On the Phenomenology of Technology
The vehicle for the growth of technology can be boiled down to two parts: a.innovation/inspiration/creativity by an originator, and
b. Further developments by those who use the originator’s framework.
Now there is of course a chick-egg problem where it is difficult to determine whether something is a or b and there is certainly blending of the two, but as a model, this works fine.
Inspiration is an intangible phonomenon- it takes factors such as circumstance, prior knowledge, and creative genius to produce something that works and is (almost) wholly new from what came before in terms of concept and what the concept can be applied to.
Examples of further developments are things like programmers using a language and compilers created from the source language and developing electronic applications. A classic example is an architectural or engineering method used widely for its stability but varied in specifics of thevactual structure.
All of this growth of technology...
At first glance, you may think that the most rational “reason” to procreate is happiness (of the child being born, not the ancillary happiness of parenthood). But happiness is tied to community..community is tied to its structural survival methods. The structural survival methods are comprised mainly of the technology of a society. Thus, the child is born to produce and promote the growth of technology. That is the “hidden” reason behind procreation. I’m speaking purely about intentin reasons based on “happiness” of the child. Happiness is really a front for the child’s ability to consume and produce technology by way of outright consumption (passive) or by way of originating or furthering technology. The child is de facto a means to this end.
b. Further developments by those who use the originator’s framework.
Now there is of course a chick-egg problem where it is difficult to determine whether something is a or b and there is certainly blending of the two, but as a model, this works fine.
Inspiration is an intangible phonomenon- it takes factors such as circumstance, prior knowledge, and creative genius to produce something that works and is (almost) wholly new from what came before in terms of concept and what the concept can be applied to.
Examples of further developments are things like programmers using a language and compilers created from the source language and developing electronic applications. A classic example is an architectural or engineering method used widely for its stability but varied in specifics of thevactual structure.
All of this growth of technology...
At first glance, you may think that the most rational “reason” to procreate is happiness (of the child being born, not the ancillary happiness of parenthood). But happiness is tied to community..community is tied to its structural survival methods. The structural survival methods are comprised mainly of the technology of a society. Thus, the child is born to produce and promote the growth of technology. That is the “hidden” reason behind procreation. I’m speaking purely about intentin reasons based on “happiness” of the child. Happiness is really a front for the child’s ability to consume and produce technology by way of outright consumption (passive) or by way of originating or furthering technology. The child is de facto a means to this end.
Comments (60)
I don’t see an argument. What is your main point? Happiness for the child is tied to technology and it is a subtle but logical connection.
Ok, I see what you mean now. I reduce only to the level of survival as that is as far as “reasons” go when related to the specific situation of the animal. Once natural selection took place, it’s kind of a given. Technology may be more basic than other cultural traits, and can even be argued as our species survival niche so this especially pertains to the human animal at the foundational level. Why would it then be appropriate to go further to physics?
If you lab-raised a group of people from infancy and you carefully avoided teaching this group anything about sex and reproduction of any species--especially their own--would they desire to reproduce? And if, predictably, a male and female in this group had sex and the female became pregnant, would the resulting delivery of the baby be considered a miracle of birth or a nightmare? Left uninformed and unprepared for the delivery, I would think it would be closer to a nightmare than miracle.
What about oxytocin? It seems like oxytocin is more evidence that "nature" intervenes to make sure the baby isn't tossed aside for all the pain and inconvenience it just caused.
Perhaps we don't reproduce for any "reason" at all. Maybe we are naturally more a-natalists, rather than pro-natalists? (Granted, there is plenty of intense propaganda in favor of natalism.)
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is the least persuasive of reasons for reproduction that you have come up with. In our long history of mindless reproducing, very very few children have produced any growth in technology. For most of our history (as the species we have been for several hundred thousand years--and before that, millions of years) children duplicated the existing technology--knapping pieces of rock into tools, cooking birch bark to get a strong pitch adhesive, food preparation, etc. We know they duplicated technology (rather than innovating) because the styles of knapping rock change very slowly.
Reproduction is the essence of life: the first life forms (simple one celled animals) reproduced. Life has been doing that for billions of years--not because it is in favor of reproduction. Life has no choice in the matter. It is designed from the molecular level and up (maybe the atomic level and up? Sub atomically and up?) to reproduce.
Because the origination of “survival” in the statistical..fit enough to not die sense, is allocated at the level of evolutionary biology, not the level of physics. I can explain the phenomenon without going any further down the causal/physical chain.
While I grant that reproduction is partly hardwired (in our case by means of pleasure-centers (i.e. orgasms in sex and oxytocin released during childbirth perhaps..), I did qualify my statement that, I am only discussing those claiming to have kids intentionally, in order so that a new human can experience happiness, but are really doing it to advance technology. Happiness is only gained by means of enculturation by way of society. Human society is only maintained via technology. The child is born to maintain and advance technology. The hope is to advance it, but if they become a common maintainer rather than advancer, then oh well, the hope was there.
Anyways, this also proves that the intention to bring new humans about for reasons of promoting "happiness" is actually subtly (but importantly) promoting technological advancement and maintenance. I will say, the addition of maintenance is from considering your response that most humans don't advance, but replicate. I still think that the hope is the offspring will either originate or further advance from the originators.
So children are put on the treadmill.. or rather the GRISTMILL of trying to innovate technology. But its hardwork and sweat.. so the children are born to work hard to create technologies, but most will not, they will just work hard.
As a side note, I always like your posts- they are well-crafted and fun to read, even if I disagree with parts. You should teach a course on, "How to disagree without being disagreeable".
