Month: September 2022

EDUCATIONAL DEADENING. William Blake raged against the deadening of original thought in children by the brutal clumsiness of one-shoe-fits-all education systems designed to keep orderly classrooms and squash originality or curiosity. We have had the curiosity systematically leached out of our minds. View in LinkedIn

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. Our education systems have generally done a good job of creating a babysitting service while the adults can service capitalist machines, as we have seen during COVID confinements, and rather less of a good job at generating enquiring minds. That any such minds survive such a system is in itself rather a wonder. View in LinkedIn

TURNING POINT. But now we have at our fingertips these unlimited libraries of original and extraordinary thought. A click away. From the comfort of our own couch without needing to navigate the Stacks with Card Catalogs that barely cross-referenced and felt more like a warren of rabbit holes. A true turning point in access to ideas. https://lnkd.in/emRkF86a View in LinkedIn

PRESCIENT. And now we have Google searches at our fingertips to answer every obscure question. “Take the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy itself. Described as an electronic guidebook and emblazoned with the words 'DON'T PANIC' on the cover, it is the go-to reference material for any universal traveller. The Guide is described in the book as being “a small, thin, flexible lap computer”. https://lnkd.in/ein_3_MX View in LinkedIn

UNLIMITED VOLUME. The sheer volume of original thought contained in these virtual libraries is essentially bottomless for all practical purposes. You can expand your intimate knowledge of extraordinary thinkers to the limit that you have the time available. A perverse twist on Parkinson’s Law. View in LinkedIn

NEW FRIENDS. Your parochial village can now be transcended. Your dinner guests can be great philosophers, scientists, writers and artists in a virtual community of friends you become intimately acquainted with during your readings. View in LinkedIn

EXTENDED INTELLIGENCE: “intelligence as a fundamentally distributed phenomenon.” (Ito Joichi, Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto, 2017). https://lnkd.in/eb8yGxmV View in LinkedIn

Although diminutive and easily missed, the tiny purple and white deadnettle flowers are truly exquisite works of geometry. View in LinkedIn

DUCKING THE PRICE OF BREAD. Such extraordinary virtual friends and dinner guests offer to give lively conversation, expand your mind, and avoid the numbing reality of Samuel Beckett overwhelming your dinner table conversations with the price of bread. View in LinkedIn

THE EMPTY CHASM. Hamm in Beckett’s Endgame: “Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn't fill it, and there you'll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe...” https://lnkd.in/enymE7ji View in LinkedIn