[p2p-research] on the conflict between the soft network economy and the hard physical economy

[Ryan Lanham]

The whole of the article was good...haven't seen Avatar.  I'm not sure about
3D but I realize they must do something to keep the experience fresh.
Europe delves deeper into the self to do so.  America goes for
techno-gimmicks.

Avatar somehow reminds me that there is some show on now with Alan Alda
called the Spark of Humanity or some such.  It's on US PBS.  There was an
interesting episode about the difference between Homo Sapiens and
Neanderthals.  Neanderthals lasted over 80,000 years in some of the same
"caves" in France using the exact same sorts of tools.  Remarkable.  One
general approach that worked...kept populations low but viable, etc.  on a
wholly sustainable basis.  Humans wiped them out quickly with changing
technologies adapted to various climate crises mostly.  The dynamics of
Africa apparently called for human innovation.  It looks like that
innovation started about 340,000 years ago give or take...by 100,000 years
ago, a person living in Africa could be adopted and presumably raised like
us.  By 10,000 years ago, we were inventing agriculture...to cope with
larger populations, climate change, and other issues.  But just 400 years
ago, 99.997 percent of humans were pre-scientific.  Now, maybe 60% are.
China is graduating more engineers per year than the US does in 10.  India
is not far behind.  It is a matter of time.  Science and culture will shift
to Mandarin and Hindi with English being used like Latin in the Middle Ages
as a language of the elite.

Ryan

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:39 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Interesting quote, that could perhaps stimulate a number of interesting
> reactions?
>
> see:
> http://liquidculture.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/avatar-3d-as-cinematic-milestone-and-sign-of-our-cultural-zeitgeist/
>
> Thus we see a conflict between the “soft” economy and the “hard”. What is
> absent, however, is a more coherent, comprehensive analysis that takes this
> political dimension one step further and recognizes how the allegedly “soft”
> economy is itself directly based on the “hard”. *Avatar* is just an action
> movie, you can’t expect it to dive into such complex reasoning. But the
> conflict depicted by the film – between sublime, “intangible” wealth and
> prosaic, “tangible” – is just fiction, it doesn’t exist in the real world.
> The computers that enable the “new” economy in our society are indeed based
> on an abundance of oil, coal, steel and an almost inexhaustible range of
> other commodities.
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>


-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
Cayman Islands
(345) 916-1712
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100109/2daac5ab/attachment.html>