Quotes
I am reading a book of essays written by Wendell Berry titled “What Are People For?” and read the following this morning that I think is poignant on this day, the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States.
Terry Cowan, Predestinated America:
Greed has ever been with us, in all places and all times; but this hunger for money had always been called for what it was: avarice. Calvinism, combined with Luther’s concept of a calling in life, ennobled this vice into a virtue
Link added.
A normal life has room for contradiction.
You can care about nutrition and eat cake at a birthday party. You can care about sleep and stay up late sometimes. You can care about politics and have friends who don’t share your every worldview. You can care about your work and still close your laptop when your kid wants you to play Uno. You can be spiritually curious and still be skeptical of people selling enlightenment subscriptions. You can be disciplined and still be fun. You can be principled and still be kind.
This shouldn’t sound radical. None of it should sound radical. It only does because our culture has become so stupidly binary.
Om Malik has written a very compelling post about what he calls the Internet of AI. Part of the post is an explanation about what AI actual means from an overall technology perspective. Here is a valuable summary:
The right historical analogy for what is happening with AI is not Web 2.0 or the cloud. It is the railroads of the nineteenth century. Railroad operators understood the freight cars were not where value lived. The value was in owning the rails and everything around them, including the land. Owning the rails meant controlling routes, latency, geography, redundancy, and the cost structure of every customer who depended on the network.
Dave Rogers: “The tech-bros are building slaves.” I had not thought of AI this way, but it makes some sense.
Contrasting Between What Is And What Intended
Tomorrow is the start of the Christian Holy Week. For those wondering whether Christianity is relevant to our current time, the stories about this week ought to provide the answer, but one may only see that with the help of leaders who connect the dots.
For me one of the best descriptions that sets the scene was written by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their 2006 book The Last Week. It begins:
“Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. . . One a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers. On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire.”
While this is not a report on what literally happened, it’s plausible contrasts the differences between what we all consider the norm of civilization, peace through violence, and the alternative rule of God of peace through love.
Palm Sunday is about hope, yes, but that is only appreciated in contrast to what is going all around us. If you get caught up in the hoopla then you are missing the point.
Read an interesting article regarding what one may consider a “common sense” reaction to screen time and an ability to focus and learn:
Consider a simple observation. The same person who cannot get through a novel can watch a three-hour video essay on the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The same teenager who supposedly lacks attention span can maintain game focus for hours while parsing a complex narrative across multiple storylines, coordinating with teammates, adapting strategy in real time. That’s not inferior cognition. It’s different cognition. And the difference isn’t the screen. It’s the environment.
The author later writes:
I used to believe, as I was taught, that literacy was primarily about decoding text. But watching how people actually learn and think has convinced me that literacy is about something deeper: the capacity to construct and navigate environments where understanding becomes possible.
The United States still matters to people in China as a point of reference. But these days, the reference is commonly negative, at least with regard to food prices, medical bills, guns, drugs, and urban safety. America’s cultural exports now compete with many others, including China’s. And U.S. industry no longer dominates many sectors—not technology, where China is a major contender, and certainly not green energy, where China is particularly strong. The “kill line” discourse captures the growing skepticism that America is inherently a better place to live.
What Trump’s America Looks Like From China, The Atlantic
Reading this article caused me to recall the “Can You Say Why America is the Greatest Country in the World?” from The Newsroom.
I think Om Malik correctly describes what passes for leadership in Corporate America. It’s seems the MBA playbook is nothing more than pander to the market that always emotionally reacts to job cuts in a positive manner, but that is nothing more than a temporary sugar high that makes the day traders rich and happy.
Corporate will use AI as an excuse well before AI is real as they use any excuse to make more money, just like the do with inflation. The extent of the AI disruption, which I do not doubt is real, is driven by the opportunitests who use it as an excuse.
Sadly, this is the new template. Cut half the company. Blame the machines. Watch the stock pop. Move on. And if you are one of the people who just lost their job, well, you are supposed to believe that the future does what the future wants. That is narrative substitution.