media ← the digital glebe

Head in the Clouds 2

May

2013

They call it progress: “Just a year after launching its $50-per-month plan, Adobe has made its Creative Cloud the only way to get the new versions of its full software suite. Customers “overwhelmingly” prefer it.” CNET They must be talking to the wrong customers, as of writing I can’t seem to find a single person ...

Does Fear Still Sell? 8

Apr

2013

I think the ‘bobos’ have had their chips to be honest. If there’s hope, it lies with the proles. “Concern about the environment is legitimate, but catastrophism transforms us into cowering children. Distrust of progress and science, calls for individual and collective self–sacrifice to ‘save the planet’ and cultivation of fear: behind the carbon commissars, ...

Myth of the Flat Earth 7

Apr

2013

Wikipedia is finally catching up at last. Myth of the Flat Earth. “Since the early 20th century, a number of books and articles have documented the flat earth error as one of a number of widespread misconceptions in popular views of the Middle Ages. The misconception has had no currency in historical scholarship since at ...

Know Thy Enemy 3

Apr

2013

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” John Maynard Keynes Almost to a man, the four main parties in UK politics -Lib Lab Con SNP- all repeat the following mantra with little deviation: “Climate change is the greatest threat faced by humanity and the most important political issue of ...

Conspiracy Meme Gold 5

Mar

2013

The evolutionary model of cultural information transfer is based on the concept that units of information, or “memes”, have an independent existence, are self-replicating, and are subject to selective evolution through environmental forces. Starting from a proposition put forward in the writings of Richard Dawkins, it has since turned into a new area of study, ...

Conversation in Babylon 2

Mar

2013

From ‘How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays’ by Umberto Eco (Between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in the shade of the Hanging Gardens, not many thousands of years ago) URUK: How do you like the cuneiform characters? My new serf-writer composed the whole beginning of the Hammurabi code in about ten hours. ...

Media, Morons & Max 4

Feb

2013

A European Asterix? 3

Feb

2013

“The idea of Europe is dying, yet the sense of identity is strong -at least in intellectual elites. Perhaps it is less so among the common people, used to celebrating as heroes people who killed citizens of neighboring countries.” Umberto Eco l’Espresso Feb 2013 ‘Bad times for those who believe in the European Union courtesy ...

Unhappy Meals

Feb

2013

About teatime, in a parallel universe far far away:

Rupert Sheldrake: “Science Set Free” 3

Jan

2013

Part 1 of a talk by Rupert Sheldrake at the conference ELECTRIC UNIVERSE 2013: The Tipping Point, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Many scientists like to think that science already understands the ways of the natural world. The fundamental questions are answered, leaving only the details to be filled in. The impressive achievements of science seemed ...