That was my holiday gift. A friend sent me a mound of episodes of Enterprise. So I watched.
Season four sucked-ass. --It was well produced and engaging, but the underlying message was just plain ASS. --Too much thinly veiled propaganda and apologism for torture and totally unnecessary bad moral decisions. -It's like Hollywood was given a mandate to validate evil. Enterprise even did an episode which was almost a scene for scene duplicate of an 'ALIAS' episode, (Now THERE'S a shitty program!), where the straw-man set-up had the 'Good Guys' really, really trying, (honest!), to take every other course of action other than torture, to the extent of simulating a fake reality with all the bells and whistles in order to trick a victim into giving up the 'vital' information. --They built a frickin' simulated space ship on hydrolics and a fake star-field out the windows in Enterprise. (In the 'ALIAS' episode, they built a fake Russian hotel inside a sound stage). --All designed to frustrate the viewer into crying, "Oh for fuck's sake! Just start cutting his fingers off!" (In the ALIAS episode, the George Bush look-alike playing the main character's father grabbed the victim and beat him to death, brought him back using one of those, "Clear!" heart-stimulators and told him he'd keep repeating the process until the victim gave up the 'vital' information. Fucking disgusting bullshit manipulative crap. (And let's not forget that ALIAS is the show which sent job applications through the roof at the CIA. --For which the dumb cunt who plays the main character in ALIAS is also doing recruitment videos. Gee! It's sure nice to know that next wave of U.S. spies were sucking up the bullshit propaganda and moral messages from ALIAS. Awesome! Where characters joke about being sociopathic, where there's a 'legitimized' torture scene in 80% of the episodes, and where they tell us, "It's an act of love to lie to your friends.") GAAAAH that show is EVIL.
News Flash: There is NEVER any 'information' which one needs to collect from a captive. That's all a total TV fiction. I'm serious. All anybody knows about it is what they grew up watching on television cop shows and spy movies. But in a battlefield situation, it simply doesn't happen. --Witness torture in Iraq; was that about gathering intel? No. It was about humiliation for the sake of humiliation. At the end of that naked pyramid, do you think the victims (who were almost certainly not even enemy combatants; the Red Cross determined that more than 70% of the military arrests in Iraq were arbitrary and needless acts of fear on the part of the occupying forces); bud were they asked to give up their vital information? Of course not! The whole, "Spy v.s. Spy" nonsense drama perpetuated through our culture by Hollywood is just that. In a situation like Iraq, intel is simply not an issue. You bomb and blow people away, and you do it to anybody who has the 'wrong' color skin. That's what Iraq is about. No intel is required. You don't need information about 'critical troop movements' or 'The Secret Code' or 'The Location of the Hidden Base'. Or nonexistent WMDs. That's all total bullshit. --You don't need any intel in order to maintain confusion and chaos so that arms sales may flow and the world can be distracted from the real crisis which the elite want a world government in place to deal with. Torture has NO good excuse. Period.
In Iraq, torture is about guards feeding/getting off on human misery. That's it. There is no other excuse. --It's about down-grading the awareness level of the human race, accessing the dark power-lust which lies dormant in all humans, getting as many people on that band-wagon as possible, doing it through these stupid television shows in a deliberate attempt to send humanity down that slippery slope so that we all turn into psychotic fuck-heads suitable for continuing the flow of dark emotional energy to our alien cattle herder masters.
Jeez. People call me paranoid. But other than firewalls and that basic stuff, I have exactly zero protection on my system. Passwords to protect my compy from prying eyes? Skip that. If people want to read my personal stuff, then that means they aren't my friends and won't be allowed in my house anymore. Simple as that. Let 'em rot.
Basic honor and respect. If I need pass codes, I need better people in my life.
Plus, despite any copy-protection I might employ, the 'Man' has the technology to see what's on my system any time he wants.
Nobody really cares what you keep on your hard drive. They just want you to feel guilty so that you live under perpetual self-inflicted stress and misery.
I've written about a lot of weird things over the past few years. Around the time I got my Slashdot account I also started meeting some unusual people and reading some unusual documents and experiencing some unusual things.
Here are a few excerpts regarding this climate stuff. ..
1. Yeah. The world weather is changing. It's part of a larger picture, often referenced under the label, "Earth Changes", which is somewhat misleading, as the changes are by not confined to just the Earth. These include things geologic, atmospheric, aquatic and electromagnetic. Increased comet strikes, solar flares, blue-bands on gas giants. The whole bit.
2. It's all linked to the collective experience of the human race. Not just reflective of, but linked both directly and indirectly. As world tensions rise and global awareness changes gear, so do these general effects on our total environment increase in number and severity.
3. It's not something to be afraid of. It's going to be increasingly annoying and painful, (and severely life-shortening in a billion cases or so), but not something to fear. This is what we came here to experience, and most of us will choose to go through it all again. The idea being to continue working on maintaining honest self-awareness and a high level of participation in life. This is how you develop your soul. By contrast, believing in comforting falsehoods and nestling deeper into the feeding on other beings through self-service and inflicting pain and control over others is how you decrease yourself, (which can actually be done to the point of vanishing altogether from the collective dream). --If you get enough people on the decrease, you lose the globe. That is, the dominant consciousness 'frequency' of the globe changes so that it no longer supports certain types of awareness. This whole trend toward normalizing the concept of torture in society is a clear marker of the push from the dark side. There is a reason sex and pleasure centers of the brain can be activated through inflicting misery on others. Humans have been written with this in mind. Choosing against this trend is entirely possible and is in fact necessary if one is to grow.
4. It is thought that about half the people on the globe are seeking their lower selves and ultimate self-dissolution. Like two great schools of thought passing through one another, one toward greater awareness, the other toward nothingness. The world and all its confusion is the static created as these two groups pass and try to drag members from each side along with them.
5. The world benefits from periodic cleansing, and re-sets itself easily enough. So don't worry about Earth. The whole experience would certainly be a lot less painful and annoying if we'd all just treat her and each other better, but the cycle remains.
Personal computers were not predicted (e.g., Apollo astronauts and Heinlein characters in the distant future all used slide rules). Flying cars -- where the F are they? Cloning becomes a possibility and politicians sit up as if they had no clue about it, and the public is pretty damn reactionary. People are miserable predictors of the future, especially when it depends on technological change.
Moreover, sf is really about just predicting the future and warning people about technological pitfalls. That's a narrow vision. It's a very unconstrained way of approaching a host of problems and issues that contemporary fiction may not be able to do. Philip K. Dick questions reality. Space colonization looks at new forms of government. Etc.
If you think the future is so clear, you need to work on your imagination. For instance, go compare predictions of the stripes of "peak oil" people to those who believe in the Vingean singularity and immortality in a couple of decades.
Well. . . The problem is that today we do actually have a pretty good idea as to what is coming. It's coming into focus daily. People are simply dealing with it in different ways, most subconsciously, a few consciously, and many others through outright denial which often involves looking away altogether.
