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The Internet Books Media Book Reviews

Technoromanticism 59

Posted by JonKatz from the the-electric-era-and-the-romance-of-the-real dept.
In Technoromanticism, a University of Edinburgh architect agrees that the computer may represent the pinnacle of scientific and technological acheivement, but, he argues, some of the most revolutionary ideas surrounding cyberspace are grounded in old movements like the Enlightenment, something techies tend to forget. Warning: This is heavy-handed academic writing but with a fascinating premise.

Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism and the romance of
author Richard Coyne
pages 399
publisher MIT Press
rating 6/10
reviewer Jon Katz
ISBN 0-262-03260-0
summary ploddingly written but important premise

Increasingly, pundits and scholars are putting the computer, and all of its promises -- of interconnectivity, interactivity, the erosion of hierarchies, of sweeping changes in business practices, the potential revitalism of individualism and democracy -- at the pinnacle of scientific and technological accomplishment, well before those promises are well delivered on.

A new book by a Richard Coyne, professor of Architectural Computing and head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh agrees that the computer is revolutionary but he argues in Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real (MIT University Press) that these narratives aren't brand new, but grounded in the Enlightenment and, especially, in the romantic traditions, from Marshall McLuhan's utopian vision of social reintegration by electronic communication to claims that cyberspace is literally redefining what reality is.

McLuhan, says author Marshall Coyne, identified the era of preliterate culture as a golden age in which humankind was at one with itself and nature. Speaking and listening in the absence of both writing and technology involved intensely interactive exchanges that come close to directly sharing thoughts. Then, says Coyne, we entered the age of literacy in which we write, lay things out in order and divide the world. Society in this era is urban, global and fragmented rather than local, integrated and whole.

Now, says the author, we are entering a third age in which the hyperactive environment of electronic communications is returning us to a tribal state once again, but this time the whole world is the tribe.

The romanticism of urban narratives represents one of two very different threads of the Enlightenment: rationalism and romanticism.

Coyne links virtual fantasies to other strains in creative history, like surrealism. "To search the web is to explore a vast 'city' within which one stumbles across strange objects and encounters surprise -- the net surfer is a flaneur (an idler, and a loafer)."

The surrealists, says Coyne were excited by this aspect of cities hundreds of years ago. Surrealist writers reported going to flea markets where they could search for objects "that can be found nowhere else: old fashioned, broken, useless, almost incomprehensible, even perverse ... "

This is an academic work published by a university press, and as such, is riddled with some dense jargon about representation, space, time, interpretation, structuralism and identity.

But Coyne is right about technoromanticism. Even if the technology is new, the ideas behind it don't spring suddenly from the earth, something the tech culture tends to forget. They have roots and precedents dating back hundreds of years, and are even more interesting when taken in context. That alone makes Technromanticism a worthwhile, if not particularly entertaining or universally accessible book.

Purchase this book at purchase this book at fatbrain.
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Review: "Technoromanticism" More

Review: "Technoromanticism"

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  • Latest estimate I read was that 300 million people worldwide are on the Internet now, bringing the percentage of world population up to five percent. Pretty astounding if accurate.
  • rating 6/10
    summary ploddingly written but important premise
    reviewer Jon Katz
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • What kinda wag still uses that term?

    The author (or Katz) just loses credibility in my eyes...

  • Exactly.

    We are the passive "entertained" we think we are interacting, but we ain't really doing anything except talkin about doing something.

    Quit reading slashdot NOW. go get some work done. slacker. I SAID NOW DAMMIT...

  • I thought it was Douglas Adams who coined the "Global Village" idea? No?


  • Toronto: Glasgow's biggest suburb

    signed: a one-time Haligonian
  • ... by E. O. Wilson. Note that the Enlightenment
    and Romanticism are not the same at all.
    -jsh
  • That is a feature that babelfish really needs.

    Katzspeak to English.
    Dumbass to English

    If we could get the Dolphin to English translator that would be pretty sweet too.

