Don't Think Twice

Bird v. Lemur

a sea of silver with little neon-like apples blinking at you. And in the distance is this steady click click click of keyboards, with an occasional muffled curse because someone's hard drive crashed or battery went dead. Punctuated with the faint thud of someone tripping over a power cord.

I was even more sympathetic till I remembered that in my New Testament survey course this spring, probably a quarter to a half of the class took their class notes on their laptops or PDAs, and it hadn't bothered me the tiniest bit. Now, if it's going to bother Shelley, then by all means she's within her prerogatives to say so and to ask for a different setting for her presentation. My experience from the spring allays such reservations as I might have about such an experience, though; I could make eye contact when I wanted with most of the people I tried to reach, and there's always someone who's just not on the wavelength. So I can hack the idea of realtime bloggers in my presentation.

Maybe one factor in my classroom has to do with my constant motion; I cover almost all the floor space in the classroom, and do look each student in the eyes (if at all possible). That won't work in most conference rooms in which I've spoken, so we'll ratchet down my contentment level a notch or two.

Okay--all that being said, I'm still sympathetic with Bb, and it's worth raising the issue of realtime blogging to work through the various dimensions of the issue, even if she and I look at the prospect differently.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what happened to set the Lemur off. Assuming that I disagreed more pronouncedly than I do, I'm not sure I can figure out getting so very wrought up about it. Shelley herself acknowledges that if she took a stand against real-time blogging, she might not be asked to give presentations, and it sounds as though she's comfortable with that. I don't know whether I'd stick around if my Lombard and Visor were forbidden; it would definitely raise the stakes for the presenter.

And I do like the idea of transforming our conferences. As matters still stand, at the conferences I go to much of the really interesting work gets done around the presentations, over meals and snacks and drinks; a technologically-enhanced meeting might turn out to be a drag, but it might enliven things considerably. And as a remote observer at the recent conferences that David W and Doc (the hidden David) Searls blogged for us, I very much appreciated their input.

So as a speaker/presenter, I don't much mind the idea (yet); as an attendee (shouldn't it be "attender"? An "attendee" should be the presenter of the session you attended) I'd have to make a tough decision regarding whether to go or not (for Shelley, I would; I don't know about anyone else); and as a blog-reader, I'm in favor, too.

But I can disagree with Shelley without thinking she wants to be center of the universe; it sounded as though she was speaking her mind (frankly and explicitly), for which I'm thankful. The Lemur was candid too (& perhaps too candid); I'm on board with a number of his ideas--but his ideas don't necessitate snarky shots at Shelley.
Permalink -Main Page-
      ( 11:01 AM )  

Happy Half-birthday, Mark!

Look--Flying Pigs!

To be fair, that's not what Mike Sanders said or even implied; still, his drawing me into close proximity to the former Education Secretary and culture warrior discomfits me. What makes it even worse is that I can't see anything definite to which I might object in the material that Mike quotes. Of course, Mike cites my objection to suicide bombings without noting that I would be equally opposed to coercive violence by nation-states, so a casual reader who doesn't follow Mike's links might think I'm a potential appointee to a Reagan/Bush cabinet.

My demurrer involves not so much the passage that Mike cites as it does the whole notion of "moral clarity," which seems entirely unclear to me. Points such: "A morally clear position would have been this: Terrorism is terrorism, and Israel is justified in responding to terrorism, consistent with the limits of just war theory and with the guidance of prudence," sound as though Bennett just short-circuits the fundamental question of "what is terrorism?" or "why would somebody volunteer to blow himself up?" If I read Bennett aright, he claims that anyone who explores the question of why one would categorize one act as "terrorism" and another as "a top secret mission in which a heroic agent sacrifices his life in order to disrupt the internal politics of a hostile state" (the typical plot of a James Bond or Ethan Hunt (of Mission: Impossible movie, though because these actors are highly-paid heroes, they have to risk but never lose their lives)--anyone who questions those distinctions falls under Bennett's charge of "moral equivocation."

{Attention: I am not here claiming that terrorists and movie secret agents are the same, nor am I here suggesting that suicide bombers aren't terrorists. I am observing that when an authoritative voice tries to quash the interrogation of vital issues, I suspect that the voice has touched on a point of ideology rather than a natural or demonstrable conclusion. One would think that a conservative pundit would encourage nuanced deliberation that might, for instance, help undermine accusations that the CIA engages in state-sponsored terrorism.}

Bennett seems to be arguing that both the US war against Afghanistan and the conflict between Israel and Palestinian irregulars exemplify situations in which one ought not stop and think too hard. "['Moral clarity'] worked in an earlier era, too, when President Ronald Reagan rejected the nuanced and sophisticated policies of detente and instead labeled the Soviet Union as the 'evil empire' that it was." Bennett objects to nuance and sophistication, presumably not across the board, but at least in these particular examples. Under such circumstances intellectual deliberation amounts, on Bennett's account, to "hand-wringing."

How does one know when the gravity of a complex situation warrants someone (say, John Ashcroft) suppressing deliberative evaluation of state policies, and when a situation isn't quite that bad? Surely Bennett doesn't mean to say, "Don't ask," or "It's obvious to anyone," or "I have a Situation-o-meter that tells me"?

Sometimes, one must act as though a situation were clearer than it is, but that doesn't mean one must occlude one's awareness of the situation's opacity. On the other hand, the minute our government says, "Don't worry your heads about those nuances; just trust us," or "Anyone who would doubt this point must be unpatriotic and disloyal," the urgency of our attending to what The Voice of Authority has concealed leaps forward.
Permalink -Main Page-