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Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Absolute success not reached 
Die and learn
Unpotted Potter
| | Hogwarts' magic and spells are a form of technology, coupling intention with action. If you lose your keys, our Muggle technology offers a key chain that beeps if you clap just right, and you follow the sound till you spy or unearth your keys. How much easier to say, "Accio keys!" -- with feeling -- and let the keys come to you. |
| | Future technologies will not be about bigger and faster computers and phones. They're likely to eliminate them, actually. The real frontier may be the development of human intelligence and capacities that will render these crutches unnecessary. Whatever you can imagine is probably possible, maybe in the lifetime of Dylan and his generation. |
| | Dylan is Sheila's grandson, same age as our youngest, now also finishing Deathly Hallows. |
| | I think what Rowling has done is remarkable. It is a mythic tale for our time. What impresses me most is that it seems so medieval. And that is what I think attracts young people to the story, just as Tolkien did a half century ago. What I think speaks to people is the struggle against world changing events, not by technology alone, but by human commitment to shared endeavor. This is the theme of Life Free or Die Hard and Transformers. It is the first theme of the 21st century. |
| | We have worlds and selves to make here. Such has always been the human condition, but I think lately we've accellerated. |
| | Many years ago when I lived outside Chapel Hill in North Carolina, I found an ancient spearhead while walking across the plowed ground of a farm nearby. When I researched it at UNC, I found that it belonged to a family of artifacts called Guilford, and was probably between five and eight thousand years old. |
| | What fascinated me most about these ancient artifacts was that one style of carving stone could persist for thousands of years, with remarkably little variation. Why was that? Given the tendency of humans to make original stuff, why were these artifacts so persistently identical? |
| | Obviously today we have many more people, communicating about far more complex ideas and inventions, using far more complex tools and combinations of tools. When your numbers are few and all you have to work with are rocks, wood, mud and animal parts, your choices are limited. |
| | My question, however, is not about the ancient folks, but about our species today. Can we change something apparently basic to our nature: the will to war, the tendency to rationalize the killing of other human beings over ideological, political, cultural, religious or familial disagreements? |
| | I don't see that changing much, though I'm always an optimist. |
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