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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 621.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 10:19:09 +0000
From: Stephen Clark <srlclark@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: machines and culture
Dear Willard
I wrote on this topic in Tools, Machines and Marvels: Roger Fellowes, ed.,
Philosophy and Technology (Cambridge University Press 1995), 159-76, and in
From Biosphere to Technosphere: Ends and Means 6.2001, pp.3-21.
In the first I made use of Spengler's distinction between Faustian and Magian
culture, suggesting that we were moving into a Magian phase: we can no longer
grasp in detail how our machines work, any more than how biological systems
work (I mean that we cannot follow through the manifold biochemical synergies
that lead from fertilized cell to adult even though we believe that
biochemistry explains it all, and we can't disentangle the multiply patched
programs on which our world depends). The effect is that our machines feel
increasingly like 'living things', and are controlled - like demons of old - by
words.
-- Stephen Clark Dept of Philosophy University of Liverpool[The above is in reference to Humanist 17.620; the Ends and Means article, to which Clark refers, is archived at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/philosophy/endsandmeans/vol5no2/index.shtml.] </x-flowed>
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