Monday, March 26, 2018

Q & A with Nancy Peacock, Author of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PERSIMMON WILSON, On Writing in the Whirl of the Digital Revolution

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Q & A WITH NANCY PEACOCK

I happened upon the website of novelist Nancy Peacock in, of all places, the comments section of computer science professor Cal Newport's blog. Newport is the author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted WorldNovelist Nancy Peacock's comments there echoed my own on the topic of social media; moreover, as I am writing about the Seminole Scouts and the Indian Wars in Far West Texas, an undeservedly obscure subject, I was intrigued to learn about her latest novel, The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson. 

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From the catalog copy:

"For fans of Cold Mountain and The Invention of Wings comes a tour de force of historical fiction (Henry Wiencek, author of Master of the Mountain) that follows the epic journey of a slave-turned-Comanche warrior who travels from the brutality of a New Orleans sugar cane plantation to the indomitable frontier of an untamed Texas, searching not only for the woman he loves but so too for his own identity. 
I have been to hangings before, but never my own. 
Sitting in a jail cell on the eve of his hanging, April 1, 1875, freedman Persimmon Persy Wilson wants nothing more than to leave some record of the truth his truth. He may be guilty, but not of what he stands accused: the kidnapping and rape of his former master's wife. 
In 1860, Persy had been sold to Sweetmore, a Louisiana sugar plantation, alongside a striking, light-skinned house slave named Chloe. Their deep and instant connection fueled a love affair and inspired plans to escape their owner, Master Wilson, who claimed Chloe as his concubine. But on the eve of the Union Army s attack on New Orleans, Wilson shot Persy, leaving him for dead, and fled with Chloe and his other slaves to Texas. So began Persy's journey across the frontier, determined to reunite with his lost love. Along the way, he would be captured by the Comanche, his only chance of survival to prove himself fierce and unbreakable enough to become a warrior. His odyssey of warfare, heartbreak, unlikely friendships, and newfound family would change the very core of his identity and teach him the meaning and the price of freedom. 
From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Life Without WaterThe Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson is a sweeping love story that is as deeply moving and exciting an American saga as has ever been penned (Lee Smith, author of Dimestore)."

Check out Nancy Peacock's work on her website, www.nancypeacockbooks.com, and read more about her novel here.

C.M. MAYO: You have been a consistently productive literary writer for many years. How has the digital revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, Facebook, Twitter, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share? 

NANCY PEACOCK:  My biggest experience with the digital revolution has been with Facebook. After much cajoling from an agent and the culture, I finally opened a Facebook account. That's what we're supposed to do, as writers, right? We're supposed to promote our work every possible way. I was surprised to find things that mattered to me on Facebook, and then, as those things dwindled, I became addicted to searching for them. In the end, my mind became fractured, and I was unable to focus on what I needed to focus on: the writing. I deleted my FB account. I did not disable it. I deleted it, and I feel my mind healing. It was like coming off a drug.

 I'm a very private person, and my writing grows from that. I need spaciousness to pull it all together, and spaciousness is coming to be seen a bit like the horse and buggy. Quaint and picturesque, but impractical. But I needed it. Not having it is a deal breaker to me.

I also spend a lot of time on research. Writing any novel requires keeping a lot of plates in the air. Writing a historical novel requires keeping those plates from colliding and breaking against facts and dates. It takes focus. I couldn't focus because social media had splintered my ability to do so.

I think writers, and publishers (maybe especially publishers) need to start taking a bigger picture of what literature means, and what it has to offer that other forms of storytelling, namely movies and television, do not. Writing and reading are ways to slow down. I wish the industry would embrace that, and stop whipping the more, more, more horse.

 For me it really came down to either being a writer or presenting as a writer. I chose the former.

C.M. MAYO: Are you in a writing group? If so, can you talk about the members, the process, and the value for you? 

