Thanks to everyone who replied to this. You raised a lot of pertinent issues
and I'll pick up on just a few points.
Like Jenne, I also draft on paper a fair amount and I agree that computers
have made the whole area of editing so much more complex. I'm curious to see
how this will change our writing over time.
Amy, Ann and Suzi comment on the technophobia of journalists, writers, and
others who encounter new technologies they have to learn from scratch, and
Ann says of journalists: 'Strange behaviour, as you say, for people whose
livelihoods depend on it. Why?'
I am not a journalist but I wonder whether part of the reason is that the
profession is in the front line for every industrial printing revolution?
Cf. hot metal etc. Are they fearful for their jobs and therefore reluctant?
Annamaria says 'I can also understand people who say they're not done yet
with exploring the toy box they already have. So I suppose I'm saying what
positive reasons do we have for wanting people to get over their
technophobia?'
I guess what I am curious about is the intensity of peoples' distrust of
machines - and beyond that, of androids, robots, anything which appears to
have a non-meat functionality. I think this goes very deep and probably has
roots in Western religion. I understand that attitudes to machines are very
different in the East, for example, where religions like Shinto incorporate
both organic and inorganic phenomena and seem to have taken more easily to
computers and other machines. But my knowledge on this is hazy. Can anyone
contribute more to that discussion?
Sue
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