not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
—- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born —- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if —- listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go
"We dislike education, because it was not presented to us in our youth for what it is. Consider it not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates, but as an ennobling intimacy with great men. Consider it not as the preparation of the individual to “make a living”, but as the development of every potential capacity in him for the comprehension, control and //appreciation// of his world. Above all, consider it, in its fullest definition, as the technique of transmitting as completely as possible, to as many as possible, that technological, intellectual, moral and artistic heritage through which the race forms the growing individual and makes him human. Education is the reason why we behave like human beings. We are hardly born human; we are born ridiculous and malodorous animals; we //become// human, we have humanity thrust upon us through the hundred channels whereby the past pours down into the present that mental and cultural inheritance whose preservation, accumulation, and transmission place mankind today, with all its defectives and illiterates, on a higher plane than any generation has ever reached before."
Some thoughts on science, technology and human progress. (Stanford University – Science, Tech & Society Program Commencement – Student Address – June 13th, 2010)
"Once you are deployed, you live with people in an intimate way. You trust them with your life and they become brothers and sisters. I couldn’t help thinking that if something happened to me, no one would know who I was. That is not the way I want to leave this world."
These are some meditations on culture, art, politics, tech and the beautiful struggle. I am a tinkerer, flâneur, social commentator, curator of big ideas, design-curious techie, aspiring entrepreneur and philanthropist, and DC native.
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