Routine - Enhanced or not!

As the western world settles into its version of the new annual cycle, routine seems to be stabilising again. Sadly, those routines are comprised largely of the same old bullshit from the powers that be. In defense of himself and totally contrary to his previous environmental stance, the fading preacher has started promoting air travel again. Elsewhere, the increasingly closeted emporer is ignoring all the advice he supposedly commissioned in favour of an almost Thatcherite "not for tuning" philosophy bolstered by a newly refreshed inner clique of neo-con counsellors. The stagnation in the court of King Georgie is at least now tempered by a less-then-sympatheic mood in the new houses of government, whilst here in the UK there are serious cracks in the mirror. The preacher is desparately trying to exit the pulpit without landing in the extensive pile of his own droppings and his sucessor has suddenly taken to distancing himself from Amerika in terms of future foreign policy. Roputine be damned - change is afoot whether they like it or not.

When "Gorgon" Brown landed in 11 Downing Street he made two major changes. The first was making the Bank of England independent of government fiscal policy. The second, less observed maybe, was overhauling his office. The latter, although before 911 and subsequent excuses for a "surveillance state" imperative, was significant in that it involved a massive technological makeover which may well have helped him excerise the famed "prudence" he brought to his job. His enthusiasm for modern tools was not exactly reflected by his next door neighbour who prefered to conduct affairs using shallow, uninformed, old-time bufoonery. For all my reservations about his ability to actually perform adequately in his planned future role, The Gorgon will at least have a grasp on the reality of the information age.

So too do Britain's intelligence services, who today have announced new plans for terror alerts and other emergencies. Most notable is the seemingly innocent revelation that we will be receiving email notifications of any changes to our security alert status. Details are sketchy, but one assumes this will involve bulk warnings sent via our ISPs. Readers will note a new piece of javascript in the sidebox at left - proof that contacting you will be pretty simple!

Paradoxically, as government attempts to embrace new communication technologies, one wonders if they are assuming too much. Some people still use dail-up connections which mean they don't get email immediately. Others still don't have online facilities of their own and rely on internet cafes and the like. Both groups don't have fixed IP addresses by which they can be contacted. A third group still haven't entered the computer age at all, although in Britain at least the adoption of mobile phones is almost universal. If this final group are not to be left out of the loop, text-messaging would be the better option. The loop itself is, of course, a privacy issue in it's own right - but we've been there before!

By co-incidence, I caught a TV documenary yesterday on how mobile phones rather than compters per-se are revolutionising cultural and political process in Africa. In areas without effective democracy or corrupt government, where even internation aid is hi-jacked by the ruling elite, people have found a way to communicate. Without even basic electricity, mobiles are charged using solar power with farms and villages formerly enslaved to "middlemen" suddenly discovering they have choices over whom they work and deal with. One woman interviewed described her mobile as "being like given the keys to your prison". The commentator suggested that Africa (and presumably more of the "third world") could be about to embrace modernity within a decade, by by-passing the industrial revolution they never experienced.

Ironically, it is big business that is saving such societies - namely the telecom giants. Phone masts cover every inch of the land, independent of government and even any other infrastructire like roads. These African phones also contain the eqivilent of cash-machine cards - people received money electronically and pay for goods and services the same way. There is no cash and nor, for the most part, does there seem to be any tax. As criminal governments decay, people are forging a new world for themselves - a kind of free-market underground economy, which is now beginning to self-finance the building of an infrastructure from which national leaders have long since abdicated.

It gives me hope and also makes me wonder if the developed world is on a road to nowhere. As we are enslaved by consumer trinkets, media that largely functions as subliminal propaganda and a so-called "lifestyle" that is dependent on unecessary travel and other energy waste - are we soon to witness pre-industrial societies achieve a social model that illustrates the fallacy of our own ways? If the planet sees a rise in new local sustainable communities that are "patched in" to global communications systems, maybe it is we ourselves who will become the new "third world" - forever dependent on others to perpetuate our decadence.

The balance of economic power in the world is shifting rapidly. Rape and pillage of recources, the slow and silent genocide of those who have no useful place in the capitalist machine and the refusal to take our own future self-sustainability seriously - these are ultimately the signs of a decline in civilisation. War, greed and callous introversion will simply accelerate the inevitable - for all our new technology, it is we who are failing to communicate adequately. It's a two-way street, but a global village!

later.