From: Paul Hughes (planetp@aci.net)
Date: Sun May 03 1998 - 02:23:40 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> Ah, my cue!
>
> If anyone is interested in checking out the range of reviewers' responses
> to the idea of the Spike nee Singularity (in Australia at any rate which is
> the only place yet that my book has been published, damn and blast it)
> Compare & Contrast the links in the box called `OzLit Pages Relating to
> this Writer' at
>
> http://dargo.vicnet.net.au/ozlit/writers.cfm?id=74.0
Very interesting. Of course I have not had the privilege to read 'The Spike'
yet. I did however find your comments given at the STAVCON 97' to be the most
poignant of them all. I found this particular passage of yours to be
questionable:
"Artists like me will do what we can to shape our understanding of the changing
realities about us, to catch its frenzy on the ends of our nervy tendrils.
But poets are no longer the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, if they ever
were. No, that role has passed to those who dwell in what C. P. Snow so long
ago called the Second Culture."
What of the Third Culture - the cross-pollination of the two? If wasn't for
the vision of 'poets' such as yourself and other sci-fi authors, many of the
pioneers in modern science would not have pursued their chosen careers.
Wouldn't you say that poetry, art and literature helps provide a context, a
navigation map, a passion, a *direction* in which to steer this rocketship we
call technology?
Hopefully Natasha is reading this and can add her own input on the importance
of art in an extropian future.
Cheers,
Paul Hughes
planetp@aci.net
http://www.aci.net/planetp
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