I don't see technology as a new eveolutionary entity but as a power
extension, and a kind of creative expression, for human beings. At
my deepest gut level, the corn lilies in the picture on my partition
at work are far more interesting and beautiful than the computer I'm
typing on right now. The computer is only interesting because it
lets me in on conversations like this. There's some basic
difference between mountains, rivers and corn lilies on the one
hand, and cars, heavy industry and computer mainframes on the other,
and it's more than an aesthetic difference.
The biggest difference is that the latter are all self-referential.
Technobia is anthropocentrism. Technobia is a kind of art therapy,
but the artist is still too busy creating to have figured out that
he is creating himself.
Self-referential loops aren't inherently bad; they can culminate in
apotheosis. Carl Jung quoted the medieval alchemist Michael Maier
as saying, "This is the line which runs back upon itself, like the
snake that with its head bites its own tail, wherein that supreme
and eternal painter and potter, God, may rightly be discerned."
Now that's some deep ecology, brother.
--John Wall