There was a point at which John Lennon made a decision to become a media hacker. He boiled his Beatles following down to a concentrated audience that could hear what he was saying. And then he acted, he didn’t wait. He said ‘War is over. If you want it.’ Imagine yourself at that crossroads.
2 CommentsCategory: politics
The discussion of Rick Warren’s participation in the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States has stirred up a number of thoughts. These ideas were given more focus by listening to an episode of Philosophy Bites on Derrida’s idea of forgiveness:
While Derrida says that national reconciliation is a separate matter, forgiveness itself, is worth some serious thought. In short, Derrida’s thoughts of forgiveness run as follows. A forgiveness that has no cost, is not worth much. It is forgiving the unforgivable that is the essence of the act. And also seemingly impossible to accomplish; it asks us to do the undoable.
This is a very disturbing idea because it seems to run counter to the idea of justice, or at least a rough form of justice. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – these practices can lead to an infinite negative feedback loop. For a change to occur, one side must do the impossible.
5 Comments
There’s a liquidity of meaning at work in Google’s Voice Search. While we think of it as computers understanding speech, it’s really nothing of the kind. The kind of talking that we do when we make sounds that a computer can understand is more like writing– perhaps even like typing words. Voice becomes writing in this context.
When we use SMS, IM or Twitter writing becomes voice. We speak through marks that we make on a screen through a keyboard. We call it writing, but it’s actually a form of speech. Think about how sign language operates– it’s speaking with the hands, with the gesture.
Voice becomes writing, writing becomes voice. But the poles are not solid, meaning moves back and forth, like Dali’s paranoic critical method. Swans reflect elephants, elephants reflect swans– a most interesting form of recursion.
Comments closed
…to sleep, perchance to dream…
Comments closed