Virtual Design

The relationship between form and function has been severed by the relentless substitution of information for experience and focusing on desirability over reliability. Refrigerators designed by people who have obviously never cleaned one and may never have one long enough to bother; cars designed for southern driving sold as viable transportation in northern conditions come to mind. Products are designed for sale; not for use. Function in a world of virtual design and marketing madness ends at the checkout – which of course moves the money but leaves the demand, ideal for corporate bottom lines.

Fuel efficiency is measured on highways; not in snowdrifts beside the road where all vehicles become equal. Maybe to truly improve vehicle efficiency we need to keep them on their path…maybe linked together running on tracks, powered by electricity, driven by experienced professionals…maybe throw in a bar car and smart phone cubicles where people could be safely and comfortably impaired and distracted. It could be called high-speed rail. Unfortunately that doesn’t address the marketing aspect very well and does nothing to transfer money to banks by way of interest on car loans. It simply doesn’t meet the standards set for consumer subservience.

Cars are a great example of design for market share rather than solution but the model is all the rage. Pharmaceutical empires put their design talents in marketing and legal fees, not the product. Packaged food, covered with empty promises and filled with empty calories, has replaced nutritious food. When we stopped knowing where our food came from we should have realized we would soon not recognize it at all. Good food isn’t designed – it is grown, cooked and eaten. Food, like so much in life, doesn’t improve with unnatural processes or involve lengthy explanations. If it takes more than a couple of seconds to read a package and understand it, don’t eat the contents.

The next time you are purchasing a tool for the kitchen or the workshop try the one that doesn’t come in a box that looks just too special for the job and one that doesn’t speak more languages than you require. You might even explore the possibility of a handsaw or mixing bowl as the best solution.

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Enumerating Literacy

Functional illiterates may be better suited to the future than non-functional literates.

As the European debt crisis is so eloquently demonstrating savvy oratory doesn’t solve problems, it exacerbates them – it makes us believe in silly things reality simply doesn’t acknowledge. Farmers, on whom theorists depend, well know an inspired dissertation delivered to the most promising seeds doesn’t get the job done; life is very pragmatic and unflinching faced with theory. Gale force winds against a small boat on open water may go well with a smart Chardonnay while reading about it on the couch but in reality the situation is more likely to elicit a white-knuckled, unencumbered cry to the heavens for help without a single concern about split infinitives.

As I have beautiful wood that needs a stern lecture on becoming furniture and flour in need of a lesson on becoming bread I must now go help the world become a better place in the mind of one – literally.

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IT25

A quarter of a century in information technology has taught me:

Information is more dependable than reality.

Whacky ideas become facts through consensus.

Completely incorrect data can be extremely accurate.

Reading an account of experience is more valuable than actual experience.

When statistical probability is calculated really quickly it is called artificial intelligence.

The value of information is inversely proportional to the cost of storing it.

Guessing becomes science three points after the decimal.

Data models follow the example of fashion models.

Compelling graphs celebrate the mundane well.

Research and plagiarism are synonymous.

Ideas are commodities.

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Silly-By-The-Sea

There is a place that can’t be reached by the information highway. It is a mythical place where there are no studies, nor data, nor facts; just stories. One of these stories is of a place called Silly – or more properly Silly-By-The-Sea – where people call their stories studies and write about facts rather than ideas. The studies and facts are created and managed for a few but hold unlimited influence over everyone. For all their hard work the few are rewarded with honor and respect particularly from themselves and their followers known, when completely absent, as head lites.

The Silly common belief is that this select few are leading a charge to overcome nature on which their future existence depends and replacing it with a superior system thereby installing themselves as masters of their own destiny and that of all of life. Not everyone in Silly is pleased with the institutionalization of hubris. There are those who think mastering life involves more than a complete lack of acknowledgement and subsequent destruction of most of it. For them this sacrosanct exalted hedonistic height is a perilous precipice and the loss of potable water or breathable air more than an inconvenient aspect of progress. For them it is flat out wrong.

As the polarization becomes irreparable, the vast majority – being the minuscule minority of shareholders – mobilize through technology. They use cell phones to greet each other and discuss lengthy issues, drive great distances to join in condemnation of oil companies, fly anywhere to attend environmental conferences and eat in fat food restaurants to keep pace in the fast lane of conservation and energy efficiency. They are quick studies when it comes to learning ways to transfer their tiny share to the powerfully wealthy in every conceivable way. There is no corporation they won’t support in their fight against greed and big business. They never stray far from the fire hoses of facts pumping hourly instalments of subterfuge into their electronic sea.

While some in the mythical place laugh at the regular retelling of this ludicrous story more people, now not so distant from the indoctrination highway, are hearing the pounding of the internal combustion war drums, tasting the air and smelling the water. The myth is encroaching. The community is threatened. They still think for themselves and wonder if and what their children will be allowed to think.

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Maybe it’s us

If politicians were statesmen corrupt bankers would be prisoners.

If you elect opportunists to plunder public coffers on your behalf don’t expect others to elect statesmen. Democracy is vulnerable, never convenient and can be easily used by groups to their exclusive advantage. Electing independents circumvents party kowtowing and results in direct representation of citizens – get your independent up and running today.