  • I've believed for some time that the Internet would eventually surpass the printing press in terms of its impact on society. As another poster mentioned, the percentage of people in the world with computers is quite low. How long will it take for the computer to become ubiquitous, or at least achieve the same availability to the average world citizen as printed media enjoys today? We're not even there with phones or VCRs, or even cable TV yet.

    Or are we going to delineate society by wired and not wired as we have for ages by literate and non-literate?
  • WOW ! img tags in an article. This creates a precedent ! We demand img tags to be allowed in the comments ! (so the trolls could fill the pages with goatse.cx images and file:///con/con) :)

    --
  • McLuhan, says author Marshall Coyne, identified the era of preliterate culture as a golden age in which humankind was at one with itself and nature. Speaking and listening in the absence of both writing and technology involved intensely interactive exchanges that come close to directly sharing thoughts. Then, says Coyne, we entered the age of literacy in which we write, lay things out in order and divide the world. Society in this era is urban, global and fragmented rather than local, integrated and whole.

    I don't buy that... just because you're forced to talk to someone doesn't mean that they're going to listen to you - ever hear of selective hearing? Liek when people keep telling you the same stuff over and over until you just selecively ignore their voice?

    Then again, most academics I've met have pretty selective hearing... ;)

  • "History is merely a list of surprises - it can only prepare us to be surprised yet again."


  • As a regular Katz-flamer who shakes my head sadly, points out where he is wrong, and calls him an idiot every time he rears his empty head, I think I can explain. The article itself is shaking its head sadly and branding its author an idiot more effectively than I, or any other Katz-mocker, can. Except for its brevity, it's the perfect send-up of Katz. It says nothing, repeatedly, in a solipsistic, self-congratulatory way; it doesn't know what it thinks, but it agrees with this new book here; it revels in its own lack of interest. Frankly, post-Columbine, I, tech-savvy cyberlibertarian, don't know what, interactively, the hell(mouth) to do, peer-to-peer. And I'm its target demographic!

  • I'm not really certain what the revelation here is. After all, like the Open Source Bazaar model, Romanticism and the Enlightenment both rose out of creative culture's need to "scratch an itch". Many of the creeds involved were simply logical extensions of the underlying European social context, when applied in a positive fashion.

    Is it any wonder that "geek culture" and the internet in general, still primarily influenced by European and European-based (North American) cultures, should share many of those same logical extensions when it tries to focus its ideals positively?

    That being said, though, it is nice to see the subject analyzed in a serious way. Had I the cash, I'd be happy to check out the book, but alas my romanticism shall have to settle for its on-line manifestations.

  • I've never heard of Glaswegia. Is that near Toronto?
    --
  • Whatever happend to an "epidemic of Jeffersonian democracy"?
  • The more things change the more they stay the same.
  • Yes i agree wholeheartedly, in fact he has his /. crackers sittin in the backroom breakin into puter readin my docs and listening in on conversations relating to these topics which mysteriously seem to pop up in his articles a few days later. >_ Griffis

  • I don't know what happened, but this may signify the beginning of the end for Slashdot.
    If Jon has lost his power to divert flame energy away from the central core of interesting discussions,
    there may be no hope for the future...



    ...or maybe everyone just got up late on Friday.


    10. After dividing into its separate entitites, Microsoft will be able to reform into one gigantic
    robot - but only if the fate of the galaxy is threatened by evil. -- lostbrain.com - proposed MS remedies
  • Heavy al right . Computers were always heavy until the mouse came along . But this making a lot of sense . Especially from an Indian view point where about .1% have Internet access . We can 'see' both the world he is talking about . What is primitive to the west as well as the 'modern', and I suppose technocratic.
  • are you kidding, the only reason that your online communities are so accepting is because ultimately everyone is secluded and has their own privacy.....they are only intellectually accepting. There is no physical acceptance in a virtual community and i doubt that a community like that would be willing to be as "free" physically as they are intellectually.

    Well, I hope we can find a way around that, or at least teach tolerance to future generations so that people don't have to be physically isolated to be intellectually free with each other. Intellectual freedom breeds physical freedom, methinks. Slow process, but hey, ya gotta start somewhere, right?

