Sublime

No: if anything, the liberal democracies of the West are abandoning the very values that were once known as the Judeo-Christian tradition. The family, the community, the sanctity of human life, the concept of an objective set of moral values, the idea of a covenant linking the present to the past—these are ideals in danger, not reigning orthodoxies

... See more

King emphasizes in a speech to the Workers Union of America in 1962.36 “We cannot create machines which revolutionize industry unless we simultaneously create ideas commensurate with social and economic reorganization, which harness the power of such machines for the benefit of man. The new age will not be an era of hope but of fear and emptiness u

... See more

useful and imperfect simplification may be that technology has mostly continued to do what it has done: expand the range of human choices. Most things are more accessible to more people than at any other point in human history. In the process, we're finding out how people handle that ability. The results are certainly mixed. As somebody who thinks ... See more

David Foster Wallace: As the Internet grows, and as our ability to be linked up, like— I mean, you and I coulda done this through e-mail, and I never woulda had to meet you, and that woulda been easier for me. Right?

Like, at a certain point we’re gonna have to build up some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technolo... See more

But free-speech maximalism flourishes in print culture; in the Digital City it appears less desirable. First, print culture sustained the belief that, given a modicum of good sense and education among people, truth would triumph in the marketplace of ideas. Writing and reading are slow and deliberate, encouraging the belief that false ideas will ev... See more

Hollis Robbins: Most people focus on the vast reserves of content now available online, but few people ask: “Is this a good teacher?”

The media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said of technology that every augmentation is also an amputation. We chose our digitally enhanced world. We did not realize the significance of what was being amputated.