Friday, April 14, 2006
Computational supplements
From The Amercian Heritage Dictionary: Prothesis - An artificial device used to replace a missing body part, such as a limb, tooth, eye, or heart valve. From the Greek, to add and to put.
So why not a missing mental (or spiritual) capacity?
Thinking about a motorcycle as a prosthetic set of legs (penis perhaps?), an airplane as prosthetic set of wings, a sacred text as a prosthetic piety, none of which anyone rails against (well, maybe some railing against prosthetic piety--especially on Good Friday--which thank god it is), is it such a reach to wish for a stronger imaginary capacity? Especially when one's own is deformed or crippled? Or has been severed from the body by way of accident or parental torture?
And since all protheses are machines, is it such a reach to envision (in all the irony that word connotes) that the prosthetic imagination, when it annunciates itself, will be cloaked in the mantle of the computing machine?
# posted by Jim @ 9:07 AM 
