16 Comments

Mr Carr, sad to see Rough Type go, but glad to see you here.

Writing this brief note to show my appreciation for your writing, especially The Shallows. I've read the book at least half-dozen times and, like all works of substance, each time through reveals something new. Your writing convinced me to read McLuhan and that changed how I see, well, just about everything.

Looking forward to the new book and reading more of what you may post here. If you happen to still live in Boulder (believe I read that in an interview somewhere) I'd always be happy to show my gratitude with your beverage of choice.

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Thanks very much, Sean. That's very kind. Alas, I'm no longer in Boulder.

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"Your writing convinced me to read McLuhan and that changed how I see, well, just about everything."

Me too!

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What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, theorgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. - Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman

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Thank you for this fantastic essay. As I contemplate the distinction between speech as self and speech as dead information, it feels like the loss of poetry itself.

Perhaps our self, as we understand it, is like baroque ornamentation, or flourishes of hand-carved crown molding in Brooklyn Brownstones. Maybe future generations will look back on the frivolous labor that we put into creating our personalities and whistle and say, “They don’t make ‘em like that any more.”

We are the Dusenberg cars of humanity, the last generation of hand-made cognition, a beautiful waste of time.

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Sad to see Rough Type end. I have followed you since The Shallows.

How do you feel about sharecropping on Substack?! 🤣

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Soiled.

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Hey Car, congratulation for the book Release. This exact point is made by a meditation practitioner, on the value of human written thank you words as opposed to the AI generated gratitude.

https://shows.acast.com/the-overexamined-life/episodes/the-hidden-risk-of-ai-nobody-is-talking-about

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Excellent piece. Denise Levertov anticipated our problem before the internet was a glint in DARPA’s eye

Contraband

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.

That’s why the taste of it

drove us from Eden. That fruit

was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder

for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.

God had probably planned to tell us later

about this new pleasure.

We stuffed our mouths full of it,

gorged on but and if and how and again

but, knowing no better.

It’s toxic in large quantities; fumes

swirled in our heads and around us

to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,

a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.

Not that God is unreasonable– but reason

in such excess was tyranny

and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell

reflecting our own faces. God lives

on the other side of that mirror,

but through the slit where the barrier doesn’t

quite touch ground, manages still

to squeeze in– as filtered light,

splinters of fire, a strain of music heard

then lost, then heard again.

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Hence, the title, “The Shallows.”

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Reminds me of "pandora's vox"

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Are you referring to the humdog piece? If so, I agree. If not, I still agree.

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Yes! I may be her biggest fan...

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The compulsion toward self replacement is disturbing but probably shouldn't be so surprising. This is all driven by the same force as previous waves of automation - money. I don't think most of us want to be replaced, if we really think about it, but there's a lot of money in replacing us, basically.

I'm left to imagine what can't be automated. Athletics? Maybe.

What will our children aspire to be? What will be the need for humans at all?

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I don't want to be anyone but myself, even if I never get diamonds to comfort me.

——Anne of Green Gables(written by Lucy Maud Montgomery)

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So well said. I’m glad to see you here on Substack.

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