NANCY PEACOCK: I am in a writer's group. The group grew from a women's writers group which I led for years, and for income. Over time the members became very solid with each other, and I kept looking in from the position of leader thinking I want to join. I thought that for years. Finally I asked if they would accept me as a member, and they said yes. So I lost some income because I no longer lead the group, but I gained an incredible group. These women are sharp, funny, great listeners and exceptional responders to the written word. We have three novelists (one needs to finish her novel - she knows who she is!), a poet, and an essayist, short story writer, and poet combined into one amazing person, who also bakes great cakes! We've seen each other through life events, sickness, raising children, publication, struggling with the work (although it is mostly me who struggles and crashes with the work) and much more.

 I think the format of a writing group is very important, and that not enough people pay attention to that. I don't think just any comment goes. You need an agreement among the members on how to respond. For instance, I once brought in a piece to a different writing group. The piece mentioned being in therapy, and one of the members response was to say she was glad I was still in therapy. She said it again and again, and it was personal, a judgement on my sanity, and had nothing to do with the writing or the story I was telling. This was not OK at all and I tried to discuss it with them and got shot down for it. One of the reasons my current group works so well and has lasted so long is because we follow guidelines that were established at the very beginning.

C.M. MAYO: Did you experience any blocks while writing this novel, and if so, how did you break through them? 

NANCY PEACOCK:  The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson was the least blocked novel I have ever written. The opening line, "I have been to hangings before, but never my own," arrived to me on a walk I took one morning to watch the sunrise. It literally was suddenly in my head. Out of nowhere. I went home and wrote it down, even though at the time I was very discouraged about writing and publishing and was thinking I might never write again. That evening I watched the documentary about The West by Ken Burns, and I idly wondered if there were any black Indians. I knew there were white Indians from having read The Captured by Scott Zesch years earlier. From these two things, the line in my head and the idea of a black Indian, the first chapter poured out of me.

With some books you labor hard to get to know the characters, and to gain their trust. With others you are possessed. This was a possession. I had to do a lot of research and shape the narrative around historical events, but Persy (Persimmon Wilson) was very willing to talk to me. I had a sense of urgency from him, just as if he was about to hang in a few days time, which at the opening of the novel, he is.

C.M. MAYO: Back to a digital question. At what point, if any, were you working on paper for this novel? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic? 

NANCY PEACOCK: I mostly compose on the computer. I don't have trouble with it. I trained myself to do it with my first book. When it comes to anything but writing, I don't like being on the screen. It's the interaction between story and me that makes composing on the computer different from all other screen activity. If I get stuck on something, if a scene is not working, I turn to writing by hand. That usually makes something break through that wouldn't come before. I also teach two prompt writing classes each week, during which I write with the students, and I sometimes use that time to work on a novel. I remember vividly writing the scene in which Persy is captured by the Comanche in my class, and reading it to them. It went almost verbatim into the book.

C.M. MAYO: Do you keep in active touch with your readers? If so, do you prefer hearing from them by email, sending a newsletter, a conversation via social media, some combination, or snail mail?

NANCY PEACOCK: I am in active touch with a large group of local writers and readers because I've built a community around a free class that I teach once a month I've been doing this for fifteen years now, and hundreds of people have come through my workshop. Because of this community building, I've built a local fan base. National has proven more difficult, and I don't really think social media helps. I think it's spitting in the wind.

I have a website and occasionally hear from someone via the contact form. I always love hearing from anyone who's read my book. I've found that if someone takes the time to contact me, it's because they liked something in the book, so it's (mostly) been a positive experience.

 I'd like to encourage readers to contact writers whose work has impressed them. There's so much competition to the printed page these days. I don't even think publishing houses understand the unique value of the novel.

Another community building activity I hope to organize is a regular letter writing campaign to favorite authors. Real letters. Not email. Real letters (or postcards!) with stamps and handwritten words on them. I am extremely touched when I receive one of these, and I'd like to make a space for readers to reach out to writers. I'd like this to be a regular part of the reading experience. Another nod to the slowing down reading gives you. Nothing says love like snail mail!

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> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.







