Tuesday, July 22, 2003

Reflections on The Burial of the Soul

Reflections on Wolfgang Giegerich's "The Burial of the Soul in Technological Civilization" by Robert Avens PhD I am looking forward to reading this.

[2:08 AM | wl | permalink

Translated version of Das Begrabnis der Seele in die technische Zivilisation

Translated version of http://www.cgjungpage.org/psychtech/giegerich2.html

Wolfgang Giegerich has an essay - The Burial of the Soul in Technological Civilization. It is on the C G Jung Page, but only in German. I snipped a bit an searched for it in Google, found the page and then clicked the Translate this Page link. Back came a translated version of the article. Here is a sample:
Certainly, if I give the title to my lecture: Funeral of the soul into the technical civilization, then would like to seem it, as if I also into the same long-known horn of the dissatisfied ones to push and over the Seelenlosigkeit of the technology, which wanted to complain uneasiness in the culture. But so simply it does not stand around the word funeral of the soul. It does not have simply a negative, devaluing meaning, as we are bent today's ones however to assume, because we do not have relationship to grave and funeral. That was for example with the old Egyptians completely different. These created the products of their entire culture activity to a large extent for the only purpose to let it disappear to buried and on Nimmerviedersehen in the grave.

"Interesting" English. The machine gave up about half way through as if from fatigue.

I am not sure what Giegerich is saying exactly - but it seem to fit that technology has taken the soul out of his essay - all very appropriate. Fun!

Funny that the machine could not translate "Seelenlosigkeit of the technology" - perhaps it was just too offended by the phrase!

In paragraph above I hear him saying something like this:

Technology has ripped the soul out of the world. We would be having a funeral for the loss of soul in the world if funerals were not part of that very soulfulness we have lost. The machines have won. We lost and we don't even know it.

I don't think like that myself. The soul has jet lag perhaps. But no, I think it is actually faster than all of our speed of light wonders. When it comes to technology the soul is like the planet Mercury - fast - and invisible a lot of the time. It takes a while for us to see it. Old technology shows off its soul but with new stuff the soul is shy, hiding behind glitz. We can see the soul now in an old ZX81 - I wish I still had ours. I think he might be saying that too, somewhere in the essay, but about wrought iron.

Here is an interesting bit, I think he is saying what i just said:

Could the winter not its own yardstick have and its own language speak, and couldn't it not us be demanded to go along and the movement of immersing into the hellignuechterne water supportless follow the course of the yearly, so that we are with our heart in it and from it, with its measure, the world to see?
So should we learn to appreciate the soul in the new world?

He proposes the idea that we give up our disdain for technology and dive into the holy water of our sober culture...
To dive into the hellignuechterne water would mean to learn by patient hearing of the cold and speechless things of the technology a new language with its own rules and its own idioms a language, which is not our native language, but the foreign language of the concrete walls, airplanes, moon rockets, television sets, computers, atom bombs, in addition, the language of the advertisement, the statistics and the modern economy coined/shaped by multinational companies.
OK, he proposes it but does he advocate it? I am not sure about Giegerich, but it would seem William Gibson does just that in Pattern Recognition where we are steeped in the foreign language of our familiar ikonised world.

I am doing Giegerich an injustice by not grasping the essay but just playing with it all. I don't have a clue what he is saying, but I love the topic. I love some of the words: hellignuechterne which is in the opening poem: In the holy-sober water and Seelenlosigkeit I love the idea of the romantic world being the summer and us now being in the winter of the soul - just not sure if that is his idea or not!



[1:15 AM | wl | permalink

The C.G. Jung Page: Technology Page

The C.G. Jung Page: Technology Page devoted to original attempts to understand the psychology behind technology and the impact of technology on our psychology. The page is edited by Dolores Brien. Jungian psychology and related subjects, etc.

I am interested in everything on this page. I have linked to many of these items in this weblog in the past. This has to be my cyber-mecca.

[12:17 AM | wl | permalink


Friday, July 18, 2003

More Quicksilver

: : : The Baroque Cycle is coming... : : :
Has an excerpt! Will be on my Palm next hotsync.

Interesting Snippet

Stephenson wiki

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Quicksilver : Volume One of The Baroque Cycle



Neal Stephenson's new book announced.

The editorial review now on Amazon
Book Description

In this wonderfully inventive follow-up to his bestseller Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in a time of breathtaking genius and discovery, men and women whose exploits defined an age known as the Baroque.

Daniel Waterhouse possesses a brilliant scientific mind -- and yet knows that his genius is dwarfed by that of his friends Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Robert Hooke. He rejects the arcane tradition of alchemy, even as it is giving birth to new ways of understanding the world.

Jack Shaftoe began his life as a London street urchin and is now a reckless wanderer in search of great fortune. The intrepid exploits of Half-Cocked Jack, King of the Vagabonds, are quickly becoming the stuff of legend throughout Europe.

Eliza is a young woman whose ingenuity is all that keeps her alive after being set adrift from the Turkish harem in which she has been imprisoned since she was a child.

Daniel, Jack, and Eliza will traverse a landscape populated by mad alchemists, Barbary pirates, and bawdy courtiers, as well as historical figures including Samuel Pepys, Ben Franklin, and other great minds of the age. Traveling from the infant American colonies to the Tower of London to the glittering courts of Louis XIV, and all manner of places in between, this magnificent historical epic brings to vivid life a time like no other, and establishes its author as one of the preeminent talents of our own age.
Sounds amazing. And there is that name: Shaftoe straight from Cryptonomicon. That alone is intriguing.

The title is of interest to me. Obviously this is set in a pre Internet era. But not in a time before the archetypes of cyberspace were around. I am in the middle of, well further than that, almost completing an essay on that topic, and Quicksilver looms large. Mercury, or Hermes as the Greeks called him was working, driving the realm we now know as cyberspace. I wonder if Stephenson has made the same connection? Undoubtedly!

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Thursday, July 17, 2003

Scandle? Just USA true to form.

20 Lies About the War

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Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Egad! They Lied!

Bad Subjects: Item by Jonathan Sterne:
The scandal is that there is no scandal.


[2:02 PM | wl | permalink

Orcinus

Orcinus Has an interesting article in PDF on Fascism.

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Saturday, July 12, 2003

Review of Pattern Recognition

NZOOM - Entertainment - Books



This is what the cover looks like in NZ - nice! I am loving the book. I literally chose this book by the cover, I thought I'd brouse the SF section at Scorpio and see if there were any with nice covers. Usually SF books have the worst covers of all genre. Of course I was also swayed by the authors's name, even though I have not liked all of his previous books. He coined the word cyberspace perhaps he will pull out another lightening bolt. Amazon

[12:33 AM | wl | permalink


Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy:
...the core challenges for designing large-scale social software.
An excellent essay.

[5:41 PM | wl | permalink

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