on tuesday Tom De Zengotita came over to williamsburg to have lunch with the insitute. Tom teaches philosophy at Dalton and NYU and recently published a terrific book, Mediated, about modern media’s profound effects on the human psyche and culture.
we invited Tom to lunch to discuss a new project we’re thinking about — how to use the web to encourage discussion about the BIG QUESTIONS facing humanity. we’ll write much more about this soon, but i couldn’t wait to mention one point that Tom made that’s really got me thinking.
Tom said “It’s about TIME.” if we are going to be serious about confronting big, first order questions, we have to be willing to put in the time to go deeply. we actually have to read the material; we have to wrestle with the ideas; we have to follow through.
this of course runs counter to our current mediated existence which favors shallow surfing over digging deep. i wonder if a sea-change is possible?