Wade Davis on culture

[goddamnitbabies]

"Our achievements have to be sure have been stunning, our technological innovations dazzling... These accomplishments do not make the Western paradigm exceptional or suggest in any way that is has or ought to have a monopoly on the path to the future

Comments

(thanks for Being There, being-there person !)

[tdaschel]

*fantastic* post.

.. using Facebook because .. my primitive mobile device isn't LiveJournal friendly. and what - really - do i do with it? trying to organize a .. conspiracy of *self* i can live with.

it is completely NORMAL i suppose to make text so as to get some sense of what we rilly an' trooly think. i mean, otherwise we just wander around in a cloud of subjectivity wherein we *think* we know what we're all about.

my introduction to Internet came Summer of '98. uncle informed me that Random House had come up with some "bestgood 20th novels in English" gimmick. discovered there was an argument being carried out online featuring "Randroids" and a secretive cult dedicated to the genius of Wittgenstein and Brian Wilson. and if our lives proceed through a series of *rooms*, then - perhaps, for better or worse - i'm still knocking about in That one ..

[slumberjack]

Hey!!! Happy to see you using other avenues after your FACEBOOK post about it

[goddamnitbabies]

Yeah, there was something irreplacable about the LJ world. I dunno, this is me connecting via Dreamwidth, which is open source, but I may try to even follow my friendslist for a while. At the very least, I want to use this place for writing about real things, instead of just dumping it all on Facebook, where it gets lost.

[switchduck]

Ahahahahaha, you're on LJ. Yay.

[goddamnitbabies]

yeah, I set it up to go to both. sigh. i'm probably just going to cave and be lj for real stuff and facebook for the goofing around stuff.

[switchduck]

I approve of this particular cave in.

Also, welcome back!

[wwidsith]

I am more optimistic. In particular I think the sudden mass circulation of information that has come with the internet has done a huge amount to advance the collective (if not the individual) intelligence. Originally it seemed so easy to circulate misinformation and other bollocks that it all seemed like a bit of a mess, but ironically, or unexpectedly anyway, this has driven a huge online culture that's committed to citing sources, and explaining where you get your information from. {citation needed}. That has all kinds of knock-on effects -- I see it myself as a journalist because people who have grown up with this are much less trusting of people like me who mediate their access to the original information. I think this is encouraging. I think you can also see it actively bringing down public credulity in superstitiion and nonsense, and I would include religion in that.