This is why I can't footnote Wikipedia...

Over the last few weeks there's been numerous reports about a virus inside Wikipedia. While this doesn't harm your computer it does do alot more harm than people expect. It traces from what computer the posts were edited.
This was a crushing defeat for members of the wikipedia community simply because they had lost their anonymity and it was once again another nail in the coffin of Wikipedia's academic credibility. Last year reports began surfacing that Wikipedia was more accurate than Britannica; schoolchildren everywhere rejoiced because it gave them excuses to use the online encyclopedia for essays and projects. However those theories were quickly debunked by the various news organizations saying that Britannica had an aspect of credibility that Wikipedia could never gain. The credibility was lost again due to this virus because it showed that a variety of different organizations from Liberal Party in Australia to the CIA in America were 'cleaning up' their own Wikipedia entries....not exactly a forum of honesty.
Wikipedia is an amazing source of information. It's literally the world at your fingertips, but unfortunately it could be the internet's equivalent of Pandora's Box.

Trust, faith and the traffic light button

This morning after emerging from the train station onto the very busy street I did as every person does when they want to cross the road, I pressed the pedestrian/walk button. However, whilst standing there waiting for the little green man to appear I noticed that around half a dozen other people who were waiting to walk safely across also pressed the button.
Some of these people did it only seconds after another person had leaving the poor metallic button with more individual hand prints than Paris Hilton's breasts.
Many of these people saw that the button had been pressed by other pedestrians but chose to press it anyone. Perhaps it was in the hope that doing so would shorten the delay to the walk signal (a myth that should be tested and debunked).
What interested me wasn't so much the fact that everyone was pushing the button but that they kept doing so even once they knew it had already been pressed. It seemed that the button wouldn't work for them unless they themselves had pushed it.
Whilst this would seem a strange thing to talk about it ties in with a thought i've been having for quite some time. We, as a people, have become much more suspicious of everyone else.
It seems to have only happened in the last 10/15 years and i believe that one of the primary reasons behind this is the introduction and adoption of 24 hour network news. There's only so much news a channel can report before they simply start to repeat themselves and so they've got to fill up any gaps with as much 'must watch television' as possible.
It's often been noticed by sociologists and anthropologists alike that fear is one of our primary responses and so cable news plays with the human brain to keep us addicted to their programs.
A browse of cable news programs show such ominous titles as "To Catch a Predator" (NBC) and these highlight and create fear and panic, forcing us to watch.

Cable News is the new cocaine :)

