[Juenger-list] DIE SCHERE #65: Note 3: A highly subjective postscript

[Rebing Rebing@t-online.de]

With that maxim in mind, unlike EJ I need not even step outside my front door in 
order to be reminded of it. I am staring at a computer screen on which the words 
appear that I am writing here, another one is over there, several phones, a fax 
machine and an answering machine are also around. These contraptions surely don't 
play a subservient role in my life. When they work I am too often seduced to play 
around with them; when they malfunction they irritate endlessly. Still, I feel 
incapable of simply throwing them out. To bridle in the transgressions of 
technology even in your private life seems darn difficult. To succeed in reducing 
them to a strictly subordinate role even out in the world would require indeed a 
strong sense of culture and a new kind of intellectual cleanliness, if not other 
new virtues. 

The chances for such a sea change are nil. People prefer to follow the beckoning 
of a prophet like Bill Gates leading us into the Promised Land of your 
remote-controlled Intelligent Home, of your Intelligent Car that talks to you, of 
your Intelligent Fax Machine that quite by itself dispatches a personalized 
greeting on your true love's birthday. Never mind that a huge part of your time 
and attention will be consumed by interacting with those wonders, i.e. not only 
trying to remember the right buttons to press but also swearing at all the weird 
things that will happen and the right things that won't, and waiting for service 
at so many hotlines. Am Technischen ist viel Illusion.

Günter Rebing