The early and mid parts of the last century were filled with a large number of possibilities based on developing technologies and new scientific discoveries. There were many, many possible paths. The simple fact is that we've chosen most of those paths, and they are leading where they are leading. --I am in a position to know that many really powerful scientific discoveries have already been made behind the scenes, and that the public realm is only experiencing a very controlled release of 'new' ideas and science in accordance to other people's plans. If some 'new' scientific discovery comes along to change our society in any significant way, then you can bet it was deliberately placed. Of course, the plans of the Powers That Be are certainly subject to chaos and changeability, and those bounds are the ones which are being explored by current fiction of any worth.
The problem is that most Sci-Fi writers are not privy to the really good stuff; they are civilian writers working within the controlled medium. Subconsciously, people know this and have no real interest in reading their work. That's my guess as to part of the lack of interest in Sci-Fi books these days.
The relevant material, the stuff which is affecting the course of our culture today DOES, however, receive massive attention. Look at the kinds of stories which go big (or which are pushed small, but nonetheless set fire to minds), not just in one genre, but across the board. I think this offers a good indicator of the state of not just popular fiction, but the shape of our current and coming reality.
I think it would have validity if you suggested that people *feel* like everything's been done, rather than suggesting that everything actually *has* been done.
Besides, SF is something like C&W music in its ups and downs. It's out there skittering around the edges of the mainstream most of the time, and every so often something huge comes along (Star Wars, Garth Brooks) and a huge explosion in popularity occurs. After a while people just get sated and interest again wanes, and it becomes slightly uncool to be into the genre--at least, for a while.
I'm sure some sales are lost to existential apathy, but I don't know how many people don't want to dream anymore because everything worth dreaming has already been dreamed.
Well. . . I've heard that argument before in other mediums. --That such things move in cycles.
--You'll pardon me if I wince slightly and call it Wishful Thinking. It's particularly common among people who work in an affected medium and who don't want to consider the possibility that they might have to find other work. I know this directly. I work in comics and I've seen booms and busts, and man, comic books are history. They cling, like any medium will cling, but for all intents and purposes, their time on the main stage has passed. There are other things to invest our collective attention in.
But things do move. So how long until there is a surge of interest in Sci-Fi? Well. . . Fairy stories were popular, as were stories about knights errant. The Napoleonic war was a popular subject for a while. Things come and go, but by the time they return, the genre is usually massively changed and the even medium is often barely recognizable. Usually the last wave of writers are dead. And so are the readers.
The reason the public will re-focus on a subject is that culture has collectively forgotten all the things it taught itself during the original wave of attention. Are you dead yet? I know I'm not, and unless an exciting new possibility enters the picture of science, then I won't feel excited enough to pick up a speculative science novel. That's how it works. What Sci-Fi writers are basically waiting for is a very significant reality shift which opens up questions most people will have a burning desire to see answered. Rocket ship technology did this. As did the advent of industrial manufacturing and artificial materials science and genetics. But those things are done. --Remember, that stuff was new only sixty years ago! And that's when Sci-Fi mattered and was big. None of this stuff is new anymore, and so Sci-Fi simply doesn't matter as much, as evidenced by the low public interest in this Slashdot story.
What will the next big shift be? Well, heck, there have been a few. Look at the genres which have hit large in print publishing. Which books sell millions of copies? And why? I think it's limiting to label oneself a Science Fiction writer. Just be a writer, go where the action is and have something worth saying. (Yeah, that's not terribly realistic. People tend to spend a life-time trying to find personal focus, and do not often have anything worth saying outside those areas. Thankfully, this is why we have lots of different people, each with different perspectives.)
--Of course, there's nothing wrong in exploring the details. That's where niche markets come in. If it interests you, then stick with it and you'll be rewarded. Passion drives, and there are always enough people to support high talent and true passion and the right message within a specific area of interest.
Sorry, but the fact that you (or I) lack the capacity to know what is coming is not sufficient to conclude that nothing new is coming. It just means that human imagination is limited.
This may be so, but I'm just trying to explain the slumped popularity of Sci-Fi book sales. I think my explanation holds some validity.
the number of posts linked to this story. At the time of this post, it's only at sixty-five, and that's after nearly a whole day of activity.
This seems like as valid an indicator of how much popular interest Sci-Fi has in our culture as any. --If Sci-Fi were still hugely valid, then the mention of Clarion would ring bells instead of just tinkling them.
As for the number of choices left open to us. . . The possible futures may certainly be infinite, but the broad scope of discernable differences between them as relates to human awareness on the subject, seems to be diminishing. Global Warming is real and it's here; how it plays out is not really a matter of debate so much as fear to the point of not wanting to look. Genetic research is already having an impact on us; most of our food is already affected. We know how industry is screwing us. We've been globally corporatized, and it doesn't look like there are any likely off-ramps. The Neil Stephenson version of the future seems to sum things up, and it doesn't look promising. The time of speculating about going to Mars in a Ray Bradbury personal space-ship is gone.
All I'm saying is that as a culture, we've explored the possibilities in great depth through Sci-Fi, and we seem to have decided on what will happen. Ask the man on the street what the future holds, and he'll probably be able to tell you with some confidence. We're not living in the fifties anymore. The ideas are not new, and they've moved beyond the realm of "fanciful possibility" and into the zone of "depressing-almost-for-certain".
This is how I explain the lack of interest in Sci-Fi these days which expounds beyond the television reality. If you have another way of explaining it, I'd be happy to hear it. Maybe people simply read fewer books these days. Have readership levels dropped to the same degree in all genres of book?
How will genetic engineering affect our lives, or nanotechnology? How will the Global Climate Change affect us and our societies? Will China become the next superpower, or will shee break due to socioeconomical difference between the country and the cities? What will happen to the aging industrial societies? Will the globalism destroy cultural indiviuality or will it create transnational subcultures?
Everybody is currently living out the answers to those questions. Who needs sci-fi when it's here? --Well, to be fair, we do like to examine these things, but you'll notice that they're all dealt with in the context of already having happened in such pop sci-fi as, um. . , The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise, Star Wars.
That the science in our culture is no longer fiction.
The article directly after this, (about Sci-Fi), also contains the stamp of Cory Doctorow content, but it received less than fifty posts. This one has over four hundred. Interesting, eh?
Sci-Fi was needed when we were still in the process of making choices. That time has passed. All the really big choices, (in regard to science and the future), in our culture have now been made and the scope of possible futures is rapidly decreasing in number as we close in on our final destination.
And it looks like that destination might be reached on American Airlines. ..
I think it's because the science in our culture is no longer fiction, all the choices have been made, and the scope of possible futures is narrowing rapidly as we zero-in on our final destination.
Sci-Fi did a great job when it really mattered, and to be fair, it still does in the areas which count. --Look at the subjects which have been holding recent fascination in such titles like The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise, Star Wars. There are some very current and interrelated themes running through each of these titles which indicate what the global consciousness is focused on at the moment. An X-Files sequel? Gee, no shit.
When Amiga began to reach a combustion point, that is, to have a powerful effect on the world of personal computing, Ex-CIA and Government spooks became board members and ran Commodore into the ground, forcing the doors closed in about two or three years of stupid business decisions.
