The Illusion of Democracy

If we wanted to change the world, would voting for the next President/Prime Minister/Premier be the way to do it?

I don't think so and I'll tell you why.

All the parties and opposition parties may well have different rationalisations for their policies but the final chapter in the book of politics will be written by the winner, from a position of great power and great wealth, and its title will be 'How to keep the gravy train running without the populace finding out about it.'

It seems that whoever you place in power by exercising your 'democratic right' to vote, they all basically do the same thing.

Remove your finances and freedom, almost imperceptibly, one bit at a time.

It's easy to be cynical, I know, but politics (and not the sham that is the American Presidential Race) does interest me and—a bit like a room with a living person, a dead person and a smoking gun—it's difficult to look at the situation without forming an opinion of it.

While I'm sure that politicians do have a very difficult job, it seems to me that their time must be spent at least as much suppressing the opposition as tending to the health of their societies.

I think Douglas Adams hit a nail (one of many) on the head with his philosophers vs Deep Thought argument. Imagine Deep Thought as democracy to its 'practitioners' and I'll share a moment of this wonderful monologue with you:

"Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually going to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourselves? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?"

This monologue could apply to a number of institutions. Here, Deep Thought was placating the philosophers, but he could have been speaking to a priest, an economist, a football manager or even a politician.

The illusion is that, no matter who we vote for, they will end up doing everything they can to sustain 'democracy' because it's keeping them rich and the rest of us ignorant.

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

I don't really know the answer to that one and I'll diet for a month if Morgan Spurlock ever finds out.

Entertaining it may well be and I might give it a look. I watched Supersize Me and (other than the movie seemingly owing its existence to an argument with his wife about his non-vegetarian diet) it was quite entertaining. I have no doubt that the hunt for bin Laden will be equally entertaining but I feel sure that he would garner more credibility with a Supersize Me 2.

I don't believe the hype of the news and take most of everything I hear with a large pinch of salt. The situation in the middle east is undoubtedly complicated and tense but news reports of action there are beginning to look like movie trailers.

That said, does anyone in this world seriously believe that the American Government are going to give money to the man to cross borders into dangerous territory or that hostile middle eastern regions will grant this enemy of their cause access to their homeland, with the singular purpose of finding out where the man at the centre of it all — Osama bin Laden, probably the most wanted man in the western hemisphere — lives and then just wrapping production and going home without a single shred of evidence or intelligence?

Maybe it's a double bluff.

But I doubt it.

Promotion through Fear

How would you feel if Tesco's started marketing mobile phones by inducing fear into you of what may happen to you if you don't happen to own one?

I think it would be well below par for such an organisation.

Irresponsible. Outrageous. Damaging. Frowned upon. Arguably even downright unethical.

Any such advertising campaign would ensure a downturn in their sales, I'm sure, and deservedly so. No company should ever believe that marketing of that standard is something that — as a society — we should accept.

But don't forget to pay your TV licence.

Or else...

HDR Images

Scotland Sky
Originally uploaded by motophiliac

Getting there on the HDR front. I did write a short while ago about HDR images the easy way with Photoshop and layers. It seems that there is actually an easier way with something called Photomatix but I prefer to do things the complicated, tweakable way.

This is my first blog post from flickr so it may look a little different.

Lollipop Cameras

While I can understand the idea behind putting miniature cameras into the 'lollipops' of Lollipop Ladies and Men across the nation, I think we have to be careful.

We're getting too used to our news services telling us that 'cameras can now talk' or that 'we are the most surveilled country in the world'.

This may or may not be conditioning, depending how paranoid you or your friends (are you sure they're really your friends?) are.

Regardless, the effect is that we are becoming a society complacent of the cloud of surveillance we find ourselves increasingly having to come to terms with.

There is a post at the bottom of a road near where I live. On top of it may be found a camera. Every month or so the camera is 'removed'. After a few weeks or so it is reinstalled. Ad nauseam.

