Bruce Sterling and Connectivity as Poverty: (blogger reflecting on it below)
"Well, as he pointed out, it didn’t quite work out that way, connectivity became cheap with cellphones, and he comically noted that “poor folk love their cellphones!” What’s happening is that this increased dependence upon connectivity, rather than being some kind of indicator of privilege, is actually a sign of our increased impoverishment. The fact is that the wealthy are those who can afford not to be connected, not to be pimping their “online brand” so shamelessly, not twittering their asses off at all hours of the day for a quick networking fix. The impoverishment of networks through connectivity!"
Not exactly sure I agree, seems a very American statement to me (poor folk in Thailand with cell phones arent even in a position to network and form a "brand", the cellphone gives them the illusion of modernity) but it is self-evident that those who try the hardest on facebook and twitter updating and what not are (usually) the most sad and desperate of people. We can all feel it, when we go on facebook and see all the status updates of people on our wall in the last 2 hours, mostly from people we dont know or dont like (which I only just realized I can hide, thats nice, I'm limiting access, I'm higher on the connectivity hierarchy!) and you can just see behind the facade of those few words either an incoherent idea expressed to no one at all (ie the person has no real friends) or the cool self obsessed girl (usually) who just really "gets" facebook and has adjusted her life to just update things all the time ie "time passes so fast ahh" or "im sick of rain i want SUN" - twitter version, confident in her "Brand" that ppl care.
Or not who cares. I only know that in my gut i feel awkward doing too much on these sites, I have too much respect for my friends to share such idiocies. so i needed a step back and now im back here. so wats new
IMF PROJECTS 4.1 trillion in losses ie 4,100,000,000,000. THat doesnt look like much?! come on where my zeros at??????????
- There are approximately 1 trillion bacteria living on the surface of our bodies.
- 3,500,000,000,000 - estimated population of fish in the ocean.
- Known digits of pi: As of 2002, the number of known digits of pi was 1 241 100 000 000.
- 200,000,000,000,000- The estimated number of ants on Earth
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(numbers)#1018
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