Sleaze, Violence and Ratings

Last night I caught the premiere of Californication. It was an hour of almost non-stop sex and more nudity on television than I had seen in a long time. I was shocked but I wasn't appalled. It was also what I had come to expect of television programs these days.
The show starts off with the protagonist, a burnt-out author, visiting a church only to receive oral-sex from a nun....one of the most unusual introductions to a character I had seen in a long time but it also managed to set the tone for the rest of the episode. The producer was telling me that this was a gloves-off program that pushed the boundaries and gained viewers through word of mouth shock value.
Granted this show had more naked women (I lost count after the second) than i had seen on most other TV shows (imagine the day when the girls from Hi-5 strip off) and this obviously led to many angry letters from various coalitions in American and Australia complaining about moral decency but these letter writers are quite hypocritical in their views.
In Season 2 of Desperate Housewives a pharmacist who had poisoned the husband of a married woman in order to begin a relationship with her and in order to prove that she loved him he swallowed a bottle of pills and waited for her to rescue her. She did not because she had just found out that he (the pharmacist) had killed her husband….confused yet?
The show allowed the audience to watch a man die whilst a woman next to her did absolutely nothing.
Take the Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson's film about the last several hours of the life of Jesus Christ. From his betrayal by Judas to his eventual crucifixion and resurrection three days later. Oh and in the middle there's 2 hours of a man being tortured relentlessly....had to remember to add that in cause it's kind of a big thing in the film.
Rather than be criticized for his excessive use of violence Gibson was praised for bringing to true detail the horror that Jesus suffered for all our sins.
What would happen to Gibson's reputation if a couple of kids, after seeing the Passion of the Christ, decided to re-enact the torture scenes to gain a greater understanding of God. Children would be hurt, possibly killed, and Gibson would walk free.
Watching other shows like CSI, NCIS or Heroes shows a death in many episodes and usually in a very bloody and graphic way. The antagonist in Heroes regularly decapitates people in order to steal their powers and the autopsy scenes in NCIS have become so realistic I feel like I’m watching a medical documentary. Have we, as a society, become so desensitized with violence that dying in a bed due to an overdose of pills just doesn’t excite us anymore? Where has this lust for gratuitous violence and sex come from? Is it from the news reports that show us the daily conflicts in areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the countless war zones from around the globe? Days after the 1999 Columbine massacre the community sought to find the blame for the horrendous murders of innocent school children and the people that bore the brunt of their investigation were the gaming industry, the rock music industry and the television industry. Congress screamed for blood to be spilled (pardon the pun) but was it really the producers fault? Where does the show draw a line? Compare the scenes in television shows today with those of ten years ago. At 8:30pm ten years ago you’d be watching a new episode of The Simpsons, today you’re watching a young many being decapitated. The producers are answering only to the audiences demands and we demand to be shocked and shaken to our core and then we have the audacity to point the finger at these shows when a young mind snaps and lets lose a torrent of rage on the community.
In turn to the producer's shift in programming the coalition of the moral have let loose their cries of war. The "Parents Television Council" have begun to release their list of what is safe for children to watch and what isn't (don't worry....High School Musical 2 is on the list). I'm fine with parents banding together to decide what's decent and indecent on our television sets. However on their website (www.parentstv.org)they urge people to protest to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to "put an end to broadcast indecency". What right do a group of parents have to infringe on my television watching. The producer's of television shows mold their programs to what the public wants to see.If you don't want your children to watch the programs....put them to bed.
As our favorite ultra-Christian Ned Flander's said (when asked why his kids why he was complaining to the FCC) "Imploring people I never met to pressure a government with better things to do to punish a man who meant no harm for something nobody even saw, that's what I'm doing!"

Celeb Treatment

To be honest I consider myself above the fray of tabloid journalism (I'm also doing my best not to sound arrogant) but this is something that I found quite shocking:

Sydney Morning Herald

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office is disinclined to charge Lindsay Lohan with three drug-related felonies, a decision that could spare the troubled actress from a prison sentence, celebrity news outlet TMZ.com reported today.

Considering that Lindsay Lohan has been AWOL in another rehab center since that night one must wonder if she had anything to do with the dropping of criminal charges against her....mysterious.
You can only imagine what would happen if anyone else who had been caught for a fraction of these crimes would be facing, possibly a year in prison. We recently saw Parish (pun intended) Hilton go away for 45 days for various driving violations. I don't want to seem as if i'm on Paris's side (if i were there would be a need for Satan to wear a scarf) but Paris did her time, a short amount of time but time nonetheless, and Lindsay is getting off scott free.
Perhaps Paris's celeb treatment wasn't working for her that day? It's unfair that Paris had to server her time while Lindsay is getting drunk in a rehab center. The judge of Paris's case should reverse his decision, have Paris's criminal record expunged and recommend that she be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


It's the least she deserves


UPDATE: Lindsay will be spending one day in jail and 10 days of community service. Justice has prevailed!!!

The man likes strip clubs....so what

For those that haven't heard:

News.com.au
It was revealed yesterday that Mr Rudd visited Scores gentlemen's club in Manhattan in 2003 with fellow Labor MP Warren Snowdon and New York Post editor Col Allan during a taxpayer-funded trip when he was opposition foreign affairs spokesman.

So What!
The man likes to visit a strip club, hell I like strip clubs.
It seems that Rudd is getting support from both sides of the aisle with Defence Minister Nelson saying that he himself has visited a strip club. I'm quite sure that almost every single male has at one time or another visited a strip club or viewed pornography in some way.
It seems that alot of commentators say that this makes Rudd appear "flawed" as if viewing naked women makes is a mark of humanity; if so i'm quite human.

Will good intention doom us all?

