My post had been in response to your later exchange (which I read first) with Dwayne, which I'd read as too rah-rah-hi-tech...
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IMO, a sad symptom of weariness, confusion and despair is excessive confidence in technological progress narrowly construed; it strikes me as nostalgia for the techno-euphoria of, say, the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, the world of tomorrow that never happened.
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I should be washing the dishes per instructions but instead...
I'm afraid I must dispute your reading of my post which wasn't intended to cheer lead for any particular technology but express a lament that some of us respond to modern problems by longing for a lost past.
Technology -- which, as I've written before, is a result of our innate, and very necessary for survival tool making capacity -- is nothing more than a way to solve problems such as, 'how do I keep my teeth from rotting and falling out?' Various peoples, over time, have devised different methods for addressing this concern. For folks living in the Western-modeled technosphere it involves regular dentist visits (if you can afford them) brushing, flossing and antiseptics. These methods form one technological approach to the lifelong problem of tooth health. In Mongolia, things may be done differently. Perhaps not.
The problem of tooth health predates capitalism and will survive its death or mutation. But, as Carroll said (more generally), the fact of capitalism shapes how tooth care matters -- a technological issue since tools of some sort (whether a carefully fashioned leaf or a sonic toothbrush), are required to tackle it -- are addressed.
So, we have many different brands of toothpaste and a bewildering array of tools -- some which are very helpful others not so much. Access to capital determines who can use these tools and the capitalist structure determines what sort of research is done into the problem of tooth health. Perhaps we'd be further along if profit wasn't the primary consideration...perhaps not. Who can say?
Now I get the sense that in response to modern problems, many people confuse the tools for the capitalist structure that holds them believing that genetic manipulation (to leave the uncontroversial -- I'm guessing, though 'round here one can never be certain -- world of tooth care and re-introduce a hotter topic) for example, is innately wrong. As I see it, echoing, in altered form, Carroll again, the true thing to be resisted is the un-regulated use, within the capitalist frame, of technologies that require care and wisdom -- two qualities in short supply within corporate boardrooms. I feel the same way about nuclear power which, in a different society, would probably work quite well but is surely a huge problem as a property of the capitalist world.
To get more specific, many of the most publicized issues, such as Merck Pharma's Vioxx debacle (if anyone reading is unfamiliar with this, see <http://makeashorterlink.com/?L260411BB> ), are not, in my opinion, the result of drug treatment, as a technology, being inherently flawed -- and I'm speaking in ideal terms here -- but rather that the drug treatment industry, operating within the capitalist frame, is often sloppy, slapdash and careless because their profit goals demand it.
So the goal is to evaluate the potential benefit/risks of any given technology once it's freed of capitalist restraints. By "freed" I don't mean allowed to take over the world (no, I don't think everyone should have a cell phone and a laptop); I mean freed to actually do what technology should do which is help us solve problems that must be addressed via tools.
Now someone will say that I'm advocating a "techno fix" to the world's problems. That's not the case though I note, to repeat myself one final time in this post, that all tools are technology (even a twig fashioned to accomplish some task) and many of our day to day challenges require tools and so, in a very broad and non-pejorative sense, many problems do indeed require a "techno fix".
Exeunt, and on to aforementioned the dishes.
.d.