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Joelle Nebbe-Mornod's Library tagged thinking →  View Popular

22 Nov 09

Home | Constellation W

For the last three years or so I have diligently (and sometimes slowly) translated the work of Michel Cartier, who for me is the francophone world’s cross between Alvin Toffler and Marshall McLuhan (and no, I do not believe I am exaggerating).

Michel is an astonishingly perceptive, erudite and humble man. I am pleased to consider myself one of his acolytes.

He has been following, interpreting and chronicling the evolution of three areas of human activity (technology, economics and societal evolution) over the past four decades. Here, as a long blog post, is a summary of the work he has done, now available on www.constellationw.com

www.constellationw.com/ - Preview

thinking

16 Feb 09

Why feminists shouldn't have to keep mum - The F-Word

  • While I love being a mother, I resent the current cult of motherhood in our society. It’s something feminists need to challenge, instead of feeling it’s a thing they need to adapt to and be oh-so-polite about. When I was on maternity leave following the birth of my son, the loneliness I felt at being out of the workplace and spending all day with someone who couldn’t talk was compounded by the fact that when I did meet with other mothers, the contemporary cult of motherhood required me to hold my tongue. It’s not that no-one talks about the physical and mental challenges of being a mother. Women do, all the time (even though the same discussions on cracked nipples and tantrums in Sainsbury’s are treated as ‘taboo breaking’ each time they arise). The trouble is, while we’re all allowed to say how difficult it is, no-one’s allowed to say that it’s too difficult and needs to change, because that would be seen as undermining the very roles with which we’re struggling. So we get nowhere or, worse, we learn to seek value in all the things that could be so much better if only we’d try to alter them.
  • This is not, by the way, another so-called feminist attack on mothers, but on a culture that encourages them not only to think so little of themselves, but to positively glorify themselves in doing so, as though this constitutes some kind of sacrifice on behalf of our children. In magazines, TV programmes, mothers’ groups and web forums, it seems to be taken as read that motherhood makes you less of a person. Rather than challenge this, as feminists have done and continue to do, the accepted response is to go along with it all, but say it doesn’t matter, as long as everyone appreciates how noble we are for having given up said personhood.
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13 Feb 09

VQR » Printed Words, Computers, and Democratic Societies

  • There is the same tendency to perceive recent developments in science as favoring elites, dooming masses, narcotizing recipients, manipulating the poor, and massaging the wealthy
  • The key is competition and not monopolization of the sources of ideas.
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Eurozine - Wer um Vertrauen wirbt, weckt Misstrauen - Ute Frevert Politische Semantik zwischen Herausforderung und Besänftigung

    • english summary: In politics as in private life, "trust" and "mistrust" play a central role, writes Ute Frevert in Merkur. As former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt recently commented, politicians are in the awkward position of being dependent on the trust of the electorate, yet of forfeiting this trust as soon as they are seen to be making an effort to solicit it. And indeed, "today's political scientists commonly refer to parliamentary democracy as a system of institutionalized mistrust".

      Frevert traces the notion of trust from its appearance during the March Revolution of 1848 (as an alternative to monarchial "loyalty"); through the Weimar constitution (whose architects neither trusted the people nor relied on their trust); and into National Socialism, which "saturated society with the semantics of trust" yet simultaneously encouraged distrust of "anti-social elements". National Socialism talked of trust but meant loyalty, writes Frevert: "Trust's retractable and oppositional strength was robbed".

      The GDR government notoriously harboured a deep mistrust of its citizens. After the uprising of 17 June 1953, Kurt Barthel, head of the Writers' Association, wrote that the demonstrators had betrayed the trust placed in them by the socialist state, prompting Brecht's famous comment: "Wouldn't it be easier for the government to dissolve the people and vote for another one?" And the West German government, too, suspecting its citizens of an authority complex, drafted a constitution that tended against referenda and plebiscites.       - on 2009-02-08
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My article on hyper and deep attention « Media Theory for the 21st Century

  • .  Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times.  Hyper attention, by contrast, is characterized by switching focus rapidly between different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom. 

  • Deep attention is superb for solving complex problems represented in a single medium, but it comes at the price of environmental alertness and flexibility of response.  Hyper attention excels at negotiating rapidly changing environments in which multiple foci compete for attention; its disadvantage is impatience with focusing for long periods on a non-interactive object such as a Victorian novel or complicated math problem.


    In an evolutionary context, hyper attention no doubt developed first; deep attention is a relative luxury requiring group cooperation to create a secure environment in which one does not have constantly to be alert to impending dangers.

Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

  • Short, regular work schedule
  • Leave yourself a rough edge
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