One of the great questions of our age is whether or not we as human beings will be able to master technology or will we continue to be mastered by it? Essentially, it is a moral question.
Yes, engineers working with the non-human, physical world are forced to stop the effort to make things perfect. I recall that there was a plane crash in Europe. Previous versions of the aircraft had a warning system that would most probably have prevented the rare situation that [ ̷f̷a̷t̷e̷f̷u̷l̷l̷y̷ ̷] arose in the fateful case. That particular system feature was removed because there was competition from other potential warning systems that had more urgency and likely need. Airplanes are good examples of this competition because weight of the plane, the necessity of human factors still exist and because of temporal constraints.
I will keep an eye out for the book you mentioned.
(I hope you do not mind, I am cross posting this discussion at my Substack page because I wanted to weave in another thread of commentary. Of course, I refer people here to your article straightway.)
No worries! Another interesting example of these compromises is F1 cars. They can make them much faster than they currently go, and safely as well, but one of the limiting factors is the air behind the car. The current rules try to engineer body design so as to make the air behind the car as clean as possible so as to encourage actual passing, you know, racing. Creating more downforce and thus more speed actually messes the air behind the car making passing almost impossible. So you intentionally slow the cars down to encourage more actual racing.
As humans we cannot even handle well the concept of "perfection." We only can handle it if the judge permits no countering evidence, when we accept that externalities cannot be accounted for in all economic models, and when some (many) people are banished from the denominator in our ratios of efficacy and efficiency. Thus, we have very imperfect notions of perfection itself. Greater visions of the system to be perfected are pursued only by compromising the parts of the previously maximized solution. The current regime uses the term 'stakeholder' a lot, perhaps more as a term of propagandistic manipulation meant for the under managers to use in PowerPoint indoctrination sessions, than one of self-discipline among the oligarchic conversations. But expanding the answer to the question, "Who we, Kemosabe?" is sure to be critical.
A lot of it is practice. I was blessed to take several public speaking courses. I have always been a decent writer and I know there are better, but there is no substitute for having to write regularly for the last 25 years.
For what it is worth, I prefer audio posts being available: I can work in the lab, workshop or kitchen while listening. Yes, I can read faster, but I cannot read while washing dishes. Thus, audio options are a force multiplier.
Yeah. That is kind of it for me. I appreciate the audio even though I enjoy reading, but my work has me in my truck a lot and I would never be able to keep up otherwise.
I listened to your article with great interest (as usual). I gave a talk at a MacIntyrean Enquiry conference, and elsewhere, a ways back on some neurobiological speculations concerning craft versus technical learning. I was also interested in the negative aspects of our choices for, and as a result of the imposition of, bureaucratization and the lost of human intellect, emotion, will, and creativity for not-necessarily desirable provisions of convenience. This also leads inevitably, I argue, toward 'organization mobbing' as an internal mechanism of self-regulation.
Thanks for the kind words. Once you really start meditating on the effects of passing off so much of our abilities to machines and systems, the effects upon us are startling. You final observation is an interesting one, maybe worth some longer reflection, this passing off of our internal moral regulation to the system is sound. In a sense, we will need a social credit based surveillance state to act as, in Freudian terms, our ego.
Herein may be part of the self-limiting corrective to the techno-tyrannical mess we are in. Well, I should say that the failures of the secular aspects of this mess will impact the overall power of the fundamental spiritual mess we are in. The spiritual is where, of course, the real battle must, and will, occur. Nonetheless, we will be propelled toward the spiritual confrontation as the temporal realm of, as you call them, technique-based systems reach a multitude of overwhelming crisis points.