That part isn't the conspiracy theory. That stuff is real.
Here's the theory:
They did it on purpose.
--Why? Well, because the machine didn't suck for one thing. It had a very 'Open-Source Community' feel to it, (even though it wasn't actually Open Source). It was the kind of machine which made the user feel in control and powerful. And it didn't take itself too seriously or inspire fear. It was fun. --And it wasn't like Apple; it wasn't made for people who didn't want to know. It wasn't made for people who didn't like to tinker under the hood, but it could still be used by such people. It managed both! Amiga was a positive force. Man, you could feel that! Not like PC's (confusion boxes) and Macs (glossy computers encouraging the dream of mindlessness.) "We became your masters the day we started thinking for you." --Man, if any computer ever rose to speak in a soothing voice and not open the pod-bay door, it'd have an apple logo on it's hood)!
I still don't entirely like my dipshit PC, and all the people who are working to change that and give it a more 'Open-Source Community' feel are fighting an uphill battle against big industry, aka. the MIC. (Military Industrial Complex)
Like Gaimen and Pratchet described in their one collaborative book, "Good Omens", the collective power of an entire population all experiencing a moderate bit of annoyance is a far more powerful tactic than a lone demon corrupting a single priest.
Can you imagine an Amiga becoming a zombie machine? Not bloody likely.
Is it just me or does this article read a lot like the kind of plot excuse a hack sci-fi writer might come up with to populate and propel a story? "Genius industrialist founds well known public company, sells it off and uses proceeds to build a giant space-based laser, time machine, moon colony or other such cheesy crap from the seventies."
"What's going on!? Talk to me, lieutenant!"
"Sir! A signal is coming through now, Sir!"
[All the staff at Earth-Command look up at the giant monitor. The towering image of a bald-headed man fills the screen. It is LEX LUTHOR.]
"Greetings, General. . . By now your instruments will have. ..", etc. etc.
This reality is becoming increasingly more like a weird fever dream with each passing week.
Funny part is that I think it was always like this, but the veils were pulled down tighter than they currently are.
I'm going to sleep now. Wake me up if it starts to rain. Space rocks.
Jumbo Jets mean that when they crash, a LOT of people are killed, not just some.
All your eggs in one basket.
Though, I suppose they'll be needing massive transport. The next wave of prison camps will not be serviced by trains. Denver airport is designed to be the hub of human cargo transfer. In a few more years, (or months), if you're on a flight to Denver, it'll be both free and one-way.
I don't care about anything else in the article. Google shmoogle.
But 'Dark Fiber' is the first industry catch phrase which, A) Actually means exactly what it says, and B) Doesn't make me want to strangle business pigs by their tasteful neckties. Those two things are almost certainly related.
Use old Windows. I like Win98. Touched by almost nothing. It's less efficient in some areas, but it works. (Though I just got my first copy of Knoppix. Will be playing with that over the weekend!)
Firewall. Blocks most of the web crap you might run into. Tells you if some rogue software on your machine is trying to connect to the web and lets you kill it. Blocks those annoying insta-viruses Win2K has to worry about from simply connecting to the web. I like Zonealarm.
Mozilla. Kills pop-ups. Allows massive control over your browsing experience. Right click those jarring animated gifs out of existence!
Don't download, don't open any file you didn't ask for. Spam is a scam. Nobody wants to give you a million dollars.
Follow these simple rules, and too can have a great computer for only $500 dollars. If, however, you are not the type who has the time or interest in computers beyond just using the software, get a Mac. The extra cash you blow is worth the trouble, because you'd spend it anyway in time and stress if you don't know how to run a PC.
The fact of the matter is that even a really broken system of government could probably work wonderfully if all the people involved (both the public and the civil servants) were committed to doing a good job with good intentions and had no greed, anger, fear or general idiocy built into their heads.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see this any time soon. And further, it seems that 'Razed to the Ground' may become more a default position than a bitter day-dream before terribly long.
I'd like a nice on-line form associated with my tax return, which allows me to pick exactly where my tax dollars are spent.
I'd tick off things like, "Sidewalks and road repair in the region of my choice."
I'd tick off, "Public Transportation."
I'd tick off, "Environmental Conservation" and "Well-funded Free Medical Clinics which employ doctors who really want to heal people and not just get rich." I'd tick off all the other things I want MY money to be spent on. I want to be able to micro-manage where my tax dollars go, what salaries people receive, and who gets to have a job funded with MY money.
Things I'd NOT tick off would include,
"Missile defense systems which A) don't work and B) increase world tensions leading to hugely wasteful expenditures on ever increasingly complex defenses. Which don't work."
"Spineless Yes-Man Politicians More Interested in Keeping Their Jobs than in Serving the People who Bloody Voted for them."
"Free Handouts and Make-Work Contracts for Stupid Corporations Which Don't Deserve Jack Shit, *cough Haliburton* But which Happen to be run by Friends and/or Family Members of Sitting Retard Presidents."
"Education systems which make kids stupid, socially retarded and massively mis-informed."
"Legal and Penal systems which put non-criminals into jails which are designed to shove everybody into beast-mode and encourage them to abuse one another just so that they might survive."
And of course,
"Half-Billion Dollar mis-leadingly named information-consolidation contracts which duplicate other contracts and existing systems which already work a bit too well at putting non-criminals into jail."
If I can't have that tax system, then I'd rather see the whole goddamned thing burn to the ground.
People who are determined not to see will use almost any means to not see.
There's really no need to sweat so much. If you want to turn your mind to fuzz, then you are free to do so.
The interesting thing I notice, however, in reading the posts below, is the apparent decreasing logical and communicative abilities of the people who are defending their own decay. To be expected, I suppose, but it is really beginning to stand out more and more these days.
There's one fellow below who wrote an annotated post explaining how to recognize quack-science. Very poorly written! --The hypocrisy and lack of rationality reads like something from one of those, "Bush, the Great Statesman," Neocon web sites. --Or the kinds of arguments you see on those late-night Christian evangelism television shows.
That's fine. Like I said, decay as much as you want. But "+5 Insightful"? THAT part makes me sigh. Some days I fear that this world is quite beyond help.
The end/beginning is coming, but the transition will only hurt in inverse proportion to the level of stupidity and denial people cling to. And right now, I'm cringing.
Now that you have learned some of the skills needed to distinguish bullshit from non-bullshit, there are a few more steps you can take if you like. ..
I have read quite extensively among the available literature regarding Cell Phone EM, and yes, there is some emotionally charged stuff out there which makes it easy to look away and not give the issue proper consideration.
But there is also a lot of good research which does not raise the common warning flags your article points out.
When it comes to the effects of EM radiation and electricity on cell tissue, the effects are by no means small or "at the very limit of detection." The research I've read does not start out with emotional appeals, but (among the ones I have read), rather stem from genuine curiosity.
