Smart phonen som sporet meg

Veldig interessant & god artikkel fra WSJ om smart phone bruk, privatsfærens død og et forskningsprosjekt ved MIT. Vet ikke om vi skal frykte fremtiden, men det vil bli stadig tøffere å leve et uavhengig liv i fred. Man må nesten gå helt off internett og mobile medier om man skal klare det. Noe som igjen vil ha andre konsekvenser i form av redusert deltakelse i den økonomiske utviklingen. Men artikkelen reiser klart en del spørsmål omkring bruk av mobile medier, og er ikke bare nesegrus av beundring for fremskrittene som vil komme ved at vi kan spore trender, oppdage utvikling av epidemier, politiske utviklingstrekk, etc. Et eller annet sted i all denne teknologiske skråsikkerheten surrer ordet «hubris» i bakhodet mitt.

Men det er selvsagt interessant at man ved å følge buzzen på twitter kan spå enkelte økonomiske trekk. Ser for meg en eksplosjon i jobbmarkedet for folk som bedriver analyse og formidling av ymse mikro- og makroøkonomiske trender basert på nye medier. Ikke banebrytende observasjon, men ofte verdt å tenke over og gjennom implikasjonene av det som synes opplagt. I en tid hvor stadig flere ønsker å ha «frie» eller «kreative» jobber, så vil veksten komme innen jobber som kanskje dels vil betale godt men som er akk så rutinebaserte og egentlig ganske kjedelige.

Vår vidunderlige nye teknologiske virkelighet vil altså se ganske annerledes ut enn mange innbiller seg. Så får media heller skrive om alle disse «kule» kreative, når virkeligheten er at de fleste vil bli enda mer systemslaver enn det foreldregenerasjonen var. Og det verste av alt er at mange ikke engang vil forstå det fordi de tjener altfor godt. Og det høres nesten ut som cue til en dialog hentet fra en Hal Hartley film...

Eller kanskje en James Bond film, om man skal ta den lett Onion-aktige spoofen i blogginnleggets overskrift på alvor.

Writing this in Norwegian, as it's based on an email I sent to friends and didn't feel like creating an inferior translation of my spontaneous flow. But use an online translator and you should get the gist of what it's about. The headline should translate into something like «The Smart Phone that Tracked Me» and the WSJ article that I link to about smart phone use and research on this, is a must read for anyone interested in technology, social media, mobile, media, and/or personal freedom.

Love and Death in Caracas

How can you not love a report of violence that contains captions such as this one?

«One day, aged 19, Silva mugged a bus passenger for her jewellery. He fled on foot and caught another bus, conscious of a police patrol ahead. Seated behind him was a pretty girl. "I wanted to say something cute to her but the only thing I could think of was: 'Will you hide my revolver?'" he recalls. The girl smiled and hid it in her purse. Love was born.»

Rest of the text in the Guardian.

If this blog was still in Norwegian, I would probably have headlined it thus: «Kanakas i Caracas»

Muammar Gaddafi speaks Swedish!

Who says irony is dead? Even with Libya on the verge of civil war, there is another way of keeping the pressure on Muammar Gaddafi: use of humour. Such as this Swedish speech, where the video poster has translated one of Gaddafi's speeches (culled from al-Jazeera) into Swedish:

«Massera min kjol!»

Afraid this will only appeal to anyone familiar with the Scandinavian languages, but easily one of the funniest YouTube clips of 2011 so far. Enjöy!

Thanks to Morten Traavik for the tip-off!

Goats Do Roam!

Loved the sheep'n'goat metaphor at the end of this little piece on the state of the world economy from FT Alphaville, one of the few blogs about financial matters that I read on a regular basis. Probably it mainly is because of the subtle humour that is intercepted here and which is sadly lacking in most writing on financial matters.

Anyway, here's the excerpt I was talking about:
«We await the end of QE2 in June. This will really sort the sheep from the goats. Then we will see whether this patient can keep up its frenetic Irish jig in the absence of extreme stimulants. I am in the camp (tent) that believes that QE1 and QE2 have driven equity prices which have, in turn, fuelled the economic recovery. Looking around, it is not a very crowded tent and being a city boy I’m not quite sure whether those droppings belong to sheep or goats.»

Q: Are We Men? A: No We Are Lemmings!

I could as easily have named this post something-to-do-with-oil, as it's the ever-rising oil-prices that is the subject here. But ah, always nice to indulge oneself and dive into popcultural ephemera and evoke the spirit (or should that be ghost?) of Akron, Ohio-new wavers Devo.

But I digress... as I said, it's all about the oil. Isn't it always thus?

It's reading stuff like this from the WSJ that sometimes even makes a pro-capitalist such as yours only doubt the existence of this thing called Western civilisation. Or make that «civilisation». And its discontents.

