Philosopher and intellectual-of-quite-a-few trades Joseph Heath hasn’t found the time recently to post anything to his blog In Due Course (well, not his blog as such, but a blog he regularly contributes to). I’m not paranoid enough to think that this is because I left a very ill-tempered comment on his most recent post all the way back in May. But still...anything is possible.
But luckily he hasn’t been completely off the radar, giving this keynote speaker address at a Canadian college in the beginning of October and in the process dropping the real reason for his absence from his blog (he's writing a book on climate change):
It’s only been viewed about a hundred times, and the one comment amusingly notes that Heath is a much better writer than a speaker. It is true that Heath talks a lot like a highly enthusiastic IT service officer, and he did drop the interesting biographical detail that he was interested in AI design when he was still in his “anarchist phase”. (This certainly explains why his writings sometimes have a somewhat technocratic flavour to them). He at least proves to be much livelier company than, say, Richard Sennett, who seems intent on putting all his listeners into a coma.
It’s probably too much to ask that Enlightenment 2.0 – the ostensible reason for him giving this address – gets a bit more of a sales boost as a result of his talk. But there’s still not much evidence that Enlightenment 2.0 has been much appreciated beyond Canadian academia. I recently got the library I work at to purchase it, so now it's just a matter of badgering people to check it out.
On top of that, my library/employer is also, due to my best nerd efforts, the only library in Australia to have a copy of his first book, The Efficient Society.
Yep, I'm definitely just a little bit obsessed with this guy...
But luckily he hasn’t been completely off the radar, giving this keynote speaker address at a Canadian college in the beginning of October and in the process dropping the real reason for his absence from his blog (he's writing a book on climate change):
It’s only been viewed about a hundred times, and the one comment amusingly notes that Heath is a much better writer than a speaker. It is true that Heath talks a lot like a highly enthusiastic IT service officer, and he did drop the interesting biographical detail that he was interested in AI design when he was still in his “anarchist phase”. (This certainly explains why his writings sometimes have a somewhat technocratic flavour to them). He at least proves to be much livelier company than, say, Richard Sennett, who seems intent on putting all his listeners into a coma.
It’s probably too much to ask that Enlightenment 2.0 – the ostensible reason for him giving this address – gets a bit more of a sales boost as a result of his talk. But there’s still not much evidence that Enlightenment 2.0 has been much appreciated beyond Canadian academia. I recently got the library I work at to purchase it, so now it's just a matter of badgering people to check it out.
On top of that, my library/employer is also, due to my best nerd efforts, the only library in Australia to have a copy of his first book, The Efficient Society.
Yep, I'm definitely just a little bit obsessed with this guy...
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