Hi Everyone, First off, I haven't studied much of Chomsky's work. Based on his mention in WITW, I thought it a good idea to find out a little about what he was up to these days. So, a few months ago, when 3 hour movie, comprised of various recent speaking engagements, and interviews with him, aired, I taped it and have watched it twice. I was suprised, and perhaps a little disapointed. It seemed to me that this extremely learned man spent most of his time, wraped up in the "content" of: "right" vs. "left", and "media and government" vs. "people and public", and argueing for changes on this basic level, backed up by tremendously well researched "evidence". Yes, he occasionally moved to the level just above "substituting-some-content-for-some-other-content", with a message of "challange the system", but it seemed to me it was much more as part of his basic arguement, rather than by design of the overall message. An (exagerated, and simple) example to further tease out the differences I noticed: Typically students walked into the lecture hall thinking "Y". Chomsky says that "Y" has been spoon fed to everyone for years. He then describes in great detail how the "Y" is manufactured, distributed, marketed and for the most part consumed by the masses. All the while he keeps using "X" as proof that "Y" is bad, and "X" represents hope, and may even be the solution. After an effective presentation, a student would leave thinking anywhere on the specturm, from: "X" is totally true, I can't believe I thought "Y" for so long, to: "X" is wrong. They may just be doing little more than switching sides of a metaphoric fence. Although I don't think it is his main message or intention, I think the real value in his work is for those that can find the message hidden in between the two extremes: "challanging the Y's and X's" that a person thinks about. I think there is also a real oppertunity being missed by Chomsky, by not being aware of the distinction, and/or not acting on it, which might encourage further process discovries, such as: How do I decide what letters I will think?, How do I describe the set of letters in the alphabet to another person?, How do I know that I can trust what I am thinking? What tests/exercises can I use to differentiate Y's from X's (when I don't have someone around to tell me the difference)? What are the benifits/drawbacks of thinking X vs. Y, and/or any other letters? So those are my initial thoughts based on my very limited exposure to Chomsky's work. I'm interested in other people's impressions of his work in regards to content vs form. Thanks, Mark MacLean