Conference noted::sf

    >> Does technology cause human nature to change over time?
    
    I don't think so.  I tend to agree with Paul Simon's line outta "The
    Boxer" that goes something like "after changes upon changes we are more
    or less the same".
    
    I do believe though that technology causes changes in our culture and
    our outlook that are reflected in the way we react to things, and to
    our expectations of ourselves and each other.  But I don't equate this
    with human nature.
    
    Humans basically believe what they are taught to believe.  And things
    like chauvenism and other forms of bigotry are affected as technology
    breaks down the barriers of ignorance that spawned those beliefs.  In
    the 50's and early 60's it was OK in our society to treat blacks with
    less respect than whites.  But the civil rights movement made more
    people aware that this was wrong.  And so we started getting a
    different message in our schools, churches and homes.  I don't think
    this changed the minds of many adults of the day, only tempered their
    actions and gave their kids a chance to be taught something different.
    And over time this affected society as a whole.
     
    However, that doesn't mean that there are fewer bigots and chauvenists,
    just that they don't have the power over the masses that they used to. 
    There are still plenty of highly placed individuals in the business
    world (including high tech) who believe that women are not equal to
    men, for example, and act accordingly when they can.  But now they have 
    to be careful what they say and do, regardless of how they feel, or
    they face the wrath of the law, or the policies their company has
    adopted to protect the interests of their employees.
    
    But that doesn't change the basic human nature aspect of what we
    believe and feel, only the fact that we are not always free to act on
    those beliefs and feelings.  I think human nature is what it always
    was.  We look out for the interests of ourselves and those we love
    first, in whatever way our society and technological culture will allow
    us to.  Everything else is just window dressing.
    
    Human nature is a very fundamental concept, and not easy to define.  It
    is what has allowed us to survive and evolve as a species.  If it
    changes at all, I have to believe it happens so slowly as to be
    immeasureable.  Technological changes occur rapidly, and affect the way
    we think and act, not necessarily the way we feel.
    
    ... Bob
    

    Re .0
    
    As .1 said, it depends on what you mean by human nature.  The raw
    psychological hardware and firmware we are born with hasn't changed due
    to technology (YET -- one field of technology is genetic engineering),
    but technology can make such drastic changes to culture that, if you
    didn't know the behavior was learned, you could easily think it
    belonged to a different species.
    
    Someone (I forget if it was .0 or .1) gave the change in the work
    environment as the biggest social change due to technology.  The shift
    off brute force made it more feasible to regard women as equals.
    
    Not to make an issue out of it, I disagree that this was the biggest
    change.  I think mediccal technology has made a much bigger change,
    though less visibly.
    
    Like power machinery, it has acted in favor of women.  The lower infant
    death rate and improved obstetrical methods means women don't have to
    spend nearly so much time pregnant, or die so often in childbirth.  A
    segment of the population that spends a great deal of its life sick,
    and dies early, has a hard time competing with the rest.  (It is only
    in the last century or so that women have begun living longer than men. 
    Further back, you find the records full of men who marry and bury three
    or four wives.)
    
    Medical technology has also acted in favor of children.  A century
    back, children were chattle, property.  Whatever the laws may have said
    or inadvertently implied, they had almost no rights in practice.  After
    infancy, they were expected to be miniature adults, only they could be
    slapped around with impunity and were.  (Of course, I simplify.  Not
    all 19th-century parents were ogres.  Many 20th-century parents are.
    But the 19th-century STANDARDS tolerated much that we would regard as
    ogrish.)
    
    One reason for this callous behavior was that children HAD to be held
    lightly, because they were very likely going to die.  You couldn't
    afford to get too attached to this tiresome little animal.
    
    In general, the fact that we have so much longer life expectancies
    makes our lives more valuable.  I predict that, if the life expectancy
    grows dramatically, we will see a corresponding increase in tender
    feelings about its loss.
    
    And of course medical technology has caused the population explosion
    that causes famines and political unrest, and threatens the planet's
    ecology.
    