Monday, March 19, 2018

Jerry Mander's FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION

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There are some books, masterpieces as they may be, that one simply is not ready to read. For me, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby comes to mind. Trudging through it as assigned reading for my highschool English class, I could not fathom why anyone would celebrate this blather about the antics of a bunch of silly people! Zoom ahead a decade and a half, and then rereading it, however, I was in awe-- at once, continually, and sledding into that elegy of a last line-- of its majesty, its poetry, its utterly American genius (although indeed, it is about a bunch of silly people). I say the same about Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.

Are you ready to read Four Arguments? Or have you already? It's an old book, originally published in the late 1970s. For me to read Mander's masterpiece in this Age of the Smombies has been one of the most astonishing reads in my life. Yet I do not believe that I could have read it any earlier. Or, perhaps, I should say: would that I had read it earlier.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Nancy Peacock comments:

"I read this book many, many years ago, first as a series of excerpts published in the Mother Earth News, and later, I purchased it and read it again. It is profound. I have told so many people about this book, and yet my recommendation always falls on deaf ears. The fact that is was published in the '70s does not make it any less profound today. In fact in my opinion, given the technologies its author likely did not imagine and how they have taken over so many lives, it is even more profound. Thank you for posting this." Nancy Peacock
www.nancypeacockbooks.com









Sunday, March 11, 2018

For the Writing Workshop: John Oliver Simon and Nicanor Parra; Margaret Dulaney's "The Child Door"; Latest Stance on Twitter; Ten Hands

This year I continue to post on Mondays, the second Monday of the month being dedicated to a post for my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. 

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REMEMBERING TWO POETS

John Oliver Simon has passed away, a great loss to the translation and poetry community in California and abroad, especially Mexico. Read his obituary here.

Back in 2008, for Tameme, I published John Oliver Simon's translation of a chapbook by Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados, Los fantasmas del Palacio de los Azulejos / Ghosts of the Palace of the Blue Tiles. Read an interview with him about that here.

And over at her blog, Holding the Light, poet and translator Patricia Dubrava remembers Chilean poet Nicanor Parra.

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Some questions for you, dear creative writer:
How would you want your obituary to read?
What creative works would you be most proud of, and why?
Which ones would you not want to leave unfinished, no matter what?

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MARGARET DULANEY'S PODCAST, BOOK, AND LATEST OFFERING, "THE CHILD DOOR"



Playwright, essayist and mystic Margaret Dulaney's monthly podcast, Listen Well, offers her beautifully written and beautifully read personal essays. (Check out her book, To Hear the Forest Sing: Musings on the Divine.) Dulaney's latest offering, "The Child Door," should be of special interest for anyone who might need a nudge for their creative process.

> Click here to listen to Margaret Dulaney's essay, "The Child Door."

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JANE FRIEDMAN KNOWS ALL, TELLS ALL

For those looking to publish, I warmly recommend signing up for Jane Friedman's free and choc-packed-with-valuable information newsletter, Electric Speed.

You can follow her blog, too.

Her new book, The Business of Being a Writer, will be published this month by University of Chicago Press.




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MY CURRENT, CRINGING-IN-THE-FAR-CORNER STANCE ON TWITTER

See "Twitter Is" by C.M. Mayo
As I slog through the backlog of email and, concurrently, contemplate the transcendent role of technology in Far West Texas and American and Mexican culture and my life (e.g., last week's post, Notes on Stephen Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute), I've been noodling about social media, Twitter in particular.

Back in 2009 when it was sparkly new, I wrote a celebratory essay about Twitter for Literal. I stand by what I said; Twitter has its creative possibilities. But then as now, to quote myself:
Fster than a wlnut cn roll dwn t roof of a hen house, were gng 2 see t nd of cvlizatn
It has become increasingly clear to me that, considering Twitter's attention-fracturing, addictive qualities, and general yuckiness (hashtag mobs, trolls, etc), on balance, it's not for me.

In fact, I sincerely wish that I had never bothered setting up an account with Twitter in the first place.

