Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Let Them Eat Data - 3 Bowers makes a well put point on the fallacy of the unbridled enthusiasm (apologies to Kramer) of the computer age. He quotes Larry Elison, "by combining all information - numbers, text, sound, and images - in digital form, and by making available everywhere, and by making it infinitely manipulable, the information highway will utterly change our lives." He also cites Gates, "... It will relieve pressure on natural resources because an increasing number of products will be able to take the form of bits rather than material goods" Bowers goes on to point out that if they actually looked at the data (numbers, text, sound, and images - in digital form), they'd see that in the next twenty years, we could be looking at an ecological catastrophe in natural resources from fisheries to forests. By the way my ecological foot print: If everyone lived like me we'd need 4.9 planets. It's all the meat that's killing my score. yum yum... 12:27:22 AM     comment []

Let Them Eat Data-2 Among many things Bowers talks about High status knowledge vs low status knowledge, these correspond to low context knowledge and high context knowledge. Basically high status low context knowledge is that which you learn at school, and in books. Low status high context knowledge is that which you learn from your mentors (Mothers fathers etc.) Bowers says the elevation of low context knowledge (hence the name) reduces the importance of high context knowledge. It is high context knowledge that leads to an economically sound lifestyle. Local knowledge is replaced with data (low context knowledge). I say sadness because this is the lifestyle I would like to lead, but basically I'm afraid too, it is an alternative way to live. I'm not afraid to be different. What I'm afraid of is that this is an age old story. Hunter gatherers live with loads of high context knowlege, in harmony (ideally) with their environment, and with a low ecological foot print. Agricutluralists live a lower context lifestyle. However they displace the hunter gatherers who live at a lower density then the agriculturalists. Industrial revolution over agriculture. Virtual culture over industrial.  I'm not saying it's good, quite the contrary. My understanding is that those hunter gatherers had hours of free time everyday, that's my bread and butter. This site has more info about agriculturism vs hunter gatherers http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cfford/342WorstMistake.htm 12:07:22 AM     comment []