1.
We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us that we imagine.
2.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
– Hannah Arendt,
quoted by Jay Rosen
3.
I’ve read a couple of personal 2017 reviews, and most of them featured a version of this sentence: “Actually, it was quite an excellent year for me personally…” When excluding all the shit going on in politics, media, tech, etc., a lot of people – including me – did rather well. Exciting projects, new relationships and opportunities. Meanwhile, our minds are occupied with a world on fire, as we should be. I don‘t know what to make of this cognitive dissonance or what it will lead to, but it is a signal I picked up.
4.
To study the politics of infrastructure is to study the political ideas that get built into the design process, and the infrastructure’s impact on the political possibilities of the communities that engage it.
– Fred Turner in an
interview I highly recommend
