There was an expression my father always used: “Nihil liberum est.” My dad was big on Latin, and it means, “Nothing Is Free.” But if the attached video does not quite do the job and you need to understand what the cost of data might look like in a dark future, read the Sci-Fi trilogy by Peter Watts: The Rifters Series.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” was plagiarized and para-phrased after Henrik Johan Ibsen’s death in 1906. Henrik was a playwright and director who once said; “A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed.”
So it is fitting that I now say, the plagiarized and para-phrased version you know today has been hi-jacked. I shouldn’t care, but this is so comically fractal it leaves me wondering about humanity. What I am seeing on Social Media is disturbing, where a picture now takes well over a thousand words to correctly depict its intension…
For example: Here is a picture, I took, In Queens NY one day. Yes, perfect timing… I just happened to be in the right place at the right time soaking in images on my phone when I came around a corner and saw a body sailing through the air…. HOLY CRAP! WHF! Now…. If I let that image stand on its own and never showed you what happened a 1/16th of a second before, well, you would be none the wiser.
And this is my point. This is the state of Social Media today.
So before you post, repost, critique, or look for the result you are searching for…. Remember these images and question what might have happened a 1/16th of a second before or after. Things are never what they appear. Take the time and research what you repost. Don’t just hit the green button—there is no reward…. Just shock…
The image of the falling man was taken at an outdoor fair, presented by the Museum Of Moving Images, Astoria, Queens, New York City. If you have never been there—it is a must.
Up to this point, we have been blinded by consumption because our global economy is based upon consumption. But the energy to maintain such a model is proving unsustainable. This virus underlines that zero growth is not the end — as this brilliant video presents it. Zero growth means that we are in equilibrium–it is a much better financial model because it follows how things in the natural world thrive The moment an organism begins to outpace this balance, it sets itself up for disaster; specialization in species is a clear path to extinction.
There is always casualty with change–it is built into the physical laws of the universe. So here we have a chance to make this change better than the thing before it.
Wouldn’t you rather live in a world like this? I do…
To my fellow Sci-Fi writers of Dystopia.... this video presents quite a beautiful twist to catastrophic events… doesn’t it? We have an opportunity to change the view…….
David Nadas 