Shift Happens? Whee!

One of my abiding interests concerns the philosophy of technology. Many philosophers, particularly the faculty of St. John's, mistrust science in general and technology in particular, voicing a sentiment Crichton discovered in writing his famous Jurassic Park - that technology serves primarily to increase the power of Man and it is frequently unclear whether Man will use his newfound power responsibly. As early as the Renaissance was the view promulgated in which the criterion for truth was scientific "success": that is, if I can make the cannonball land where I want it to - nowadays, if I can create the cell in the way I want - I know the truth. This infatuation with science continued all through the so-called "Enlightenment", with Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza all passionately enamored of science and technology (Rousseau was much less impressed but he is another story). But by the nineteenth century things were waning down, and the belief in Progress was waning. At the eve of the Holocaust, an old man named Edmund Husserl declared European science, including Einstein's relativity and Schrodinger's quantum theory, to be in crisis and in need of his philosophic theories to regain humanity. Leo Strauss was a student of Husserl, and many of Strauss's students are tutors at St. John's; the studentry thus shares a decided caution towards technology simply.

I am wary of things such as cellular engineering (making your own cells in a lab! Woohoo!) and even warier about the applications of such new knowledge; after all, the quickest applications have generally been ways to kill lots of people as soon as possible. But at the core, what Man desires more than anything else is power. Technology and science give him power over nature and power over Man. Thus technology will be universally embraced. Let's all get on board then! Perhaps not. But it is undeniable that it sometimes is cool, the steps made. Everyone knows the YouTube video Shift Happens. I have a more amusing video: Neato XV vaccuuming robot! It is cheap enough for purchase by almost any middle-class family and seems to work well. Unlike the Kindle, I do not go into paroxysms of rage when I look at it. But I do have some questions:

• Will it get stuck under furniture?
• Will it attack your pets?
• Will it connect over the Internet with all the others and poison all their owners so that the floors stay clean?

Questions of this sort serve to pique my interest, keep me from studying Hegel and Phenomenology, and otherwise occupy this busy Senior trying to make his (very) little way in a (very) large world.