    I don't really care WHICH technical change people think is the biggest
    in its effect on our lives, but they DO change our lives, right down to
    the deepest emotional levels.  Look at the differences in myth,
    religion, symbolism, and politics between a hunter-gatherer culture and
    an agricultural culture.  Now that I think of it, agriculture might vie
    with medicine for largest impact.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .2
    
    Medical Tech. has definetly impacted our lives the most. It has forced
    us to examine our life styles, with an eye to longer life, and then
    need to deal with limited income due to longer retirements. It makes us 
    plan futher into the lives of the elderly to insure them the basic care
    with dignity they deserve. Think how far we have come in 89 years! We
    went from a culture who used horses as transportation to exploring the
    next door star! The medical advances have been shocking. We have far to
    go, to grow. I sometimes think that our emotions will never catch up
    with our intellect. We are forced to overcome problems every day that
    just a few short years ago would have seemed impossible. SF enables us
    to accept change easier. We tend to be more open in our thinking,
    thereby tending to routinely believe in the impossible being overcome. 
                                     

Greetings,

     I'm not sure human nature (defined here as genetic predisposition toward
certain behaviours) changes as technology develops. I think it adapts to the
technology or adapts the technology to its own purposes, but I'm not sure human
nature itself changes.
    The field I used to work in was Animal Behaviour and some current 
speculative thinking from that field might illustrate:

     If you read some of Dave Barry's funny articles on human sexuality
(he suggests that the time women would like to spend at foreplay, lovemaking, 
and lingering in the afterglow is the same amount of time men think could be 
devoted to foreplay, lovemaking, afterglow, and building a garage.) you might 
see what some folks in AnBe regard as an essential adaption on the part of 
male humans. 
     They quote the figures: the average pre-1700's woman died in childbirth 
with every fifth child (in some parts of the world this is unfortunately still 
true), which meant that the lives of women (contrary to current reality)
were ordinarily far shorter than those of men (whose lives only averaged 
between 40-45 years anyway). So, the preservation of the species demanded that 
males Not become too attached to a single woman and that men choose mates 
based upon appearance (which might be indicative of the woman's health). Women 
on the other hand would want to choose mates based upon status and wealth (which
might indicate a better chance for their children to survive and reproduce).
     Now, granting that some of this thinking is villified by people who see
anything that sounds like genetic pre-determinism as fascistic, sexist, and 
racist, there are folks who say that the high rates of divorce in the developed 
world (higher than in the developing world) are the result of this 
predisposition on the part of males to not spend more than a dozen or so years 
with any one woman. They say people were not meant to stay married for a 
lifetime, that human programming is not designed for that circumstance.
     If that were true, the fact that women live longer now because of 
obstetrical technology hasn't changed male (or female) human nature. It has 
just forced human nature to adapt (via higher divorce rates) to the results of
technological improvements in health care.

     There is also an idea floating around in AnBe that the human brain is 
geared for, and expects, a certain amount of excitement. This expectation of
excitement, some say, was the result of having to fend off the brutal beasts 
and wrest food from a harsh environment for so many millenia. They say that the 
brain requires this excitation and is not provided with it by tame, danger-free 
civilized life. This is why, they say, that drug abuse is a more of a problem in
our time (the last few thousand years), and stress related illness, and spousal 
and child abuse, etc. They say that paleolithic life provided enough 
unpredictability and sorrow and struggle to satisfy a brain designed to handle 
that kind of strife. But these days we have to rely on technology to provide 
the excitation. Brains demand stimulation, and if they don't get it from 
chasing cavebears or discovering new uses of fire, then they get it by sticking 
noxious powders up the nose. So, in this case, maybe technology has come to 
satisfy artificially an urge that technology forbid the natural satisfaction 
of. (But human nature remained the same.)

     I realize the ideas above are currently politically unpopular and the
folks who espouse them are calumniated all the time. But I still think they're
interesting. E.O.Wilson had a bucket of water dumped on his head at a 
scientific conference not long ago. He made the mistake of suggesting that 
women were better adapted for child rearing (not least because they possess 
pendulous child-feeding devices). Some people said that he was trying to 
justify the oppression of women: behind the cradle, behind the stove, behind 
the husband. 

