<nettime> Ai is to nukes as '25 is to '50

[Max Herman via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

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Iron curtain, red scare, missile gap
Huac a mole
Mutually assured dereliction

Marlowe, Wiener, Faustus and the golem inc.:

"How am I glutted with conceit of this...."

Really it's the garment of culture we weave
That forms the fabric of the outcome
Tone and gesture avert a Cuban crisis
It's why "lie there my art"
Why "I'll drown my book"

The waste land, fisher king, the question:
Who does the grail serve?
What does the allegory personify?

Drink deep or else taste not the Pierian spring.

"A cui esperienza grazia serba."

Sometimes what worked before, or so we thought, doesn't anymore.
Then labels have to change
We have to see with fresh eyes again

Beginners mind reborn again
To each their very own
There must be enough, say half
Like Pater said.
Diaphaneity perchance.

+

FAUSTUS. How am I glutted with conceit of this!
     Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
     Resolve me of all ambiguities,
     Perform what desperate enterprise 13 I will?
     I'll have them fly to India for gold,
     Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,
     And search all corners of the new-found world
     For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;
     I'll have them read me strange philosophy,
     And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
     I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
     And make swift Rhine circle fair 14 Wertenberg;
     I'll have them fill the public schools with silk, 15
     Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;
     I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
     And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
     And reign sole king of all the provinces;
     Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,
     Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp-bridge,
     I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

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