Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Teaching Life Blog Life Disjunct

At Berkeley, I'm lecturing on Plato's Symposium and Aristophanes' Wasps today. Meanwhile, of course, Amor Mundi is still reverberating crazily over last weekend's anti-futurological rant. It's a sore temptation to elaborate and respond to comments happening here and elsewhere, since many reflect honest confusions or what look to me like skewed emphases all of which I'd love to treat as teachable moments. I've been saying so insistently so long so many of the things in that little piece, it's lovely that so many are exercised by them at the moment and it would be lovelier still to have the time to get more of the futurologically-susceptible to bite down more conclusively on my fish hook with a little selective cajoling. Unfortunately, there just isn't time.

I will say that I am still bleakly amused by those who seem especially incensed at the length and occasional playfulness of my sentences and so on. For those who feel that way who also happen to number among the sooper-brain futurological congress, I must say it is hard to square their pretended ecstasies about infinitely proliferating morphologies and intelligences with their reactionary dismissal of my own modest divergence in style from third-grade readable newspaper reportage. A mind is a terrible thing to tweet.

Meanwhile, for those who really do hunger for concision, do let me recommend my Futurological Brickbats, which offer up much of my anti-futurological critique in readily digestable aphoristic chunks, many pre-chewed. One-liners directed toward media critique are collected under Fool Me Tee Vee, one-liners directed toward market libertarians and other reactionary politcos are collected under Dispatches from Libertopia, one-liners directed at the academy are collected under Faulty Ivory Towers.

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