For the last few months I’ve been using Blackle which is an energy-saving alternative to Google. The entire screen is black and according to the website it produces less energy because it uses black pixels as opposed to white pixels. I was quite proud of myself, not only was I searching the web I was also saving the Earth at the same time. However my ego was shattered when a report released earlier this week saying that the black pixels not only didn’t conserve energy but in some cases it essentially produced more energy to display the black pixels. I suddenly got an image of my head of a world drowning in water and polar bears scavenging for food in the desert all because Blackle had lied to me. Did my keenness to help Mother Earth harm her in the end?
There are numerous accounts throughout history of adopting a cause or discovering a cure only to have it lead to disaster due to insufficient testing and study. During the first Gulf War coalition army soldiers were provided with anti-anthrax tablets in the case of a chemical attack by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces. Although these were given, and produced, with nothing but the soldier’s lives taken into consideration and the best of intentions it was discovered that these pills had disastrous side effects which are being felt in America, Britain and Australia. This same result can be seen with the vigor that society is taking up in combating climate change.
There are a multitude of methods to combat climate change with the most prominent being switching to public transport, hydrogen or electric based cars or simply keeping the car at home. These, according to the website nature.org, will multiply and lead to everyone adopting to take public transport. It’s not a bad idea, it will reduce the amount of cars on the road and will eventually lead car manufacturers to create energy efficient vehicles. There’s one small problem, our public transport system is at breaking point. Cityrail has numerous delays with its current load and it freely admits in recent advertisements that it has one of the most complex rail networks in the world. A mass migration from private to public transportation would cripple the service beyond belief.
The recent Live Earth concerts were a critical and a commercial success in raising awareness for the state of climate change in the world. They were also a success in proving that practicing what you preach isn’t exactly a motto for the concert goers. Photographs of the Live Earth concerts show an inexcusable amount of garbage on the ground. From plastic water bottles to sections of banners that had been ripped down the sites in Sydney, LA and other venues looked as if a tornado had hit a garbage dump.
Climate Change is a very real issue and as a society we do need to monitor and decrease the amount of carbons we put into the air but the Western World has taken up the cause of climate change with such vigor that it’s closing off any kind of debate on the subject and labeling anyone who disagrees with the science as neoconservative’s who are in the pocket of big oil. In our extremism to save the Earth are we doing more harm than good or will this dynamism of good intention be a form of drug fever for Gaia?

Time off for terrorists

Why is it that people who traffic drugs are given eighteen years in prison or even death but those that plan terror attacks are given reduced sentences.

Yahoo News

Ten Islamic militants jailed for suicide bombings on Bali that killed more than 220 people — many of them foreign tourists — had several months shaved off their sentences Friday to mark Indonesia's Independence Day.

I could understand if these men were serving exorbitant sentences such as 150/200 years but it seems that some of them are serving as little as 8 years and the most heinous is serving only 18. Drug traffickers got more time then they did. This is a disgusting piece of information. I for one am boycotting Indonesia.

News

Apologies for the lack of posts but I do have some exciting news.
I've just purchased a domain name and a server and am currently in the process of teaching myself website design.
Hopefully i'll be up and running within the next couple of days.

Regards,

Raffe

Child Abuse

Reading some of my previous posts you could understand that i'm not the biggest George Bush fan in the world. However reading this article made me so angry.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22245585-2,00.html

It's not the fact that a play has been made satirizing the Bush administration (there have been hundreds) but rather that a teacher has manipulated the minds of his students to prove a political point.

The student performance piece Bad Knight II, conceived by Davidson High School teacher Kim Peade and featuring students as young as 12.


Students are being manipulated by this teacher simply to make a political statement. According to the Rock Eisteddfod website, the students should be learning skills such as Health, Life Skills and Creative Thinking however all they're being taught is what the teacher wants them to think. I'm very much against teacher's bias affecting their students. School's should be about encouraging debate between classes in order for students to make up their own mind but it seems that at Davidson the faculty tell the kids what to think. Someone, please call Child Welfare.

Does God exist?

Whilst I could replicate some of my previous posts and turn this into a discussion regarding mankind, the nature of religion and the unexplained miracles that are attributed to God i'd rather just come out and say it....yes he does and he's very slow in acting on mankind's prayers.
Late last night Sydney time Karl Rove, Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bush, stepped down claiming the fact that he wanted to spend more time with his family. This of course had nothing to do with his role in the Iraq war, Valerie Plame CIA affair or the fact that he looks suspiciously like a complete douche.


