The Cult of Information
Toolan, David
and politics, no One Hundred Years of This Supreme - just like the rest of us - premise, one he obviously shares, is that Solitude fantastic circus for readers of all produces powerful,...
...What books, Aquarian politics seems to coin- ling examples of each sort of abuse - all needs to be stressed at this point, in the cide - for very different reasons - with fulfillments of Norbert Wiener's fear that face of the mystification of megatrendthe "Reagan revolution" in its attack on cybernetics would fall "into the wrong ers and computer enthusiasts like MIT's big government and in its hero-worship hands...
...Original...
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...An international communion of tation...
...Or call spiritual roots, she became one of Paris's (711) 675-3862...
...tion and poverty in the wake of the 1917 munities...
...By Helene Iswill ever encompass...
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...So much for prelude and setting for the current book, which is a timely demythologization of an age of faith in the silicon chip...
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...No more than the re- understand flower children and SDS clopedia's entries under "Paraguay" and cording author can the supreme dictator (maybe), but that in reviving, for in"Francia...
...Workshop: June 22-27, 1986...
...More Commonweal, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...City, State, Zip That's right...
...It can also invade privacy, written on a word processor, and makes nor a narcissistic ego trip but a middle- subvert democratic values, disemploy, fascinating use of computerized data class revolt against massification and feed delusions of power and control, and banks...
...America, she eked out a living, writing Hour cassette: $6.50...
...HEAlff.l...
...tananda and Thomas Merton...
...But Helene Isthan three times...
...He dic- the present book - Roszak's hostility to tity and control (including self-control...
...For the price of the From Roszak's view anyway, it's a story images by which we orient ourselves...
...NATIONAL BESTSELLER--Z Sample: question where our The TAM [ultra-intelligent ma- society Ls going DM Wme ,&w t .S Si ~ir ic§ ~ chine] will enable us to solve any ---J...
...conveys a Powerful As if sheer volume of data without qual- moral urgency...
...I They started out with solid countercultural credentials, firm believers in an "electronic populism...
...The iconoclastic against what Lewis Mumford called the "pentagon of power" - the nationstate, mass mechanization, one-way Commonweal's styles of management, and the consumer paradise promised by mass-marketers...
...Church Bytes, Inc...
...Which is why he has pursued the more The abdication of judgment seasoned Hair generation as it moved (with side trips to psychokinesis, THE CULT OF INFORMATION Awakenings, and the Romantic critics of apocalypticism, and Tarot) from LSD THE FOLKLORE OF COMPUTERS AND industrial modernization - Blake, and Marcusean politics to Swami MukTHE TRUE ART OF THINKING Wordsworth, Goethe...
...If there is more to it than action to save whales and seals, and I hope there is, it hasn't shown up yet at NOW IN PAPERBACK the national level - except maybe in Gary Hart's "new ideas...
...I do not speak to myself...
...economy, he indicted urban-industrial sed first the shock, then the mainstream- However deafened we were when such dominance and bigness as such - as ing, of sixties populist movements in the ideas took the form of blocking commut- inimical to the wellbeing of the planet culture...
...tated most of this novel...
...Above all, mere data- librarians, Roszak hands out this bit of hands of the people - by giving them gathering, at whatever high speed, must advice to populist change-agents who access to data otherwise inaccessible to be distinguished from master ideas - may be tempted to hook into an expen- them...
...Free journey from prerevolutionary Russia to RATES: 750 a word, one time...
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...She taught at Fordham's Biblical Institute 884002, Walled Lake, MI 48088...
...ultra-intelligent people), or the well-\vritten and absoconversion of the world's popula- lutely free of jargon, it tion into a single UIP...
...The I manifests itself only stretched our sense of the tradition of incredible factuality (such as the many- through the He...
...Gregory and St...
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...For brochure contact: Thomas O'Nei43, Institute of Gerontology, College Religious Watch Revolution...
...For example, John Naisbitt, whose most signi Leant data-rich Megatrends may hold the distinction of being one of the century's works„ most thoughtless books...
...monthly in advance for more ler and asylum in the United States, Fellowship makes affectingly clear...
...Theodore Roszak Contrary to the popular impression, From the outset a David against these were not books celebrating inno- Goliaths, Roszak has been hurling stones Pantheon, $17.95, 238 pp...
...Is he stuck, one sometimes wonders, Offer for New Subscribers in the romance of the primary group...