Ha, I see what you're saying, but I don't think that it is necessarily an argument against survival as the stopping point. At the level of organism, which we are, survival is essentially all we need to reduce to. But, I am not SIMPLY reducing to survival. It is survival via technology via happiness. So, I acknowledge there are levels at play here, it is just that where they may seem disparate, I see cohering connections.
I am not really reducing actually. It is actually more revealing happiness= technological advancement for reasons of having children. Its more definitional than explanational I guess. It was you who brought in the idea of reduction. Survival is in the equation, but via technological advancement. There is no way to have happiness without the technology that provides the sustaining community. It is all tied together, I am not sure if reduction has to play into it. I am not saying "we are born to produce technology", but rather the reason of "happiness" is necessarily tied into technology. There is a difference.
Certainly I see technology as foundational- thus the necessary tie with it rather than with other human cultural phenomena.
Granted, perhaps I should phrase it differently such that "The intention of happiness is only had by way of technology, and thus happiness brings with it the treadmill of technology-originators/advancers/maintainers."
Quoting ?????????????
Not exactly. Rather, what I said above. To reproduce based on happiness is to bring about the workers needed to advance technology for the community. I suppose the connection is more unintended than the way I first stated it.
Every new line of code is just substantiating it :D.
There’s no other choice..I guess you can call that inherently satisfying.
The problem is having no choice.
Back to your point about the reduction..more technology producers why?
I guess there’s no evaluative aspect to this. It is to reveal the connection of happiness to technology by necessity.
So breed, you bastards, breed. Better technology tomorrow!
I explained it in the OP. Happiness > Community > Technology
Well started off describing the two ways of innovating tech
an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience. Basically what things are like from first person.
Ok so you have the first paragraph of your "Prolegomena to a Phenomenology of Technology". Thats good, but thats barely laying down ink on paper. After that you'll need to work out the methodology and restrictions you want to impose on your research through an description of both your epoche and your phenomenological reduction(s). This would at least involve redrafting multiple times the same text in order to evacuate any metaphysical or natural bias you, as the author, inevitably inject in the treatment.
If you just want to share your introspections with the group, that is great, but until you dedicate yourself to the work I've begun to describe above, you are precisely not doing phenomenology.
I will happily change the title if you think it appropriate. If you want to point the way to proper epoche methodology, I would be happy to see an example.
An epoche is the work or neutralizing metaphysical and personal biases in the philosophical description of a phenomenon. It can be as simple as neutralizing your disgust toward something, forcing yourself to adopt a more neutral point of view, or as complicated as preventing any form of preconceived belief from being stated in the text, and likely should involve a bit of both.
The importance of the epoche is in the proof-of-work it provides, its important to explain the process of epoche almost as much as you treat the subject matter itself, because it is the only way a third party may judge weither or not the author does manage to reach the state of the transcendental attitude.
Well if I had the time I would try to get the exact recount of the thoughts of the person who invented the C language exactly as he invented it. Then I would have the exact recount of a programmer building an app in the language of C. I would hopefully have accounted for any biased in each so the reader had pure experiential understanding of the originator and advancer concepts.
There are two assumptions here, one possibly supportable. It may be that people have children so that a new human can experience happiness. That only sounds good. I don't know whether it is true or not. I think it is more true that people HOPE the child will experience happiness. That parents HOPE the child will be happy suggests that they are aware happiness isn't guaranteed. If happiness isn't guaranteed, then there must be some other reason for having a child.
The claim that they are having the child to advance technology strikes me as altogether unsupportable. I just don't see any evidence of that. Where are you finding factual support for this view? Post hoc ergo propter hoc, anyone? (After this therefore because of this.)
Schop, how forward thinking are most reproductive decisions? Having a child for any specific reason is a major gamble for most people. Produce workers to keep the tribe going? Produce cheap help on the farm? Produce people who will be smart and will keep the cultural fires burning? A farmer who is planning on sons but gets only daughters won't have the kind of workforce he was planning on. Parents planning on keeping the tribe a going concern assume the children won't leave to join a different group. Or all die of bubonic plague.
I still think people have children because we, like other animals, are set up to reproduce whether we especially want to or not. Having children is the default mode. NOT having children takes special planning and effort. Once the kid is on its way, we start coming up with justifications and plans -- which might be more of a salvage operation than a celebration of EVEN MORE CHILDREN. I was not a wanted child. My parents had already had 7 (2 died early on) and were tired. WWII had just ended, everything was in short supply. None the less, Sex + fertility = baby. One woman in my home town had 18 children (!). Did she want 18 children? I don't know about the husband, but she DID NOT. According to her older children, it was a living nightmare. (Some of the 18 are apparently happy within reasonable bounds, some are decidedly not happy.)
Well I’m connecting it with technology for a reason. There is the need for someone to master the technology and perpetuate it. Who shall it be? You do make a good point children historically are the result of the desire for sex with no birth control methods. The lofty goals were perhaps after the fact.
The reality is survival requires the technology. It is primary to all else whether flaking stones and hut building techniques or machine coding.
Whoever it is the responsibility of, society gets reproduced. Social reproduction (cultural, technological, population, etc.) is not an individual task--it's a collective, cultural task. Two crows can repopulate Crow City, but two humans by themselves can not perpetuate human society. Without an intact culture, humans would devolve very rapidly (or maybe they'd just drop dead). I can imagine millions of Americans dying from shock if television were to just disappear--probably within 24 to 48 hours of its disappearance. One very big EMP over North America and the lights would go out, zillions of printed circuits would be fried, and everything would come to a screeching halt. Sic transit gloria technocracy.
