I'm lazy. Also nervous about being caught out -- who wants to go first in a debate? Second in a debate -- now that's a different story. You are under no obligation to build a case of your own, aside from, "It's maybe a little more complicated than you think."
Here is an example of what I'm talking about, from four years ago: Gaza And The Loss Of Civilization. Palestine, in other words -- Brian Eno's outrage; Peter Schwartz's measured, "I don't think there is any honour to go around here." If it weren't for Eno we wouldn't get Schwartz -- all via Byrne, who seems to have made this sort of exchange-and-explore his raison d'être.
Byrne's is a good model. I'm afraid I'm more familiar with Joel's experience -- protracted and passionate argument with an individual on the cusp of psychological collapse. Given the tenor of what I'm seeing on the Splinternet I'm beginning to wonder if that isn't a spreading condition.
Related: VR pioneer Jaron Lanier says, "We won, and we turned into assholes" -- over here.
More anon.
5 comments:
Going to hold my peace here for the most part. Not unhappy to see you take these things up, difficult as they surely are. Have to say, though, how refreshing it is to see someone outside the Rod-Dreher-has-something-important-to-say-to-us scene moan about squandering of our blessed civilizational capital as if the culminating slaughter of millions on millions the western powers had managed to accomplish across a globe shaped by their ambitions through 4 or 5 centuries before ‘1948’ meant anything to anybody were a f***ing parenthesis.
Seems to be my weekend for suddenly noticing Brian Eno, by the way. I came across him in a clip in somebody’s tweet, yesterday, and thought it good for this thing I’m just starting to play with on the new site. I’d honestly never paid any attention to him before. Convergence!
Haha. Ha. Oy.
Re-read, here, and see that you offer Byrne’s point-counterpoint of course just to illustrate what you’re setting up to say about high emotion in combox exchanges &c. — and that for my part I’m evidently game to become part of the illustration.
Keep rolling, Bowman. We're here for you!
You’re the enabler I can always turn to …
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