The Free Thinker

"The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers" (Nation):

Communities across America are suffering through a crisis that could leave a dramatically diminished version of democracy in its wake. It is not the economic meltdown, although the crisis is related to the broader day of reckoning that appears to have arrived. The crisis of which we speak involves more than mere economics. Journalism is collapsing, and with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the United States.

After years of neglecting signs of trouble, elite opinion-makers have begun in recent months to recognize that things have gone horribly awry. Journals ranging from Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New Republic to the New York Times and theLos Angeles Times concur on the diagnosis: newspapers, as we have known them, are disintegrating and are possibly on the verge of extinction. Time's Walter Isaacson describes the situation as having "reached meltdown proportions" and concludes, "It is now possible to contemplate a time in the near future when major towns will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters." A newspaper industry that still employs roughly 50,000 journalists--the vast majority of the remaining practitioners of the craft--is teetering on the brink.

Blame has been laid first and foremost on the Internet, for luring away advertisers and readers, and on the economic meltdown, which has demolished revenues and hammered debt-laden media firms. But for all the ink spilled addressing the dire circumstance of the ink-stained wretch, the understanding of what we can do about the crisis has been woefully inadequate. Unless we rethink alternatives and reforms, the media will continue to flail until journalism is all but extinguished.

Let's begin with the crisis. In a nutshell, media corporations, after running journalism into the ground, have determined that news gathering and reporting are not profit-making propositions. So they're jumping ship. The country's great regional dailies--the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, theMinneapolis Star Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer--are in bankruptcy. Denver's Rocky Mountain News recently closed down, ending daily newspaper competition in that city. The owners of the San Francisco Chronicle, reportedly losing $1 million a week, are threatening to shutter the paper, leaving a major city without a major daily newspaper. Big dailies in Seattle (the Times), Chicago (the Sun-Times) and Newark (the Star-Ledger) are reportedly near the point of folding, and smaller dailies like the Baltimore Examiner have already closed. The 101-year-old Christian Science Monitor, in recent years an essential source of international news and analysis, is folding its daily print edition. The Seattle Post-Intelligenceris scuttling its print edition and downsizing from a news staff of 165 to about twenty for its online-only incarnation. Whole newspaper chains--such as Lee Enterprises, the owner of large and medium-size publications that for decades have defined debates in Montana, Iowa and Wisconsin--are struggling as the value of stock shares falls below the price of a single daily paper. And the New York Times needed an emergency injection of hundreds of millions of dollars by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim in order to stay afloat.

Those are the headlines. Arguably uglier is the death-by-small-cuts of newspapers that are still functioning. Layoffs of reporters and closings of bureaus mean that even if newspapers survive, they have precious few resources for actually doing journalism. Job cuts during the first months of this year--300 at the Los Angeles Times, 205 at the Miami Herald, 156 at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 150 at theKansas City Star, 128 at the Sacramento Bee, 100 at the Providence Journal, 100 at the Hartford Courant, ninety at the San Diego Union-Tribune, thirty at the Wall Street Journal and on and on--suggest that this year will see far more positions eliminated than in 2008, when almost 16,000 were lost. Even Doonesbury's Rick Redfern has been laid off from his job at the Washington Post.

The toll is daunting. As former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Post associate editor Robert Kaiser have observed, "A great news organization is difficult to build and tragically easy to disassemble." 

While I think Kaiser is partly right, I've long though that the newspaper makes no sense in an internet age.  Most of the services embodied in a daily paper can be provided better on the internet.  There may still be a role for a daily paper, but it should leave content-creation to the internet, and limit its role to bundling web content and putting it on a page side by side with advertising for people who are caught waiting somewhere, such as a restaurant or a bus stop.

The timing is appropriate.  A few years ago the MSM had a certain advantage in "objectivity," a philosophically problematic term, but not meaningless in practice, vis-a-vis the blogosphere.  But in 2008 the pro-Obama spin of the MSM was so crude and obvious-- and so unwarranted by the relative merits of the candidates-- that this advantage was lost for good, making the MSM just a less pithy, smart, diverse, and representative-of-the-population version of the blogosphere.  