     What's interesting to me about this kind of research, tho, is seeing 
technology's attempts to reveal what it is that technology may change about 
human nature and what it won't. The Minnesota twins-reared-apart studies, for 
example. 
     What they've been finding is
that certain behaviours that we had always thought of as purely environmentally
mediated (nurture not nature) actually seem to have a genetic component:
things like sense of humour, sartorial preferences, even specific phobias. 
Twins raised in Israel and Germany who wore exactly the same rare kind of
five pocket shirt and thought the same kinds of practical jokes were funny.
Female twins separated at birth, raised in England and the US, who had exactly 
the same phobia of a particular kind of snake hanging from a low branch of a
tree (but no problem if the snake were on the ground). Two guys raised in
Argentina and the US who used exactly the same extremely rare brand of Swedish
toothpaste. 
     Part of what's interesting in that work is the role of technology in 
peeling back the layers of the human onion to see what parts technology is 
likely to affect and what parts seem pre-coded. Some of what they find is 
bound to be politically unpopular. But I think we'll adapt.



Bandicoot

    Re .4
    
    For the third time, it depends on what you mean by human nature.  You
    are the first to offer a definition (genetic predisposition toward
    certain behaviors).  It sounds good, and I agree that the genetics
    haven't changed much, if at all, in the last 6000 years.  But even the
    instances you site show how much our *lives* (if not exactly our
    *nature*) change in response to technology.
    
    By the way, women's anatomical specialization for child-rearing doesn't
    seem to apply after weaning.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

	One of the areas of Human behavior/nature which seems to have been
affected by our burgeoning technology, the increased efficacy of our medical
technology, at least  indirectly, is the way humans mature, and the number of
years of `nurture' required/expended before the child leaves the nest.
Anthropologists guess-timate our pre-historic cousins experienced puberty at
about eight/nine years of age, considered adult at 12/13, and dead by twenty+.

	Over the centuries, this has evolved to the current situation wherein
the onset of puberty at age 14/15 is not considered particularly retarded,
children often remain with their parents through college (or are supported by
same) age 22/28+, and people assume they will more than likely see age 80 and
beyond.
	
	The longer learning curve necessary to absorb the information needed to
function in a more high-tech society is one of the reasons for the above, but
it is interesting to note the side effects: later maturation, delayed
acceptance of responsibility, etc. etc.

Mike J

    re .5:
    
    > By the way, women's anatomical specialization for child-rearing doesn't
    > seem to apply after weaning.
    
    There was a book published quite awhile ago titled "The Descent of
    Woman", a kind of feminist view of human evolution (answering Desmond
    Morris' _The_Naked_Ape_". Later expanded into "The Aquatic Ape")
    
    Anyway, one of the interesting theses presented tried to account for
    "male pattern baldness", or actually women's lack of (cranial)
    baldness. The suggestion being that since the early hominids were
    spending most of their time in neck deep water, the longer stronger
    hair of the woman would provide nice "safety ropes" for the infants
    and toddlers.
    
    The point being that _if_ the thesis is true, then there is at least
    one female anatomical specialization that would be useful to child
    rearing after weaning.
    
    An interesting book, not very good science but an interesting alternate
    view, that tries to account for alot of anatomical anomolies (such as:
    the nose, tear ducts, fatty buttocks, lack of body hair, upright
    posture, speech, the almost primal feeling that snakes are slimey and 
    spiders are evil, fatty breasts, frontal sex, etc.)
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /
     

    When I think of human nature I don't see technology changing us that
    much. I think of all the complex and emotional situations humans
    still get themselves into, is a love triangle today much different
    than one a hundred years ago? Don't people still love and hate with
    passions that aren't stopped by the fact that dishwashers exist and
    women work outside the home?

    A few months back I read a newspaper article where the subject
    concerned the worry of one NASA official that mixed sex teams on
    long missions might cause serious problems if people involved
    started delveloping sexual relationships. The worry didn't center on
    single people but rather couples that might break up and reform
    during the mission. Does this seem a reasonable worry? Afterall, we
    have all this technology, can't it stop a spaceship from turning into
    Payton Place? Perhaps I'm being a bit facetious here but I think you
    can see what I'm getting at. The outside trappings are different but
    people still react to each other in a fundimental way. liesl

    Changes in emotional patterns may be more cyclical than progressive,
    but they do happen.  SF (and NASA, for that matter) usually assumes a
    generic USA WASP '50s gamut of passions, but there is plenty of
    evidence that "love triangles" and "couples" do not always work the
    same way.
    
