[PREV - UHURU]    [TOP]

FLORID

                                              May 05, 2005


   Samuel Floriman
   "The Existential Pleasures          APOCRYPHA
   of Engineering"


Back in the seventies, there was such
a strong current of anti-technological
thinking going on that it's possible
that even I was swept along with it --
though I don't think it took me very far.


        (I was getting tired of              The advice against
        holding on to the rock               mixing metaphors
        of my science fictional              is funny: whenever
        faith, though.)                      I try and stick with
                                             one, like this, it
                                             seems really silly.
  This made Samuel Floriman's
  "The Existential Pleasures
  of Engineering" a joy
  to read... at least the first                  Maybe: The
  few chapters of it, in which                   prohibition
  Floriman argues quite clearly                  against the
  and persuasively that engineers                mixed metaphor
  are not evil.                                  is based on the
                                                 idea that a
     He then goes on to try                      metaphor is
     and prove that engineers                    something
     are not boring... and                       stronger than it
     merely succeeds in being                    is, something
     very boring about it.                       akin to an
                                                 analogy.

     In any case, Floriman's                     Usual it's
     book remains one of my                      just a figure
     favorite pro-technology                     of speech,
     polemics -- and in those                    a rhetorical
     days there wasn't much out                  flourish...
     there like this -- Jerry
     Pournelle's columns in
     "Galaxy" is the only other    Hm... come to think
     example I can think of.       of it, I should put
                                   Pournelle on my list,
                                   at least as Apocrypha.

     If it wasn't such a stone-cold
     obvious, common-sensical issue,
     maybe I'd promote this from
     "Apocrypha" to "Bible".


            The way it played out: as the
            80s roled around, and it looked
            like the Japanese had seized the
            technical and thus the industrial
            lead, all of a sudden no one wanted
            to hear from the anti-tech crowd
            any more.

--------
[NEXT - GREENISH-TINGE]