C-240. Technological paradox
H.S. Kim asked survey respondents whether science or technology would be more likely to help solve each of a list of contemporary South Korean problems. The close winner was technology. Science gives answers; technology gives solutions? Consider this reputation. Based on what: tool technology or procedural technology? Tool technology, obviously. Procedural technology (e.g., “big government,” “politics,” the pandemic) enjoys no such reputation.
Thus the importance of giving community and union priority as S-universe matters to be tackled in light of Expansion principles. We need to invent procedural technologies that will enable us to act as one: as communities, and then to invent unions (added procedural techs) to link individuals with communities. To put it mildly, this has been a continuing, thorny assignment.
It has not helped that we have faltered in failing to differentiate – i.e., not employing the pragmatic precept (PP) to clean up the rampant confounding in B-speak. Here the failure to distinguish community and union, as we see, for example in “state of the union”, where WITA is the state of the objectified nation, not of the procedural union. “Nation” is procedural too, its geographical identity notwithstanding. “Nation” is a problem in community.
This is why we need the forward leverage of the Expansion and the S-universe. Our operating systems (“selves”), whether for the individual or the community (“Know thy selves”), need the R-transform to get us where we need to be: not drowning in B-ness instances of individual and community but rather AT, ON the Frontier of the Expansion and in the S-universe attending to needed functionality.
In their linguistic roots, both “problem” (“pro-“) and “question” (“quest”) say, “Go forward!” The joint message of the Expansion and of the S-universe. But you have to get there. First things first. Hence the R-transform. Once we have unfolded the B-ness fan.
***
As a practical matter (see “The new pragmatist”), to make the most of what the Expansion and S-universe together offer us as progressive (Forward!) opportunity, further differentiation via technology should work its way through stages from that progressive foundation based on what the Expansion and the S-universe have to tell us about WICF and WTITBTA – i.e., needed functionality.
We start with individuals engaged in practices. Not always happily, but a change in practice can be problematic too. To build a community, whose very existence is a matter of articulated steps in the first place and of shared steps after that, new practices will however need to be introduced. And adopted. Not any easy matter.*
Then we can repeat the tech differentiation for union. Union, as procedural tech, is needed to make the individual-community relationship work. And in a balanced way: Individual/community = 1. So far, “…toward a more perfect union” is more wish than fulfillment.
The Expansion’s principle of extension** is exemplified in nature studies by the spider that, in place by a river, spins a web not along the river bank but across the river (above which insects travel). The spider does this by first shooting a strand across the river, then building on that -- literally. The R-transform is an initial strand of sorts.
The adoption problem remains. Procedural technology will have to solve that too. The fate of the revised typewriter keyboard, which promised improved functionality, is instructive here. For “practical” reasons, it was not adopted. A similar fate might await S-universe procedural tech innovations. R-words, for example?
The common sense approach to such a quandary is to Involve it in a larger one. If R-words seem like too much “hard work” … well, assign it those condemned to “hard labor.” Create a new “Australia” within the penal system. Let prisoners crack concepts to extract the mettles in them … to then make use of the mettles to splice alloys whose functional merit could serve themselves as well as others.
***
* Extension centers, such as those established in early-20th century Wisconsin, distributed the problem-solving fruits of that Progressive era’s development. As themselves procedural technology, they could help carry forward the missions, the needed functionality, of community.
** The Expansion, once liberated from B-ness, can be seen to have qualities that may serve as principles: Extension, differentiation, forward (Frontier), emergence (CEM), discontinuity (“supergappiness”***) of steps (S-universe) and bodies (B-universe).
*** Separateness per se, a quality. Compare “gappiness,” a quantity of relationships (gaps) among N objects. Once multi-step behavioral entities appear on the scene, the Nature of Things’ general persisting condition of discontinuity (separateness) applies to steps as well as bodies. Hence an S-universe of steps. And there is an “anxiety” problem to go with each of them: “What’s ahead?” to go with “All alone.” Matters of the S-universe can be seen as just as – if not more – consequential, more material as those of the B-universe.