    To borrow your facetious example, I don't think that Peyton Place could
    have existed a hundred years ago, in a commune in the mid-'60s, or in
    China, for example.  I agree that a change in outside trappings does
    not necessarily have any influence on human relations, but that doesn't
    imply that human relations are immutable.
    
    (To borrow your other facetious example, after "The Empire Strikes
    Back", I had high hopes of seeing the following scene in the sequel:
    
    	Luke:  Is it true, Obi-wan Kenobie!?!?  Is Darth Vader really my
    		father!?!?!
    	O-w K:  Yes, Luke, he is.
    	Luke:  Golly drat it to heck!!  Why didn't you tell me!?!?
    	O-w K:  Because I... I am your mother, Luke.  )
    
    Ray

    I am not sure "human nature" can be adequately defined.  Ignoring the
    difference in time from one century to the next, let us look at human
    cultures that exist right now.
    
    We have a typical (whatever that means) US citizen.
    
    And throw in someone from Japan.
    
    And the Middle East.
    
    And a bushman from southern Africa (like the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy")
    
    
    And I am sure an anthropologist could go on for pages.
    
    What do all these people's cultures really have in common?  What would
    be polite in one could be a grevious insult in another.  One note
    talked of "love triangles" and such remaining the same.  Well, in each of
    these cultures men and women treat each other in completely different
    ways.  I am not sure I understand the term "human nature" as it is
    applied here.
    
    				=ELB=

    Re .8 (leisl):
    
    >A few months back I read a newspaper article where the subject
    >concerned the worry of one NASA official that mixed sex teams on
    >long missions might cause serious problems if people involved
    >started developing sexual relationships.
     
    I think the worry should exist if they _didn't_ start developing
    sexual relationships.
    
    One problem with a really long-term mission is that there are only
    so many ways people can interact, and, barring physiological problems,
    it's difficult to imagine that sexual relationships wouldn't develop.
    Make that a long enough mission, and the same might occur on single-
    sex-crew missions.
    
    ... Unless the crew was composed of nothing but preteens who get
    back before any of 'em reach puberty.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Re: last few
    
    I can imagine some changes concerning technology and love, and I think
    I can site some real ones.
    
    Take these long-term space missions.  Suppose NASA decides that
    single-sex mission teams and romantic entanglements are both
    politically unacceptable.  Suppose an SFish medical advance -- some
    drug or enzyme that harmlessly neutralizes sex drive, an "artemisiac,"
    the opposite of an aphrodisiac.  (The key word is "harmless."  It's
    already possible to screw up sex drives with injections of steroids
    etc.)
    
    Now an author can go to town with such a possibility.  For most well-
    behaved crew-members, such a drug is a relief; it just makes it easier
    for them to live up to the original good intentions they had at
    blast-off.  Introduce a villain who regards sex as a full-time
    avocation.  Under the drug, he doesn't want sex, but he wants to want
    it.  He therefore contrives to skip his doses and tries to slip fake
    drug to people he deems likely partners.
    
    In a traditional love-triangle, we often have a conflict between calm
    judgement and passion.  Here we have complicated that conflict by
    introducing a layer of technical control.  We have also made sex a
    matter of judgement (on the part of the villain) as well as passion.
    
    Casting a glance backward, remember what was said in earlier notes
    about cultural changes due to changes in life-expectancy and rates of
    maturation.  Remember all those passion-inflamed knights and ladies of
    the Middle Ages?  You always assumed they were adults, didn't you? 
    Well, they were, by their own standards, but they were frequently only
    sixteen years old.  No wonder they act like they have gonads where
    their brains should be.
    
    And don't the relaxations of sexual codes in the 60s and 70s reflect,
    at least in part, the improved technology of contraception?
    
