How the World Works - Salon.com

How the World Works - Salon.com

I'm a Globalization nerd, and the blog above has been my favorite site on the web for several months now. But today, Andrew Leonard excelled his already very readable prose, taking that mighty leap from the merely Global to the Apocalyptic. He has peered into the Cauldron of Cerridwen, and seen long-dead warriors rising from the depths of cyberspace. He knows what it's like when "the abyss looks back into you." In short, he's discovered MUDs.

I spend the plurality of my on-line time reading articles and listening to news on the subject of Globalism. This is not because I'm a newshound, really. I am, but that doesn't explain the specific focus. It is instead this: I'm also a fan of Speculative Fiction. Specifically, I like apocalyptic literature, anything from the Book of Enoch to Revelation to Neuromancer. My favorite book is 1984, best read in intertextual dialog with Diamond Dogs. I first read it in high-school (in 1984). I especially enjoy CyberPunk, which spawned not just a literary genre, but an entire post-apocalyptic aesthetic (for which reason alone I'm a fan of techno music).

Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley1792-1822