Postman: digital information has little to do with our real problems

Among the implications of these beliefs is a loss of confidence in human judgment and subjectivity.  We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation...

The computer argues, to put it baldly, that the most serious problems confronting us at both personal and public levels require technical solutions through fast access to information otherwise unavailable.  I would argue that this is, on the face of it, nonsense.  Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information.  If a nuclear catastrophe occurs it shall not be because of inadequate information.  Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information.  If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorises a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information.  Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing whatever to do with any of these problems.  And the computer is useless in addressing them.

Technopoly, p.118&119

Quick review: Murder Must Advertise

...by Dorothy L Sayers

I'm gradually reading through the Wimsey novels in order.  What struck me about the first novel was not simply the fiendish plot, but also the revelation that the wise-cracking, one-liner detective was already around in the 1920s (did he start here?).  And though I have enjoyed the subsequent half-dozen books, that kind of easy wit has been gradually slipping and so, whilst still a complex mystery, became less entertaining along the way.

But we're back to form here - though sadly minus Bunter (Wimsey is a kind of uber-intelligent Bertie Wooster, complete with Jeeves/Bunter).  Also fascinating was to see the inner workings of a 1930s advertising agency.  Sayers had worked in one (and is, apparently, responsible for some of the more famous Guinness taglines), and her carefully drawn sketch of life in a London agency is a great backdrop.  What is interesting is how all contemporary it sounds:  aside from the change in technology, not a lot seems to have altered in the aims and ethics - or perhaps I should say: it's surprising how much of what we assume is contemporary has in fact always been around.  And Sayer's philosophical asides could have been written about posters you saw on the tube last week.

Postman: computers make us Joseh K's

The computer turns too many of us into Joseph K's.  It often functions as a kind of impersonal accuser which does not reveal, and is not required to reveal, the sources of the judgements made against us.  It is apparently sufficient that the computer has pronounced.

Technopoly, p115

Postman: the dominant metaphor of our age

[Bolter argues that the computer is] the dominant metaphor of our age;  it defines our age by suggesting a new relationship to information, to work, to power, and to nature itself.  That relationship can best be described by saying that the computer redefines humans as 'information processors' and nature as information to be processed.  The fundamental metaphorical message fo the computer, in short, is that we are machines - thinking machines, to be sure, but machines nonetheless...it subordinates the claims of our nature, our biology, our emotions, our spirituality.  The computer claims sovereignty over the whole range of human experience, and supports its claim by showing  that it 'thinks' better than we can.

Technopoly, p111

Postman: mindless acceptance

...This is not to say that the computer is a blight on the symbolic landscape;  only that, like medical technology, it has usurped powers and enforced mindsets that a fully attentive culture might have wished to deny it.

Technopoly p07

Quick Review: The Fringes of Power

...by John Colville

I first came across this man's name whist reading Roy Jenkins' biography of Churchill, and decided he'd be interesting to follow up.  His Downing Street Diaries I discovered not so long afterwards in a second-hand bookshop, and they have lain deep in the geological strata of my 'unread' pile for a very long time.

Was it worth digging it out?  Yes indeed, if you're interested in the goings-on of government during the war years and soon after.  Sir John was a secretary to Chamberlain, then Winston's private secretary, private secretary to Princess Elizabeth, and then Churchill again during his last years in power.  Initially not keen on Churchill, it's fascinating to see his opinion change to one of reverence (though not uncritical) and affection;  his character sketches of major figures;  the picture that builds up of how Downing Street and the Cabinet functions; his touching on now legendary events but from a contemporary, work-related perspective that as yet is unaware of the epic nature of things.

And I really enjoyed the sense of routine of the every-other-weekend trips to Chequers and how life went on there.

So, not for everyone - especially as it's a BIG book - but worthwhile if it's your thing.

Svenson: last post - more on rest

I have not gone so far as to suggest that the way of life in developing countries is superior or preferable to that of developed countries. I am only making the observation that these gracious and hospitable people are not exhausted, in body or spirit, whereas we often are. Those who would maintain that progress brings rest are wrong. We may have education, affluence, technology, leisure, and conveniences—but no rest.

“A rest-less work style produces a restless person,” notes Gordon MacDonald. “We do not rest because our work is done; we rest because God commanded it and created us to have a need for it.”

A. W. Tozer observed, “The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest.”

Margin (loc3211ff)