...Oh. That was it.
[Several Hours Later...]
Okay, the proper approach isn't working. Let's try something... interesting.
This paper needs to be about privilege, because that's what widespread information pokes holes in. The printing press poked holes in the clerical grip over the world; the internet is poking holes in the first-world superiority complex. Right now, the internet is going all over the world, connecting hackers in China with protestors in Egypt with politicians in America. People are downloading music, legally and illegally, and reading blogs that make their blood boil and their heart sing. The gap is closing, between privileged and unprivileged - that Jamaican girl you passed on the sketchy side of Main Street last night is a moderator on a WoW forum, kicking your son's friend out for the night because he said something offensive.
What the printing press did was end the limits on books. Suddenly, you didn't need to be a priest to read. And when people can read, people can write, and people can nail theses to church doors, and publish pamphlets about government, and write books about why a unified Italy, or Prussia, is a good idea, and power is no longer held in the hands of the bishops and arch-bishops who get to decide which monks' works go out to the church, and which saints' ideas are passed on to the public, and suddenly, opinions are everywhere. It's hard to argue against an effect like that; I don't think the internet is an argument against it, but a carrying on of that same mantle, that same brick-by-brick destruction of the status quo. It's a jump-start to the momentum and inertia of revolution.
Why yes, I am a writer.
Now I'm getting somewhere. I'll keep on and write this, and then write the paper that says it more formally, and then I'll have something other than a blank page, at least.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth
Okay, the proper approach isn't working. Let's try something... interesting.
This paper needs to be about privilege, because that's what widespread information pokes holes in. The printing press poked holes in the clerical grip over the world; the internet is poking holes in the first-world superiority complex. Right now, the internet is going all over the world, connecting hackers in China with protestors in Egypt with politicians in America. People are downloading music, legally and illegally, and reading blogs that make their blood boil and their heart sing. The gap is closing, between privileged and unprivileged - that Jamaican girl you passed on the sketchy side of Main Street last night is a moderator on a WoW forum, kicking your son's friend out for the night because he said something offensive.
What the printing press did was end the limits on books. Suddenly, you didn't need to be a priest to read. And when people can read, people can write, and people can nail theses to church doors, and publish pamphlets about government, and write books about why a unified Italy, or Prussia, is a good idea, and power is no longer held in the hands of the bishops and arch-bishops who get to decide which monks' works go out to the church, and which saints' ideas are passed on to the public, and suddenly, opinions are everywhere. It's hard to argue against an effect like that; I don't think the internet is an argument against it, but a carrying on of that same mantle, that same brick-by-brick destruction of the status quo. It's a jump-start to the momentum and inertia of revolution.
Why yes, I am a writer.
Now I'm getting somewhere. I'll keep on and write this, and then write the paper that says it more formally, and then I'll have something other than a blank page, at least.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth