-Your
Guide to the Cultural Impact of Emerging Technologies.
Eudoxa Comment March 2004
Virginia Postrel and Eudoxa
By Lene Johansen
It
was a great honor to host a dinner for Virginia Postrel in Kansas City.
Her work means a lot to Eudoxa. One of the works that inspired our start
up was Postrel's first book, The Future and Its Enemies. In this book
she outlined what she calls the growing conflict over creativity, enterprise
and progress.
The book is easy to dismiss as another one that questions the viability of the traditional left-right dichotomy if you work with traditional policy issues. The traditional issues are so set in this dichotomy that they are hard to untangle from that context as several attempts to establish a third party in American politics has shown. But Eudoxa does not work with traditional issues; our policy issues are just entering public discourse. The road map the book provides makes more sense on emerging technologies like the ones we work with.
The intellectuals that write about emerging technology does not feel constrained to defend or oppose certain viewpoints based on the left-right dichotomy. They are freer to develop their viewpoints based upon the values they espouse as the battle lines are still being drawn. Certain writers might find that they agree with those that are perceived as their enemies. The book gives some great examples of this.
Postrel came to Kansas City to promote her newest book The Substance of Style. The design community has embraced this book and Postrel talked to them as well while she was in Kansas City. The Substance of Style addresses the rise of the aesthetic imperative in our society.
Design and aesthetics have traditionally been viewed as superfluous. But Postrel makes a powerful case arguing that Maslow's hierarchy is too simple. Humans are tactile and visual creatures by biology. We tend to put effort into prettying ourselves and our surroundings weather we live on the verge of starvation in recently liberated Afghanistan or we are executives in corporate America.
Postrel explains how development of a global economy has made the current bountifulness of diverse affordable products possible. She also spends an entire chapter exploring how there is an increasing trend to regulate the aesthetics of our public spaces. And the regulation does not stop at the edge of your property.
So why would this book be interesting for Eudoxa? First of all we share a joint defence of diversity and individual choice with Postrel. She is an advocate for respect of individual choice. Our self-adornment communicates the values and social affiliations we would like others to perceive despite the fact that most of the social symbol systems around our adornments have collapsed.
She briefly touches more extreme ways of altering our appearance, like plastic surgery and cosmetic gene therapy. Although the cost in pain, danger and money still makes this unrealistic for most of us, these trends exemplify the concept of health as an individually defined and desired optimal functionality. This goes beyond just altering our appearance; it will also include our abilities. The right to make these choices for our offspring and ourselves is rooted in natural rights according to the study that Eudoxa released on morphologic freedom.
We sure hope that we will be able to work with Virginia Postrel in the future and would like to thank her and Flint Hills Center for Public Policy for making her visit possible.