P3D Re: Alternative content - and more

["John Goodman" <jgood@xxxxxxxx>]

Xal wrote:

> Brian Phillips states the following prescription:
> 
> >The list is about the medium not the message.
> 
> Is that so? Technology separated from content? That would be apalling.
> How about making smart bombs and being fascinated with the technique of 
> 'navigation' as separate from 'where it's going'? (Like the early days at 
> Negroponte's MIT lab with stereoscopic 3D graphics geniuses working on 
> cruise missle guidance...'wow that's a neat imaging technique!')

IMO, technology is morally neutral:  it's the uses of the 
technology that work for good or ill. The same GPS 
system that makes smart bombs accurate is guiding an 
increasing number of drivers to their destinations, saving 
lives of people stranded in remote locations, and so on. 
Makes no difference that the system was first developed 
by and for the military.

99% of this list is either about the "how to" of stereo 
photography, or provides other useful information. No 
guidance, comments or criticism as to the content of the 
images that enrich our lives, only how to most effectively 
capture and present it.  

I read somewhere that in a Nigerian context, the elephant 
dung in Ofili's painting of a Nigerian Virgin Mary is the 
opposite of loathsome. The animals and their excreta are 
revered. Isn't this work of artifice just a recapitulation of 
the age-old conundrum that one person's meat is another 
person's poison? That's why I find the extremes of political 
correctness so stifling (e.g. no Betty Boop mugs in the 
office), as such individuals cannot embrace the variety and 
range of human taste and often seek to impose their 
limitations upon others.

JG