    Technology may not change "human nature" (the predispositions we are
    born with) until we get to genetic engineering, but as I said before,
    it can affect just about everything else concerning human life.  Not
    CONTROL it, or make it unambiguously better or worse, necessarily, but
    affect it.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I am not so sure that "advances" in sociological ideals and mores
    have changed simply because of an advance of technology.  For example,
    (and I guess one subject I am most comfortable dealing with), take
    the sociological advancement of women, on the work and home front.
    
    If we accept that technological advancements made it possible for
    women to join the workforce in unprecedented numbers, rather than
    staying home and having babies, then we would have to assume that
    they are only working now because the plow got better (easier to
    push,or whatever).
    
    If the social aspect did not advance at all, then that woman wouldn't
    be out pushing the New Improved Plow anymore than she would be pushing
    the old, slow plow--somewhere, some woman had to decide she was
    going to go push a plow, period.
    
    (okay, not a scientific arguement, and probably not as glib or slick
    as it could be, but I think I am getting the point across)
    
    Women did not come into their own right (such as it is) because
    technology allowed them do.  They came into their own right because
    they, as a social force, changed.  Technology just advances on it's
    own--and while it does have some impact on social change and
    development, it is not (in this opinion) changing that which was
    not already there.  Women realized that it was okay to go push a
    plow, old and slow or new and improved--it was all right to be a
    policeman, accountant, pole-walker, whatever--not because the guns,
    adding machines and telephone poles improved or the technology
    surrounding them, but most likely because of strictly social
    forces--the realization that there was more to life than breeding
    like bunnies, loss of a husband in a war, perhaps, to make them
    see that they must gain some income earning skills of their own,
    and so on.  As this did not happen overnight, one can always expect
    social resistance (how often do we, in our own lives, lament change?
     "Things weren't like that when *I* was such and such an age....").
    I don't think someone said, "Okay, the plow is easier to push,
    therefore the weaker sex can now join us and push it".  And yes,
    I know that many women back in them Olden days really did push plows,
    but it's a good analogy.
    
    As for the spaceflight dilemma (if that is what one can call it)
    I agree with Earl (I think it was) who said that if sexual relations
    did not develop, that would be more unusual than the reversal. 
    Then again, one would assume that developments or not,the
    professionalism of the astronauts would suggest that perhaps such
    things are rather nitty in the whole spectrum of the job.  I imagine
    that lovers or not lovers, the job would get done--opposite sex
    or not.  Blah blah blah....and so forth.   :)
    
    Of course, it's that dilemma that probably stopped the ERA from
    going through in a big way......(editorial comment; when the ERA
    passes and we're all truly equal, then I'll be willing to say things
    have really changed, and that has nothing to do with technology).
    
    Regards,
    
    kim

    Here's a really SF concept for you -- what if it dawned on all
    humankind that no matter WHAT "predispositions" and "anatomical
    adaptations" theorists of all stripes come up with to explain the
    history of humanity or their favorite prejudice of the moment --
    what if it dawned on everybody that ANYBODY can now CHOOSE what
    they want to do, how they want to be in many ways never thought
    possible in the past!  And that the IMPLICATIONS of those theories
    (such as women should STILL be the primary childrearers because
    they have breasts and long hair (!??) ) are invalid artifacts of
    outmoded thinking!
    
    Boy am I sick of all the retrospective theorizing that suggests
    or says outright that women should get out of the work force and
    leave the jobs for the men!  (flame off)
    
    Could we maybe PLEASE look at something besides gender dependent
    roles in society as examples in this topic!?
    
    Thank you very much!
    
    Sherry

    Re .14
    
    Ahem.  Of the thirteen responses prior to your own, only four even
    mentioned the idea of gender specializations (.4, .5, .7, and .13).  At
    least three of those were somewhat or wholly negative about the idea.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .12 (Earl):
    
    >..................... Suppose an SFish medical advance -- some
    >drug or enzyme that harmlessly neutralizes sex drive, an "artemisiac,"
    >the opposite of an aphrodisiac.
     
