THIS IS NOT NEWS EITHER
Jun. 30th, 2008 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenPlayed for humor, this video nevertheless raises a good point. (Minor spoilers for Wall*E).
We all know that most of our menial jobs will be eliminated whenever it is we get around to making robots that do them. Odds are good we'll have maybe two minutes to worry about that before the robots take over and kill us all, but it's something to think about. Specifically as regards our approach to fiction set in such a future as would have service robots.
The question I ask is this: would we move towards classlessness or would socio-economic stratification become all the more entrenched and ugly as a result of replacing poorer labor with synthetic labor? My money is on the cynical answer--that as soon as people get closer to the poverty line/unemployment as a result of not having skills to do jobs that robots can't, society as a whole starts shitting on them more than ever. Something to ponder.
*
They call it the "Global Literacy 2008" issue. So why not completely simplify shit and undermine the idea of literacy--which is an ability to decipher complex thought in addition to simple grammar and vocabulary--by positiing this riveting question? I can't find the cover picture anywhere, though you can see a small picture of it on their homepage now, but it is pretty stupendously...stupid. Imagine two stuffy, fairly old white guys standing back-to-back like prizefighters bumping shoulders while posing for heavyweight championship posters. That's Abe Lincoln and Chuck Darwin posing. And the title reads: "Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?"
Can we say "false dichotomy" much?
Lest you be lulled into thinking that this is just an oddball historical piece, the author DOES directly weigh the one against the other as if there can be no overlap in people who like one with people who like the other. (It's the imaginary black woman demographic that couldn't exist when we were casting wide nets of assumption about Obama/Hillary voters.) Nope, you like Lincoln, that pull-himself-up-by-his-bootlaces hero who advanced despite his rube background or you like Darwin, that queer English dude who liked to look at birds. A lot.
So, who's the winner? Do you even have to guess? In an election year, in America, does the white-haired, balding, English scientist who shied away from publishing his own ground-breaking work because he didn't want to upset people even stand a goddamned chance against An American Patriot who, for all we are told about him, pooped red, white, and blue turds? Of course, it's not phrased that way. It's phrased as if Lincoln and only Lincoln could have successfully weathered the secession of the South, the Civil War, and the eventual liberation of slaves. Anyone else? Would have failed miserably. But Darwin had Wallace right at his heels and other scientists were getting around to this natural selection/evolution thingie, so it's not like he was irreplaceable or anything. We'd have gotten The Origin of the Species by another name sooner or later. Not so the Gettysburg Address!!! USA#1USA#1USA#1!!!!
But Darwin shouldn't feel bad about basically just getting lucky and being the first guy to publish, so sayeth bullshit artist "author":
If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not gainsay his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications. Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave. He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it.
Hey, Chuck D, don't cry or nothing! At least you write good! And you stood up to religious people and shit, that's like mad awesome, yo!
The man gave us a rubric by which we have come to understand the natural world. I'd say he deserves more than a pat on the back and runner-up trophy. I also fail to see why notoriety and acclaim are zero-sum quantities. Can we not admire Lincoln's actions to secure the United States as one nation (not under God; fuck you) and see in it the strategy and brilliance and honor and not equally admire Darwin's ability to parse the mysteries of genetics, evolution, and speciation, which have granted us the keys to understanding our world and ourselves?
The answer, quite literally, is no. I'm not kidding. At the end of this "America--FUCK YEAH!!!" article it is stated, unequivocally. The title is "Who was more important: Lincoln or Darwin." And, on the last page, it says: Answer: Lincoln.
Fuck you, Newsweek. Fuck you and your anti-intellectualism, nationalist ass-licking "news." If you want to publish an article saying that Lincoln was awesome, fine. If you'd like to take a closer look as to WHY Darwin has fallen out of favor, that might, in some way, be relevant to how we live today. (The answer, by the by, is because ignorance rules the day. If Newsweek can offer opinion as fact, so can I.) Fuck you, you fucking fucks.
We all know that most of our menial jobs will be eliminated whenever it is we get around to making robots that do them. Odds are good we'll have maybe two minutes to worry about that before the robots take over and kill us all, but it's something to think about. Specifically as regards our approach to fiction set in such a future as would have service robots.
