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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .
The recurrent catastrophe is enabled by a quite specific sin: that of scientists who put their knowledge at the service of any ruler who will finance their work, regardless of the uses to which it is put.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller Jr
Of course, it’s not like Meta (Facebook’s rebranded parent company) is coming right out and saying, “hey we’re building digital heaven!” Techno-utopianism is (only a little bit) more subtle. They don’t come right out and say they’re saving souls. Instead they say they’re benefitting all of humanity. Facebook wants to connect the world. Google wants to put all knowledge of humanity at your fingertips. Ignore their profit motives, they’re being altruistic!
Emily F. Gorcenski
Norman Packard
We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of ‘raw materials,’ and that we may safely possess those materials merely by taking them. This taking, as our technical means have increased, has involved always less reverence or respect, less gratitude, less local knowledge, and less skill. Our methodologies of land use have strayed from our old sympathetic attempts to imitate natural processes, and have come more and more to resemble the methodology of mining, even as mining itself has become more powerful technologically and more brutal.
The World-Ending Fire
Wendell Berry
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