Digital natives and their brave new world

Digital natives and their brave new world—Is the smartphone generation getting smarter, or just more superficial? (MercatorNet 1-10-12)

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, is a distinguished scholar of this technological and cultural revolution. In 2009 he published a best-seller called The Dumbest Generation, arguing in thoughtful detail what the constant use of the Internet was doing to the mind and character of people glued to their computers, cell phones, tablets, and a huge variety of additional electronic gadgets. The book was disturbing at best, pointing to the growth of narcissism, anti-intellectualism, and the loss of general literacy and good manners. Bauerlein has now collected a series of excerpts taken from books, magazines, and journals by 23 authors that “present a range of judgments about the Digital Age, and digital tools and behaviors that have enveloped our waking hours.” Variety abounds in The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, texting, and the Age of Social Networking (2011), but the quality level is inconsistent. Here is a review of some of the best of the selections.

Getting There Too Quickly--Aldous Huxley and Mescaline

Getting There Too Quickly—Aldous Huxley and Mescaline (The Revealer 1-2-12)

Between his 1932 vision of a sterile dystopia in Brave New World and the 1962 novel Island about a spiritual utopia, the author Aldous Huxley experienced two things; the Hindu religious philosophy known as Vedanta and psychedelic drugs. In Brave New World, people are addicted to Soma, a hallucinogenic that artificially simulates a kind of dull transcendent state, and so makes religion irrelevant. In Island, the Palanese (residents of Pala where the book takes place) ritually use the drug moksha for spiritual and mystical insights. It wasn't that by the time he was writing Island Huxley no longer believed that civilization was potentially doomed to a homogenized over-indulgent consumer culture, but rather that there was another possibility for human destiny. Soon after writing Brave New World Huxley saw this other opportunity but believed it would take work, a disciplined and rigorous adherence to a spiritual ideal. By the time he got around to writing Island he was convinced there was a faster, less strenuous way to find the higher purpose of human consciousness: mescaline.

Ready for Doomsday: Buying asteroid-proof bunkers, killing their pets and planni

Ready for Doomsday: Buying asteroid-proof bunkers, killing their pets and planning mass suicide, the families convinced this ancient calendar predicts the world will end in 2012 (UK Daily Mail 1-10-12)

Public concern is so high that NASA, the U.S. space agency, even has a section debunking the theories of impending doom on its website.

The agency says it has taken more than 5,000 questions from people, some asking if they should kill themselves, their families or their pets.

Animal Studies Cross Campus to Lecture Hall

Animal Studies Cross Campus to Lecture Hall (NY Times 1-2-12)

This spring, freshmen at Harvard can take “Human, Animals and Cyborgs.” Last year Dartmouth offered “Animals and Women in Western Literature: Nags, Bitches and Shrews.” New York University offers “Animals, People and Those in Between.”

The courses are part of the growing, but still undefined, field of animal studies. So far, according to Marc Bekoff, an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, the field includes “anything that has to do with the way humans and animals interact.” Art, literature, sociology, anthropology, film, theater, philosophy, religion—there are animals in all of them.

Remembering Michael Dummett

Remembering Michael Dummett (NY Times 1-4-12)

Sir Michael Dummett, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, died last week in Oxford, England. He held the position of Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University from 1979 until his retirement in 1992. Below is a gathering of reminiscences from fellow philosophers, including Hilary Putnam, Timothy Williamson, Dorothy Edgington, Daniel Isaacson, and several others who knew Dummett, worked with him or were influenced by his life and work. We invite readers to offer their own contributions in the comments section.
—Simon Critchley and Ernie Lepore

————————————————————————————————————————

Nice Nihilism--review of The Atheist’s Guide To Reality by Alex Rosenberg

Nice Nihilism (3ammagazine 12-21-11)

'This is a book for atheists'. Rosenberg makes this explicit in the preface. Atheism requires a whole view of the world based on science that is 'demanding, rigorous, breathtaking.' There's a feeling you get when reading Rosenberg that he's fed up with atheists who avoid facing up to the big persistent questions such as: 'what is the nature of reality, the purpose of the universe, and the meaning of life? Is there any rhyme or reason to the course of human history? Why am I here? Do I have a soul, and if so, how long will it last? What happens when we die? Do we have free will? Why should I be moral? What is love, and why is it usually inconvenient?' Rosenberg demands that atheists just stop arguing with theists, for one because 'contemporary religious belief is immune to rational objection' but also because it eats into the time atheists should be taking to work through the implications of their own worldview. Atheists need to spend more time getting to grips with what they should know about the reality we inhabit because science reveals it is 'stranger than even many atheists recognise.'

John Haldane: Philosopher Sir Michael Dummett's death is great loss to UK cul

John Haldane: Philosopher's death is great loss to UK culture (Scotsman 12-31-11)

Between Christmas and New Year, Britain lost its greatest living philosopher. Sir Michael Dummett was 86 and he died at the home in Oxford which he had shared with his wife Ann for the last half century. His death was neither untimely, troubled, nor lonely; he had been ailing for some while and his family was gathered around him.

It was neither tragic nor traumatic, yet in contemplating his passing I am troubled by the thought that it marks a great loss to British philosophy and to our higher culture more generally. Dummett was an outstanding example of a type once familiar among teachers, academics, librarians, and writers, but which is increasingly rare: the highly educated, culturally rounded, morally serious, socially aware and publicly spirited intellectual.

The decline in prominence of such figures, even within their own professions, is due to several factors which suggest that it may mark an irreversible trend, but before explaining that, let me indicate just how exceptional Dummett was and why he led British philosophy for decades.

Scientists List 2011's Most Fascinating Discoveries

Scientists List 2011's Most Fascinating Discoveries (Live Science 12-28-11)

Sometimes the science news that grabs headlines isn't the same news that piques the interest of working scientists. As part of our year-end round-up, LiveScience asked researchers to tell us what they considered the most interesting science stories of 2011 and why. Here's what they wrote back

Archaeologists uncover Native Americans' sprawling metropolis under St Louis

The lost city of Cahokia: Archaeologists uncover Native Americans' sprawling metropolis under St Louis (UK Daily Mail 1-4-12)

Mr Lawler wrote: 'A millennium ago, this strategic spot along the Mississippi River was an affluent neighbourhood of Native Americans, set amid the largest concentration of people and monumental architecture north of what is now Mexico.

'Back then, hundreds of well-thatched rectangular houses, carefully aligned along the cardinal directions, stood here, overshadowed by dozens of enormous earthen mounds flanked by large ceremonial plazas.

'Cahokia proper was the only pre-Columbian city north of the Rio Grande, and it was large even by European and Mesoamerican standards of the day, drawing immigrants from hundreds of kilometres around to live, work, and participate in mass ceremonies.'

Patients at risk after scientists withhold test results from clinical trials of

Patients at risk after scientists withhold test results from clinical trials of new medicines (UK Daily Mail 1-4-12)

Missing data from clinical trials could endanger patients, health experts have warned.

The British Medical Journal has raised concern that some test results go unreported and are deliberately hidden, enabling pharmaceutical firms to make unfounded claims.