Still the question remains: what comes first - depression and isolation, or depending on technology?
If a person has to depend on chat rooms and instant messengers for relationships, there was probably something wrong already before this. They are not depressed because they drink a lot of coffee and live in chat rooms. They live in chat rooms, because they are depressed if they don't. Feeling depressed and isolated? IRC will help you. Can't handle your real life anymore? There's always an unreal one waiting. Etc. If your organism gets used to it, it's hard to be without. Not impossible, though -- but changing your lifestyle is difficult.
1) Why would a "fan" want to consume ripped-off copies of his or her faviorite author's works?
Because he/she can't get them from anywhere else? For instance, I've read about half of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series as etexts, because at that moment (two-three years ago) there was no other way I could have got them. Note that these were English versions - I have either bought or borrowed all those that are translated into Estonian. That's the case with me and most sci-fi, by the way - the only ways to get some books are either ordering them from abroad (which I usually can't afford [*]) or pirating them.
[*] because I spend almost all of my free money on books (mostly non-fiction)
Where do I come from? To be honest, I'm a soon-to-be 2nd year student of semiotics and theory of culture;7
I was thinking (or was I?) of semiotics as a theory of signs in general (opinions about its limits vary from culture to everything). Rumors and predictions about its death seem to be wildly exaggarated...
PS. I almost completely agree with what you said about 'semiotics as in structuralism' being dead.
Was it Einstein who said "Time is what we measure with clocks"?
Hopis do have a concept of time - time is something that happens when corn grows or a person lives, every object has its own time. I think the concept of time in biology is also quite close to this, by the way.
Someone somewhere (ok, in my notebook - a note taken in a seminar) said that the sense of time comes from forgetting what just happened, it's the short-term memory that causes it. Maybe boring things seem to take longer because the brain is less active and has less to forget (has to "refresh" less often?), but when you're doing something that is more exciting and involves you more deeply, it has to "refresh" more often so that you don't even notice what's happening. This is, of course, my wild assumption, backed by no real evidence and not much time taken to actually consider it.
Excuse me, but what exactly do you mean by failure of semiotics? It seems to me by semiotics, you mean structuralism (or Barthes's semiology?), which were/are used as synonyms sometimes, but semiotics is a far wider term really. And it seems to be far from dead to me...
I think it's also worth mentioning that none of those polytheistic religions have such strict rules - they don't have books listing exactly who all those gods are and what are they responsible for, and saying "that's it, all other so-called gods are imposters". It'd be quite impossible, too - just try to cover everything with a limited number of gods, you'll always be finding tasks that need a new one (of course you can have a god of "everything else", but it will only lead to another god of everything else; reminds me of Cantor and his cows...). It's much easier to have one deity do everything. Like when filling a jar with stones, you can always find room for more, but if you fill the jar with water, it's full at once. The Greek or Roman gods don't say things like "if you don't believe in me, you'll burn forever in the lake of fire". They don't need to - as they are god of some certain thing that exists. Not gods that just exist.
Sure, monotheistic religions may have problems with all those others still being out there, but despite this, they still spread very fast, compared to the earlier ones. Why? What did they have to offer? I don't know, maybe it had to do with them unifying all those tribes and lands that previously had all had (at least to some extent) different gods, different languages (note that this didn't change much, though Latin was kinda what English is today).
What you have today is a very diverse society. Even almost tribal. No wonder if monotheism doesn't work anymore, at least in the case of Christianity and all those different branches claiming that they are the real McCoy. It's not even the Roman thing, it's something much earlier. Something pre-polytheistic - everyone, or at least every village, has their own deity. "The others may have theirs, but this one is mine". (Then again, it may just be the start of a new cycle...)
There's this story about how the wise men of old times decided to translate all the Bible to Greek. To make sure it gets translated correctly, they had 40 (or 100, I've forgotten the exact number) different men do it. And lo! a miracle happened and all the translations were exactly the same. When translating the book into Latin, the same stunt was performed with the same results, or at least that's what the legends say. And for this reason the Greek and Latin versions also counted as the Original...
What if we're going to the wrong church? We're just making Him madder and madder every Sunday?
A man from Delhi once came to Sri Ramakrishna to complain: "The people in Delhi are praying to wooden statues of God! You must tell them the err of their ways, and destroy those statues!"
Sri Ramakrishna said: "No. Do you think God is so stupid not to realize that they are actually praying to him?"
("The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna"; Rough quote lifted from Salinger ("Franny & Zooey").)
I think Luther's problems started already before translating the Bible into German - he translated (interpreted some parts of it quite freely, so that it would correspond to his own ideas) the book in 1522, but was declared a heretic (and in the Church's opinion, the only dead heretic was a dead one, so Luther was a major disappointment for still being alive) already in 1517, for publishing his propositions concerning indulgences.
