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Strategies & Market Trends : John Pitera's Market Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Pitera who wrote (10633)	11/20/2008 9:10:43 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 33421

OMG!!! Now you've done it!! NOW YOU'VE DONE IT!!!!! I can hear the Black Helicopters on their way to your house already!!... ;0) Btw, ever watch "Dark Skies"? Hawk

To: John Pitera who wrote (10633)	11/20/2008 9:26:31 AM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 33421

The computer itself has a technocratic pedigree. Although Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage conceived their analytical engine in the mid 19th c., the first computer was not actually built and used until after WW II, when the Western technocratic state was still in its ascent. I put the peak of this ideology, which promoted humanism and scientific literacy, somewhere in the years 1966-68. RAND Corporation, Herman Kahn, Fairchild Semiconductor, Syntex. These names from that age conjure the failed promise of the technocracy: a socially liberated future without want. Why did it fall apart? Because people are a peculiar mix of animal and spirit, simultaneously self-loathing and self-loving. Not many people are suited for the (post)modern mode of living, and seek structure in the ruins of the great traditions, religious, legal, and social. Despite immense material progress, in a sense the US has never recovered from the Great Depression. The post-war technocracy was an unsuccessful attempt to plan our way out of the bust. But at least we got the computer and the WWW out of it. In my view, there is one book that captures both the beauty and tragedy of the failure of the technocracy, and that is Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet.