Reading the article I remembered something else I had read many years ago. It seems someone of note (I don't remember exactly whom, unfortunately) once wrote a lengthy letter to a friend in which he or she apologized for writing such a long letter, explaining that he or she didn't have the time to write a short one. With the explosion of e-mail, instant messaging, and free-long-distance cell phones that we've seen over the last 10 years, personal letters are today becoming a thing of the past; there are faster, easier ways to communicate these days. But as far as communication is concerned, speed and ease often come at the expense of effectiveness, which is the point made by the apology in that letter. Deliberateness of thought, weighing of words, attention to clarity -- in the world of e-mail and IM, these are frequently absent, instead replaced by emoticons whose purpose is to clarify the intended message. The emoticons in effect become load-bearing walls in the communication.
I'm not necessarily ranting against smileys and such; that'd be somewhat hypocritical, seeing as how I use them myself. (Maybe I'll abstain from them for a time as an experiment.) I'm actually thinking of a bigger question that this study raises, in my mind at least, which is this: Differences in educational opportunities aside, is America, generally speaking, less articulate than it was, say, 100 years ago?
I'm reminded of a scene in the movie National Treasure, the exact details of which I'm again lacking. The central idea of that scene, though, is that Nicholas Cage's character is at the National Archives, standing in front of one of this nation's great historic documents. He reads aloud a portion of that document -- eloquent, profound, affecting words written by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution -- and then remarks, almost as much to himself as to his sidekick, "No one talks like that anymore." Even the Founding Fathers, I don't believe, actually talked like that, but they probably could if the occasion warranted. And obviously, they most certainly could think and write like that.
Paine, Jefferson, Madison, and other gifted, well-educated men like them were the brain trust of a fledgling country, to be sure. Also, education is of course far more accessible today than it was to those who weren't part of early America's "ruling class." Nevertheless, it's my impression that the typical educated person then and even up through to the 1920s and 1930s was more capable of articulate expression than the typical educated person today.
Why did the Palestinian people just elect Hamas? Or, are you now going to argue that Hamas is non-violent?
Well it looks like that's exactly what Hamas is about to try to sell us. Get this, this is rich:
Hamas "is prepared to play a role in calming the situation between the Islamic world and Western countries on condition that these countries commit themselves to putting an end to attacks against the feelings of Muslims," the organisation's leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference.
- From a story currently on Yahoo news.
The events of the last few weeks, including not only the reaction to the cartoons but also the Hamas win in Palestine, has quite frankly left me feeling far less sympathetic to this region of the world.
I had felt previously that Palestinians were in a sense a victim of their leadership and that with the passing of Arafat, the door would be opened to at least the possibility of progress in the Israel/Palestine conflict. But that belief largely went out the window when terrorists and not moderates were voted into power. Couple that with the reaction to the Danish cartoons in the larger Muslim world, not to mention the news that Iran has inserted other cartoons not of Danish making to further foment the masses, and I'm ready to conclude that, politically correct notions aside, this region of the world is not yet ready for democracy.
Free speech, which is part and parcel of democracy, comes with its attendant responsibilities and consequences, and one of those consequences is that one will on occasion be offended by the statements or opinions of others. Wanting to kill someone because a book they wrote or a movie they filmed offended you and your religion is not the reaction of a rational mind. It is the mindset of a fanatic, and fanaticism, particular on the scale that we unfortunately see in the Middle East, doesn't mix well with the ideals of democracy.
It was only in the last ten years or so that the typical American received their first exposure to the internet, and since then we've seen the rise of even newer forms of communication -- cell-phone text-messaging, for instance. The communications revolution, then, is still clearly in full sway, and that revolution, it can be argued very strongly, all started with the invention of the telegraph.
As mentioned in another comment, there's a short but fascinating book titled The Victorian Internet (the author is Tom Standage) whose thesis is exactly what you alluded to. The book is well worth a read, with many similarities between now and then, particularly in terms of how quickly the new communication medium mushroomed and created the need for new technologies.
We'll never know the total death toll from the 1918 flu but estimates range from 20 million at the low end to as many as 100 million. That's a massive range, yes -- records of that time are hard to come by and the world was, of course, at war -- but accepting even only the 20 million figure, it's difficult to find any other event in world history that has caused so many deaths is such a short period of time. According to a book I read a couple of years back (Flu, the author of which escapes me at the moment), in the year that the pandemic raged, the average U.S. life expectancy fell by something like 10 full years. And the numbers surrounding the 1918 flu become even more astonishing when one considers that only 2.5 percent of those infected died. The prospect of a similar pandemic today is, to me, beyond harrowing.
However, stranger things have happened. Family Guy, for instance, turned out to be so successful on DVD that it led to the show's resurrection; sales of the Firefly DVDs similarly have been surprisingly high. It was one of Amazon's best-selling DVDs for 2005, and both Firefly and Serenity are still on their top 10. It wasn't until after Serenity was released that I discovered the series -- and that thanks to my girlfriend, Whedon fan that she is -- but I for one would love to see the series come back.
