The question is a pose

An exchange in an online question-and-answer session with the writer Ursula Le Guin:

Question: As opposed to the standard model of time travellers projected into previously lived cultural patterns, what do you make of the concept "collective experience of temporal variation," such as stalled, recursive or redundant sequences of year sets. I am thinking of collective delusion or the social construction of reality, wherein mere participation in humanity's elaborated schedules makes distance between avowed temporal judgments and an undercurrent of more objective time. For instance, what would happen if global culture lost track of the passage of the years due to the complexity of information elaborating its rote performance? I am thinking of this not so much from a narrative science fiction perspective as an anthropological dissonance between (world) culture and context.
Le Guin: Sorry, the more I read your question the stupider I feel.

From Pseuds' Corner by way of Ansible, two publications that have perfected the art of mockery.

2004/03/07 · 0 COMMENTS · Link