Enjoying the view from Limbo
From W. H. Auden, we have this charming short:
Why are the public buildings so high? How come you don’t know?
Why, that’s because the spirits of the public are so low.
To extrapolate on that theme of matter and form in society, body and soul writ large, I shall dare to venture a few lines of my own….
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” as we moderns are so fond of saying. There is probably no serious adage about the soul which is subject to a greater gap between the number of people who cite it and the number who understand it. Apart from that sad fact, however, it is notable that late modernity has gradually transformed the expression from general...
Here in the second part of this discussion, having explained that the concept “advanced” admits of various measurements, corresponding to the various senses in which a new technology may be judged relative to its antecedents, I took a moment to prepare the pathway to a more specific reply to my student’s third and final question about my views concerning which innovations, according to...
A few months ago, I stumbled into a conversation with a most inquisitive student about the role of advanced technology in modern life, and specifically how our age’s technological obsession has blinded us to fundamental questions, not only about the ultimate human value of our rapid material changes, but also about the terms on which we categorize technological innovations as “advances” in the...
by Daren Jonescu · Published December 28, 2024 · Last modified December 24, 2025
The past century of human civilization has increasingly defined itself as the age of the labor-saving device; that is, of endlessly-developing technological advances aimed at reducing human effort and freeing up our time and energy for “more important things.” But what happens when the labor being saved by our technology is specifically the kind of labor that was previously dedicated to those very...
Throughout the history of civilization, until just a moment ago, the attraction of “abroad” consisted of the enticing mystery of the unknown, the challenge of the unfamiliar, the risk of fundamental obscurity, and above all the hope, born of the deepest and most natural human need, that one might find wisdom out there. That is to say, the world beyond one’s own comfortable...
The world may already have ended: I just noticed that Noam Chomsky of all people has publicly stated something aligned with what I myself was thinking during my morning walk today. Specifically, he commented about a year ago that AI systems such as ChatGPT are “basically high-tech plagiarism. It’s a system that…accesses an astronomical amount of data and finds regularities and strings them...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published April 29, 2024 · Last modified May 4, 2024
One of the most universal and predictable bromides, spoken by people of all temperaments and political persuasions, in reply to any contemporary warning about the societal dangers inherent in this or that significant change in information technology, educational norms, economic relations, popular entertainment, or public mores: “But that’s what they said about X back in the day.” This rejoinder is meant to carry...
I occasionally post some thoughts here in Limbo under the title, “Random Reflections.” I am not in general an aficionado of randomness, and by “random,” when I apply the word to my written thoughts, I never mean chance or arbitrary. I mean something more like reflections that have no obvious place within ordinary discourse, or that seem to come from somewhere just beyond...
Phone calls and message alerts at any moment; one learns to stop in the middle of anything — and worse, to expect to have to stop. After all, the social rule in the age of ubiquitous digital communication is determined by our new understanding that not only is everyone immediately accessible at any time, but what is more, everyone knows that everyone is...
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