Ursula Franklin—technology thinker, physicist, metallurgist, Quaker, and committed pacifist—is one of the people whose work I return to the most when things are bad.
I tried to write about her great short checklist for making decisions about technology and I ended up writing a whole post about just the first item, which the real foundational one.
https://www.wrecka.ge/ursulas-list/
"The viability of technology, like democracy, depends in the end on the practice of justice…"
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(I also meant to post this yesterday, but a kid-virus intervened. It's better for the delay.)
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@kissane interestingly to me, the foundational principle of the Bahai faith is Justice. " O SON OF SPIRIT! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes."
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@kissane and thank you so much for your lovely post. It stirred my heart.
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@kissane this's fantastic, ta
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@kissane That's a beautiful piece.
Thank you.
I want to listen to the lectures now.
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@funnymonkey @kissane available right here on archive.org, fetched from the CBC website some years ago:
https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-of-technology
Add them to your podcast app with
https://archive.org/download/the-real-world-of-technology/podcast.xml
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1989-cbc-massey-lectures-the-real-world-of-technology-1.2946845
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@fluidlogic @funnymonkey (They're also linked from the post itself, in a couple of places.)
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@kissane Thanks for sharing this! I am a Quaker who has adored Ursula Franklin's lectures and writing for years and is planning to do a second hour at my meeting about her life in a few weeks, I may borrow this to share! Incidentally, I have found many American Friends are totally unfamiliar with her, which is a huge part of my motivation for trying to change that!
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@kissane thank you for this piece, and I hope your kid is ok!
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@sakhavi Thank you! And she’s doing great ❤️
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@kissane "There’s no way to reduce fear through means that make the burden on others greater" is indeed an uncompromising position. As an engineer who has been trained to think in terms of tradeoffs, it's one I'm not yet convinced of. Do you have any pointers within her great volume of work that can get me convinced faster?
No worries if not. This is interesting stuff, I will likely poke my way through it regardless.
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@twifkak I’d start with The Real World of Technology. I included two points in the post about this as well, bc there are always trade-offs—she’s talking about working out which things we refuse to trade.
The bit toward the end about the negotiable and the non/negotiable is crucial here, and somewhere in the post I talked about using an accurate sense of the needs of the most vulnerable to draw boundaries for trade-offs. (Which is to say, shifting terror to someone else isn’t a fix.)
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@kissane great essay.
Fear and dehumanization of communities who are othered pave the way for abusive technological advancement. These groups are placed in protection black holes and become testing grounds for this tech. They face the biggest threats from states and power regardless of who is in office: from migrants at borders and incarcerated people in prisons, to apartheid systems. Once these approaches have been tested on those living in the margins, it is then expanded to other segments of the population."
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@jdp23 I had not seen this, thank you! My media diet this week has been—a mess.
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@kissane 📢📢📢
"'Peace is the absence of fear. Peace is the presence of justice. Because of the work that all of us have done, we are very clear that peace, in fact, is a consequence. Peace, as it was defined in 1936 by R.B. Gregg, “is a by-product of the persistent application of social truth and justice and the strong and intelligent application of love.'”
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@kissane yes yes yes
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@kissane Wonderful essay! Thanks for sharing this interesting mind
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@kissane
I am immediately reminded of the #Indigenous principle I have heard of centering the needs of the most vulnerable: elderly, the very yough, the disabled. Because if they're taken care of, •everybody• is taken care of.
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@kissane
"A modest list, though bigger on the inside than the outside." Indeed. Thanks for the appetizing introducton to Ursula Franklin. Nourishment we can all use.
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@kissane damn she was ahead of her time by a LOT
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@kissane bookmarked, somehow actually came back to read it, now planning to read the full length works you discuss. Really nice intro, thank you!
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@kissane thank you! I did not know her before you toot. :)
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@kissane An incredible woman. Thanks for posting about her. It encouraged me to go and learn more. Some more about her life here: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ursula-franklin
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@kissane These lectures are great.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1989-cbc-massey-lectures-the-real-world-of-technology-1.2946845
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@edwiebe Right?
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@kissane Ha! You got me. Illich, Foucault, Ostrom, Alexander. Now I am curious to read more of Ursula Franklin. Thank you for introducing. Great quote at the end of your post. Do you happen to know if Franklin and Illich ever met? Or knew of each other? Perceived each other's works?
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@bicipoiesis She quotes him in TRWoT and I think elsewhere as well, and they met, but weren’t friends afaik. The Illich scholar and former CBC guy (a friend and colleague of Franklin’s) David Cayley has some context:
https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/2019/1/16/ivan-illich-as-an-esoteric-writer
My own totally external sense is that Franklin’s generosity as a epistemic roamer was not always reciprocated.
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@kissane I'll have to get the book or listen to the lectures. Cayley had a series of talks with Illich which I think also were broadcasted by CBC. Later published as a book "The rivers north of the future". I like it because it gives a good introduction to Illich's thinking.
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@bicipoiesis I should listen to those—I’ve read Illich over the years and have kind of mixed feelings, but I think he got into some really important zones.
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@kissane thank you for writing this
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@djfiander Thank you for reading it!
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@kissane i really appreciated that post. I've kept a copy of her Massey Lectures on my phone for over 7 years now, it's a touchstone for me.
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