Techno-Phobia/Techno-Philia in Industrial Culture

[Balor/SS1535]

The interesting comment about Burroughs in the otherwise ill-advised AI thread reminded me of one of the rare instances where Reed's history of industrial music was actually insightful rather than proscriptive:

It is through this reality that one can't view Burroughs and industrial music as merely technophobic; instead they have a techno-paranoid streak.  Industrial music's debt to Futurism's uncomplicated machine idolatry precludes a Luddite, antitechnological response to its perception of media totalitarianism---this isn't folk music we're talking about.  So as the music stakes out territory amidst the larger machines it seeks to dismantle and rewire, it's thus appropriately ambivalent.  In perusing even the names of industrial bands, albums, and songs, we can see roughly equal amounts of valorizing and humanizing of technology as well as a reactionary call to destroy it.

Assimilate, p. 40

[NedOik]

I read recently a very good book along these lines: 'Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine' by Thomas Dekeyser. Whilst it does not talk about Burroughs it goes a lot into the early Christian view of the machine as demonic and a challenge to divine creation, something beyond spiritual control. One could ask the question - tho I admit its debatable -  if Burroughs fears are an updated secular version of these much older ones. Re AI you can easily see the inference here.