Headline of the Decade, perhaps? “Police: Crack Found in Man’s Buttocks”. Who’d have thought. “Hagerstown, Md. (AP) — Police searching a downtown home found a man hiding 15 plastic bags of crack cocaine in his buttocks.” Hat-tip to Angus Wheaton.
Whoring my Bloggerati vote
Bloggerati is running a straw poll on who should go to the Australia 2020 Summit. Some people have been shameless whoring their vote link. So shall I. Click here to vote for me, using the “Vote” button when you get there. It isn’t part of any official process, but it might help someone summarise something, somehow.
Enlightenment is about Conversation
“Dare to Know!” is the title of chapter 8 of Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947. And the opening words will bring a wriggle of delight to social media evangelists everywhere. (Hi, Laurel!)
The Prussian enlightenment [of the 18th century] was about conversation. It was about a critical, respectful, open-ended dialogue between free and autonomous subjects. Conversation was important because it permitted the sharpening and refinement of judgement. In a famous essay on the nature of enlightenment, the Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant declared that:
Enlightenment refers to man’s departure from his self-imposed tutelage. Tutelage means the inability to make use of one’s own reason without the guidance of another. This tutelage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in an intellectual insufficiency, but in a lack of will and courage… Dare to know! [Semper aude!] Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the motto of the Enlightenment!
[…] In the percolation through society of this spirit of critical, confident independence, conversation played an indispensable role. It flourished in the clubs and societies that proliferated in the Prussian lands…
The conversation… also took place in print. One of the distinctive features of the periodical literature of this era was its discursive, dialogical character. Many of the articles printed in the Berlin Monthly (Berlinische Monatsschrift), for example, were in fact letters to the editor from members of the public… The Berlin Monthly was thus above all a forum in print that… was not conceived as fodder for an essentially passive constituency of cultural consumers. It aimed to provide the public with the means of reflecting upon itself and its foremost preoccupations.
In other words, the strength and integrity of the Prussian state came not from the King or the bureaucrats telling everyone how things worked, but from people engaging in an on-going conversation about their own society.
In the age of “emerging social media”, this sounds very familiar…
“Tom Yum Goong Disease”
’Pong’s photos of the urban decay in Bangkok are much better than mine.
Even better commentary on Microsoft/Yahoo! merger
My commentary on a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger was sarcastic, but Fake Steve Jobs has even better visual imagery. “The Borg-Yahoo merger won’t work. Here’s why. It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.” And “Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards.” Hat-tip to Mark Pesce.
So, who’s for Chairman Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit?
Chairman Rudd’s got a clever strategy going, unless it’s just a coincidence. The usually-secret Red Book warns of approaching “challenges” like climate change, an aging population and the economic growth of India and China. Then we announce the Australia 2020 Summit.
As any management consultant will tell you, develop a shared vision and folks will endure short-term pain — like interest rate rises and having to change the light bulbs.
Actually I’m not that cynical about it. I’m quietly enthused. After a decade of Howard’s backward-looking short-term thinking we seriously need to look to the future. Fast. Of course, back when Barry Jones was science minister we had a permanent organisation to keep watch, the Commission for the Future. Maybe I’ll read Lessons from the Australian Commission for the Future: 1986-1998 [PDF file] when I get the time. But I digress…
If Chairman Rudd wants 1000 of our “best and brightest” in Canberra on 19-20 April, who should they be?
It’s flattering that Nick Hodge and Peter Black nominated me, bless their sycophantic little hearts. And I’ve already gained four votes at Bloggerati. I’d love to be part of this Summit, sure, because I’d be Fighting the Hallucinating Goldfish hands on. However I have a few more modest suggestions…
Continue reading “So, who’s for Chairman Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit?”