    Besides, one of the online communities I was a part of in the past (haven't had much contact with it for the past year or so... life changes things sometimes...) I do know a lot of the members of in person, and they are every bit as accepting in the real world as they are on the 'Net. Unfortunately, they are scattered about the country, so it's not like I can just pop down the block and say Hi...

    -cajun
  • Where I live, it's every asshole with a boomcar playing some combination of shouted bad poetry and mercifully-deafening bass (at least I assume they're deaf. It would be a mercy. The levels of distortion and the rattle and buzz of every object not rubber-mounted in the car pretty much destroy any musical value the stuff might have.)

    Well, I've heard that stuff, too. And I always think: "Get some Dynamat, dammit!!!" as well.

    However, if these individuals thought they were a PART of a real COMMUNITY they might actually CARE about other people. And they might meet someone who knows something about acoustics and vibration and whatnot who can set them up so their car sounds a lot sweeter without buzzing and shaking and distorting all over the place, plus the common courtesy to turn it down at night, at stoplights, etc.

    I used to blare my stereo as loud as I could, now I turn it down at stoplights because I realized that I didn't like it when others blared at lights, so I shouldn't either.

    I still think a more developed community would help solve a lot of these sorts of antisocial problems...

    Besides, what I meant about cool music coming out of a door isn't a loud blare, it's enough to notice from the sidewalk if you were walking by. Listening carefully, you'd say "Hey, that sounds cool, I wonder what it is?" and walk up and ask. In college I could do that all the time, and met a lot of cool people that way.

    -cajun
  • A few weeks ago I went to Burning Man and I was astounded at the wonderful sense of community. You could not walk 50' without people inviting you in for food or drink or chat. I would *love* to live in such a place all the time (minus the desert). It is all the more perplexing considering a huge proportion of Burning Man attendies are from here. Why cannot the same sense of community be created here?

    I've never been to Burning Man. Would love to go sometime, but unfortunately my ONE WEEK of not-scheduled-for-me time off is usually tasked to a 4x4 trip to hang with the LandCruiser community that is the TLCA. Cool peoples, the 'Cruiser types are, most of them anyway. Everybody shares spare parts, tools, fuel, food, etc. Difficult as all heck to avoid being offered food, drinks, etc. from other fellow 'Cruiserheads. All kinds of people, all kinds of ideas, all kinds of fun!

    I'll make it to Burning Man some time, I just hope I don't have to wait too long...

    -cajun

    BTW, I live in a Northern suburb of Chicago where property values are INSANE and as such things are a bit odd. The coffee shop (CharBucks) closes at 6PM??????
  • I would settle for Katzspeak to English at this point. But the dumbass to English would be appreciated too. Then I could converse with my relatives ;-).
  • I'm sorry, I don't normally do this, but I feel the 'fuck's sake' post should be modded up to +5:Insightful.

    If that isn't an appropriate use of the word 'fuck' then I've never seen one.
  • Excuse me, I have a question for you:
    Did you and Jon Katz go to the same school, or did you just find a book of 'really big words you can use to confuse people'?

    I think I picked up enough of that to make a little sense, but I have a feeling most of us didn't understand that Katzspeak so well. Could you convert to dumbass English so the rest of us could understand? Thank you.

  • I totally feel the same way. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I find their is an incredible lack of community here. While I love the liberal tolerant atmosphere here, I found that even Houston had more of a sense of community (though I would never go back for other reasons!)

    A few weeks ago I went to Burning Man and I was astounded at the wonderful sense of community. You could not walk 50' without people inviting you in for food or drink or chat. I would *love* to live in such a place all the time (minus the desert). It is all the more perplexing considering a huge proportion of Burning Man attendies are from here. Why cannot the same sense of community be created here?