In light of the very useful Search feature now available, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.
(c) 2021 R. F. Carter
Thus the importance of giving community and union priority as S-universe matters to be tackled in light of Expansion principles. We need to invent procedural technologies that will enable us to act as one: as communities, and then to invent unions (added procedural techs) to link individuals with communities. To put it mildly, this has been a continuing, thorny assignment.
It has not helped that we have faltered in failing to differentiate – i.e., not employing the pragmatic precept (PP) to clean up the rampant confounding in B-speak. Here the failure to distinguish community and union, as we see, for example in “state of the union”, where WITA is the state of the objectified nation, not of the procedural union. “Nation” is procedural too, its geographical identity notwithstanding. “Nation” is a problem in community.
This is why we need the forward leverage of the Expansion and the S-universe. Our operating systems (“selves”), whether for the individual or the community (“Know thy selves”), need the R-transform to get us where we need to be: not drowning in B-ness instances of individual and community but rather AT, ON the Frontier of the Expansion and in the S-universe attending to needed functionality.
In their linguistic roots, both “problem” (“pro-“) and “question” (“quest”) say, “Go forward!” The joint message of the Expansion and of the S-universe. But you have to get there. First things first. Hence the R-transform. Once we have unfolded the B-ness fan.
As a practical matter (see “The new pragmatist”), to make the most of what the Expansion and S-universe together offer us as progressive (Forward!) opportunity, further differentiation via technology should work its way through stages from that progressive foundation based on what the Expansion and the S-universe have to tell us about WICF and WTITBTA – i.e., needed functionality.
We start with individuals engaged in practices. Not always happily, but a change in practice can be problematic too. To build a community, whose very existence is a matter of articulated steps in the first place and of shared steps after that, new practices will however need to be introduced. And adopted. Not any easy matter.*
Then we can repeat the tech differentiation for union. Union, as procedural tech, is needed to make the individual-community relationship work. And in a balanced way: Individual/community = 1. So far, “…toward a more perfect union” is more wish than fulfillment.
The Expansion’s principle of extension** is exemplified in nature studies by the spider that, in place by a river, spins a web not along the river bank but across the river (above which insects travel). The spider does this by first shooting a strand across the river, then building on that -- literally. The R-transform is an initial strand of sorts.
The adoption problem remains. Procedural technology will have to solve that too. The fate of the revised typewriter keyboard, which promised improved functionality, is instructive here. For “practical” reasons, it was not adopted. A similar fate might await S-universe procedural tech innovations. R-words, for example?
The common sense approach to such a quandary is to Involve it in a larger one. If R-words seem like too much “hard work” … well, assign it those condemned to “hard labor.” Create a new “Australia” within the penal system. Let prisoners crack concepts to extract the mettles in them … to then make use of the mettles to splice alloys whose functional merit could serve themselves as well as others.
* Extension centers, such as those established in early-20th century Wisconsin, distributed the problem-solving fruits of that Progressive era’s development. As themselves procedural technology, they could help carry forward the missions, the needed functionality, of community.
** The Expansion, once liberated from B-ness, can be seen to have qualities that may serve as principles: Extension, differentiation, forward (Frontier), emergence (CEM), discontinuity (“supergappiness”***) of steps (S-universe) and bodies (B-universe).
*** Separateness per se, a quality. Compare “gappiness,” a quantity of relationships (gaps) among N objects. Once multi-step behavioral entities appear on the scene, the Nature of Things’ general persisting condition of discontinuity (separateness) applies to steps as well as bodies. Hence an S-universe of steps. And there is an “anxiety” problem to go with each of them: “What’s ahead?” to go with “All alone.” Matters of the S-universe can be seen as just as – if not more – consequential, more material as those of the B-universe.
In light of the very useful Search feature now available, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.
(c) 2021 R. F. Carter
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