The question I ask is this: would we move towards classlessness or would socio-economic stratification become all the more entrenched and ugly as a result of replacing poorer labor with synthetic labor? My money is on the cynical answer--that as soon as people get closer to the poverty line/unemployment as a result of not having skills to do jobs that robots can't, society as a whole starts shitting on them more than ever. Something to ponder.
*
They call it the "Global Literacy 2008" issue. So why not completely simplify shit and undermine the idea of literacy--which is an ability to decipher complex thought in addition to simple grammar and vocabulary--by positiing this riveting question? I can't find the cover picture anywhere, though you can see a small picture of it on their homepage now, but it is pretty stupendously...stupid. Imagine two stuffy, fairly old white guys standing back-to-back like prizefighters bumping shoulders while posing for heavyweight championship posters. That's Abe Lincoln and Chuck Darwin posing. And the title reads: "Lincoln vs. Darwin: Who Matters More?"
Can we say "false dichotomy" much?
Lest you be lulled into thinking that this is just an oddball historical piece, the author DOES directly weigh the one against the other as if there can be no overlap in people who like one with people who like the other. (It's the imaginary black woman demographic that couldn't exist when we were casting wide nets of assumption about Obama/Hillary voters.) Nope, you like Lincoln, that pull-himself-up-by-his-bootlaces hero who advanced despite his rube background or you like Darwin, that queer English dude who liked to look at birds. A lot.
So, who's the winner? Do you even have to guess? In an election year, in America, does the white-haired, balding, English scientist who shied away from publishing his own ground-breaking work because he didn't want to upset people even stand a goddamned chance against An American Patriot who, for all we are told about him, pooped red, white, and blue turds? Of course, it's not phrased that way. It's phrased as if Lincoln and only Lincoln could have successfully weathered the secession of the South, the Civil War, and the eventual liberation of slaves. Anyone else? Would have failed miserably. But Darwin had Wallace right at his heels and other scientists were getting around to this natural selection/evolution thingie, so it's not like he was irreplaceable or anything. We'd have gotten The Origin of the Species by another name sooner or later. Not so the Gettysburg Address!!! USA#1USA#1USA#1!!!!
But Darwin shouldn't feel bad about basically just getting lucky and being the first guy to publish, so sayeth bullshit artist "author":
If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not gainsay his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications. Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave. He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it.
Hey, Chuck D, don't cry or nothing! At least you write good! And you stood up to religious people and shit, that's like mad awesome, yo!
The man gave us a rubric by which we have come to understand the natural world. I'd say he deserves more than a pat on the back and runner-up trophy. I also fail to see why notoriety and acclaim are zero-sum quantities. Can we not admire Lincoln's actions to secure the United States as one nation (not under God; fuck you) and see in it the strategy and brilliance and honor and not equally admire Darwin's ability to parse the mysteries of genetics, evolution, and speciation, which have granted us the keys to understanding our world and ourselves?
The answer, quite literally, is no. I'm not kidding. At the end of this "America--FUCK YEAH!!!" article it is stated, unequivocally. The title is "Who was more important: Lincoln or Darwin." And, on the last page, it says: Answer: Lincoln.
Fuck you, Newsweek. Fuck you and your anti-intellectualism, nationalist ass-licking "news." If you want to publish an article saying that Lincoln was awesome, fine. If you'd like to take a closer look as to WHY Darwin has fallen out of favor, that might, in some way, be relevant to how we live today. (The answer, by the by, is because ignorance rules the day. If Newsweek can offer opinion as fact, so can I.) Fuck you, you fucking fucks.
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Date: 2008-07-01 09:33 pm (UTC)This is why Darwin is on the wane in our educational systems, too. Because some idiots said that religion (excuse me, (un)intelligent design) deserved equal time with science despite the fact that the two are mutually exclusive studies with mutually exclusive rule sets. You can't study them together (unless you're studying the anthropology of religion, and then you can apply science to religion, but that's not studying them together). So, in keeping with: Jesus or mitochondria, MAKE YOUR CHOICE, we may now make science and politics impossible bedfellows. That stupid science! It can't get along with anyone!