From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 21:32:50 MDT
Spike wrote
> It occurred to me that something like what I proposed has been
> done, by James Burke. He produced two excellent PBS series
> called Connections and The Day the Universe Changed. Burke
> explains history in terms of technological development, how one
> breakthru leads to another, creating a new demand for a third,
> which soon follows. His presentation is exactly what I am
> looking for: colorblind, gender blind, culture blind and
> value neutral. spike
and Damien answered
> At 08:25 PM 8/26/02 -0700, Spike wrote:
>
> >culture blind and value neutral.
>
> But that's simply *not the case* with technohistory.
>
> *You and I* might value tearing up the ground and making ball bearings out
> of it, but there are plenty of people around the world (whose ground you
> have your eye on) who find the idea disgusting, the cultural results
> irrelevant if not degrading, and the culture that blindly sees itself as
> blind to value when it does this as diabolical. Disagree with them all you
> like; the point is that the implicit values of technocivilization are not
> universal and neutral, and no cultural analyst of the last half century
> would fail to ridicule this claim.
I'm unsure as to whether to agree. On the one hand, I
totally agree with Spike that our goal must be careful
objective reporting. (Commentary not merely expressing
facts or a factual account of, say, history, must be
explicitly labeled as such.)
On the other hand, yes, some people will be aghast at the
way that Burke and others---like people here on this list
---will calmly describe the raping of the Earth and other
horrendous deeds without extreme indignation. Perhaps you
are saying that the mere absence of indignation while
describing something is itself a political statement?
If so, I don't agree. One should be able to read some
reports of terrible tragedies---say the Nazi Holocaust
---without the inevitable sermonizing. Yes, the
moral outrage and sermonizing of course has its
place, but just because an account is free of same
is not itself a cause for alarm. Just today in a
book store I almost bought an interesting book, but
then realized that in all probability the author had
an axe to grind, and put it back on the shelf, for
it happened I was only interested in the facts (today)
and was very worried that he was going to distort them
to make his case. I will wait until I see a more
objective account of whatever-it-was.
Lee
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