Yuval Noah Harariの "Nexus" を読んでいます。Chapter 5, Decisions: The Technological Pendulumからの引用です。
Totalitarian regimes choose to use modern information technology to centralize the flow of information and to stifle truth in order to maintain order. As a consequence, they have to struggle with the danger of ossification. When more and more information flows to only one place, will it result in efficient control or in blocked arteries and, finally, a heart attack?
...
Fast-forward twenty years, and it was the Soviet system that had become unworkable. The sclerotic gerontocrats on the podium in Red Square were a perfect emblem of a dysfunctional information network, lacking any meaningful self-correcting mechanisms. Decolonization, globalization, technological development, and changing gender roles led to rapid economic, social, and geopolitical changes. But the gerontocrats could not handle all the information streaming to Moscow, and since no subordinate was allowed much initiative, the entire system ossified and collapsed.
"ossification" と "ossified" の意味を原形の "ossify " で辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: ossify (something) (formal, disapproving) to become or make something fixed and unable to change: an ossified political system
・Cambridge English Dictionary: If habits or ideas ossify, or if something ossifies them, they become fixed and unable to change: Years of easy success had ossified the company's thinking and it never faced up to the challenge of the new technology.
・Vocabulary.com: Ossify means to become bony. When a baby is born, some of their "bones" are actually soft cartilage, which allows for growth. As the child grows, these soft areas ossify into actual bone. The knee cap, for example, begins to ossify between ages 3 and 6.
From the literal "to become bony" meaning of ossify, we get the more figurative meaning: to become rigid or hardened. Although you and other young people may be willing to effect social changes, many older voters have ossified in their opinions. Convincing these rigid thinkers that these changes are good for the country will be quite the challenge. If your kids sneak food to their rooms, you may find ossified cheese under the beds. Even mice won't touch that!
Totalitarian regimes choose to use modern information technology to centralize the flow of information and to stifle truth in order to maintain order. As a consequence, they have to struggle with the danger of ossification. When more and more information flows to only one place, will it result in efficient control or in blocked arteries and, finally, a heart attack?
...
Fast-forward twenty years, and it was the Soviet system that had become unworkable. The sclerotic gerontocrats on the podium in Red Square were a perfect emblem of a dysfunctional information network, lacking any meaningful self-correcting mechanisms. Decolonization, globalization, technological development, and changing gender roles led to rapid economic, social, and geopolitical changes. But the gerontocrats could not handle all the information streaming to Moscow, and since no subordinate was allowed much initiative, the entire system ossified and collapsed.
"ossification" と "ossified" の意味を原形の "ossify " で辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: ossify (something) (formal, disapproving) to become or make something fixed and unable to change: an ossified political system
・Cambridge English Dictionary: If habits or ideas ossify, or if something ossifies them, they become fixed and unable to change: Years of easy success had ossified the company's thinking and it never faced up to the challenge of the new technology.
・Vocabulary.com: Ossify means to become bony. When a baby is born, some of their "bones" are actually soft cartilage, which allows for growth. As the child grows, these soft areas ossify into actual bone. The knee cap, for example, begins to ossify between ages 3 and 6.
From the literal "to become bony" meaning of ossify, we get the more figurative meaning: to become rigid or hardened. Although you and other young people may be willing to effect social changes, many older voters have ossified in their opinions. Convincing these rigid thinkers that these changes are good for the country will be quite the challenge. If your kids sneak food to their rooms, you may find ossified cheese under the beds. Even mice won't touch that!
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