While it has been demonstrated that cancer cells can be made to grow many times faster with certain types of electrical stimulation, the issue I am more interested in has to do with the various mechanisms through which physiology can be altered and affected in non-destructive ways.
The cry of the wool-dyed cynic is just as foolish and self-deluding as the cry of the lunatic. If you want to know what's really going on, you cannot walk into a library with expectations. I notice in your article that you used numerous instances of ridicule to press your point when logic was not on your side. How is this different from the very emotional appeals you point out yourself as being problematic? I don't mean to rub your nose in it, but the question I think is valid.
And finally, it is a mistake to believe that anybody owes one anything. One does not deserve truth. We are all responsible to ourselves in the search for knowledge. Nobody owes you proof, and if you move through the world accepting 'data' from only those who have the funds and media structure to deliver their messages to you in the style you have become accustomed to, then you will be filled only with what people with lots and lots of money want you to be filled with.
Simply put, if 500 respected reviewers find no link between two phenomena, and one quack professor on the fringe of sanity finds a link, you tell me who gets published.
Lone Quack theory?
Hm. There is always a lunatic fringe, but is it always wise to look at only one part of a sample in order to judge the whole?
I believe this was in essence even part of your own argument. So why not apply it to more than just one area?
The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of good science being done. Some excellent literature, books, papers have been written by scientists who are well respected by their peers in the world of orthodox research. I've studied a portion of it, and the material I've come across reads in direct contrast to the broad public beliefs about what is and is not known. Somewhat alarmingly, this is the case even among people really ought to know better, but who instead take the industry's and big media's word for the matter.
The problem is that there is a lot of research done every year, and scientific ideas are much like rock music and movies. They can only reach a broad audience and wide public acceptance with enormous promotional funding. --The same rules which rule pop culture apply to the scientific world, and that's not a joke. It takes money and effort to sell ideas. To elicit awareness.
The problem is that the media is owned by the very companies which have heavy stakes in cell phone technology. This is not conspiracy theory. It's cold, hard truth. It's conflict of interest. I know a few journalists, and I have been told stories about how stories have been scrubbed because of fear of upsetting the publisher.
Even the American Air Force has had a hand in the manipulation of public perceptions in this matter. --When Air Force soldiers began to develop cancer from exposure at high-power radar and com-sat stations, (soldiers described how standing in front of a big radar dish was good in the winter because it heated them up nicely.), the military, fearing law suits, began funding research designed not to uncover the truth of the matter, but to deliberately 'show' that human tissue cannot be affected even by high power EM radiation. In typical fashion, the military got their way and was not forced to foot any medical bills for exposing their people to unsafe technology and medicines.
As with most innovations, there was a direct continuation of microwave technology moving from the military into the public sector; and right along with this came the pre-installed lies.
Further, the issue is confused. Cancer isn't the main problem. --Although, it is possible to speed up the growth of existing cancer cells with extremely low levels of electrical stimulation of the sort which can be created through resonance effects caused by Cell Phone technology, this is, I think, a side issue.
Animal cells are affected by EM radiation within certain parameters. --Again, it is true that Cell Phone microwave radiation is at too high a frequency to have many of those effects which are understood, but a Cell Phone signal IS however, modulated down to a frequency, about 10 Hz, (if I remember correctly), which while it is not annalog, does have the ability to mimic those low frequency effects.
And this is not quack science.
I'll roll out once more the example of Cyclotronic Resonance for a blunt explanation of how one of those effects works. --Basically one signal in combination with the Earth's magnetic field, can cause certain molecules and atoms which naturally exist in the blood, not just to energize, but to move on a vector which allows them to much more readily penetrate the Blood-Brain Barrier than they normally do, and thus have medicinal effects upon the brain. --This is just one of several mechanisms which are known to exist.
So apparently I am now 4 times more likely to die a horrible death... 4 times what? What are the odds of getting the tumor without using a cell phone? Four in 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000?
It's not really about dying a horrible death. It's about having your mind turned to fuzz so that you can't think or cognate properly.
And there are no odds. If you use a cell phone, then your brain isn't working properly. You are living under a measurable handicap. Simple as that. The fact that you might have trouble noticing this is due to the fact that the very organ you use for taking stock of reality is the one being affected.
The issue of EM radiation is not nearly so clear-cut at all the owned news sources would have us believe.
The example linked above is just one small piece of a fascinating puzzle. You might benefit from more research beyond the corridors of big money. There's a lot to find if you take the time, and particularly in this case it's well worth the effort.
It struck me that all the big advances in the last couple of centuries, watershed technologies, were all about communication, and that they have all slid up a notch in terms of. . . Hm. How do I put this. . ?
That is. . , after the advent of industrial manufacturing, automatic weapons, air travel, all the big watersheds seem to have slipped into a higher frequency realm.
Even the Steam Engine was a form of communication, and so was the airplane. They simply operated on a lower vibrational frequency. They communicated energy in a denser form from Point A to Point B. Even industrial manufacturing was a way of converting dense energy into new forms. Re-describing matter in different ways.
After that, though, communication has been pushing the speed of light speed.
Star Wars used new ways to describe and communicate images and ideas. The Telephone was about communication, as is the internet. Same with Tesla's invention of the radio. --And speaking of Tesla, so was the advent of AC electricity. Tesla even thought of electricity in those terms. Communication. Moving energy from Point A to Point B in new ways.
So. ..
If I might tentatively suggest that there is a real pattern here, then perhaps the next Big Deal will also revolve around the same scheme. The communication of energy from one place to another.
Hm. Another thought. . . I'm not convinced that technology will necessarily play a key role. The number of people I know who are budding telepaths keeps growing. Just today I was talking with another person who is coming to grips with her first experiences in that arena. Interesting times, indeed.
My father once told me that the world was waiting for the next watershed technological leap and that it had been for some time. People in high places were biting their fingernails. We were overdue.
I said, "A water shed? Like an outhouse?"
He said, "No. A Watershed is a geographic term. It's a high point. Something which defines the terrain and the river systems. The flow of water."
Ah. . . The flow of life energy. Gotcha. Powerful term. Didn't say that, though. He continued. ..
"The Steam Engine was a watershed mark. So was the Printing Press. Telephones. You understand? The world is waiting for the next big one, and nobody knows what it will be."
"Any ideas," I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't know. I think it might have something to do with digital switching." (My pop worked at Nortel) "We've made some spectacular advances in the last few years. It's possible to do things now with the switches we make that you simply couldn't have imagined only a few years ago. None of that potential has been tapped yet. But I don't know. Telephones are old news."
We had this conversation before there was an internet. --We had modems and BBS's, but the internet hadn't breached the shell of public awareness. GUI web browsers and email were the big steps I think. They were the watershed. There would have been no tech bubble without email and GUI web browsers. Netscape and Eudora and similar were the tips of the iceberg. Tips of the rising watershed.
The bubble itself was then all about hype and over-excitement. --Justifiable over-excitement, (if that makes any sense). After all, the web did change the world, and it did make some people very, very wealthy. Amazon.com is finally the giant everybody suspected it would become. It didn't happen over-night, and people were anxious and stupid about it, but it certainly happened.
