A Journal Discovered Among the Papers of Thomas Kjar  

Technology, as a whole, is obviously a huge field of activity in which almost any thought or feeling can be projected. The mind reacts almost instinctively at first touch with that which absorbs it.

The attitude toward technology can be divided along those lines of male and female aspects. The male is excited by technology; its power and energy. It acts in the world. It is intricate and so forth. The female has an ambivalent attitude toward technology- she is awed by it and repelled by it- it is a mystery which she can't comprehend with her imagination. That's the general attitude in the beginning.

It has no final spot it is heading but demands all the time and energy of a given period of time. Hmm. Well, a goal is impossible since we understand that the goal will change; we are at the beginning of technological society. So, at best, we formulate large categories of general goals. Improved living conditions, space exploration, cheap energy and so on. And we know that technology changes things but we don't know how or why and this demoralizes the sense of autonomy. I get up in the morning, get into a machine and drive with other machines on concrete roads that converge on the epitome of the machine;the city. In an office I process data through a computer. I go home and turn on another machine whose images appear and watch a rocket blast men and women into space. I cook my dinner in the microwave oven; digital clocks surround me. Someone calls me on another machine; I can hear his voice as if he is standing next to me. He orders me to some distant place so I go to a huge ensemble of buildings of flying machines and enter one of the flying machines and it conveys me thousands of miles to the voice that ordered me.

This is all a fairly common experience. And I you look in history; even a very short period of time ago and try to find complements for this common, daily occurrences which has been precipitated by technology. None is to be found. And because it is so pervasive you eventually have to ask, 'what is it all for?' and 'how does it command me' and 'how does it change me?'

What does it make me susceptible to. How does it change my attitude toward work, love, death and so on?

What is the implication of having a technology that is speeding ahead at an ever accelerating rate while the human being himself is barely evolved out of his primitive past? Why, ultimately, are human beings sacrificing themselves to technology? What is the rational behind it?

One very definite thing it has done has been to force the unconscious into the light of day. It's made life a dark carnival that prances through the neon day, glowing with power and satisfaction. It has unleashed those powers once repressed by political and religious order.

It only appears absolute when you are struggling from its effects.

Most of the attitudes towards technology are a kind of exhausted confession.

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