Category Archives: Culture

Do free societies suffer tragedies?

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On Twitter Politico quotes from a statement issued by President Obama in response to a shooting at a public event held by Representative Giffords, which has claimed many casualties including the Congresswoman (her prognosis is reported to be surprisingly positive, having suffered a gunshot to her head) and at least a few fatalities among them as I draft this.

@politico: #Obama: Such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society http://politi.co/fQmggR

What does that mean? Assuming even the best of intentions, does that sentiment mean much in the context of remarks from a contemporary President of the United States?

In trying to give those words meaning, these questions come to mind:

What does that imply about society? I don’t take it for granted that we live in a free one, if that was an implied premise.

Do I even agree with the statement? What does a free society need to endure, lest it stop being free?

I think we must consider the idea that a free society is going to have to accept some level of tragedy. We also need to consider how much tragedy is a function of an unfree society. I’m not sure the most vocal people who seize podiums and microphones want a free society or even understand what they want.

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The Legacy of Tron

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I saw Tron: Legacy recently and what it was is about what I expected. It was true in a major respect to the original: it was a technology demo. And this one had a better soundtrack.

I enjoyed it for what it was. Under the 3-D glasses that came with my ticket I had gladly already popped-in nostalgia-tinted contacts, imbued by the cult following of the original Tron (after it too flopped in the theaters).

Still, as I watched, I also hoped for it to break out into something internally coherent and specific, and maybe even illustrate a moral that directly related to the technological challenges of our day.

Jeff Bridges seemed to evoke a John Perry Barlow-esque iteration on The Dude, and from there we could have touched on Net Neutrality (maybe even with tangents touching on technologies like Tor and topics echoing WikiLeaks). Or, more obviously, we could’ve been given a morality play on The Singularity, drawing from Hans Moravec and Bill Joy. Legacy nodded at most of these things and then quickly averted its eyes.

Given the low bar set by and the cultish favoritism associated with its predecessor it was still enjoyable for the indoctrinated.

In the rushing reverberating express

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Two days ago I read of the announcement that wifi internet access will be deployed across all of Amtrak’s Acela trains.

My first reaction was a reflexive appreciation of progress. I’m a fan of travel by train when I can afford it, and I can schedule my travel such that an Acela ticket does not cost much more than the regional lines. It’s worth it to me when I can swing that.

But, I also thought of this passage from Graham Greene’s Orient Express (aka Stamboul Train):

… In the train, however fast it travelled, the passengers were compulsorily at rest; useless between the walls of glass to feel emotion, useless to try to follow any activity except of the mind; and that activity could be followed without fear of interruption. The world was beating now on Eckman and Stein, telegrams were arriving, men were interrupting the threads of their thought with speech, women were holding dinner-parties. But in the rushing reverberating express, noise was so regular that it was the equivalent of silence, movement was so continuous that after a while the mind accepted it as stillness. Only outside the train was the violence of action possible, and the train would contain him  safely with his plans for three days; by the end of that time he would know quite clearly how to deal with Stein and Mr. Eckman.

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