Brian Eno: Success ruins artists – Salon.com
What does Doctor Pangloss have to say about how 21st-century human ingenuity is being channeled into inventing juicy gizmos like the iPad, instead of preparing for a world without oil, which, if even conservative estimates are correct, will be upon us by the time my daughter is in her late 20s?

The hope is that some of these gizmos become the tools by which we make those preparations. It’s a worry: Are we entertaining ourselves to death, or are we actually learning new ways of coping? Only time will tell.

People discuss the merrits of their f’ing phones (((Android!!! Apple!!!) with more emotion and involvement than Climate Change. I have wondered whether that is because phones are safe in the sense that they are not political. Americans don’t seem to be very good at discussing politics (((perhaps Americans don’t have as much practice talking politics compared to, say, the regular English pub or Italian cafe discussions, and they often see things too polarized – on the other hand we can’t say that Italy or the UK are especially successful politically, can we…))), so maybe people find phones a safe object of discussion and disagreement. Let’s avoid religion and politics, but let’s really get involved in the phone we carry..

It’s just a phone. Who gives a shit what operating system it runs! If you are happy with yours, I think that’s great, but let’s talk about more important things, like climate change, like education, like the fact that without charging a realistic amount of taxes (((more than currently))) we cannot build a great culture and country, period.