Re: Including the luddites [was Re: Degrees vs. smarts]

Kathryn Aegis (k_aegis@mindspring.com)
Tue, 05 Oct 1999 17:56:38

At 10:07 AM 10/5/99 -0700, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>However, I will comment that I know an artist in S.F. who happens to
>also be a Native American. Our conversations regarding technology
>trends and especially genetics tend to get fairly hot. It isn't
>that he is particularly anti-technology but that he sees technology
>as a threat to his cultural history.

As do many African Americans. This was a flash point during my time at Antioch. My professor would just stand there and let people scream racism for supporting genetics, robotics, etc. And the day that I proposed that humans are slowly leaving individual cultures behind in favor of a common interface was the day I was informed that Hitler had fathered my mother.

The multi-culti movement has put itself into diametric opposition to any technological advancement that promises to fundamentally alter the human body. Having fought so long and so hard for basic respect for their own cultures, they tend to view these technologies as yet another opportunity to wipe them off the face of the earth. Surely we can empathize with that, but it becomes worrisome in that they may find themselves less adapted to the future.

Kathryn Aegis