Yet the author of The Age of Anxiety and the author of The Gutenberg Galaxy turn out to have more in common than their conflict might suggest. Both in their 60s by the time of this discussion (“Thank God I can remember the world before World War I,” says the poet) and both 1930s converts to Catholicism…— Marshall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buckminster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Modern Technology & Media (1971) | Open Culture. That would be — what’s the word? — wrong.
I find it amusing to reflect on the idea that mankind may sometime soon grow tired of reading and that writers will do so too, that the scholar will one day direct in his last will and testament that his corpse shall be buried surrounded by his books and especially by his own writings. And if it is true that the forests are going to get thinner and thinner, may the time not come one day when the libraries should be used for timber, straw and brushwood? Since most books are born out of smoke and vapour of the brain, they ought to return to smoke and vapour. And if they have no fire of their own in them, fire should punish them for it.
The education of German youth, however, proceeds from precisely this false and unfruitful conception ofculture: its goal, viewed in its essence, is not at all the free cultivated man but the scholar, the man of science, and indeed the most speedily employable man of science, who stands aside from life so as to know it unobstructedly; its result, observed empirically, is the historical-aesthetic cultural philistine, the precocious and up-to-the-minute babbler about state, church and art, the man who appreciates everything, the insatiable stomach which nonetheless does not know what honest hunger and thirst are. That an education with this goal and this result is an anti-natural one is apprehensible only to one who has not yet been fully processed by it; it is apprehensible only to the instinct of youth, for youth still possesses that instinct of nature which remains intact until artificially and forcibly shattered by this education.
Betrayed by Our Leaders: A Young Conservative Responds to Endorsements of Donald Trump
Betrayed by Our Leaders: A Young Conservative Responds to Endorsements of Donald Trump
I think what Peters says here is basically correct, but I don’t think he has identified the key issues in relation to First Things, as opposed to ISI or Claremont. The latter are institutions defined politically, and while many people associated with them are religious believers, they need not be. But FT is a journal dedicated to the relationship between religion and public life — that’s it’s whole reason for being. So when I read post after post by Rusty Reno and Mark Bauerlein defending Trump — or criticizing people who attack Trump — that don’t mention Christianity, or even religion more broadly, I find myself thinking: Man, we could really use a journal of religion and public life right about now.
[gallery] pupdesign:
Today we say goodbye to the eminent graphic designer, Elaine Lustig Cohen (1927-2016). Her website provides a fitting description:A high point of book publishing of the 1950s and 60s, Elaine’s typographic, abstract and photographic book jacket designs are a unique style of American modernism characterized by inventiveness and clarity.Thank you, Elaine, for showing us how to speak visually, boldly, concisely.
[gallery] alphonsopeluso:
My @IITArchitecture Advanced Modeling student’s 3D prints. The theme was ‘Effects’.
[gallery]
The aesthetic challenge of slow TV is less about attention, in other words, than about use. Yes, the screens have won, it grants. But no, we needn’t employ them as directed. Look: you can avoid the consciousness-devouring rush of “The Good Wife” (Norwegian: “Brutte løfter”) and use your flat screen to view the regular world. Though slow TV appears to reach back to simpler times, it is in many ways the realization of twenty-first-century media technology, relying, for its full effect, on footage that’s high-definition, organic, and continuous. (The hours of unbroken footage for “Bergensbanen” would have been all but impossible in an era when high-quality images needed to be shot on film.) At its best, it affords a visceral kind of armchair tourism, a global window with a formless and subjective meaning. There’s no zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz in that.
the luxury of dismissal
Some American Christians say they fear a coming persecution. When they start working across denominational lines I’ll think they mean it. If you think you have the luxury to ignore or demean Christians outside your particular tradition, you’re not as afraid of persecution as you say you are.
I don’t trust this stuff anymore. It was the very reliability of it — in user-friendly design, as well as stability of functionality — that was the basis of my choice in the first place, and continued choices for decades since. I don’t care about the brand itself, and I have no intellectual investment in the platforms as a developer anymore. I just need things that work, and that I can rely on working. I say this with the utmost regret, sadness, and no small sense of betrayal: Apple doesn’t seem to make those things anymore.