From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Space: The Final Frontier
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 09:10:32 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


This is lengthy, people, so if you want to get on with something far
more edifying please do.

In article <gate.mTRuTB1w165w@pil.UUCP> alizard@pil.UUCP writes:

 > Why is it senseless? What makes my previous post senseless? All
 > I've seen from you in contradiction of my previous statement is
 > some non-responsive bullshit about my emotional state.

There doesn't have to be any reason for me to exclaim that something
is senseless. If I want to say it purely at whim, it's done . . .

 > You really ought to look a lot further into the relationship between urban
 > and rural cultures before you comment on this any further. Do modern
 > aborigines use axes? Do you have any idea of what level of investment goes
 > into a steel industry, from mining through finished product?  While good steel
 > implements CAN be made by blacksmiths, handmade goods of this kind cost
 > several times as much. Pricing them out of people's reach. You seem to think
 > that the goods and tools you take for granted will appear out of nowhere in
 > response to your sending a check to a mail order distributor. Your emotional
 > response to this is comparable to that of the South Sea cargo cultists. If
 > you don't like where your high tech comes from, don't use it to berate its
 > creators for not being paragons of virtue.

I don't give a shit what level of investment goes into a steel
industry! What you appear incapable of understanding is that the
investment once having been made then proceeds to churn out umpteen
bezillion stupid fucking axes at a dime a dozen. Mass production has
brought down the price of bloody near everything to within the each of
even the most remote communities with only coconuts to trade, and if
you have no market to supply at those prices your investors will do
their dough. Don't you understand that yet?

I tell you, mate, every bloody Aboriginal corporation in Australia is
fully equipped with computers and satellite access. There is no Cargo
Cult, only a level of productivity and exchange value sufficient for
just about anyone anywhere to buy the stupid things off the shelf at
bargain basement prices!

It is not a matter of whether I like where my high tech comes from at
all. I don't care too hoots where it comes from when all I have to do
is shop around to get whatever I want off the shelf. It is not me
hanging out for a new computer, but there are an awful lot of computer
salesmen around hassling me to buy one.

I am not going broke trying to flog more and more high technology gadgets
to an already flooded market, they are!

 > Your vision in any case is severely limited, I fully expect to see a few
 > years from now the aborigines you work with telecommuting via satellite to US
 > software companies... (it's a profitable thing to get into, and doesn't take a
 > whole lot of investment, this is one reason why programmers and engineers in
 > India are already doing this.) which suggests that you should study native
 > folkways while you still can.

"Native folkways" have nothing to do with what technology they have at
their disposal. Using a computer does not stop Aboriginal people from
being Aboriginal, for fucks sake! Out in the desert they use radios
and video cameras as well, with their own TV studio owned and run by
their own Aboriginal Media Service, none of which prevents them in any
way from living as hunters and gatherers. So what stupid point are you
wanting to make?

Or do you suggest that they are somehow less "authentic" for using
computers, that I should work to rescue that "authenticity" in case
its loss will cause the people to disappear somewhere?

Total fuckwit!

 > In any case, you think that the solutions for ANY of these problems you cite
 > don't have anything to do with new technology? I, among others, are WORKING
 > on some solutions to these problems. What do you have to contribute? Have a
 > talk with local providers of the services you assert the need for before you
 > tell us what technologies humans really need.

What are you raving on about here? Computers cannot be eaten as a
source of human nutrition, being quite toxic, in fact! People get
hungry whether the technology exists or not, and what they want as I
first stated is adequate nutrition, not high technology? If you
come up with a solution to that sort of problem, how about coming here
to work with us. I *am* a local provider of services, and I assert
here LOUDLY AND I HOPE FINALLY PENETRATINGLY that computer programmers
and their technology are a dime a dozen. We do not need more computers
or high technology "solutions"!

In the case of the actual projects I am currently engaged in, in fact,
it is the computer people retaining an anthropologist to advise them
on how to apply the technology most appropriately, to assist in
opening up new markets for what it might have to offer, and I can
tell you HERE AND NOW that gains are marginal in the extreme. The
activity is purely peripheral, and there is no money in it at all.

What I am doing here on the Internet, right now typing all this stupid
shit to you, is merely beta-testing software on the one hand, and
mapping conflict patterns among users toward advising new users on
the other. No, you are not *only* guinea pigs because I do enjoy our
exchanges. *SOME* of you are very nice people, but there the matter
essentially lies.

 > These technologies and the theories underlying them are created by "mature"
 > women as well, you should re-examine your ideas about sex role
 > specialization. Before someone else flames you for sexism. (I'm leaving this
 > to the women scientists and technologists on this newsgroup, as I think
 > they'll do a better job than I can.)
 >  
 > As for "off the shelf", most of what is "off the shelf" wasn't a few years
 > ago. Technology progresses due to the efforts of creative, greedy people.
 > Whether you progress intellectually or not.