Watersheds only come about once in a long while, and not often in the same medium. Star Wars introduced high-tech production values never before seen. It re-defined the way movies were made. Spielberg understood this and tried to push the same kind of hype around Jurasic Park, using extensive CG animation and touting that as the next big step. His so-so film just happened to ride the coat tails, and he knew it. --Annoyingly enough, his plan sort of worked. CG animation certainly wasn't his invention, but he did bring it to the spotlight.
But in computer IT? What's the next big thing? What's going to make everybody go hoola-hoop rubic's-cabbage-patch again?
Well, first you need unformed power, like the advanced digital switches my father worked on at Nortel, which have massive potential but no application. Then you need somebody to come along and define that power.
So what's out there in tech land? Heck if I know. I'm not a technologist. This wireless bullshit is interesting, (and rather threatening, I think), but just a small step. People already understand that technology. It's not new. It's not unimaginable, like the simple graphic web page would have been twenty years ago. We've had walkie-talkies for ages now.
Slashdot Mirror
That was my holiday gift. A friend sent me a mound of episodes of Enterprise. So I watched.
.
Season four sucked-ass. --It was well produced and engaging, but the underlying message was just plain ASS. --Too much thinly veiled propaganda and apologism for torture and totally unnecessary bad moral decisions. -It's like Hollywood was given a mandate to validate evil. Enterprise even did an episode which was almost a scene for scene duplicate of an 'ALIAS' episode, (Now THERE'S a shitty program!), where the straw-man set-up had the 'Good Guys' really, really trying, (honest!), to take every other course of action other than torture, to the extent of simulating a fake reality with all the bells and whistles in order to trick a victim into giving up the 'vital' information. --They built a frickin' simulated space ship on hydrolics and a fake star-field out the windows in Enterprise. (In the 'ALIAS' episode, they built a fake Russian hotel inside a sound stage). --All designed to frustrate the viewer into crying, "Oh for fuck's sake! Just start cutting his fingers off!" (In the ALIAS episode, the George Bush look-alike playing the main character's father grabbed the victim and beat him to death, brought him back using one of those, "Clear!" heart-stimulators and told him he'd keep repeating the process until the victim gave up the 'vital' information. Fucking disgusting bullshit manipulative crap. (And let's not forget that ALIAS is the show which sent job applications through the roof at the CIA. --For which the dumb cunt who plays the main character in ALIAS is also doing recruitment videos. Gee! It's sure nice to know that next wave of U.S. spies were sucking up the bullshit propaganda and moral messages from ALIAS. Awesome! Where characters joke about being sociopathic, where there's a 'legitimized' torture scene in 80% of the episodes, and where they tell us, "It's an act of love to lie to your friends.") GAAAAH that show is EVIL.
News Flash: There is NEVER any 'information' which one needs to collect from a captive. That's all a total TV fiction. I'm serious. All anybody knows about it is what they grew up watching on television cop shows and spy movies. But in a battlefield situation, it simply doesn't happen. --Witness torture in Iraq; was that about gathering intel? No. It was about humiliation for the sake of humiliation. At the end of that naked pyramid, do you think the victims (who were almost certainly not even enemy combatants; the Red Cross determined that more than 70% of the military arrests in Iraq were arbitrary and needless acts of fear on the part of the occupying forces); bud were they asked to give up their vital information? Of course not! The whole, "Spy v.s. Spy" nonsense drama perpetuated through our culture by Hollywood is just that. In a situation like Iraq, intel is simply not an issue. You bomb and blow people away, and you do it to anybody who has the 'wrong' color skin. That's what Iraq is about. No intel is required. You don't need information about 'critical troop movements' or 'The Secret Code' or 'The Location of the Hidden Base'. Or nonexistent WMDs. That's all total bullshit. --You don't need any intel in order to maintain confusion and chaos so that arms sales may flow and the world can be distracted from the real crisis which the elite want a world government in place to deal with. Torture has NO good excuse. Period.
In Iraq, torture is about guards feeding/getting off on human misery. That's it. There is no other excuse. --It's about down-grading the awareness level of the human race, accessing the dark power-lust which lies dormant in all humans, getting as many people on that band-wagon as possible, doing it through these stupid television shows in a deliberate attempt to send humanity down that slippery slope so that we all turn into psychotic fuck-heads suitable for continuing the flow of dark emotional energy to our alien cattle herder masters.
-ahem-
But anyway. .
Th
Basic honor and respect. If I need pass codes, I need better people in my life.
Plus, despite any copy-protection I might employ, the 'Man' has the technology to see what's on my system any time he wants.
Nobody really cares what you keep on your hard drive. They just want you to feel guilty so that you live under perpetual self-inflicted stress and misery.
-FL
Here are a few excerpts regarding this climate stuff. .
1. Yeah. The world weather is changing. It's part of a larger picture, often referenced under the label, "Earth Changes", which is somewhat misleading, as the changes are by not confined to just the Earth. These include things geologic, atmospheric, aquatic and electromagnetic. Increased comet strikes, solar flares, blue-bands on gas giants. The whole bit.
2. It's all linked to the collective experience of the human race. Not just reflective of, but linked both directly and indirectly. As world tensions rise and global awareness changes gear, so do these general effects on our total environment increase in number and severity.
3. It's not something to be afraid of. It's going to be increasingly annoying and painful, (and severely life-shortening in a billion cases or so), but not something to fear. This is what we came here to experience, and most of us will choose to go through it all again. The idea being to continue working on maintaining honest self-awareness and a high level of participation in life. This is how you develop your soul. By contrast, believing in comforting falsehoods and nestling deeper into the feeding on other beings through self-service and inflicting pain and control over others is how you decrease yourself, (which can actually be done to the point of vanishing altogether from the collective dream). --If you get enough people on the decrease, you lose the globe. That is, the dominant consciousness 'frequency' of the globe changes so that it no longer supports certain types of awareness. This whole trend toward normalizing the concept of torture in society is a clear marker of the push from the dark side. There is a reason sex and pleasure centers of the brain can be activated through inflicting misery on others. Humans have been written with this in mind. Choosing against this trend is entirely possible and is in fact necessary if one is to grow.
4. It is thought that about half the people on the globe are seeking their lower selves and ultimate self-dissolution. Like two great schools of thought passing through one another, one toward greater awareness, the other toward nothingness. The world and all its confusion is the static created as these two groups pass and try to drag members from each side along with them.
5. The world benefits from periodic cleansing, and re-sets itself easily enough. So don't worry about Earth. The whole experience would certainly be a lot less painful and annoying if we'd all just treat her and each other better, but the cycle remains.
I have no newsletter, so don't ask.
-FL
Moreover, sf is really about just predicting the future and warning people about technological pitfalls. That's a narrow vision. It's a very unconstrained way of approaching a host of problems and issues that contemporary fiction may not be able to do. Philip K. Dick questions reality. Space colonization looks at new forms of government. Etc.
