Gloria Origgi is an Italian philosopher, and a tenured senior researcher at CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) in Paris. Her latest book is Reputation: What It Is and Why It Matters (2017), translated by Stephen Holmes and Noga Arikha.
There is an underappreciated paradox of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our advanced hyper-connected liberal democracies: the greater the amount of information that circulates, the more we rely on so-called reputational devices to evaluate it. What makes this paradoxical is that the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced.
Kayaking down intercoastal waterways, trudging through marshland, building catapults and even riding roller coasters are just a few of the many activities John Paul II Catholic School science classes have participated in throughout the past two years.
Cue scene: The waitress at my birthday dinner has a smile that seems tailored just for me. She’s just a little shy but very sweet. Blue streaks in her hair. With 7 credit cards, we pay up, my friends and I, joking about the small profit the bank makes on our good time. I waive adieu and we go in for some late night jazz at a bar across the street. Much later, that same smile graces my eyes. It’s loud in here but we manage to talk poetry just as I’m called on stage to play. She leaves with a friend and I can’t reverse her momentum as she walks out.
