markjgsmith

It rained very heavily around 8-10pm then drizzled quite a lot after that. A bit chilly, my feet are cold this morning. Sleep depravation on and off for much of the night. Looks like that was planned in some way as one of the locals was repeatedly taunting me with super exagerated yawns during the rain storm. He was basically saying, we are going to keep you awake and you can't do nothing about it. Sleeping has been depracated again, both during the night and during the day. Oh and of course they are currently starving me, so the levels of glee are quite high amoungst the infiniti-nos, who are absolutely certain they aren't infiniti-no-ing while maximumly infinity-no-ing me in every possible dimension.

It sounds proposterous, and then one day it happens to you, and it no longer sounds proposterous, and you say 'I understand now', but it’s too late. #

Monkeys are trending, one wonders if it has anything to do with Assange being released.

I think it's kind of gross when people use animals to get at other humans. It's not the sort of behaviour you would expect from the so called apex animal of the planet.

Especially given that we are smart enough to know how rare a life rich planet like Earth is in the universe. We shouldn't be using the other life forms like that IMO.

I do it too sometimes without realising it, it's unfortunately very normalised behaviour. #

The printing press vs the world wide web

I've read a lot recently comparing the introduction of the printing press and the internet / world wide web. The main gist of it is that following the introduction of the printing press there was all sorts of craziness that ensued in societies across the world. But on the other hand it still led to the enlightenment period which is universally seen as a good thing for humanity.

Looking at it from a purely numbers perspective, the printing press introduced millions of new minds to the general social discourse. That creates problems because dynamics that had been in place for hundreds of years suddenly started to shift. With the internet / world wide web, there's no reason to think something similar isn't currently occuring. The difference is that instead of millions of new minds, we have introduced billions of new minds to the general social discourse. What's more we've done it much faster, for all intents and purposes in comparison to the printing press, it's happenned almost instantaneously.

So we should expect there to be a very turbulent period, where dynamics recallibrate. It's complicated because this time it really is global in nature, but we have very different cultures and ideologies across all these places. I expect there are big fault lines across it all for things like economic status and gender. I think it's going to be rather rough because the dynamics that have been in place for so long are rooted all the way down to the language, customs and ritual layer of our societies. Things that we grew up with and didn't question are being questioned.

I think that's why we are seing such polarisation in politics across the globe. It's an important moment. Those in power will be trying to keep that power while the less powerful are speaking out about their difficult lives. It's worth remembering that the printing press resulted in a better world, and the same will be true for the internet / world wide web, we need to collectively find ways to channel the change, without blocking or supression, even if it's uncomfortable.

We should encourage kindness, humility, understanding, a willingness to try and see things through the eyes of others, without predjudice, the courage to speak out when things aren't right, and equally the courage to listen to views that we might not be used to hearing. Infiniti no will only ever be met with infiniti no, so we have to find better ways of sailing through these waters. #