We are natural villagers 20 Jul 2009 We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing. Douglas N. Adams, 1999 [Hat tip Jeb Baugh] Social evolution Technology
Ecology and Biodiversity Supernatural selection 2 6 May 20104 Oct 2017 Part one is here. Rossano divides naturalistic explanations of religion into five distinct types: (1) commitment theories, (2) cognitive theories, (3) ecological theories, (4) performance theories, and (5) experiential theories.I want to discuss this taxonomy. Read More
Censorship More on ISP filtering 6 Dec 2008 At my other blog here. Also see Ars Technica: Here’s an idea: if the Australian government actually finds child porn, nuclear bomb making manuals, and the like on the Internet, why not do their best to find the perpetrators and put them behind bars? That way we get to keep… Read More
Censorship No shit! 14 Dec 2008 Here’s an article, by MSN no less, that explains the problems with broad filtering. A fellow named Herman Libshitz can’t get an email account from Verizon because his name contains “shit”. Residents of Scunthorpe in the UK apparently have similar problems. God only knows what the residents of Testiclebreastpenisvaginaville can… Read More
I was born in a village and I grew up in a village. I now live in a village, literally on the boundary of a smallish town whose main characteristic is that it is like a village, everybody knows everybody, and that is the reason that I live where I do and why I’m staying put.
Of course, I grew up in a village of some 1500 in a remote region. Where I live now is another village, but this one is not defined by physcial geography. It is more defined by a social geography enabled by mass communications and social networks. I think that was Adams’ point. The world is no longer round, you see.
“The world is no longer round, you see.” WOW! New theorem – “The shortest distance between two points on a sphere (ours) is through the keypad.
It is more defined by a social geography enabled by mass communications and social networks. I think that was Adams’ point. Didn’t Marshall McLuhan say something like that?
Perhaps we are natural villagers, – but for millenia man has tried to escape the country. As the saying from the Middle Ages goes “Stadtluft macht free” (city air make you fee)
And what do we do when we reach the city? Start up small groups of friends and neighbours. We are still villagers.
I always found London rather village like in a strange sort of way. I lived in Brixton for years, very strong sense of community and a very distinctive local identity. Its a vast city split up into little tribal groups and zones.