If you think the future is so clear, you need to work on your imagination. For instance, go compare predictions of the stripes of "peak oil" people to those who believe in the Vingean singularity and immortality in a couple of decades.
Well. . . The problem is that today we do actually have a pretty good idea as to what is coming. It's coming into focus daily. People are simply dealing with it in different ways, most subconsciously, a few consciously, and many others through outright denial which often involves looking away altogether.
The early and mid parts of the last century were filled with a large number of possibilities based on developing technologies and new scientific discoveries. There were many, many possible paths. The simple fact is that we've chosen most of those paths, and they are leading where they are leading. --I am in a position to know that many really powerful scientific discoveries have already been made behind the scenes, and that the public realm is only experiencing a very controlled release of 'new' ideas and science in accordance to other people's plans. If some 'new' scientific discovery comes along to change our society in any significant way, then you can bet it was deliberately placed. Of course, the plans of the Powers That Be are certainly subject to chaos and changeability, and those bounds are the ones which are being explored by current fiction of any worth.
The problem is that most Sci-Fi writers are not privy to the really good stuff; they are civilian writers working within the controlled medium. Subconsciously, people know this and have no real interest in reading their work. That's my guess as to part of the lack of interest in Sci-Fi books these days.
The relevant material, the stuff which is affecting the course of our culture today DOES, however, receive massive attention. Look at the kinds of stories which go big (or which are pushed small, but nonetheless set fire to minds), not just in one genre, but across the board. I think this offers a good indicator of the state of not just popular fiction, but the shape of our current and coming reality.
-FL
Besides, SF is something like C&W music in its ups and downs. It's out there skittering around the edges of the mainstream most of the time, and every so often something huge comes along (Star Wars, Garth Brooks) and a huge explosion in popularity occurs. After a while people just get sated and interest again wanes, and it becomes slightly uncool to be into the genre--at least, for a while.
I'm sure some sales are lost to existential apathy, but I don't know how many people don't want to dream anymore because everything worth dreaming has already been dreamed.
Well. . . I've heard that argument before in other mediums. --That such things move in cycles.
--You'll pardon me if I wince slightly and call it Wishful Thinking. It's particularly common among people who work in an affected medium and who don't want to consider the possibility that they might have to find other work. I know this directly. I work in comics and I've seen booms and busts, and man, comic books are history. They cling, like any medium will cling, but for all intents and purposes, their time on the main stage has passed. There are other things to invest our collective attention in.
But things do move. So how long until there is a surge of interest in Sci-Fi? Well. . . Fairy stories were popular, as were stories about knights errant. The Napoleonic war was a popular subject for a while. Things come and go, but by the time they return, the genre is usually massively changed and the even medium is often barely recognizable. Usually the last wave of writers are dead. And so are the readers.
The reason the public will re-focus on a subject is that culture has collectively forgotten all the things it taught itself during the original wave of attention. Are you dead yet? I know I'm not, and unless an exciting new possibility enters the picture of science, then I won't feel excited enough to pick up a speculative science novel. That's how it works. What Sci-Fi writers are basically waiting for is a very significant reality shift which opens up questions most people will have a burning desire to see answered. Rocket ship technology did this. As did the advent of industrial manufacturing and artificial materials science and genetics. But those things are done. --Remember, that stuff was new only sixty years ago! And that's when Sci-Fi mattered and was big. None of this stuff is new anymore, and so Sci-Fi simply doesn't matter as much, as evidenced by the low public interest in this Slashdot story.
What will the next big shift be? Well, heck, there have been a few. Look at the genres which have hit large in print publishing. Which books sell millions of copies? And why? I think it's limiting to label oneself a Science Fiction writer. Just be a writer, go where the action is and have something worth saying. (Yeah, that's not terribly realistic. People tend to spend a life-time trying to find personal focus, and do not often have anything worth saying outside those areas. Thankfully, this is why we have lots of different people, each with different perspectives.)
--Of course, there's nothing wrong in exploring the details. That's where niche markets come in. If it interests you, then stick with it and you'll be rewarded. Passion drives, and there are always enough people to support high talent and true passion and the right message within a specific area of interest.
-FL
This may be so, but I'm just trying to explain the slumped popularity of Sci-Fi book sales. I think my explanation holds some validity.
-FL
This seems like as valid an indicator of how much popular interest Sci-Fi has in our culture as any. --If Sci-Fi were still hugely valid, then the mention of Clarion would ring bells instead of just tinkling them.
As for the number of choices left open to us. . . The possible futures may certainly be infinite, but the broad scope of discernable differences between them as relates to human awareness on the subject, seems to be diminishing. Global Warming is real and it's here; how it plays out is not really a matter of debate so much as fear to the point of not wanting to look. Genetic research is already having an impact on us; most of our food is already affected. We know how industry is screwing us. We've been globally corporatized, and it doesn't look like there are any likely off-ramps. The Neil Stephenson version of the future seems to sum things up, and it doesn't look promising. The time of speculating about going to Mars in a Ray Bradbury personal space-ship is gone.
All I'm saying is that as a culture, we've explored the possibilities in great depth through Sci-Fi, and we seem to have decided on what will happen. Ask the man on the street what the future holds, and he'll probably be able to tell you with some confidence. We're not living in the fifties anymore. The ideas are not new, and they've moved beyond the realm of "fanciful possibility" and into the zone of "depressing-almost-for-certain".
This is how I explain the lack of interest in Sci-Fi these days which expounds beyond the television reality. If you have another way of explaining it, I'd be happy to hear it. Maybe people simply read fewer books these days. Have readership levels dropped to the same degree in all genres of book?
-FL
Everybody is currently living out the answers to those questions. Who needs sci-fi when it's here? --Well, to be fair, we do like to examine these things, but you'll notice that they're all dealt with in the context of already having happened in such pop sci-fi as, um. . , The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise, Star Wars.
-FL
The article directly after this, (about Sci-Fi), also contains the stamp of Cory Doctorow content, but it received less than fifty posts. This one has over four hundred. Interesting, eh?
Sci-Fi was needed when we were still in the process of making choices. That time has passed. All the really big choices, (in regard to science and the future), in our culture have now been made and the scope of possible futures is rapidly decreasing in number as we close in on our final destination.
And it looks like that destination might be reached on American Airlines. .
-FL
I think it's because the science in our culture is no longer fiction, all the choices have been made, and the scope of possible futures is narrowing rapidly as we zero-in on our final destination.
Sci-Fi did a great job when it really mattered, and to be fair, it still does in the areas which count. --Look at the subjects which have been holding recent fascination in such titles like The Matrix, Firefly, Stargate, Enterprise, Star Wars. There are some very current and interrelated themes running through each of these titles which indicate what the global consciousness is focused on at the moment.
An X-Files sequel? Gee, no shit.
-FL
When Amiga began to reach a combustion point, that is, to have a powerful effect on the world of personal computing, Ex-CIA and Government spooks became board members and ran Commodore into the ground, forcing the doors closed in about two or three years of stupid business decisions.
That part isn't the conspiracy theory. That stuff is real.
Here's the theory:
They did it on purpose.
