Sunshocked

My dad says he likes the funny posts better. Sorry, Dad. Here’s the second half of my examination of the relationship between design and social change I began last week. I’ll try to make it funny.

Dan Rather, best known for his 44 years as reporter and eventually anchorman for CBS News, was today’s keynote speaker at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. He had a few things to say about the blogging, the internet, and the state of journalism in this country.

Is it just me, or does the entire air travel industry run on hot air? And I mean more than the stuff thats rammed through super-heated jets in order to keep the planes in the air.

Al Gore. Affable, amiable, genial… he’s charmed America with his 1337 Powerpoint skills and put us on the right path to addressing the looming menace of climate change. Moral to a fault, no one has ever questioned his motives. Until now.

Much is written about how incredibly dangerous the new media is. Wikipedia contains inaccuracies! MySpace is full of pedophiles! Craigslist is infested with scams! Of course, much of this is perpetuated by the old media, who are hardly without sin. In fact, a recent situation illustrated to me just how the ecology of new media is vastly more healthy.

Logic has come a long way since the time of Aristotle. While my mind is continually blown at the fact that some dude in a chlamys sat down one day and “invented” logic, I am not alone in questioning his stubborn assertion that every statement is either true or false.