|
Sunday, November 10, 2002
There won't be a test 
| | Sometimes the best hiding place is right in the open. It took seven years of reading and reflection for me to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. It was under my nose, of course, but for years I avoided seeing what was there because no one else seemed to notice. Forced schooling arose from the new logic of the Industrial Age‹the logic imposed on flesh and blood by fossil fuel and high-speed machinery. |
| | This simple reality is hidden from view by early philosophical and theological anticipations of mass schooling in various writings about social order and human nature. But you shouldn¹t be fooled any more than Charles Francis Adams was fooled when he observed in 1880 that what was being cooked up for kids unlucky enough to be snared by the newly proposed institutional school net combined characteristics of the cotton mill and the railroad with those of a state prison. |
| | After the Civil War, utopian speculative analysis regarding isolation of children in custodial compounds where they could be subjected to deliberate molding routines, began to be discussed seriously by the Northeastern policy elites of business, government, and university life. These discussions were inspired by a growing realization that the productive potential of machinery driven by coal was limitless. Railroad development made possible by coal and startling new inventions like the telegraph, seemed suddenly to make village life and local dreams irrelevant. A new governing mind was emerging in harmony with the new reality. |
Bedtime for Dick Cheney?
Earth to Hollywood: go adjust yourselves
| | And he's using Windows (I assume). Here's whatcha get if you don't: |
| | Thank you for your interest in Movielink. We want you to take part in the powerful Internet movie rental experience that Movielink delivers; however, you currently do not meet our minimum system requirements. You will need to adjust the following: |
| | You Need Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP |
| | Sheila Lennon reports this insult to Windows users browsing with Mozilla: |
| | You need Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher - Upgrade Now. |
| | With friends like this, Microsoft doesn't need more enemies. |
BiPod
| | The Neuros "MP3 Digital Audio Computer" is kind of an ultimate digital walkman. It records and plays back in MP3 from its FM radio or its microphone. It plays back through headphones or its audio output, or over a blank FM channel so you can listen on your home stereo's FM tuner or your car radio. It can listen for 30 seconds to any song you record so its "fingerprint" allows it to be identified the next time you jack the thing into the Net. |
| | It tells you all this through a Flash demo that constitutes everything the company, Digital Innovations, says about it. No link on the company site to the product site. Weird. |
| | Still, looks pretty cool. |
Shine on
| | Got one of these today. Needed it a hurry, and it did a boffo job. |
| | [Later...] for most of this morning I had the "Dramaturgy of Death" link, below, under "one of these," above. Many readers found it meaningful. |
Didnt' kill me, but it did put me to sleep
| | Garry Wills: The Dramaturgy of Death. He brings in Nietsche to list more reasons for a state to kill someone than there are ways to do it. |
Hey, I'll buy one
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