To elaborate (ramble, perhaps) on the frailty of these temporal systems, we cannot evade the fact that we make up, and that we are part of, an ecological system. We are part of a whole with at least some aspects describable in cybernetic terms. Ultimately, we are embedded in a system that must obey the Logos. The technocrats, those who worship technique over all other things, cannot indefinitely get away with the idolization of the imbalanced condition. The pathology they engender by their desires and plans must necessarily fail by a sort of implosion. They cannot design enough feedback loops because human knowledge is woefully imperfect. As I recall, there are canonical limits to engineering control systems, each of which has a non-zero probability of failure. Moreover, their setpoints, their goals, cannot coincide with anything anywhere near the true Telos. Their efficiency ratios cannot incorporate real numerators and denominators for the scale of things that they want to control. Their cost-benefit ratios become meaningless. Too much becomes unaccounted-for externalities. To simplify, they choose efficiency ratios that merely take into account the few, the chosen-few technocrats. (Perhaps what you meant by ego-centered control systems. Their models are meaningless when trying to define universal systems. Like an impish boy who is frustrated that his erector-set project failed to satisfy, they have a tantrum and conclude that it will all be easier if they simply smash anything traditional, natural, truly ecological, and then depopulate in order to make their equations -- although flawed -- more tractable in their failures. So, their vision is doomed. But this does not mean that we all do not suffer greatly as their playtime turns out to be catastrophic in in what they view as their romper room.
Yes, once you grasp the significance of Ellul's concept of technological ambivalence, that all techniques/technologies bring both good and ills, that it becomes inevitable that the ills will accumulate to the point that the system will eventually bring itself down under the unmanageable weight of the problems it has generated trying to solve and control for all externalities. The perfect system cannot be built.
If you have not read Christopher Alexander's "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" you should get a copy. Alexander argues in looking at the design of a small village that there can be no perfect design because perfecting one area often degrades other, so certain balanced imperfections must be dealt with. But they remain imperfections. Engineers will often have to grapple with these realities. But social engineers and lawmakers somehow believe themselves immune.
Of course, the task now is for us to demand right society. That can, in fact, happen. We have the theory and, actually, we have had it for a long time. Now we need the will.
Yes, engineers working with the non-human, physical world are forced to stop the effort to make things perfect. I recall that there was a plane crash in Europe. Previous versions of the aircraft had a warning system that would most probably have prevented the rare situation that [ ̷f̷a̷t̷e̷f̷u̷l̷l̷y̷ ̷] arose in the fateful case. That particular system feature was removed because there was competition from other potential warning systems that had more urgency and likely need. Airplanes are good examples of this competition because weight of the plane, the necessity of human factors still exist and because of temporal constraints.
I will keep an eye out for the book you mentioned.
Curiously, last night I accessed the following "Outer Limits" episode entitled "Stream of Consciousness." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ved1c
(I hope you do not mind, I am cross posting this discussion at my Substack page because I wanted to weave in another thread of commentary. Of course, I refer people here to your article straightway.)
No worries! Another interesting example of these compromises is F1 cars. They can make them much faster than they currently go, and safely as well, but one of the limiting factors is the air behind the car. The current rules try to engineer body design so as to make the air behind the car as clean as possible so as to encourage actual passing, you know, racing. Creating more downforce and thus more speed actually messes the air behind the car making passing almost impossible. So you intentionally slow the cars down to encourage more actual racing.
As humans we cannot even handle well the concept of "perfection." We only can handle it if the judge permits no countering evidence, when we accept that externalities cannot be accounted for in all economic models, and when some (many) people are banished from the denominator in our ratios of efficacy and efficiency. Thus, we have very imperfect notions of perfection itself. Greater visions of the system to be perfected are pursued only by compromising the parts of the previously maximized solution. The current regime uses the term 'stakeholder' a lot, perhaps more as a term of propagandistic manipulation meant for the under managers to use in PowerPoint indoctrination sessions, than one of self-discipline among the oligarchic conversations. But expanding the answer to the question, "Who we, Kemosabe?" is sure to be critical.
How can I master writing?
A lot of it is practice. I was blessed to take several public speaking courses. I have always been a decent writer and I know there are better, but there is no substitute for having to write regularly for the last 25 years.
Very good stuff. Incredible how smart some people are and I am very blessed to be able to hear them.
For what it is worth, I prefer audio posts being available: I can work in the lab, workshop or kitchen while listening. Yes, I can read faster, but I cannot read while washing dishes. Thus, audio options are a force multiplier.
