Old Things & The Antiquarian's Imaginary.

[IdleRich]

Almost every step brings some loss and some gain. The more relevant question is how big is each and was it worth it overall. Though as you can never prevent the march of progress or go back when one has been made I don't know how relevant that is either.

 

[sufi]

Almost every step brings some loss and some gain. The more relevant question is how big is each and was it worth it overall. Though as you can never prevent the march of progress or go back when one has been made I don't know how relevant that is either.

so appropriate footwear is crucial

 

[IdleRich]

Yep... jackboots for the march of time.

 

[WashYourHands]

to bring this back to my original point, are we chained to modern tech, precisecly bc it's so magical? does this therefore imply some kind of loss?

yes, because people believe it can save us, any constraints are ignored in the great march towards convenience

 

[vimothy]

Almost every step brings some loss and some gain. The more relevant question is how big is each and was it worth it overall. Though as you can never prevent the march of progress or go back when one has been made I don't know how relevant that is either.

whether it's all inevitable is another "big question". is history a purely physical process like rock formation or does it admit free choice bc humans are different somehow. if it it does then that implies that the trajectory at least of progress is up for grabs

 

[woops]

". is history a purely physical process like rock formation

Have you heard of a poet called JH Prynne

 

[william_kent]

is history a purely physical process like rock formation

"The Glacial Question, Unsolved"

 

[vimothy]

oh dear, is prynne a deleuzian?

 

[IdleRich]

whether it's all inevitable is another "big question". is history a purely physical process like rock formation or does it admit free choice bc humans are different somehow. if it it does then that implies that the trajectory at least of progress is up for grabs

I didn't mean to go as deep as that. I think that even if we allow free will, things that can be invented tend to happen regardless of whether we want them to or not.

 

[vimothy]

but then you have to make your own peace with them. how do you respond to the "March of progress"?

 

[IdleRich]

However you like

 

[vimothy]

well, Idk, but you were saying that technological progress is just this thing that happens which you have to accept. but do you have to accept it? maybe to some extent but also you have some margin along which you can respond as an individual

 

[IdleRich]

Sure I was being flippant, but my original points were fairly flippant too so it seemed to follow. My thought process was as below.

You asked if modern technology implied a kind of loss... and I replied to say that every step forward leaves something behind... I was trying to say that with every path taken there is another path not taken and so any development necessarily involves some loss and some gain, so, in terms of deciding - as a society - whether or not to move forward with some technology, the question should not be "is something lost?" (cos something is always lost) but rather "Will we lose more than we gain?" But then I thought that, regardless of the answer, in the world we live in it tends to be that if it is possible to do something, then someone will - even if the first person decides that nuclear war or genetic engineering or time travel is too dangerous, someone else will find out how and then someone else and they will all face that dilemma and eventually it will get created even so.

However I was sort of mixing up two things - so in fact, your original question about examining how much we have lost with a particular technology is something worth thinking about and, yeah, considering how we, personally and as a society, react to the losses. There are other reasons to consider this beyond deciding whether to use them.

So... what do you think we have lost?

 

[william_kent]

oh dear, is prynne a deleuzian?

no, Prynne is clever

 

[luka]

but there is a huge amount of overlap. in geology as mentioned above, in the concern for nomads, in botany, a note on metal/metalurgy, twisted marxism, in being impossible to understand etc