Robert Darnton on Google & the Future of Books
from the New York Review of Books.
The beginning meanders through the Enlightenment way too long, but it eventually picks up speed.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
My uncle baffles me sometimes…
Disclaimer: though this will sound like criticism, I actually mean this to be more of a neutral set of observations. Like watching beetles in the wild.
My uncle has lived in West L.A. for 30 years; he’s a liberal Hollywood type, well educated, well traveled. But, at the end of the day he is a baby-boomer man from the South, raised by a father who was kind of a selfish dick.
I am often surprised by things he says… for example, that feminists are anti-sex. His wife and daughters are obviously feminists, and none of them seem to have any sort of hang-ups about sex. Or his continued hope-in-vain that the internet’s affect on all media will just be a passing phase—slash—the internet is destroying the economy. Or, “My friend ___ is coming over to watch some football on the HD. So, don’t get scared if you hear us shouting.” As if I would assume there were gang fights breaking out on the mean streets of Westwood.
My uncle often takes whatever he wants with this sense of entitlement that I can really only characterize as old(ish) rich white male. (This isn’t white man hate. I love many rich white men. Many of them do amazing things on this planet.) He doesn’t do it out of malice, or any kind of special selfishness. It just doesn’t even occur to him to do otherwise (I should pause at this point to say that he is, by no means, a master of the nuances of emotion, though he is a really gifted big picture guy). If I didn’t know him, I think I would often be offended by these sorts of behaviors, but I do know him to be an upstanding and well-meaning guy, so I’m mostly just fascinated and want to do anthropological studies on him.
I started thinking about writing about all this because I was doing laundry. The basket I always use is a little bigger than the others because I only get the time to do laundry every couple of weeks (i have a lot of clothes…) I had pulled his laundry out of the dryer so I could insert mine. I left the larger basket sitting on top of the washer. His clothes were piled into the little basket. It all stayed in a pile, but it was more than should be in that little basket. I came back 30 min. later and his clothes were now in the big basket, space left over, and he had left me the small one.
I know that this wasn’t a “fuck you”…he just wanted the bigger basket, “a basket fit for a man,” I’m sure he’d say. And then I think about how it would never even occur to me to seize the basket someone else is obviously using. Who does that kind of thing?! The answer: a space cadet rich white baby-boomer man from the South.
Aliens in their habitats--nothing more fascinating.
My uncle has lived in West L.A. for 30 years; he’s a liberal Hollywood type, well educated, well traveled. But, at the end of the day he is a baby-boomer man from the South, raised by a father who was kind of a selfish dick.
I am often surprised by things he says… for example, that feminists are anti-sex. His wife and daughters are obviously feminists, and none of them seem to have any sort of hang-ups about sex. Or his continued hope-in-vain that the internet’s affect on all media will just be a passing phase—slash—the internet is destroying the economy. Or, “My friend ___ is coming over to watch some football on the HD. So, don’t get scared if you hear us shouting.” As if I would assume there were gang fights breaking out on the mean streets of Westwood.
My uncle often takes whatever he wants with this sense of entitlement that I can really only characterize as old(ish) rich white male. (This isn’t white man hate. I love many rich white men. Many of them do amazing things on this planet.) He doesn’t do it out of malice, or any kind of special selfishness. It just doesn’t even occur to him to do otherwise (I should pause at this point to say that he is, by no means, a master of the nuances of emotion, though he is a really gifted big picture guy). If I didn’t know him, I think I would often be offended by these sorts of behaviors, but I do know him to be an upstanding and well-meaning guy, so I’m mostly just fascinated and want to do anthropological studies on him.
I started thinking about writing about all this because I was doing laundry. The basket I always use is a little bigger than the others because I only get the time to do laundry every couple of weeks (i have a lot of clothes…) I had pulled his laundry out of the dryer so I could insert mine. I left the larger basket sitting on top of the washer. His clothes were piled into the little basket. It all stayed in a pile, but it was more than should be in that little basket. I came back 30 min. later and his clothes were now in the big basket, space left over, and he had left me the small one.
I know that this wasn’t a “fuck you”…he just wanted the bigger basket, “a basket fit for a man,” I’m sure he’d say. And then I think about how it would never even occur to me to seize the basket someone else is obviously using. Who does that kind of thing?! The answer: a space cadet rich white baby-boomer man from the South.
Aliens in their habitats--nothing more fascinating.
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