31–40 of 73 posts
This makes me sad. Despite my political opposition to Obama, I thought that he understood the culture of the "IPod, XBox era." In fact, he leveraged these tools of 'diversion' in his campaign (and did so very effectively). This seems to be the knee-jerk technophobic speech that politicians would have given in the latter half of the 20th Century. Instead of being afraid and resistant to technology (which, as we have s…
[deleted]
>"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work..." What the hell? This sounds like Bush. What happened to the guy who was in love with his blackberry?
That is a pretty dishonest headline you're using to summarize this article.
It's the headline the article uses as well.
Indeed, the strong controversy this articles headline will stir up proves Obama's (actual) point quite well.
Excellent; that's some of the most intelligent argument in this area I've seen for a while. And it is so true. Look st how much time people spend propogating meme's on facebook. Ok so there is always room for us to enjoy banal stuff - but I feel like it is starting to enroach on our lives. It's like the sivers post from the other day; if only we shared an interesting wikipedia rather than one of those chain emails, c…
[deleted]
iPod/iPad/Xbox are a concern because they are platforms of mass procrastination. But so is Steam (I'm supposed to be working this weekend but I have spent a silly amount of it playing COD:MW2). i.e. the argument works equally well for many other areas of tech :)
EDIT: the poster above (who wimped out...) was making the connection between my comment and the idea that the iPad (or Apple) was the cause of the whole problem.. hmm.
Obama's arguments here remind me of Noam Chomsky's thoughts on sports: Sports keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports [as opposed to political and social issues]. So much chatter to distract us from the important issues of the day.
Obama's arguments here remind me of Noam Chomsky's thoughts on sports: Sports keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports [as opposed to political and social issues]. So much chatter to distract us from the important issues of the day.
Obama isn't nearly as extreme as Chomsky politically, but come from the same sort of intellectual heritage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The birther stuff, in particular, is a great example of nonsense that perpetuates. On a policy level, we were hijacked by the death panel nonsense. Debate the public option and minimum coverage requirements and subsidies - sure - but the death panel stuff is just nonsense designed purely to distort the debate. If you don't get how having to deal with stuff like that at the expense of substantive debate harms our nati…
Actually I kinda think stupid ideas like birtherism are deliberately given air by the Obama operation. I don't mean that in a "conspiracy theory" sense, I just mean that politicians would rather engage loudly with the silliest of their opponents rather than the most sensible. By focusing attention on the few loonies who oppose Obama, Obama attempts to associate opposition to Obama with looniness. If birthers didn't e…
Let's read that before spending a bunch of effort debating only a single sentence of it.
(It didn't take me long to find. It is the speech he planned to give, not a transcript, so there may be some minor differences in the actual address.)