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Showing posts from June 11, 2016

NO MORE WALLS: PART ONE — THE ICONIC WALL-RAISER

Walls. The very symbol of curtailment, of intransigence, of closed societies, of dead ends. I think I can safely state that, not since the fall of the Berlin Wall more than a quarter-century ago, has there been so much talk about walls and fences in the United States and Europe. And, unfortunately, not about their coming down, but about putting them up. Isaac Newton, a key figure in the scientific revolution of the 17 th and 18 th centuries and, as such, a believer in breaking through the frontiers of knowledge and progress, once said that “we build too many walls and not enough bridges.” I contend that this quote has seldom been truer than it is today. This seems to be imperceptible to far too many people, given that we are daily immersed in social media and worldwide communications. But at the political core of our societies there is an ever more powerful movement afoot to separate global communications from physical contact and, indeed, from open society—to be ever more co