attached mail follows:
1) Does art still have a dynamic role today?
Yes. Technology seems to dwarf it but there are still plenty of people
practicing art and experimenting and there are multitudes of other
people, not necessarily themselves artists, who are joyfully receptive
to it.
2) What is technology? (in moqist terms: what are its values?).
Technology is the stuff that makes possible the social level on a grand
scale. It makes our biological needs less intrusive in our lives.
Biological functions still exist of course but they become secondary.
Humans' main pursuit now is to keep them that way.
3) How can technology evolve everyday faster (in moqist terms: what is
its
dynamic aspect, its meaning?)
Don't you think technology is evolving too fast already? Certainly the
dynamic element of technology is science, but it's the relentless
ratcheting of the static latches that make it so impressive. Science
upon science, technology upon technology, and it just keeps snowballing.
The result is the Giant. Most of it grew up within the last 300 years, a
staggeringly short period of time.
4) Pirsig says that at its birth technology was art: if it's so, what
happened to separate art and technology? (in moqist terms: in which step
of
evolution it happened?)
I suppose the "obvious" answer here is that art and technology were
indistinguishable before SOM brainwashed people. But even before science
was systematized under the scientific method, before the methods of
civil and mechanical engineering were invented, I imagine the people
constructing and planning the walls and buttresses of a new cathedral
were a different breed from those designing the stained glass in the
windows and painting the murals across the ceiling. You have to go
farther back than that, in fact so far back that technology would be by
today's standards barely recognizable as such, until you found the guy
who fashioned a boat from a log was the same who carved the tribal
totem. Most art back then was *useful* in that it helped fulfill a
religious ceremony. But once art was done for the artist's own pleasure
(art for art's sake), or provided purely as entertainment, the
difference between it and utilitarian technology must have been
appreciated. So I believe the split happened when art evolved from being
social to being intellectual. Certainly this happened well before the
onset of SOM thinking (17th-18th centuries).
5) Is this divorce definitive? (in moqist terms: is this divorce moral?)
Yes, except in disciplines like web-page design and architecture where
the two naturally co-exist. The second part of this question begs to ask
if technology and art are in neighboring static levels, for if so they
would likely oppose one another and for MOQ this would be a moral
divorce. Focusers are not in general agreement about which level each
belongs (it's a little comical), but I would say, with not too much
enthusiasm, that technological ideas are generally spovs, and artistic
ideas are generally ipovs. So not only is the *divorce* moral, but all
kinds of other moral dilemmas are cleared up, such as: if a fire strikes
your home and you have but a moment to grab one thing and flee before
you are consumed in flames, it's more moral to rescue your daughter's
art work off the refrigerator than your son's GameBoy off the table.
Regards,
Glennn
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:18 BST