Monday, January 16, 2012

Technological progress goes backwards

Been have a major problem hosting my collection of 'model' (i.e., self-written under test conditions) essays in such a way that make them easily accessible via hotlinks in my blog entries. And since I'm cheap, for free.

In desperation, I went back to search my once old reliable, GeoCities, which Yahoo killed off quite a while ago. I found Geocities.ws, which after experimenting a while works the way I like. Upload file, make a hyperlink, model essay pops out in a new tab. No fuss, no muss, and FoC. Yay!

Will be transferring my archive from Skydrive (which I couldn't hyperlink to properly) to the new host real soon. Will also be updating the links in my previous posts, though that could take some time yet.

For today, just be satisfied with this:

The question asks us to comment on a quote from Huxley: "Technological progress has merely provided us with the most efficient means for going backwards."

It is quite a difficult question involving nested layers. The trick is to identify a fixed point or two that you can orbit your variables around. My first fixed point is to lock technology down as a general concept without being tempted to get specific with it; while the second is to keep the interpretation of "going backwards" focused on our escalating conflicts over resources. In truth, such a vague quotation can be interpreted in many ways, but a good argumentative looks for parameters within which truth can hold. Even so, I had to exceed the word limit in order to do this question justice. Completion time: 1hr 15min.

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