Ah gee, Brad. I always get worried when someone in DC thinks that way...
(P.S. Although the pork barrel'rs north of the 49th aren't much better
:-)
Richard Bruskiewich
Bradley K. Sherman wrote:
>> Well I liked this a lot; your mileage may vary.
>> --bks
>> >Next: Pigs That Fly?
> >--------------------
> >
> >Andrew Kimbrell, founder of the International Center for Technology
> >Assessment in Washington, D.C., describes one of the "classic" experiments
> >in genetic engineering this way:
> >
> > Dr. Vernon Pursel inserted the human growth gene in a pig. Pursel
> > hoped to create giant pigs that would be major meat producers. The
> > problem was that though the human growth gene was in every cell of the
> > pig's body it did not act in the manner the scientists expected.
> > Instead of making the pig larger it made it squat, cross-eyed, bow-
> > legged, smaller than an average pig, with huge bone mass, a truly
> > wretched product of science without ethics. Pursel tried to find a
> > silver lining in his experiment gone wrong by claiming that the pig was
> > leaner. Pursel's argument was that people are worried about
> > cholesterol, so maybe we can sell this as lean pig. Did he really
> > think the public was ready for pork chops with human genes?
> >
> >That pig strikes me as a good metaphor for the constructions of the
> >Information Age. The prevailing notion is that we have this massive
> >collection of information -- exemplified by several hundred thousand
> >snippets of human genetic code -- which we can merrily pass from one
> >database to another, inserting this piece here and that piece there.
> >
> >But there is no such thing as an "objective piece of information". Like a
> >word in a sentence, a bit of information *means* a particular thing only
> >within a given context. Pursel's pig symbolizes the kind of result you
> >get when you ignore context and try to build things from the bottom up --
> >that is, when you start with the reduced products of your sophisticated
> >analyses, forgetting what it was you were analyzing in the first place.
> >
> >Context in the present case means, to begin with, the pig itself. Pursel
> >was willing to see fragments of DNA -- and even lean pork chops -- but did
> >not care to see the pig. Such is the technological mindset we now trust
> >to re-engineer the human being.
> >
> >Exactly the same trust is at work wherever information is glorified as the
> >decisive form of capital, the basis for problem-solving, and the
> >fundamental ingredient of all knowledge.
> >
> >
> [...]
> >
> >NETFUTURE is a newsletter and forwarding service dealing with technology
> >and human responsibility. It is hosted by the UDT Core Programme of the
> >International Federation of Library Associations. Postings occur roughly
> >once every week or two. The editor is Steve Talbott, author of "The
> >Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst".
> >
> >You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. You may
> >also redistribute individual articles in their entirety, provided the
> >NETFUTURE url and this paragraph are attached.
> >
> >Current and past issues of NETFUTURE are available on the Web:
> >
> > http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/> > http://www.ifla.org/udt/netfuture/ (mirror site)
> > http://ifla.inist.fr/VI/5/nf/ (mirror site)
> >
> >To subscribe to NETFUTURE, send an email message like this:
> >
> > To: listserv at infoserv.nlc-bnc.ca> >
> > subscribe netfuture yourfirstname yourlastname
> >
> >No Subject: line is needed. To unsubscribe, the second line shown above
> >should read instead:
> >
> > signoff netfuture
> >