...As if, pace the proponents of cog- x;7.95 Ainei aatn if e nitive science and artificial intelligence, RrNVt N. &7h* data-processing served as an adequate r R E N M I A L 10 R A R Y R dtt -"he"M:swAftm model of the human mind or substituted HAAPER t NOW PURLFSHERS1 . t ...Ann St, edk AVid:S'M"rM.flpnn for the art of thinking...
...network subscription fee, the connect of co-optation, a fall from innocence...
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...Their precursors, he has not er traffic, Roszak clearly thought the and the individual...
...Ninth An- and Roman Catholic Churches...
...The most revealing and The book begins with the parable of the "emperor's new clothes" - in this beautifully written book case the extravagant claims being made on what Americans believe and feel...
...thought to which we belong...
...Here, however, Roszak takes aim at some of the gurus of a more "One of the ear's business-oriented consciousness movement...
...Or call (717) 675-3862...
...It holds up, a for salvation by machines heaping up mirror to American values, makes us examine MYmountains of undigested information selves, and dares us to more suitable for "Trivial Pursuits...
...ity ideas were the point...
...stance, the Romantic protest against a imal novel delights with a learned play- "One can only speak of another," he reductionistic rationalism, he may have fulness, a sophisticated modernity, an says...
...After ently - and this is no less true of his being a runaway in the cosmos), and a all, Francia may well ponder, perhaps he critique of "the cult of information" in many-ended detective story about iden- wrote the pasquinade himself...
...In the name of parfailed to point out, were early American iconoclasm of the time deserved articula- ticipatory democracy, Roszak protests utopianists, circuit-riders of the Great tion and a hearing...
...On the other hand, this max- answer directly the question of who he is...
...Religious Watch - a newsletter monitor- lost generation...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., NYC 10016...
...10016 modestly, Lasch and MacIntyre appeal to For the enclosed $9 send the next 11 issues (6 months of Com- Aristotle and the virtue-inducing kinds of monweal) to: work of the Athenian city state - Name whereas Roszak's latest model is derived from a medieval Benedictine monasAddress tery's ethos of "pray and work...
...Benedict T. Viviano, OP...
...Studies...
...When she came to PA 18612...
...This book was resented neither a revolt of the masses after all...
...She was the driving force behind Commonweal: 318...
...201 W. Laflin times...
...Whoa!, says -The Nat km Roszak to the readers of New Age and The Tarrytown Report...
...Like Tolstoy's unforgettable PlaResponsibility prayer, work and study dedicated to the tdn Karataev, she invariably rose up like organic union in diversity of the Anglican a loaf...
...Toward the end of a chapter on "the to that...
...She seems to have known everyone Davies, Ph.D...
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...Cult of Information is testimony enough wolsky...
...5/23/86 jeremiad against conspiratorial bigness, ----------------------------------- explored in Unfinished Animal (Harper Commonweal: 316 & Row, 1975), was the inward turn of the Such hype, Roszak argues, overlooks has fallen to the uses of the likes of Dickseventies...
...She contributed often to these Faculty: Donald Senior, Carolyn Osiek, Roland Murphy, Bruce Metzger, Reginald spiritual growth and Christian ministry pages, as well as tdJubilee, The Catholic Fuller, Joseph Cunneen...
...Modern/ spiritual -of her time...
...Institute of Contemporary Russian 21 st Biblical Institute, Trinity College, Bur- Religious Community Studies until ousted by Cold-War inlington, VT 05401, June 15-20, 1986...
...and politics, no One Hundred Years of This Supreme - just like the rest of us - premise, one he obviously shares, is that Solitude fantastic circus for readers of all produces powerful, not absolute, solu- what is repressed in our culture is not sex ages...
...The difference seems to lie, so far as I can figure it, in the ------------------------------------ models invoked toward a solution...
...For brochure contact Sr...
...Like Commonweal, stands an apologia for thinking - as maybe...
...Augus- wolsky never surrendered to such a tempAging Religious: Our tine...
...Contact Worker, and The Journal of Ecumenical Miriam Ward...
...We read wonderingly by sewing but a sense of transcendence...
...The daughter of the Czar's last ambasnual Workshop for those working in pro- Robert, Incarnation Priory, 2210 Cedar sador to France, Iswolsky knew disrupgrams for the aging in religious com- St., Berkeley, CA 94709...
