Checking in.........................

........with the always interesting Martin Gurri:

 But the beginning of any human structure is an uncertain affair. The present is always a tangle of contradictory visions and conflicting interests. What appears to be of all-consuming importance today is forgotten tomorrow—and even the supposed clarity of hindsight is mostly an illusion.  We know exactly when and how Rome fell, but why such a backwater of a city became one of history’s greatest empires remains a mystery. . . .

Mir insists that the disappearance of the newspaper must mean the end of journalism. I agree. A model formed to exploit scarcity can’t be expected to function in an era of overabundance. The facts of the world, it turns out, are virtually infinite in number and incoherent in pattern. The digital age resembles the Tower of Babel—an uproar of mutually unintelligible voices. The New York Times and CNN merely contribute to the din. In such an environment, conspiracy theories can become plausible explanations for the behavior of scientists. The more information we absorb, the less we understand.

-two excerpts from his essay, The Fall and Rise of the Mediators