and dropping dead, slowly and painfully. Gosh,
thanks, ancestors. Thanks, twentieth century! Thanks for thinking
of us! (Bruce Sterling, from "Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As
Knowledge," a speech given to the Library Information Technology
Association in June of 1992)
======================================================================
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