Quote of the Day
"There are also privacy issues when people sell a laptop or any computer that includes personal information. “Whether it’s a cellphone or laptop, your personal information needs to be sanitized or destroyed before it’s passed on because it could potentially come back to harm you or someone you know,” said Robert Johnson, executive director of the National Association for Information Destruction in Phoenix."- From an article in the new york times about youths re-selling their semi-old techno gadgets. Of course, the prospect of phishing credit card numbers and the likes have been a semi-real threat, and weve all read about some computer geek/guru who wanted to drive the point home, so he purchased x amount of hard drives online, and came up with all sorts of scary info that im sure your mom wouldnt be happy to know is out there in the world.
But to start a National Association of
Information Destruction just because of this? I mean, really?
posted by carlito sway at 09:56
Quote of the Day
"Capitalism ... is adept at turning luxuries into necessities - bringing to the masses what the elites have always enjoyed. But the flip side of this genius is that people come to take for granted things they once conveted from afar. Frills they never thought they could have become essentials that they cannot do without. People are stuck on a treadmill: as they acheive a better standard of living, they become inured to its pleasures."- from the december 23rd edition of The Economist, on Happiness. (yes im behind in reading.)
Its only after these types of realizations that capitalist theory begins to break down, showing clear faults and fallacious reasoning. Instead of always wanting the new, want the solution. When our relationship with product is allowed to change, evolving into (and, in many ways, returning to) a utility based "use not own" premise, we can begin to disassociate things we once thought intrinsically linked. Pleasure does not need to be weighed down by the constraints of ownership, and thus climbing the social rank, with newer and more elite experiences and purchase becomes a moot point, from a bygone era. We will become free to explore what 'pleasure' means to each of us, on an individual level, yet independant of what is taught to us as 'pleasure' (newer home, better neighborhood, faster car, better paying job, etc).
But capitalism is self-serving - nearly perpetually - and designed to not let our relationship with products mature, for fear of derailing its symbiotic relationship with the consumer; fueling its own addiction to sales, it maintains its clients addiction through teaching (advertising, branding and marketing), which in turn, maintains its hegemony on the concept of "world economy."
In 100 years, I would interested to read what the Economist talks about, how it would adress "the emerging economy" (because phrases like that, i can imagine, will always be used to describe the current economic condition), and how they might describe the role of economy in life. With the changes that are happening now, i can promise the socio-political economy of 100 years will be miles away from our current position.
posted by carlito sway at 20:40
Quote of the Day: Corn and our Insatiable Appetite
"The historical cheapness of corn has driven it into nearly every aspect of our economy, in the form, most familiarly, of corn syrup. The low price of corn over the past half-century lies at the very foundation of America’s historically (and unrealistically) low food prices.
Gratifying our two major appetites — cheap food and cheap gas — used to seem easy because both corn and oil were abundant. Cheap oil helped keep corn prices low because it cost farmers less to run their tractors and combines.
But we are entering a new dynamic now. While there has been talk recently about refining ethanol from sources other than corn, that could take a while. So at the moment what we are trying to do is gratify those appetites from the same resource: agricultural land. No matter how high prices go, what will need to change isn’t the amount of corn acreage available or even the size of the enormous harvests we are already getting.
What will need to change is the size of our appetites. "-from
The Price of Corn, via the nytimes.
this comes a few days after (and obviously with a subtle tip of the hat to) the UN "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" - the summary PDF of which, can be downloaded
here - which somewhat resolutely concludes that yes, we are indeed causing global warming (via the green house effect). although the majority of left-leaning thinkers would already agree, in many ways this report comes as long-needed neighborhood-bully-on-our-side who can finally coerce the lesser (yet stronger than us) bullys, who have consistantly denied it for their own benefit. typically, the latter thinkers are either involved with money, oil or both.
a nice side note on sustainability; to acheive and maintain a development regime that is sustainable, we do not have to live differently (ie, in strange, post modern concrete dwellings, half submerged for energy and water concervation purposes, in a desert scene not unlike lukes house with unkle owen on tattooine), but instead, we must think differently about how we live.
cars and suburbia are the iconic nemesis of sustainability, and are the anti-thesis of my thesis - however, it is possible to create a car that solves its two biggest problems (its non-reclaimable design and its energy needs) thereby enacting the prior statement; we can drive cars IF we rethink them, and create them differently. we CAN be consumerists, if we rethink how and what we consume, for what reasons, and what happens to the old stuff when we are "done" with it. most aspects of our lives can cantinue, but just in modified and different ways.
sustainable development will arrive when every aspect of our existence has been reevaluated and redesigned to be appropriate.
posted by carlito sway at 08:20