I think we're moving to a civil-society, as opposed to professional, model of journalism, and that this is better in the long run, but the transition may be rocky, as substitutes for the branding and gatekeeper functions of the MSM will take time to evolve.  Problems with this transition may account for the unprecedented ineptitude of American public opinion in the past 3-4 years, and of American voters in 2008.  One thing I don't understand very well is where, if anywhere, the reporting function finds a home now.  Or do we need it?

The Lights Go Out All Over Russia

"The International Red Cross is Barred from South Ossetia" (Moscow Times, 8/19/2008)

The International Red Cross said Monday that it was seeking urgent clarification from Russia after its president was unable to enter the breakaway province of South Ossetia on a humanitarian mission.

Russian troops control access to South Ossetia, where fighting there has left thousands homeless and many dead and injured.

The Red Cross "has not been able to get access to South Ossetia," Dominik Stillhart, the International Committee of the Red Cross's deputy director of operations, said by telephone interview from Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia. "Access to South Ossetia is a priority. We have lined up teams, logistics and assistance. ... We need to have discussions in Moscow to find out exactly what is the problem."

The Russians may also not want more international agencies to expose their lies.  Already, though, the word is out that the Russians charges of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" were lies.

"Paper Reprimanded Over Georgia" (Moscow Times, 8/19/2008):

Novaya Gazeta's St. Petersburg edition has been accused by the federal media watchdog of inciting hatred toward Georgians and faces possible closure if the violation is repeated.

The newspaper's editor denied any wrongdoing, saying the outspoken opposition paper was under attack for its critical coverage of St. Petersburg authorities.

The local branch of the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service said Monday that the newspaper had violated media and extremism laws by quoting an ultranationalist group's appeal to isolate Georgians living in Russia.

"In the publication, there are blatant calls directed at inciting ethnic hatred toward Georgian nationals and at violating the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of an individual and a citizen depending on his national identity," the agency said in a statement.

I doubt this is the real reason for the threat to close Novaya Gazeta.  Here's the front page story at Novaya Gazeta from 14 August:

«Это была не спонтанная, а спланированная война»

Сегодня мне совершенно очевидно, что российское вторжение в Грузию было заранее спланировано, причем окончательное политическое решение завершить подготовку и начать войну в августе было, похоже, принято еще в апреле.

"This was not a spontaneous, but a planned war"

Today it's completely obvious, that the Russian invasion of Georgia was planned in advance, moreover the final political decision to complete preparations and begin a war in August was, likewise, made in April.

I thought it was nervy of Novaya Gazeta to publish a story like that.  Not surprising the paper is being harassed now.  How can the Putin regime, telling lies to wage wars, tolerate a newspaper that tells the truth?  I wonder how long the Moscow Times will last.

It's interesting, though, that there are still some papers in Russia that are fairly honest and independent.  Those with large circulations are brought under control, but a few small-circulation papers-- and the Moscow Times, being in English and circulated mainly in the capital to foreigners-- are tolerated, so far.  Propaganda for the masses; a tenuous openness for a small intelligentsia.

Espionage Practice You Can Try at Home

Identify the nationality of blog commenters by careful textual exegesis.  Careful: they may be using fake names!

From the comments at a Daily Telegraph story ("Keep the Bear in its Cage"):

I feel compelled to comment on the lack of balance in the reporting of the recent conflict in Georgia. It has been suggested that Russia is returning to Cold War behaviour and that its military action in South Ossetia is similar to that undertaken previously in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. I would suggest that the West's ill considered reaction is more typical of Cold War era belligerence.
 
It will be recalled that during the 1990s, the West enthusiastically supported the secession of the constituent republics of Yugoslavia, then a sovereign state and recognised as such in international law. However well intentioned, this policy undoubtedly contributed to the appalling violence that followed. Furthermore, in 1999, NATO undertook military action against what was left of Yugoslavia in defence of Kosovan national aspirations, despite the fact that Serbia & Montenegro had not threatened any other sovereign state and notwithstanding that Kosovo had been part of Serbia for centuries. This was followed earlier this year by the immediate and overwhelming recognition of Kosovo's declaration of independence.

