A Moment for Wonder
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Have you heard “Quiet and Other Songs” yet? Maybe not, but you can. And that is a wondrous thing.
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I grew up in a very small south georgia town with a tiny library. We didn’t even know that we had no real access to information. Even then, we had more access to information than all of the mythical founders of the ussa put together. And yet, even though we had so little access, in comparison to today, we had people who were just as informed as the brightest minds of today. This access is a boon, that is NOT to be slighted; but remember that knowledge (or access to it) is only potential power, it requires a mind which thinks critically and a will that asserts itself. In that regard, I think we have slipped a bit. JimBob from fluorida who would never be so crass as to type “FIRST” in the comment section. Nope, never.
Would it be over-dramatizing to say that the plains of accessible knowledge spread out before mankind today resemble the immense plains of the physical world spread out before the two legged hominids of yesteryear? School’s out forever?
No, but I’m still jealous of them. There was no one to tell us we couldn’t walk on the grass back then.
For some reason I never thought to “surf the net” before 2008 when I broke my leg in a big way.
The wonder and sense of eupohoric freedom of surfing
I could type ANYTHING! Look into ANYTHING!!! Know ANYTHING!!!
…very, VERY quickly gave way to shock.
Genuine, authentic Shock as I began to work myself through what is commonly known as “waking up”. I mean hot tears running down my face and heaving sobs. Disbelief, wonder, confusion, doubt, rage and revolt…
Oh and
I loved that old slip of the tongue, Mr Corbett, “…instantly accessible, at my fingertrips…”
aat…mmmmyyyyy…fiingeertriiips
mmmmmmyyyyyy fffiiiinnnngggeeerrr – ttttrrrriiippppssssssss
oh yea
my tongue slips
and my finger trips….
all information easily accessible
at my fingertips
the first step in my intergenerational transhumanistic metamorphosis….
Once again I wander off topic. In the background of the video, there is something on the trunk of the large tree behind James. I just noticed it and it bugs me because I can’t tell what it is. Could be a plaque, but it’s pretty high for that. It’s on the right side of the frame and is level with James’ ear. I know, petty, OCD, and whatnot; but that pretty much describes me. JimBob from fluorida who waits impatiently for the world to make sense. Just once. Please.
It looks like a rectangular shaped device or plaque strapped to the tree with 5 symbols or lights or whatever on it.
Beats me what it is.
So is THAT what Japan is like? Just odd things stuck on trees at unreasonable heights? 🙂
Is it possible that you, James, did not READ and investigate life and work of Ted Nelson? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson
Ted Nelson vision of computer world have answers to many of yours questions about society… Ted predicted need for micropayment in 60s, he predicted problem of “fake news”…
You should definitely need spent some hours on listening, reading and comprehending Ted Nelson ideas.
Milan , thank you for sharing this information. 2 (two)Very interesting topics that I have always found fascinating from my youth. My introduction to Anthony Burgess of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ Language creation, and a rather wonderful love encounter with a visiting Japanese business woman who had graduated from Keio University. I thank you for bringing Sigeko back to my failing memory of youths past loves and the wonderful international relations that occurred between a mid-westerner and a Japanese beauty on her first trip to the US of A. Gratci! I will look up Nelson
The video bring to my mind one idea: “La biblioteca de Babel” (The Library of Babel) by Jorge Luis Borges.
Saludos!
As a constructive observation, I think the upshot of all this proves a simple fact… that access by anyone to all this information has made all of the charter functions of the CIA redundant, i.e. they are no longer needed to collate information for any President. Our one bright hope for the 21st century is that the CIA might be broken into a thousand pieces and cast to the wind, as JFK once swore to do.
I watched an old CyberPunk doc on YT and they wheeled out Dr. Tim Leary the LSD guy who said that in the future every inner city kid would have more power and info in his pocket then the Government… he was right but all that power is being used to do selfies and surf porn.
Its rather like the StarShipTroopers movie when the drill instructor threw a knife and pinned a mouthy trainees hand to the target because the trainee was saying knives were no use in a nuke fight… the point was that if you couldnt USE that that power (unable to pressthe button) then it wasnt really any use to you. Most of us today are like that…we SHOULD be the best educated smartest people ever to walk the earth……but most of us are not.
We can blame entities outside of ourselves for this, and we do, but it’s not the truth. We CHOOSE to be powerless. We choose to DESIRE our subservient positions. These are all choices that we make. The individual chooses to make these choices impossible. JimBob from fluorida who chooses to not be able to go to sleep so is getting an early start on the day at just after midnight. Happy,happy,happy.
True.
Sad fact…Communism didnt fail because it was an evil unnatural system of totalitarian control. It failed because it couldn’t make decent washing machines, cars and other consumer goods that its subjects knew others were enjoying. Thats actually a pretty sad picture of human nature.
Yes. Mises pretty much destroyed them on that point. Price fixing being an impossibility in a market that doesn’t allow the consumer to determine production. I once read in a Tom Woods newsletter some of Marx’s poetry. He wished to become death. A really nice guy there. That should have been a clue, along with a million other things like the mass murder recommendations and the like. Just how stupid does a person have to be to realize that power will never give up its’ power? Your statement reminded me of the book Poland by Michener. The party couldn’t figure out where to put their resources in manufacturing and kept making the farm sector suffer to somewhat satisfy the wants of a whackjob manufacturing sector. And we see how that worked. People really don’t want to use their giant brains, which is odd since nature has us spending so much of our energy on it. JimBob from fluorida who remains fascinated by stupid people. They’re just so entertaining!