So much imagination, eccentricity, dreaminess, and creativity went into the creation of the tech we use now. Yet it is becoming the instrument of our species’ most simplistic and brutal instincts for raw power, deception and coercion. Damn it, I want that Renaissance they promised!
First part is wrong. The true dreamers and eccentrics were ignored. Their ideas and patents sat around for decades until a well-connected Big Corporation stole them and used them for evil. The Silicon Valley “dreamers” were all relatively rich dudes with solid corporate connections. They invented nothing but business models.
The pattern itself is old. Since I’m in a French mood today, let’s reprint a Chappe piece that I haven’t yet worn out with tiresome reprinting. Chappe was a brilliant dreamer who saw his system adopted by Robespierre and used for torture and military conquest, and later for stock fraud. All the elements of modern Deepstate.
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In my present focus on science as entertainment I’ve neglected another connection that was clear and constant before 1906.
Science was seen as one of the gifts we received from God, and practicing science was a way of thanking God for the gift.
Here’s an elegiac passage from an 1853 Italian book on telegraphy:
Ogni mezzo che serve alla comunicazione di un essere coll’ altro, si comprenderebbe solto il nome di telegrafia, interpretando questa parola nel senso il più esteso.
Tutti i membri della creazione animale hanno ricevuto dal loro Fattore qualche mezzo naturale di comunicazione che unisca e colleghi fra loro gli individui delle varie specie. Infiniti e mirabili sono i modi con cui si manifesta il divino linguaggio della natura, disposto con bella armonia. L’uccello gorgheggia, il quadrupede emette gridi e voci inarticolate, e questi mezzi cosi poveri e ristretti bastano ai bruti limitati nella loro vita ai bisogni istintivi e materiali. L’uomo destinato ad una via di progresso morale e civile, ha mestieri di poter esprimere con segni sensibili le idee, i sentimenti che si agitano nell’anima sua, comunicarli ai propri simili, e stringersi con essi in amichevoli rapporti: E la divina Provvidenza lo dotò di favella che lo rende superiore agli altri esseri, e determina lo sviluppo di sue facoltà intellettuali e morali.
The book starts out with the Chappe semaphore, which uniquely marked the destruction of this connection in France. Claude Chappe was a priest who thought he was advancing the poter esprimere con segni sensibili le idee, i sentimenti che si agitano nell’anima. When he saw that the Revolution was using his invention for the exact opposite purpose, he jumped down a well.
Reviving the sense of entertainment and joy must also revive the connection to the gift by Divine Providence. Can’t have one without the other.
Polistra's Mill 