And flipping you the bird. The fact is, when you zoomed past I assumed you were actually trying to kill me. In fact, as I realise later, you were trying to tell me I had my sidestand down, or maybe you were noting my lack of indicating. Most of the time, when I shout “what’s your fucking problem”, its actually mine. Sorry about that.
The internet is a parasite to business. It has grown its tendrils through every part of every for-profit organisation, and has been bolstered and boosted by business. Business has created, improved and built infrastructure, sold commodity devices and educated everyone in the western world that this was something they had to get involved with.
That was just the first phase.
The internet is an infrastructure: a joining of many little networks: your home’s, your ISP’s and their commercial international carrier are all clicked together. The lego-like connections are built so you can change any part of that chain pretty much instantly. Running on the top of that infrastructure are more infrastructures: email, http…. Business have built these to run their services. Those that don’t have the standard lego-like connections have failed: compuserve anyone? Those that encourage and improve the robustness of the connections thrive: google.
After the first rush of excitement (the ‘@’ in an email address is an anarchy symbol!) we thought that business was pushing us out (they are stealing our revolution!). The media kept running the ‘internet is the great leveller’ meme – first it was kinda interesting, then it became a standard story – IRC from the Moscow White House when Yeltsin did his counter revolution, email from the Balkans, blogging from Bagdad.
The parasite grew out of organizations caught in the capitalist world, but not of it. Universities, governments. These things are older than capitalism, and will be here afterward (if if capitalism doesn’t kill us all first, o’course). The organisations that have used the ‘net best are either those institutions, or ones like them; citizen journalism fits best into the culture of public broadcasting, for example.
A parasite grows in its host, then it kills it. Profiteers would like to think this was (at best) symbiotic, some lefties assume a mutualistic approach. They don’t see the way that the internet destroys profit, promotes democracy, and in general works against capitalism. I need to do a lot more thinking about the monopolistic trend inherent in capitalist growth and how that has been reflected in the internet, but my immediate reaction is to think that the monopolies (an tcp/ip is nothing if a monopoly…) are only toxic when there are profits to be made. When I say toxic – I mean business monopolies kill (r.f. the meat trusts).
I predict that there will soon be casualties to the parasite, and the host will start to react. Already the anti-bodies of the RIAA have started to inflame the music body corporate. Big Music’s arms are gangrenous, and the limbs that have died have already fallen away, and new shoots of independent music are growing between the fallen, rotten branches. (Man, this metaphor runs and runs…).
Who is next? Democracy in the UK is having to react to a general public understanding of exactly how crap their system is, now there is an informed public discussion, like there could never have been before. Business can only be scared at a more transparent voting process – look to see who is trying to protect their current position!
Big Oil, and Big Food are fighting fire with FUD – but their time is limited. They have even enrolled religion in their attempt to dupe (teach the controversy).
Its all good news.
Most of the bike blogs I read have mentioned electric bikes, and every time a coconut, the comments end up with people criticising them, in quite crude terms. Is this some part of the bike culture I’m missing? Commute by Bike have been the most recent I’ve seen suffer this.
Is it becasue biking is quite a solitary activity, so it attracts those who are not well socially adjusted? My other life, in IT, understands that well – I love my semi-autistic cow-orkers. Perhaps they are simply young, and a short and ascerbic (but never witty) comment is all they can manage. Sure, electric bikes are fat bastard bikes, bikes for those who are unfit and most-un-bike-like. People who don’t wear lycra, and maybe even want a pink spotted bag with flowers on it. (Go Dottie!)
Actually, as I think about it, there is a faction of the biking community that get up my nose as well, so maybe its reciprocated. The fitness facsists (the lycra cowboys) are thick and fast in Dunedin, but they are OK: they are on the way to the gym, in between pilates lessons. The fixie crowd are punky enough to remind me of my old days – its sweet. (As in cute, rather than ‘OK’, I’m attempting condescension). No, the bikers that get me are the ‘Copenhaginize’ types. You Shall Be Like Us, As We Are The Best. Its weird, because Danes tend to be rather nice people in my experience, but the Copenhagen Advocates (and they are ‘advocates’ in the same way as the US ‘pacified’ Vietnam) do seem to be very hung up on fashion, and I find that rather shallow. I do admire their bike lanes as well, but they are not the only ones: Portland/Bellingham/The Netherlands… there are other places that have good cycle infrastructure without the overwhelming arrogance…
I’ve come 180 degrees: decrying the haters, it seems I am one as well! Go boys, loathe e-bikes, hate them to your very soul. Anything that makes you happy.
