Failure to call shotgun
Joseph Weizenbaum (1987):
I don’t quite know whether it is especially computer science or its subdiscipline Artificial Intelligence that has such an enormous affection for euphemism. We speak so spectacularly and without ourselves recognizing our own superficiality and immeasurable naivete with respect to these concepts. And, in the process of so speaking, we anesthetise our ability to evaluate the quality of our work and, what is more important, to identify and become conscious of its end use.
[…]
One can’t escape this state without asking, again and again: “What do I actually do? What is the final application and use of the products of my work?” and ultimately, “am I content or ashamed to have contributed to this use?”
As it’s quoted, this is about as good and important a statement about the average person’s use of, language about, and complicity in technology and its effect.
Without that middle ellipsis, however, it’s a little more specific — and a lot more frightening.
“I can reach it.”
In the final analysis [history] can be understood and illuminated only by sympathetic insight.
Nacho breath … and smile
Neil Postman, on “image politics” as a form of therapy:
In the shift from party politics to television politics … We are not permitted to know who is best at being President or Governor or Senator, but whose image is best in touching and soothing the deep reaches of our discontent.
I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election. And Donald Trump, a malicious man and a petty president, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He is the same fire hose of lies he always was, obsessed with his grievances…
I’m going to have to start doubling down on what has been my lackadaisical use of Instapaper if I’m going to justify their doubling down on the price tag, for what I’m yet to be convinced are “improvements” that I need or want.
I am literally never not pleasantly surprised by joy when I pick up Richard Wilbur. Here’s his “Digging for China,” posted on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. You can also hear Wilbur recite it here. (I love the chuckle at the end. “And it seemed to me I was acquitted.”)
And here is Wilbur’s translation of Francis Jammes, A Prayer to Go to Paradise with the Donkeys, which you can happily also hear him recite. 😀