Technology and what it can do

[Kip Powick]

Very seasonal....

This (digital) meeting between Elvis Presley & Martina McBride, is 40 years apart.

Elvis portion was done in 1968 and Martina in 2008. It has been done before with Nat King Cole and his daughter, as well as others, but this is rather seasonal...and it's always nice to hear "The King".

[J.O.]

Very seasonal....

This (digital) meeting between Elvis Presley & Martina McBride, is 40 years apart.

Martina McBride ... sigh

[Moon The Loon]

Martina McBride ... sigh

I hear ya, J.O. Brings back memories of the mile of broken glass...

[Doering]

Top notch video editing on that one. Very cool!

[Don Hudson]

Wow.

I love the look "Elvis gives Martina..." at the end of that wonderful song...

[boestar]

Well done for sure. Enjoyed that.

Gets you thinking though....If they can pull that off and have it look that realistic then how much of that technology could be used (or is being used) to fabricate News for instance. The lines between reality and fantasy can get distorted for sure. This would provide for manufacturing propaganda and even manufacturing "proof"

Still great video.

Merry Christmas

[Don Hudson]

Boestar;

Yes, the video is a treat to watch and listen to - it's really well done and enjoyable precisely because we know it is entertainment and it brings back some common memories. Your next comment, I think, is about when we don't know what we're reading, watching, listening to, is "just entertainment".

Your comment, which doesn't detract from the video at all, "Gets you thinking though....If they can pull that off and have it look that realistic then how much of that technology could be used (or is being used) to fabricate News for instance. The lines between reality and fantasy can get distorted for sure. This would provide for manufacturing propaganda and even manufacturing 'proof'", is more important now than ever.

Among many, Neil Postman's book is still worth reading 26 years after its release. It was the sole reason we completely removed television from our home during the entire child-raising years. The personal computer was just being created and the internet was a US military secret.

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Wiki

Amusing Ourselves to Death CD - Amazon.ca

From the Foreward:

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Among the many illusions we harbour, most are intellectual ones that permit us to make sense of "daily life" but what arises from the spirit and the heart... - from those places we don't know, can be counted among those very few things that are truly real. Merry Christmas to all.

Don

[Kip Powick]

In case you didn't know......cause I certaintly didn't

centrifugal bumblepuppy

An advanced, consumerist form of tetherball played by the children in Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World.You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.

The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal

Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower.

A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down

into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of

the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught.

[boestar]

Don:

IMHO I think we are closer to the Orwellian than we choose to acknowledge. Today more than ever we are watched through video survelience, internet activity, what we watch on TV, where we shop, what we buy when we shop there. The shear amount of data compiled on individuals each day is staggering. And that isn't even including whatever the Government compiles on you. Of course most of that data is inconsequential fluff but much of it can be used for targeted advertizing and the like.

At the same time we are controlled by "Big Brother" in the form of mass media. We are kept in a state of "Semi Fearful" (The Sky Is Falling) for the single purpose of being controlled. I dont thik this to be a government conspiracy (They aren't smart enough to pull it off) I think of it as a corporate model. Big business likes to sell stuff and what better way to sell it than to convince you that you NEED it. For example (drawn from another recent thread) Global Warming. You NEED a new electric hybrid car to do your part to prevent global warming. Of coourse this car carries a premium price tag.

Orwell had the government watching the people and punished them for "thought Crimes" What this evolved into in reality is BIG BUSINESS guilting us into spending money.

This may come accross as conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo but as anyone who uses the internet knows THEY KNOW WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN. Watch your advertizing on pages, doesn't it seem strange that all the adverts come from companies that you may have recently dealt with or have some other close connection. Its not a coincidence.

GOOGLE is one of the largest players in this market of targeted marketing with their advertizing systems. And now with Google phones with GPS and location processing they know where you are and can target by location. Googles goal is to house and store ALL of the worlds DATA. That gives Google the title of worlds most powerful company. That is the danger we face.

[Kip Powick]

That is the danger we face.

If that is your biggest fear then why not turn all your "techy" stuff off?? Start with the kids...get them to discover there is an "outside" place to play, take away all the electronic crap that is changing so many into vegetative, over weight nerds who can't read, write, or communicate in what I think is a normal fashion......... proper English grammar

Do we need kids going to all day school at age 3 1/2 - 4 or do you think maybe we should let them play and experience childhood...or is it more important that we change schools into Day Care centres because both parents want it ALL now and subscribe to "lateral" movement in society when they move away from home instead of working ones way up? Pick man or woman but have a parent stay home with the "little ones".

That "fear" quoted above certainly doesn't concern me...I'm more concerned about the erosion of basic common sense, decency, and the "over kill" on human rights......... as well as probably the worst judicial system that I have ever experienced in my life time. The family core is not what it used to be and I don't mean as portrayed in "Leave it to Beaver, or the "Bill Cosby Show".

Bitter???? No, just very disappointed with what I see as the future generations....

Mini Rant over.

[Don Hudson]

Kip - keep the "mini-rants" coming!

