The state university prospers according to the extent to which it can sell itself to the people of the state.
Edward Bernays, “Propaganda”, p. 124
Many millennia ago, not a single human activity was remunerated — (perhaps) simply because the concept of money had not yet been invented. Today, there seems to be no human activity left for which there does not exist a milieu for remuneration — and I am quite certain that there exist many economists who undoubtedly prefer that I would have said “marketplace” instead of “milieu”.
I am reminded of an academic colleague (in information science) who was very prone to point out the many dozens or even hundreds of definitions for the German word “Satz”. In sharp contrast, I have a strong hunch that the present-day predisposition to general artificial intelligence is completely and utterly un-able to deal with the innumerable nuances that exist within the vast diversity of milieus.
Quite recently, for example, I have become fascinated by the way the English word “relationship” today has become particularly focused only on relationships among human beings. Apparently, anything non-human can no longer be in any kind of relationship with anything else (other than, perhaps, with a human being).
As I continue my trek through Edward Bernays’ “Propaganda”, I repeatedly note that this extremely myopic focus apparently did not exist just one hundred years ago.
Milieus exist everywhere, and perhaps most obviously as we travel through time and space. Yet the importance of nuance in milieus is probably most severely ignored if and when some ignoramus (and / or robot) traverses from common language across the wide variety of academic disciplines, let alone the finer differentiations across dialects, jargons and various other socio-linguistic phenomena.
Having written that, I can oddly sense John C. Dvorak’s critique and can almost hear him admonishing me from some cloud floating in heaven to steer clear of pedantry (and oddly also his often-repeated tip to not focus on obstacles). At the same time, I also remember another quip I’ve heard second-hand (via my father): “if it weren’t for us nit-pickers, we’d all be knee-deep in nits”.
