User:MastCell: Difference between revisions
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{{Quotation|In a practical, immediate way, one sees the limits of the so-called “extended mind” clearly in the mob-made Wikipedia, the perfect product of that new vast, supersized cognition: when there’s easy agreement, it’s fine, and when there’s widespread disagreement on values or facts, as with, say, the origins of capitalism, it’s fine, too; you get both sides. The trouble comes when one side is right and the other side is wrong and doesn’t know it. The Shakespeare authorship page and the Shroud of Turin page are scenes of constant conflict and are packed with unreliable information... Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that.|[[Adam Gopnik]], [http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/02/14/110214crat_atlarge_gopnik "How the Internet gets inside us"]; ''[[New Yorker]]'', 14 February 2011}} |
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I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.<br> |
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So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:<br> |
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Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned<br> |
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With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.<p> <p> |
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Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.<br> |
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Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.<br> |
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A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,<br> |
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A formula, a phrase remains, — but the best is lost.<p> <p> |
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The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,<br> |
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They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled<br> |
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Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.<br> |
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More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.<p> <p> |
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Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave<br> |
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Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;<br> |
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Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.<br> |
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I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.<p> <p> |
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—"Dirge Without Music", [[Edna St. Vincent Millay]] |
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Revision as of 20:13, 11 February 2011
In a practical, immediate way, one sees the limits of the so-called “extended mind” clearly in the mob-made Wikipedia, the perfect product of that new vast, supersized cognition: when there’s easy agreement, it’s fine, and when there’s widespread disagreement on values or facts, as with, say, the origins of capitalism, it’s fine, too; you get both sides. The trouble comes when one side is right and the other side is wrong and doesn’t know it. The Shakespeare authorship page and the Shroud of Turin page are scenes of constant conflict and are packed with unreliable information... Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that.