--Why? Well, because the machine didn't suck for one thing. It had a very 'Open-Source Community' feel to it, (even though it wasn't actually Open Source). It was the kind of machine which made the user feel in control and powerful. And it didn't take itself too seriously or inspire fear. It was fun. --And it wasn't like Apple; it wasn't made for people who didn't want to know. It wasn't made for people who didn't like to tinker under the hood, but it could still be used by such people. It managed both! Amiga was a positive force. Man, you could feel that! Not like PC's (confusion boxes) and Macs (glossy computers encouraging the dream of mindlessness.) "We became your masters the day we started thinking for you." --Man, if any computer ever rose to speak in a soothing voice and not open the pod-bay door, it'd have an apple logo on it's hood)!
I still don't entirely like my dipshit PC, and all the people who are working to change that and give it a more 'Open-Source Community' feel are fighting an uphill battle against big industry, aka. the MIC. (Military Industrial Complex)
Like Gaimen and Pratchet described in their one collaborative book, "Good Omens", the collective power of an entire population all experiencing a moderate bit of annoyance is a far more powerful tactic than a lone demon corrupting a single priest.
Can you imagine an Amiga becoming a zombie machine? Not bloody likely.
-FL
This reality is becoming increasingly more like a weird fever dream with each passing week.
Funny part is that I think it was always like this, but the veils were pulled down tighter than they currently are.
I'm going to sleep now. Wake me up if it starts to rain. Space rocks.
-FL
As I heard it said once. .
Jumbo Jets mean that when they crash, a LOT of people are killed, not just some.
All your eggs in one basket.
Though, I suppose they'll be needing massive transport. The next wave of prison camps will not be serviced by trains. Denver airport is designed to be the hub of human cargo transfer. In a few more years, (or months), if you're on a flight to Denver, it'll be both free and one-way.
-FL
But 'Dark Fiber' is the first industry catch phrase which, A) Actually means exactly what it says, and B) Doesn't make me want to strangle business pigs by their tasteful neckties. Those two things are almost certainly related.
Have a great day!
-FL
Use old Windows. I like Win98. Touched by almost nothing. It's less efficient in some areas, but it works. (Though I just got my first copy of Knoppix. Will be playing with that over the weekend!)
Firewall. Blocks most of the web crap you might run into. Tells you if some rogue software on your machine is trying to connect to the web and lets you kill it. Blocks those annoying insta-viruses Win2K has to worry about from simply connecting to the web. I like Zonealarm.
Mozilla. Kills pop-ups. Allows massive control over your browsing experience. Right click those jarring animated gifs out of existence!
Don't download, don't open any file you didn't ask for. Spam is a scam. Nobody wants to give you a million dollars.
Follow these simple rules, and too can have a great computer for only $500 dollars. If, however, you are not the type who has the time or interest in computers beyond just using the software, get a Mac. The extra cash you blow is worth the trouble, because you'd spend it anyway in time and stress if you don't know how to run a PC.
-FL
The fact of the matter is that even a really broken system of government could probably work wonderfully if all the people involved (both the public and the civil servants) were committed to doing a good job with good intentions and had no greed, anger, fear or general idiocy built into their heads.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see this any time soon. And further, it seems that 'Razed to the Ground' may become more a default position than a bitter day-dream before terribly long.
-FL
I'd like a nice on-line form associated with my tax return, which allows me to pick exactly where my tax dollars are spent.
I'd tick off things like, "Sidewalks and road repair in the region of my choice."
I'd tick off, "Public Transportation."
I'd tick off, "Environmental Conservation" and "Well-funded Free Medical Clinics which employ doctors who really want to heal people and not just get rich." I'd tick off all the other things I want MY money to be spent on. I want to be able to micro-manage where my tax dollars go, what salaries people receive, and who gets to have a job funded with MY money.
Things I'd NOT tick off would include,
"Missile defense systems which A) don't work and B) increase world tensions leading to hugely wasteful expenditures on ever increasingly complex defenses. Which don't work."
"Spineless Yes-Man Politicians More Interested in Keeping Their Jobs than in Serving the People who Bloody Voted for them."
"Free Handouts and Make-Work Contracts for Stupid Corporations Which Don't Deserve Jack Shit, *cough Haliburton* But which Happen to be run by Friends and/or Family Members of Sitting Retard Presidents."
"Education systems which make kids stupid, socially retarded and massively mis-informed."
"Legal and Penal systems which put non-criminals into jails which are designed to shove everybody into beast-mode and encourage them to abuse one another just so that they might survive."
And of course,
"Half-Billion Dollar mis-leadingly named information-consolidation contracts which duplicate other contracts and existing systems which already work a bit too well at putting non-criminals into jail."
If I can't have that tax system, then I'd rather see the whole goddamned thing burn to the ground.
But hey, that's just me.
-FL
There's really no need to sweat so much. If you want to turn your mind to fuzz, then you are free to do so.
The interesting thing I notice, however, in reading the posts below, is the apparent decreasing logical and communicative abilities of the people who are defending their own decay. To be expected, I suppose, but it is really beginning to stand out more and more these days.
There's one fellow below who wrote an annotated post explaining how to recognize quack-science. Very poorly written! --The hypocrisy and lack of rationality reads like something from one of those, "Bush, the Great Statesman," Neocon web sites. --Or the kinds of arguments you see on those late-night Christian evangelism television shows.
That's fine. Like I said, decay as much as you want. But "+5 Insightful"? THAT part makes me sigh. Some days I fear that this world is quite beyond help.
The end/beginning is coming, but the transition will only hurt in inverse proportion to the level of stupidity and denial people cling to. And right now, I'm cringing.
-FL
I have read quite extensively among the available literature regarding Cell Phone EM, and yes, there is some emotionally charged stuff out there which makes it easy to look away and not give the issue proper consideration.
But there is also a lot of good research which does not raise the common warning flags your article points out.
When it comes to the effects of EM radiation and electricity on cell tissue, the effects are by no means small or "at the very limit of detection." The research I've read does not start out with emotional appeals, but (among the ones I have read), rather stem from genuine curiosity.
While it has been demonstrated that cancer cells can be made to grow many times faster with certain types of electrical stimulation, the issue I am more interested in has to do with the various mechanisms through which physiology can be altered and affected in non-destructive ways.
The cry of the wool-dyed cynic is just as foolish and self-deluding as the cry of the lunatic. If you want to know what's really going on, you cannot walk into a library with expectations. I notice in your article that you used numerous instances of ridicule to press your point when logic was not on your side. How is this different from the very emotional appeals you point out yourself as being problematic? I don't mean to rub your nose in it, but the question I think is valid.
And finally, it is a mistake to believe that anybody owes one anything. One does not deserve truth. We are all responsible to ourselves in the search for knowledge. Nobody owes you proof, and if you move through the world accepting 'data' from only those who have the funds and media structure to deliver their messages to you in the style you have become accustomed to, then you will be filled only with what people with lots and lots of money want you to be filled with.
-FL
Lone Quack theory?