...In Brief involving more than a glut of informa- Evidently, nothing like a Blakean polition, more than a binary computer logic tics is anywhere near realization yet...
...I the Supreme demands concentra- tions...
...and foreign periodicals Catholicism in 1923 led to a lifetime of Sacred Scripture for trends and ideas in religion...
...Yet the thing has been overgether the theses of these latter two into mere "facts...
...Consistton meteor Francia chains to his desk for I listen to myself through Him...
...Roszak supplies tel- dressed by the "data merchants...
...Classified payable expatriation in France, to flight from HitWaukesha, WI 53186...
...cent barbarians in the streets, but essen- at the mystifications of big bureaucrats, tially were about what the book under big technocrats, hidden corporate interDavid Teelan review calls master ideas - for in- ests, and well-funded experts suffering stance, the "myth of objective con- from Newton's one-eyed sleep...
...As if there were - I'eic York T iwe.' any such thing as "raw data" without i Indlvidualfsm a Nd governing (and questionable) assump- Book f?erifH' Cv~ ire tions...
...Fellowship of St...
...be as good as the programmer's judg- subscribe to a dozen magazines and ment, or as bad...
...This way lies folly...
...In B EGINNING back in 1969 with The sciousness," the eschatological visions Person/Planet (Anchor, 1978), an exMaking of a Counterculture and of Herbert Marcuse, Paul Goodman, and tended midrash on E.F...
...Emperors deserve respect...
...tion, a welcoming rhetorical palate, and, and unsewing this crazy quilt of muti- The point was not just that he helped us I suggest, a browse through an ency- lated documents...
...Box 652, North Bellmore, the Atlantic...
...The No TIME TO GRIEVE...
...Schumacher's Where the Wasteland Ends in 1972, Norman 0. Brown, or the political mean- plea for a decentralized, human-scale Theodore Roszak has tracked and asses- ing of William Blake's prophetic poems...
...Watch, P.O...
...Gary Martinez, Box 105, Hico, WV 25854...
...cheap personal computers, which IBM, fat with govhigh tech, as well as its hidden cur- politics of information" which contains ernment contracts, wasn't at all inriculum (i.e., empiricist rationalism), warm appreciations of democratic net- terested in, these hirsute folk thought and the potential to mask dubious politi- working, l. F. Stone, public libraries, and they knew, would put power back in the cal agendas...
...Carroll Stuhimueller, CP...
...Money 19th Annual Institute on Sacred Scripture back guarantee if dissatisfied with first is- work for ecumenism, promoting the sue...
...Send $12 (for 11 issues) to: Religion search for understanding on both sides of August 3-8, 1986...
...e/tiill(j1'e Siiii practically soluble problem and we shall perhaps achieve world peace, "Penetratin .., the elixir of life, the piecemeal conversion of people into UIPs remarkab e...
...technocracy has been based on a quest to understand the "true size of the mind...
...640, six times...
...For the other side of 0 I prefer a full-year subscription at $28...
...11710...
...23 May 1986: 317 Apple Computer shows, something funny happened to the "guerrilla hack0 ers" on their way to spectacular success...
...But her conversion to ing over 500 U.S...
...Gradgrind of Hard Times...
...Well it didn't turn out that way...
...Homely truth: the programmed data will time, and the cost of a modem, one could How long, Lord, how long...
...values, judgments, and the generative sive data bank...
...Highly cultured, deprived of M+sericordia, Dallas, PA 18612...
...Personal/Convalescent use...
...Write Fr...
...Roszak's impression is that it Marvin Minsky, are the limits of the new of the entrepreneur...
...turn to new transpersonal therapies and has a built-in bias for the military- Roszak is at pains to deny he is any revived ancient spiritual disciplines rep- industrial complex (who paid the piper doctrinaire technophobe...
...in the French and Russian enCassettes Noel Ke'ler, RSM, Institute on Sacred lightenments-both cultural and Scripture, College Misericordia, Dallas, Biblical Meditation Songs...
...In fact, as Roszak's account of The fact is, there was plenty of time to grieve (Helene Iswolsky was seventyComputer Newsletter nine when she died in 1975), and ample Classified opportunity, as this autobiographical Computer Newsletter for Ministry...
...Problem: when you put to- corrupt political discourse by turning it computers...
...As Roszak read things, the the dark side, that computer technology ens's Mr...
Vol. 113 • May 1986 • No. 10