Rove's resignation comes as a shock to many, though quite unsurprising as it is always seen that people flee a sinking ship as soon as possible.
Though like many that hold office Rove has been offered a prestigious job once his resignation becomes effective. Whilst ex-administration officials sit on boards such as Halliburton; Rove has signed up with Sony BMG as it's next artist and they are hoping that he'll be the biggest thing to hit rap since Notorious B.I.G. Here's his first video clip


Let's hope, for all our sakes that Rove, like B.I.G, will soon find himself gunned down in the streets of Las Vegas

Shooting in East-Jerusalem....on youtube.

Following an earlier post regarding the emergence of the internet and its effect on society here's another example of how times they are a'changin. It seems that police shootouts are put on the internet 3 days after they happen. This was done to quell any rumors of impropriety by the Israeli police.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22235073-401,00.html

Israeli police have released video footage showing a fierce firefight between a Palestinian man and an Israeli security guard in the Old City of occupied east Jerusalem which left the Palestinian dead.




Once the article explains the shooting it then mentions at the very end :

Ateret Cohanim, founded in 1978, is one of several ultra-nationalist organisations that have bought land and homes from Palestinians through various means in order to place Jews in the Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

What did that have to do with anything at all? It seems that it was placed at the end of the article by a journalist for no reason. The article didn't talk about occupation or Palestinian rights, just that a Palestinian had grabbed a gun, shot a soldier and ten bystanders and then been shot by police....fairly simple story. If they had mentioned Ateret Cohanim why didn't they talk about HAMAS, Islamic Jihad or any of the other ultra-nationalist Palestinian terror groups. I've never heard of Ateret Cohanim before but according to news.com.au they buy houses and put other people in them.
It seems that the papers seem to be having a go at Israel again.

open source communism

As the first bricks hit the ground on November 9^th 1989 the structure known as The Berlin Wall ceased to exist and thousands of people trapped in the grip of communism were finally freed to embrace the joys of Western Society. But the philosophy did not die, it lay dormant for almost a decade until it found the perfect host….the Internet.
The rise of open-source software such as Google aps, Linux or the ever-popular Wikipedia has brought Karl Marx’s dream to life in a way that he could never have imagined.
The classless society thrives in chatrooms and forums where users have complete anonymity and, with the exception of supremacist websites, there is no segregation based on skin colour, gender or annual wage.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary people who create and develop applications and post them free on the internet simply for the benefit of other people. This practice has never been seen en mass in the history of the world.

Marxism is a failed philosophy. The 80 year experiment from 1918 to 1991 destroyed modern Russia, depleted it of her natural resources and annihilated the economy but it has found its perfect petri dish.
Marx’s motto “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” paraphrases the rapidly growing ‘open source movement’. As the internet has no natural resources it will not be constricted by the economic problems that devastated Russia. It's quite certain that the internet will be everlasting and so it seems that Marx's dream for communism will be realised 124 years after his death.

Anti-Semitism...alive and well.

Ah yes, Big Brother. The Norwegian social experiment/reality show that's managed to lure half the Western World into watching it and annoy the other half that it's on. The American Big Brother featured a Las Vegas waitress complaining about Jews being selfish, money-grubbing and that they can be identified by their last names and long noses. Whilst this is no surprise, anti-semitism has been on the rise it's ironic that this waitress is against Jews, seeing as it was Jewish gangsters who made it possible for her to have a job (thank you Bugsy Siegel).
The girl's claims of Anti-semitism are a regrettable truth that only 60 years since the end of the Holocaust there have been reports of 'new waves' of hatred against Jews, most notably in Britain and East-European countries. The tireless efforts of worldwide diaspora communities appear to be failing when it comes to promoting education about Jews and Israeli foreign policy.
Whilst the rise of anti-Semitism should surprise no one it is CBS's extraordinary lack of judgment that allowed this to air in the first place. Despite disclaimers throughout the credits there are laws and censors that mediate these programs. It seems that there were failures on the part of the censors, the government and the station. However the biggest failure was the ignorance and stupidity of a Las Vegas waitress.

