Dystopian techno-futurism from 1909! Eerie and vivid. Enjoy. http://www.tcnj.edu/~miranda/classes/topics/reading/forester.html “Beware of first- hand ideas!” exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by life and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and [...]
Is television a waste of time? Yes… but, perhaps, a waste badly needed during the years it has taken for society to reinvent itself. A steam-valve for the volcanic birth of the Information Age. In this insightful essay on social surplus, Clay Shirky argues that our the hours liberated by the microwave and the washing [...]
We who love interactive fiction, story games, role-playing games, video games, and their myriad synonyms still have a lot of thinking – and, more to the point, talking; or, even better, creating – to do before we know what they’re about. The thought that games can also be stories, or should have anything to do [...]
I got tipped off to a concise, clever, and thought-provoking video by Ken Wilber, a scholar of “spiritual phenomena” (which, as he points out, is a loaded term). In this eight-minute segment, he explores the question of whether scientific methodology can be applied to non-physical experiences. Spirituality and the Three Strands of Deep Science I [...]
Did that headline get your attention? In our culture “creative” is very frequently a synonym for “good”. Okay, you probably don’t want the driver of the car beside yours driving creatively, and you’d likely acknowledge that burgeoning creativity wouldn’t be advisable for the structural engineer behind the Hoover Dam, or the accountants at Enron. But [...]
The Gothamist describes a generation of “New Victorians” who are bringing long-lost habits of diligence, fidelity, and propriety to bear on their youths. I wonder if they are also rediscovering Victorian sexual repression and colonialism. Regardless, I think this is fantastic news. I’ve long predicted that America is on a bring of a neo-Victorian cultural [...]