But I have not deleted my account, cmmayo1, because, after all, I have a goodly number of followers and therefore, when I run a guest blog, book review, or Q & A, I will tweet the URL to that post as a courtesy to the author. And I know that there are still a few thoughtful, readerly and writerly souls out there, checking in on their Twitter feed, now and then, who may see such tweets and find them of interest and value. You know who you are.

[UPDATE JANUARY 2018: I dislike Twitter's attention-fracking mobdom intensely, however I have decided to keep the account @cmmayo1 to tweet as a courtesy to those writers who have given me a Q & A; as a courtesy to their publishers; and, when the occasion calls for it, which is very rare indeed, I'll tweet as a courtesy to my publishers. That's it. I prefer to invest what I think of as my "communication writing energy" in this blog, email and, yeah verily, snail mail.]

P.S. Everything I have to say about Facebook I said here.

P.P. S. Nicholas Carr has two extra-extra-crunchily crunchy pieces on Twitter in Politico, this one in 2015 and this one in January 2018.

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TEN HANDS

Today's 5 minute writing exercise is "Ten Hands":

Describe five different pairs of hands. (Some things to consider might be color; texture; shape; symmetry; condition; scars; tattoos; jewelry; etc.) For each pair of hands assign a name and a profession.

> Help yourself to 364 more free five minute writing exercises on my workshop page here.

P.S. As ever, you can find many more resources for writers here, and recommended reading on the creative process here.


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> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.





Monday, March 05, 2018

Notes on Stephen L. Talbott's THE FUTURE DOES NOT COMPUTE

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Dense yet elegantly lucid, Stephen L. Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst was published by O'Reilly Associates in 1995, on the eve of the explosion of email, well before that of social media. Astonishingly, it delineates the nature of our now King Kong-sized challenges with technology, when those challenges were, so it now seems, but embryonic. And Talbott writes with unusual authority, grounded in both philosophy and his many years of writing and editing for O'Reilly Media, a prime mover in the economic / cultural juggernaut of a complex, increasingly dispersed from its origin in California's Santa Clara Valley, that has become known as "Silicon Valley."

[>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM]

> Talbott offers the entire text of The Future Does Not Compute for free on his website at this link, along with an annotated table of contents. You can also find a paperback edition from your go-to online bookseller.

From the catalog copy:

"Many pundits tell you that the computer is ushering us toward a new Golden Age of Information. A few tell you that the computer is destroying everything worthwhile in our culture. But almost no one tells you what Stephen L. Talbott shows in this surprising book: the intelligent machine gathers its menacing powers from hidden places within you and me. It does so, that is, as long as we gaze into our screens and tap on our keyboards while less than fully conscious of the subtle influences passing through the interface... 
"The Net is the most powerful invitation to remain asleep we have ever faced. Contrary to the usual view, it dwarfs television in its power to induce passivity, to scatter our minds, to destroy our imaginations, and to make us forget our humanity. And yet -- for these very reasons -- the Net may also be an opportunity to enter into our fullest humanity with a self-awareness never yet achieved. But few even seem aware of the challenge, and without awareness we will certainly fail."

For me Talbott's work was a wondrous but belated find, given my focus on the conundrums of technology in my book-in-progress on Far West Texas (which also, on few occasions, ranges as far west as Silicon Valley, for reasons which will be clear in the book itself).

Tops on my reading pile is Talbott's more recent book (2007), Devices of the Soul: Battling for Ourselves in the Age of Machines.

> Visit Talbott's home page and guide to his writings here.

> See also a 1999 New York Times article on Talbott's work, "Editor Explores Unintended, and Negative Side of Technology."



NOTES ON TALBOTT'S THE FUTURE DOES NOT COMPUTE

BUT FIRST, OWEN BARFIELD
Owen Barfield
"Our destiny is to
become conscious and free"

In his acknowledgements Talbott writes that he is "indebted above all to a man I have met only though his published writings: Owen Barfield." Barfield (1898-1987) was an English philosopher, author of Worlds Apart and Saving the Appearances, among many other works, and part of the Oxford literary circle that included C.S. Lewis and J.R. R. Tolkein. Writes Talbott:
"The core insights underlying all [Barfield's] work remain among the most original scholarly achievements of this century. So original, in fact, that these insights are impossible to accept-- even impossible to think."

