The special report “Nomads at last” in the April 12th issue of The Economist comes with a series of articles about how mobile technology is changing the fundamental fabric of today’s society, ranging from work attitudes to the effects it may have on language evolution. Altogether a collection worth reading.
About a year ago, in small, simple, sms I had pointed out some statistics that support the notion that half of world population would be armed with a mobile device soon. Now it seems a good time to figure out what that will do to our society.
With arguments that remind me of “The Hacker Ethic“, the notion that mobile technology is blurring the line between work and private life, seems to be a persistent meme throughout the special report. The trend for many independent consultants to be able to conduct their business without the need for an office or even having to subject themselves to work from a desk in their houses, thus liberating them to roam the multiple hotspots where Internet access is readily available and the surroundings are stimulating. As opposed to telecommuters, who are forced to work from their [...]
Listening to Duke Ellington quote Marshall McLuhan, making the incredibly deep thinking of the cultural philosopher accessible to his audience is priceless. In “the whole world is going oriental” the Duke found inspiration to create some of the most advanced jazz fusion of the 60’s by unifying themes from around the world without concern for the remix of cultural patterns.
When McLuhan made the original statement he was talking about the process of westernization of the East and orientalizing of the West:
The entire Western world, McLuhan argues, is now turning inward upon itself—in the old Oriental pattern—while the Orient “has been increasingly engaged in an outer trip, aided by Western technology.
That was back in the 60’s. More recently we could argue a very similar process has been evolving when around 200 million migrants find a new home every year. In immigrant population and the south in the heart of the north I’ve documented some of the facts and figures of this process, but what interests me today are the methods that migrants use to cope with the sudden disorientation that results from trying to build a new way of live in an unknown city.
Meet David [...]
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