Hello and welcome back to another edition of THE POSTCARD, Unregistered’s fortnightly roundup of recommendations.
Thoughts, tools, and treats
This week’s postcard is about what is at stake.
Liberal enlightenment
Will science and universal human rights endure? Steven Pinker is optimistic without being naive.
Liberal democracy
How is democracy faring? Andreas Reckwitz, a German sociologist who has written an excellent book on loss, reflects on the state of liberal democracy: „To face truth with open eyes, to accept fragility and to incorporate loss into the democratic imagination could, in fact, be the precondition of its vitality. If we once dreamed of abolishing loss, we must now learn how to live with it. Should we succeed, it would mark a step toward maturity. And that could become a deeper form of progress.“
When a glass breaks
„I barely pick it up anymore. The fear that it will shatter is too great—from setting it down too firmly, from washing it, from polishing it. Such an end would be too trivial. A wrong pressure, a small crack, a dull sound, and forty years of wine memory vanish in a pile of shards. What would remain then would be memory without a body, an orchestra without sound.“ Manfred Klimek on his last Vinum Bordeaux glass from the Kufstein glassblowers Riedel (in German).
Restitution
Jennifer Hudin, John Searle’s secretary for 40 years, has something to say to the world.
Revival
Sometimes things thought lost return in unexpected places. The humanities could be one of them, Henry Oliver is convinced, and I agree.
Noteworthy
“I was 12 years old when I got my first computer, an Apple II Plus, and I’ve never stopped loving the freedom of having my own computer and being able to run whatever the hell I want to.
My computer is not a terminal. It’s a world I get to control, and I can use — and, especially, make — whatever I want. I’m not stuck using just what’s provided to me on some other machines elsewhere: I’m not dialing into a mainframe or doing the modern equivalent of using only websites that other people control.
A world where everything is on the web and nothing is on the machines that we own is a sad world where we’ve lost a core freedom.“
—Brent Simmons, an independent software developer
A mystery link leading into the unknown
The Last...
As always,
Dirk
P.S.: Feel free to send me pointers to articles, books, sites, pods, tools, and treats that could be interesting for this roundup. While I cannot promise to link them, I read and appreciate every hint.