South Ossetia has voted twice for independence from Georgia and desires unity with (Russian) North Ossetia. The Ossetians have as much right to their independence and national identity as the people of Kosovo and to protection against Georgian aggression.

Russia's response to the situation in South Ossetia is no different to that which NATO undertook against Serbia & Montenegro in relation to Kosovo. To demonise Moscow's reaction as old style Russian/Soviet imperialism is hypocritical and dishonest. The Kremlin would have considerable justification in considering that the West is guilty of double standards if we fail to respect South Ossetian national aspirations and oppose Russian support of these.

We (the United Kingdom that is)may have had our differences with Russia in the 19th Century and with the Soviet Union in the 20th. Nevertheless, on the three occasions in the last two hundred years when we have faced a real threat to our national survival; from Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler, Russia has been in the same situation and turned out to be a staunch ally. A more constructive approach from the West could have the same outcome.
                                        
Posted by Simon Williams on August 14, 2008 6:31 PM

I doubt that "Simon Williams" is really a Briton.  Some Russians are smart-unscrupulous enough to pose as Westerners on Western web pages (and sadly few are smart-generous enough to understand the West's real motives).  Note the deliberate "We (the United Kingdom that is)..."  Sure, "Simon," whatever you say.  (The Kosovo/Georgia analogy many other reasons, among other things, because NATO did not insist on the removal of Milosevic after the war in Kosovo: we just pushed the Serbs out of Kosovo, and the Serbs took him down themselves.)

This also doesn't sound like a Briton talking:

Stuck in the sixties. We believe in Liberty and Freedom, but not for Russia, it must be in a cage.As for kicking Russia out of G8 or trade associations, well Britain and America should be kicked out then.Whenever we invade or bomb foreign countries,that's good according to the Telegraph. When others do it it's terrible. This is the hypocrisy and stupidity of the Telegraph.Try seeing things from someone else's view, otherwise you'll always be a small minded, pitiful,bigot.

But the "cage" is Russia's borders, which Russia's troops can stay inside of thank you very much.  In that sense, the Western democracies are happy to be "caged."  The "liberty and freedom" the West enjoys does not consist in the liberty and freedom to invade small countries, but civil liberties and free elections.  In that sense, it is Putin, not the West, that is keeping Russia in a cage.

The commenter's misreading of the Telegraph headline is ingenious.  I don't think a Briton would be smart enough to invent this particular sophism.  Russians, meanwhile, hear stuff like this all the time from their state-run media.

But hey, I could be wrong.

Conferences and Stag Hunting

Just finished a very busy week.  I went to two conferences: (a) Airships to the Arctic IV, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and (b) the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.  Both very interesting.  I think face time is an important factor in intellectual exchange.  In theory, the lightning-fast communication of the internet could make not only conferences, but also universities obsolete.  Why assemble people in one place, at considerable cost, in order to advance knowledge, when there are not only journals and newspapers, but e-mail, blogs, chatrooms, and for that matter audio- and videoconferences that can connect people from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world.  Partly, it solves a coordination problem.  One of the things I learned about in Tampa is the "stag hunt" game, in which two players can either hunt hares (which can be caught, it is assumed, by one person) or hunt a stag (which takes two hunters to bring it down, but has far more meat).  This differs from the prisoner's dilemma game in that if one player plays stag hunt, the other player's best response is to play stag hunt as well.  But if either player plays hare hunt, the other player's best response is to play hare hunt.  So the stag hunt outcome is an equilibrium with high rewards, but unstable (each player will deviate if he thinks the other will deviate), while the low-reward equilibrium, in which both players hunt hares, is stable.  Some kind of coordination is needed to sustain the stag hunt.  A conference helps to achieve the cooperative solution to the stag hunt game: the same conversations could, perhaps, be carried out almost real-time in the comments of blogs, but in a blog comment you risk putting a lot of thought into an especially thoughtful comment, only to see it lost amidst banal or prosy contributions, or getting no feedback at all.  At a conference, people are stuck there.  Yet I think there's more to it than that.  Meeting a person who cares about something advertises its importance to your brain, and moves the mysterious wellsprings of your thoughts.  It makes it easier to pay attention to the topic.  It stimulates in the mind the tenacity to follow a difficult line of inquiry through to a conclusion.  Certainly the internet can do that as well-- my interest in philosophy of mind has certainly been stimulated by discussions that took place here-- but I think face time reinforces the effect, enlisting our animal sympathies for other people to stimulate our intellectual sympathies with other minds.  On the other hand, in the worldly order of things, conferences still serve to broker position and power in a way that blog comments do not yet do.  That will presumably change as continued technological and social innovations make the internet a more efficient medium for the exchange of ideas, and as rising generations grow more and more accustomed to the web as a way of life.  Face time may matter less in the future.  The next generation of scholars may find it absurdly primitive to hold serious intellectual exchanges in conference settings, where time has to be rationed on an arbitrary basis by a moderator, where the impossibility of citation by linking puts the well-informed on the same basis as those making things up and/or relying on rumors and distorted recall, and where the proceedings leave no written record and are in that sense highly non-transparent and insulated from critiques from the outside.

