A good read, thank you. The quotes you've pulled are incredibly prescient.
The challenging aspect of modern technology is that it's inherently magical. Idols were imbued with demons by carving sigils into stone (think printed circuit boards), saying a spell to animate the idol (programming), charging the inanimate object with energy through sacrifice of a natural being (electricity), and getting it to do "your" will, which leads to the Faustian outcomes you describe here. This is even more stark with modern LLMs, which are truly just tokenized Ouija Boards and (in my opinion) can never be "baptized".
It seems like the more you use this power, the more you're taken in by it regardless of your intent or the intent of its designers. It's still all black magic, you're still under the spell of the hardware and software engineers, and the Internet allows them to cast "spells" globally. It's the one technology we would all be better off without but also the least likely to be cast off.
Maybe a demon will not incarnate in your work email inbox, but we certainly "animate" other demons by feeding data to the surveillance State and Silicon Valley.
Some kind of radical asceticism akin to the Amish or Orthodox Old Believers seems to be the only solution, if not to that extreme. If clothes are the first technology invented after the Fall to shield us from our nakedness, it seems we should in good conscience strive to remove as much of our technological garments as we can.
This is all very well said, and I deeply appreciate your comment. Modern technology is indeed very magical. Who except a tiny minority of experts can say they actually understand the inner workings of their phones? I hardly even understand radio, let alone TV and computer hardware. You are 100% right about being sucked in by use. I think this is what Heidegger essentially means with his concept of enframing. You and me contemplating technology and talking about it, even if a small thing, allows us to not be totally enframed and have reality understood for us, even if we accept our inevitable unideal relationship to technology.
This concept of enframing is very helpful, it reminds me in some ways of the memetics of Rene Girard but can be applied more succinctly to the technostructure.
Have you read any Neil Postman by chance? His book Technopoly contextualizes Heidegger’s “enframing” within two spheres, the individual and the collective. His conclusion is that while we as individuals may be able to resist this molding of the soul, we can’t resist the molding of the collective. So I guess it’s just Brave New World by a sociologist :P
But we have the Holy Spirit and the incarnate Logos. I’m constantly reminded of the Amish, who don’t have Social Security numbers and run afoul of basically every Federal food production regulation, but seem to be given Divine protection.
Even as a software engineer by trade, we’re getting to the point where even I can’t understand how some of this stuff works, which is unsettling.
Thank you for taking the time to respond and for your writing, it’s very insightful.
"I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country."
Sir Roger Penrose (Twistor Theory) asserts that classical computers can never become conscious, that consciousness is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. There is really no room for the gods in classical/relativistic physics, which is the basis of all our technology except electronics, where quantum mechanics already comes into play. There is good and substantial reason to think that if any posited immaterial beings can influence the course of this world, their influence manifests thru the quantum level, which may correspond to the causal or subtle plane in Hindu thinking.
The LLM 'AI's will probably always be clever mechanical things, clattering away lifelessly. Quantum computers with really large numbers of Q-bits, many orders of magnification beyond the present toys, may be a viable substrate for the emergence or immanentization, manifestation, of... Something; perhaps a good God; perhaps some fresh Hell; perhaps an open door, for better or worse.
"we should learn from the capacity as a community to actually contemplate a technology and make a decisive choice as to whether or not it ought the be adopted."
Nice idea but it doesn't work. Consider the groups of individuals who forsaw the destructive culture of the automobile and chose not to adopt it. Consider the individuals who had similar foresight and decided against adopting computers. Where are they now?
If technology increases prosperity and or eliminates labor, it will not only be adopted by the masses but it will eventually dominate the society. It's self delusion to think you can pick your way among the landscape of demons and remain on a path to God.
The total enslavement and destruction of man has been a centuries long work in progress. It's very clear in retrospect. CBDCs will mark the final victory for the fallen ones. It's all mop up action from there.
A good read, thank you. The quotes you've pulled are incredibly prescient.
