Earthling

Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.

Beloved author and thinker Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night. I first found that out in many of my regular blog reads this morning.

At their worst, blogs as echo chamber dull you to the details. But at their best, hearing the same news told by lots of different sources in their own way, who you feel like you already know something about, can be comforting and insightful. You see each person's slightly different reaction to the same event, and get a fuller picture of what kind of an impact it has on the lives on individuals. The macro picture isn't always as important as lots of smaller pictures. In this case, it's like reading dozens of quiet and personal eulogies.

In going through the available clips of and about him on YouTube this morning I came across an interview he did with John Hockenberry within Second Life in August of 2006. Hockenberry asks him how he feels about Second Life and technology in general and here's what he said:

"I'm frequently an enemy of new technologies. But I love cellphones because I see people so happy and proud walking around...gesturing...you know? Like Karl Marx, I'm for anything that makes people happier."*

*Earlier in the interview he had explained that in Marx's famous quotation(Religion is the opium of the people) he was actually praising, not denigrating, the ability of religion to comfort the masses.

The full interview is available here.

Update: Thanks to Brian for the pointer to this video, and Austin and Reid for the Daily Show and Weekend Edition clips. Rachel points out that MediaBistro has collected a bunch more good links to interviews and such.