Malpractice in Fiction: That Hideous Strength

While re-reading That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, the word malpractice occurred to me.  Some word stronger than "flawed" is needed to describe what is wrong with this book.  Malpractice has the right connotations.  It suggests not a mere lack of skill, but a willful abuse of skill.  By its reference to professions such as medicine, it suggests that fiction is something more important than a form of amusement for one's leisure time: it is at once a sort of research, and a treatment applied to the soul and the will.  Narrative illustrates the virtues, but it can also be a vehicle of general philosophical thought.  Indeed, this can greatly enhance fiction, for two reasons: (a) the dialog genre in philosophy is especially interesting when the interlocutors are characters whom the reader has been induced to care about in a broader story, and (b) the characters' lives and actions can serve to illustrate how a person behaves who believes what they do.  The author may try to convince us of the falseness of a philosophy by showing how his beliefs makes a character's life empty, or his behavior foolish or wicked.  This is a valid method, I think, because our actions are certainly affected by our beliefs, and I think there is a truth in our inarticulate senses of meaning in life and of right and wrong that a worldview without room for these must be mistaken.  It is a dangerous method, however, because it allows for a type of ad hominem attack.  Look what characters who believe X do!  Belief X is bad!

In That Hideous Strength, there is a confrontation between two sides.  The bad guys represent C.S. Lewis's philosphical bugbears: a combination of materialism with a sort of postmodern blend of occultism, sociology, and a Nietzschean rejection of ethics; they conduct themselves like gangsters and are conspiring to seize total power in England. Experience shows that atheists in materialist countries don't really behave this way.  What do the good guys represent?  Christianity, but also a sort of paganism, for in this book, "the gods" of Greek mythology really inhabit the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc., and bear their names (though also other names).  In War and Peace, Tolstoy uses his narrative to launch into a philosophy of history which is interesting but probably has little truth.  At least, though, Tolstoy seems genuinely to have believed what he was writing.  D.H. Lawrence, too, fills his novels with a philosophy of life that is probably thoroughly false (I haven't read him in a while; perhaps there was something in it) but was at least sincere.  But C.S. Lewis knew that the theological cosmology of That Hideous Strength was quite false.  Fiction, like examples in economics and philosophy, uses false suppositions-- imaginary characters and situations-- to illustrate true principles.  What are we to make of a novel in which the false suppositions grow into entire philosophies of the universe?  How are we to distinguish the true principles we are supposed to take away from the falsehoods that are being written?

C.S. Lewis should have known better than to present a book like That Hideous Strength to the public.  Yet the book also has great merits.  Nowhere is C.S. Lewis's unique brand of moral-psychological character insight better honed than in certain passages of That Hideous Strength.  There are some good philosophical passages (sadly embedded in a false framework), and some wonderful passages of prose-poetry.  The book treats the theme of marriage thoroughly and well.  I wonder how much of the book could be profitably excerpted.  To read it is a bit like sifting through a garbage bin for diamonds that someone has dumped there.  At the same time, the book is a decent suspense thriller: once I start listening, it's difficult to stop until the end.

