Comment by ethicsengineer
8 years ago
Engineers need to read The Trial by Franz Kafka. I don't think people fear soulless beurocracy without any possible resolution enough.
8 years ago
Engineers need to read The Trial by Franz Kafka. I don't think people fear soulless beurocracy without any possible resolution enough.
One of my favorite parts:
-- Before the Law
A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through an open doorway, but the doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that it is possible "but not now". The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them "so that you do not think you have failed to do anything." The man does not attempt to murder or hurt the doorkeeper to gain the law, but waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Law
That was a very interesting piece of text I've never heard of, although I know Kafka. Thank you!
The full text(only slightly longer) is here: http://www.kafka-online.info/before-the-law.html
?
It's the first thing hat crossed my mind as I read this.
Also read the Unabomber Manifesto (Industrial Society and its Future). Technology enslaves us.
But it can also liberate us, and we should seek to maximize the liberating force of technology and try to disrupt the enslaving tendency.
Also read his two books: "Technological Slavery" and "Anti-Tech Revolution"