5 Comments

I'd be interested in why you would focus on "Gutenberg Galaxy vs Social Media", rather than "Gutenberg Galaxy vs Fox News", or even television in general?

Expand full comment

Minor Typo, maybe? Did you intend the first sentence of final paragraph to be something like "In this context, *cries that the mores* of those in the past were different from ours, and that we should not judge them, *are* mostly demands that we not focus. . . "

Expand full comment

I fear that your ambition to duplicate MacAskill's success is hopeless; MacAskill's book is popular for the usual reason that people read it in what they want to be told. Not that MacAskill has shaped his message for this purpose, of course; he is always intelligent, usually interesting, and quite often correct (more often than most of us.) He views his claims about the future as a logical extension of his life's moral project to protect and nurture the unprivileged. But for most of his readers, the appeal of longtermism lies in its denial of shorttermism; it is a way to justify comforting the comfortable. I do not think that you would want success at this price.

Expand full comment