eBooks - Social Issues - Communication - Lee Siegel - Against the Machine
Against the Machine eBooks
by Lee Siegel
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Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $14.00
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Platforms
Windows PC, Windows Mobile 5.0-6.0, Pocket PC 2003 Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $14.00
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Platforms
Palm, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Windows PC, Mac, iPhone/iPod Touch Features
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Availability:
Download Now Price: $14.00
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Against the Machine Summary
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1 “The World Is All That Is the Case” I GO TO STARBUCKS, sit down, open my laptop, and turn it on. In the old days—ten years ago—I would be sitting with a pen and notebook, partly concentrating on my writing and partly aware of the people in the room around me. Back in that prehistoric time, my attention faced outward. I might see someone I know, or someone I’d like to know. I might passively enjoy trying to figure out why that couple in the middle of the room are speaking so intensely—are they moving closer together to relish their intimacy or because there is a crisis in their intimacy? And who is that guy with the fedora—and why the red sneakers? Is he an original, or the copy of an original? I might be watching everyone, but some people might be watching me, too. My situation is just as permeable as theirs. A stranger could come over to my table at any minute, his sudden physical presence before me unexpected, incalculable, absolutely enigmatic in the seconds before he becomes one kind of situation or another. But here I am, sitting in the future—I mean the present—in front of my laptop. Just about everyone around me has a laptop open also. The small mass of barely variegated gray panels looks like a scene out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but with modems and Danishes. I can hardly see anyone else’s face behind the screens, and no one seems to be doing anything socially or psychologically that might be fun to try to figure out. They are bent into their screens and toward their self–interest. My attention, too, is turned toward my ego. But I am paying attention in a different way from what I do when I... |
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eBooks - Titles - Authors - Social Issues - Communication - Lee Siegel - Against the Machine