Something in the water?

Florida Rep Bob Allen was arrested a few days ago for offering his sexual services for $20. Not only was he massively overcharging (take a look at him)




but he had also attempted to bring a bill into the House of Representatives which would ban 'lewd and lascivious behavior'. September 2006 Mark Foley, also from Florida, resigned from his position in Congress because he had sent sexual explicit emails to his congressional page (a young boy of 16) ironically Foley was in charge of putting away pedophiles and molesters. Guess he became everything he used to hate.
Is it something about power that makes these people easily corruptible or is it just something in the water in Florida?

Why Iraq will be seen as a failure in the War on Terror.

Make no mistake about it. We are at war with terror and our enemy is fanatical in their belief, battle-hardened and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. George Bush is without a doubt the worst president in history (I include William Henry Harrison who died within 30 days of taking office, at least he taught people not to give long speeches in the rain) and the effect of his presidency will have unknown consequences for years to come.
However, Saddam Hussein was a danger and he was pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction along with funding terrorism in the Occupied Territories which created instability in the region but an invasion was not the correct course of action. We've currently been in Iraq for 4 years and upon careful consideration I understand why the Bush administration was pushing for regime change in the country. Saddam had constantly flouted international sanctions and whilst he did not have WMD's at the current time there was evidence presented to Congress during David Kay's briefing in 2004 that Iraqi scientists had deliberately misled UN weapon inspectors due to fear from the Hussein regime. With intelligence pointing towards a covert build up on WMD’s and a mad-man who had no respect for the rule of law (including terrorizing his own citizens and torturing political prisoners) the US saw little option but regime change and I support that.
However, the War on Terror cannot be fought by an army. To instil regime change (as is quietly being done in Iran) you must first support a pro-democratic group through funding and intelligence. After supplying the pro-democratic group with enough intelligence and weaponry allow them to quickly and quietly remove any remnants of the tyrannical regime that stood before it. When the citizen’s wake the next day there will be a pro-democratic government and trade can resume with sanctions being lifted. Political prisoners would be released, a constitution would be drafted which focused on ensuring civil liberties and human rights were paramount and restricting governments to 4 years or less in order to ensure that governments could be overthrown via legal and legitimate elections.
These measures would ensure that there were limited civilian casualties during the period of transition and eventually the new government would gain international recognition and another democracy would be born.
This method is of course a best case scenario and it could lead to many different paths, some good and some bad but it is the way that the War on Terror will be won. Notice that in this scenario there is no mention of a foreign military presence and no need for hundreds of thousands of troops. The War on Terror will be fought quietly and it will take longer than any war fought in the last century. When we eventually prevail there will be no victory parade with confetti covering the troops or monument of soldiers raising an American flag because this war will be fought in the shadows and the warriors will be the smartest and the toughest that the West has ever produced. This war will be fought by the spies and the battlefield won’t be troops moving from house to house but a lone man with a silenced pistol in an alleyway. To quote the 1998 movie The Siege "The army is a broadsword and what you need is a scalpel". America may prevail in Iraq, crush the insurgents and install a peaceful, democratic government but Iraq is and will always be considered a failure in the War on Terror. It has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi's (this number is very difficult to determine due to the ease that insurgent forces have of passing themselves off as civilians) and over a thousand US and British lives that could have been averted.
Terrorism cannot be fought by an army; despite painful efforts to keep civilian deaths to a minimum, innocent people will die during aerial bombings which in turn will increase animosity to the Western World and create a never-ending cycle of violence. Carefully planned targeted assassinations dramatically reduce the amount of civilian casualties and hopefully in the years to come the scalpel that are the intelligence services of the Western World will finally eradicate those that threaten our freedoms and democracy.

University: The best option for students?

