Content area
Full Text
The Prometheus Complex: Man's Obsession with Superior Technology. By Hans van de Braak. Amersfoort, The Netherlands: Enzo Press, 1995. Pp. 209; figures, notes, bibliography, index. NLG 115.00 (hardcover) NLG 59.00 (paper).
Proud Prometheus goads the gods, stealing their fire and daring to compete with them. So humanity constantly goes after the divine. That is a daunting but noble model for why we engineer fancier and faster machines. But, Hans van de Braak argues, we don't just do it to get ahead in the material world. We are obsessed, we are seduced, and we use technology to impress and seduce ourselves. Technology is sexy. We always want more. The insatiable species overruns the world.
Van de Braak borrows this central idea from Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher who evoked in poetic language how innovation emerges from reverie and feeling. "Thus, fiery love-making would have served as a model for rubbing two pieces of wood." We set our hearts on fire before we know how to rub two sticks together. "Prometheus should be understood as a vigorous lover rather than an intelligent philosopher, and the vengeance of...