    Small point: the opposite of an aphrodesiac is called an "anaphrodesiac,"
    according to the texts I've read.  Some herbs (e.g., Scullcap) seem
    to have this property in limited degree.
    
    Re .13 (Kim):
    
    >I am not so sure that "advances" in sociological ideals and mores
    >have changed simply because of an advance of technology.
     
    Well, staying away from gender-based issues, here's one.  Once a
    visitor to Athens was chatting with one of the more famous Greeks,
    I forget which, but say, Aristotle.  The visitor said something
    on the order of, "You speak so passionately about the dignity of
    Man, yet you have slaves."  
    
    "Aristotle" responded, "When our wheels can spin by themselves and
    our looms can weave by themselves, then we'll have no slaves."
    
    Well, technology took a long time to catch up, but now looms do
    weave by themselves and fabrics are generated without human intervention.
    With cheap mechanical labor, slaves become a financial liability.
    [One strange exception: the cotton gin.  Cotton was becoming difficult
    to raise because it was so difficult to have the slaves pick seeds
    and boll pieces out by hand; the gin broke that bottleneck, so it
    became still affordable to have the slaves still raise and harvest
    the cotton.]  Eventually, slavery has become disreputable, through
    most cultures on the planet.
    
    >Then again, one would assume that developments or not,the
    >professionalism of the astronauts would suggest that perhaps such
    >things are rather nitty in the whole spectrum of the job.  I imagine
    >that lovers or not lovers, the job would get done--opposite sex
    >or not. ...
     
    If they're sufficiently motivated, probably.  But it could lead
    to tensions that _might_ jeopardize a mission.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re: .15
    
    Just because mention of sex roles is not explicit or is discussed
    as a negative does not mean that the idea is not implicit in other
    notes and in conversations of this type in general.  Surely we can
    find other examples of technological influence on society (I'm not
    sure technology influences VALUES) besides ANYTHING having to do
    with gender, pro or con.  And some of the flames were aimed at the
    THEORISTS, not the noters who discussed them.  As one of the few
    token females around here I really do get tired of the subtle
    "innocent" and unacknowledged sexism that underlies a lot of
    assumptions about both sf and technology.  I'm sure most men don't
    even see it, and probably would consider me an alarmist for mentioning
    it.  Similarly some people think ethnic jokes are perfectly ok becasue
    they "don't REALLY mean it" -- then when they get annoyed with someone
    who's name ends in 'ski, they angrily mutter about the "dumb Pollock".
    Consider my remarks an attempt at consciousness raising -- not finger
    pointing.
    
    And, back on track, I don't think basic VALUES are impacted much
    by technology -- but maybe personal aspirations and expectations
    are.  Something a bit different, I think.  People who are "successful"
    in a given culture can to a large extent be classed by a correlation
    between the level of technology and their career.  In third-world
    cultures, you are successful and "wealthy" if you are a landowner
    with cattle and a big family of free help, etc.  In low tech cultures,
    factory owners and similar types were rich and successful.  In
    high-tech cultures, it's the people who manage the technology --
    Wall Street types who manipulate data and money, owners of companies
    that develop and sell technology, etc.
    
    Undeveloped concept -- does it scan?
    
    Sherry

    I'm just starting my intro anthropology course so I should have more
    to say on this later in the semester.

    Values vary so widely through different cultures that it's hard to
    say what might change given the right push. However, the space
    faring societies (or maybe I should say potential space faring
    societies) are of indo-european variety right now. It's unlikely that
    enough African Bushmen are going to infuse NASA with their version
    of values to make a difference. Even should a Bushman be brought to
    this point he would have been immersed in our culture to get there.

