But there’s something in this event in particular that worries me: Our machinery for translating any kind of event into an existential crisis that requires us to abandon a humble, probabilistic view of the world has evolved into something truly exquisite. It now takes that machinery less than a single day to extrapolate the meaning of an event into Common Knowledge – something that everybody knows that everybody knows. It takes only hours to marshal us all into defense of issues of existential importance to our Greater Truth.


goobster:

Fantastic article. No matter what side you are on - if any - the opportunity for self-reflection is here, presented in stark black and white... what kind of human do you want to be in the world?

Here's your chance to decide.

Man, I miss BBSes, newsgroups, and threaded discussion web sites. Each conversation and community was isolated in its own space, under its own topic. There was little to no cross-contamination between your different interest groups, so each group existed on its own, and you could be whoever you wanted to be within that small area.

Now you are the sum total of all your presences across all media, and that sucks.


posted 1920 days ago