Word: modernizations
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...MYOPIC MODERN HERO; Einstein on the beach without a paradigm; Steven Jay Gould gone off the deep end in search of the gecko and the albino gorilla--the name of this man is Mr. Palomar...
Calvino takes for his instrument a highly unliterary device: that great observation post of modern technological man, the gigantic telescope on Mount Palomar in Southern California. He perches a pair of unsteady eyeglasses on the balding crown of the observatory. The critical mass of our atomic age is passe; we have moved on to critical distance in the what-comes-next age. Middle-aged Mr. Palomar is the clumsy seer. Mr. Calvino is the critic, shooting from the hip the question for scientific man in his midlife crisis--"'What color is your parachute?'...or haven...
This is Calvino-speak, a language that is always looking for and talking about language, a model of words to fight the entropy of things. Calvino leaves us with a cozy picture of the outcome of evolutionary time, the image of the modern mind: Mr. Palomar falling asleep holding in his dreams the image of a great white ape holding an old rubber tire...
What better locale for high-speed writing on the symbol-strewn walls of modern culture than in a cheese shop in Paris? Calvino enters wielding pen like bludgeon or scalpel, a bull in a cheese shop, breaking all the codes. He leaves the Reader with a picture of Mr. Palomar, balancing notebook on knee, pen on paper, scribbling down names, sizes, colors, mold formations, as if his frantic doodling could create another map of the stars, a gastronomy of everyday life. Mr. Palomar does take on a persona, and at the same time becomes a recognizable character, when he sonic...
Where we have not done so well is education. We have not invested enough by anybody's standards, not even our own. Our major task is going to be changing our way of thinking, to think more positively, more modern. We must be able to use technology and modern methods in our daily work...