Perspective

Whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we think we carry our past with us. All of our thoughts and actions carry tendrils that reach back into the past. Most tendrils may only go back into recent living memory, a large number may go back a few generations, a few may go back a long way to medieval times, such as the times of the plague, and one or two may stretch way back into the mist of time, the stone age or even beyond. We are inescapably tied to our past. It shapes and determines how we think for the future.

Today we are plagued by short-termism. This country in particular has no long-term investment view. What is the least input required to be able take out the grosses benefit, that is the ruling mantra. Our ancestors took pride in what they produced, mostly, they put all their skills into making something to hand on to the next generation. What they produced was their measure of worth, their public mark of where they stood in their community. Not for them the quick cheap fix, stuff it in nobody will notice or care. We have inherited those quality products and now routinely trash them with contempt. Today the labour cost is king whilst thousands are idle or employed in lowgrade drudgery work. But hey technology is changing so fast there is no point in making things to last anymore and robots do a much more consistent and faster job than any human. What do I care, nothing to do with me, I will just buy the next model upgrade and see if that works any better.

Sitting on top of this economic model that drives our culture are the Supermarkets, exploiting to the very limits, promoting and using every psychological trick to encourage us to revel in this throw away society. Buy more, buy cheaper, buy because its not going to be there tomorrow, buy, buy. To placate the institutional shareholdings who only look for the percentage gain this minute to the next minute and most certainly have no stake in a week, month or even a years strategy let alone any long term goal. The Supermarkets need to keeping increasing the amount they sell day by day. Squeezing their suppliers and manufacturers to cut corners, to cut standards, to cut quality, anything to reduce costs by that pence here or there. Cutting until just before the point of customer drift. Maintaining high standards and expectations, promoting a strive to improve quality and experience just are not their agenda. Lulled as we are into this false security of trusting our run-of-the-mill supplier, the Supermarket outlet. They are doing what is best for us. Ha. In our name they are corrupting the quality of life we depend on. They do not have a balance sheet on the numbers of people kept in production employment, the plunder of raw resources, the wanton accumulation of discard's to be tipped, they are just exploiting the economic model. The model which states labour is an key expense and throwaway is cheaper then longevity. 

Just remember there is nothing intrinsic about labour being a dominate cost factor, just as there nothing intrinsic about cheap throwaway technology. We are bright enough and creative enough to devise alternative economic models, if we choose to. Models, just for example, that reward local production, that reward least use of raw materials, that have long shelf life's, that have upgradeable platforms or reusable core components. There are lots of other options to consider, if we had the will. If we chose not to treat our Earth as infinite landfill site and face the reality of diminishing natural resources. We could if only we cared. We might then rediscover a pride in what we passed on to our children.

Flawed Model

Recently I flirted with Twitter. The more I looked the more concerned I became. It seems to me that Twitter is fundamentally flawed, it operates like an inverted pyramid selling game. In the long run is just is not sustainable. Eat my words?

Social networking is the new buzz, the new way to be free, express ourselves and make undreamt of connections. Unlike Facebook, Twitter requires you, as your starting point, to select six person whose tweets you most want to follow. Then, based on that initial selections, encourages you to select other related tweeters to select to follow. 

This is in direct contrast to Facebook which start out with the friends you do know and offers to extend your circle to other connections which have a connection back the the friends you have. Your choice, your pool, you decide pond or ocean.

Back to Twitter then. How does any one person end up with 20 million people following their every cough and sneeze of a tweet? Do they have something that is so original so earth shattering to say that 20 million people are agog for their next pronouncement. I think not. 

Your own tweet is just a grain of sand on the beach, indistinguishable from all the other grains, lost in the sea of sands. Only your tweets that are ripostes to that some august body count and might possibly get noticed. How to be become an august body? Why by being promoted as a person being offered for selection. Who gets to decided which persons tweets are worth being offered for selection? By the originators of this pyramid scam. It is all very self-referential. Only the deemed noteworthy are offered and therefore only they can increase their followers, which then pushes them up the ranking to become an even higher favourite selection. That is why a Miss Withnothingtosay can end up having 20 million followers. Not as a direct response of her undoubted wide and universal popular appeal but just the way the network is stacked. 

In my world a twit was a fool, a numbskull who made wrong choices. Or a twittering was the raucous sound made by a large flock of sparrows. By either definitions, Twitter certainly has found the right word analogies to rest amongst.