According to Wikipedia, a treaty was proposed to "restrict the exploitation of the Moon's resources" and was signed by a number of countries, none of those countries, however, being among the space-faring nations. So perhaps Russia is on solid ground, legally speaking, at least, as would be the U.S. if they proposed a similar endeavor. Space Race version 2.0, anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
Reading the article I remembered something else I had read many years ago. It seems someone of note (I don't remember exactly whom, unfortunately) once wrote a lengthy letter to a friend in which he or she apologized for writing such a long letter, explaining that he or she didn't have the time to write a short one. With the explosion of e-mail, instant messaging, and free-long-distance cell phones that we've seen over the last 10 years, personal letters are today becoming a thing of the past; there are faster, easier ways to communicate these days. But as far as communication is concerned, speed and ease often come at the expense of effectiveness, which is the point made by the apology in that letter. Deliberateness of thought, weighing of words, attention to clarity -- in the world of e-mail and IM, these are frequently absent, instead replaced by emoticons whose purpose is to clarify the intended message. The emoticons in effect become load-bearing walls in the communication.
I'm not necessarily ranting against smileys and such; that'd be somewhat hypocritical, seeing as how I use them myself. (Maybe I'll abstain from them for a time as an experiment.) I'm actually thinking of a bigger question that this study raises, in my mind at least, which is this: Differences in educational opportunities aside, is America, generally speaking, less articulate than it was, say, 100 years ago?
I'm reminded of a scene in the movie National Treasure, the exact details of which I'm again lacking. The central idea of that scene, though, is that Nicholas Cage's character is at the National Archives, standing in front of one of this nation's great historic documents. He reads aloud a portion of that document -- eloquent, profound, affecting words written by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution -- and then remarks, almost as much to himself as to his sidekick, "No one talks like that anymore." Even the Founding Fathers, I don't believe, actually talked like that, but they probably could if the occasion warranted. And obviously, they most certainly could think and write like that.
Paine, Jefferson, Madison, and other gifted, well-educated men like them were the brain trust of a fledgling country, to be sure. Also, education is of course far more accessible today than it was to those who weren't part of early America's "ruling class." Nevertheless, it's my impression that the typical educated person then and even up through to the 1920s and 1930s was more capable of articulate expression than the typical educated person today.
Why did the Palestinian people just elect Hamas? Or, are you now going to argue that Hamas is non-violent?
Well it looks like that's exactly what Hamas is about to try to sell us. Get this, this is rich:
Hamas "is prepared to play a role in calming the situation between the Islamic world and Western countries on condition that these countries commit themselves to putting an end to attacks against the feelings of Muslims," the organisation's leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference.
- From a story currently on Yahoo news.
The events of the last few weeks, including not only the reaction to the cartoons but also the Hamas win in Palestine, has quite frankly left me feeling far less sympathetic to this region of the world.
I had felt previously that Palestinians were in a sense a victim of their leadership and that with the passing of Arafat, the door would be opened to at least the possibility of progress in the Israel/Palestine conflict. But that belief largely went out the window when terrorists and not moderates were voted into power. Couple that with the reaction to the Danish cartoons in the larger Muslim world, not to mention the news that Iran has inserted other cartoons not of Danish making to further foment the masses, and I'm ready to conclude that, politically correct notions aside, this region of the world is not yet ready for democracy.
Free speech, which is part and parcel of democracy, comes with its attendant responsibilities and consequences, and one of those consequences is that one will on occasion be offended by the statements or opinions of others. Wanting to kill someone because a book they wrote or a movie they filmed offended you and your religion is not the reaction of a rational mind. It is the mindset of a fanatic, and fanaticism, particular on the scale that we unfortunately see in the Middle East, doesn't mix well with the ideals of democracy.
It was only in the last ten years or so that the typical American received their first exposure to the internet, and since then we've seen the rise of even newer forms of communication -- cell-phone text-messaging, for instance. The communications revolution, then, is still clearly in full sway, and that revolution, it can be argued very strongly, all started with the invention of the telegraph. As mentioned in another comment, there's a short but fascinating book titled The Victorian Internet (the author is Tom Standage) whose thesis is exactly what you alluded to. The book is well worth a read, with many similarities between now and then, particularly in terms of how quickly the new communication medium mushroomed and created the need for new technologies.
We'll never know the total death toll from the 1918 flu but estimates range from 20 million at the low end to as many as 100 million. That's a massive range, yes -- records of that time are hard to come by and the world was, of course, at war -- but accepting even only the 20 million figure, it's difficult to find any other event in world history that has caused so many deaths is such a short period of time. According to a book I read a couple of years back (Flu, the author of which escapes me at the moment), in the year that the pandemic raged, the average U.S. life expectancy fell by something like 10 full years. And the numbers surrounding the 1918 flu become even more astonishing when one considers that only 2.5 percent of those infected died. The prospect of a similar pandemic today is, to me, beyond harrowing.
However, stranger things have happened. Family Guy, for instance, turned out to be so successful on DVD that it led to the show's resurrection; sales of the Firefly DVDs similarly have been surprisingly high. It was one of Amazon's best-selling DVDs for 2005, and both Firefly and Serenity are still on their top 10. It wasn't until after Serenity was released that I discovered the series -- and that thanks to my girlfriend, Whedon fan that she is -- but I for one would love to see the series come back.
According to Wikipedia, a treaty was proposed to "restrict the exploitation of the Moon's resources" and was signed by a number of countries, none of those countries, however, being among the space-faring nations. So perhaps Russia is on solid ground, legally speaking, at least, as would be the U.S. if they proposed a similar endeavor. Space Race version 2.0, anyone?