Mike,
Well, I tried reading Gibson -- after an encomium of yours some
months ago. There were some initial sparks of excitement but I
couldn't get into it. Too rich for my desiccated brain cells these
days I guess. But never mind. Tomorrow's world is much more likely to
be described by a novelist than any prof of political science(?). But
which novelist I wonder?
Over here, we're obsessed by the Eurozone saga and I really wrote
about the Zuckerberg scam by way of relief. But there's nothing I
could write about the Eurozone that hasn't already been said. In any
case, what will happen in the next few days/weeks will probably be
quite different from anything that anybody has imagined so far. It
might even be a trivial Facebook event that will trace the ionic
pathway through which the final bolt of lightning crashes.
One old man, Charles Dallara, the head of IFF (a consortium of 400 of
the world's leading banks), and as desiccated as I am, is quoted as
saying that if Greece defaults it will produce a situation "between a
catastrophe and Armageddon". Apparently -- and this is a real laugh!
-- the Greek government owes the European Central Bank more than
twice as much as the ECB possesses!* Wonderful! How could the
Eurozone have ever got into this absurd situation! (*Except for the
"worthless" currency of gold, a large quantity of which the ECB
started its life a decade ago. It hangs onto that fiercely. Against
Armageddon presumably! And the same goes for Greece's "worthless"
gold, still there in the vaults. In fact, if Greece defaults and
becomes the investment pariah of the Euro and Dollar world [but not
of the Renminbi world for sure] then the gold will be as useful as
it's always been prior to 1914 -- for marginal balancing up of
imports and exports.)
Keith
At 20:58 16/05/2012, you wrote:
Keith wrote:
> Quite beside the fact that usage of Facebook in America, its place
> of origin, is already falling away, its hoped-for customer base is
> upside down. It has been a fashion that started among the
> economically poorest segment of all in an advanced country, namely
> teenagers.
He gives the kids free samples,
Because he knows full well
That today's young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow's clientele.
-- Tom Lehrer, "The Old Dope Peddler"
Not to disagree with the rest of your post, where you continue:
> Unfortunately, however, teenagers are not only the economically
> poorest segment in the advanced countries already but they are going
> to be even poorer in the years to come as adults increasingly shut
> them out of the world of work by working for many more years
> themselves.
Well, in a cyberpunk future -- cf. Gibson's Sprawl trilogy or Bruce
Sterling's work [1] -- electronic networking won't provide lux
condos, six-figure incomes and entry to the 20%. But it may well
provide those in the middle -- those who don't abandon all hope due to
innate stupidity or to drugs, alcohol, frustration and rage -- to live
in the cracks as do Gibson's or Bruce Sterling's characters.
As for the market hype surrounding Farcebook -- the IPO, the jockeying
among bankers and securities weenies and all that -- I wouldn't put
money on your prediction,
> No, Facebook hasn't a chance of success.
nor on the contrary one.
> Instead of being a future consumer market, the jobless young are
> more likely to use their mobile phones to gather 100, 200, 300 or
> 1,000 rioters instead when provoked by one incident or another.
But, being, as you point out, in their optimal creative (and most
resilient) years, there are probably alternatives to flash-crowd riots
that can emerge from the technology which old geezers such as you and
I haven't thought of. Sterling and Gibson, inter alia, have thought
of some of them.
- Mike
[1] Sterling has projected numerous different takes on the future of
today's youth disenfranchised by the very processes we've been
talking about here. I think it's a mistake to overlook
thoughtful fiction when thinking about this stuff. In my high
school senior year, my English class was taught by a charming 80
year old man who'd spent his entire career at that school. I once
quoted Thoreau as having said, "I read no novels". Dr. Smith
replied, "What a shame!".
Short story intro to Sterling's take: Bicycle Repairman, in _A
Good Old-Fashioned Future_. The eponymous repairman lives and
works in a freight container in the burned-out, riot-trashed
shopping-mall atrium of an otherwise functioning, pricey high-rise.
His mother lives in a lux condo on an upper floor. His mother
wants him to get a job. He wants to build the perfect racing
bike.
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
