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Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan

G. K. Chesterton Early life[edit] G.K. Chesterton at the age of 17. Born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London, Chesterton was baptized at the age of one month into the Church of England,[8] though his family themselves were irregularly practising Unitarians.[9] According to his autobiography, as a young man Chesterton became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards. Family life[edit] Chesterton married Frances Blogg in 1901; the marriage lasted the rest of his life. Career[edit] Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw,[13] H. Visual wit[edit] Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand, and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. Radio[edit] In 1931, the BBC invited Chesterton to give a series of radio talks. The talks were very popular. Death and veneration[edit] Writing[edit] Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic (July/August 2008) - "Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. I can feel it, too. I think I know what’s going on. For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. I’m not the only one. Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings.

Joseph Campbell Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: "Follow your bliss."[1] Life[edit] Background[edit] Joseph Campbell was born and raised in White Plains, New York[2] in an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family. While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. Europe[edit] While in Europe, he was highly influenced by the period of the Lost Generation, a time of enormous intellectual and artistic innovation. It was in this climate that Campbell was also introduced to the work of Thomas Mann, who was to prove equally influential upon his life and ideas. Great Depression[edit] Another dissident member of Freud's circle to influence Campbell was Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1939). Death[edit]

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. He was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. Shaw was noted for expressing his views in uncompromising language, whether on vegetarianism (branding his own pre-vegetarian self a "cannibal"), the development of the human race (his own brand of eugenics was driven by encouragement of miscegenation and marrying across class lines), or on political questions (in spite of his own generally liberal views he was not an uncritical supporter of democracy, and is even recorded as supporting, or at least condoning, the dictators of the 1930s). Life[edit] Education[edit]

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the R Carroll Quigley Carroll Quigley (/ˈkwɪɡli/; November 9, 1910 – January 3, 1977) was an American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations. He is noted for his teaching work as a professor at Georgetown University, for his academic publications, and for his research on secret societies.[1][2] Life and career[edit] Quigley was born in Boston, and attended Harvard University, where he studied history and earned B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. From 1941 until 1972, he taught a two-semester course at Georgetown on the development of civilizations. In addition to his academic work, Quigley served as a consultant to the U.S. Quigley retired from Georgetown in June 1976 and died the following year.[1] Major conclusions[edit] Inclusive diversity[edit] Quigley asserts that any intolerance or rigidity in the religious practices of the West are aberrations from its nature of inclusivity and diversity. Institutionalization and the fall of civilizations[edit] Weapons and democracy[edit] Style[edit]

Lewis Mumford Lewis Mumford, KBE (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford. Life[edit] Mumford was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1912.[2] He studied at the City College of New York and The New School for Social Research, but became ill with tuberculosis and never finished his degree. Mumford's earliest books in the field of literary criticism have had a lasting impact on contemporary American literary criticism. In his early writings on urban life, Mumford was optimistic about human abilities and wrote that the human race would use electricity and mass communication to build a better world for all humankind.

Antony C. Sutton Antony Cyril Sutton (February 14, 1925 – June 17, 2002) was a British and American economist, historian, and writer. Biography[edit] Sutton studied at the universities of London, Göttingen, and California, and received his D.Sc. from the University of Southampton. He was an economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution from 1968 to 1973. During his time at the Hoover Institution, he wrote the major study Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (in three volumes), arguing that the West played a major role in developing the Soviet Union from its very beginnings up until the present time (1970). In 1973, Sutton published a popularized, condensed version of the three volumes called National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union and was thereby[citation needed] forced out of the Hoover Institution. In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology ...

Joseph Weizenbaum Joseph Weizenbaum (8 January 1923 – 5 March 2008) was a German and American computer scientist and a professor emeritus at MIT. The Weizenbaum Award is named after him. Life and career[edit] Born in Berlin, Germany to Jewish parents, he escaped Nazi Germany in January 1936, emigrating with his family to the United States. Around 1952, as a research assistant at Wayne, Weizenbaum worked on analog computers and helped create a digital computer. His influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while Artificial Intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. Weizenbaum was the creator of the SLIP programming language. In 1996, Weizenbaum moved to Berlin and lived in the vicinity of his childhood neighborhood.[5][2] Weizenbaum was reportedly buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin.

William Faulkner Biography[edit] Faulkner was born William Cuthbert Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons of Murry Cuthbert Falkner (August 17, 1870 – August 7, 1932) and Maud Butler (November 27, 1871 – October 19, 1960).[3] He had three younger brothers: Murry Charles "Jack" Falkner (June 26, 1899 – December 24, 1975), author John Falkner (September 24, 1901 – March 28, 1963) and Dean Swift Falkner (August 15, 1907 – November 10, 1935). Faulkner was born and raised in the state of Mississippi, which had a great influence on him, as did the history and culture of the American South altogether. Soon after Faulkner's first birthday, his family moved to Ripley, Mississippi from New Albany. Here, his father Murry worked as the treasurer for the family's Gulf & Chicago Railroad Company, a business he had been drawn to from an early age. As a schoolchild, Faulkner had much success early on. Faulkner also spent much of his boyhood listening to stories told to him by his elders.

Computer Power and Human Reason - Wikipedia, the free encycloped Joseph Weizenbaum's influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976; ISBN 0-7167-0463-3) displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while artificial intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Comments printed on the back cover illustrate how the Weizenbaum's commentary and insights were received by the intelligentsia of the time: "Dare I say it? — Keith Oakley, Psychology Today "A thoughtful blend of insight, experience, anecdote, and passion that will stand for a long time as the definitive integration of technological and human thought." — American Mathematical Monthly — Theodore Roszak, The Nation. See also[edit] External links[edit]

Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949 (and also after his brother, Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist). He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice of education. In particular, he is widely recognized as having been the architect of the Prussian education system which was used as a model for education systems in countries such as the United States and Japan. Humboldt was born in Potsdam, Margraviate of Brandenburg, and died in Tegel, Province of Brandenburg. His younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, was equally famous, as a geographer and explorer. Philosopher[edit] Minister of Education[edit] Humboldt's concept of education does not lend itself solely to individualistic interpretation. Diplomat[edit]

Extract from "Computer Power and Human Reason" That last posting jogged my memory and I dug out the following text that has been lying around forgotten in my filesystem for almost ten years. The following extract is taken from a chapter by Joesph Weizenbaum that originally appeared in his book "Computer Power and Human Reason". I came across it in a book that I am currently reading: Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices edited by Charles Dunlop and Rob Kling, published by Academic Press, Inc. Weizenbaum's chapter is entitled "Against the Imperialism of Instrumental Reason" in the section on Ethical Perspectives and Professional Responsibilities. I would recommend the book to every computer scientist. In particular, the following extract struck a few chords with me. It happens that programming is a relatively easy craft to learn. Unfortunately, many universities have "computer science" programs at the undergraduate level that permit and even encourage students to take this course.

Julius Evola Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites, spiritual oblivion and organised deviancy. To counter this and call in a primordial rebirth, Evola presented his world of Tradition. The core trilogy of Evola's works are generally regarded as Revolt Against the Modern World, Men Among the Ruins and Ride the Tiger. According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century He was never a member of the Italian National Fascist Party (and thus rejected for not being a member[2]), or the Italian Social Republic, and was furthermore engaged in constant criticism of fascism and declaring he was an anti-fascist.[2] Evola regarded his position as that of a sympathetic right-wing intellectual, saw potential in the movement and wished to reform its errors, to a position in line with his own views.

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