Doing some course readings in the library today i commented to a friend of mine that my course that dealt with warfare throughout world history was very exciting and he should consider taking it up next semester. His reply was something that i've heard all too often in my short university life "I can't because it won't help my course". Warfare was a subject that he found fascinating yet because it had nothing to do with his Law degree it would simply be a waste of time and delay his degree by six months. Is university about creating passions for students or just simply allowing them to take the safe course in life?
Our universities are churning out more degrees now than ever before and the job markets in law, journalism and commerce are so full that simply having a degree is not good enough anymore. Degrees have to be more open so that students can enjoy the full range of studies on offer and possibly they will find a passion that they never knew was inside of them in the first place. Reading the text of Apple CEO Steve Job's address at Stanford university he talks of taking a class in calligraphy that had nothing to do with his degree but it awoke his passions and twenty years later that same calligraphy ended up on his mac computers.
Lets expand degrees so students aren't forced to constrain their passions to a particular subject.

62 years

There's something strange about anniversaries. We use them to commemorate joyous times such as weddings or birthdays to remind us that life is good and that we are happy. But today is the 62nd anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. This anniversary is used for quiet reflection to remember those that were lost when the American's unleashed the fury of nuclear weaponry. 140,000 people were wiped out in an instant with thousands more suffering from hideous side-effects that were passed from mother to child. Hiroshima was the beginning of the end of World War II. With the victory in Europe over the Nazi forces the US was forced to quell the violence in the Pacific. The dangerous prospect of 'island-hopping' would leave hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers dead and the Japanese army and civilians were fanatical in their defence of their homeland. Did Truman have little chance but to use the nuclear weapons provided? Some believe that in doing so he saved more Allied and Japanese lives due to the quick surrender by the Emperor. Could have exploding the bomb into the sea have yielded the same result?
Even with hindsight these questions are asked but still, regardless of your answer we remember those that were lost.

Science and Religion

The other day Pope Benedict XVI, with very little fanfare, announced that science and religion could coexist peacefully. In a coup for atheists everywhere he claimed that there was enough science to conclude that there was a natural process of evolution from the Gibbon to Man. But will this acceptance of science increase recruiting numbers for the atheist belief structure?
Boarding a flight from Melbourne to Sydney recently my driver quipped that today was the most dangerous day to travel. Whilst there were no terror warnings or specific threats of weather it took me a few minutes for his comment to make sense. It was Friday the 13^th. Not a religious or superstitious man I took his comment as jest and took my flight. However I found that during the pre-flight safety demonstration I listened intently and that during every bump of turbulence my heart beat a little faster than it should have.
Why did I believe that the plane that had flown for hundreds of trips and the pilot that had flown for thousands of hours would simply have an accident on this of all days? It’s the same reason that humanity still believes in religion and superstition.
The medieval drawings of churches and townships in the 12^th and 13^th centuries show the image of God and the saints protecting the town from attack and making the villages safe-havens for true believers with heaven being simply a few short kilometers above our heads. With the invention of man-made airplanes in the early 20^th Century humankind made its first trip above the clouds and found nothing. In the 1950’s when Yuri Gagarin breached our atmosphere to become the first person in space it seemed that God had relocated yet we still attended our buildings of worship en mass.
A recent study found that over two-thirds of American scientists believe in God, the most popular book post-September 11 was the bible and several religions gained members in the 2006 Australian census. So why after discovering how the universe was created and debunking the religious theories of creationism does human kind still attend church, read the bible or even belong these organizations. Comfort.
L Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction writer, took one of his books and spun it into his own religion and if alive today he would see that his “religion” was often on the front-pages of the gossip magazines and had caused controversy in Germany. The Scientology belief system revolves around freedom from fear and doubts and purging yourself of negative energy. The doctrine of scientology include mentions of galactic overlords yet still people join this organization in hopes of being free from the drudgery and pain of everyday life. How is Scientology’s doctrine different from the New Testament where God’s only son comes down to earth to purge man-kind of its fears and doubts (under the auspice of sin). The gospels report miracles being performed which all rational people would dismiss as parlor tricks yet mainstream religion has grown in Australia despite the technological advances disproving the existence of a deity.
We seek solace to keep us safe even when there is no hope. As a people we’ve begun to collectively defy science in order to comfort ourselves from the reality of pain, misery and the many other problems of living in the real world.
One of the most popular places to discover a higher form of life is in prison. In the squalors of human misery where those shunned by society are removed from the mainstream of the population one of two things happen, they either get worse or they get God. Chaplains from all major religions routinely visit various prisons in search of disenfranchised souls to redeem into the welcoming bosom of the lord. Prison, humanities cesspool, is perfect for religious enlightenment due to the nature of our penal system. Inmates are locked away with societies worst offenders ranging from murderers to rapists to thieves and a popular theme of religion is that of forgiveness, atonement may fail on the mortal coil but God loves all his children. But in this digital age with instant communication and the world at your fingertips the most popular book of all time remains The Bible. The recounting of the creation of the world, the freedom of the Jews and the martyrdom of God’s only son has sold an immeasurable number of copies (with some theorists predicting more than 6 billion) and is believed to be one of the first books ever printed by Gutenberg in the 1400’s. The bible will continue to be printed until the world runs out of paper but by then it’s words would have been digitized (as they have already) and will continue to enlighten until the ends of the Earth
There is no true answer as to why we have, in this age of technology, reverted to the belief of God or superstition because every person has their own different experience. Some, like those in prison, do it for redemption whilst others seek enlightenment and answers to life’s frightening questions that we fester in the back of our minds, why are we here? What happens after death?. The impossible questions that science cannot yet answer and religion has been retorting for over two thousand years.
Humanity breached the clouds and saw the supposed face of God only to discover that nothing was looking back at us but still we believe in the loving embrace of our deity. Why has this happened? Only God knows.

