All new low

I'd let it rest on 2008. That was the year when the bottom fell out, and that was also the time when nobody wanted to be told "I told you so."

The gravy train was supposed to keep going forever, and the money was supposed to keep flowing. Nobody wanted to believe that all good things need to come to an end.

Since that time, nobody's been permitted to rock the boat. The social psyche is still fragile, still reeling from a near (or some might say, truly) fatal blow. Before 2008, dissent was tolerated out of lip service, because it was assailing an impregnable fortress of self-righteousness. We were successful, and the economy was proving us right at every turn.

But now? Now those sticks and stones can break bones. The Occupy Wall Street protests were a telling reaction to the iniquities sustained over the last decade. But more telling was the reaction. Police brutality. Open criticism in the media. Protest is a constitutionally sanctioned right - but nobody seems to bring that up when the police make mincemeat of protesters. Or further, when politicians sneer at the audacity of disenfranchised youth.

Now we're facing the jaws of a recession the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the 1930's. What will Fox News say when the US's entire middle class is emptied out into the streets? What will the economy do with no workers and no consumers? This is the world we're going in to, whether we want it or not.

Ready?

Legacy

I had a pretty uncomfortable dream last night. I've since turned it into the start of a new story - one more to add to the heap, I guess.

But it just made me wonder. What would you do if the world was dying, and you were given the choice of dying peacefully with it, or taking a long-odds gamble of survival after a mentally and physically brutal journey?

Dinosaur Bones

I'm sitting in a lecture right now about the issues produced by new media forms, and how new mechanics work.

I suppose it is useful to understand what theorists 60 years out of date think about modern technology (ex. it's interesting, fascinating, magical, bizarre, etc.) I suppose I've been spoiled. I've grown up with technology, and in a sense, it's grown up with me. I see nothing bizarre or magic about the migration of content onto the Internet. It's the product of an iterative process that's been ongoing since humans first decided that the information stored in our heads would be better preserved on a medium like clay or paper.

I'm amused by how badly some theorists want to try and explain technology. There's a huge push to define its relationship to society, and how people drive (or are driven by) it. The truth is, technology is an aspect of society, and society itself a technology that allows humans to exist communally to varying degrees of intimacy.

There. I've just saved you $6,500 and a year of lost time.

Syria's been on my mind a lot of late. I'm studying it for another one of my lectures. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to read about what's happening over there. It's shaping up to give Rwanda a run for its money, but the UN can't seem to get its permanent seat holders to pull their heads out their asses, so we're likely just going to sit on the sidelines while people are butchered in the streets.

More categorizations.

The world we're set to inherit isn't in very good shape right now. There's going to be another economic collapse, probably starting in Europe. I'm banking that there's another country there that's teetering on default, but they haven't mentioned anything yet because it would cause a global panic. So instead, we're waiting, stacked like nervous dominoes. The arrangements that led to the first collapse in 2008 are still in place, and the guilty parties walked away from that mess scott-free.

Break time. I'll write more later.