Yule greetings to you all.
This week the Abbey of Misrule passed a milestone of sorts: this project now has 30,000 subscribers. I hasten to add that the vast majority are free subscribers - if that were not the case I would currently be sunning myself on a distant beach, probably on an island which I had newly purchased myself. Instead, here I am, planning another essay. But I’m happy that there’s so much interest in what I’m doing here.
To mark this occasion, and to celebrate advent, I’m going to carry out a little one-off Christmas experiment, and open comments on this monthly salon up to all my subscribers, both paid and unpaid. For those of you who are new here, the salon is a monthly post in which readers guide the conversation. You can talk about anything you want. Bring what you have to the party, and we’ll see what ensues.
Since this may be a bigger crowd than usual, it’s worth reminding you all of my comment policy:
On this issue, if on no other, I tend towards the Elon Musk worldview: you’re free to express your views here without being censored or cancelled or deleted for wrongthink. But I do clamp down hard on nastiness. Please feel free to disagree, to argue and to state your case - but do so with respect for others. Nasty arguments that get personal will be deleted, as will any obvious bigotry - racism, anti-semitism, etc. - that has nothing to do with the case you’re making.
I’ve never had any of these problems here, and I’m sure I won’t now, given the high quality of readership around these parts. But knowing what the Internet is like, I wanted to be clear.
Having said all that: fire away.
'... I would currently be sunning myself on a distant beach, probably on an island which I had newly purchased myself...'
Probably good that that didn't happen, because wouldn't that be part of the Machine? 😉😁
We are all using machines of one kind or another to comment on the impending nature / impact of 'the Machine'. I just wonder where understanding the problem in-hand via the internet starts to feel meaningless and trying to identify actual things we can do with our lives in way of response might begin? Is it even worth trying to mitigate or dodge the 'great unfolding' of technology? What does one do? Sorry - I appreciate that's more than one ideas thread.