    At any rate, there are some things standard across all cultures. To
    survive as a culture you must have food,shelter and reproduction.
    Technology does affect those things I admit, I just can't relate to
    the idea of men and women not having emotional responses to each
    other. liesl
    

    Some more thoughts:
    
    Re. 16 (Steve, I think)
    
    I understand the points you are making, but I still contend that
    technology is NOT the predominant force for social change.  It can
    be a catalyst, or a sounding board for changes of social mores,
    but simply because looms now spin themselves isn't the greatest
    of reasons why there is no slavery.  At least I will not think so
    without a bit more proof.
    
    re. 15 and .17 (Sherry)
    
    I suspect I am one of the people who were using the gender cases
    that got you to flame.  The reasons I used the examples I did is
    because I can most appreciate that kind of example, being female,
    and also because I was responding to previous comments.  It's still
    a social issue, even if it's an oft-discussed one, and probably
    one of the few I can address with some intelligence.
    
    kim

    Re .19 (Kim):
    
    >I understand the points you are making, but I still contend that
    >technology is NOT the predominant force for social change.  It can
    >be a catalyst, or a sounding board for changes of social mores,
    >but simply because looms now spin themselves isn't the greatest
    >of reasons why there is no slavery.  At least I will not think so
    >without a bit more proof.
     
    Well, naturally, this kind of discussion is what Lucy van Pelt
    (_Peanust_) calls "opinionation."  Let's go back to the early
    primitives: little society, mostly every "man" [= family unit] for
    himself.  Then, tribes, and (shortly thereafter) the division of
    labor.  By the time early kingdoms had arrived, the structure was
    that some had to have others do the "grunt work"; hence, slaves.
    But slaves are a rough commodity: they have to be housed, fed, and
    at least somewhat clothed.  If sick, they have to be tended.  Thus,
    slaves were an economic liability.  
    
    When devices were developed that could allow spinning wheels, etc.,
    to be powered reliably by other than muscle power _and did so
    economically_, then slaves became a significantly high liability
    that not having them was culturally more desirable than having them;
    hence, slaves disappeared.
    
    One point is that technology can help induce change: increased
    communication, for instance, can elevate awareness of conditions
    one only would have heard about well after the fact before; thast
    can cause unrest in oppressed lands.  The impact of technology
    on culture changes desires, and hence, levels of importance.
    
    Ultimately, over generations, this affects cultures and their perspectives.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Remember that ideas like insurance, stocks, money and wills are
    also inventions, as are techniques of organization.
    
    Thus "Kingdom" is a technological invention, and a huge change
    in peoples' lives (mostly for the better when contrasted with 
    anarchy or a sequence of tyrannies).
    
    Money lets you save; savings let you provide for bad times on
    your own; connections to others are less necessary; you can thus
    choose your friends and be more of an individual in a society
    with a money economy than in one where you have to stay on good
    terms with close relatives for your life's sake.
    
    Or think of the concept of "Law", and how much it modifies life
    and motivates people.
    
    			-John Bishop

    I think WWII had more of an effect in putting women into the workforce
    than did any technological changes.  Someone had to run the farms and
    factories while the men were in Europe and the Pacific doing battle. 
    It wasn't that the work became easier to do (I can understand how a
    comment like that might get Sherry worked up), it was that there was
    noone else to do it.
    
�    One point is that technology can help induce change: increased
�    communication, for instance, can elevate awareness of conditions
�    one only would have heard about well after the fact before; 
    
    The Vietnam War is an extremely good example of this.  Look at how much
    the attitude of fighting a war changed between WWII and Vietnam once
    reporters and TV cameras were able to bring the war directly into
    people's homes as it was happening.

�    Look at how much
�    the attitude of fighting a war changed between WWII and Vietnam once
�    reporters and TV cameras were able to bring the war directly into
�    people's homes as it was happening.
    
    They might also have been different sorts of wars.  (: >,)
    
    The 1812 war between the USA and England seems to have been at least as
    unpopular as Vietnam was, and in that case there was even some obvious
    danger to the USA. 
    
    A comparison between the Korean and Vietnamese wars might be worthwhile
    but it should take international pressure and general cultural trends
    into account as well as technological changes.

    Some thoughts about how "human nature", or at least attitudes, can change:
    
      the Romans and Greeks regarded the killing of new-born children as
    perfectly OK
    
      there's a book called "The Mountain People" which describes an African 
    tribe where it si literally every man for himself - if you kill an animal
    you try to eat it all before your wife and kids get to it.
    
    
    I'm sure you can see how advances of technology would help in the
    second case - the problem as it stood was shortage of food. In the first
    example, ancient methods of contraception were 100% ineffective: find a
    safe method of stopping babies being conceived and you change that 
    attitude.
    
