Don't Look Up discussion. Hope you enjoy.
Monday, March 7, 2022
Monday, February 14, 2022
Monday, January 24, 2022
S2E0: Bonus - canals, trains, cars and wheelchairs
We just published a new podcast. Here is the blog to go with it.
This little video is a great little explainer of why canals were so important before trains.
This little video gives a little snapshot of how fast the change from dirt roads to what we think of as modern roads - because they all look alike (but actually road technology continually evolves).
Within a couple of decades of The Model T there was huge development of the ecosystem. This little fabulous video gives an idea of the development of road rules.
... now to the wheelchair
In this season we plan to talk more about the development of the current high technology rigid frame wheelchair. However, for now we will look at the new super add-ons.
The freewheel.
In Australia they have invented the Gecko Traxx which looks like it would be great on sand, perhaps even snow.
This summer we tried out the Batec power assist for wheelchairs. Developed in Barcelona you can see it works great on flat and paved terrain for power assist and leaves your chair free to use indoors.
However, if the terrain is gravel and even a little steep the Batec has no grip and wheel spins.
Friday, January 21, 2022
S1E10: Wrapping up season 1
Monday, October 25, 2021
S1E9: Thinking about Economics
Economics and technology
Looking back in history we can see epochs of particular dominant technologies. However, globally the classification is messy, with not all societies going through the same transitions roughly simultaneously - obviously.
Also the transitions are periods of time and different classifications focus on different phenomena.
- The "stone age" for example extends well into the time of agriculture and early metallurgy.
- Bronze age full production agriculture, writing ending around 1100-1200 BC
- Iron age
During the long period post Jesus we have the end of the Roman Empire, the so called Dark Ages which were not so dark - although the Black Death had a huge impact on Europe. We could just as easily focus on Feudalism. In the rest of the world agriculture and city development was continuing develop in many parts of the world.
- Then we hit the European Scientific and Industrial revolutions we we could think as short transition, or on going.
Regardless I think from a macro point of view there is something interesting going on. In the past economist have thought themselves to be studying the system they call an economy … unchanging platonic system. Now it is clearer that economists are actually not physicists studying eternal laws or biologists studying plant biology but agents in the system economy and technology and economies are so intertwined as to be inseparable. If you know some economics and squint hard enough you can convince yourself that the old rules apply in new circumstances such as digital. On the other hand the economics of stone age were different to the bronze age or the iron age. Why today would the systems shift in unexpected ways.
Traditional economics proper tends to ignore technology, even still. This is getting harder and harder. Famously, it built the idea that what mattered were – land (natural resources and literally land) labour and capital. Technology was a given. It fell from the gods and was outside their system.
If you god back and look at an Economist issue from the 1980 and 1990s technology only makes surprise mentions. Today, an given issue is filled with discussions of technologies because hundreds of technologies not only change what consumers buy but how things are made or transported.
Economics and Christianity.
This topic matters not just because it matters to the topic of technology and Christianity – it matters to me because I spent years trying to understand how economics and Christianity might come together.
A few broad observations
In the second situation – we have stripped all the political and economic meaning out of the New Testament and spiritualised it.
Jesus riding into Jerusalem like a Caesar except he is on a donkey, Paul saying there is no slave or Greek or Jew Male and Female – this had real economic meaning. Or Paul asking that Slaves be treated like family.
See what did my head in for years was the innovativeness of the early Christian – charities, hospitals for the public etc versus the staticness of the rest of society and later Christians.
So how has Christian economics been thought of… I think this excerpt from
Kim Hawtrey – who I respect and have met several times does justice to many of the existing views when this was a hot subject in 80s and 90s and less so now from my observations.
If you god back and look at an Economist issue from the 1980 and 1990s technology only makes surprise mentions. Today, an given issue is filled with discussions of technologies because hundreds of technologies not only change what consumers buy but how things are made or transported.
Economics and Christianity.
This topic matters not just because it matters to the topic of technology and Christianity – it matters to me because I spent years trying to understand how economics and Christianity might come together.
A few broad observations
- A lot of what I have read starts with contemporary economic questions and tries to find answers in the Bible (a long favourite of bad Bible reading).
- One example – one book used the 10 commandments rule to not steal to suggest that the Bible supports private Property and thus is against communism. A 1980s question read back into the Bible. The commandments to help the poor etc was not a big part of the book (written in the USA).
