If you can read this, you're too damn close!
My hidden ramblings!
Communication and truth are the core of civility. The most painful thing for me is to be cut off from the world, yet I seek that as a salve for my soul sometimes. I like to drink deep and then exhale mightily.
The bell is rung
The dice are tossed
The trigger pulled
The key is lost
The communication thing...
The most profound change I have observed in my little lifetime is in communication. Since the early 1900's the speed and quality of knowledge dispersal has improved to the point of changing the organism. Indeed, reaction time is so quick today, that the civilized world often reacts more like a single body than disparate places and peoples. Today's cognoscenti get data from multiple sources, at realtime or close.
Only the elite used to possess accurate knowledge, information. To be aware of issues was the exception. We now possess a democracy of data, where those that desire can pursue information, and compare it for accuracy. We can alter and expand it. Spew it back into the group mind, and be corrected or vindicated or ignored. This
The Reach Thing -
Man's power, his reach has grown exponentially. Used to be, he could reach the length of his arms, on a good day, if he weren't injured. Then, the reach of the first tools. The ability to throw or hurl things gave him greater prowess as a hunter, and fighter. Soon this was magnified with the tools of science to reach further and further, as explosives and electricity powered remote occurrences...
Power used to require knowledge. Now any monkey can fire a weapon. Used to take a while to take out another human being.
INFO or TRUTH Bombs -- Listening to reports of what Arab newspapers are saying, from mild to radical lies about our little war, is illuminating. It would seem we need some sort of truth bombs... Information that is real, or at least as real as we can make it. Should we drop laptops with WAN like blue tooth, or such wireless internet access? What would happen if we started dropping satellite tv systems, with CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the gamut of news, and entertainment available to US? Would the locals be at least interested? You bet....
In the