 > See Owen Barfield's official webpage, main quote: "Our destiny is to become conscious and free."
Timeline of Barfield's friendship with C.S. Lewis

Romanticism Comes of Age
by Owen Barfield
> See Worlds Apart by Owen Barfield
> See Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield
> See link to a short documentary, "Owen Barfield: Man and Meaning"
Notes on that: Barfield is mainly about "thinking about thinking." His key work is Saving the Appearances.

> See the authorized biography by fellow Anthroposophist Simon Blaxland-de Lange, Owen Barfield: Romanticism Comes of Age: A Biography. 

> See also the collection by Owen Barfield with the same title, Romanticism Comes of Age, essays on Coleridge, Goethe, Steiner and Anthroposophy.


RE: RUDOLF STEINER, NOTES AND LINKS

An important influence on Owen Barfield was the work of Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), most notably his book The Philosophy of Freedom. When he found Steiner's works, Barfield had already independently come to many similar conclusions. In the documentary on Barfield cited above, "it was a case of like finding like."


Rudolf Steiner
See the page on Rudolf Steiner here and an archive of his works here.

Caveat: Reading Steiner can get very strange very fast; not everyone has the stomach for reading about angelic channelings, epic battles in the supercelestial realms, etc. Steiner's Anthroposophy is an offshoot of Theosophy, and as such, heavily influenced by many of the ideas of Russian mystic Madame Blavatsky. (Read a brief note about Madame Blavatsky, the monumental figure of modern esotercism, in the excerpt from my book about Francisco I. Madero here.)

But: keep your shoes on your feet and your helmet buckled onto your coconut! Steiner was, among many other things, the founder of the Waldorf Schools. Read about that influence in Silicon Valley here (New York Times) and here (Business Insider). There is also a video posted in 2013 by the Waldorf School of the Peninsula which explains the educational philosophy in some detail.

Of note re: Steiner's broader cultural influence: Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift grapples with Steiner's philosophy, Anthroposophy. For this novel Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976, the same year he also won the Nobel Prize for Literature. See Stephen E. Usher's Conversations with Saul Bellow on Esoteric-Spiritual Matters: A Publisher's Recollections.

(I'm focusing on computers here, so I won't get into Steiner and Biodynamic Agriculture; do Google or Duckduckgo should you feel so moved. P.S. Wikipedia, aka wiki-whenever-whomever-whatever, is likely not your best source of information on this subject.)

The Philosophy of Freedom
By Rudolf Steiner
Also available free online
at the Rudolf Steiner Archive
> See Liz Attwell's brief and concise video review of Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom. Quotes from Attwell's review:

"[This is] the most radical book that Steiner wrote, it is the foundation of all his thought... I think it is the only book that would have convinced me he had something important... to say... he is removing the blinkers from the Western mindset. He clarifies the act of knowing... he brings it down to the simplest possible elements and he shows you where, in your thinking, it's possible that you might be free. He shows you, there's a self-contained place in your thinking where it's absolutely clear that you could be free.... If you build from that place, you can be sure that what you are thinking and feeling and willing is coming from a place that is not being determined by anybody or anything else... we can begin to know ourselves in the world, and that would be the true basis of freedom."


> See also the video of Christopher Bamford, publisher of Steiner Books USA, discussing Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom; and for a broader view of Steiner's thought, see "Christopher Bamford Interviewed for 'The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner.'"  And see philosopher Jeremy Naydler, also interviewed for "The Challenge of Rudolph Steiner."


BACK TO NOTES ON TALBOTT'S THE FUTURE DOES NOT COMPUTE

Get it in paperback from
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Talbott:
"During most of [the] seventeen years I was working with computers, and it slowly became clear to me that the central issues bedeviling all of us who try to understand the relation between the human being and the computer are issues upon which Barfield began throwing light some seven decades ago.  The Future Does Not Compute is my attempt to reflect a little of that light toward the reader."

