From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jun 24 2000 - 12:34:09 MDT
"Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net> writes:
> > Robert, you're applying a level of rationality to the mentality behind this
> > kind of action that just doesn't work. The animating force behind what is
> > coming to be a recognized new type of terrorism is REACTION: These folks are
> > reacting against technological progress based on a visceral fear and general
> > distaste for the people who are developing the new technologies. It's what
> > Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan and Jeremy Rifkin all have in common -- and there
> > sure isn't any consistency among that bunch.
>
> I tend to look at this political evolution as an emergence of a third
> primary axis in the memespace of political geography that is based upon
> technological freedom, where the other two are based on social and
> economic freedom. Based on this, its far easier to make sense of these
> unlikely allies. They all occupy the 'right wing' of that axis, while
> occupying different locations on the other two axes.
A nice description. Personally I like Postrel's analysis into stasists
versus dynamists; stasists want control/stasis, while dynamists seek
freedom/change. One can of course be stasist/dynamist in different
aspects and in different ways (technocrats are different from
reactionaries), but often one's views about freedom correlate between
the views on economics, society and technology. Are there any groups
that are against economic and social freedom that are for
technological freedom, for example?
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:29:26 MST