Taxi Driver 1976.
Microsoft latest effort to wrest the internet from Google, well I presume it is.
I am sure you have seen the adverts. One person makes a comment which sends another off into free association. The premise being we are all suffering from information overload and cannot differentiate between useful and not useful.
Microsoft presumably comes to the rescue and tell us what is useful and what is not. Or rather fails to tell us about things it does not deem useful. Well I am sure it is less Orwellian when Microsoft explains it and it is no bad thing skipping irrelevancies.
Think how much happier you would have been not having to read the last 3 paragraphs.
Information overload is considered a modern evil and something it would be nice to get control of.
I have been reading The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is a true tale about a modern day American that wishes to bring us all back to nature and bought 1000 acres of land to create a community to enlighten people about how to go about this.
It is perhaps not Utopian in its ideals, but certainly it is going along those lines. I studied Economics and Utopia cropped up quite a bit, usually just because you needed a country where things were perfect. “In this Utopian world of perfect information…” etc etc. It was a handy simplified starting point before too much of the real world leaked in and Keynesian economics crashed down around your ears and you found yourself mumbling, “In the long run we are all dead”. Keynes might have been wrong on that, it might be, in the long run we are all monetarists.
Back to the point (there is one, well the beginning of one anyway).
Utopian thinking is not the preserve of economists or lunatics (not mutually exclusive) but there is a very enjoyable history of cranks and nutters setting up societies outside of society and thankfully not all based on some sort of religious mania.
Although not its only geographical stronghold there is a long history of “Utopian society” building in England. My current reading includes : Utopia Britannica: v. 1: British Utopian Experiments: 1325-1945 by Chris Coates.
I was browsing OS maps online and comparing the 1930’s/40’s OS maps with the current ones ( http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm ). Looking at the changing landscape and names because for the last year or two I have been walking “ghost landscapes”. Basically landscapes which no longer exist, ie trying to trace the boundary of something more ancient in the modern landscape looking for a remnant. If asked why, there is no quick answer and probably no coherent one either.
Then I noticed a large area of orchard on the 1940’s map which no longer exists. Turns out this was just such a Utopian society just before World War One. It then changes hands to assist unemployed Londoners around about the Great Depression. Now it seems to have a prison on part of the acreage.
Utopian society, economics, changing land use and it has 3 Martello Towers to see along the route. All this and a hell of a lot more from a bit of coastline that is combed over pretty regularly by the outdoor type programmes for entirely more obvious reasons.
While walking is just that, “plod plod plod” some landscapes live more in the head than the feet. Which might be the best explanation I am going to manage as to why I walk ghost landscapes.
I can’t wait to set foot on the path, it has fired my imagination for a few days and will bring together some threads from my current reading matter.
One person’s data is another person’s information.
For those interested, here is the section of the map I am referring too:
http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm?lat=52.04600001215836&lon=1.44211568412607&gz=14&oz=7>=6
No comments:
Post a Comment