    Michelle

  • I find myself agreeing on most counts, but as far as I can tell, the gist of JonKatz' summary is that Coyne argues that the _narratives_ which dominate our impressions of the internet are grounded in priciples established (or at least reiterated) in the Enlightenment. Rephrased: the myth of a global forum (and it is largely a myth, as far as I'm concerned), in its electronic incarnation is the realization of a classical (as opposed to modern) ideal. Most people appear to be disputing the validity of said myth, which is quite laughably invalid, when perhaps they should be arguing if the myth might potentially inform the creation of a genuinely worldwide exchange (arguably a work in progress). I'd make and break the argument myself, but I'd have to make it via praxis and "institutional forgetting" and given that it's a Friday night, I don't much feel like it. Apologies if the post seems disjointed or off-topic; the book review itself is a somewhat short and vague for such a broad and complex subject.
  • Maybe it's just where I live, but I sure don't see anyone leaving a door open with cool music coming out,

    Where I live, it's every asshole with a boomcar playing some combination of shouted bad poetry and mercifully-deafening bass (at least I assume they're deaf. It would be a mercy. The levels of distortion and the rattle and buzz of every object not rubber-mounted in the car pretty much destroy any musical value the stuff might have.)

  • Listening carefully, you'd say "Hey, that sounds cool, I wonder what it is?"

    Well now, that's almost exactly why I play my music at the proper volume -- good and loud. Of course, I listen to good stuff, so at worst I figure I might enlighten somebody.

    (One of these days I'm going to make a tape of whale sounds and play that in the car, just to watch the reactions)

    Seriously, though, I do see your point about their community spirit. I suspect, though, that they do see themselves as part of a community, just not mine. Certainly I've seen two boomcars at a stoplight, drivers grinning at each confraternally as every window in the neighborhood shakes (OK, the houses are old and not terribly well-built, but still).

    'Course, maybe I'm just old.

    "These damned kids, listening to that jungle music. It's all about sex, you know, that's all it is. Sex and dissonance. Doing that Charleston, and the Jitterbug -- country's going to hell, I tell you!"

  • Lacan, Foucault, de Man, and the rest of that Parisian trash pit.

    Since you're an Anonymous Coward, I don't know for sure if you're being serious.

    If you are, well you've little basis upon which to offer any criticism of Katz. If not, well, I applaud you for a brilliant piece of academy-speak.

  • So when we overthrow opressive tyrannies like Sony, Adobe, 3dfx, and Creative, we'll basically be repeating history.

    "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." I remember history pretty well, but I see some situations where we will want to re-create a few wars against tyranny. Bible thumpers and quakers alike unite against the vile existence of corporate arrogance and tyranny!

  • You'd think someone would have moded this up by now. It's funnier than some well-moded stuff I've posted in the last week.

    Also, this discussion (at this moment) seems astoundingly empty for a Katz discussion. There oughta be about 30-50 "shaking their heads sadly" posts and 25-46 "Katz is an idiot" posts and 42-87 posts stating exactly why Katz is wrong. Minumum.

    Did everyone just agree with him this time? Was he right? Did everyone who doesn't like him finally figure out how to use Slashdot Preferences to block him out?
  • But is this a good thing?

    The net has enabled communication to an unprecedented degree. The same effect that allows you to look up directions to any address also allows pedophiles and hate groups to gather in virtual communities. These "negative" groups are tightly knit, due to strongly held beliefs and social pressure. In his BuSab future (Whipping Star, The Dosadi Experiment, a couple of stories), Frank Herbert postulated a time when all red tape had been removed from the government machinery. It worked too well. The Bureau of Sabotage was created to throw some judicious monkey wrenches into the machinery. The question of whether or not the communications structure of the Internet works too well has yet to be answered. On the question of languages. My opinion is that the different conceptual maps encouraged by different languages are a valuable phenomenon. And I don't think that multiple languages are going to disappear. Change form, perhaps, however. As current languages reflect current community structure (geographical), future languages may well reflect the structure of intellectual communities. To some extent, this is already happening.

  • It sounds like this book's bottom line is that despite the fact that the "computer culture" is relatively new, the persistence of human nature can't be denied. As humans we're doing the same thing we did 2000 years ago except we're doing it better and with more ppl. 5 dollar words aside, if we figure out how to communicate, we'll take advantage of it. It's the natural curiousity to learn and know that drives us forward.