UPDATE: The "sifting through garbage" metaphor is too harsh, sorry.  I should say that page by page, That Hideous Strength is often sublime, often funny, often wise, almost always interesting.  But the whole is not merely less than the sum of its parts, but distorts them into an overall worldview that the reader is compelled to reject.

Book Review: Death in Holy Orders

I recently listened to Death in Holy Orders, by P.D. James. The first murder-mystery I've read in a long time. Setting is a powerful element in this book: the plotline takes place in a remote (Anglican) theological college on cliffs above the sea (in England). Murder mysteries are interesting for a guy who likes epistemology as much as me. All about putting together clues. Everything takes on a new light as new facts are revealed.

P.D. James draws on the mystique of holiness.  But one feels that Christianity is something decaying. It is very different from C.S. Lewis or Dostoyevsky, which lead through darkness and wickedness towards a glorious Christian epiphany.

Book Review: Perelandra

On my shelf is a book called The Modern Mind, by one Peter Watson.  At the top of the cover is this blurb: "It is astounding, a one-man encyclopedia, a history of every idea in the twentieth century."

Yet I looked in the index, and found that C.S. Lewis is never mentioned. What a travesty! When I grew up C.S. Lewis was the Christian intellectual, steeped in philological erudition that gave him access to centuries of Christian intellectual heritage, for which he served as a bridge for modern Christians who have forgotten Latin and Greek, defending the faith with perpetual clarity and commonsense, believing in a thoroughly orthodox Christianity without being credulous or narrow-minded, and by-the-by educating readers in all sorts of historical and philosophical arcana, which he rendered relevant.  And all my life I've regularly encountered Christians who regarded C.S. Lewis with the same gratitude and almost awe.

It seems uncharitable to blame Peter Watson too harshly for the omission. One ought to feel grateful to anyone who attempts a project as ambitious as writing a comprehensive intellectual history of the 20th century. Still less can one blame the author of the blurb, even though it implies that, as C.S. Lewis was not included in Watson's book, he must not have had any [important, original, interesting, influential] ideas. It is the nature of blurb-writing to have a eulogistic tone-- one is trying to sell books, after all-- and to notice this error and withhold favorable comment because of it would, of course, be too much to ask of him.

Yet nonetheless it seems an unhealthy sign that a 772-page intellectual history of the 20th century could omit-- and its claims to comprehensiveness be accepted nonetheless-- this formidable essayist, novelist, and Christian apologist. It would be a fine thing, I believe, if college students majoring in philosophy or literature were compelled to study him. Not compelled to agree with him, of course. But to study him, as a leading spokesman for an important body of opinion. It would be excellent if, for example, philosophers who wanted to take a materialist/physicalist position regularly felt the need to answer the question: "But how do you refute the arguments of C.S. Lewis?"

Some Christians might think: "philosophy-- all right; but why literature?" I stopped by a bookstore this afternoon to buy a copy of Perelandra, which I had listened to as an audiobook, in order to write this post. First I looked in the "Literature" section. It wasn't there. I started wandering around the bookstore to see if there was anything else of interest, and then I saw the "Science Fiction" section. That hadn't even occurred to me, but... yes, it was possible... and sure enough, there it was. Perhaps C.S. Lewis would not have minded, but to me it seemed inappropriate and slightly demeaning that Lewis was not in the literature section. It had this picture on the cover:

Again, I ought not to be too harsh with the artist. Certainly, part of the appeal of the book is the richly imagined world that C.S. Lewis depicts on the planet Venus (writing in the 1940s before much was scientifically known). And at any rate, that is the feature of the book most easily conveyed in art. But as if dragons were the most important thing! In all the literature that I have read, at any rate, no novel ascends higher than Perelandra; no novel conveys the diabolical so cogently; but most importantly, none so exalts the spirit, nor so dispels earthly troubles with the light of supernatural hope.

