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Revisiting the Future

January 26, 2012
Miscellaneous, Science and Technology
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It is, I’m afraid, quite likely that the unusually light posting over the last couple of weeks will be the norm rather than the exception for the foreseeable future. Lots going on this semester to keep me busy. But perhaps that is for the better, maybe lighter posting means better writing and better reading.

In any case, one of the activities that is keeping me busy for the next few months is an internship with the Synthetic Reality Lab at the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Simulation and Training. Specifically, I’ll be conducting research for a rather cool project, a virtual recreation of the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. Check out the website for more on the project: Come Back to the Fair.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the World’s Fairs have been on my mind the past few months. As things stand right now, the ’39 New York Fair will serve as a case study of sorts for my dissertation. It is all still very much a work in progress, but my hope is to tie together some work on embodiment and spatial practices by Pierre Bourdieu, Henri Lefebvre, and Mark Johnson among others with a view to better understanding the social construction of technology.

I know, I know … I’ve got to figure out a way of talking about all of that so that it doesn’t sound dry as dirt. In fact, I’m quite excited about the whole thing. And, if you stick around, I’m sure you’ll get a feel for the whole project as it develops over the coming months. Stay tuned.

Writing To An Imagined Audience … Suggestions Welcome

January 19, 2012
Miscellaneous
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Audience, as the etymology suggests, originally involved hearing and, hence, speaking face-to-face; in which case you would know exactly who you were communicating to and, presumably, to what end. The paradox of referring to the “audience” of written communication reminds us of the more difficult task of communicating when the parties involved have been abstracted from one another in space and time.

So who’s my audience?

I know a few personally, I’ve come to know a few virtually through comments, but for the most part it is an invisible audience that I nonetheless find myself wanting to address in a meaningful manner.

Having said this, I’m curious to know why you take the time to read The Frailest Thing.

I was reminded by a comment today that most of the readers of this blog are “silent readers,” and that is fine of course. I’m not a very loud reader myself. But as I think about what to write, it couldn’t hurt to have some ideas of the kind of posts that readers find most helpful. What would you like to read more about? Which posts do you just skip over? What can I do to improve the quality of posts? Are there topics I don’t write enough about? Topics I write about too much? In short, what would make this a better blog? No need to pull punches.

If you have the time to spare, drop me a comment below or send me an email — LMSacasas at gmail dot com.

And of course, for whatever reason you do so, thanks for reading!

On the Passing of Old Trees

January 16, 2012
Culture, History, Miscellaneous
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Within driving distance of where I live stood one of the oldest living trees in the world, until today.

“The Senator,” as the tree was known, held its ground for an estimated 3,500 years. Monday morning it caught fire and collapsed. The cause of the fire is unknown.

This was terribly sad news. How odd to consider that something that lasted for so long and endured so much came to its end in one’s own lifetime.

But how do we begin to asses this sort of loss? It points out the woeful inadequacy of our preference for quantifiable measures, none of which could possibly account for the passing of old trees.

One measure of the tree’s significance suggested itself to me when a local station interviewed a woman who came to the fallen tree this morning with an old black and white photograph. Coming to the tree had been a part of her family’s history. The tree marked time for her. In one sense, it marks time for all of us.

America is not a land of ruins that might engrave in our imagination a feeling for the depth of history. There is very little by which we might take the measure of our lives, and less still that might suggest to us the ephemeral nature of the days with which we have been gifted  and to discourage us from adopting the pretensions of presumed timelessness.

This tree, when it was looked upon and thought of, did just that.

Ursula Le Guin once wrote of one of her characters, “he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”

That seems just about right.

Photo by Anthony Scotti via Wikimedia Commons

Weekend Reading, 1/7/12

January 7, 2012
Culture, History, Miscellaneous, Politics and Economics, Religion and Theology, Science and Technology
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Hope the new year finds all of you well. As you may have noticed, Weekend Reading posts have been on hiatus due to holiday busyness. Things will only be getting busier as the new semester ramps up, but I’ll try to keep these coming. For the sake of time, however, introductory/explanatory comments may be minimal as they are this week. Enjoy. All of these are quite interesting, the pieces by Havel and Lightman are particularly good.

“The Intellectual and Politics” by Vaclav Havel at Project Syndicate. By the late Czech poet, dissident, and president.

“Always the Optimist: Václav Havel’s transcendence of politics” by Stefany Anne Golberg at Smart Set.  On Havel.

“War No More?” by Timothy Snyder at Foreign Affairs. In conversation with Pinker’s recent book on the decline of violence.

“Their Noonday Demons, and Ours” by John Plotz in the NY Times. On distraction, past and present.

