automotive enumeration
Written on 2 February 2003 | Posted in reading/listening | 0 Comments
I’ve been reading a fascinating book over past week: The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin. It is the published version of The Massey Lectures she gave at The University of Toronto in 1989. Franklin has the most interesting and engaging way of personifying technology, not in that schlocky way that a lot of people write technology for the express purpose of making it accessible, but in a way that makes a constructive and critical examination of technology truly fruitful. To wit:
“Almost nothing is known about the global energy need of devices or about their lifespans. China can embark on a rigorous one-child-per-family policy for the sake of the country’s future, and in general that policy has been approved by the world community. But where in North America, western Europe, or Japan is there serious discussion on the political level about, for instance, the need for a one-car-per-family policy for the sake of the country’s or the world’s future? Now may be the time to take machine demography seriously and enter into real discussion about machine population control.”
I’m really taking my time with this one, it’s one of those books that has a rare pearl of wisdom on just about every page, and I don’t want to miss a single one.