Hackers are arrogant geek romantics. They lack the attentive spirit of inquiry.

University, as institutions, pre-date the information economy by many centuries and are not for-profit cultural entities, whose reason of existence (purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization not just download data into student skulls.

Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.

I wouldn't describe that "position" as "parasitic." I'd describe that experience as "edifying." I don't merely write from a critical intellectual distance. I actually live around here.

(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute

Everybody has a different Internet.

The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.