Oh, Brave New Mobile World
Prelude: The View into Nomads' land
Overture:
This is going to be a trilogy in four parts ( three parts and a prelude, duh), and is an examination into how the world is flowing from a state of permanency into a state of flux. If this scares you, then just remember my motto, Nothing lasts for ever. One day, in the future, the world will settle down again and stop shifting around under your feet. You just have to wait, and watch for your opportunity to jump onto a bit of solid ground that happens to be passing.
Watcher of the Skies, Watcher of all...
I have been watching out for signs lately. I've not been sure what I should have been looking for, that's caused me a lot of confusion. In the old days, I might have scanned the skies for patterns made by flights of birds, or studied the meandering paths left by the clouds. I might have kept an ear open for farmer's tales of two-headed calves being born, and what particular dialect the extra head spoke in. I might have plotted the instances of fish falling from the skies and muttered to myself "it Steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time". Because I'm not a cruel man I wouldn't have been gutting animals and scrabbling around amongst the bloody entrails, but if someone else less squeamish had muttered to me that they had found suggestive shapes amidst the slime I would have added that information into my cauldron.
But these things no longer apply, scrying now happens in front of a computer screen, not a glass ball. There is also, I believe, an electronic Planchette. The Tarot has been online for years. The I-ching program was one of the first things I wrote, years ago, when I graduated from a ZX-81 to a Tandy 100 which had enough memory to store the lengthy descriptions of the hexagrams.
As to why I am looking for signs, well, I believe that great things are afoot. (Come now, earth-creature, or you will be late...) The world is once again on the move. The old guard is changing.
(Gentlemen, he said, I don't need your organisation...)
What things (afoot, great, fore-mentioned) are these? Well, that's why I'm looking for the signs, because these changes aren't happening with fanfare and panoply. There will be no announcements in the papers or postings on the walls of fashionable establishments. So I keep looking, rummaging around the world and the web, trying not to drown in the mass of messages of banks, bailouts, protests, predictions, sleaze and scandal. Underneath all of that dross are tiny little flecks of news that, on their own, mean little, but they are the signs. If you can persuade these shimmering flecks to cluster in a cloud, it is possible that they will coalesce into a more meaningful picture.
The signs I have found haven't made much sense, so far. A friend of mine has scrapped his domains and hosted web-sites and put his own small webserver on the end of his broadband line using dynamic DNS. It means he could move tomorrow, plug the machine into the new ADSL line, update dynamic DNS and he's back on the web. It's the opposite of serverage, which is what another friend of mine is up to. She has just finished uploading her entire music collection to the web. She no longer has to carry around with her the bulk and weight of CD's and the necessary HiFi system. All she needs is a connection to the web. Just because they're doing the opposite to the other doesn't mean that either or both of them are wrong. I feel that each of them is right. They're taking off in different directions, but heading for the same wide sky.
(Into the Blue again...)
The signs I am seeing are telling me that people are starting to move around again. But this time, they're moving into cyberspace. Online shops are springing up while high-street stores are shutting down. People are starting to do more things in the cyberverse, such as using serverage to store their music collection. It's partly due to cost. In order to house and make use of my collection of music, my Wharfedale speakers and the amplifier and player, I need a room, with the necessary cost of rates, heating, the need to keep answering the electoral roll form. And I can't, when I'm at someone else's house, play them something from my collection unless I've thought in advance and taken it with me. I, in a sense, am the equivalent to one of the city-dwellers in the last days of the Roman empire, when the Huns appeared as if from nowhere and plundered where they would.
This new realisation was sparked off by something I spotted over on Zen's blog, and it has reminded me why I still keep him on my sidebar as a link (under Satori'l Eloquence). He posted recently his thoughts after reading a book on the rise of the Mongol empire under Ghengis Khan, and how the Roman Empire was powerless to oppose him, because the horsemen came and went at will, while the city-dwellers had to sit there and take whatever came their way, usually arrows. Until I read what he had written, I knew that I knew something, but I didn't know what it was. And now that I do know what I had been sensing was going on around me, it's time to write it all down before the event.
The next post, the first in a trilogy, could well be titled Nomads I have Known.
And if you still think I'm clutching at straws, then ask yourself this; why have the cream of the trolls left usenet? And where have they gone? (So long, and thanks for all the fish)
Or, why do I no longer bother listening to the radio? Why is it that I would rather go into SecondLife and sit in the garden there listening to the streaming audio? I do it by choice, I haven't been forced there by economic circumstances, I did it of my own free-will. (I choose, therefore I am)
I suggest that you now pop across to Zen's satori'l state and read his post, which is titled On Information.
