Are you kidding? Thanks for contributing these observations and meditations. Much appreciated!
I think for me the "mutability and permanence" equation plays out in this fantasy that there was, at a given moment, a way to know all of at least the accepted wisdom about some topic, and that while I can't know everything about anything at all in the present moment, I could at least get caught up to the past.
That is naturally also an illusion.
I really like your point about being able to turn up some of the complexities of opinions at the time -- that's one of the motivations for textual studies in general, right? This is all a kind of informal scholarship. (Or maybe formal, I don't know -- do you write about the dated Internet guides? I think that would be fascinating.) (Now I am thinking of the episode of Buffy where Ms. Calendar calls herself a "technopagan".)
RE: Re: dated data
I think for me the "mutability and permanence" equation plays out in this fantasy that there was, at a given moment, a way to know all of at least the accepted wisdom about some topic, and that while I can't know everything about anything at all in the present moment, I could at least get caught up to the past.
That is naturally also an illusion.
I really like your point about being able to turn up some of the complexities of opinions at the time -- that's one of the motivations for textual studies in general, right? This is all a kind of informal scholarship. (Or maybe formal, I don't know -- do you write about the dated Internet guides? I think that would be fascinating.) (Now I am thinking of the episode of Buffy where Ms. Calendar calls herself a "technopagan".)