A grave warning on the potential dangers of living in a brave new digital world from the UK's House of Lords? The author of an article in The Guardian on a speech made to the august body by Susan Greenfield, neuro-biologist and, ahem, baroness, speculates on the deleterious effects of exposure to the "clicking, bleeping, flashing" visual lingo of electronic media. "In some of the most chilling words heard in the Lords" (to quote the author), Baroness Greenfield raised the need to study the impact of new "digital-picture" technologies on the brain.
The Baroness may have a point, but the hysterical tone of the article is the true star of the piece. As per the author, at the crux of the brave new digital world is a dialectical tension between those who have not yet reached the watershed age of 40 (i.e., the tech-literate) and those who have (i.e., the "fuddy-duddy"-- again, to quote the author, albeit, out of context). I wonder whether there were similar concerns when humankind transitioned from cave drawings to the written word.
Business Week has a really interesting article entitled "My Virtual Life" (the writer of which is pictured to the left in his computerized form) which talks about the rising popularity of online games/communities such as Second Life, wherein people create alter-egos and can actually buy and sell video game items that don't really exist for virtual dollars (which, being "virtual," also don't exist). As a person raised on Space Invaders and Pitfall, this doesn't seem at all like what video games used to be (although it's really just a more elaborate 3D version of the old Infocom text games); fascinating and a little scary. Excerpt: "In fact, it's a stretch to call it [Second Life] a game because the residents, as players prefer to be called, create everything. Unlike in other virtual worlds, Second Life's technology lets people create objects like clothes or storefronts from scratch, LEGO-style, rather than simply pluck avatar outfits or ready-made buildings from a menu. That means residents can build anything they can imagine, from notary services to candles that burn down to pools of wax."
Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced, and we were very happy that a Henry Holt title, Imperial Reckonings: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, by Caroline Elkins, won for general non-fiction. Congrats to Elkins and everyone at Holt. The book is a major work of history that for the first time reveals the violence and terror at the heart of Britain's civilizing mission in Kenya.
From Matt: The scriptwriters made quite a few changes from the book, but they were all for the best - and booklover though I am I have to admit that its better to see magic than to read about it.
From Mina: I adore this film. Monsieur Hulot’s very modern sister and brother-in-law don’t know what to do with Tati’s charmingly untidy and bungling protagonist, who inhabits a world where meaning is still more important than appearances.
From Carey: A must see Hayao Miyazaki’s anime is Laputa: Castle in the Sky, originally released in 1986. A fantasy film that explores the altruistic and compassionate nature of humans, aspects lost through repeated exposure to power, technology, and the complexities brought by the combination of the two. 
