George Dafermos' Weblog

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Mobiles build interactive cities
Technophiles could soon use mobile phones to create and access interactive city guides. A four-week trial of the latest technology has just begun in London. [Note: for more information, check the Urban Tapestries project website or the people behind it, Proboscis and their concept of SoMa -- or Social Matrices.] Source: Helen R. Pilcher, Nature, June 14, 2004

[Smart Mobs]

very interesting. just wonder who will be having access to all this distributed wealth of highly personal, subjective data and who will decide over questions of legitimacy. this approach is all the more interesting to contrast to open, radical alternatives like MudLondon that aim at empowering us to annotate london with our own mental maps while retaining a certain degree of control over big brother.

2:00:24 PM

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technology is neutral

the 5th HOPE meeting takes place in 15 days. from the meeting programme, a presentation entitled "non lethal technology" caught me eye:

Non-Lethal Technology
Gonzo
Technology is neutral. The patterns to which it is submitted are what determines if it can be used for betterment or detriment. This panel will go into that. As we all know, technology has greatly helped mankind. But what about technology that has been altered so that it can be used for non-lethal means? Imagine a bomb that can be dropped that won't kill anyone but will kill any technological related hardware. How about a blast from a sound wave, or a radio wave that can do physical damage to the body? These and other topics will be discussed, as will the technology behind it, and sinister applications.

To which, McLuhan would defnitely reply:

"In accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few years ago, General David Sarnoff made this statement: "We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value." That is the voice of the current somnambulism. Suppose we were to say, "Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Or, "The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Again, "Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value." That is, if the slugs reach the right people firearms are good. If the TV tube fires the right ammunition at the right people it is good. I am not being perverse. There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form. General Sarnoff went on to explain his attitude to the technology of print, saying that it was true that print caused much trash to circulate, but it had also disseminated the Bible and the thoughts of seers and philosophers. It has never occurred to General Sarnoff that any technology could do anything but add itself on to what we already are". (italics mine)

we had enough of neutral technology and all this nightmarish rhetoric about ethical uses of 21st century knowledge. concerns over social justification and political legitimacy aside, do you reckon an atomic bomb could be used in an ethical manner? and how could the exploitation of medical knowledge via the institutionalised instrument of patents be ethical in a world torn apart by famine, aids, and artifically implanted subsistence? it's hightime we woke up from the dream of pacified/stupified human creatures liberated by science and decided to finally take the quest for pure science at face value for what it really is: a prosthetic extention of and to ourselves. only then do we stand a chance of preserving what is worth sustaining.
1:45:04 PM

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