At 09:56 30.05.01 +0200, jonivar skullerud wrote:
>Denne performative selvmotsigelsen, til ettertanke...
>
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4193178,00.html
>
>Log off now
Etter å ha sett den amerikanske "svarte komedien" om "den andre
borgerkrigen" (en litt forvirra blanding av svart humor og amerikansk-
sentimentalt vrøvl) hvor mediegalskapen blir satt på spissen er jeg enda mer
på denne linja. Det er dette med den gamle kinesiske vismannens ord om at
hvis du har mer enn sju ting, er det ikke du som har tingene, men tingene
som har deg.
Det er ikke menneskene som har internettet, TV, osv. Det er de som har oss.
Det er ikke vi som har arbeide, det er arbeidet som har oss, osv. Dette er
på en måte kapitalismen i et nøtteskall. Midlene tar over og blir til mål.
Hva vi trenger midt i all denne informasjonsforstoppelsen, hypen, spin'et og
denne produktivistiske galskapen er å falle ned og få bakkekontakt igjen.
Summere opp hva vi vet. Dette vil tvinge seg fram, so oder so.
Naturens reaksjoner (inklusive vår egen naturs) burde fortelle oss noe.
Karsten Johansen
>New technology was supposed to make our lives easier, not take them
>over
>
>Jeremy Rifkin
>Guardian
>Saturday May 26, 2001
>
>The whole world is rushing to join the information
>revolution. Everyone wants to be connected. It is generally believed
>that the only debate worth having in the "new era" is how to ensure
>that everyone has access to cyberspace. Now an equally important issue
>is beginning to loom: is too much access as big a problem as too
>little? Is it possible that the information and telecommunications
>revolution is speeding up human activity at such a rate that we risk
>doing grave harm to ourselves and to society?
>
>Two experiments by American scientists reported recently should give
>all of us reason to ask where we are heading in this era of
>instantaneous global electronic connections. In the first, two Harvard
>University teams succeeded in slowing light down to a full stop,
>holding it in limbo, then sending it on its way again. Light travels
>at a speed of 186,000 miles a second and is thought to be the fastest
>form of energy in the universe. This marks the first time light has
>ever been stopped and temporarily held in storage, and researchers
>hope it will lead to a new type of technology revolution called
>quantum computing and quantum communication. Quantum technologies
>could vastly speed up both computing and communications in the coming
>century.
>
>In the second experiment, scientists at Princeton succeeded, for the
>first time, in making a light pulse travel at many times the speed of
>light. While researchers were quick to point out that nothing with
>"mass" can exceed the speed of light, scientists now believe that a
>"pulse" of light can. The physicists conducting the experiment hope
>that their work will lead to a dramatic speed up of optical
>transmission rates.
>
>These experiments bring us to the cusp of a new era in human history:
>we are beginning to organise life at "the speed of light". Every day,
>new software and telecommunication technologies are being introduced
>to compress time, accelerate activity and process greater stores of
>information. We live increasingly in a nanosecond culture. But is it
>possible that the very technological wonders that were supposed to
>liberate us have, instead, begun to enslave us in a web of
>ever-accelerating connections from which there seems to be no escape?
>
>A new term, 24/7 - around the clock activity, 24 hours a day, seven
>days a week - is quickly coming to define the parameters of the new
>temporal frontier. Our fax machines, email, voice mail, PCs and
>cellular phones, our 24-hour trading markets, instant around-the-clock
>ATM and online banking services, all-night e-commerce and research
>services, 24-hour television news and entertainment, 24-hour food
>services, all vie for our attention.
>
>And while we have created every kind of labour- and time-saving device
>and activity to service one another's needs and desires, we are
>beginning to feel we have less time available to us than any other
>humans in history. That is because the new services only increase the
>diversity, pace and flow of commercial and social activity around
>us. For example, email is a great convenience - until we find
>ourselves spending much of the day frantically responding to each
>other's email. The cell phone is a great timesaver - except that now
>we are always potentially in reach of someone else who wants our
>attention.
>
>Today, we find ourselves in a far more complex interdependent temporal
>world made up of ever-changing webs of human relationships and
>activity - a world in which every available minute becomes an
>opportunity to make another connection. Descartes' dictum, "I think,
>therefore I am," has been replaced by: "I am connected, therefore I
>exist."
>
>What happens when our lives are embedded in around-the-clock
>relationships operating at the speed of light? The telltale signs of
>our new time angst are everywhere. Stress-related illness is rising
>dramatically all over the world. Much of it is attributable, say the
>experts, to information overload and burnout as more and more people
>find themselves unable to cope with the pace, flow and density of
>human activity made possible with new lightening-speed
>technologies. In the UK, three in 10 employees suffer mental problems
>each year from stress-related behaviour. Stress-related illness and
>absenteeism costs the economy the equivalent of 10% of its GDP.
>
>According to a recent report of the International Labour Organisation,
>one in 10 adults worldwide suffer stress, depression and burnout. The
>ILO predicts a dramatic increase in stress as even faster technologies
>are introduced and globalisation accelerates. Stress related diseases
>- including depression, heart disease, strokes, cancer and diabetes -
>are rising so quickly, say some observers, that stress may become the
>leading cause of illness.
>
>The new, fast-paced 24/7 society is having other profound effects on
>people's lives. Around-the-clock activity has led to a serious decline
>in the number of hours devoted to sleep. In 1910, the average adult
>was still sleeping nine to 10 hours a night. Now the figure is less
>than seven hours in highly industrial countries: an extra 500 waking
>hours a year. But our internal biological clocks are set to the
>rotation of the planet and daily, monthly and seasonal temporal
>rhythms. We are biologically designed to go to sleep after sunset and
>wake at sunrise. Massive sleep deprivation, brought on by the frantic
>new pace of living, is increasingly being linked to serious illnesses
>including diabetes, cancer, strokes and depression.
>
>Nowhere is the "speed of light" society having a greater impact than
>with the dot.com generation. Millions of children (especially boys)
>are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in
>the US, with a rising number of cases in Europe. Sufferers are easily
>distracted, unable to focus their attention; impulsive and quickly
>frustrated. But if a child grows up surrounded by video games and
>computers, and comes to expect instant gratification, is it any wonder
>that he develops a short attention span? Quicken the pace, and we
>risk increasing the impatience of a generation.
>
>Is the hyper-speed culture making all of us less patient? Already,
>new stress related, anti-social behaviour patterns are beginning to
>emerge. "Desk rage," "road rage" and "air rage" have become part of
>the popular lexicon as more and more people act out their stress with
>violent outbursts. In the click-click culture, we shouldn't be
>surprised if everyone is poised for a hair-trigger response.
>
>Perhaps we should be asking what kind of "connections" and what types
>of "access" matter. If this new technology revolution is only about
>speed and hyper efficiency, then we might lose something even more
>precious than time - our sense of what it means to be a caring human
>being. Until now, we have asked only the question of how best to
>integrate our lives into the new technology revolution. We need to ask
>a deeper question. How do we create a social vision that makes these
>new "speed of light" technologies a powerful complement to our lives,
>without them taking over our lives?
>
>* Jeremy Rifkin is author of The Age of Access
>
>comment@guardian.co.uk
>
>--
> ______ _________________________________________________
> / | jonivar skullerud jonivar@bigfoot.com |
> | jon | http://www.bigfoot.com/~jonivar/ |
> \______ | |
> \ | None are more hopelessly enslaved than those |
> ivar | | who falsely believe they are free. -Goethe |
> _______/ |_________________________________________________|
>
>
>
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