[tempest67]

Great point about the explosiveness of transition periods -- the Renaissance comes to mind as well, powered both by new intellectual openness and the thuggish Medicis. But calling for "defamiliarization" with free speech sounds kind of horrible -- like putting us in jail for a while so we appreciate our freedom of movement.

But isn't the process of technological upheaval a continual defamiliarization of sorts, with people constantly changing modes and methods of communication with every new development? We don't need to be subjected to tyranny to be continually thrown off balance and required to innovate...

[puzzle-out]

Sorry, I was using 'defamiliarisation' in the context of the Russian critical readings of literature - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization - I can see how it takes on sinister overtones outside of this, and I have no idea how it can be done in practice, other than looking at examples of tyranny elsewhere, contemporaneously or historically, of which there are many. There are certainly parallels between today's technological upheaval and say the English civil wars, when the printing press was being celebrated by people like Milton in similar terms - "as good as almost kill a man as kill a good book". I guess the point I'm getting at it is often the struggle that leads to the creativity - and thus why the Renaissance as you say is so interesting.

[tempest67]

Oh, like Brecht -- Verfremdung! I should have gotten that -- sorry. I love the Milton quote (and I wonder what it means in the age of technical hyper-reproducibility online...).

I also wonder what could accomplish defamiliarization nowadays, when satire and Dadaism have become commodities and every crap sitcom breaks the fourth wall. But perhaps utter economic collapse will do the trick?