So, there is much more than the individual delusions of prospective parents at work.
IF society crashed, and 99.9% of the population were dead, I think the remaining remnant would be hard pressed to imagine that they were producing children so that they would be happy.
But then, were you ever positing that parents "individually apart from society" imagined that their children would find happiness and nice technology?
Well, let me put this in a broader context- think about the burden of technology. As you mentioned a large EMP over North America, I can hear in the background the proverbial technophiles in ThePhilosophyForum land saying statements like, "Actually, the North American grid is connected to such and such frameworks, this or that power stations, such that an EMP could not possibly fry the whole power grid, and perhaps only a quarter of the country would fail from such an event, and then go into the mechanics of how the possibility of a nationwide power failure would occur, and the slim chances of such occurrence. You see, someone has to know this. Someone has to work towards knowing this. Happiness is wrapped up in our ability to grasp, innovate, and further technology. The burden of the details has to be gained and furthered. You can spend years just knowing the details of some engineering concept.
The country is cast back into the late 19th century as far as technology is concerned. From now on, they will have to make what they need by hand -- hence the title. The story is NOT about lovely hand-made furniture.
WMBH is set in a very small upstate New York village. Recovery is difficult, and there aren't really any miracles to help them out. If I remember correctly, the story covers 2 or 3 years, maybe a little longer. The reduced population of the village survive, and life goes on -- but in a very reduced way. Very large numbers of people in the country died off because adaptation was impossible for most people. (take Chicago, New York, LA, Houston -- feeding that many people can't be done without modern transportation. True, New York was large and was fed in the late 19th Century; so was Chicago and many other cities. But the existing organization and animal-based traction technology long since disappeared. Yes, 19th century tech can be recovered, but not in one or two years. It would take decades to reconstruct.
There are several volumes in the series; they are realistic, pessimistic, but in someways hopeful. That's what Kunstler's lecturing and non-fiction books are about -- if we are going to survive as a species, we are going to have to radically change the kind of life we maintain and exist in. It will probably need to resemble the 19th century in many ways (animal traction, minimal electronic devices, a far less centralized economy, smaller population, etc.). We would have to live much like the Amish live.
A World Made By Hand isn't going to change your ideas about the world, but they are very interesting stories.
EARTH ABIDES is another one -- this much older, written in 1949. It posits a plague that quickly kills most of the world's population -- like... 99.99%. There's no horror in the novel. The story focuses on a small group's efforts to survive in Oakland, CA. They do survive, though along much different lines than their tech-oriented leader had thought they would.
Earth Abides is interesting because the world that ended in 1949 was so much less "technical" than the present one. For instance, the star of the novel decides to drive across country and decides that Highway 66 would be the best bet. When I read that I thought... "why would he not travel on the interstate freeways?"... Oh right, they hadn't been built yet. Television? Invented, but barely in use; radio, yes; telephone, yes; electric lights, yes; refrigeration and natural gas, yes. All that was now gone. So there were many adaptations necessary. A surprising and interesting conclusion to the book.
Thanks for the book recommendations! I might have to add it to the reading list. As you know by now, these topics simply go back to the major premise I see about life. That is to say, structurally, we are always in a state of "lack". Certainly, technology (of any era) speaks to the lack of many things: the lack of the ability to survive without it, for example. If we always had what we needed, we would never want. But want is subversively valued as the summum bonum so that we can cope with our deficiency by praising that very deficiency. Lack brings want, want brings MORE STUFF, MORE STUFF brings MORE METHODS FOR GETTING THE STUFF! Just the fact alone, that we need health care STUFF, and food STUFF, alone means there needs to be more growth.. Then we need MILITARY STUFF, and scientific STUFF, which filters into CONSUMER STUFF. And of course that STUFF needs more STUFF to support the STUFF and administrations grows, and writing jobs to market it, and on and and and on. The growth of technology is the growth of the minutia. Every equation, every line of code, every twist of the manufacturing widget. It is an ultimate delve into the intricacies of the minutia of the intricacies of minutia. It is the ultimate culmination of our sense of lack.
The rational "parent" brings new children into the world so that they can be MINUTIA MONGERS and bring us more STUFF. But of course, I am not talking about the simple sex = baby cases. This was meant for purely so-called rational reasons to bear and raise a child
I agree with a lot of your down-beat points. People who are consciously and deliberately upward mobile start planning their child's glorious career before ovulation. They already have the money (or they have a plan) to thrust this baby into the upper class if at all possible and they pursue it from the get go. Pregnant mama eats well, listens to Mozart, all that. Then attention showered on the baby, and early childhood education (way before first grade), private schools, tutoring, dancing lessons or whatever the fuck, push, push, push. If all goes well, these great expectations pan out pretty well, on a local basis, anyway.
Successful people want more stuff, get more stuff, waste more stuff, and learn jack shit from the experience. Unsuccessful people do the same thing, just with lower quality stuff purchased from the dollar store or K-Mart.
The book and series I suggested won't change your mind -- I think you will find Kunstler's approach affirming. His non-fiction books, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation and The Long Emergency (among others) develops ideas about the logic of STUFF that you expressed. Mostly I suggested the books because they are great post apocalypse fiction and are far, far more pleasant than Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD which made me very uncomfortable. I watched the first few minutes of the movie The Road and decided it was going to supply too many intolerably vivid images of ghastliness. CLICK!
