David Gelernter

[drscott]

The author of this piece is more famous for surviving an attack by the Unabomber than his work in computer science and virtual environments. But he knows where the new tide of ideologically-based ignorance is leading us. Teaching children "correct" attitudes instead of history and the tools of thought to interpret it is destroying our ability to make reasonable judgments as a democracy.

Here's what happened to him for daring to create new technology:

In 1993, Yale computer science professor David Gelernter opened what he thought was an unsolicited doctoral dissertation. It exploded, destroying his right hand and eye and making his torso resemble a construction site. Gelernter, bleeding and "royally annoyed," walked to the local hospital. His blood pressure zero, surgeons barely saved his life.

Still no bookshelves.

Comments

[abearius.livejournal.com]

It's a splendid piece of rhetoric. As much as I agree with him on the Guantanamo-Gulag analogy and the abuse of "Nazi," I found his pretext a little shaky. The girl could just have been stupid. I've taught before and have had similar "let me jostle your memory" teaching moments. Taking one stupid student as a pretext for generalizing about education is a cheap shot. What was the teacher's reaction? Did the teacher straighten the girl out? Did other stuents? We don';t hear this at all. Instead we hear a "useful idiot" of the Republican Party attacking the educational system that they refuse to fund.

Maybe really smart people don't become teachers any more because they are paid horribly and the students they get are undisciplined by their families (if they have them). I know I got tired of listening to self-satisfied brats and credit-card orphans from Los Angeles complain about having to read Aristotle and Faulkner because "it doesn't have anything to do with my maaaaaaaaaajooooor."

Sorry. I'd love to agree with this guy, and would if he weren't as phetorically slimy as the people he attacks. And I don't think that having been partially blown up makes him any more admirable than anyone else, especially since he was hit by a random act of terror and not killed in a programmatic act of imperialist expansion. Let's just try to imagine all the potential Einsteins and Rumis we have blown to smitherenes in Iraq since Equinox of 2003.

And just in case Dr. Gelertner wants to get his own ass waxed, he might remember that it was the United States CIA money, authorized by Jimmy Carter, that funded Pol Pot's takover in Cambodia in a chess move to punish the Vietnamese for having won the Vietnam War. Quis custodiet custodiens?. Follow the money. And, moreover, the puling whelp can do his fucking homework.

;-)

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

His injuries do seem to have turned him into a bit of a curmudgeon, not that I blame him. You're right that this is a polemic -- how could it not be, being so short? -- and, like Orson Scott Card, you have to admire some bits and pieces of his achievements without accepting all of the conclusions he comes to. But at least he's trying to do more than bleat the party line of the moment.

Yes, it's amusing that Jimmy Carter has this goody two-shoes image, when his foreign policy moves were, if anything, more disastrous than Richard Nixon's. I'm ashamed I voted for him.

[abearius.livejournal.com]

In his better moments, my sainted grandfather would have said of this guy: "It is better to shut your mouth and let everyone think you are an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt." In his not-better moments he would have said, "That boy's so full of himself he could sit in a pile of his own shit and think he was smelling roses."

I won't make excuses for the guy because he is a useful idiot in my opinion. Smart as a computer engineer, maybe, but he really should not speak out of his depth.