  • Same old, same old (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Like every other "new" idea that comes around, the net is just a rehash of past concepts which proved unworkable at the time. The fact that people are getting so excited about it merely demonstrates their lack of understanding of history, not that there is a radical new paradigm on the horizon.

    The sad fact is that novelty, as defined by Leibnitz, does not exist.

  • As Tevre would say "both sides are right!".
    In four millennia of written human heritage
    many ideas recur repeatly.
    And there is also true novelty.
    Its the the mark of an educated person to
    distinguish the difference (go to college techies!).

    We see this dialectic in the microcosm of slashdot. Some people think everything they read is new and fantastic.
    Then we see articles and postings that are essentially repeats of old ideas.
  • The author of Ecclesiastes cp 1 vs 9-10
    complained about this 2600 years ago!

  • Not entirely true. Try living in any large city and you'll find a nice mix of languages. Miami is a good example. Spanish is at least as used as English there and you have a mix of people from all over adding little groups with different languages and cultures. Sometimes you can't understand the language but you still can connect with people. I guess the Internet is like real life. People with few interests who stay home a lot meet few people and stay in their own little box but the rest of us like to mingle. I think the Internet just makes it a lot easier to do that mingling. :) You have isolated settlements but you can be in several at once. You are your own bridge.
  • I've often worked through an evening of conversing with someone using translation tools and a lot of patience. It isn't easy but it can be interesting.

  • Oops, the book is about technoromanticism, not technomancery.

    I'd rather see a review about technomancery.

  • You make a very good point on the mingling issue(being your own bridge) but I disagree with your take on language. While it is possible to communicate with someone in person(via gestures, facial expressions, or whatnot), when text is your only medium you'd better be speaking the same language or you won't get much done. Of course, this brings up the question of non-textual forms of communication on the net. I personally like ease and privacy of text communication, but I can see where another form of communication could come into play.

  • The odds that the ultimate premise of a 399 page accademic treatise is merely "this stuff ain't new" are so slim, that I surmise that Jon Katz was in over his head.

    I would expect the premise of such a book to be much more specific. Until I actually know what the book has to say, ideally through reading it myself, I have no idea if it has merit or not.

    In light of this, I certainly don't feel inclined to accept Katz' summary as authoritative.
    ----------------------------------------------

  • from the Dictionary of Foreign Words in English by John Ayto :

    flâneur
    French flâner means 'stroll around idly or aimlessly', and its derivative flâneur has come to denote an 'idler' or 'loafer', 'someone who passes his time in aimless amusement'. English began to use the word in the mid-19th century, and it has also taken over the related flânerie 'idling, lounging'. It has even, semi-facetiously, coined a verb from it, variously flâné or flane : 'In Paris, in London I have been a happy flâneur; I have flânéd in New York and Washington and most of the great cities of Europe' (H.G. Wells, Apropos of Dolores, 1938). The ultimate source of the French work is Old Norse flana 'wander about'.

    If you are a happy idler, you may enjoy a collection of writings on idling called The Idler's Companion : An Anthology of Lazy Literature. Writers selected include Samuel Johnson, Herman Melville, Oscar Wilde, Miles Davis, Will Self, Rimbaud and more

  • Hmmn.. my senior year in high-school in an English class studying all of the authors and the time-period etc I had the same idea, and again doing my research paper in my English class I reflected on this just a little.

    My conclusion is anyone who is even aware of what romanticism and the Enlightenment can and usually do quickly grasp the parallel of the 'freedomistic' movements today, Free software, Free thinking etc.

    I think anyone who has to read a book to see this isnt among the crowd (not to say the author isnt obviously he *gets* it). I always found my self thinking on tangents in High School, this was one when English got to dry.

    Its amusing to see a book written on it, but not shocking and really I do think this is another good reason to be "broad" in your education. You can easily forget your 'root's ;) and then your bound to repeat mistakes etc, at least thats the idea right..

    Jeremy :)
  • Witness these quotes from Jon's review:

    "Warning: This is heavy-handed academic writing but with a fascinating premise."

    "This is an academic work published by a university press, and as such, is riddled with some dense jargon about representation, space, time, interpretation, structuralism and identity."

