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Humanist Archives: Oct. 1, 2019, 8:41 a.m. Humanist 33.290 - There was a time when the Internet..., or "monsters from the Id"

                  Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 290.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
                   Hosted by King's Digital Lab
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                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2019-09-30 07:20:38+00:00
        From: Robert Amsler 
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.285: There was a time when the Internet...

In the 1956 science-fiction movie "Forbidden Planet", the civilization of
the Krell collapsed in a single night when they built the ultimate machine
that could transform thought into action. They died in their sleep when
their machine interpreted their dreams as actionable commands to create the
monsters from their ids.

In the 20th century, we created the World Wide Web to give voice to our
dreams without any controls as to whether those dreams represented voices
from our ids.

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 1:35 AM Humanist  wrote:

>                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 285.
>             Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>                    Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>                        www.dhhumanist.org
>                 Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>         Date: 2019-09-30 05:28:36+00:00
>         From: Jim O'Donnell 
>         Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.259: There was a time when the
> Internet...
>
> Willard, in the late spring of 1992, on the campus of the University of
> Illinois Chicago Circle (as then was), when you had been keynoting the
> North American Serials Group annual meeting, we were chatting in the
> hall (I think it was our first f2f meeting) and I said something
> conventional of the time about how the Internet was off-limits to
> commercial activity and this was our hope and you said to me, Jim, I
> think we've got about five years before the big boys come in and take
> over, we have to do what we can now to shape the future.  It was less in
> fact than five years.
>
> jo'd
>
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 10:05 PM Humanist  wrote:
>
>                         Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 259.
>                   Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>                          Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>                          
>                       Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>               Date: 2019-09-19 20:19:31+00:00
>               From: Willard McCarty 
>               Subject: once upon a time
>
>       > There was a time when the Internet seemed to promise the world
>         to the
>       > world. When it appeared to be opening up a benign, infinite network
>       > of possibilities, in which everyone was enfranchised and newly
>       > accessible to one another as they were drawn, in one of Jia
>       > Tolentino’s many felicitous phrases, to the “puddles and blossoms
> of
>       > other people’s curiosity and expertise.” It would be a world in
>         which
>       > hierarchies in whatever guise would be upended, a democratic
>         forum to
>       > rival and exceed the philosophical marketplace of ancient Greece
> (no
>       > exclusion of anyone, not women, not slaves). At the very least, it
>       > was a place where, because you could be sure that someone out there
>       > was listening, you would find yourself able to articulate the
>       > thoughts that, for lack of an audience, had previously threatened
> to
>       > remain forever unspoken, stuck to the tip of your tongue.
>
>      Thus begins Jacqueline Rose's "Song of my self-care", New York
>      Review of Books, 10 October
> (
> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/10/jia-tolentino-song-my-self-care/
> ),
>      reviewing Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
>      by Jia Tolentino.
>
>      Read on.
>
>      Yours,
>      WM
>
>
>      --
>      Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/ ),
>      Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
>      London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
>      (www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20
>      ) and Humanist
>      (www.dhhumanist.org )



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