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Post by Maolsheachlann on Feb 12, 2018 10:11:22 GMT
Does anybody have any thoughts on technology and its benefits or drawbacks?
I was reading an article by Anthony Cronin in his book "An Irish Eye" (composed of newspaper columns from the Irish Times). The articles are from the late seventies and early eighties. He argues in one article that the microchip should be recognized as a benefit and we should be eager to embrace the computer age, considering it would free up people from a lot of repetitive labour and give them more interesting jobs.
He may have been right about that, and on balance I am in favour of the internet. But did it come too slowly for anybody's taste? I'm not in any great rush for the next technological breakthrough. The advance of technology is inevitable, probably beneficial, but I wouldn't be depressed to learn that the world would remain at the current level of technological advancement for the rest of my life (unless that meant I was going to die very soon!).
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Post by cato on Feb 12, 2018 17:03:01 GMT
I usually get dumb looks when I say I have great sympathy for the luddites. I am naturally suspicious of any "advances" except for medical pain relief which has been one of science's greatest blessings.
A child born today will probably have a fair chance to live to be a hundred. If transhumanism ,artificial intelligence and cloning fulfill their potentials I am glad I will not be around in 2118.
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Post by Tomas on Jul 4, 2020 17:28:02 GMT
Were there any Luddites equivalents in Ireland at the time, or only such activities in England?
Did Irish people join those groups in England of the 19th century?
Curious thing, but oddly and in far offside way reminding a small whit of the brutal vandalism on the statues today.
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Luddism
Jul 5, 2020 11:53:41 GMT
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Post by Séamus on Jul 5, 2020 11:53:41 GMT
Were there any Luddites equivalents in Ireland at the time, or only such activities in England? Did Irish people join those groups in England the 19th century? Curious thing, but oddly and in far offside way reminding a small whit of the brutal vandalism on the statues today. Irish National Invincibles (founded in 1881, mostly famous for assassinations the following year) could be looked at as similar, although their constitution mentioned 'remove all principal tyrants' more so than being against industrialisation per se. |
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Post by Tomas on Jul 5, 2020 14:47:00 GMT
Were there any Luddites equivalents in Ireland at the time, or only such activities in England? Did Irish people join those groups in England the 19th century? Curious thing, but oddly and in far offside way reminding a small whit of the brutal vandalism on the statues today. Irish National Invincibles (founded in 1881, mostly famous for assassinations the following year) could be looked at as similar, although their constitution mentioned 'remove all principal tyrants' more so than being against industrialisation per se. Scary when it came to interpretations then... if they were as injust and full of vice as the blind anti-cultural militant flocks moving now it would be close to mottoes as low as "anarchy or be mocked!" |
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Post by Tomas on Jul 5, 2020 14:56:09 GMT
What is the problem with today´s flock modes? People getting into streamlined "thoughts" and dito "idealist actions" everywhere? Even the responses to defend the good is tending to end up in the streamlined mode nowadays. Nearly as if full-fledged technology have begun to produce robotlike behaviour among real people.
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Luddism
Jul 10, 2020 10:23:50 GMT
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Tomas likes this
Post by cato on Jul 10, 2020 10:23:50 GMT
Were there any Luddites equivalents in Ireland at the time, or only such activities in England? Did Irish people join those groups in England of the 19th century? Curious thing, but oddly and in far offside way reminding a small whit of the brutal vandalism on the statues today. The vandalism of today in some way resembles the behaviour of fanatical mobs throughout history. The church had her dispute over whether representing Christ and the saints was an offence against the prohibition to worship idols. The iconoclasts were the pure ideologues in the dispute. The protestant reformation was also accompanied by the destruction of religious art and imagery. In the secular world 1789 and 1917 also witnessed the ideologically advanced destroy imagery of the old regime and the Christian faith. As we know the revolutionaries didn't restrict themselves to destroying statues, icons and books. Nearer to our own time catholic clergy carried away by a modernist spirit of the 1960s helped destroy the interior of many fine catholic churches. Bishop Eamon Casey deserves a few decades in Purgatory for his destruction of the Pugin designed Killarney Cathedral. Mao, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Taliban and Isis are united in a hatred of transendental beauty and cultural heritage as are all iconoclasts. The ignorant ghastly woke propagandists of our day follow this path of destruction and anti creativity. As for the Luddites- their destructive urges were directed against machinery and the dehumanising aspects of the industrial revolution.They were ideologues too and were doomed to be on the wrong side of progress but in some ways they were a gallant protest against some of the more negative crushing aspects of the industrial age. |
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Post by Tomas on Jul 10, 2020 13:59:29 GMT
Were there any Luddites equivalents in Ireland at the time, or only such activities in England? Did Irish people join those groups in England of the 19th century? Curious thing, but oddly and in far offside way reminding a small whit of the brutal vandalism on the statues today. The vandalism of today in some way resembles the behaviour of fanatical mobs throughout history. The church had her dispute over whether representing Christ and the saints was an offence against the prohibition to worship idols. The iconoclasts were the pure ideologues in the dispute. The protestant reformation was also accompanied by the destruction of religious art and imagery. In the secular world 1789 and 1917 also witnessed the ideologically advanced destroy imagery of the old regime and the Christian faith. As we know the revolutionaries didn't restrict themselves to destroying statues, icons and books. Nearer to our own time catholic clergy carried away by a modernist spirit of the 1960s helped destroy the interior of many fine catholic churches. Bishop Eamon Casey deserves a few decades in Purgatory for his destruction of the Pugin designed Killarney Cathedral. Mao, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Taliban and Isis are united in a hatred of transendental beauty and cultural heritage as are all iconoclasts. The ignorant ghastly woke propagandists of our day follow this path of destruction and anti creativity. As for the Luddites- their destructive urges were directed against machinery and the dehumanising aspects of the industrial revolution.They were ideologues too and were doomed to be on the wrong side of progress but in some ways they were a gallant protest against some of the more negative crushing aspects of the industrial age. Yes we could take as a given that the only striking similarity would be in the destruction carried out. It gets to limited comparing. Difficult to clump together movements like these, and not least to compare such things from very different ages. Sympathy for the Luddites are naturally much easier to feel when one weighs in the smoke of later years to the whole gamut. |
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Post by Tomas on Feb 16, 2021 19:24:14 GMT
I usually get dumb looks when I say I have great sympathy for the luddites. I am naturally suspicious of any "advances" except for medical pain relief which has been one of science's greatest blessings. A child born today will probably have a fair chance to live to be a hundred. If transhumanism ,artificial intelligence and cloning fulfill their potentials I am glad I will not be around in 2118. When Luddites were brought up as topic here earlier I didn't get in full the implication hinted in this first post of yours Cato. Luddism today would probably not be the BLM rioters and statue-breakers that were stealing attention at the time, but rather quite other parallell actors to target the equivalent threats to those of the historical Luddites, the technological ones, i.e. the ever present AI systems made use of by most every super power making gains on the world market. If any underdog rebel David would smash any AI control tower, let's say make an escape from a first rank political prison or such dystopian nicety (now that death penalty of a sudden has officially become "wrong" regardless of history and inherent logics of all previous ages) or, perhaps in just as wild imagery fashion, by someone trying to make some future political election un-rigged, they would be least as futile or doomed as their predecessors. Only for curiosity, would it be possible for a Conservative to argue than one side would be better than the other in terms of Conservatism? Is a backward approach always more Conservative? Are there morals involved, or only pragmatic considerations? Hope it doesn't appear too much theorethical to stumble about. |
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Post by Seán Ó Murchú on Feb 16, 2021 20:29:37 GMT
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