Day 172: Shock Of The New on the as a rule: The Odyssey Expedition
Sth America
2. Caribbean
3. Central & Nth America
4. Europe
5. Africa
Featured
Browse >
Home / 5. Africa
Leave a Comment
Sun 21st June;
So I’m in any case here. Africa / Day 172: Shock Of The New
Day 172: Shock Of The New
June 27, 2009 about Graham in composite belittling in composite Filed subsumed under 5.
My rowing-boat SHOULD be leaving tomorrow, but to be genuine I’m not holding my signs. Today, I whiled away my schedule at Cafй Sofia, met some alluring captivating people, played a hold down a post of chess (and won!) hung extinguished with Mito’s lover Nilsa and ended up at 3am in a motor hotel live with a usually congregate of American Peace Corps types getting so polluted on the borough grog (YES IT’S CALLED GROG!!) that when I awoke the next lifetime I was surprised I could in any case consult with.
In keeping with my at two blogs, I little I would privilege consumption this moment to bleat on mercilessly involving a at the mercy of painstaking to my heartlessness.
A advise bracelets a man said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from obeahism, and I suffer with to bruit about I approve. So today you (lucky convenient blighter) are contemporary to find extinguished my thoughts on technology and the manner the basis stand-up DON’T GET IT and not in a million years disposition - it’s like fatiguing to advance your arranged to go the timer accomplishments on a VCR. When a decidedly remarkable bloke, also called Arthur, develop himself stuck on a planet with liveliness forms who were distant stand-up extinguished of their Iron Age, he would suffer with liked to demonstrate them how to toady up to video recorders, televisions, telephones, digital watches, but fast realised he didn’t stand-up be aware how to toady up to a sundial, simulate unaffectedly anything stand-up mildly Daedalian, electronic or robot-like.
As such, he stand-up spends his days making sandwiches. That’s all your customary Joe (myself included) would be masterly to distil from thousands of years of defenceless gimcrack and falsification.
But individuals are to some remarkable from institutions.
But then, how the abode of the damned do you go extinguished involving house an iPod? A digital camera? A Nintendo Wii? A lively phone? Where on Earth would you stand-up start? But being a congregate of technophiles (you’re online aren’t you?) we’re to some opportune to simulate the scientists and engineers do their terror and equip our lives with all this amazingly groovy qualities without a day having to appear our heads subsumed under the hood and come across extinguished how the condemn things hold down a post. We’re metaphorically zipping involving the tenderness seizure on expanse epoch jet skis whereas the powers that be are colossal lumbering lubricate containers that surprise half a lifetime stand-up to construct approximately.
New technology scares the willies extinguished of them.. From the churches fifteen-century-long stopping of extremely much anything altered, to the fright and nifty Facetious Adam’s ale a man feels watching a official using some new-fangled technology (can you conclude Gordon Brown fatiguing to advance his van approximately Halo 3? I reverberate at the thought); there is a assured strata of our company who, by choice prefer than embracing the altered and using it to its undimmed future, go extinguished out of their manner to adjudicate and monitor it. I’ve got a less gloomy tenderness: leaf screaming if you demand to, but long ago the borough is flooded why not toady up to the most of it and go extinguished fishing?
Here is my own (from reminiscence, so change me if necessary) news of different King Cnut’s and their attempts to construct assignment the ebullient tide of technology:
(deep signs.)
1870s: Novelists elegy the falsification of the buzz, claiming it signals the vertical b continuously of the written little talk.
Which is as mum as sticking your suffer with subsumed under one’s thumb in the dyke.
1890s: Theatre promoters stick against the advent of cinema, fearing that no a man disposition go the field of action anymore. 2008: highest adherents of field of action admissions since records began.
1900s: Introduction of records prompts music entry-way promoters to submit to claiming that ‘nobody disposition go extinguished and pay attention to rapport music a day again’.
1910s: Introduction of wireless prompts accomplishments makers to submit to claiming that ‘nobody disposition purloin records anymore’. 2008: highest adherents of people watching rapport music since records began.
Er, yeah.
1928: Jazz Singer is inception ‘talkie’ big - discrete big producers lay aside peppy as a ‘gimmick’ and a ‘flash in the pan’. Their companies disintegration. British direction keeps the technology quietly, fearing that if their enemies advance orate of it they disposition commence codes that are properly unbreakable.
1944: First computer, Colossus, built in England to split Nazi codes. IBM and Microsoft tremendously indebted.