    "...Technromanticism a worthwhile, if not particularly entertaining or universally accessible book."

    After reading these quotes, isn't it not surprising (due to his attitude towards academia) that Katz gets ripped by /. (nearly universally) for HIS writing style?

  • Try this link [elsewhere.org] for auto-generated post-modern mumbo-jumbo.
  • Lessee here... Nice bit of work there, wish I had time to order and read the book before posting, but I don't.

    The "global village" isn't here yet, as another poster has mentioned. And, yes, the author of the book is right in that the "ideals" of the Internet providing us with such global connectivity is really just the same Enlightenment ideas being attributed to new sources.

    I for one would like a tighter community. One very much like a university dorm, but with better sound insulation on the walls (VERY important... ;-) and private bathrooms/kitchens and all the comforts of home. Sounds very much unlike a dorm, but it's not the PHYSICAL implementation that I want to be similar.

    It's the SOCIAL one.

    Maybe it's just where I live, but I sure don't see anyone leaving a door open with cool music coming out, inviting random passersby to stick their head in and knock and see if anyone wants to chat or something. And I am SURE that if I tried to just walk up to random houses and/or apartments around where I live and knock and try just chatting with people I'd get wierd looks and maybe a visit from the police...

    Why are we so interested in cocooning ourselves away from everyone else? The fragmentation it produces is is why we all love our Internet connections so much, it is a SUBSTITUTE for the physical community that is so obviously lacking in the "real world".

    Or, at least, that is the typical "geek stereotype" reason, I guess.

    We've lost much more than we've gained with rampant consumerism and an ad-driven popular culture. In exchange for boatloads of shiny trinkets and a feeling of "security" behind the gates of our suburbs and the wheels of our Expeditions we've given up just about everything I can define as "community".

    If things are different where you live, please describe it. I might want to move there!!!!

    What good is prosperity if you can't enjoy it? A more "open" community model would alleviate quite a lot of alienation, lonliness and abject boredom, methinks...

    And the cooperation such communities would engender would bring a higher standard of living to everyone involved.

    To get rid of the "tragedy of the commons" you need to keep the community tight-knit enough that everybody knows what's going on. This necessarily involves smallish groups, like a few blocks or somesuch, but these block-level groups can work together in larger groups without losing the advantages that the small block group size affords in dealing with keeping common areas in good shape.

    I hope to find some sort of community someday in the real world that is as accepting and open as some of the online ones I am a part of...

    -cajun
  • In light of this, I certainly don't feel inclined to accept Katz' summary as authoritative.

    Very sensible, he certainly fucked up the translation of "flaneur". In English criticism, its sense is extended beyond the literal translation you get in a French dictionary, and carries the sense of a wanderer on the edges of performance. It's a term from Walter Benjamin [virtualia.ong.ro].

    And yes, as a modern languages graduate, you'll be relieved to know that I am partial to the occasional hairy ass.

  • Does anyone else notice that Katz is the only person doing book reviews that don't seem like reviews? I mean, it seems like his reviews are more of a chance for him to spout off some theory. Now, maybe this theory is the one the author was trying to convey, or maybe not. Personally, I doubt it very much. Katz seems to miss the point on so many things (witness some of his latest columns published here) that I have a really, really hard time believing he would get the premise of a book right.

    I really wish he would just give us a sampling of the book, and a breif outline of the general topics discussed. Instead, what he gives us is another diatribe of his idiotic ideals wrapped in the premise that the author of the given book shares his ideals.

    Sorry if this seems flamebaitish, but this doesn't seem to be a book review. It seemed more like an editorial inspired by a book reading.
  • I would be fascinated to see your copies of the wiring diagrams to the 5th century Cray computers used by the Athenian government to run their social engineering efforts, along with their ICBM program.

    I would also be interested in Aristotle's treatise on the design principles of twelve tone harmony as practiced by his teachers, comparing it to those social anachists who insisted on introducing rock and roll to the celebrations honoring Athena in her temple.

    The problem is, of course, that innovation can take place, and does all of the time, in bits and pieces. Otherwise Linus should have never bothered developing Linux, since that pesky operating system idea had been done already by fine companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Xerox, etc.

