Between Logos and Eros: New Orleans' Confrontation with Modernity Page: 71

                                
dialogue, desire, and excellence. Such an approach would have an impact on
environmental policy in New Orleans, but it is also relevant on a larger scale, offering
timely alternatives in a world that is propelled now more than ever by the promise of
limitless technological possibility.
Techno has a much broader connotation than the contemporary term technology:
techno can be anything from the art of shoemaking, horseback riding, or cooking, to the
art of medicine or statecraft. Techno - a term that means art, skill, craft, expertise, or
technical knowledge - denotes "a thorough, masterful knowledge of a specific field that
typically issues in a useful result, can be taught to others, and can be recognized,
certified, and rewarded" (Roochnik 1996, xi). Techno was activity which sought to allow
matter to participate in the universal good. Aristotle writes of a "desire" on the part of
matter- a longing to realize its true form, and thus to participate in the inherent order in
the kosmos (Physics I, ch. 9).
A dramatic shift in the logos of techno was coeval with the dawn of the
philosophical project begun by Bacon and Descartes - the era known as modernity.
Divorced from its purported participation in a teleological, ordered universe, lifeless
matter could be worked upon and mastered without a consideration of any overarching
purpose. While ancient techno worked with the inherent order of matter in pursuit of
excellence, modern technology is aimed at the manipulation of matter for the sake of
efficiency, maximization of output, and the control of nature.
Ancient philosophers conceived of logos as the element of reason, or speech,
which separates the human from the animal kingdoms. Aristotle defines man as the

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