(My '69 VW bug would never forgive me for adding silicon to oil...) : : I was wondering if any of you have taken current (and future) technology into account when deciding your blueprints for the future? Taking into account that alot of ideologies that move back and forward were penned before the "communications revolution", and while alot of it is fundamentally true, are they relevant?
: As Barry would say, the fact that people are getting screwed from a longer distance doesn't mean they're not being screwed any more.
I wonder what that means?
: (except he'd probably phrase it slightly differently).
: I say this as someone who has been connected to the net for 8 years now (I remember the 'net before it was a graphical medium!); the recent history of the Internet has shown nothing as much as the existing capitalist companies engaging in colonialism; lacking a new country to invade, they just decided to try and invade the 'net and exploit it. There's no noticeable change in power relationships.
Colonialism via the net. It's much easier that way I suppose. The capitalist companies make their demands over the net and if the countries being colonized don't agree to those demands, why, it's a simple matter of...what? spamming them to death? C'mon Far...
: (Except the geek one; a geek in real life is usually a scrawny wimp; here, we are the masters and the magicians; as sundry companies found out last week.)
(Masters and magicians? I liken them more to hit and run drivers.)
: As to 'the 'net revolution', my money's on the South Sea Bubble...
I hate to say this, but, well, it wouldn't be the first economic bubble in history. Certainly after the passage of the other bubbles everyone did not lay down and die. People learn from their mistakes and keep on truckin'.
: : Dont take this as a stab at any particular ideology, but surely computers/telecommunications must be figured into your equations.
: They can be useful; as the existence of McSpotlight demonstrates; the message can go to a larger selection of people than ever before. Of course, the flip side is also true; you can be tracked and traced as never before.
I haven't been around that long, not as long as you, but the message that is going out, while it is reaching people who may not otherwise have received it previously, is also being countered by other's with their own message.
Let's hope those blood-hounds keep improving their tracking abilities....
: It's a technology; it is inherently neither good nor bad; where used to free people it can be liberating; where used to propel the existing capitalist status quo it is entirely the opposite.
And any cursory examination of history will show that Capitalism, mixed w/ equal amounts of law, will result in freedoms the likes of which has never been seen before. Maybe even too many freedoms.
: : I realise that the majority of the worlds population cannot afford computers etc, and that they are all produced by evil corporations, so dont bother with that angle.
: Not everyone can afford books; that doesn't render books inherently bad.
: Where the wealth division is bad is that it reinforces the class divide; the educated and wealthy classes will receive a better education and have access to more learning materials than the lower classes. This isn't per se the fault of the book.
The class divide? Capitalism, combined w/ the rule of law, allows people to escape that divide. It is a divide only to the extent that the individual allows. The poorest quintile today are not the same as those of twenty years ago. Or fifty. The rich of a century ago are not necessarily the rich of today. Today the net is creating the new rich, tomorrow it'll be new drugs and the day after that it'll be chemistry. Who knows what after that?
: : I just want to hear how you think present and future technologies will fit into society under a different regime, for surely it has a large bearing on what will work and what wont.
: Well, to be perfectly frank, unless we as a species clean up our act PDQ, we quite probably don't have a high-tech future. Computers, books and heavy industry are wonderful things in the right hands for the good of all, but when precious natural resources are consumed to make Happy Meal toys we are frittering away energy we can ill afford to lose.
: Farinata.
It's always the "...in the right hands..." that worries me. May I take a guess though? I suspect the 'right hands' would be defined by you as those with advanced degrees. The new Bhramins.
