Rhetoric, Technology, Culture Spring 2011

First, talk about a nostalgia bomb. The fact that proto-Pixar did The Brave Little Toaster is pretty interesting; especially with Toy Story 3's rather grimdark moments and similar plot elements. While I could go into a whole tandem reading of the Toy Story films, I'll refrain.

I suppose the thing that was most interesting to me was the moment you touched on the 'dark side' of evolution - the depiction of the tinkerer's shop as a horror show, and the 'useless' inventions created out of the gutted appliances. It reminded me of the introduction to this Radiolab episode (http://www.radiolab.org/2010/dec/14/) where they talk about how evolution is often seen as a process where "living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition." The show itself goes on to examine 'goodness' and why there is cooperation in spite of the natural predilection to be jerks, but i find it interesting that Kelly is able to avoid this inherent pain of evolution.

Obviously part of the revulsion to the tinkerer scene is due to the whole "cute anthropomorphic appliances" factor, but I think additionally we *would* rather close our eyes to the pain inherent in the evolution of biology, and the technium as well. Kelly is obviously aware of the ethical questions of technology being better in the long run - his thesis of 'more technology = more choice = better overall life world' (paraphrased) seems fairly sound. However, I think it speaks to the issue of evolutionary pain as his glowing descriptions of technology tend to generally avoid the darker side of technology – sure he addresses it, but quickly returns to all the positives. And realistically, we hardly ever talk about ‘failed’ evolutionary lines: we'd probably rather not talk about dirigibles unless we're into steampunk. Evolution is cruel - when you're made out of hydrogen, explode, and there's a better form of flight in the plane, you're going to lose your use.

However, the interesting fact is that while with biology, once a species is extinct (due to being unable to adapt further to some change - say a new predator/environment) it is gone, in technology we very rarely lose these technologies. The dirigible may have never taken off as a flying transport, but its successors are used for entertainment in hot air balloons and for science with weather balloons. The fact that evolutionary lines may 'die' and their records live on allows us to cheat evolution. Opposed to the do-or-die evolution of the biosphere, the technium preserves knowledge and allows for ‘dead’ species to find themselves reincarnated in a new form (The evolutionary tree of coronets on 51). And while this process might be violent to anthropomorphic blenders, in reality it is a preservative feature of the technium that ultimately works towards propagating new species of technology. “Survival of the Fittest” might not be the correct term; rather, I would like to suggest “Survival of the Kairotic(est)” or some variation of. Because species that might not survive their first time around can be reincarnated through Kairos into use again (or as Kelly notes, repurposed from their original planned form), the determining factor of technological evolution isn’t one’s fitness – unless it is fitness of time and place at the proper moment. And because this evolution is done through Kairos instead of cold blooded survival, it isn’t nearly as painful as Pixar would have us believe.