But what I want to say about Perelandra must be connected with an essential, distinguishing feature that pervades C.S. Lewis's work, and which he himself viewed, not only as important to his writing, but as the key to... how should one put it? To life, certainly, or at any rate to what makes life worth living. And more than that: "to the whole theory of the universe," one may say, but the phrase carries the unfortunate false grandiosity associated with physics. This is "Joy" as he defines it in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Here is his description of his first experiences of Joy:

Book Review: Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons

It's high time some high-powered writer tried to capture in literary form that fascinating product of cultural evolution, college. High school has long been stylized, and high school flicks are a genre, like Westerns: thus we have James Dean, Grease, the type of the jock and the nerd, the glamor surrounding Prom. College deserves the same treatment.

For one thing, while American high schools are nothing specially, educationally speaking, the US university system is widely considered the finest in the world, one of the secrets of America's ongoing global economic leadership. Third-world leaders who are ambitious for their countries might well want to read a novel about US college life by a leading writer, in hopes of understanding how the US produces its sterling supply of "human capital," and replicating it.

Though I'm afraid Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons wouldn't be a particularly useful source for that kind of reader.

Wolfe turns an eye that is, at its kindest, satirical, towards college social life, particularly the more debauched and corrupt aspects of it that are the enemy within of American universities' academic excellence. Although, on the other hand, the social life gives college a certain glamor that may cause college students-- not all, but a plurality-- to get more wrapped up in it, and take all its aspects, including academics, more seriously.

Wolfe gets the details right to a remarkable degree that makes me envy future historians. If only there had been such a tireless, penetrating chronicler in, say, 5th-century Athens, or traveling with the army of Alexander the Great! Wolfe's prose is alive, it punches its way into your brain and projects the scenes onto your imagination like a video projector. There is a sense in which fiction can be truer than any journalistic-- "true" in a more literal sense-- account could be. This is because a journalistic account has to limit itself to reporting the verifiable facts: places and dates, words spoken in interviews, etc. Which are inevitably incomplete. A novelist can fill in the whole picture, can make you feel what it's like in the eyes of participants. Many a time I found myself saying, Yeah, that's what college was like, despite, or perhaps because of, the somewhat cartoonish exaggeration of the characters. I don't think that is a weakness of the book. It is a strength of the book that comes with a cost. It comes with a cost because you eventually get tired of the characters and to some extent stop believing in them. But it is a strength because, at his best, Wolfe conveys certain types that no one ever fits perfectly but that some aspire to and others are labeled as, which have some truth in them, and which become part of the way people make sense of one another. The star athlete. The cool frat boy. The nerd, with his simultaneous inferiority/superiority complex. The innocent freshman girl. And so on. (Writing teachers err in their implacable condemnation of the cliche.)

Sex, sex, sex. Wolfe is obsessed with how sexualized he takes college life to be. On the one hand, I think it's mostly a bad thing that literature has become more sexually explicit than in the past. On the other hand, Wolfe doesn't exactly glamorize it. One thread in the plotline is the reader's suspense about the fate of Charlotte Simmons' virginity amidst the extravagant sexual corruption of (the fictional) DuPont University. I can't remember ever reading a book where the reader is made to hope so desperately that the maiden's virginity remain inviolate! If one tries to draw an overall message from the book, if one tries to extrapolate what it all means and what we should do about it, it seems to boil down to something like this: College is an abomination! It takes children from the loving embrace of their families and plunges them into a cesspool of vice! It is a vicious racket to despoil the innocence of maidens! Tread down the loathsome thing! But that can't be what Wolfe was trying to say, was it?

The book has its weaknesses. For example, at a party, Wolfe has a junior girl say: "I'm a junior, and I don't have a boyfriend. And all these freshman girls are running around, saying 'F*** me!'" Now, the sentiment is no doubt real enough. But who is this junior girl talking to? If she's talking to a stranger or a new acquaintance, she wouldn't be so explicit about the sexual competition with underclassmen. She might be, with close friends, but in that case she wouldn't need to preface it with "I'm a junior, and I don't have a boyfriend." Wolfe wants us to know something, and he uses an overheard conversation to send us the message while adding throbbing detail to his party scene. But the fragment of conversation is unrealistic. Perhaps a more serious flaw is a sort of "telepathy" among the characters, where people who don't know each other keep talking about the same things.

