{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2340", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2340, "subject": "A walk on the wild side", "messages": 6, "voices": 5, "first": "2000-08-10T14:53:12+00:00", "last": "2000-08-11T22:01:57+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Russell", "address": "j.a.russell at exeter.ac.uk" }, "date": "2000-08-10T15:14:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) A walk on the wild side", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is completely irrelevant to the current field of \ndiscussion, but I'm writing up my piece for the symposium \nat the moment, and have just realised that there is a \nquestion that I would be interested to hear anyone's \nopinion on. Its fairly straightforward, so...\n\nIn Sword Cyriaca tells the story of the lost archive, and \nstates that at some point in the distant past the \nstarfaring dudes left their wild half behind, which was \nthen sold to the thinking machines who incorporated it into \ntheir designs for cities etc, etc. Im sure you are all \nfairly familiar with the passage. What interests me is: \nWhat do you interpret this to mean? - or more precisely - \nwhat do you think actually happened for these forms of \nbehaviour to be seperated?\n\nLike I said, pretty straightforward, but I'd be really \ninterested to hear what anyone has to say.\n----------------------\nJim Russell\nUniversity of Exeter" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "2000-08-10T14:53:12+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) A walk on the wild side", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jim Russell wrote:\nThis is completely irrelevant to the current field of\ndiscussion, but I'm writing up my piece for the symposium\nat the moment, and have just realised that there is a\nquestion that I would be interested to hear anyone's\nopinion on. Its fairly straightforward, so...\n\nIn Sword Cyriaca tells the story of the lost archive, and\nstates that at some point in the distant past the\nstarfaring dudes left their wild half behind, which was\nthen sold to the thinking machines who incorporated it into\ntheir designs for cities etc, etc. Im sure you are all\nfairly familiar with the passage. What interests me is:\nWhat do you interpret this to mean? - or more precisely -\nwhat do you think actually happened for these forms of\nbehaviour to be seperated?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well =I= always took it to mean that the people had become rather like\n\"Star Trek\" Vulcans ; favoring \"logic\" in their culture and\nerasing \"non-logic\" (including emotions, grim fairy tales, folk dancing,\nfiction) from their culture. So they were like the Ascians in that sense\n(although not necessarily molded by \"Correct Thought\") of being\nmachine-like. My sense of that story is that the wild stuff was the stuff\nthat had actually brought humanity out of the jungle in the first place.\nWhich makes it a form of technology, in a way; and antiquated technologies\nare discarded every day (buggy whips, telegraph relay stations).\n\nSo the starfaring people thought that they would improve themselves by\ngetting rid of this old stuff that tied them to the nasty, brutish past.\nBut according to the story this was a case of throwing the baby out with\nthe bathwater (it all turns out okay, though, when the baby crawls back in\nthrough the doggie door).\n\nAs to what happened to cause this separation between logic and non-logic,\nit seems to me to be the same sort of scientific triumphs that we have seen\nin the 20th century: real miracles, real terrors, real predictions\nvalidated through experimentation (and any \"failure\" just points the way to\nlater success--nothing invalidates Science itself), and so forth.\n\nI think the story is about the need for a balance of things: a golden rule\nof nothing to excess (where the singleminded pursuit of logic is an\nexcess).\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Greene, Carlton", "address": "cgreene2 at hunton.com" }, "date": "2000-08-10T18:24:35+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) A walk on the wild side", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis wrote:\n\nAs to what happened to cause this separation between logic and non-logic,\nit seems to me to be the same sort of scientific triumphs that we have seen\nin the 20th century: real miracles, real terrors, real predictions\nvalidated through experimentation (and any \"failure\" just points the way to\nlater success--nothing invalidates Science itself), and so forth.\n\nI think the story is about the need for a balance of things: a golden rule\nof nothing to excess (where the singleminded pursuit of logic is an\nexcess).\n\nGiven this separation, by what means did man \"sell\" his wild side to the\nmachines?\n\nworks" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-08-11T12:18:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: A walk on the wild side", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I’ve always been intrigued by the way Cyriaca's story seems to\nanticipate what Severian is later told in the “Key to the Universe”\nchapter of Citadel of the Autarch. In both stories, humanity creates a\nrace of beings that is more perfect than itself. The Hieros can\ntranscend time, the machines have the wildness that humanity has lost.\nIn both stories, the created ultimately remakes, and thereby redeems,\nthe creator. The machines return to us our wildness, the Heiros make us\ninto beings as puissant as themselves.\n\nInterestingly, in both stories the act is described as being as much\nrevenge as it is altruism. Being reborn is painful. (The act, one might\nalmost say, of a Torturer).\n\nIn both stories, the created race is a sort of physical manifestation of\nhumanity's knowledge, learning made flesh. It seems to me that behind\nboth, a specific Wolfean principle can be found:\n\n“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we\nare their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Tony Ellis\nOn-line Editor, PC Format magazine\n01225 442244 x2349\nhttp://www.pcformat.co.uk" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Fusch", "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2000-08-11T21:51:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) A walk on the wild side", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: Michael Andre-Driussi \n\nWell =I= always took it to mean that the people had become rather like\n\"Star Trek\" Vulcans ; favoring \"logic\" in their culture and\nerasing \"non-logic\" (including emotions, grim fairy tales, folk dancing,\nfiction) from their culture." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with this to a certain extent; I always had the impression that \nCyriaca was speaking of a modernist separation of \"thought\" and \"feeling.\" \nStill, I wonder if perhaps the ancient race put away their \"wild things\" \nless from favoring logic than from simple forgetfulness; that is, perhaps \nthey became too utilitarian, too reliant on technology, and then lost touch \nwith art, imagination, and passion. They \"reached the stars, and...bargained \naway all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared \nfor the taste of the pale wind, nor for love or lust, nor to make new songs \nnor to sing old ones, nor any of the other animal things...\" (BotNS, III, \nvi). They became too mechanistic and forgot the spiritual and artistic \ndimension of their lives." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think the story is about the need for a balance of things: a golden rule\nof nothing to excess (where the singleminded pursuit of logic is an\nexcess)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this is right on the mark; the ancient race is set in contrast, \nperhaps, to the zoanthropes, who bargain away their intellect to embrace the \notium and forgetfulness of \"animal things.\" At any rate, considering the \nrole that storytelling and the finding of old stories (the Book of the \nWonders of Urth and Sky, for instance) plays in Severian's narrative, I \ndoubt the condition of the ancients who bargained away their passions is \npositive.\n\nDaniel" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Fusch", "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2000-08-11T22:01:57+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) A walk on the wild side", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Greene, Carlton\" \nGiven this separation, by what means did man \"sell\" his wild side to the\nmachines?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ambiguous...but I took this simply to mean that in creating machines that \nare artificial intelligences and that therefore live and have personalities \n(and \"hearts\"), humanity created beings capable of developing culture, \nfeeling, emotion, of making stories and of telling them, etc. In the race to \ncreate artificial beings that would be \"human,\" mankind did its job too \nwell--or rather, they could not help but make machines that could feel as \nwell as think, though they \"never reckoned with that.\" They made imitations \nof themselves, children who still had the art and imagination the parents \nhad forgotten. Frankenstein creates a monster that has its own humanity and \nis capable of emotion and great passion, though Frankenstein had meant to \ndesign only a tool for his own drive for perfection and glory; the Creature \ncomes to hate its creator both for creating it and for the creator's own \nlack of emotion and sympathy.\n\nDaniel" } ] } ] }