Did you know that the etymology of Narcissus is “narcosis” or numbing?

McCluhan points this out in Extensions of Man.

It reminds me of peering into the internet as Narcissus peered into the pool and saw his own reflection.

We forget that he didn’t recognize it, only fell in love with it.

Just as one is likely not to notice the echo chamber effect of seeking information online, we look into the pool of data and see something that attracts and distracts us.

We don’t realize that we are alone in a room looking at pixels and seeing nothing more than our own projected image, falling in love with it, I guess.

Happy stuff.

After reading this in McCluhan this morning, I then I ran across this passage in T. S. Eliot’s play, “The Family Reunion.”

“You have gone through life in sleep,

Never woken to the nightmare, I tell you, life would be unendurable

If you were wide awake.”

I’m afraid I’m still a bit exhausted from my vacation. I know Eileen was still very tired all day yesterday. I played well at church.

Came home and continued playing through Beethoven piano sonatas. I do find this satisfying. Later we visited Mom.

She seems to be doing okay.

I will be able to take most of today off. All I have scheduled is my six month check up with my doctor.

It looks like next week, we will possibly begin the renovation of our first floor in earnest. We meet with the contractor a week from today.

In the meantime I will need to continue clearing away stuff from the areas where they will work. This will entail much less work than moving the books to the second floor did. I will need to clear a wall of a bookshelf and the harpsichord and empty completely the pantry in the kitchen and the bathroom. Easy stuff.

1. Your Smartphone Is Watching You – NYTimes.com

 

“In the surveillance state, everyone knows you’re a dog.” I am bothered by the notion I keep seeing expressed that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Yikes. Where are people’s brains? I understand we live in a fishbowl of surveillance, but the idea that there is no protected speech or privacy left and that the state can use all information to it’s benefit and the private citizen’s detriment erodes democracy. I don’t know what the answer is but it’s not to give the state free reign that’s for sure.

2. Progress At Work, But Mothers Still Pay a Price – NYTimes.com

“HERE’S an old riddle: a boy and his father are in a car crash and the father is killed instantly. The boy is airlifted to the best hospital in the region and prepped for emergency surgery by one of the top surgeons in the country. The surgeon rushes in, sees the boy, and says “I can’t operate on this patient. He’s my son.” Who is the surgeon”

More people respond that the surgeon is the dead man’s gay partner rather than his wife.

3. Peeping President Obama – NYTimes.com

The assault on privacy continues.

4. Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance | World news | guardian.co.uk

This is the article I ended up reading about this issue. It seems to be part of a series that broke the story.