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June 1, 2003
Weekend Assortment
Warning, babble to follow.
We went to go see The Matrix: Reloaded this weekend which was pretty entertaining. This link to an article on "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation" reminded me of my philosophy class and discussions about, "What is Real?", and "Why are we here?"
Along those lines, Doc Searl's latest post what the net should be like and should be called, maybe "Permanet". This refers to an always-on fairly fast connection which a large percentage of people nowadays have. While lately I've been talking and thinking about Social Software, the FCC's rule change allowing more mass-media market ownership, I can't help stopping to think about those who don't even have access to the internet. To people in many third world countries, they are dealing with similar issues about who controls the flow of information in parallel with us. Only for a lot of them, it's not companies controlling where I can play my music but who gets to eat and who doesn't.
On the other hand, we can't help those in which we don't know about and the mass media could have an unheard of effect on this world if they would just change the front page of their newspaper, website, whatever to show how people can help others instead of an article about a police chase through town or if police pay is reasonable.
Do the grassroots efforts and movements matter to the masses? After working so hard at revolutionizing Social Software and communication (like we do every 10 years?), do these things appeal to the masses?
I've read The Cluetrain Manifesto and the discussion about how corporations treat people like mindless consumers just opening their mouths under the sludge faucet that drips what we call entertainment, do we really want more? The obvious answer is that we do but people just need to be exposed to the possibilities.
Posted by beamz at June 1, 2003 9:34 PM
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Comments
hi beamz!
sr
Posted by: sar at June 2, 2003 11:46 PM