phyllostachys twelve: picking up, moving on

Hurricane Season, 2005, has just about left the stage. Civil unrest (aside from certain invasions) is just about to take center stage. And, the Northern Hemisphere is just about to weather another winter. Although the possibility of higher fuel prices is waning with the memory (in non-affected areas) of Katrina, Wilma, Beta, etc., higher energy costs are here to stay.

How, then, can we afford these prices? By working a little bit harder, a few longer hours (easier during the shorter days of Winter), and with more intent to a warmer (or at least more solvent) future.

Working harder is easy for me to say...I have had a string of decent jobs over the past two decades, each of which seem to have helped pay the bills and allowed me to put some away for a rainy (or graying) day. But what about those people who are under-employed, ill-employed (just barely suited to the task) or not employed? It's easy to say "get a job"...but the great leveler is that we may each face a point of uncertainty in our lives in which we don't know which way to turn, where the next meal, roof or paycheck is going to come from.

At my level (such as it is), it seems easy for me to take solace in learning: I know, from education in the past, that I can read, study and learn much of that which I'll need to get ahead...and learn on-the-job that which I haven't learned yet. For self-directed as well as community-guided learning, a great leveler was the public library...and more recently, the Internet: both provide easy access to copious amounts of information to anyone willing to (1) walk into a library (learn how to open a web browser), (2) know how to read (how to search) and (3) find gobs of information that you need to learn from or are having fun learning from.

But as economics or nature remove access to such excellent public institutions (thanks, in the U.S. to Andrew Carnegie, among others), we are left with challenges as to how to get the information to the masses....without exposing paper to the elements. Proliferation, therefore, of computer technology to the masses, with a built-in browser linked to the ever-expanding presence of a search engine (e.g., Google) seems to be a potential answer. Currently, one needs to be literate to access the media on a computer....soon, however, video (and, on the horizon, VR?) and 3D interaction will allow greater numbers to access all the information they need to improve themselves (and hopefully not blow up the rest of us -- a very real concern in a world of open information and relatively open borders/airspace).

So, the key to bringing the masses along with the "digital haves" is to encourage increasingly better methods of education, increasing levels of health (thanks to orgs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and increasing access to the digital libraries of the world.

..phyllostachys.



2005 Hurricane Names

The Gates Foundation

Adam Smith on Wikipedia