The panic created by the ongoing events in Libya (a far more limited producer of oil than the impression created by the ever-present hysterical mass media), apparently has seen oil prices reach their highest level in two years. Strange really, considering that there are sufficient back supplies to last another month (as the WSJ piece points out) and any losses in Libyan oil production so far in 2011 have been offset by similar rises from the world's primary oil producers – the Saudis.

So why the panic? Are We Not Men? Sadly it doesn't seem that way. So much for the idea that people in the West think independently. It all looks rather more like a flock of lemmings heading towards the nearest cliff together. And not exactly in a communal spirit, which would have been the least to expect given the circumstances.

They build fences, don't they?

This news piece about how the Greek government secretly has been working on a plan to build a wall on Greece's shared border with Turkey, to keep immigrants out of the EU, made me think of this little thought-provoking book about the history of barbed wire.

iPhone Shooter

Award winning director Park Chan-wook («Old Boy», «Thirst») is debuting his iPhone 4 shot feature «Paranmanjang» in Korean cinemas later this month. Is this the first time a feature film shot on an iPhone is shown in regular cinemas? An interesting development following on from a lot of stills done on iPhones by pro-photographers and also the work of these journalists embedded with US troops in Afghanistan, which they are posting via Facebook.

Future Sounds

When reading about David Cameron's plans for Britain to invest in tourism, pharmaceuticals, and so-called green industries, my initial reaction is: Isn't that what all developed countries are investing in or say they want to be investing in? Makes one wonder, is it possible for all countries to develop the exact same industries and somehow get away with it? I mean, sounds a bit like we'd end up with the old concept of everybody cutting each other's hair.

Gay-Friendly Office Party Music

Read this lukewarm review of the third Scissor Sisters some while back in the printed version of Die Welt, and have wanted to post this but didn't look it up online until now. The headline brilliantly sums up the Sisters' tepid pop: «Musik fürs schwule Betriebsfest». Or in English: «Music for the gay office party». As I was writing this however, it struck me that given the Sisters' adoring mainly non-gay fanbase (at least in the UK and Europe), a rather more fitting headline that neatly encapsules their sound would have been: «Music for the Gay-Friendly Office Party». Which just about sums up that the band reached its pinnacle early in their career, with a brilliant cover of Pink Floyd's «Comfortably Numb».

Sexx Laws (German Style)

The type of newspaper headline you would only get in Germany: «Niedergang der Sexualwissenschaft: Verhaltensmanagement statt Triebschicksal». If you insist on reading the whole piece, here you go bubbas.

inequality & income & the bleeding obvious

Check the graphs in this op-ed piece from the Washington Post. Especially the one about productivity and median income, and isn't it easy to spot that the writer is missing one very obvious point in why productivity goes up without income increasing accordingly: It's the technology, stupid!

And technology is just one of many, many factors that very obviously explain why income is not going to rise for the majority of people in the west in future years. Now, let's try and find ONE politician brave enough to admit this to the electorate...

Western Stars: The Facebook stock bonanza and the sudden implosion of the North American Way

Why oh why am I left with this strange desire to see an oversigning of Facebook stock akin to the theatre play Springtime for Hitler in Mel Brooks' classic The Producers? The cynicism of Goldman Sachs certainly leaves nothing to be desired compared to the producers who give title to the film. And then imagine this oversigning of stock to be followed by an implosion in the interest for social media, especially when people find out they need to work for a living again after the years of plenty in the West.

The oversigning of Facebook stocks quickly leading to a collapse of western finance.The irony of something as trivial as Facebook leading to this sudden loss of prestige and economic wealth surely wouldn't be lost on anyone. Extremely suitably and delightfully ironic it would be too that such a banality should see an end to our way of life.

And if so were to happen, I recommend that Time magazine name Mark Zuckerberg as Man of the Year once more. By public demand! That is, if Time magazine still were to exist after said implosion of fortune. Probably won't happen. But oh what a spectacle it would be. It would make the Facebook share deal look like the modern-financial-crunchy version of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. At least Hollywood could probably make a great movie out of it. But please, don't let Oliver Stone anywhere near it. We most certainly do not need a Wall Street 3!

Disneyland After Dark

Only surprise is that this hasn't happened sooner, but finally Disney Inc is set to destroy China from the inside in the shape of a theme park in Shanghai. In other words no point in worrying about any future challenges from the far east. The Chinese will be disneyfied and westernized long before they constitute any threat to the so-called Western way of life. Crazy like us!

Facebook is gay?

Facebook's gay, claims one of the readers responding to this anti-Facebook rant. The article neatly sums up why FB is such a waste of time. As for the claim that this particular social media is gay, I would argue the opposite. I would also argue that FB isn't particularly «social». But there you go! We're all entitled to our opinion. Personally I prefer the Onion's take on football (or soccer, as Americans like to call it) coming out as gay & which I wrote about before. Who wouldn't want football to be gay rather than something as dull as Facebook?