Talbott on awareness of self and awareness of the nature of machines:
"Machines become a threat when they embody our limitations without our being fully aware of those limitations. All reason shouts at us to approach every aspect of the computer with the greatest caution and reserve. But what incentive has our culture provided for the exercise of such caution and reserve? It's more in our nature to let technology lead where it will, and to celebrate that leading as progress." Ch. 2 "The Machine in the Ghost"
"On the one hand: the machine as an expression of the human being. On the other hand: the machine as an independent force that acts or reacts upon us. Which is it? I am convinced there is no hope for understanding the role of technology in today's world without our first learning to hold both sides of the truth in our minds, flexibly and simultaneously. The relationship between human being and machine has become something like a complex symbiosis." Ch. 2 "The Machine in the Ghost"
"If it is only through self-awareness and inner adjustment that I can restrict the hammer in my hands to its proper role, I must multiply the effort a millionfold when dealing with a vasty more complex technology-- one expression in a much more insistent manner its own urgencies." Ch. 2 "The Machine in the Ghost"
"understanding is the basis of freedom." Ch. 2 "The Machine in the Ghost"
"the computer, one might almost say, was invented as an inevitable refinement of the corporation" Ch. 3 "The Future Does Not Compute"
"what we have embodied in technology are our own habits of thought... The need is to raise these habits to full consciousness, and then take responsability for them." Ch. 5 "On Being Responsible for Earth"
"another word for responsability is 'dominion'-- not the dominion of raw power, but of effective wisdom." Ch. 5 "On Being Responsible for Earth"
"We can no longer stop or even redirect the engine of technological change by brute, external force. Such force is the principle of the engine itself, and only strengthens it. We must tame technology by rising above it and reclaiming what it not mechanical in ourselves." Ch. 5 "On Being Responsible for Earth"
[Much of chapter 5 is taken up with a critique of the works of Jerry Mander. See Mander's In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations and Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. (For more on television: Marie Winn, The Plug-In Drug: Televisions, Computers, and Family Life).]
"But Mander does neglect one critical fact: what we have embodied in technology are our own habits of thought. Yes, our artifacts gain a life of their own, but it is, in a very real sense, our life. We too easily ignore the ways in which we infuse these artifacts with the finespun web of our own, largely subconscious habits of thought. The need is to raise these habits to full consciousness, and then take responsibility for them.

[Much of chapter 6 includes a scathing attack on George Gilder's ideas.]
"...the more complex and indirect the mechanisms through which human action come into expression, the more you and I must be masters of ourselves." Ch. 6 "Networks and Communities"
"...one way or another, you are creating your future. Wake up before you find that the devils within you have done the creating." Ch. 6 "Networks and Communities"
"...the view that a technology can be 'democratizing and leveling' testifies to a radical alienation from everything that constitutes both the inner life and culture" Ch. 6 "Networks and Communities"
"...the telephone, automobile, radio, and television have all contributed to social fragmentation, personal isolation, and alienation from both self and other" Ch. 6 "Networks and Communities"
"What hope is there for peace and human rights when I conceive the barriers separating me from my fellows to be mere obstructions on a network technology diagram rather than the powers of darkness shadowing my own heart?" Ch. 6 "Networks and Communities"

On freedom and power:
"The need is to recognize ourselves in our machines, and our machines in ourselves, and begin to raise ourselves above our machines." Ch. 7 "At the Fringe of Freedom"
 "Freedom, you might say, is not a state, but a tension" Ch. 7 "At the Fringe of Freedom"
"The doing required of us is a refusal to continue seeing all problems as the result  of a doing rather than a being, as technical rather than spiritual." Ch. 7 "At the Fringe of Freedom"
"...if we persist in the cultivation of a purely technical stance toward our work and our technology, we will find that, like the corporation, it takes on a life of its own, which is at the same time, our life--but out of control and less than fully conscious... this autonomous life may exercise a totalitarian suppression of the human spirit that will be all the more powerful for its diffuseness and invisibility" Ch. 7 "At the Fringe of Freedom"

