Word: contact
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...great revolutions--against colonialism, racism, violence. His concept of nonviolent resistance liberated one nation and sped the end of colonial empires around the world. His marches and fasts fired the imagination of oppressed people everywhere. Like the millions of Indians who pressed around his funeral cortege seeking darshan--contact with his sanctity--millions more have sought freedom and justice under the Mahatma's guiding light. He shines as a conscience for the world. The saint and the politician go hand in hand, proclaiming the power of love, peace and freedom...
...first step is to delete the word suddenly from that last sentence. For this giant social brain has been taking shape, and hastening change, for a long, long time. Not just since Emerson's day, when the telegraph--sometimes called the "Victorian Internet"--made long-distance contact instantaneous, but since the very dawn of the human experience. For tens of thousands of years, technology has been drawing humanity toward the epic, culminating convergence we're now witnessing...
...suggests that as of 50,000 B.C., during the Middle Paleolithic, the social brain was not humming very vibrantly. There were only 2 million or 3 million "neurons"--a.k.a., people--scattered across the whole planet, and lacking fiber optics or even postal service, they weren't exactly in constant contact...
...benefits that keep us plugging into the Internet, it can be alienating. (Is it just me, or is e-mail a much poorer substitute for face-to-face contact than a phone call is? And if so, why am I letting e-mail crowd out my phone calls?) There is indeed the sense sometimes that, like neurons, we subordinate ourselves to the efficiency of the larger whole--that technology wins in the end, that culture trumps biology. As Emerson put it, "There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,--Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town...
...they await a March 7 trial, the Kelsos are forbidden to have any contact with their son while authorities try to line up a suitable long-term placement. The hospital has been deluged with calls offering sympathy and support, as well as some from other parents of severely handicapped children urging that the Kelsos not be judged too harshly. Steven is medically stable, says hospital spokeswoman Terri Greenley, "but we'll keep him here to make sure he gets whatever he needs, whether it's medical care or a smile...