Christ almighty. Everyone, take a step back from your humanities classes and realize what Linux is actually about. It is software. It performs useful tasks.
Sure does. But there are other ways of performing those tasks, other pieces of software that could do the same thing. So WHY THE HELL DID YOU CHOOSE LINUX? Don't tell me "because it's the best one". There'll be lots of people arguing with you. Admit it - there is some kind of ideology or whatever you choose to name it behind this particular piece of software, that (at least partly) made you choose it (or not to).
It'd be the paparazzi wet dream - if Van Damme or whoever came and stuck your camera up your arse, you could still sell the pictures of him doing it to some yellow newspaper as a revenge.
Oh yeah, and about the "war of attrition", the following is a joke from the days when war was almost breaking out between Soviet Union and China:
Chinese supreme command is making plans for invasion:
"First of all, small infantry groups will quietly cross the border. One million men in each group."
"The tanks will move in on the flanks -- one tank on the left, the other on the right."
"What about air support?" "No, the pilot called in sick."
Soviet Union survived for quite a while and could have survived even longer if Gorbachev et al wanted to. Instead, they lost interest and that's why it collapsed.
There are some social scientists (at least in Russia) who say that the Soviet Union didn't collapse at all. Yes, I know, it did break apart and the former Soviet republics are independent (and some of them even democratic) now - after all, I live in one of them - but in Russia, the changes have been on the outside. In most places outside Moscow or St Petersburg everything is still the same. They even restored the old anthem of the Soviet Union, and though the lyrics are new, most of the people still sing it the old way.
Grandparent: I think it does have breaks inside the hub of the rear wheel, look more carefully - there is this metal clamp thingie just near the hub on the chain side of the bike.
Parent: yeah, right. Imagine this - you're going at full speed. Downhill. You'd better keep your feet as far away from the pedals as possible - if you don't want to break your legs.
29/12/2003: Mars got very, very angry after some Englishmen tried to make tea on his warm spots yesterday. England, Scotland and part of Wales wiped off the face of the Earth. Mars is accusing India, China and Sri Lanka of "supporting the terrorists". Tea prices are dropping fast all over the world.
Farewell now, all the good ideas that I had! Oh, woe me, who fed a machine with you Didn't know, what it would lead to: They drove the poor machine mad.
Oh, I thought it would be glad, Its memory full of concepts new! Now I wish: if I only knew, I'd have left it with what it had...
Oh, how could I be so bloody stupid! I taught the machine about platonic love And how angels fly up there, high above And now -- it thinks it's a Cupid!
It found its calling in mating poems! Haikus have sex with sestinas and doggerels...
If there were no alternatives to Microsoft, the economic environment wouldn't matter much, would it?
Imagine a situation, where there's no alternatives to MS. If the economic situation is bad, will the customers upgrade their MSware? Probably not. Probably they'll wait for better times. No sales = no profit.
That's exactly why the artists don't get paid what they do - because people like you (and me - I do buy CD's sometimes, but I have pirated a lot more, so it's not an excuse) don't buy their CD's.
Slashdot Mirror
If a person has to depend on chat rooms and instant messengers for relationships, there was probably something wrong already before this. They are not depressed because they drink a lot of coffee and live in chat rooms. They live in chat rooms, because they are depressed if they don't. Feeling depressed and isolated? IRC will help you. Can't handle your real life anymore? There's always an unreal one waiting. Etc. If your organism gets used to it, it's hard to be without. Not impossible, though -- but changing your lifestyle is difficult.
Are you addicted to water, or do you have a need for it?
Because he/she can't get them from anywhere else? For instance, I've read about half of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series as etexts, because at that moment (two-three years ago) there was no other way I could have got them. Note that these were English versions - I have either bought or borrowed all those that are translated into Estonian. That's the case with me and most sci-fi, by the way - the only ways to get some books are either ordering them from abroad (which I usually can't afford [*]) or pirating them.
[*] because I spend almost all of my free money on books (mostly non-fiction)
I was thinking (or was I?) of semiotics as a theory of signs in general (opinions about its limits vary from culture to everything). Rumors and predictions about its death seem to be wildly exaggarated...
PS. I almost completely agree with what you said about 'semiotics as in structuralism' being dead.
Hopis do have a concept of time - time is something that happens when corn grows or a person lives, every object has its own time. I think the concept of time in biology is also quite close to this, by the way.
Someone somewhere (ok, in my notebook - a note taken in a seminar) said that the sense of time comes from forgetting what just happened, it's the short-term memory that causes it. Maybe boring things seem to take longer because the brain is less active and has less to forget (has to "refresh" less often?), but when you're doing something that is more exciting and involves you more deeply, it has to "refresh" more often so that you don't even notice what's happening. This is, of course, my wild assumption, backed by no real evidence and not much time taken to actually consider it.