Kip, Boestar;

"Technology" can't be "turned off" as it is literally part of our being - our "world view", our "weltangschauung" It is the way our world is socially-constructed - it is the same as saying "because the light bulb has altered our perceptions of the earth's "pace", (day, to night, to day, etc) and we can stay awake past dark, we should turn off all the light bulbs" so we are "in-tune" with our world. While there is a part of me that agrees with that very sentiment, I know technology is a one-way path; besides, there are some communes here in the Gulf Islands that are trying that and the notion ain't spreading.

Technology permits us to "intellectualize" the world and "us-in-the-world". By intellectualize, I mean "to stand us apart from the world", or "to place us in control of the world". It's old stuff I know but technology's latent effects are to remove ourselves from our selves and psychologically we lose our way, so to speak. We construct the model of reality we each carry around with us, (making extremely sophisticated and complex societies run as smoothly as they do). We built this model inguistically, but as words create reality they also "divide" us from ourselves, making us think that because we have a name for something, we know it, including ourselves.

The prettier the baubles around us in our world, the greater the enabling cultural distractions from who we are. Who we are can't be seen. Plunder, in all its forms including the kind of plunder that appears the most gentile and civilized, (until October 2008 reminded us otherwise), is launched from the eyes but "knowing" resides elsewhere. While I suspect Conrad Black and others of his ilk are not the least bit interested in such poppycock because, having legalized and institutionalized their brand of larceny on a grand scale, making a practise of plunder and creating societal secrecy and distraction, most of us are mildly curious about "whither goest...?"

Kip, I'm all for hoops and a stick as toys for kids. And cardboard boxes, (and today, a hot glue gun!). And getting dirty by actually playing outside in an open lot, "play"ground or backyard; Allergies and asthma have shot up since I was a kid. Why? George Carlin puts it best in one of his last, brilliant contributions to enhancing awareness of what is being done to us in the name of "progress", (another word we don't know the meaning of), in his "Bad For Ya"....He asks, "Do kids even know what a stick is?" Get rid of television, don't "cruise" the internet but use it, get rid of all computer games, ("enhances hand-eye coordination"...yeah, right; what many games do is sterilize human sensitivities towards others and trains one to be good a thinking violence). A buddy of mine said it well..."Pull up yer pants, turn yer hat around and get a job". I would add, "take yer hat off at the table, stand up when a lady enters theroom and stop jumping on top of conversation when others are speaking". I don't yearn for the "good ol' days" because they weren't. We're healthier and far better off and safer than when you and I grew up. Maybe that last, (safer), is part of the problem. Elementary AND high schools have hundreds of cars, (Mercedes, BMWs, Lexi), "protecting their kids from all those sexual predators" instead of letting them get some exercise, yet they ignore the internet sites that their kids are cruising. Technology "atomizes" us psychologically - it parcels our sense of individuality so hermetically that in seeking our own self-interest as though it were a reasonable and intellgent act we are increasingly incapable of sensing, "the commons". As technology becomes increasingly invisible we yield that psychological (human) commons to the language, values and priorities of technology and power's handmaiden, (corporate) business interests; in the 12th Century it was "religion". That doesn't mean "business" is "bad" or that we need to rid our society of business"...not at all! But it does mean that an unquestioned privileging of a language which, (invisibly) carries a very specific message and inherent set of values to the exclusion of others, requires examination. I submit that at least some of the effects we are most concerned about in our culture today, have their roots in these notions. But where can we discuss them without ideology being invoked? Where can we discuss and still suspend judgement in favour of curiosity....without seeking "the" answer, but keeping the question open to play with for a while?

Boestar, perhaps both Orwell and Huxley had it right? Doesn't matter, because both cultural and societal circumstances which they foresaw and wrote about have come to pass, and in ways unimaginable to even these seers so disturbing is the reality.

As hinted at above, it is no longer possible to carry on a sustained dialogue on a complex subject that isn't technical in nature or based upon technological notions. A culture that only understands and privileges "know-how" cannot understand that it is possible to be wrong. As long as "philosophical discourse" is silenced by the inability to maintain an attention span longer than a single sentence or without incessant interruption and distraction to another topic mid-sentence, "know-how" will be the only discourse and what we see unfolding before our eyes will be beyond our ability to comment upon let alone divert.

Don

[boestar]

Thats funny Don. In your response to Kip above you mention "standing when a woman enters the room" I still do this but often feel uncomfortable because very few others do. Chivalry is NOT dead, people just forgot how to be polite and perhaps that has alot to do with the techno part in our communications...People just plain forgot.

You are right, it is too complex a topic for a forum such as this.

Kip. Believe me when I say I would love to turn it all off but unfortunately sitting at a computer is my job right now. I think I would much rather be turning wrenches on some big aluminum birds but that just doesn't fit the plan right now.

I am guilty of wasting time in front of the "idiot box" sometimes very guilty.

Las summer I took my bike out to a place where, as kids, we used to run around and play hide and seek or tag or whatever we felt like. It is a ravine area with fields and trees. There were beaten paths everywhere when I was a kid. When I got there with my bike I couldnt get close as there were no worn paths. It was overgrown like it was untouched. That tells me right there that kids are not "out there" doing the fun activities we used to do. Its a shame really. My kids are outside as much as possible....I think that because they don't like listening to me nag them.

Merry Christmas to all.