Who gives a shit? What we live by is what is available now, not what
was available yesterday or might be available tomorrow. All you
creative, greedy people can just piss off without worrying us one way
or another about we will fare in your absence.

 > As for Russian aid vs. aid to other Third World countries, it isn't their
 > availablily of missile launchers, it is the thousands of nuclear warheads
 > that fit them that worries the US. Quite properly, your viewpoint is colored
 > by the fact that you don't live on ground zero. Staying alive is a first
 > priority in all cultures I ever heard of.

Perhaps, but few are stupid enough to have created the very threat to
their own staying alive all by themselves. You are as silly as a 20c
watch with a Mickey Mouse on the dial.

 > As for the lower price of Soviet launch capability, these are closeout
 > prices... if we were effectively liquidating our space program, we'd be able
 > to match these prices.

Sorry, I was referring to missile launchers with their warheads
removed now being offered as satellite launchers . . .

 > As for shooting blacks...Shoot potential customers? I'd look into choosing a
 > different selection of recreational drugs if I were you.

What does this gem refer to?

 > You may not care, but your guinea pigs have to whether they know it or not,
 > how well the industrial complex works defines what prices they pay when they
 > buy from the First World. If scarcities of critical raw materials raise
 > prices on goods, your research subjects will be the first priced out of the
 > market. It might be Keflin (a broad spectrum antibiotic), not the latest
 > 486-66 DOS clone that your people find themselves unable to get. Conversely,
 > if average prices for technological products drop, your research subjects
 > will be able to afford more of what they want or need from us.

No, they don't have to even think about such matters so important to
you, and neither do I. It is *never* our problem what prices you want
to charge for whatever you produce, but yours. As I am endeavouring to
get it through your thick skull, American carpet baggers flogging
gadgets are a dime a dozen. If you all disappear, then we just go back
to using whatever we do have available. Our lives do not swing around
your critical raw materials; in fact the most vociferous campaigns we
are engaged in are to leave them right there in the ground and let the
people have their sacred places back.

 > That's the biggest financial justification for massive public investment in
 > ultra low cost space industrial capability. So everyone can realize the
 > benefits of cheaper products made by methods that do a lot less environmental
 > damage. Maybe cheaper satellite dishes don't matter to you personally, since
 > its government money anyway... but cheaper satellite dishes due to advanced
 > industrial techniques that are physically impossible on Earth will make it
 > possible to serve more and smaller villages that it isn't cost-effective to
 > serve at this point in time. Or just cheaper digital thermometers. Will it
 > matter to your guinea pigs? Ask them a few years down the line. Your
 > definitions of their needs are no longer of that much interest to me.

Serve what to what smaller and smaller villages? If you are American
they are just as likely to run from you in sheer terror, and the Chinese
are now producing all this stuff at about 10% what you are wanting to
charge for the same item.

 > Feeding families... talk to our American organic farmers...

Sure! We have organic growers here too. Big deal!

 > Building hospitals and schools? After the physical plant, we need cheaper
 > high tech tools to assist in providing medical and educational services, so 1
 > doctor or teacher can serve several times as many people. Especially
 > important in areas with little, no, or rare medical access. (more doctors?
 > Any idea how much of an allocation of social resources it takes to educate a
 > doctor? Let's see some numbers.) In any case, everything I've ever seen in a
 > hospital is the product of an advanced technological civilization. What do
 > you claim to know about medical technology?

Not at all, what we need are more highly skilled doctors and nursing
staff willing to stay and work in remote areas, facing the loneliness
and hardship for a sufficient period to have an effect on improving
the general health of the community. I repeat, we have more high tech
gadgetry than we can possibly know what to do with. Get it yet?

 > >Or are you another of these Sci-Fi Dweeb Wizards, or something?
 > >
 > >Fucking mindless deadshit.
 >  
 > Your name calling is an admission to the entire newsgroup that you ran out
 > of ideas several minutes ago. Of course, your admission was unnecessary, we
 > already read your post.
 >  
 > You seem to take your lack of familiarity with how a technological
 > civilization really works and how that working affects Third World cultures
 > as a sign of spiritual superiority. I take it as simple ignorance that isn't
 > worth glorifying. Maybe you should look up George Bush and share your
 > respective ignorance. He might treat it with more respect than I do.

I DON'T GIVE A SHIT HOW A TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILISATION WORKS! I MAKE NO
CLAIM TO SUPERIORITY IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM, ONLY BEING A LARRIKIN
CONVICT BLOODY OCKER, MATE, AND I SUGGEST YOU ARE HERE SUFFERING A
MONUMENTAL FUCKING INFERIORITY COMPLEX!

I REPEAT:

OR ARE YOU ANOTHER OF THESE SCH-FI DWEEB WIZARDS, OR SOMETHING?

FUCKING MINDLESS DEADSHIT.

                DID YOU HEAR PROPERLY THAT TIME?

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *