Love mention of Theuth. Neil Postman opens his book "Technopoly" with that tale.
Your essay also reminds me of Adrienne Mayor's "Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology"--a great read!
I also agree. There is a promethean aspect to Homer, which means it's also about man's struggle against the gods.
I mentioned to a friend that that the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and Job, share a similar vein of thought. Roughly, they all deal with men coming to understand where they stand in the cosmic pecking order.
BTW, my first inclination was to re-read Odyssey, instead I picked up Eric Cline's "1177," which I've been wanting to read for years.
Cline’s book more on popular side. My impression is that classicists wearying of Sea Peoples thing. Cyprian Broodbank “The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World” longer but fascinating — origins of seafaring, obsidian as key trade item, island elephants etc. can also recommend Barry Powell ‘Homer’ and Edith Hall “Return of Ulysses,” thoughtful comparison of Odyssey with Ford’s The Searchers
The Trojan Horse was a bit of carpentry and a risky con. Odysseus didn't invent a device that the world wasn't wise or ethical enough to use responsibly. It was just a strategem and it could only work once. Being wary of Greeks bearing gifts was a commonplace in antiquity.
The fact that Nolan frames it as a technology is just one of the many incomprehensible and unfortunate choices he made in adapting the poem for the screen.
Fair point! To which I would say how many technologies gain prominence or become heavily mythologized amount to the equivalent of a bit of carpentry and a risky con?
Entirely true! The biggest difference here is that even though laying the railroad tracks across the USA was a mix of carpentry and con, the trains still ran and the world truly did change even after the tricks were exposed. It didn't change because a train ran once but because holy crap, suddenly there were trains running all over the place and suddenly all the buffalo are dead.
Nolan tried to graft a kind of world-changing tech narrative onto the Trojan Horse even though practically by definition, it only worked once and did not change the world due to something inherent about the object itself, just that it led to the fall of the city.
But there is an interesting vein here as long as you go outside the film! You get a fuller description of the end of Troy in the Aeneid, where Sinon comes from. There are several Trojans who are skeptical of the horse and think the plan to bring it inside the city is lunacy. What happens? The gods, who backed and authorized the Trojan Horse plan from the beginning, suppress the defectors and change Trojan minds, all but forcing them to accept it: "And if the fates of the gods, if our minds had not been perverse, he [Laocoön] would have driven us to hack open the Greek hiding places with iron, and Troy would still be standing, and you, lofty citadel of Priam, would still abide."
It must also be relevant they were at war. It seems odd to frame a stratagem of war as somehow unfair because it was tricksy. The atomic bomb is literally world-changing in scale and scope. Even today, the annihilation of entire cities is destabilizing to think about. The Trojan horse was a trick, and an obvious one, from the enemy at the gates.
😊 living in China and subsequent reading has confirmed that the stark East/West dichotomy is bogus as Andy Ogles’s CV. Edith Hall points out Odyssey owes much to Gilgamesh
"An MIT study found that most writers who used AI to produce essays couldn't identify a quote from their own papers.": That strikes me as a definitive demonstration that they don't actually care about whatever "they" (really, some chatbot) are writing. For them, writing is just a means to some other end, probably unmerited socioeconomic status.
It also strikes me that the story of chatbots and, to a large and growing extent, society and politics in general these days isn't so much technological hubris as the triumph of form over substance. Here's a typically droll episode of *Cat and Girl* about that:
Just as we use the term "a Trojan" to characterize software that carries malware, it is currently being used as an excuse to deny imports of Chinese hardware and software, most recently, open-source AI model weights. Will low-cost Chinese AI result in a new phrase "Beware the Chinese bearing gifts"?
Kevin Kelly wrote that technology has both benefits and costs, but as long as the net benefits are 1%, they accumulate and society benefits. Will AI have a net benefit? This may depend on how it is used, which may depend on regulation.
I think Brian makes a good case in his book about the Luddites that any mathematical calculation of the benefits of progress is hopelessly biased in favor of progress. You have to think outside the box, as Brian does, to imagine a world in which humans made different choices. You have to go back to the world that was, as Brian also does, in order to do that. If we had the benefit of hindsight, and could rewrite our history accordingly, we wouldn't choose to entirely ban the products of human ingenuity but would deploy them more judiciously. We would take into account an understanding of "the common good" based on abstractions like morality (fairness), happiness, stability and individual freedom that can't be measured mathematically. Instead we rely on money and longevity, which can be measured. What's good for business isn't always good for mankind as a whole. Moreover, even if progress benefited our species by the paltry margin of % (I would argue otherwise), it is measurably bad for nature. Non-human species extinctions CAN be counted, and their consequences measured. No one doubts that we depend on a balanced ecosystem for our own long-term survival.