Stuffiness of civilization is not new, of course. The touring show of Pompeii artifacts displayed all sorts of STUFF that reasonably well-fixed Romans needed. The tombs of Egypt are full of STUFF that the well-fixed Egyptian needed. Luxury goods, like a piece of thin leather about 3 sq. feet in area, delicately cut to look like woven fabric. Conspicuous consumption.
We started to accumulate stuff when and where it was possible a long time ago. If we were somewhat settled down, food was reasonably plentiful, the climate wasn't too awful, stuff just started to accumulate. We and pack rats seem to have a similar urge.
Are you familiar with Thorsten Veblen? He published his Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. It is a slim volume. One of the themes in the book is about "conspicuous consumption". People consume in order to display their excess capacity. His classic example are fields of grass upon which no sheep are allowed to graze, yet the grass is short. "Lawns" are a demonstration that one can afford to grow grass for appearance and pay someone to cut it short. It's a totally non-productive pasture. The manicured pasture surrounding stately homes was quickly copied by the middle class (even the working class) who propagated much-fussed-over small pieces of pasturage upon which no cow will ever graze.
You can get the collected works e-edition of Veblen for 99¢ on Amazon--buy it today! His "Leisure Class" is still in print in paper and is regularly re-issued. You need more STUFF, Schop; at least the e-edition doesn't take up much space.
Very good description.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Thanks for recommendations. They do fit the theme it seems. Fiction can often paint the picture, that a monograph can't quite get at.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Need a home to keep stuff.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I've heard of this. Sounds like it is still relevant.
I think Marx main contribution was showing that the material circumstances- like economic structures drive ideas. Well, to tweak that a bit- technology might even be more foundational than economic systems. It doesn’t matter who owns what, or what style of distribution. Rather, it matters more in how a society protects, maintains, and progresses the technologies. Our culture really is centered on this. The priests? The engineers.
I'll put it this way. Try to make an argument against the fact that the most valuable people are the technology originators? You can be cynical and say its money that talks. Its technology that makes the money do anything.
A World Made by Hand is fiction. Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation and The Long Emergency are nonfiction. Similar themes explicated in both.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is a tricky connection between technology and money.
There are many useful inventions that have been patented, and never saw the light of day. Maybe some were "earth shaking, paradigm shifting, watershed" inventions; some were good and useful inventions, and some were flights of imagination.
Why?
One reason is that a lot of money has already been sunk into other technologies. An obvious example is petroleum. Drilling for, pumping, refining, distributing, and selling petroleum products is very lucrative, but also very expensive. The sunk costs of the petroleum industry, and the reliability of the income are too large to risk investment in... wind and solar farms, highly efficient engines, mass transit systems, and so forth.
Investors hate risk, especially when they already are getting big payoffs from previous risks and investments.
Why don't pharmaceutical manufacturers search for new antibiotics? Because a good, new antibiotic will result in sales of one or two bottles of pills per person per illness. Maybe 50 pills. Blood pressure medications, on the other hand, are a life-long proposition. So, chronic illnesses get investments that acute infections aren't going to get. Forget about making immunization serums. That's 1 shot per person per life-time. Where's the profit in that?
Windmill and solar farms are getting built, and are generating electricity. More could be built, and more sustainable electricity could be generated, so why not? Again, sunk costs. The cost of a new nuclear generating plant are extremely high, so the existing ones are going to be run until they... blow up? Maybe, but at least until they really are no good anymore. Same for coal fired plants. They are reliable, the infrastructure is in place and operating well, and they make money. Global warming makes new coal-fired plants inadvisable (no such thing as "clean coal").
Power companies are a little more forward thinking than General Motors and Exxon. The end of their fossil fuel is a bit closer. (Plenty of coal, but it's increasingly uncompetitive cost wise.) In a number of states, wind and solar are providing a significant and growing share of electric power (in states that have good wind resources--not every state does) and where there is lots of sun near large metropolitan areas. Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, and California are 4 states that I know are getting quite a bit of electrical power sustainablyb from wind. The SE states lack sustained wind streams, but they do have sun enough. But... southern crackers. What do you expect?
So, great and good ideas generally die on the vine if somebody doesn't come along to capitalize them. Here's a small example: Somebody started a little mushroom powdering operation in town (this was... 20 years ago). It was a good product -- just dried mushrooms ground to a powder. Very good in a number of dishes, like casseroles, gravy, soup, etc. They disappeared from the market in a a couple of years. Why? The costs of expanding promotion, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution were too high. They needed an investor who, apparently, didn't materialize. No money, no powdered mushrooms. Powdered mushrooms are manufactured and sold on Amazon, by larger operations.
Or, personal issue, take high efficiency water heaters. I could buy one, and it would use less gas than the conventional water heater I have. However, the savings per year would not equal the cost of this tank for maybe 20 years. The same applies to roof top solar power, adding extensive insulation, etc. The payback period is longer than my probable remaining lifetime. If it paid for itself in two years, hey -- I'd do it.
Technology has to pay off reasonably fast, or people can't afford to adopt it, whether they are individuals or Fortune 500 companies.
Excellent ideas alone usually won't fly. They require funds to lift them aloft.
Creators, inventors, come up with new ideas. Labor brings them to fruition. In a capitalist economy workers are wage slaves and without paid work starve. Creators require the means to manufacture -- that means a building, machinery, and workers. Further, they have to buy raw materials (like sheet metal). All of this requires cash. That's where investors come in: IF they think the idea will make enough profit, they may invest.
