Wow, there’s so much reading on tap. I’ve got to sit down and relax with some of these papers. I read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I was a teenager, I think. I’d surely get a lot more out of it now; I remember close to nothing. I do like mechanics; it is just so satisfying when something works, does what it is supposed to, whether that’s a poem, a bicycle, or a chunk of code. We could argue about what machines are supposed to do.
That is really the issue: our goals, desires, purposes. In my experience, people, we, usually get what we wish for, one way or another, for better and worse, eventually. Exactly how we do so might be a secondary matter. Then again, our means are not necessarily neutral. Moreover, all art is technological. Some artists embrace certain devices, others resist. The meaning is aesthetic ultimately, as I see it, though it is not mere preference. The quality of our relationship with technology, as with the virtual generally, could be a matter of life and death, liberty or bondage.
We have also thought about this in terms of dependency paths, the progression from rock to spear to bow and arrow… it keeps coming up. The technosphere looms over our lives; it invades everything. But what is it, really? I believe we have a generational opportunity to reimagine the human in the light of a multiple historical and cosmic, as well as unreal, scales. It is a thankless and almost impossible task. Maybe we are up for it.
Does anyone have thoughts about what we might explore on Thursday, the 6th of January (2022)? That would be the first Thursday of the month and I would love to begin with something pithy, poignant, and potent, perhaps even poetic.
Thanks, @johnnydavis54, for sharing your canine-friendly dreams. I call myself a dog/god lover, and I am sure Mooby occupies a dogged part of my soul and always will (we just received her ashes today); and I am not surprised that we would be connecting on that imaginal level.