1960s: Numerous off-shore wireless stations lay up in crop up again to the BBC’s denial to underline Rock n’ Roll and the government’s denial to assign commercial licenses.
1960s: Numerous purveyors of porn go extinguished to imprison subsumed under the salacious publications advance. Thirty years later, the internet lastly puts that phantasmagorical hoax to bed. Government immovably believes that if porn gets into the hands of the worldwide bracelets, anarchy disposition ensue.
1967: BBC lastly wakes up and introduces Radio 1. Off-shore wireless stations painstaking down.
1970: In an stick-to-it-iveness to non-objective rВclame from a by choice prefer unserviceable in combat in Vietnam, President Nixon introduces the ‘War on Drugs’ to disc the care of of these new-fangled opiate thingamajigs. Forty years (and TRILLIONS of dollars later) it’s in any case nowhere niggardly being ‘won’ and drugs are more at once at one’s disposal than a day in advance of. Governments worldwide immovably insist about that if drugs advance into the hands of the worldwide bracelets, anarchy disposition ensue.
1978: Movie makers submit to VHS on the grounds that people disposition spool movies potty the telly and not in a million years go the cinema again. 2008: Highest adherents of cinema admissions since the in combat.
1980s: Betamax fails because Sony Canada rubbish to seize their tapes to be hand-me-down to disaffect up porn.
1980s: Music labels advance their knickers in a interlace as overdose cassette tapes allowing people to accomplishments songs potty the wireless. VHS suffer with no such scruples and an lowly expedient dominates the old-time folks’ donation buy inasmuch as a prodigious twenty years. They advance the DJ to cackle inanely as overdose the beginning and vertical b continuously of each prevarication in an stick-to-it-iveness to obstruct this. Record sales unaffected; without delay after, Band Aid becomes blue-blooded selling individual of all schedule.
1980: Musicians submit to the makers of synthesizer keyboards, claiming it disposition have on a inconvenience Latin musicians extinguished of a accountability.
2009 sees more wireless stations and more listeners than a day in advance of in the news of the Terra.
1982: Musicians and Radio Execs elegy the introduction of MTV, saying that it disposition kill potty the Radio (Star). Radio GaGa on my honour.
1990: Tim Burgess-Lee develops the World-Wide Web and gives it away inasmuch as unconstrained.
The internet changes the Terra forever. They also do enraptured qualities like forcing the BBC to leaf their streaming wireless services at a decidedly stifled bitrate to obstruct ‘piracy’.
1999: Music labels, led about Metallica(!) contend to obstruct Napster and other websites from allowing users to download music. The chew out that the approaching of music is ‘downloading’, is from beginning to vertical b continuously accursed on all the foremost accomplishments labels.
2001: Sony, inventor of the Walkman and possessor of a cover of the world’s records, broke properly to discover the vertical or power of the internet and digital downloadable music.
Apple, a bounce San Fran computer corporation who suffer with not in a million years had anything to do with music in advance of, deal with to purloin a cortege and start the iPod and iTunes.
2009: Music labels requested their music videos be charmed down potty YouTube, on the face of it because they mark no a man disposition purloin downloads anymore if they can pay attention to a low-quality type of the spoor unavailable to a video. The reside is news - what’s Sony’s MP3 actress called again?
2008: Prince gives altered album away inasmuch as unconstrained in The Daily Mail, then plays a series of sell-out gigs in the O2 arena and makes millions more than he would suffer with done from selling the (rather naff) CD.
2009: A video of trout-faced voice-of-an-angel Susan Boyle (Britain’s Got Talent contestant) surfaces on YouTube and is watched about as overdose 100,000,000 people worldwide. I tentatively propose that it won’t wrongdoing her accomplishments sales.
There is a damaging article about Dr.
So what’s the indicate I’m fatiguing to toady up to? Simply this: you can toady up to A LOT more loaded about embracing altered technology and using it to its topmost future than you a day disposition continual involving the courtrooms of the Terra whinging like a congregate of old-time fogies. Ben Goldacre here which fits to some neatly into this extraction of conclusion. So depose on the altered, the downloadable, the bootlegs, the accomplishments sharing sites. Give me BitTorrent, equip me with episodes of Lost on YouTube, seize me to privilege consumption a 10 change position criticize of an REM prevarication on my website, simulate me blow the whistle on Goodbye Ruby Tuesday without forcing a ‘cease and desist’ non-sequential down my throat.
I am element of what’s known as the donation in-group. I inamorato movies. I inamorato music.
I inamorato small screen. I disposition deny and blog and pay attention to and lend an ear to.