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From: [email protected] (Omar Haneef '96)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Frankenstein (was Dystopia cont.)
Date: 6 Sep 1995 23:13:46 GMT
Organization: Swarthmore College Engineering, Swarthmore PA
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mpa ([email protected]) wrote:
> Omar Haneef '96 ([email protected]) wrote:
> > It is not that the stuff changes us into PHYSICAL monsters. That is kinda
> > cool and who wouldn't be helped with nodes and implants. Its that they can
> > control us so we are tools, they inhabit, infest and violate us; they steal
> > some essential part of us that I call humanity. They change our desires;
> > imagine a poor wretch living round the corner from play boy rich kid who is
> > HAPPY about the inequity.
> All you're talking about here, Omar, is that Things Change(tm) according
> to situation. It'll be left to time and linguistics to determine whether
> "humanity" will continue on. It is a sure bet that the definition of the
> word has changed and will change with time. The ingredients have been
> around a lot longer than this particular recipe and will very likely
> provide a number of new dishes before we smash the rock or hop off it.
And you don't think it important that we be able to control or discuss the
direction of this change?
> > > "Lost humanity" appears to be nothing more than nostalgia, which appeals
> > > to the bleak when it is tinged with melancholy.
> > We haven't lost it yet. Well, not ALL of us. Its not nostalgia; we're
> > loosing it as we speak. We loose it when AT&T expands the workday from 8
> > hours to 24.
> If you're not alive 24 hours a day then you are not alive. If you don't
> do what you enjoy for a living you're wasting precious time. Your workday
> should push that 24 hour limit not shy away from it.
This is an absurd argument. Surely one grows tired of any given activity
after a while.
> > There is no such thing as the activist Dystopiac. I use Dystopia as a tool
> > to incite dialogue. We have to talk about what is going on; what is
> > happening to us.
> What a marvelously contradictory sentence. No "activist Dystopiac"'s but
> you use the term to "incite". You want to move people to action. You want
> to scare or anger them into engaging you. Umm...activist.
But I'm not asking for action because I'm not sure what we should do. I'm
asking for dialogue so we can figure it out.
> > > Dystopianism is wedded to millennial hysteria. It will provide us with
> > > amusement to observe some rather strange bedfellows.
> "'Cause tonight I'm gonna Party like its 1999." -TAFKAP
> > Dystopianism, whatever that is, SHOULDN'T be wedded to anything. It should
> > be a reminder of what COULD happen, and I am grateful to you for reminding
> > me that what COULD happen - what I treated formerly as horrible - may not be
> > so bad. But notice how important the dialogue was.
> So, really, we're back to dystopia meaning nothing or whatever "me" don't
> like. A term only useful to politicos and organiser's.
You missed the point. To invoke dystopia is to discuss the future
and its alternatives. Dystopia, even in discussing what it is or is not is a
vehicle for discussion. For instance, on this newsgroup Sourceror talked
about my dystopia as his good thing (without defending it too much) and
presented a case for it.
> In what way was the dialogue important? Cause you maybe ran around in
> circles long enough to get your typing speed back up to par?
That is very clever of you mpa. To qoute someone from way back when: you
have all the brute lyricism of a meek sunday school teacher.
-Omar
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