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Change

With demonstrations across the world
demanding change it might be a good time for each of us to define our
real problems and try to imagine real solutions. Is it wealth
distribution or the power that wealth wields that is truly hurting
us? Does anyone really care if Wall Street and its worldwide
franchises are in a weird Dickensian state or if the whole pack of
them are overwhelmed in an avalanche of money? Maybe what bothers you
is the fact that they manipulate the value of your house and everything
you own for their benefit without a concern in the world for you or
your family. Do you think about their lack of contribution to the
country while taking so much reward through the controlling of its
currency?

Is it your job? You wish you had one
so your family could be comfortable knowing there will be food,
a table to put it on and a roof over it next week. Everyone has
a lot of personal thinking to do without the assistance of any
more media information. No sense looking to the television when
you are the only one who knows your problems and cares so
completely about the solution.

Maybe it is time to let them take their money,
stick it in their banks and get out of their racket all
together. Let them win, who cares. Use your power as a citizen to
vote down their rules. Use your community as a tool of power. Stop
using their currency whenever possible and start using your own.
Barter means never having to pay for banking services. Barter means
the value of your work stays in your community. Communities that hire
themselves first can’t have their jobs shipped to children who should
be in school on other continents. The banks can declare you
financially dead for all you care if you act as a community rather
than a tool of the banks and the corporations they represent.

Take back your local resources.
Don’t let an accountant in London or a banker in Bangkok decide to
poison your water and air so he can do you out of a job and get rich
in the process. Those are your resources, not his, keep it that way.
How in Hell did we ever come to believe it was to our benefit to give
our pristine, natural rivers, lakes, skies, forests and mountains to
invisible investors whose ‘people’ use our land as a production sewer
and then return the resulting toxic sludge to our families to breathe
and drink at our peril. We have been dancing to the tune of jobs, jobs,
jobs for ever but there are no jobs so take back the resources you
traded for them. Those resources owned locally are the future of
every village, town and county in the country because the jobs will
never be shipped away by those who need them.

We must have known aliens were involved
in November 2009 when Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs) said bankers
are doing “God’s work”. Their god is obviously not your God.
They seem to have a special banker god that hires the best
politicians available to do their bidding. If a political
representative says you are wrong about local ownership, elect a new
one…as often as necessary.

The problem is not their money, it is
us using their money that takes from us all hope, dignity and
probably sanity. The solution is simply to ignore their money and
return to the community for hope and support. There is no debtor’s
prison so the worst case is that bankers might think less of you
(presently they never think of you at all) and only you can decide if
that is such a bad thing. Most of us have probably had better people
than bankers think less of us. So change the laws in your area to
suit the residents rather than international corporations and wave
a hearty goodbye to the problem that is destroying your family and
community.

No matter what you decide,
treat bankers fairly; after all you are not a corporate banker and are
above acting like one.

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Crazy Things Experts Say

Listen to us, we are financial experts with a wealth of experience serving your interests. We know what’s best.
The only thing to thank financial professionals for is they did not choose to be pilots, bus drivers or life guards. If an economist drove a bus over a cliff he would assure the passengers if they could get an immediate extension on the height he could save the day as there would be no reason to hit bottom. Economics is highly technical and based on concepts too difficult for poor, single mothers with limited education who have raised productive, properly-fed, well-schooled children to grasp.

Listen to us, we are certified wildlife experts employed by the government. Injured animals must be left to their natural ways; dodging cars, fishing in lifeless rivers (thanks to pesticide run-off and chemical spills) and hunting in monoculture fields the size of Manhattan. When their natural habitat becomes the suburb in which you live it is best to pretend you are not there. Above all remember compassion is bad and unkind to the needy creature, you must fight the urge to be part of the living, breathing earth.

Listen to us, we are nutritional experts in the employ of concerned corporations. In these times of runaway cancer rates, diabetes through the roof and diminished immune systems food must be carefully analyzed, altered for improvement, packaged, marketed and managed by government inspected corporations. We purchase countless studies proving our manufactured products are a requirement for a healthy diet and improve on real food in ways too complex for a layman to understand. It is unfortunate about the health thing but studies clearly show the cause to be old-fashioned foods like butter even though thousands of years of use is only now resulting in ubiquitous obesity.

Listen to us, we are human resource experts with experience placing the right people. We have multicolored charts and Power Point presentations proving conclusively that candidates holding credential for four years of reading hardcover data created by people with eight years experience collating statistics created by people with no practical knowledge about those with hands-on experience in the field are better for a position than someone with actual experience. How some of the graduates manage to make it through without comprehensive reading skills or an ability to write coherently is being studied; the results will be available for review in a few years.

Listen to us, we are art experts and we can help you decide what you like. It is very important to understand what the artist is trying to say – it takes years to distinguish art from…
Fraud needs to be explained, not art. If a contemporary artist can’t express himself well in his medium his imagination is wasted on his talent.

The only thing self-confessed experts in fields of indeterminable results seem to have in common is an extraordinarily high and indestructible gracious opinion of themselves. Why the rest of us opt to believe them is the real mystery.

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