4.0279 More on "University as Clearinghouse" (2/37)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Fri, 13 Jul 90 17:04:53 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0279. Friday, 13 Jul 1990.


(1) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 90 15:11 PDT (15 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0261 Clearing Houses for Information?

(2) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 09:53:02 -0400 (22 lines)
From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield)
Subject: "Mike Heim's comment on the University Clearinghouse"

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 90 15:11 PDT
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0261 Clearing Houses for Information?

Oh by the way, I think Confucius was working against a vast cultural
catastrophe that preceded his era: the destruction of all written
things by that man Chin chi Huang, the Great tyrant megalomaniac who
unified China for the first time. Capital punishment to own a book
under him. Well, it was all destroyed, thousands of years of
achievement. But then, there are the Bamboo Annals, a reputed
discovery of the chief historical records, and he was their annotator.
But...how to discover what the terms were and meant? after such a lapse,
hiatus, lacuna? That was his problem, and a hell of a problem it was.
We however suffer from a plethora of writings. Does it come to the same
thing, sort of? Confusion?
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 09:53:02 -0400
From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield)
Subject: "Mike Heim's comment on the University Clearinghouse"

Oh, these are deep, dark thoughts! Mike may be right that McLuhan
was "split" by the very "holism" (my term) he elected to adopt in
the spirit of information tolerance. Did he indeed become an
information generalist, open to all linked information, and thus
lose the tighter humanistic focus that helps provide a counterbalance
to the pragmatism of technology and the Information Age? Are those
of us in literary and quantitative studies, including structuralism
and stylo-statistics, changing the bandwidth of literary studies?

Or is McLuhan's comment to a surprised movie-goer and would-be McLuhan
critic in _Annie Hall_ (while Woody Allen delightedly eavesdrops in line)
to be believed? (Roughly, since dimmed by the slightly decayed memory:
"I AM Marshall McLuhan, and I just wanted to say that I heard what you
said. You don't understand anything about my work.")

Regards,
Joel D. Goldfield
Language Outreach, Dartmouth College