Suddenly seized by a particular kind of intellectual terror, I realize-- I don't know nearly enough about any thing there is to know about. I demand the immediate and fresh injection of ideas, 500 cc's or so.
For example, amazon.com. Where did they come from? How does the public perceive their persona? (Are they too recently arrived to elicit the kind of gut reactions from, say "Wal-Mart" or "McDonald's", for example.) How big are they, in terms of revenue, people employeed? How does one even go about starting an online franchise? How many books address the burgeoning social issues of online commerce?
Is e-commerce the equivalent of intercontinental trade, or finding a resource? Do former economic principles apply? Which ones? Who is best poised to write the definitive study, among the strata of our academic society?
And so on. Dammit, why the fuck did we have to lose David Foster Wallace. We, as a nation, really needed him. I believe this. He was the clearest pairs of eyes up in the crow's nest. Every time I unravel one of his works, I find: he has described, in advance, some trap that I am currently caught in, or he has marked the path I find my feet on. The finest since Dostoyevsky, and since I haven't read Dostoyevsky, just the Finest.
Amazon elicits a lighter gut reaction from me than brick-and-mortar places. Maybe Lessig has something to say about this? It would be cool if there could be a local currency local to the internet/cyberspace.
ReplyDeleteDFW is arguably closer to Tolstoy. Just to free-associate. I Write Like says your post is like Cory Doctorow. I never heard of him.
I also like seals and the cute pictures on the above post.