Hm. There is always a lunatic fringe, but is it always wise to look at only one part of a sample in order to judge the whole?
I believe this was in essence even part of your own argument. So why not apply it to more than just one area?
The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of good science being done. Some excellent literature, books, papers have been written by scientists who are well respected by their peers in the world of orthodox research. I've studied a portion of it, and the material I've come across reads in direct contrast to the broad public beliefs about what is and is not known. Somewhat alarmingly, this is the case even among people really ought to know better, but who instead take the industry's and big media's word for the matter.
The problem is that there is a lot of research done every year, and scientific ideas are much like rock music and movies. They can only reach a broad audience and wide public acceptance with enormous promotional funding. --The same rules which rule pop culture apply to the scientific world, and that's not a joke. It takes money and effort to sell ideas. To elicit awareness.
The problem is that the media is owned by the very companies which have heavy stakes in cell phone technology. This is not conspiracy theory. It's cold, hard truth. It's conflict of interest. I know a few journalists, and I have been told stories about how stories have been scrubbed because of fear of upsetting the publisher.
Even the American Air Force has had a hand in the manipulation of public perceptions in this matter. --When Air Force soldiers began to develop cancer from exposure at high-power radar and com-sat stations, (soldiers described how standing in front of a big radar dish was good in the winter because it heated them up nicely.), the military, fearing law suits, began funding research designed not to uncover the truth of the matter, but to deliberately 'show' that human tissue cannot be affected even by high power EM radiation. In typical fashion, the military got their way and was not forced to foot any medical bills for exposing their people to unsafe technology and medicines.
As with most innovations, there was a direct continuation of microwave technology moving from the military into the public sector; and right along with this came the pre-installed lies.
Further, the issue is confused. Cancer isn't the main problem. --Although, it is possible to speed up the growth of existing cancer cells with extremely low levels of electrical stimulation of the sort which can be created through resonance effects caused by Cell Phone technology, this is, I think, a side issue.
Animal cells are affected by EM radiation within certain parameters. --Again, it is true that Cell Phone microwave radiation is at too high a frequency to have many of those effects which are understood, but a Cell Phone signal IS however, modulated down to a frequency, about 10 Hz, (if I remember correctly), which while it is not annalog, does have the ability to mimic those low frequency effects.
And this is not quack science.
I'll roll out once more the example of Cyclotronic Resonance for a blunt explanation of how one of those effects works. --Basically one signal in combination with the Earth's magnetic field, can cause certain molecules and atoms which naturally exist in the blood, not just to energize, but to move on a vector which allows them to much more readily penetrate the Blood-Brain Barrier than they normally do, and thus have medicinal effects upon the brain. --This is just one of several mechanisms which are known to exist.
-FL
It's not really about dying a horrible death. It's about having your mind turned to fuzz so that you can't think or cognate properly.
And there are no odds. If you use a cell phone, then your brain isn't working properly. You are living under a measurable handicap. Simple as that. The fact that you might have trouble noticing this is due to the fact that the very organ you use for taking stock of reality is the one being affected.
-FL
Cyclotronic-resonance
The issue of EM radiation is not nearly so clear-cut at all the owned news sources would have us believe.
The example linked above is just one small piece of a fascinating puzzle. You might benefit from more research beyond the corridors of big money. There's a lot to find if you take the time, and particularly in this case it's well worth the effort.
-FL
Mixed metaphors?
Like Opus's, "You can lead a horse to a manger but you can't make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke."?
If I was mixing metaphors, I certainly didn't mean to do so, nor did I see where I did it. Care to explain your snotty remark?
If I wasn't the charitable sort, I'd suspect you had other, less than noble reasons for being hostile.
-FL
That is. . , after the advent of industrial manufacturing, automatic weapons, air travel, all the big watersheds seem to have slipped into a higher frequency realm.
Even the Steam Engine was a form of communication, and so was the airplane. They simply operated on a lower vibrational frequency. They communicated energy in a denser form from Point A to Point B. Even industrial manufacturing was a way of converting dense energy into new forms. Re-describing matter in different ways.
After that, though, communication has been pushing the speed of light speed.
Star Wars used new ways to describe and communicate images and ideas. The Telephone was about communication, as is the internet. Same with Tesla's invention of the radio. --And speaking of Tesla, so was the advent of AC electricity. Tesla even thought of electricity in those terms. Communication. Moving energy from Point A to Point B in new ways.
So. .
If I might tentatively suggest that there is a real pattern here, then perhaps the next Big Deal will also revolve around the same scheme. The communication of energy from one place to another.
Hm. Another thought. . . I'm not convinced that technology will necessarily play a key role. The number of people I know who are budding telepaths keeps growing. Just today I was talking with another person who is coming to grips with her first experiences in that arena. Interesting times, indeed.
-FL
I said, "A water shed? Like an outhouse?"
He said, "No. A Watershed is a geographic term. It's a high point. Something which defines the terrain and the river systems. The flow of water."
Ah. . . The flow of life energy. Gotcha. Powerful term. Didn't say that, though. He continued. .
"The Steam Engine was a watershed mark. So was the Printing Press. Telephones. You understand? The world is waiting for the next big one, and nobody knows what it will be."
"Any ideas," I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't know. I think it might have something to do with digital switching." (My pop worked at Nortel) "We've made some spectacular advances in the last few years. It's possible to do things now with the switches we make that you simply couldn't have imagined only a few years ago. None of that potential has been tapped yet. But I don't know. Telephones are old news."
We had this conversation before there was an internet. --We had modems and BBS's, but the internet hadn't breached the shell of public awareness. GUI web browsers and email were the big steps I think. They were the watershed. There would have been no tech bubble without email and GUI web browsers. Netscape and Eudora and similar were the tips of the iceberg. Tips of the rising watershed.
The bubble itself was then all about hype and over-excitement. --Justifiable over-excitement, (if that makes any sense). After all, the web did change the world, and it did make some people very, very wealthy. Amazon.com is finally the giant everybody suspected it would become. It didn't happen over-night, and people were anxious and stupid about it, but it certainly happened.
Watersheds only come about once in a long while, and not often in the same medium. Star Wars introduced high-tech production values never before seen. It re-defined the way movies were made. Spielberg understood this and tried to push the same kind of hype around Jurasic Park, using extensive CG animation and touting that as the next big step. His so-so film just happened to ride the coat tails, and he knew it. --Annoyingly enough, his plan sort of worked. CG animation certainly wasn't his invention, but he did bring it to the spotlight.
But in computer IT? What's the next big thing? What's going to make everybody go hoola-hoop rubic's-cabbage-patch again?
Well, first you need unformed power, like the advanced digital switches my father worked on at Nortel, which have massive potential but no application. Then you need somebody to come along and define that power.
So what's out there in tech land? Heck if I know. I'm not a technologist. This wireless bullshit is interesting, (and rather threatening, I think), but just a small step. People already understand that technology. It's not new. It's not unimaginable, like the simple graphic web page would have been twenty years ago. We've had walkie-talkies for ages now.
So what will it be?
-FL