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From: kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: The Impact of Inventions
Message-ID: <2102@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Wed, 24-Jun-87 18:17:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2102
Posted: Wed Jun 24 18:17:45 1987
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William Ingogly writes:

> Poets [etc.] usually are not in the service of the military-industrial
> complex. [...]

I admit I was a bit young to remember this myself, (born 12/43), but the
second world war propaganda machines kept all the poets, song writers, and
essayests available in the various combatant countries churning out patriotic
ditties, "our heros" flicks, and reams of news copy, all saying "our guys
are the good guys, the enemy are subhuman, the hardships can be borne, the
goal is worth the cost" and so on.  Without this stirring up of passions, the
common people would have called off the war immediately for lack of interest
in suffering and dying, despite all the shiny new toys the weapons whizzes
could create.  It is exactly the poets who keep these things going.  Refer
Kipling, in an earlier era.

> It would be nice to believe that poets, essayists and philosophers have 
> great influence outside academia.

You better believe they do!

> Unfortunately, few people READ the poets, essayists and philosophers, 
> including college students at our 'best' universities.

Nowadays, few people read at all, so the poets are writing TV jingles.
You think that influences "few people"!  The essayests and philosophers 
are busy filling up the op-ed pages, and I doubt the ones who aren't read 
keep getting published.

> I think you're overrating the impact of academic theorists on society

Oh, if we could only restrict them to academia, where there is at least
enough average intelligence for critical reception of their output!
These guys have the full attention of the nation five or six hours a
day, 'cause they're busy writing screenplays for Three's Company to convince
us that mixed roomies and giggly sex is cute, and newscripts for the nightly
news trying to make heros out of folks dumb enough to hang around a religious
war zone and get caught in the crossfire in Lebanon.

> and underrating the role of technological Babbitry in defining our 
> political and economic realities.

Well, the hula hoop didn't do that much harm, except for creating enough
bad backs to get chiropractic quackery accepted as "medicine".  ;-)

> Most scientists and engineers go where the money is, and the
> money is in research that supports our right wing fantasies about
> Russia's Evil Empire and the bloodsucking welfare state.

Nah, your politics are blinding you.  The BIG bucks are in finding the 
next hula hoop, or writing the next 400 page piece of pseudo-historical
drivel that gets bought up for a mini-series.

>It's not the technologists who will be 'persecuted' and 'stifled' if 
> they're given free rein to implement their ideas without having to answer 
> to the taxpayers who are funding their research.

Sure they will; they breathe the same air, and live on the same planet as
the rest of us; worse, they vote for both major political parties (a round
condemnation of technical education in America), and live in the same
target areas.

Kent