impossible perfectibility still moralism

One of these days i was arguing with my friend Marcio Shimabukuro about technology and money. Shimabukuro’s perspective was somewhat like this: we have to use currently surpassed technology because they want more money. Current selling products in Brazil are equivalent to products from 5 years ago in Japan (but this difference used to be 12 years), and the same goes for most other “First World” countries, and the reason for this lateness is that companies can make more money selling products that use an already old technology but still has a better profit margin than the newest thing. As an example, if you can make an walkman for 10$ and sell it at 189$ and you can make an iPod for 120$ and sell it at 220$, you will prefer to sell the walkman even if the iPod is better.

What i wanted to say to this was: this is a moral argument, even if in hiding.

end of science

Do i fear about the future? Yes, of course. But i do not fear what it seems most people are fearing. One of those cases is science. Most people fear that science might pull a Frankenstein, creating monsters by mistake while trying to create beauty. I do think science is on the right track to stop creating monsters and that really worries me!

Technology and Fear

Technology, itself a daughter of Curiosity, makes a disservice to itself, and to her siamese sister Science, by being useful. What was a play and a gamble, mostly for fun, can now be turned (by the siblings of Fear, such as Parcimony, Greed, Conservatism, Protocol, Authority & Need) into blind moralist burocratic gossipy narrow-midded recipe-following.

The Issues

If there is anyone interested in astrology out there: this year begins with Pluto entering Capricorn. The interpretation would be something like “this is a time for restructuring of the world, of the systems and institutions that sustain our world, a time for rethinking and changing power and authority.”

Whatever the value of such transit, we are living a moment in which it seem to me adequate to ask:

“What are The Issues™ that matter here and now?”