Yeah. That is kind of it for me. I appreciate the audio even though I enjoy reading, but my work has me in my truck a lot and I would never be able to keep up otherwise.
I listened to your article with great interest (as usual). I gave a talk at a MacIntyrean Enquiry conference, and elsewhere, a ways back on some neurobiological speculations concerning craft versus technical learning. I was also interested in the negative aspects of our choices for, and as a result of the imposition of, bureaucratization and the lost of human intellect, emotion, will, and creativity for not-necessarily desirable provisions of convenience. This also leads inevitably, I argue, toward 'organization mobbing' as an internal mechanism of self-regulation.
Thanks for the kind words. Once you really start meditating on the effects of passing off so much of our abilities to machines and systems, the effects upon us are startling. You final observation is an interesting one, maybe worth some longer reflection, this passing off of our internal moral regulation to the system is sound. In a sense, we will need a social credit based surveillance state to act as, in Freudian terms, our ego.
Herein may be part of the self-limiting corrective to the techno-tyrannical mess we are in. Well, I should say that the failures of the secular aspects of this mess will impact the overall power of the fundamental spiritual mess we are in. The spiritual is where, of course, the real battle must, and will, occur. Nonetheless, we will be propelled toward the spiritual confrontation as the temporal realm of, as you call them, technique-based systems reach a multitude of overwhelming crisis points.
To elaborate (ramble, perhaps) on the frailty of these temporal systems, we cannot evade the fact that we make up, and that we are part of, an ecological system. We are part of a whole with at least some aspects describable in cybernetic terms. Ultimately, we are embedded in a system that must obey the Logos. The technocrats, those who worship technique over all other things, cannot indefinitely get away with the idolization of the imbalanced condition. The pathology they engender by their desires and plans must necessarily fail by a sort of implosion. They cannot design enough feedback loops because human knowledge is woefully imperfect. As I recall, there are canonical limits to engineering control systems, each of which has a non-zero probability of failure. Moreover, their setpoints, their goals, cannot coincide with anything anywhere near the true Telos. Their efficiency ratios cannot incorporate real numerators and denominators for the scale of things that they want to control. Their cost-benefit ratios become meaningless. Too much becomes unaccounted-for externalities. To simplify, they choose efficiency ratios that merely take into account the few, the chosen-few technocrats. (Perhaps what you meant by ego-centered control systems. Their models are meaningless when trying to define universal systems. Like an impish boy who is frustrated that his erector-set project failed to satisfy, they have a tantrum and conclude that it will all be easier if they simply smash anything traditional, natural, truly ecological, and then depopulate in order to make their equations -- although flawed -- more tractable in their failures. So, their vision is doomed. But this does not mean that we all do not suffer greatly as their playtime turns out to be catastrophic in in what they view as their romper room.
Yes, once you grasp the significance of Ellul's concept of technological ambivalence, that all techniques/technologies bring both good and ills, that it becomes inevitable that the ills will accumulate to the point that the system will eventually bring itself down under the unmanageable weight of the problems it has generated trying to solve and control for all externalities. The perfect system cannot be built.
If you have not read Christopher Alexander's "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" you should get a copy. Alexander argues in looking at the design of a small village that there can be no perfect design because perfecting one area often degrades other, so certain balanced imperfections must be dealt with. But they remain imperfections. Engineers will often have to grapple with these realities. But social engineers and lawmakers somehow believe themselves immune.
Of course, the task now is for us to demand right society. That can, in fact, happen. We have the theory and, actually, we have had it for a long time. Now we need the will.
For what it's worth, I prefer written posts.
I get it. This is why I do both. About a third of the people who interact with my stuff now access it through the recordings.
This was previously written post from October 2022 (https://www.seekingthehiddenthing.com/p/can-humanity-master-technology). I very much appreciate Kruptos making a spoken recording of it rather than using my device's text-to-speech or Substack's uncanny valley generated audio.
Good to hear the feedback. For me it depends on the person. Some I read almost exclusively, but with Auron and Charles, I tend to listen exclusively.