"Stating the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." - George Orwell.
Excuse me, but what exactly do you mean by failure of semiotics? It seems to me by semiotics, you mean structuralism (or Barthes's semiology?), which were/are used as synonyms sometimes, but semiotics is a far wider term really. And it seems to be far from dead to me...
Sure, monotheistic religions may have problems with all those others still being out there, but despite this, they still spread very fast, compared to the earlier ones. Why? What did they have to offer? I don't know, maybe it had to do with them unifying all those tribes and lands that previously had all had (at least to some extent) different gods, different languages (note that this didn't change much, though Latin was kinda what English is today).
What you have today is a very diverse society. Even almost tribal. No wonder if monotheism doesn't work anymore, at least in the case of Christianity and all those different branches claiming that they are the real McCoy. It's not even the Roman thing, it's something much earlier. Something pre-polytheistic - everyone, or at least every village, has their own deity. "The others may have theirs, but this one is mine". (Then again, it may just be the start of a new cycle...)
There's this story about how the wise men of old times decided to translate all the Bible to Greek. To make sure it gets translated correctly, they had 40 (or 100, I've forgotten the exact number) different men do it. And lo! a miracle happened and all the translations were exactly the same. When translating the book into Latin, the same stunt was performed with the same results, or at least that's what the legends say. And for this reason the Greek and Latin versions also counted as the Original...
A man from Delhi once came to Sri Ramakrishna to complain: "The people in Delhi are praying to wooden statues of God! You must tell them the err of their ways, and destroy those statues!"
Sri Ramakrishna said: "No. Do you think God is so stupid not to realize that they are actually praying to him?"
("The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna"; Rough quote lifted from Salinger ("Franny & Zooey").)
I think Luther's problems started already before translating the Bible into German - he translated (interpreted some parts of it quite freely, so that it would correspond to his own ideas) the book in 1522, but was declared a heretic (and in the Church's opinion, the only dead heretic was a dead one, so Luther was a major disappointment for still being alive) already in 1517, for publishing his propositions concerning indulgences.
Sure does. But there are other ways of performing those tasks, other pieces of software that could do the same thing. So WHY THE HELL DID YOU CHOOSE LINUX? Don't tell me "because it's the best one". There'll be lots of people arguing with you. Admit it - there is some kind of ideology or whatever you choose to name it behind this particular piece of software, that (at least partly) made you choose it (or not to).
Imagine a Beowulf, err, mountain range of these!
"Yo Momma's so fat, she produces more heat than a Beowulf cluster of Chinese supercomputers!"
It'd be the paparazzi wet dream - if Van Damme or whoever came and stuck your camera up your arse, you could still sell the pictures of him doing it to some yellow newspaper as a revenge.
Philip K. Dick, "Man in the High Castle"
Chinese supreme command is making plans for invasion:
"First of all, small infantry groups will quietly cross the border. One million men in each group."
"The tanks will move in on the flanks -- one tank on the left, the other on the right."
"What about air support?" "No, the pilot called in sick."
There are some social scientists (at least in Russia) who say that the Soviet Union didn't collapse at all. Yes, I know, it did break apart and the former Soviet republics are independent (and some of them even democratic) now - after all, I live in one of them - but in Russia, the changes have been on the outside. In most places outside Moscow or St Petersburg everything is still the same. They even restored the old anthem of the Soviet Union, and though the lyrics are new, most of the people still sing it the old way.
Parent: yeah, right. Imagine this - you're going at full speed. Downhill. You'd better keep your feet as far away from the pedals as possible - if you don't want to break your legs.
29/12/2003: Mars got very, very angry after some Englishmen tried to make tea on his warm spots yesterday. England, Scotland and part of Wales wiped off the face of the Earth. Mars is accusing India, China and Sri Lanka of "supporting the terrorists". Tea prices are dropping fast all over the world.
Sonnet
Farewell now, all the good ideas that I had!
Oh, woe me, who fed a machine with you
Didn't know, what it would lead to:
They drove the poor machine mad.
Oh, I thought it would be glad,
Its memory full of concepts new!
Now I wish: if I only knew,
I'd have left it with what it had...
Oh, how could I be so bloody stupid!
I taught the machine about platonic love
And how angels fly up there, high above
And now -- it thinks it's a Cupid!
It found its calling in mating poems!
Haikus have sex with sestinas and doggerels...
Imagine a situation, where there's no alternatives to MS. If the economic situation is bad, will the customers upgrade their MSware? Probably not. Probably they'll wait for better times. No sales = no profit.
Looking at the current state of the economy, I'd say that their concern may rather be that they own too much of the said environment.
That's exactly why the artists don't get paid what they do - because people like you (and me - I do buy CD's sometimes, but I have pirated a lot more, so it's not an excuse) don't buy their CD's.