On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 10:46:12PM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:
> There has been a lot of criticism of Mann's showmanship in this list. I'm sure
> lots of people here will like his latest message:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/science/physical/25CYBO.html
In many ways his showmanship is perhaps more important than the
technology. Anyone can develop wearable technology, that is just
standard creative engineering. But putting developing technology in a
social context, that is a far rarer ability.
There are also quite a few people doing showmanship of new science and
technology claiming to put in a larger context while not really doing
anything else than placing it in a hackneyed standard context like the
"in the future everything will be better", "big brother", "brave new
world" or "the unnatural artificial world" narratives. Fortunately, I
think Mann is not in this category, since he actually does raise some
new questions and suggest new ways of looking at the interactions
between tech and society. He might still irritate people, but he adds
something to our culture.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:57 MDT