On the so-called "global village":
"...could it be that what we so eagerly embrace, unawares, are the powers of dissolution themselves?" Ch. 9 "Do We Really Want a Global Village?"
"...what concerns me is the likelihood of our expressing within a new social and technological landscape the same spiritual vacuity that gave rise to the old tyrannies" Ch. 9 "Do We Really Want a Global Village?"
"The global village is... a technological creation.  Many would-be village architects are inspired by te endless potentials they discern in a satellite dish planted among thatched roof houses. This techno-romantic image calls up visions of information sharing and cooperation, grassroots power, and utopian social change. What it ignores is the monolithic and violently assimilative character of the resulting cultural bridges." Ch. 9 "Do We Really Want a Global Village?"

On awareness and loss:
"The light of mathematics may have descended into our minds from the circling stars, but how many students of mathematics still look to the night sky with wonder?" Ch. 9 "Do We Really Want a Global Village?"

On "helping" developing countries by bringing modern technology:

"the logic and assumptions of our technology can prove bitterly corrosive. Worse, the kind of community from which Western technical systems commonly arise is, for the most art, noncommunity--typified by the purely technical, one-dimenional, commercially motivated, and wholly rationalized environments of corporate research and development organizations."

More:

"...human  life can be sustained only within a sea of meaning, not a network of information" Ch. 9 "Do We Really Want a Global Village?"

Heavvvvy....

"...our rush to wire the world will some day be seen to have spawned a suffering as great as that caused by this century's most ruthless dictators"

On the corporation (corporation as machine):

"Is the corporation a human activity in the service of human needs, or not? It is remarkble how easily and subtly the human-centered view slips from our grasp. Indeed, just so far as the corporation is viewed as an enterprise designed to score a profit, rather than to serve worthwhile ends under the discipline of economic controls, to that extent the entire organization has already been cut loose from its human justification and reduced to something like a computational machine" Ch. 10 "Thoughts on a Group Support System"

Nugget o' wisdom:

"... every problem is a gift... [it] invites the production of new, human "capital.' This is far different from seeing a problem merely as something to be gotten rid of by the most efficient means possible." Ch. 10 "Thoughts on a Group Support System"

 Essence:

"It's not the Net we're talking about here; it's you and me. And surely that's the only place to begin. Neither liberation nor oppression can become living powers in any soil except that of the human heart" Ch 11

Yep:

"If we experience our machines as increasingly humanlike, then we are experiencing ourselves as increasingly machinelike." Ch 11 
"...we are strongly  tempted to use our freedom in order to deny freedom, pursuing instead the mechanization of life and thought" Ch 11 
"... what is directly at risk now--what the computer asks us to abdicate-- are our independent powers of awareness. Yet these powers are the only means by which we can raise ourselves above the machine" Ch 11 
"What if the human being to whom we so beautifully adapt the computer is the wrong sort of human being? What if our efforts really amount to a more effective adaptation of the human being to the machine, rather than the other way around?" Ch 11 
"...we have learned to regard ourselves as ghosts in the machine... we have more and more become mere ghosts in the machine" Ch 11 

Quotable:
"an electronic New Jerusalem, its streets paved with silicon" Ch. 24 "Electronic Mysticism"

More to ponder:

"ancient man, much more than we, experienced himself rather like an like an embryo within a surrounding, nourishing cosmos... a plenum of wisdom and potency"
"the mythic surround was engaged in weaving the ancient mind, as in a dream"
"From Tolkein's storyteller-- who originates and remains one with his own mind-- they have descended to mechanican tinkerer... just so far as we forget our ancient descent from a cosmos of wisdom above us-- we lose the basis of creative mastery, an offer ourselves to be remade by the mechanisms below us"
"we are pursuing an experiment every bit as momentous as the discovery of mind at the dawning of western civilization-- what manner of god will we be?"

> See also C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image

Essential quote from Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute:
"...what we have today is in some respects a seriously disabled consciousness, and... our own infatuation with machines is both a symptom of our disability and a further contributor to it." 


> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.