All You Need Is A Rocket Experience
Douglas as Society
Oct|7|2009
Facebook Feast
Nov|28|2008
Ok, I admit I’m really late coming to Facebook. I was waiting for a critical mass to take place in order to have the most friends available. Now I guess that has happened because my mom is on Facebook. That is a sign of it’s absolute superiority to Myspace. Myspace is still better for music promotion but as a social network site, facebook has it beat. OK back to adding more friends.
A World Made by Hand
May|19|2008
I have long been an admirer of James Howard Kunstler’s writing style. His dry wit and cultural literacy make for entertaining as well as informative reading. His most recent book is a work of fiction titled “A World Made by Hand.” It tells the story of an America that is broken. There is little electricity, no cars, no communication, and very little government. Religion has become an organizing force in society once again, and medicine has reverted to the 19th century. At times this book is very dark, showing how people have difficulty Read the rest of this entry »
The Nature of Lowbrow
Douglas as Society
Jan|25|2008
In Where the Stress Falls: Essays, Susan Sontag writes that she dreads “the ascendancy of a culture whose most intelligible, persuasive values are drawn from the entertainment industries” and which has spelt the “undermining of standards of seriousness”. Even intellectuals, once prepared to risk themselves for what was right and true, are now addicted to entertainment, reluctant to inconvenience themselves for any cause, and devoted to personal safety. She believes that it is the affliction of sameness, the absence of intellectual friction or counterpoint, that plagues culture. She sees “the devolution of literary ambition and the concurrent ascendancy of the tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel as normative fictional subjects” as symptomatic of this retreat from a position of thoughtfulness and the degraded ability to recognise, and desire, greatness and quality in cultural products.
Starting this blog has got me thinking about how the culture of the internet is such an unbiased reflection of our world at large. With so many opinions out there, how we filter these voices becomes more important than ever. Sometimes you meet someone and can tell right away where some of opinions come from. It might be Stephen Colbert, or AM talk radio, but their reality is in a sense, constructed by these influences. Read the rest of this entry »