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TOMB_DUEL
February 5, 2011
About an interview with Gary Snyder
by Eric Tomb, from 2010. Broadcast on August 2, 2010,
on KVMR, in Nevada City, CA
This was the last of a series of interview (north-west of route 80,
shows ("Booktown"). Eric Tomb, had been doing near Tahoe).
them for 10 years, and for his closing show he
wanted to do something appropriate, bringing it http://www.archive.org/details/Booktown2August2010GarySnyder
back "full circle": he had started out with Ray http://kvmr.org/
Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines".
He, personally, was fascinated by Kurzweil's
ideas for a time, but found them "one-sided",
and for him, a corrective force was the essays BEYOND_WILD
of Gary Snyder in "The Practice of the Wild". WILD_MIND
RYDING_THE_BURN
So he had the idea of getting Kurzweil and STEADY
Snyder in an on-air conversation together...
but Kurzweil was hard to get, and Gary Synder WHAT_ARE_THEY_TO_ME
was a little dubious of the idea (Snyder's
not unreasonable take: the two of them are so
far apart it would probably be better if they
had lunch together first).
So as a second-best, Tomb interviewed Gary Synder,
leading off by asking him to comment on Kurzweil's
ideas...
First of all, I must say that Eric Tomb
is doing *brilliant* radio here: he's
using his own personal resonances as a
lens, and getting it to work. This is at You might say there's
least a bit risky: if you, the listener, a "gonzo" character
doesn't think much of the interviewer or to this, albeit not
of the interviewers ideas, then you won't the hyper/crazy
think of this interview; it will make it Hunter S variety.
doubly hard to use it to find out There's a blending of
something about the nominal subject, Gary subject and object.
Synder. There are two barriers to
overcome rather than the usual one.
GONZALES_LATER
Taking this "risk" makes a gain possible:
a typical interviewer considers the OLD_NEWS
subject in the light of The Issues of the
Day, there's a standardized set of things
we're all supposed to care about, and so I have a collection of a
every interview risks becoming the same dozen Naomi Oreskes
as every other. interviews as mp3s. I
really wonder why I
The involved interviewer off on a bothered downloading all
personal quest of his own may be of them, it seems
on a self-indulgent tangent, but unlikely I'll manage to
at least has a chance of doing listen to them all: and
something new. how likely is it that
any given interviewer is
going to punch through
the standard material
into new ground?
MERCHANTS_OF_DOUBT
Trying to bring together two
polar viewpoints, two viewpoints
that almost never even engage
with each other, that are barely
aware of each other's existence...
that strikes me as a noble goal.
Gary Snyder's immediate reaction:
"does Kurzweil really believe
this, or is he just trying to
sell books?"
That's characteristic of all of
these kinds of First Encounters.
HONEST_JOHN
Snyder goes on to comment
(1) we don't know all that much
about human intelligence, or for A fair objection to AI
that matter animal intelligence. enthusiasts (though
not unanswerable).
(2) Snyder calls the quest
for technological immortality
"profoundly unspiritual"; That's not really true.
comments that we don't know It's pretty clear what
what death is, either. death is, really, but a
lot of us are running
away from the obvious.
Here, Synder is
trying to flip the BOP
burden-of-proof to
the other side...
There's no real
reason to think
of death as anything
but the end.
If we "live on" it's
through the obvious
channels: the
memories of others,
and the works we
create while living.
At the end of the show,
Gary Synder brings it back
"full circle", suggesting
that webcast interviews The interviewer comments
might be the way to go in that this might be so,
the new technological era but he personally
of smart phones. doesn't have a cellphone
and it will be some
years before he has one.
He says something like:
"There are some new technologies
I'm happy to jump on, but some
I'm willing to pass up."
(See? The man is
a geeenniussss.)
CELLPHONES
Eric Tomb likes: A book by Joel
Garreau, about the 9 North
American Nations (which includes I'd heard of that book,
an "ecotopia"). but somehow it didn't
register it was by Garreau.
EDGE_CITY
Gary Snyder likes
Paul Flannery's
"The Eternal Frontier"
BRIDGES
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