- Lots of the work discusses the role of Old Testament Law – because it can’t pass anybody’s attention that the Old Testament has lots to say about Economics. ... and then goes on to say the New Testament is different.
- My observation across hundreds of articles there is no no compass for the topic – every article starts somewhere different
In the second situation – we have stripped all the political and economic meaning out of the New Testament and spiritualised it.
Jesus riding into Jerusalem like a Caesar except he is on a donkey, Paul saying there is no slave or Greek or Jew Male and Female – this had real economic meaning. Or Paul asking that Slaves be treated like family.
See what did my head in for years was the innovativeness of the early Christian – charities, hospitals for the public etc versus the staticness of the rest of society and later Christians.
So how has Christian economics been thought of… I think this excerpt from
Kim Hawtrey – who I respect and have met several times does justice to many of the existing views when this was a hot subject in 80s and 90s and less so now from my observations.
Creation, Fall and Redemption the traditional Evangelical Triad. We have come such a long way. Hear how N T Wright now describes what Paul was doing.
N T Wright. "What was the Apostle Paul trying to do: he was founding and maintaining communities - worship based, educational, egalitarian, philanthropic, fictive kinship groups" (non biological kinship I suspect - kinship of the imagination).
I would now put forward the idea that it is possible to have a compass.
The Bible’s own native motif is not so much sin but ‘new creation’. Sin is actually taken for granted the call is to live better. To be a New Creation.
if New Creation is the more dominant language of the Bible.
If the world is already going and Adam and Eve
are called like Israel to be transforming agents and they fail …. NT Wright.
The story starts to look a lot like Israel and
perhaps that is the point…..
This make more sense of all the language in the Old testament to treat human better. Indeed, treat them like other cultures thought they needed to treat the gods.- This what we read in a previous blog.
There is lots to ponder about that.
And indeed much to apply to how we think of technology.
That is just a place to start no an end place.
Hope that is helpful.
Friday, October 22, 2021
S1E8: In the footnotes Defining Technology Part 3 - the visual guide
So in the first two footnotes episodes I took a run through both some of the existing Christian thought on technology in brief terms. In the second episode we had a brief look at Brian Arthur's three fold view of what technology actually is. But that is still not as helpful as you might think technology is really really complex. It spins off in my directions, and here I am not talking the ideological, philosophical, moral, politics or economics. No, I am just talking what it is.
Biological systems
Start with a tree
But that is very English. People from the tropics are very fond of mango trees, Although these do not seem to have the deep multi-layered associations as some tree types in Northern Latitudes.
A tree and then a ecosystem...
Bentwood box
Technology
Start with an object
1929 Movie from Russia
This is Russia in 1929 - from the perspective of someone where pro-industrialisation of a very poor country. Sit back and watch it is fascinating.
1939 General Motors Promotional Video and Model
Note the vision of technology but the language is a bit jarring - apparently - exploring and new horizons are just for men.
and now the 1964 World Fair.
Monday, October 18, 2021
S1E7: Biblical Anthropology
S1E7: Biblical Anthropology
It matters what you think of humans, but it is a very mixed history.
From the 10 Commandments we read:
And God spoke all these words verse 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
From which we rightly derive that we should not make and image or sculpture or likeness or representation of Yahweh.
Curiously because they were very expensive items we do not have any (probably) Ancient Near Eastern temple images. p158 Hundley, M.B. Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East) 2013
But wait there is a problem back in Genesis 1. There where humans are declared the image and likeness of God we get a different meaning of the term entirely.
The three invented meanings of image Gen 1.
- Morality – sense of good and evil
- Relational (with each other and God)
- Reason / rationality / wisdom
Why does image (object / drawing etc) mean image in one place and human qualities in another place?
Perhaps because we don’t read the Bible as a complex narrative.
Further and more problematically, the morality, relational and reason rationality concepts have been used to research and design AI.
But what if the text means exactly the same thing.
Watts 2002.
Read this way the whole of Israel's Scripture and the New Testament make a whole lot more sense.
The command not to make an image in the commandments is because Yahweh already has an image - every single human being.
Go love your neighbour.
The point is most of Israel's laws are not about serving God - most are actually about how to serve other human beings.
This then is the test of every technology. How does it fit within the narrative of humans being Yahweh image - his representatives within his Temple Cosmos.
"What was the Apostle Paul trying to do: he was founding and maintaining communities - worship based, educational, egalitarian, philanthropic, fictive kinship groups" (non biological kinship I suspect - kinship of the imagination). N T Wright.
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