Weather: Partly cloudy. Highs in the upper 80s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Tuesday Night: Mostly cloudy. Lows in the upper 60s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph.
Today at the Editor’s Glance:
In Court: The trial of Travis Smith before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins continues. Smith faces a second-degree burglary and two misdemeanor charges stemming from an alleged assault of a Lyft driver in Palm Coast in 2020.
The Palm Coast City Council meets in workshop at 9 a.m. at City Hall. The council has asked the couty property appraiser and tax collectors to make presentations. The council will also get overviews of public works, utilities and stormwater and engineering. The meeting is streamed live here.
“Don’t Be A Victim” Learn Everything About Insurance Fraud: FCAR & Cornerstone Center Co-host Rytech Restoration in a workshop aimed towards empowering Real Estate and Insurance Agents on how to catch fraudulent acts before their customers are affected. Rytech experts will uncover different ways companies/contractors are fraudulently filing claims for damages obtained in a tragic moments for the customers. Rytech wants to give the tools to spot these fraudulent acts before its too late. 11:30 a.m., Cornerstone Center, 608 E. Moody Blvd Bunnell.
Notably: SAMUEL MORSE ON THIS DATE SENT THE FIRST-EVER TELEGRAPHED WORDS (“WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT?”) FROM THE CAPITOL BUILDING IN WASHINGTON TO BALTIMORE.
Now this:
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“Thoreau, as it turned out, was precisely correct. He grasped that the telegraph would create its own definition of discourse; that it would not only permit but insist upon a conversation between Maine and Texas; and that it would require the content of that conversation to be different from what Typographic Man was accustomed to. The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography’s definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraph made information into a commodity, a “thing” that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning.” […] As Thoreau implied, telegraphy made relevance irrelevant. The abundant flow of information had very little or nothing to do with those to whom it was addressed; that is, with any social or intellectual context in which their lives were embedded. Coleridge’s famous line about water everywhere without a drop to drink may serve as a metaphor of a decontextualized information environment: In a sea of information, there was very little of it to use. A man in Maine and a man in Texas could converse, but not about anything either of them knew or cared very much about. The telegraph may have made the country into “one neighborhood,” but it was a peculiar one, populated by strangers who knew nothing but the most superficial facts about each other.”
–From Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1986).
Pogo says
@And what’s more:
“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 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, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
In 1984, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us”.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business