Almost 100 years ago, "Metropolis" (1927) warned about inequality and teh dehumanizing of teh workers. Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936) did this in a more lighthearted way during the Great depression. I don't think anyone doubts that we have benefited from scientific and technological advances. In teh early 1980s, the UK fretted over the impact of microcomputers. They were wrong about employment, but today workers are constantly monitored using these machines. Amazon is famous for making its fulfillment centers and delivery drivers work in unpleasant and dangerous conditions. These are failures to properly regulate business, not the technology itself. The drivers are the relentless need to compete and squeeze the last buck out of costs, as well as making it easier to manipulate the equity markets to benefit senior management and owners. AI is the latest version, soon to be followed by workplace humanoid robots. IMO, how each is employed is the issue. There are many tasks where it makes sense to use them, but there are many, many more where they will be used to the detriment of people. I expect to read about sabotaging robots at some point, much like prompt injection is used to sabotage AI.
The thing about mythic epics is they always revolve around the gods and/or magical interventions. We are still trapped in those stories. Fantastical stories that say that there are other forces shaping our lives. But in today's world that feels far more political than supernatural. So The Odyssey film is nothing new, just more of the same. A "thriller" with lots of battle scenes.
For a bit of levity: Imagine writing not one but two massive epic poems so good they're studied and referenced 2700 years later and still only being the second most culturally relevant Homer.
Love mention of Theuth. Neil Postman opens his book "Technopoly" with that tale.
Your essay also reminds me of Adrienne Mayor's "Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology"--a great read!
I also agree. There is a promethean aspect to Homer, which means it's also about man's struggle against the gods.
I mentioned to a friend that that the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and Job, share a similar vein of thought. Roughly, they all deal with men coming to understand where they stand in the cosmic pecking order.
BTW, my first inclination was to re-read Odyssey, instead I picked up Eric Cline's "1177," which I've been wanting to read for years.
I’ve never read 1117 either. Good choice and quite timely here. Report back on how you found it?
Cline’s book more on popular side. My impression is that classicists wearying of Sea Peoples thing. Cyprian Broodbank “The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World” longer but fascinating — origins of seafaring, obsidian as key trade item, island elephants etc. can also recommend Barry Powell ‘Homer’ and Edith Hall “Return of Ulysses,” thoughtful comparison of Odyssey with Ford’s The Searchers
Humanity has been trying to automate the commute since Homer. Los Angeles remains unconvinced.
The Trojan Horse was a bit of carpentry and a risky con. Odysseus didn't invent a device that the world wasn't wise or ethical enough to use responsibly. It was just a strategem and it could only work once. Being wary of Greeks bearing gifts was a commonplace in antiquity.
The fact that Nolan frames it as a technology is just one of the many incomprehensible and unfortunate choices he made in adapting the poem for the screen.
Fair point! To which I would say how many technologies gain prominence or become heavily mythologized amount to the equivalent of a bit of carpentry and a risky con?
Entirely true! The biggest difference here is that even though laying the railroad tracks across the USA was a mix of carpentry and con, the trains still ran and the world truly did change even after the tricks were exposed. It didn't change because a train ran once but because holy crap, suddenly there were trains running all over the place and suddenly all the buffalo are dead.
Nolan tried to graft a kind of world-changing tech narrative onto the Trojan Horse even though practically by definition, it only worked once and did not change the world due to something inherent about the object itself, just that it led to the fall of the city.
But there is an interesting vein here as long as you go outside the film! You get a fuller description of the end of Troy in the Aeneid, where Sinon comes from. There are several Trojans who are skeptical of the horse and think the plan to bring it inside the city is lunacy. What happens? The gods, who backed and authorized the Trojan Horse plan from the beginning, suppress the defectors and change Trojan minds, all but forcing them to accept it: "And if the fates of the gods, if our minds had not been perverse, he [Laocoön] would have driven us to hack open the Greek hiding places with iron, and Troy would still be standing, and you, lofty citadel of Priam, would still abide."