    As horrifying as it may seem, there may be a fundamental flaw in the argument that everything has been done before, merely due to a blindspot in the imagination of the author.

    - - - - - - - -
    "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."

  • Jon should do more of his articles in this style, because this time we get a nice summary:

    ploddingly written but important premise

    Much easier than wading though his prose :)

  • Coyne links virtual fantasies to other strains in creative history, like surrealism. "To search the web is to explore a vast 'city' within which one stumbles across strange objects and encounters surprise -- the net surfer is a flaneur (an idler, and a loafer)."

    Well that pisses me off just about enough to get out of my chair and do some work for a change.

  • Surrealists (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @05:40AM (#777546) Homepage
    Surrealist writers reported going to flea markets where they could search for objects "that can be found nowhere else: old fashioned, broken, useless, almost incomprehensible, even perverse ... "

    That pretty much sums up the eBay experience! :))

  • Whole world a village? (Score:3)

    by AdamHaun ( 43173 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @04:40AM (#777547) Journal
    The whole world won't become a village until we all speak the same language. On the scale of human population, cities are fairly small-scale. It's easy to hook up with your neighbors in a city. On the internet, you generally meet a few people who have common interests. These are your intellectual "neighbors." The internet seems to be shaping up to be a model of the current world -- many isolated "settlements" of people who share common interests.

  • What? (Score:3)

    by LNO ( 180595 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @04:39AM (#777548)
    No Corporate Republic? No anti-Geek? No post-Columbine?

    You imposter! Where's the real Jon Katz? What have you done with him!?

  • Hmmm (Score:3)

    by DunkPonch ( 215121 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @04:39AM (#777549) Homepage
    I ran that whole article through Babelfish and it still came out gibberish.

  • The tech culture DOES remember its roots (Score:4)

    by Da VinMan ( 7669 ) on Friday September 15, 2000 @04:55AM (#777550)
    We haven't forgotten our roots. However, we live them so intensely that we tend to forget that they're not delivered for everyone else. Most of us live in very privileged conditions, and we very much feel like we're in McLuhan's "global village" (McLuhan's idea; NOT Clinton's). This is especially true compared to the cold-war, pre-Internet era when simply having a Russian accent in America was considered exotic. (Or vice versa - I've heard stories about either.)

    In a world where over half the world population goes hungry every night, and where maybe only 1% of the world population has access to a computer, much less the internet; the global (well fed, at peace, and in touch with their spirituality) village is far from achieved. But then is a state of utopia really achievable anyway? (Another discussion altogether.)

    It is indeed a romantic vision that allows us to believe that everybody benefits from this fairly small-scaled renaissance that is occurring because of technology. The whole world will not be the tribe until the whole world has access to the same infrastructure.

    If we're lucky, we might a achieve a worldwide tribe of the intelligentsia. That would at least allow the world's thinkers and leaders to have the medium as a support mechanism when they implement the best-of-breed cultural norms through the influences of their writing, art, etc.
  • Wendell Berry [eku.edu] also says that language and technology as they're now often used divide the world (see "Life is a Miracle" or really, just about anything else by him). I wonder what he thinks of the internet...

    This reminds me of something that I was thinking about the other day as I passed some ad that said "communicate with anyone! anywhere! anytime!" I don't own a cell phone. Yes, I check my email twice a day, but I find that I don't really have to (several weeks in Australia reminded me of that).

    How much of the communication ideals that seem to be pushed out (or community website ideas) do we really want? Need? I don't need to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Sometimes I need the opposite. Sometimes I just need to be able to communicate with a few people, in the right places, and then have time to do something useful, like build a bookshelf (so I'll have a place to put those collectors items when people buy only eBooks that expire in 4 months).

    Yeah, I'm starting to sound like Cliff Stoll [theconnection.org] and I'm also something of a hypocrite because I like the internet and technology as much as the next guy. But there's just something about the promise of virtual community (and often "Insta" or
    some other manufactured word like that) that, like virtual books, doesn't seem quite as promising as community in the real world.

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