Archive

Post-Enlightenment, Media, and Democracy

I think this is the end of the news. Not the end of jour­nal­ism, end of news. And I think the whole dis­cus­sion about busi­ness mod­els, or qual­i­ty, or trust, or ethics are sec­ondary to what is the real prob­lem, which is a cul­tur­al prob­lem and a social problem.

Religion and World Politics part 2

When we look back at our his­to­ry here in Europe, we often cel­e­brate the roman­ti­cized ver­sion of that his­to­ry and for­get the import that that roman­ti­cism often cloaked. For instance when we have films, when we read the books of Alexandre Dumas, par­tic­u­lar­ly The Three Musketeers, all we see are three (plus one) swash­buck­ling, sword-bearing gen­tle­man usu­al­ly of an exquis­ite hand­some­ness. And there’s an evil car­di­nal, Cardinal Richelieu, lurk­ing in the back­ground. But the idea that France was just like this for no appar­ent rea­son is some­thing that we nev­er real­ly real­ly investigate.

Seeing the Stack

It’s this infra­struc­ture that is unseen, because it is infra-structure, it is under the struc­ture. And when you start think­ing about this mas­sive web of tech­nolo­gies that keep you alive, the only inter­faces we have on a day-to-day basis are tap, turn, flush. Everything else is hid­den and unseen.