Brilliant People who are not me:
So I spend many of my pretend-to-be-a-security-guard hours reading the words of people vastly smarter than myself. It’s humbling, amusing, enlightening, and occasionally painfully depressing. My reading time tonight has been filled with an inspiring combination of each of these as I’ve continually found myself lost in the endlessly thought-provoking ideas of some of my favorite internet folks.
The purpose of this post is to capture something useful/insightful/imaginitive from two of the swellest people I’ve come to follow through the Tubes. These people are widely known for their seemingly limitless capacity to:
1. produce profound nuggets of insight
2. produce hordes of internet fanboys
This is simply a haphazard (because I love that word) collection of a few of those thoughts. They’re written here party for me to remember and refer to later, and partly for the moral edification and perverse enjoyment of anyone who happens to find their way to this page.
First, let me say that I love Clay Shirky.
Specifically, I love this piece about the death of newsprint. I wish I had had this paper to read when I was taking History of Mass Communication last year. I get chills anytime I read about revolution, but this piece in particular is fascinating in it’s treatment of literacy and media, as opposed to simply politics. I’m all for joining an agrarian revolt (with pitchforks), but if I can’t have that, I’ll happily settle for reading about the subtler, more relevant forms of revolution.
“That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing.”
Also, if you have a chance, read or watch “Here Comes Everybody.” If it disappoints you, you’re not paying attention.
Next, I’d like to write a few words about Douglas Rushkoff. My introduction to Rushkoff came when I first picked up the Testament series, something I would reccommend to anyone with an interest in the Torah, economics, or government surveilance (RFIDs). It’s essentially a modern retelling of some of the stories which are central to the Hebrew Bible. It’s by far the most creative use of visual space on the comic book page that I’ve ever seen. One of the elements of the story that really fascinated me was the concept of an organic, living currency. Even if I were to read it two or three more times, I don’t think I could quite wrap my brain around it, much less be able to explain it. Nevertheless, Rushkoff gave me reason to think that he really knew what he was talking about in terms of economics. I thought it would be interestig if he wrote a basic economics primer.
Now, he has. Read it. Be amazed. I’m still not sure how I feel about it except to say that not only does this man inspire incredible confidence in his knowledge of all things economics, he has an angle I can really appreciate. He approves of letting the whole silly little house of cards fall down. He might have more civilization-friendly views than I do in terms of the ultimate outcome, but either way, I approve of his strategy.
favorite lines:
(And speaking of modern retellings of Jewish myths, check out Kings if you want an amazing look at a modern day version of the story of David. It’s something I’m hoping will stick around for a few seasons. It’s Orgasmically-OT.)
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