Virginia Postrel
Virginia Postrel
Virginia Inman Postrelis an American political and cultural writer of broadly libertarian, or classical liberal, views...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 January 1960
CountryUnited States of America
biggest cartoons control creativity desire future life neat progress threat utopian work
The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.
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Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
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There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Desire and innovation will trump policy, the argument goes, as clever programmers circumvent controls.
consumers desires knew producers surprising uncover uses
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.
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Surprise drives progress because innovation depends on the sort of knowledge no one can gather in a central place.
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Even before Sputnik, scientists and policy makers worried that not enough Americans were studying science.
children freaks less tube
Like the 'test tube babies' born of in vitro fertilization, cloned children need not be identifiable, much less freaks or outcasts.
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Habituation is indeed a fact of human psychology. That's one reason we like novelty, including different cuts of jeans.
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Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.
cannot offer science
Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees.
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The United States government approaches patient choice in medication as Singapore does free speech: its pronouncements sound reasonable and tolerant until you threaten its prerogatives.
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The mere existence of 'Buffy' proves the declinists wrong about one thing: Hollywood commercialism can produce great art. Complex and evolving characters. Playful language. Joy and sorrow, pathos and elation. Episodes that dare to be different - to tell stories in silence or in song. Big themes and terrible choices.
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Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for martyrs. But life is not supposed to be about dying well. It is about living well.
possess response
Glamour is not something you possess but something you perceive, not something you have but something you feel. It is a subjective response to a stimulus.