Josh Balik

Arguably, good artists are created by society in its own image. Likewise as everything is associative, by studying the exemplary figures of society (ie: intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists) it is possible to gain holistic insight towards the inner workings of culture. Reassessment of technological culture seems to be the refrain of a long list of artists including Cage, Rauschenberg, Kluver, Tinguely, and writers such as Forster, Orwell, and Huxley. Scientists aim to measure the energy of empty space in order to gain deeper understanding of our universe, admitting serious flaws in our current model. Musicians and artists vamp the theme of nothing containing something. Algorists search for their own set of underlying rules, the unseen infrastructure which governs the behavior of everything we observe. Writers like Arundhati Roy and Lewis Mumford admonish that historical values are being sacrificed to the apotheosis of the machine called technological progress, and search for a means to expose the concealed dangers of mechanized life to the mainstream. We may not require all the ‘improvements’ progress prescribes. Dangers of technology must be counterbalanced with a good measure of ethics and morality non existent in those who control international order. We are hurling towards instability at an exponential rate of acceleration. As all intervals expand, the threat of detachment from historical values and human purpose grows increasingly ominous. The threat of a cataclysmic end is thematic in art, literature and even American entertainment. The end; not with a bang, but a whimper. Social atrophy. It seems the dynamism of technology is inversely proportional to the lethargy of society.