The bottom line here is that, simply, society — at the point where it means the most — does not want a camera. How much more vocal can a society be?

And yet, here we are, welcoming the presence of cameras on lollipops.

I think we need to keep an eye on those who so want to keep an eye on us.

The future of the Net

Through the decisions they are making right now, people like Neil Berkett of UK ISP Virgin Broadband are ensuring the death of the Internet as we know it.

Their names will go down in history. Not in a good way, either.

The children of tomorrow will look up at their mothers and fathers, and ask, "What was the Internet like when you were little?"

Their parents will answer.

"We had YouTube. And blogs. It was a time when domains flowed through the registrars like water and services were free. People like you and me could write what they wanted and publish what they had written to the entire world. For a while, it looked as if the World War may not have happened, as well.

You see, politicians — the people who run the world — took to a global audience and had to change the way they ran the world. They had to be more tolerant of different cultures, races and beliefs.

I remember I met your mother on a website called Facebook! Without the Internet, you may never have been born! It was a little annoying, sometimes, though. You know email?"

"You mean the channel?"

"Kind of, but more, er, personal. If you wanted to tell someone something, you could write it on your computer and send it in an email to them."

"Was email free, too?"

"Back then, yes, which meant that there was lots of it because people didn't have to pay. Sometimes we complained about how many emails we were getting from websites like Facebook."

"Was that spam?"

"Kind of. Although with Facebook and other sites like it, you would tell the site that you wanted to receive emails, even though sometimes you'd get lots of emails that told you the same thing."

"That sounds like a waste."

"I suppose it was. But wouldn't you rather read an email to find out if it was interesting, rather than not be told about it?"

"Is that what happens now?"

"I think so, yes. Companies who control all the Internet's hardware, you know the cables that connect all the houses?"

"Yes."

"Well, the companies who own those cables didn't like people using them to look at certain websites. They wanted to charge everybody for certain websites. I suppose you could say they started caring for themselves more than the people who paid them."

"That's not a good business model! That's a, er, what d'you call it, a dictatorship."

"Ha ha! Well, kind of. I wish you could have told them that!"

"Can I call Meli?"

"Yes. But be careful. Don't mention what we've just been talking about online. Okay?"

"Okay, dad!"

It seems in the future, we'll have to be even more careful online than we do now but for very different reasons. I hope this is not the shape of things to come. It's not too late to do something about it. Give your business to Net-Neutral ISPs.

Dear ISP,

When you say 'unlimited', what exactly do you mean?

Do you mean that I can download as much as I want? As quickly as I want? Over my 8 mbit connection? Which doesn't run at 8 mbits anyway, but that's a another letter...

Or do you mean that I can download as much as I want until I've downloaded too much? Isn't that just another way of saying that my service is not 'unlimited' after all, despite having a contract to that effect?

Fair use is something that you could argue about in court, I guess, so does this mean that if I'm disconnected while watching BBC iPlayer for instance, I can take you to court for breach of the same contract?

Oh, you want BBC to pay for that bandwidth? Well, hang on, doesn't that take you out of the loop, then? Shouldn't I just pay BBC directly? What, exactly, am I then paying you for?

I'll tell you what, exactly, I'm paying you for.

I am paying you for providing Internet to my house.

I am NOT paying you for providing content to my house. I don't care how you do it, but if you are to remain an Internet Service Provider, you maintain my connection to the Internet and all that that implies, otherwise you get out of the way and let someone else do the job.

If you want to stay in the game, let the consumer decide. If you're not about the consumer, you're obviously in it for yourselves and have only yourselves to blame for the problems you are now facing.

How about letting consumers know exactly what they're paying for and how much of it they're paying for?

If I want to download 5 gigabytes of iPlayer content in a day, charge me for it. Don't get above yourselves and pretend that you're concerned about the content. Give me a wire or cable with Internet coming out of it and shut the hell up.

Yours angrily,

Mr Internet Consumer.