the global village
Pluribus
We were watching Pluribus for the last 10 days and finished the first season today. I have mixed feelings about the show. I especially found the first few episodes hard to watch because I couldn’t stand Carol. It got easier towards the end of the season but I can’t say that I loved the show. Nevertheless, it was an interesting watch. I especially liked the depiction of the collective power that humans possess. It’s eerie to think about the connection between our individuality and the problem of coordinating with others. I read a take (Turkish) that said the show is trying to teach communism to American masses but I disagree. Although the world becomes communist in a few hours after everyone gets “infected,” Pluribus’ virus is not of communism but McLuhan’s. It turns the world into the global village:
Global village is not created by the motor car or even by the airplane. It’s created by instant electronic information movement. The global village is at once as wide as the planet and as small as a little town where everybody is maliciously engaged and poking his nose into everybody else’s business. The global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony. You have extreme concern with everybody else’s business. And much involvement in everybody else’s life. — Marshall McLuhan
The global village, once formed, renders game theory useless. And thus, it removes the hardest problem of communism: the coordination. In this sense, I found Pluribus deeply anti-communist. Communism is shown as only possible in the case of an alien hive mind with a biological imperative to cooperate. The obverse, of course, is that we, as humans, have a biological imperative that is not suitable for communism.
Kagi Small Web
It’s been a few weeks since I started using kagi as my search engine. I love this kind of initiative that tries to form a more humane internet (I believe we need to reclaim the internet). Apart from my RSS reader, Kagi Small Web has become my go-to to read stuff on the internet. To my pleasure, they also released it as a mobile app last week!
Crucial Tracks
What are crucial tracks? A crucial track is a song that changes the direction of your life or helps you see the world in a different way. The songs that represent relationships or trigger memories. The songs that make you, you.
Crucial Tracks is a music journal with a simple idea: share the important songs in your life. Every member gets one post per calendar day. Use a daily prompt or pick any subject you’d like!
I. LOVE. THIS! I heard about Crucial Tracks thanks to Steve Makofsky.
This was my first post there:
You can subscribe to my feed with your favorite RSS reader.
I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart
Remove all the bars that keep us apart
I wish you could know what it means to be me
Then you’d see and agree
That every man should be free (I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free)