Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts

Monday, April 9, 2007

History walk in Berlin, Dorotheen Graveyard

A walk in a graveyard in Berlin, Mitte (the middle of Berlin):
History has its presence there:
The philosophers Fichte, Hegel and Marcuse
The writers Brecht, Mann, Seghers, and actor Weigel
The musicians/composers Dessau, Dohnanyi, Eisler
The German resistance fighters Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi
The visual artist fighting Nazi Germany with political collages: Heartfield
The industrialist Borsig and the inventor of the ubiquitous free-standing cylindrical advertising columns all over Berlin, Colonne Morris: Litfass
The agriculturist Hartig inventing sustainable forest management in 1790.
And many others

The Dorotheen Graveyard is in Chausseestr.126 next to the Brecht-House/Restaurant (smoky) and opposite the Borsig-house. There is a pleasant, well-kept atmosphere in the place.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

The machine IS us

The global 'megamachine' of a hierarchically organised conglomerate of homo sapiens and their technology constitutes their power over the Earth. Usurping every niche on this planet this hybrid swarm appears omnipotent against 'nature'.
The American historian and sociologist of technology Lewis Mumford provided the terms 'megamachine' and 'technics' amongst others in his investigations into civilisation.
Erich Fromm points out (To Have or to Be?,1976) how the symbiotic reliance on such a social/technical machine leads to actual impotence of the individual. As long as s/he is integrated in it, power is bestowed onto the person, in the degree of hierarchical participation. At the margins of this web, reliant on ones own powers, one seems to be helpless 'like a child'. But don't they adore the hierarchical machinery and their machines: their petrol motors, the ICT strands/rays connecting all, the intelligent agents as interlocutors – the entire noosphere...They provide the self-assurance to be 'great', omnipotent, without it one feels disabled.
After-thought to 'The Machine is Us/ing us'
Image: Sculpture in Berlin, Mitte