Then there are intangible factors: Does the inventor (and owner of the technology) and the engineer who figures out how to turn the patent into a product, and the factory manager, the workers, and the investor all get along? There are frequent disputes. The investor thinks its taking too long to get production going. The workers think they are not getting paid enough. The engineer feels he is expected to pull rabbits out of hats. The inventor feels he's getting ripped off by everybody else. The whole process sometimes breaks down.
Later, the factory is turning out the Barbot, the robot that helps you score at the bar. Demand is high. Hammacher Schlemmer has ordered 10,000 units. Then problems arise. The special processor that helps the Barbot exude charm is held up by labor unrest (aka, a union drive) in China. The Indonesian chemical company that produces the Barbot's special pheromones can't get enough extract of yak gland from Mongolia. The factory floor is flummoxed. 1,000 fully operational units are shipped, which only fuels demand which can not be satisfied.
Finally Hammacher Schlemmer*** Hammacher Schlemmer decides to drop the Barbot for the Fully Obedient Stormtrooper, which isn't as charming, but is fully stocked at a warehouse.
The Barbot operation can't get production going again; law suits are begun; Barbot goes bankrupt. Another one bites the dust.
Meanwhile, the 1000 Barbots that did get made, shipped, and purchased are helping nerds do a land office business at the bar. What can't be accomplished with charm and pheromones can be accomplished, it turns out, with a vice-like grip. So, the Barbot introduces the potential bed mates it has located to its owner with a soto voce message in the ear of the potential bed mate, "or else. Just remember, we have vays..."
***The actual Fully Obedient Stormtrooper is much larger than it appears in the illustration.
You paint a very good picture of how investment, manufacturing, engineering, and invention work. However, what I mean by money doesn't do anything without technology is literal. Money is only as good as what can be done with it. Otherwise, its just paper. So where does money get put to use? Basic survival-like needs such as homes, heating, appliances, electricity, etc. What do the taxes need to do? Other survival-like stuff at the community level. Roads, electrical supplies, stop lights, all sorts of infrastructure. Then of course, luxuries are spent on. Stuff needs to get made, is complicated to configure and make, and takes the brains to make it, and yeah the brawn to put it together.. But the workers need to have the technology as well, otherwise there is nothing to work on, build, and fix, or the building and fixing would be of a very home made, 17th century type technology.
So, you can describe the methods for which investments promote technology, but LITERALLY money means nothing without the BACKING of the value technology gives money. Yeah money can be seen in lots of ways, as an exchange or a "store of value"..but none of it stores anything unless there is the technology for which the money can obtain. That is the final telos of the money.. It is waiting to be cashed out in technology.
All of this is based on the current technology which is used to make further technology. The workers and investors rely on technology. So it is still the inventors and engineers that are needed most. The very platform we are using was based on computing technology with all the computer engineering, and programming that goes into it, as well as networking technology, then forum technology, and further, the very nice format of "Plush Forums" which this particular forum is based. Of course that is not mentioning every other supporting technology, such as the electrical ones and manufacturing that goes into the devices we are using and keeping them powered.
True, and not true, maybe. I'm not all that knowledgeable about this.
For a Roman, a gold coin was the value of gold. It didn't represent anything, it just was. Now the value of any currency is what the world's consensus of its value is. Value "jiggles" up and down continuously. Currency is connected to real stuff through what? Trade? A country which has (practically) nothing to sell is going to have a virtually worthless currency. If you sell stuff then you can buy stuff, and if you pay your bills, your money is good. Stop paying your bills and your currency might turn into cat litter. Value comes from the market. The currency of Zimbabwe was so worthless (nothing to sell, couldn't buy anything) that they started using other countries' currencies -- to the extent that they could get them.
Money is itself a technology. Several hundred years ago the social infrastructure of Holland was solid enough that one could say, "Hey -- I want 500 tulip bulbs. Let me give you a check..." (which was a promissory note). You got the tulips bulbs, the bulb seller took your check to your bank and got the gold coins. That was good for a few hundred years. Then we figured out how to make the promise to pay through an intermediary -- the credit card company. You hand the man your card, he swipes it, the credit card company (eventually) pays him and (eventually) unsubtly informs you that it is time to pay up or else. (Quite a bit of money is made by the "or else" -- usurious rates of interest).
Now we can point our phone and pay for something. Soon you will be able to merely think of something and a sale will be charged to your account. "Oh, nice shoes" -- WHAM! $600 deducted from your account and the shoes are on their way. That'll put a brake on daydreaming at the mall.
What gives a society the ability to command respect for its currency isn't so much "technology" as "production". The major currencies (euros, dollars, yens, renminbis, pounds) are "major" because they are backed up by trusted economies that turn out a lot of goods people want. Back in the day when Japan made "cheap jap junk" (after the war), the yen wasn't worth much. When Japan outstripped Detroit as the #1 Auto Maker (1980), the yen got lots of respect.
Economic activity doesn't have to be high tech to count. China may make iPhones, but they also take shiploads of waste paper and turn it into cardboard. Not exactly high tech. China outsells other producers by using that lowest of tech devices, low paid workers.
An economy might need consumers more than inventors. 70% of US GDP is personal consumption spending. I buy a little tech every now and then. Most of what I buy are food, utilities, health insurance, property insurance, and miscellaneous stuff -- as high tech as a kitchen pan, underwear, bike tires, etc. I bet most of your household spending is similar.
Yes I agree, but how much technology goes into all of what you described? A lot more than used to be. So tech here is meant broadly, not in the narrow definition of electronics or something similar when we think of technology
Also, it is the burden of knowledge. The best must create. The best must have the knowledge. The best have to be specialized.
