Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Does the way in which he made the reference indicate that Andrew Sullivan doesn't know who Orson Scott Card is? Glenn Reynolds certainly does. And they are both right that Card's article on North Korea and China is well worth reading. Card has actually been writing interesting stuff on the war on a weekly basis since pretty much right after September 11, 2001.

It's kind of funny. As the blogosphere has grown, there has been lots of interaction between the those who came into it from the techie side (in blog terms led by Dave Winer and perhaps connected a little to the slashdot crowd) and those who came into it from the journalism and lawyerly side (let by Sullivan, Mickey Kaus and Josh Marshall, perhaps). The two crowds seem to largely get on okay, but once in a while its clear that the reference points of the two sides are different. There are very few people on the techie side who haven't read Ender's Game .

Interestingly enough, this division seems much less apparent the younger are the people you are looking at. Smart younger people are techies almost by definition, and this is reflected in what they watch and read as well. It's an interesting development. There are older people who understand both sides (Glenn Reynolds and Virginia Postrel perhaps), but they are much more common in the echo-boomers born in 1980 or so. If you are over 30 and like this then you are not like other people. If you are under 25, you are like plenty of other people.

Update: I suspect another division between the two groups is that the people who come from the tech direction are today cursing and swearing about the Eldred v Ashcroft decision, whereas most of those who come from the journalism and law side are not.

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