In the next few days Mumbles is going to be down/away for a bit. I’m going to reinstall wordpress in a way I can have a bit more fun with it. If you don’t get any new posts you may want to come back to mumbles.mojo.org and reset your feed reader.
I’m skeptical about things metaphysical, but I have a small, sneaking thought that I’m not entirely in charge. Sometimes I can just leave things to work themselves out, and they do. Mostly they get sorted by friends, lovers, colleagues and strangers, but sorted out they become. The once caveat is I have to be honest about the problem in the first place. I’m not talking about running away (though I’m plenty guilty of that). I’m talking about seeing a problem, and simply not worrying about it (or trying to let it go).
Its something I tell beginners in Tech Support (why the hell am I still in Tech Support?). Problems simply resolve themselves sometimes. Something sits and stews for weeks, and you worry and it festers and then you call and find, “oh, that. Yes, that seems to have sorted itself”. It happens.
So who sorts it out? Who makes grief lessen, and joy return? Who opens doors while others close? Maybe anthropomorphizing too far is a mistake, but I’m grateful to the process. I love the way my life tends towards joy rather than depression these days. It makes a nice change. Thanks to whoever/whatever was responsible for that.
Why don’t I just take credit for it, say it was Me? That Me sorted it? Me, the master of the universe? Well, that’s because of experience: I did try take control for a long time, and it just made me anxious. Anxiety led to fear – frightened that everything was out of control. Fear led to anger, and though I may not seem it, I’m one of the angriest people you’ll ever meet. Grr.
Well, nothing is really under control, and I’m letting it, bit by bit, go. Handing It Over. To… well, the process that deals with such things. I’m thinking of giving that process a name: I might just call it the Dude, and as we all know, the Dude abides.
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Things are proving to be emotionally tricky right now – my mother died about six weeks back, and I’ve been going through the wringer. It seems that the grief has left me with few ways of dealing with all the other things that life is throwing at me – normal, everyday stuff. I’m not over-reacting to things in action: just in my head.
Something like my bike breaking down. I took Betty (the bike) into the shop – talked calmly to Sarge and told him what my expectations were. Sorted. In my head I’m flashing cleavers, hacking people to bits for perceived wrongs that simply don’t exist. It hard not to turn this whole thing into a big pity party, yet still recognize that I’m just brittle, and I have to take care. This Too Shall Pass.
Its a beautiful day. I have work to do. What’s in front of me? Do that. Be.
I’m terrifically grumpy today – I took out Betty to ride down to the Farmer’s market, and a terrible graunching sound from the motor, ending in Nothing At All From The Motor Even Though The Lights Are All On put paid to that. Rebooting the bike (y’know, turning it off and on again) showed no change, so I peddled her down to Sarge at Shoosh. After the last time she was in for a warrantee job (which took literally months six weeks or so to resolve) I decided to put the hard word on.
My brother Mike is good at these things, and he kinda coached me last time – I said to Sarge he had two weeks to get it fixed, and if not, I might well be wanting my money back. I don’t want to do that, I really don’t, but I just can’t be bothered with the fluffing around that happened last time, with the bike being ready or though to to be ready “tomorrow”. The wisper is an excellent bike – I’m sure of that, and the forums have proven that my experience has been exceptional, but I’m really wondering if I shouldn’t see what the people at Bike Otago can get in for me instead.
Speaking of Bike Otago, check out this rather delightful post from their website! Its cheered me right up.
The lovely (they most be lovely) people at http://worldsbestbikestickers.com/ are giving 10 free stickers to people who link to them. I’d totally understand if NZ was too far away for them to keep their promise, but I thought I’d pop something up anyway, as I do like some of thier designs. A sister site http://peacesupplies.org/ has all the hippy acoutrements a peacenik like me could use.
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