Fire and Knowledge

The measure of cultural literacy today is not whether you can “read” all the symbols in a Rubens painting but whether you can operate an iPhone and other Web-related technologies. One thing you can do with such devices is visit any number of Web sites where you can see Rubens’s pictures and learn plenty about them. It’s not so much about having information as it is about knowing how to get it. Viewed in this light, today’s young people are very culturally literate indeed—in fact, they are very often cultural leaders and creators.

—Tyler Cowen, “Three Tweets for the Web“

With the help of technology, we are honing our ability to do many more things at once and do them faster. We access and absorb information more quickly than before, and, as a result, we often seem more impatient.

If you use Google to look something up in 10 seconds rather than spend five minutes searching through an encyclopedia, that doesn’t mean you are less patient. It means you are creating more time to focus on other matters. In fact, we’re devoting more effort than ever before to big-picture questions, from the nature of God to the best age for marrying and the future of the U.S. economy.

—Tyler Cowen, “Three Tweets for the Web“

A kind reader sent in the audio of Neil Postman’s lecture on “Technology and Education” that was given on April 8, 1994. A transcript is forthcoming. In the meantime, here’s the audio:

I’ve also posted it on NeilPostman.org.

Focus on the Family has an entire website dedicated to what retailers are “Christmas-friendly” — that is, retailers who say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.”

Does Focus on the Family not realize there are multiple religions and holidays in America? There’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, and the New Year. What’s the problem with wishing people a general happy holiday season, instead of just one specific day that not everyone celebrates? There’s nothing sinister behind it, even if they want that to be true to fuel their persecution complex.

Seems to me that people who think this is a big deal are being self-centered and don’t want to think about anyone besides themselves.

So on that note, happy holidays everyone!

Stuart McMillen has created an interesting cartoon based on the foreword of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.

I agree that Huxley was closer to our future than Orwell — though it was a hard thing to predict, because it depended on whether communism or capitalism would win. Thankfully, capitalism did, and our “fate” is to revel in our own pleasure instead of being controlled by a despotic empire.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take our pseudo-Huxlian future over an Orwellian one any day. It gives freedom to those who want it, and allows slavery to those who need it.

Now there’s a new way to publish your autobiography: The Tweetbook.

This is an interesting story about how Google never forgets by Seth Godin:

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Two lessons there: (1) make sure you lock down your social networking profile so that only friends can see it and (2) never put anything on the internet that you don’t want your future employer to see.

Much of my early intellectual life was trying to like things others said I should like. And I would often get frustrated at myself, because I usually wouldn’t like what they said I should.

Some of the classics are outstanding — but most of them I’ve found dull, drawn-out, and unsatisfying. And unfortunately, I’ve read hundreds of them.

It’s been that way with art, too. I’ve been to art museums and tried to like the classics of art. I tried to reform my unruly tastes. But I found most of them unmoving and unimpressive.

So it’s a relief to hear that someone else that I respect felt similarly. Here’s Mark Twain:

Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michael Angelo, a Caracci, or a da Vinici (and we see them every day), you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now….

[People] stand entranced before [a da Vinci] with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:

“O, wonderful!”
“Such expression!”
“Such grace of attitude!”
“Such dignity!”
“Such faultless drawing!”
“Such matchless coloring!”

I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest… But at the same time the thought will intrude… How can they see what is not visible?

I’ve stopped caring that my tastes are not what some people considered “cultured.” I’m not going to delude myself into liking something just because others do.

Tastes are subjective. Life is too short for reading books I don’t enjoy. It’s too short for old movies with bad acting and bad editing. It’s too short for art that was once moving, but now is mediocre at best.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,” said Francis Bacon. And some, I’d add, are to be shut and put back on the shelf for someone else who enjoys them.