The challenging aspect of modern technology is that it's inherently magical. Idols were imbued with demons by carving sigils into stone (think printed circuit boards), saying a spell to animate the idol (programming), charging the inanimate object with energy through sacrifice of a natural being (electricity), and getting it to do "your" will, which leads to the Faustian outcomes you describe here. This is even more stark with modern LLMs, which are truly just tokenized Ouija Boards and (in my opinion) can never be "baptized".
It seems like the more you use this power, the more you're taken in by it regardless of your intent or the intent of its designers. It's still all black magic, you're still under the spell of the hardware and software engineers, and the Internet allows them to cast "spells" globally. It's the one technology we would all be better off without but also the least likely to be cast off.
Maybe a demon will not incarnate in your work email inbox, but we certainly "animate" other demons by feeding data to the surveillance State and Silicon Valley.
Some kind of radical asceticism akin to the Amish or Orthodox Old Believers seems to be the only solution, if not to that extreme. If clothes are the first technology invented after the Fall to shield us from our nakedness, it seems we should in good conscience strive to remove as much of our technological garments as we can.
This is all very well said, and I deeply appreciate your comment. Modern technology is indeed very magical. Who except a tiny minority of experts can say they actually understand the inner workings of their phones? I hardly even understand radio, let alone TV and computer hardware. You are 100% right about being sucked in by use. I think this is what Heidegger essentially means with his concept of enframing. You and me contemplating technology and talking about it, even if a small thing, allows us to not be totally enframed and have reality understood for us, even if we accept our inevitable unideal relationship to technology.
This concept of enframing is very helpful, it reminds me in some ways of the memetics of Rene Girard but can be applied more succinctly to the technostructure.
Have you read any Neil Postman by chance? His book Technopoly contextualizes Heidegger’s “enframing” within two spheres, the individual and the collective. His conclusion is that while we as individuals may be able to resist this molding of the soul, we can’t resist the molding of the collective. So I guess it’s just Brave New World by a sociologist :P
But we have the Holy Spirit and the incarnate Logos. I’m constantly reminded of the Amish, who don’t have Social Security numbers and run afoul of basically every Federal food production regulation, but seem to be given Divine protection.
Even as a software engineer by trade, we’re getting to the point where even I can’t understand how some of this stuff works, which is unsettling.
Thank you for taking the time to respond and for your writing, it’s very insightful.
"I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country."
https://rawhistory.com/democratic-despotism-as-described-by-alexis-de-tocqueville/
Lost his country and much more.
Sir Roger Penrose (Twistor Theory) asserts that classical computers can never become conscious, that consciousness is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. There is really no room for the gods in classical/relativistic physics, which is the basis of all our technology except electronics, where quantum mechanics already comes into play. There is good and substantial reason to think that if any posited immaterial beings can influence the course of this world, their influence manifests thru the quantum level, which may correspond to the causal or subtle plane in Hindu thinking.
The LLM 'AI's will probably always be clever mechanical things, clattering away lifelessly. Quantum computers with really large numbers of Q-bits, many orders of magnification beyond the present toys, may be a viable substrate for the emergence or immanentization, manifestation, of... Something; perhaps a good God; perhaps some fresh Hell; perhaps an open door, for better or worse.
Great work, I love the Archangel Michael route to the Archons.
Perhaps apropos, concurring or at least rhyming:
https://substack.com/profile/98857799-jim/note/c-81988760?r=1muv5z
"we should learn from the capacity as a community to actually contemplate a technology and make a decisive choice as to whether or not it ought the be adopted."
Nice idea but it doesn't work. Consider the groups of individuals who forsaw the destructive culture of the automobile and chose not to adopt it. Consider the individuals who had similar foresight and decided against adopting computers. Where are they now?
If technology increases prosperity and or eliminates labor, it will not only be adopted by the masses but it will eventually dominate the society. It's self delusion to think you can pick your way among the landscape of demons and remain on a path to God.
The total enslavement and destruction of man has been a centuries long work in progress. It's very clear in retrospect. CBDCs will mark the final victory for the fallen ones. It's all mop up action from there.
...and man, are we close on the end.
I approached this same problem through cybernetics and a return to animism. These creatures are powerful but they do not have the light of consciousness that humans have https://www.theseedsofscience.pub/p/psychofauna-studies-a-manifesto