I came upon an article ( http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121647282/PDFSTART?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 ) that provoked some thought.

These thoughts were in response to someone's specific musings about individuation in the era of modern technology. This person also specifically expressed their concern about the effect of technology on the organization and its structures.

The article provoked my thoughts about the insidious effects of technology. I'm fascinated by the "as if" quality of the social contract that technology fosters. (Ironic that our discussions occur through the very means that we are examining.) I believe technology can have stultifying effect upon individuation for various reasons. It is a saccharin like substitute for meaningful relatedness. Our appetites are sated so easily (and in mercurial ways) though the Internet, that it grows more difficult to recognize slow deliberation's value when contrasted with nibbling the next bit (or bite) of information. And there is a certain numbing to information that streams at us with such speed and efficiency.

Not so long ago, news and information about the world arrived at a pace that encouraged the individual to find a way to integrate it into their sense of self and their passage through their life. (This is not to say that people did this, but there were fewer impediments when a pamphlet on "The Rights of Man" was printed and distributed from one reader to another.) That kind of communication tended to stregnthen the bonds of community that could gather like storm clouds until the birth of a nation was its result.

The shadow side of technology may be the growing emphasis on humanity as something reducible to a means of production (notice the phrase human resource). Another possibility occurs to me. Perhaps, the experience of community that stands opposed to our existentially isolated condition, is subject to revision with technologies that permit us to interact, exchange ideas, and be reminded that there are other people who comprise my world who I may never meet but who are connected to me.

As for organizational structures and relationships, I am reminded of Whitehead and Russell's insights in their 'Principia Mathematica' (a good resource for this reference is http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/principia-mathematica/ ) about logical classes. The rules and inferences that pertain to the individual may not be properly extended to the organization or relationships within the organization since the individual and the organization are members of two entirely different logical classes. I believe the organization is best understood as an 'Emergent' phenomena in the way that we are beginning to understand from Complexity Theory. In that respect, the organization may proclaim that its intention is to serve the individual and the individuation process (Google) but this is a vener for its real purpose in a Capitalist society. Its real intention (even Google made this clear when it permitted Chinese authorities to dictate its standards) is its own survival and its advance in the competitive marketplace. Companies like Google may (and perhaps should) strive to mitigate their stultifying effect on the individual, but if the choice must be made to sacrifice the individual in favor of the organization, I believe the organization will push aside individuation (for the individual) for its purposes. Technology equips the organization to be more efficient in pursuing its goals than it equips the individual in his/her effort to individuate.

Transcendant Wisdom

Modern physics exposed fundamental paradoxes that have their parallel within the psychological realm. Between idealist philosophy and realist approaches the controversy rages on. And the mind-body problem is the eqivalent within the psychological/philosphical realm.

Mind determines the construction of reality from the basic sensations that confronts us. However, reality presses itself upon us demanding to be understood. The cognitive constructions that furnish us with a necessary efficiency that also constrains us. If a middle ground exists, how are we to achieve it.

Quantum physicists are resigned to the fact that the wave-particle duality is not only fact but more fully explains the subatomc realms. Psycholgy is struggling with a similar paradox involving the hope for an objective nature to reality and the thoroughly subjective nature of reality imposed by mind. What is emerging is a real possibilty of transcendance of these apparent paradoxes. The duality of the quantum world may offer a map for the psychological landscape.

There was a young man who said "God,
to you it must seem very odd
that a tree as a tree
simply ceases to be
when there's no one about in the quad."
God answers:
"Young man, your astonishment's odd,
I'm always about in the quad
and that's why the tree
never ceases to be
as observed, by yours faithfully, God.

From "The Miracle of Existence"