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February 21, 2005
The Difficult Internet, Part 2: Eason Jordan Was Hung By the Mobb
For those that have dipped into Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, you are familiar with the character of the Mobb. Amorphous, unprincipled, uncivil, capricious, shifty, and wholly volatile, they collectively have quite an effect on how history is made. The Mobb riots, hangs, sets fires, rescues criminals, and in general wreaks havoc with the organizing forces and principles of the great men of the age: Newton, Leibniz, Queen Elizabeth and King Louis, et al. The gatekeepers, tastemakers, builders, and enforcers of society know that their work may be well and good (or ill and bad), but they are still subject to the caprices of the Mobb.
On the grand scale, the Mobb acts rarely, but when it does, no amount of words and only enormous amounts of action change its course. The Mobb is incited by an unholy brew of troublemakers, rumor-mongers, newspapers, common sense, popular belief, and human desire. The Mobb is part of what made life cheap and Locke fearful in pre-modern Europe.
Eason, Rather, and all other kings of the age: meet the Blogg.
Watch your back, because you might be next, or might be between the Blogg and what's next.
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Posted by Noel at 05:29 PM
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