Angels of History, Morning and Harlem

Walter Benjamin, patron saint of cultural studies, famously wrote;

"There is a picture by Paul Klee called Angelus Novus. In it, an angel is depicted who appears as if trying to distance himself from something that he stares at. His eyes and mouth gape wide, his wings are stressed to their limit.

The Angel of History must look this way; he has turned to face the past. Where we see a constant chain of events, he sees only a single catastrophe incessantly piling ruin upon ruin and hurling them at his feet.

He would probably like to stop, waken the dead, and correct the devastation - but a storm is blowing hard from Paradise, and it is so strong he can no longer fold his wings.

While the debris piles toward the heavens before his eyes, the storm drives him incessantly into the Future that he has turned his back upon.

What we call Progress is this storm."

Which sort of knocks Juice Newton's Angel of the Morning and U2's Angel of Harlem into a cocked hat, eh?

On "Progress", I'd recommend

The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology by Langdon Winner
Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway by Clifford Stoll
All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity by Marshall Berman
Anything on technoscience by Donna Haraway or Cynthia Cockburn

I mean to get around to
The Myth of Progress by Tom Wessels
A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
False Dawn by John Gray
Vandana Shiva's latest stuff