I'm not minimizing the value of technology; granted, it's a component of some pretty ordinary things. But I don't like the idea of shifting the 'pivot point' of society from brute economic activity (which almost all of it is) to this entity of "technology". What Intel or Samsung does in their factories is complex manufacturing, certainly, but it isn't really all that much different than what goes on in a Ford plant. Men and machinery are combined to produce highly engineered objects. Modern dairies are much more "technological" than they used to be -- in some operations cows and robots move around in the barn as they wish. When a cow wants to be milked (and they do want to be milked at least twice a day) the cows solicit the services of a robot. Whether it's done by a robot or a guy carrying a Serge milking machine from cow to cow, milk is sucked out of mammary glands.
High tech and low tech operate the same way in the economy.
Ford and Intel are making a product from raw or previously processed material, then selling the product for as much as the market will bear. In both cases, there is a major markup in price between the factory and the final purchaser -- probably by a factor of 10. (Each stage--manufacturing, warehousing, selling, shipping, incorporation into another product, more warehousing, distribution, etc. adds a little more to the final cost. By the time you buy something at Target, a lot of handling costs have been added. That's true of an eggbeater from Target or a computer from Dell.
I prefer to think of "technology" as one factor in products along with initial cost, toxicity, repair costs, longevity, convenience, and so on.
One instance where "the best" technology is bought, where tech is tech, is in the purchase of patents. Large tech operations sometimes buy small competitors only for the value of the patents they own. Once the sale is complete and the patents have changed hands, the recent acquisition is flushed down the drain (if it isn't otherwise worth keeping).
Oddly, the patents might not be needed for future manufacturing. They may be useful only for future litigation. It's like if some small company owned the patent for "the computer mouse" they could sue all sorts of computer makers for patent infringement, and make a nice income. Apple, for instance, keeps unneeded patents on hand to sue or counter-sue competitors. They all are involved in this "high tech" legal maneuvering.
But this is why I specifically called out technology- it is not the output aspect or the economic indicator that represents output. It is the technology that is the basis for the output.
Quoting Bitter Crank
You think cars aren't extremely complex technology? This all takes the engineering knowledge, of course. Something as simple as a milking machine, are also engineered.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Again, great description of the economic factors. However, it is the technology that creates the items. We survive and are entertained through technology. None of the stuff you mentioned exists without someone figuring out a better code to program the machine to make a more efficient or "superior" product.
Interesting point. Consumers are not valuable. Only the creators of technology are. That's the thing. The investors are nothing without the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They are needed by consumers, owners, and investors alike. There is no real production without it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
They are all critical to the others' success. No production without consumption; no production without finance; no technology without production -- and visa versa.
But when you think about technology, how far back are you going? Isaac Watts? The mechanical loom? Water power?
Manufacturing is just applied tech. In the "lithic" eras, stone tool production was not a mass operation; it was a boutique operation. The entire tribe didn't gather together to knap flint rocks for a week. It was skilled work, taking a lot of practice and time. What whole tribes did do was trade. In south central Minnesota, for instance, there are all sorts of flint tools and flint chips accumulated over 9,000 years which are not obtained from local rock formations. Some of the stone tools are from as far away as 100 to 300 miles. There is no obsidian anywhere close to south central Minnesota. They traded stuff that x tribe made for different materials that tribe y had.
There was quite a lot of technological knowledge worked into the stone tools. A producer had to know how a type of rock (of which the traded supply was very limited) would respond to the kinds of knapping blows that it might receive. Sometimes only pressure was applies to a location to achieve the desired material removal.
There are a lot of "home manufactured items" in our history. Fabric is a major one. Taking animal hair (like wool) and turning it into a durable garment is, like stone knapping, skilled labor, often varied out alone. There are all sorts of things made by hand, 2 hands at a time. But there were also group efforts. Ore was dug up and smelted by numerous individuals working together.
Moving all this forward... at some point, individual workshops turned into group workshops turned into factories. Water power would have enabled the factory to use several mechanized processes.
So, in my view, technology goes back quite a ways. I'm pretty sure that early factories (like cotton spinning factories) had to have had investors, or the founder would have needed to be rich from the start. You can't have technology without infrastructure (like a dam, a mill pond, water wheel, power shaft, over head leather pullies, a solid building, windows, etc.
I mean, tech isn't a person. It doesn't walk in a magically transform nothing into something. Something has to be there first, and it has to be paid for early on. This hasn't changed in a long time.
Yes, all of it. Of course the more modern we get, the more reliant the technology is on specialized engineers and scientists.
Quoting Bitter Crank
But investors, eventually need to make money on tangible products and output. Eventually, making money on money only goes so far before it needs something real that actually is producing the profits. Products need the inventors and engineers to originate and further technologies. That is the piece that everyone else needs. An inventor can just invent. But a consumer needs those inventions, and an investor needs the tangible output- whether they be stone tools for cutting meat, or any number of modern products.
Sure, we can think of scenarios where the products are primitive to not need inventors or services with little skill, but that society doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did. The inventors and proto-engineers were always needed since civilization began (whether they were called that or not).
Not sure what you mean. That seems like an incomplete thought.
Bitter, one of the main reasons for this thread is to not only point to the supremacy of technology has a basis for which all society is organized, but rather to show its effects on the kind of people who can originate and maintain this technology. Its main effect is that those with the most MINUTIA MONGERING- the ability to specialize in extremely minute points of math/science/engineering are who are most valued and de facto "needed". This is interesting to me the precision of detail needed in modern times that our brains must focus on, and the kind of performances that we rely on as a society to maintain and increase technology.
