Lauda­tor Tem­po­ris Acti:

Google returned no hits for wollerk­er­toot, a sit­u­a­tion I hope this post will remedy.

One won­ders about the sta­bil­ity of [ir]relevance. We strive to pre­serve old writ­ing; how long until we’re a threat to Google? An inter­est­ing feel­ing: impend­ing dangerousness.

Some ambiva­lence is noted: “Mer­i­toc­racy and Losers”.

A soci­ol­o­gist named Michael Young coined the term ‘mer­i­toc­racy’ when he used it as the title of his dystopian novel, writ­ten in the late 1950’s. (It was set a few gen­er­a­tions into the future.) The con­ceit of the novel was that all indus­tries were orga­nized by rig­or­ous merit, with the result that the lower classes were hor­rif­i­cally exploited, since any­one in the lower classes with any abil­ity was quickly reslot­ted some­where else. The ones left over were the ones inca­pable of defend­ing them­selves. And nobody else defended them, since they lost fair and square. Over time, it came to resem­ble a caste system.

Liam’s Pic­tures from Old Books.

Some­thing that makes me won­der about get­ting a PC: Inter­view of Michael Samyn & Ariea Har­vey, cre­ators of The End­less For­est. Oh so very Miyazaki.

Specif­i­cally, on the cost of search, and The Law of One Price.