Now *that* part sounds very, very familiar.
Not all Trojan horses are literal horses. the stratagem continues to be used to this day, which is kind of the point.
It must also be relevant they were at war. It seems odd to frame a stratagem of war as somehow unfair because it was tricksy. The atomic bomb is literally world-changing in scale and scope. Even today, the annihilation of entire cities is destabilizing to think about. The Trojan horse was a trick, and an obvious one, from the enemy at the gates.
You lost me at “one of the two earliest canonical works of human literature” Gilgamesh, Rig Veda, I Ching all predate two Homeric epics
Yes thanks updating did not mean to put ‘two’
😊 living in China and subsequent reading has confirmed that the stark East/West dichotomy is bogus as Andy Ogles’s CV. Edith Hall points out Odyssey owes much to Gilgamesh
I'm a few chapters in and can imagine Nolan reading it before making his movie.
https://theclearview.substack.com/p/the-homer-oracle
"An MIT study found that most writers who used AI to produce essays couldn't identify a quote from their own papers.": That strikes me as a definitive demonstration that they don't actually care about whatever "they" (really, some chatbot) are writing. For them, writing is just a means to some other end, probably unmerited socioeconomic status.
It also strikes me that the story of chatbots and, to a large and growing extent, society and politics in general these days isn't so much technological hubris as the triumph of form over substance. Here's a typically droll episode of *Cat and Girl* about that:
https://catandgirl.com/play-humbug-games/
Just as we use the term "a Trojan" to characterize software that carries malware, it is currently being used as an excuse to deny imports of Chinese hardware and software, most recently, open-source AI model weights. Will low-cost Chinese AI result in a new phrase "Beware the Chinese bearing gifts"?
Kevin Kelly wrote that technology has both benefits and costs, but as long as the net benefits are 1%, they accumulate and society benefits. Will AI have a net benefit? This may depend on how it is used, which may depend on regulation.
I think Brian makes a good case in his book about the Luddites that any mathematical calculation of the benefits of progress is hopelessly biased in favor of progress. You have to think outside the box, as Brian does, to imagine a world in which humans made different choices. You have to go back to the world that was, as Brian also does, in order to do that. If we had the benefit of hindsight, and could rewrite our history accordingly, we wouldn't choose to entirely ban the products of human ingenuity but would deploy them more judiciously. We would take into account an understanding of "the common good" based on abstractions like morality (fairness), happiness, stability and individual freedom that can't be measured mathematically. Instead we rely on money and longevity, which can be measured. What's good for business isn't always good for mankind as a whole. Moreover, even if progress benefited our species by the paltry margin of % (I would argue otherwise), it is measurably bad for nature. Non-human species extinctions CAN be counted, and their consequences measured. No one doubts that we depend on a balanced ecosystem for our own long-term survival.
Almost 100 years ago, "Metropolis" (1927) warned about inequality and teh dehumanizing of teh workers. Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936) did this in a more lighthearted way during the Great depression. I don't think anyone doubts that we have benefited from scientific and technological advances. In teh early 1980s, the UK fretted over the impact of microcomputers. They were wrong about employment, but today workers are constantly monitored using these machines. Amazon is famous for making its fulfillment centers and delivery drivers work in unpleasant and dangerous conditions. These are failures to properly regulate business, not the technology itself. The drivers are the relentless need to compete and squeeze the last buck out of costs, as well as making it easier to manipulate the equity markets to benefit senior management and owners. AI is the latest version, soon to be followed by workplace humanoid robots. IMO, how each is employed is the issue. There are many tasks where it makes sense to use them, but there are many, many more where they will be used to the detriment of people. I expect to read about sabotaging robots at some point, much like prompt injection is used to sabotage AI.
Yes!
Very interesting! I wish I had that kind of inside when I watched the Odyssey🤪
The thing about mythic epics is they always revolve around the gods and/or magical interventions. We are still trapped in those stories. Fantastical stories that say that there are other forces shaping our lives. But in today's world that feels far more political than supernatural. So The Odyssey film is nothing new, just more of the same. A "thriller" with lots of battle scenes.
For a bit of levity: Imagine writing not one but two massive epic poems so good they're studied and referenced 2700 years later and still only being the second most culturally relevant Homer.