The Most Influential Person of the Past 1,000 Years

While we're on the topics of text messages as writing, post cards as literature, and the credibility of blogs....check out who A & E claimed to be The Most Influential Person of the Past 1,000 Years (or should I say...The Guy Who Made This All Possible).

Being that we are in an American literature course, a reoccurring theme we've discussed in class includes what it means to be free and have the right to freedom. Everyone knows the US prides itself on Freedom; "it's a free country," "Roosevelt's 5 Freedoms," "free speech," etc.

After watching this short segment from A & E's 25 part series, Biography of the Millennium, which aired in late 1999, it seemed to be a no brainer that Johan Gutenberg was to be chosen to be The Most Influential Person of the Past 1,000 Years. Mind you, this segment was aired nearly 12 years ago, but a few thoughts on this tv clip:

-Kofi Annan, the then Secretary General of the UN, was astounded to know that government news tips were being leaked through the fax machine. I wonder how he feels now...

-David Remnick, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker, said:

"The effect of the press on our lives is essential. We can't, as a democracy, live without it. It infuriates us, there's lots of bad press. But I've seen the opposite. I've lived in the Soviet Union in the bad old days. I've seen the effect of the 'non-press' on a people. And if that's the option, then I think that every American would say 'Count me out.'"

This got me to thinking about Americans' ability to express ourselves and how lucky one is to have that freedom. (side note: Facebook is known to be blocked by the government in nearly 27 countries around the world. I don't even want to know what would happen if the US government blocked facebook...) Nonetheless, it is interesting to think of how this idea applies to writing "in a time of terror" when writers grapple with the idea of what exactly it means to be free (is it the ability... as one theorist argues, to be able to be welcome and a home for whoever walks through our doors? to disseminate information and perspectives? to express oneself through writing? or is it something else?)

'One Sec'

The human race continues it's free fall into extinction. Good.

Above you can see an image from Gizmodo.com, entitled 'One Sec' (click image for link). I saw this image a while ago as it appeared on my friends "Google Buzz" thread through gmail. While the image encapsulates present day discussion and controversy regarding technology and the role it plays in our daily lives (especially when discussing naturalism, transcendentalism, post modernism, etc), it also is a clear comic display.

I found this description of gizmodo.com: "Gizmodo.com is a "technology weblog about consumer electronics...It's known for up-to-date coverage of the technology industry and the personal, humorous, sometimes very inappropriate writing style of the contributors." (thank you Wikipedia...)

From this description, it seems that gizmodo.com is making fun of themselves by posting this picture.

When looking at this picture, I thought back on our discussions on so many texts and authors (naturalism writers from the beginning of the course, Amy Lowell's "The Captured Goddess", Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow," Robert Frost's poems, various writers during the New Negro movement as they reminisce on their homeland (Africa), Dos Passos's piece of newspaper headlines, Proulx's Postcards, and the list goes on). The freedom found in nature vs. the poisonous captivity (so it seems) of industrial and technological advancement is conquered time and time again in literature, particularly in literary movements before and during post-modernism. I'm interested to see how nature and the natural world is going to creep into the "time of terror" movement (or whatever movement comes after post-modernism), or even if it will be worth noting, as we begin to reading Zigzagger this weekend.