From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Oct 05 1999 - 11:07:31 MDT
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Natasha Vita-More wrote:
>
> Also, I notice that most of the respondees to the thread that I started on
> an art topic a couple of weeks ago, that developed numerous subthreads,
> were not "artists." And, the artists who responded did so with a lot of
> technical savvy.
>
> This is a very good sign.
True, the collective observation of individuals trying to open their
minds and grok the perspectives of those who seem (to them) to be
quite different does raise my hopes.
However, I will comment that I know an artist in S.F. who happens to
also be a Native American. Our conversations regarding technology
trends and especially genetics tend to get fairly hot. It isn't
that he is particularly anti-technology but that he sees technology
as a threat to his cultural history. Native Americans are caught
in a bind. They can live on a reservation where they can have their
culture but have few economic opportunities or move away from the
reservation, losing their culture but having more opportunities to
educate themselves and prosper. Since he also teaches Native
American history he can also cite chapter and verse where the
government has run amok, abused power, broken promises, etc.
When we start discussing genetics he raises the problem of the
creation of DNA databases and the "categorizing" of indivduals
according to ethnicity. As I understand it there are some
relatively complex laws regarding the support you get or rights
you have depending on whether you are more or less than some
fraction of "Native American" ethnicity.
So the advance of technology represents both a threat to his
culture and a threat to the economic well being of the "tribe"
that he views himself a member of.
I notice that the barriers are fairly high for him (as an artist
with a particular cultural heritage about "art" as well as a
Native American viewing fairly negatively the advance of
European "Civilization") to allow himself an open mind with
regard to possible benefits of technologies we regularly discuss.
It is really important for us to consider the side of things
that includes things that get lost (cultures, languages,
art forms, etc.), that some people consider to be quite
valuable, with the incessant march of technology or the
evolution of art.
Since he and I have such radically different backgrounds
and experiences I sometimes get the sense our communications
go right past each other. However, I believe there are
members of this group who share more common experience
with him who could identify those shared thought patterns
that allow really effective communication.
The increased awareness of the diversity and experiences of
people here as well as the interactions trying to find
those "common grounds" shows us the resources and paths
that may be used to build the bridges to the luddite lands.
Robert
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