Clifford Geertz, the great American anthropologist, died a couple of days
ago. There's this quote from his obituary at the IAS* which struck me as
being relevant to our projects:
In *Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author* (1988), Geertz stated,
"The next necessary thing...is neither the construction of a universal
Esperanto-like
culture...nor the invention of some vast technology of human management. It
is to enlarge the possibility of intelligible discourse between people quite
different from one another in interest, outlook, wealth, and power, and yet
contained in a world where tumbled as they are into endless connection, it
is increasingly difficult to get out of each other's way."
Though through the mechanism of a technology that wasn't imagined through
most of Dr. Geertz's lifetime, it seems to me that's what we're doing:
enlarging the possibility of intelligent discourse between people. It's a
worthy goal.
-- phoebe
*
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