Overture:
This is going to be a trilogy in four parts ( three parts and a prelude, duh), and is an examination into how the world is flowing from a state of permanency into a state of flux. If this scares you, then just remember my motto, Nothing lasts for ever. One day, in the future, the world will settle down again and stop shifting around under your feet. You just have to wait, and watch for your opportunity to jump onto a bit of solid ground that happens to be passing.
Watcher of the Skies, Watcher of all...
I have been watching out for signs lately. I've not been sure what I should have been looking for, that's caused me a lot of confusion. In the old days, I might have scanned the skies for patterns made by flights of birds, or studied the meandering paths left by the clouds. I might have kept an ear open for farmer's tales of two-headed calves being born, and what particular dialect the extra head spoke in. I might have plotted the instances of fish falling from the skies and muttered to myself "it Steam-engines when it comes steam-engine time". Because I'm not a cruel man I wouldn't have been gutting animals and scrabbling around amongst the bloody entrails, but if someone else less squeamish had muttered to me that they had found suggestive shapes amidst the slime I would have added that information into my cauldron.
But these things no longer apply, scrying now happens in front of a computer screen, not a glass ball. There is also, I believe, an electronic Planchette. The Tarot has been online for years. The I-ching program was one of the first things I wrote, years ago, when I graduated from a ZX-81 to a Tandy 100 which had enough memory to store the lengthy descriptions of the hexagrams.
As to why I am looking for signs, well, I believe that great things are afoot. (Come now, earth-creature, or you will be late...) The world is once again on the move. The old guard is changing.
(Gentlemen, he said, I don't need your organisation...)
What things (afoot, great, fore-mentioned) are these? Well, that's why I'm looking for the signs, because these changes aren't happening with fanfare and panoply. There will be no announcements in the papers or postings on the walls of fashionable establishments. So I keep looking, rummaging around the world and the web, trying not to drown in the mass of messages of banks, bailouts, protests, predictions, sleaze and scandal. Underneath all of that dross are tiny little flecks of news that, on their own, mean little, but they are the signs. If you can persuade these shimmering flecks to cluster in a cloud, it is possible that they will coalesce into a more meaningful picture.
The signs I have found haven't made much sense, so far. A friend of mine has scrapped his domains and hosted web-sites and put his own small webserver on the end of his broadband line using dynamic DNS. It means he could move tomorrow, plug the machine into the new ADSL line, update dynamic DNS and he's back on the web. It's the opposite of serverage, which is what another friend of mine is up to. She has just finished uploading her entire music collection to the web. She no longer has to carry around with her the bulk and weight of CD's and the necessary HiFi system. All she needs is a connection to the web. Just because they're doing the opposite to the other doesn't mean that either or both of them are wrong. I feel that each of them is right. They're taking off in different directions, but heading for the same wide sky.
(Into the Blue again...)
The signs I am seeing are telling me that people are starting to move around again. But this time, they're moving into cyberspace. Online shops are springing up while high-street stores are shutting down. People are starting to do more things in the cyberverse, such as using serverage to store their music collection. It's partly due to cost. In order to house and make use of my collection of music, my Wharfedale speakers and the amplifier and player, I need a room, with the necessary cost of rates, heating, the need to keep answering the electoral roll form. And I can't, when I'm at someone else's house, play them something from my collection unless I've thought in advance and taken it with me. I, in a sense, am the equivalent to one of the city-dwellers in the last days of the Roman empire, when the Huns appeared as if from nowhere and plundered where they would.
This new realisation was sparked off by something I spotted over on Zen's blog, and it has reminded me why I still keep him on my sidebar as a link (under Satori'l Eloquence). He posted recently his thoughts after reading a book on the rise of the Mongol empire under Ghengis Khan, and how the Roman Empire was powerless to oppose him, because the horsemen came and went at will, while the city-dwellers had to sit there and take whatever came their way, usually arrows. Until I read what he had written, I knew that I knew something, but I didn't know what it was. And now that I do know what I had been sensing was going on around me, it's time to write it all down before the event.
The next post, the first in a trilogy, could well be titled Nomads I have Known.
And if you still think I'm clutching at straws, then ask yourself this; why have the cream of the trolls left usenet? And where have they gone? (So long, and thanks for all the fish)
Or, why do I no longer bother listening to the radio? Why is it that I would rather go into SecondLife and sit in the garden there listening to the streaming audio? I do it by choice, I haven't been forced there by economic circumstances, I did it of my own free-will. (I choose, therefore I am)
I suggest that you now pop across to Zen's satori'l state and read his post, which is titled On Information.
Labels: Digital nomads, don't drown - Dive
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 10:56 am
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