Friday, August 29, 2014

From Philip K. Dick

I’ve never read Philip K. Dick, but I found these words, somewhere, and I like them. From the novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982):

Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.
Useful advice for anyone involved in the work of an institution. I for one always mistrust institutional rhetoric of the inevitable. (Look, there’s some now, coming down the pike.) To my mind, the claim that something is inevitable might alone be reason enough to object.

[Got MOOCs?]

comments: 3

Michael Leddy said...

Mike, I saw Matt’s tweet — since then I’ve been looking at your posts and have added your blog to my reader. Your Borg Complex is my “rhetoric of inevitability,” or vice versa.

I still remember when word-processing was going to revolutionize the teaching of writing. Here’s to intelligent skepticism.

Matt Thomas said...

I tried to leave a comment on this post calling your attention to Sacasas’s “Borg Complex” idea but it got lost in the ether. Glad he stopped by. I know Twitter isn’t your thing so I’m always flattered when you read my tweets. In any event, glad you two found each other. Carry on, gentlemen.

Michael Leddy said...

With Twitter, I plead to lurking, very selectively. Thanks for passing that post on, Matt.