Re: [Futurework] Re: Not ideological (was More crap again)

[Ed Weick]

REH in black. Ed Weick in whatever colour this is. A couple of points. 1. The process of going out of print with cheap paper has caused a large number of books to go the way of the celluloid movies. Ever so many of them should probably not have been printed in the first place. I have a large collection on shelves in our basement that should be thrown out, but I haven’t had the heart to do it yet, perhaps because of something I was taught about respecting books as a child. 2. The Internet computerization of all print with a complete search engine has the potential to bring about a real renaissnace for the first time in human history but with the power of capitalist money it could be available only to those who can afford it and therefore will become a tool of oppression. Take a look at http://www.questia.com/, a virtual library of 70,000 or more volumes. You have to pay to use it, but the personal cost isn’t much more than the costs of accessing an ordinary library (gas, bus tickets, parking, fines, etc.), and the public costs are probably considerably less than building and maintaining ordinary libraries. 3. China during Kubalai was the most tolerant religious society ever seen before or since with all of the religions of the world living in peace under the sword of the great Khan. I’ve recently done some research on the Khazars, a Turkic people who converted to Judaism. They were pretty tolerant too, as were the Moghuls in India. When in India years ago, I heard that one of the Moghul emperors demonstrated his tolerance by taking three wives, a Christian, a Moslem and a Hindu. I do hope they enjoyed each other’s company. 4. It is the West's worship of individualism that is the issue, not whether China and the other Asian countries were up to them. China had the printing press hundreds of years before Europe. Europe knew it, why didn't they use it? The printed word can be dangerous, serving the purposes of the church and state, and excluding others. And the printed word is not the only way of preserving memory. In the 1970s I was at a hearing in the Mackenzie Delta at which a Gwich’in elder told a story about a very sudden and very great flood that imperiled his ancestors. A geologist was there with me, and he and I concluded that what the elder was talking about may have occurred at the end of the last ice age, six or seven thousand years ago, when an ice barrier that separated the Porcupine River basin from the Mackenzie Delta broke. How’s that for memory? There are, of course, many flood stories. Two American academics, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, argue, in "Noah’s Flood", that the filling of the Black Sea at the end of the last ice age gave rise to great flood of Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh, both of which would have existed as oral traditions long before they were written down. Ed Ed Weick 577 Melbourne Ave. Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 Canada Phone (613) 728 4630 Fax     (613)  728 9382