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May 1, 2003
One year older
Well, I'm one year older today but so much is going on that I didn't mind the fact that I spent the day at work at the evening in class.
Tonight I did a presentation on democracy, social software, morals and values. Before the presentation however, as we were discussing utilitarianism and pragmatism, I drew some similarities with the war in Iraq. The idea of making an "example" out of them is what I drew the contrast with. While I was commenting on the Iraq and utilitarianism parallel that the war had, a woman said war "something that doesn't need to be discussed." Awhile after my comments, I presented my ideas on social software and empowering people. I talked about forcing ourselves to examine our ideas by putting them up to a microscope.
After my ideas, in a stunning turn of events, this woman who said we should avoid discussion about war ditched her whole presentation and started talking about how her whole family is in the military, how individuals who haven't served really can't say anything about what soldiers do until they've done it themselves, and how they are fighting for pillars of our society such as free speech. I made a short rebuttal but it was too late and I for some reason couldn't disagree with war yet support the very people who are fighting it.
This has been all over the blogsphere lately with discussions on how people are villified like the Dixie Chicks and are called unpatriotic.
I also felt good about my social software discussion because I got to let a lot of people who aren't technology savvy know about platforms for free speech such as blogging.
Posted by beamz at May 1, 2003 12:11 AM
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