Rise of the Machines

Machines are taking over more and more financial transactions. Meaning that the cut-throat world of finance is now being measured more and more by the nano-second. Interesting also to read the reader comments. Including one guy who asks if America will become the first genuine communist society on earth. Something which reminds me of a piece I read about communism in modern America, where they talked to a commie who suggested that Sarah Palin was the most socialist of the mainstream political candidates. Sorry, I meant to write lamestream. But of course!

Being Boring

Like listening to paint dry, was only one of many subjects discussed at this conference of boredom in London. Sounds like just the right thing to pop up in our day and age.

Oh those Russians!

Brutality, corruption, and morally ambiguous. Russia is the perfect setting for contemporary novels.

Postmoralism // Postmoralisme

I'm declaring 2011 the year of Postmoralism! Happy postmoralistic year! // 2011 erklæres herved som postmoralismens år. Ha et riktig godt og postmoralistisk år!

Don't Speak

New Taylor Swift album «Speak Now» is begging for someone to release the response album: «Please Don't»!

Homo-soccer

Soccer officially announces it is gay, in this characteristic The Onion newscast. Watch out for the written texts running as part of the video, e.g. «Soccer wildly popular in gay places such as Spain and Florida».

Fjern ørevoksen!

Ear-cleaning maggots with the Kombai in Papua. Enjøy!

Political organ donation & the people who grinned themselves to death

I love stories like this one about the Kosovan PM who was trading in organs of executed Serbian prisoners during the civil war in the country, because they expose how absurd the notion of good and bad, of us and them, truly is. Sad fact is though, that such dichotomies still exist and persist and will keep on existing, against the wisdom of the few. As Arthur Miller once so correctly pointed out: «The majority isn't always right.» I remember a friend of mine changed that slightly, suggesting that the majority is almost always wrong. I sometimes agree with him on that. But Miller was definitely onto something.

Tvitteri-tvittera!

Etter å ha tenkt litt på hvordan jeg ønsker å kommunisere ut linker og slikt som jeg ramler over, så har jeg bestemt meg for å flytte aktiviteten fra blogging til twitter. Dermed blir Droneland til @droneland_.

For de av dere som ikke har og ikke vil ha en twitter-konto, så er det likevel ikke noe problem å følge meg på twitter. Det er bare å bokmerke twitter-siden min på nettleseren og så kan du besøke denne på samme måten som du har besøkt Droneland.

Kort forklart så ble Droneland i sin tid påbegynt fordi jeg brukte å sende ut masser av linker til venner og bekjente. Flere av disse oppfordret meg til å starte min egen blogg. Noe jeg en smule forsinket gjorde.

Det er selvsagt moro å skrive ut noen synsete betraktninger i bloggformatet. Verden har dog beveget seg videre siden 2007 og sosiale medier har tatt over. Siden jeg liker det brutale formatet twitter representerer og jeg liker utfordringen det er å fatte seg i korthet, ser jeg dette som en naturlig plattform for å legge ut linker til ting jeg liker å lese.

Mao vil jeg fortsatt dele ting jeg syns er ok, så om du i likhet med meg har interesser som krysser på tvers mellom ymse fagfelt så hekt deg på. Og siden man som kjent aldri skal si aldri, så kan Droneland selvsagt bli gjenopplivet i fremtiden. Men for nå, så er det twitter som gjelder for mine linker.

Mer katolsk enn paven

Interessant om hvordan den katolske kirken mister sitt fotfeste og at de prestene som faktisk klarer å holde på oppslutningen fra sine menigheter er de som enten er retro-katolikker eller reformatorer innen kirken. Nå om dagen blir ikke sånne direkte lyst i bann lenger, men mister enten jobbene, blir overlesset med tungvint og byråkratisk arbeid eller blir på ulikt vis satt i en posisjon uten økonomiske midler som gjør det mulig for dem å utføre jobben sin på en tilfredsstillende måte.

Generelt peker teksten, rent utover det som er en raskt fremskridende implosjon av den katolske kirken i Europa, indirekte på en del interessante scenarier om hvilken rolle religionen vil spille i det moderne Europa. For tro slett ikke at religion er død, noe dette intervjuet med den canadiske filosofen Charles Taylor viser.

Lønnsslaveri før og nå

Helseskadelig overtid og lave lønninger bidrar til den økonomiske veksten i India i dag...

...ikke helt ulikt utnyttelse av arbeidskraft i Indias kolonimakt Storbritannia under den industrielle revolusjon, hvor de like godt brukte barn som slavearbeidere.

Historien gjentar seg!