Perhaps @fdrake can chime in on the phenomenon of technology and the necessary knowledge of minutia to push it forward.
Minutia mongering: Excellent.
I submit that we have probably passed our capacity to monger all the minutia we have to manage. All the code that it takes is too voluminous, too complex, too inter-connected, for any individual or team to adequately oversee. The result is all sorts of failures (cleverly called bugs rather than mistakes) that are discovered only by putting the product into the hands of millions and letting them find all the errors by the brute force of daily use. EDIT: JUST NOW THE NEW VERSION OF iTUNES (which I didn't ask for) WOULDN'T LET ME QUIT; I COULD CLOSE THE WINDOW, BUT NOT TURN IT OFF. I HAD TO USE "FORCE QUIT" TO SHUT IT OFF. A small example.
The stakes are not very high for a draw program running on a tablet. The stakes are rather higher if the program is running the air traffic system, a nuclear plant, oil refinery, or missiles, or a big bank, or that autonomous self-driving car everyone is waiting for. I have read that legacy systems (like that running the FAA system or Social Security) are often so complex that officials are reluctant to replace them, because, of course, errors would be catastrophic.
So, yes: software engineers are very, very valuable.
As time goes on, and complexity continues to grow (as it will) we will have to off-load a substantial portion of the burden onto computers, which (or who) have a much larger capacity to finagle complexity than we have. As we do so, we will, of necessity, relinquish a degree of control over the programs themselves.
Bear in mind, though, that the drive to increase technology is top down rather than bottom up. Tech is the product du jour. The reason Apple and Samsung and who-the-fuck keep coming up with new and snazzier phones is that maintaining profits requires new phones. You don't need a new phone; I don't need a new phone; nobody on earth needs yet another version. Apple, Samsung, and who-the-fuck need new phones so that they have something to sell that is different than what they sold yesterday.
The same thing applies to apples. There are already I don't know... around 5,000 apple varieties. One would think that those 5000 apple varieties probably suffice. But no: places like the U of Minnesota keep breeding new ones. You like Honey Crisp? That's one of the U of M varieties. They've introduced it's successor this year. Successor? Right. People are tired of The Apple of the early 21st century. Apples must be perpetually sweeter, crisper, juicier...
Why? Because apple growers need new apples to generate consumer interest. "Consumer interest" is a different beast than "feeding people", you understand. Consumer interest is about selling stuff.
The technologists who analyze consumer behavior are also very valuable people. More valuable than we band of brother-philosophers, certainly.
:grin: I like that reference.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Excellent point! This is really where I'm getting at. This is why I put "phenomenology" in the title. WHO is the person. What TYPE of person. Why that type of person? What are the THOUGHT PROCESSES of that person who needs to know the lines of code.. the testing of the code...the compiling of the language...the inventor of the language.. the mathematics behind all of this...the engineering behind all of that. And on and on it goes.
What does this mean as a lived human? Where does that put the person who DOESN'T do these complex, focused, processes based in the minute understanding of the expert? What is the VALUE of the mind of a person who CAN do these things..that MOVE technology and that the cultural-economic fabric relies upon. What implication does this mean in terms of taxonomy of USEFULNESS.. What does this mean for consumers vs. producers.. What does this mean as a theory of value? What does this mean as a theory metaphysically in terms of WHAT the phenomenon is?
I get that often technology is foisted from the top down through marketing, but we must admit that civilization relies on its substrate of technology. The technologists are the ones that carry these nuts and bolts processes and outputs to fruition. It is the phenomenon of the MINUTIA MONGERING technologist that I am trying to get at.
First off, what causes the no-choice world?
Second, according to the State Department of Thread Title, you should remove the word "Phenomonology" from your title. It doesn't fit your topic. A socio-ecopolitical observation of our civilization does not need such word to be understood.
Third, have you ever considered, I mean stopping even for a brief moment to ponder, whether humans actually enjoy conforming to the same thing? Have you ever thought that doing similar things and following similar path are actually happiness-inducing endeavour?
No choice- we need minutia mongerers.
Quoting Caldwell
Besides the bad spelling, the phenomenology is fine in the title I think. It is there to indicate the POV of the technologist. What is it like to be the person who needs to be an expert in the necessary minutia to originate and further technology? I am willing to have an example of a how a phenomenological account might go- the kind that is lacking to be worthy of the title.. If you think my more general commentary is not sufficient, please provide an example of how a proper phenomenological account would go to make the title worthy.
Quoting Caldwell
Can you explain this? Do you mean that engineers/mathematicians like what they are doing, ergo I am wrong for bringing up the minutia-mongering of technological expertise?
The heart of the topic was stated to Bitter Crank here:
What does this mean as a lived human? Where does that put the person who DOESN'T do these complex, focused, processes based in the minute understanding of the expert? What is the VALUE of the mind of a person who CAN do these things..that MOVE technology and that the cultural-economic fabric relies upon. What implication does this mean in terms of taxonomy of USEFULNESS.. What does this mean for consumers vs. producers.. What does this mean as a theory of value? What does this mean as a theory metaphysically in terms of WHAT the phenomenon is?
Here's a more concrete question for you, BC:
What would incline one person to be a monkish ascetic and meditate for 12 hours a day, focusing on "nothing" and "everything" (or their breath, or a mantra, or a paradox, etc.) and what would incline another person to learn about the intricacies involved in creating better electronic components and programming languages and maths that support it all?