“The Accidental Universe: Science’s Crisis of Faith” by Alan Lightman in Harper’s. This article has gotten a lot of attention over the last couple of weeks. Very interesting.

“Christianity and the Future of the Book” by Alan Jacobs at The New Atlantis. Explores relationship between Christianity and the book form in light of the emergence of electronic forms of reading.

Interrogative Intonation …

December 21, 2011
Culture, Miscellaneous
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A little over a year ago I wrote a post on the popularity of the ellipse ( . . . ) in online communication after I began to notice how frequently I had been employing the mark myself. After laying out a rough and ready taxonomy of uses, I wrapped up with the following conclusion:

“It was the mark of a thought that refused to assert itself …. The ellipsis gives expression to a habit of ironic detachment and preemptive indifference.  And here is where I found the point of contact with larger cultural trends.  The mood of ironic detachment that has settled over so many of us was manifesting itself in three simple dots.  With those dots we were evading conviction, giving off an apathetic vibe, and guarding ourselves from seeming unfashionably earnest.”

Today, via Peter Leithart, I came across the following from John Milbank:

“People who fondly imagine themselves the subjects of their ‘own’ choices entirely will, in reality, be the most manipulated subjects, and the most incapable of being influenced by goodness and beauty. This is why, in the affluent Anglo-Saxon West today, there is so much pervasively monotonous ugliness and tawdriness that belies its wealth, as well as why there are so many people adopting (literally) the sing-song accent of self-righteous complacency and vacuous uniformity, with its rising lilt of a feigned questioning at the end of every phrase. This intonation implies that any overassertion is a polite infringement of the freedom of the other, and yet at the same time its merely rhetorical interrogation suggests that the personal preference it conveys is unchallengeable, since it belongs within the total set of formally correct exchange transactions. Pure liberty is pure power – whose other name is evil.”

I thought at the time I had perhaps overanalyzed. I now feel better about that.

Death and Material Culture

December 17, 2011
Culture, Literature and Poetry, Miscellaneous, Science and Technology
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Christopher Hitchens passed away on Thursday evening from complications related to the cancer he had been fighting for many months. I received this news with a certain startled sadness, even though it was, of course, expected. I hope to post some reflections on Mr. Hitchens with regards to the quality of public discourse in the coming days. For now, I only want to draw attention to a portion of his brother Peter’s reflections published yesterday in the Daily Mail.

Peter Hitchens wrote of one of his last conversations with his brother in which Christopher hoped to return home from the hospital:

“There, he suggested, we could go through his bookshelves, as there were some books and other possessions he wanted me to have. I couldn’t have cared less about these things, but I had greatly hoped to have that conversation, which would have been a particularly good way of saying farewell.”

Admittedly, as Peter Hitchens notes, the objects are nothing compared to the person. But I would think, personally, that they are not therefore entirely insignificant. They are something. And the books especially, for what they meant to the giver, might be a particularly meaningful token.

All of this to say that no one will ever want to go through an e-reader in quite the same way. Only the particularity of the book as object can carry the fullness of meaning and significance that is entailed in passing a thing on to another in this way. It is an aspect of the culture of the book that takes shape around the older form.

This is, in itself, no argument against the utility of e-readers. It is only to note a subtle loss that attends this particular shift in our material culture. And I, for better or for worse, have a temperamental proclivity to register such losses.

Of course, it takes no particular predisposition to register and regret the loss of Mr. Hitchens.

Weekend Reading, 12/10/11

December 10, 2011
Culture, Miscellaneous, Politics and Economics, Science and Technology
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Short and to the point this week.

“Solitude and Political Friendship” by Anthony Esolen in Public Discourse: On the difference between solitude and isolation. Wise reflections.

“Out of Body Experience: Master of Illusion” by Ed Yong in Nature: On experiments exploring body image, perception, sense of self, etc.

“Beardless in Barnesville” by Joshua Glenn in HiLobrow: Lovely essay, first published in 1996, on the Second Luddite Congress.

“Dear Amazon: You Really, Really Suck” at Advent Book Blog: Very short post on a disconcerting Amazon sales tactic and what to do instead.

“You Say You Want a Devolution” by Kurt Anderson in Vanity Fair: “Or maybe, I worry some days, this is the way that Western civilization declines, not with a bang but with a long, nostalgic whimper.” Not as dramatic as all that, but an interesting look at the stagnation culture over the last twenty years.

“Hugo Addendum: The Film in Context” by Adam Batty at Hope Lies at 24 Frames per Second: Excellent post on the film history that forms the context of Hugo. H/T Mr. Gladding.

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