I was 15. We were getting out of Vietnam. I was - as most teenagers do - was learning how to think as an adult, and not as a child. On that day, I watched this, and nothing was ever the same again.
This was the intellectual turning point for me, and it's now available to anyone who wants it, courtesy of Mr. Gore's most excellent Information Superhighway. It's a little dismaying to compare the 49,000 page views of this to the 49 Million (or whatever) from Honeybadger.
That series had quite an effect on me, too.
ReplyDeleteI think it was the last episode where he was using radars of different frequencies on several different sized objects. He was using it to show how as the wavelength gets shorter, resolution increases, and used it as a parable about how as knowledge advances, we can understand things on a more and more precise level.
He also used it as a cautionary tale about becoming arrogant in the use of that knowledge, and using it for evil purposes.
It was the episode that ending with him walking through the mud at Auschwitz, talking about how knowledge does not equate to wisdom, and he knelt down and picked up a handful of the mud that literally contained the ashes of his relatives.
Very moving.
It was episode 11, "Knowledge or Certainty" that I was thinking about.
ReplyDeleteBlasted evil music copy-write on episode 1. darn you EMI!
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