The meditator represents a sort of detachment and removal from the world of minutia..trying to achieve the most generalized state of mind. The engineer, on the other hand represents the other side of the spectrum- someone involved heavily in the intricacies and minutia of the world. This seems the opposite of generalized; it is someone mired in the details. What are the similarities of these types? What are the differences? Which is called for? When is it called for?
Both the ascetic and the engineer are extremely dedicated to the work and discipline. They both are probably somewhat indifferent about social niceties. Of course, their goals are as different as can possibly be. One is attempting to tunnel away from the world, the other is digging a tunnel into the heart of the commercial world. The number of meditators in the world, compared to the number of people screwing around with printed circuits and codes would resoundingly validate the life of the nerd over the life of the monk.
Arthur Clark wrote a short story about a monastery of monks who operated a powerful computer. They were trying to compile a list of all of the names of God. When all of the names of God had been written, the universe would end.
One night they left the monastery and walked away. Overhead the stars were going out.
Yes, this turning away from the world is valueless for society though, no? They are navel-gazers. Their very existence is due to someone else's intricate understanding of technologies. The minutia mongers allow the meditators to tunnel away from the world. Or so the narrative might go. Look at the thread of Marx Theory of Value.. It is about highly modelled mathematical frameworks to understand the quantitative measure of value from a commodity through labor and resources. I am not knocking it.. I rather like the rigor that that thread exemplifies.. but I am just giving examples of the minutia we deem necessary to really understand the world. Is more "minutia-knowledge" better? Are people who gravitate to more minutia-knowledge (experts?) better? If you say "NO, that's absurd".. you de facto rely on their expertise for your technology (or output as you rather call it). The mintutia-experts are the ones who give you your things, allows society to run.
I guess a bigger point I am trying to uncover here is the tediousness of living in general. I can't help but think the surface of "Yahooo!!!" skiers, extreme sportsers, vacationers, leisurely readers, tv watchers, world travellers, and especially consumers are just skimming on a shallow sheet of ice that is undergirded and bolstered by an immense amount of minutia and tediousness. Thoughts?
Close-up thinkers are also "a" (not "the") critical part of society. They are minders, mongers, managers, and manufacturers of minutia. We've needed both kind of thinkers all the way back into the stone ages. Someone in a band of Homo sapiens sapiens had to decide when it time to move on. Someone had to pay attention to the whole band, not just 1 person. On the other hand, when it came to stone tools, close-up thinkers needed to focus on the stones that were available, and how--exactly--to use them. Close-up thinkers figured out how to get pitch out of birch bark (it's great glue). Both close-up Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens figured this out, separately.
You are a big picture thinker and you are able to question the grand scheme of things that we are taught. Close-up thinkers aren't interested in that sort of questioning. They want to make the machine 7% better; you wonder whether the machine should even exist.
Big picture thinkers, like close-up thinkers, make positive contributions. Ancient traders made a big picture decision when they set out on the sea to find other people to buy from and sell to. Even haggling over the price (in very small units of value) is a big picture activity. One needs to know not just whether a given piece of cloth has enough threads per inch, but they need to think about how much they can sell the cloth for elsewhere in exchange for what, and who can they sell that stuff to...
Big picture thinkers deal with real problems, and find real solutions, just like close-up thinkers do -- just on a different scale.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Classic big picture project. Is it a positive or a negative picture?
I like this framework.. makes sense.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Interesting point. And I tend to agree with your analysis here about those who tend towards the big-thinking and those who tend towards the close-up thinking. I have to think more about this and get back to you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What are minutia mongerers? Sorry, I saw this in one of your posts, but still didn't quite absorb it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You got it backwards. In my opinion, you do not need a phenomenological method to make a claim about something that could be measured sociologically and psychologically -- and yes (!), with all their interpretive instruments. You are, in fact, if you haven't noticed, performing hermeneutical analysis of what you yourself see around you. You are interpreting the condition of our society as Quoting schopenhauer1
..and Quoting schopenhauer1
Why not use sociological analysis instead? Of course, a cynical observer could reduce any human action to technology. But is this reasonable?
It is the ability to specialize in extremely minute points of math/science/engineering. Further, I claimed those who are most valued and de facto "needed" are ones that have mastery over minutia in these fields. As they increase the basis for how our society works- that is the technological foundation.
Quoting Caldwell
Fair enough. I can change it to the hemeneutics of technological expertise. For my own learning's sake, How would it have to look in order to hit the threshold of a phenomenological thread? I know of Husserl and his bracketing approach, but I was using the term loosely, not strictly Husselerian. How would the methodology look to be officially phenomenological?
Quoting Caldwell
Well, it is about the amount of expertise in the minutia.. the type of concentration on a very narrow set of understandings to increase technology. The kind of knowledge we need to know to increase, maintain, and reproduce technology. That was when I brought up minutia mongering. It would be what Bitter Crank called "close-up" thinkers.
I don't know, Schop. You are bracketing, that could not be avoided.
Pin point what the experts in the past had focused on when talking about human actions. Be honest on this as this is your starting point. Is it towards conformity and uniformity or plurality? Then state where they made a mistake. Why would they say such a thing?
Then, how do we lead ourselves to uniformity -- through creativity and creation (or building) of things and stuff that take the shape of one thing -- technology? You can illuminate how creativity itself is an instrument towards greater conformity, not the other way around. Develop your semantics on "technology". Develop your ontology around technology. Even language is technology itself.
You could incorporate what @Akanthinos had said.