Another problem is that the character really has no one the reader can admire. We certainly sympathize-- not quite admire-- Charlotte Simmons at the beginning, though not so much at the end. The character I ultimately like the best is probably the basketball star, Jo-Jo Johansen, the only character who clearly improves in the course of the novel.

Wolfe does a bit of an injustice to the American university system. In the best schools-- and the fictional DuPont is supposed to be up there with Princeton, Yale, Stanford etc.-- students are much more serious-minded and interested in academics than Wolfe would have us believe. I worked like a dog in college (with the exception of a couple of semesters). So I hope this isn't the last serious literary opus that tries to be the War and Peace of American college life. But I'm grateful to Wolfe for writing it.

"Club" Media, or Free Media?

Arnold Kling makes the case for "online content bundling," suggesting that people would be willing to pay for "a club [that] would provide content aggregation, recommendation, and annotation services."  But why should readers pay for access to a club when so much great content is available for free?  And it's not just that: the paid content is actually worth less by virtue of its being paid, as I argued in "The News-and-Views Industry of the 21st Century":

What's peculiar about the economics of news-and-views is that, by raising the price, the [New York] Times will not merely reduce demand for their product, they'll reduce its value, because the significance of an op-ed does not come only from the author, but from the audience as well. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech would have been much less interesting if it had been given at some obscure academic conference, rather than on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands. Likewise, [NYT op-ed columnists] John Tierney and Paul Krugman will be less interesting when they are no longer writing to the internet masses, to America and the world, but merely to the narrow, unrepresentative subscriber base of the Times. [The article was written shortly after the NYT's decision to put its op-eds behind a subscriber firewall.]

I predicted that we were headed for an age of free media, but of course, media has to be financed somehow.  Advertising is one way, but I think the internet also increases the influence of those who want to make their voices heard; those who are willing to take a loss for the sake of publicity.  We're entering the age when the blogger-with-a-day-job and the advocacy-oriented NGOs and web-magazines will shape the national global conversation.  (Not "national," because the globalization of the conversation of humanity is another revolutionary implication of the internet.)

Also, please note that Arnold Kling and I are arguing more and more by referencing past writing.  That's another aspect of the internet age: the relationship between writing and time is transformed.  Newspapers go out with the trash, web pages stay.  On the one hand, the internet quickens the pace of the conversation of humanity: within hours of the State of the Union address, for example, reams of commentary are produced in the blogosphere.  This has been much noticed before now.  But whereas formerly, old newspaper articles were buried in obscure archives, today stuff written six years ago, or ten years ago, or at any time since the dawn of the internet age, is just as accessible now as ever. 

G. K. Chesterton once complained of our "jumpy journalistic age," where people got excited about Czechoslovakia (the country in central Europe created in the wake of the Habsburg collapse, now divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) who had never heard of Bohemia (the historic medieval kingdom of which Prague was the capital, and which provided some historical precedent for Czech independence).  This historical amnesia was a function of the newspaper, which goes out with the trash, and which also caused vernaculars to displace Latin, thus creating a linguistic barrier to knowledge about the past.  The internet, on the contrary, makes the past accessible.  I expect it to develop, with time, into a powerful force for tradition.

Audiobooks and Cognitive Evolution

I listened to my first iPod audiobook about two weeks ago, and I'm hooked.  I'm the type of person who typically reads a lot of books at the same time-- ten, twenty, thirty, who knows.  If I go on a trip I take several books with me.  But I probably finish about 5% of the books I start, and maybe 10-15% of the books I start with the intention of finishing.  Because I rarely finish books, I rarely read fiction, because with fiction books there's generally a pay-off to reading the whole thing, whereas if I read the first two chapters of, say, a history of the British empire, I've still learned something.  I've probably read only 2-3 novels, at most, from beginning to end in the past year.  Now, all of a sudden, I've "read," or rather, listened to, four novels in the course of a little over a week.  (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis, and The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho.)

Audiobooks are not new.  My mom has listened to them in the car while commuting for years.  But the iPod is new, so listening to an audiobook on an iPod is an experience that's only been possible for a couple of years.  A media revolution has been ongoing for several years now, and iPod audiobooks are not quite as important as, say, the internet.  But the possibilities are still pretty striking.