    One more case: I'm sure a lot of you have read "Bug Jack Barron". Without
    giving away the story, one of the things that bothered me most about the
    book was everyone's immediate acceptance of immortality as a wholly good
    thing. My feeling is that if we found a new technology to make us (almost)
    immortal, a whole slew of attitudes and presumptions would have to change,
    from views of illness to religion to personal relationships to ambitions
    ... even the Meaning of Life itself. I'm not sure I'd want to be immortal
    but then again, if everyone else was, I sure as hell wouldn't want to die!
    
    (Incidentally, there's a load of other stuff on this problem - lots of 
    philosophy, and a fair bit of ancient Greek mythology & literature - so
    it's no new problem. Maybe what's new is the technology aspect?)
    
    Chris

    re .24, _The_Mountain_People_
    
    The book is by Colin Turnbull (Trunbull?).  The tribe, called
    the "Ik", were dying out due to the Kenyan government's taking
    of their hunting grounds to form a national park.  Most of the
    author's photographs have captions like this: "Abaz is roofing
    a traditional hut.  He died of starvation two months later".
    
    Their behaviour under more benign conditions might have been
    more generous.
    			-John Bishop

    Well, maybe...
    
    I haven't read the book, I must admit, so I didn't get the context (that's
    what you get from talking to anthropologists).
    
    But isn't the point that under extraordinary circumstances what we regard
    as human nature doesn't hold up? That if you push someone far enough out 
    of their natural environment, the nice liberal theories of respect for 
    other people just don't hold up? (Another example of this are the cases
    of shipwreck victims killing and eating the cabin boy to survive)
    
    Technology does push us out of our comfortable, familiar surroundings,
    at least sometimes - to take an example I used earlier, what's more 
    comfortable than believing death is final? Or: it's far easier to kill
    someone by pushing a button than by strangling them by hand. Technology
    just produces a lot of more threatening (or less "benign") situations.
    
    Chris

    re: -.1
    I think by your own argument, the concept of human nature is a fiction.
    With the people eating the cabin boy, also ranks the charge of the
    light brigade (certain suicide for the cause of duty) and the people
    staying aboard the titanic (certain suicide for moral cause).
    
    To return to the original topic, I think if one defines the term
    human nature as the cultural patterns of thought, technology changes
    it all the time. For example, when movies first came out publicly,
    many people who observed them reacted to them as if they were real.
    And the later concept of "news", especially backed up by newsreels,
    suggested as you see it so it is. Many people do not hold this true
    any more. Is a videotape or film proof of a crime? (see "the stuntman"
    for the answer.) And these are basic perceptual assumptions.
    
    Let's talk about something more basic: humans are divine inventions
    of a benevolent creator. True or false. Many of us would consider
    this false. However, a thousand years ago to answer false to such
    a statement would have gotten you burned at the stake-- and people
    would have considered it a natural thing. To consider otherwise
    was unnatural. Yet, technology-- if you can consider Darwin and
    Copernicus technology-- were instrumental in bringing this about.
    
 steven popkes
    

    re .27, Charge of the Light Brigade:
    
    Not only were there many survivors, it wasn't obvious at the
    time to the average Brigade member that a charge would be suicide.
    
    See Cecil Woodham Smith's _The_Reason_Why_.
    
    			-John Bishop

    Okay. So I don't know the charge of the light brigade. It doesn't
    invalidate what I said however. You know the paradigm. You can fit
    your own examples.
    
    steve
    

        In my anthropology class I've learned a few things that have
    affected my opinion on this.

    One thing that seems clear after looking at several cultures is
    that people adapt their culture to be what they need at the time.
    Therefore, any change, technological or not, can affect the culture
    and change the way people act. Is our nature reflected in our actions?

    What is not yet clear to me is whether certain ideas are
    consistant. By this, I mean that even though the meaning of what is
    honorable may change is there still always the concept of honor?

    Maybe this is why we all read SF. It gives us practice thinking
    about the moral dilemmas of our future (or maybe we are all just
    escapists, :*)) liesl