35 Years of reason

A history in excerpts

From the December 2003 issue

(Page 13 of 13)

December 2002

Wealthier is healthier for both people and the envir-onment. As societies become richer and more technologically adept, their air and water become cleaner, they set aside more land for nature, their forests expand, they use less land for agriculture, and more people cherish wild species. All indications suggest that the 21st century will be the century of ecological restoration, as humanity uses physical resources ever more efficiently, disturbing the natural world less and less.

-- "Wilting Greens," Ronald Bailey

If you regard the United States as 280 million not-very-savvy people who receive their information primarily from the 11 p.m. Action News broadcast, Crossfire, or talk radio, then you might be depressed.

But the glass is not merely half empty. In 1980 there was essentially no desktop publishing. By 2000, a single newsletter-publishing company...was pulling down $100 million in annual revenue. In July 1992 the World Wide Web was in its demo stage. By July 2002, a single Web publishing company...could report that new sites were being created using..."Blogger" technology at a rate of 1.5 per minute....Some cautious optimists might suggest, gently, that the public is better served now that it need not get its news exclusively from Walter Cronkite and the locally dominant daily.

-- "Woe is Media," Matt Welch

July 2003

The deepest utopian appeal of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter is not to an adolescent yearning for a world inhabited by wizards, hobbits, and Jedi knights, but to a modern consciousness torn by mutually contradictory desires....We wish at once to be free and to be a god to others. We would return to an idyllic past and progress forward to an unbounded future. The truly magical power of these films and stories is that they allow us...to believe that as modern individuals we can be both at home in the world and at one with ourselves.

-- "Back to the Future," Michael Valdez Moses

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