| Having a blog is rather like publishing your own, on-line version of Reader's Digest, with daily updates: you troll the Internet, and, when you find an article or a Web site that grabs you, you link to it—or, in weblog parlance, you "blog" it. Then other people who have blogs—they are known as bloggers—read your blog, and if they like it they blog your blog on their own blog. | The
libertarian philosophy of minimal government and maximal individual
freedom appeals, as well, to the globe-trotting computer professionals
who consider themselves less citizens
than "netizens," wired
by cellphone, fax, and modem into the
world space of ceaselessly circulating
information and liquid capital but increasingly disengaged from public
space, civic life, and social
responsibility. |
But most
of the
community is
accepting this as almost
smoking-gun proof that there were oceans
on Mars. Ultimately, I think we're going to
have to dig holes in the shoreline and dig for sand. |
| I knew, of course, that it's just a hard drive, a small chunk of magnetized metal that I share with about a quarter of a million people, none of whom I will ever meet. But that's a little like saying my American Express card is just a piece of plastic. That server is a pulpit, a launchpad, and the communal hub of my life. | The modern world focuses primarily on material things. Development is measured by material indicators, not by intangible things such as God-consciousness, brotherhood and sisterhood, or neighbourliness. Taliban-style movements also focus on the material, the tangible aspects of faith—rules and outward behaviour. Unlike beliefs, intentions and feelings, these can be controlled and imposed upon people. Taliban violence against those who break the rules is an application of the modern view that state interference in the lives of individuals is the answer to most social problems. | Computers create an illusion of objectivity in all data, while simultaneously undermining the ways in which communities pass on their cultural heritages from generation to generation. By intervening in the way a community understands itself and its heritage, computers dislocate their identity, while individuals retreat into cybernetic worlds of data far removed from their lived realities. What results is "a natural attitude toward being a rational, self-determining individual who looks upon both past and future in terms of immediate self-interest." This self-absorbed individual develops "a view of the environment as a technological and economic opportunity," shearing it of all other significance. |
| Most cultures exist because they've taught their people to reject new ideas. It's not human nature, it's culture nature. I regard cultures as huge parasites. I think each person has a lot of potential, and I find it painful when I'm introduced to somebody, say, in Europe, and when I hear that a man's name is O'Brien, I know he's Catholic. He didn't choose it. His culture chose it. And to me that culture is an evil, mindless force that first teaches its values and then teaches you to fear other values. So, of course it looks like human nature, but it's meme nature. | Architecture
has always represented the prototype of
a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity
in a state of
distraction. I really believe that entertainment in a lot of ways has become a way for people to come together… It has, in fact, become—I'm convinced of this—it's become a replacement for religion. And I think that in the same way people used to quote Scripture they're now quoting 'Seinfeld.' |
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