awareness

My next musing will come soon. As of now i'm making sure that this blog is discoverable on all the search engines :)


Technorati Profile



The wonders of the internet age.

R

Brave New Internet

My friend recently announced his engagement. Proclaiming his intention to marry his girlfriend he invited everyone he knew to the party where the wine would be flowing and the conversation would be lively. However unlike the conventional engagement announcements on intricately designed paper and a party overlooking the beauty of Sydney the announcement was made via ‘Facebook’, a popular social networking site, and the party was held in ‘Second Life’, an intricately detailed virtual world where people can throw off the shackles of physics and fly around.
A recent survey from by YouGov in the UK has found out that half of all broadband users log into social networking sites and that more than 10 hours a week are spent online socializing. This works out to around 24 days a year compared with 22 days actually spent meeting friends or relatives.
Have we become so embedded in the internet that we are forsaking some of most cherished moments?
Too often the youth of today are told that they are spending far too much time in front of a screen and not enough time socializing. To our critics I say simply that we are socializing but considering the impact that the internet has had on society in the past two decades we are doing nothing wrong, its socialization that has evolved to the point where that’s all it is….a screen.
With the introduction of sites such as myspace, facebook and livejournal I’m able to interact with my friends, do my university assessments and write opinion pieces all without leaving my chair.
The internet was literally dumped in humanities laps and it took years for the shock to wear off. But whilst the older generation is still recovering from a form of cyber post-traumatic stress disorder the youth are embracing the evolving society. A globe, that has suddenly become completely inter-connected, has expanded and shrunk society at the same time. We’re able to instantaneously send files from one person to another across the world and its completely logical to assume that email will replace snail mail by the end of the century. This from the world that five hundred years ago still had large aspects undiscovered. At every stage of evolution since the axolotl rose from the primordial soup we have discarded anything that did not allow us take advantage of our surroundings. Now that man has finished evolving physically our evolution is taking place socially and with each generational leap we will leave something behind that is unnecessary.
What will the future hold for the generation that masters the internet? The dawn of the new information age is upon us. The internet is more important than any other device in the last hundred years and society is not controlling the evolution of the internet but rather the internet is controlling the way society is evolving.
Our many detractors spend their time warning parents that children are growing up without the skills needed to survive, that their progression to adulthood is being tampered by the many advancements in technology. They point out that those that were growing up were being denied “essential” skills such as map navigation because of the availability of GPS and general research because of the instantaneous answers of the internet. Whilst these people are entitled to his opinion, the future will prove him wrong. Facebook is the modernized equivalent of a phone book. Your contact details are all there and it’s easy enough to send a message to your “buddies” but for some reason contacting and socializing through a screen is considered “anti-social”. Technology has always replaced skills that eventually become redundant. Less than a five hundred years ago we relied upon celestial navigation to direct our ships, sun dials to tell the time and windows to throw waste out of. These have been replaced by GPS, clocks and indoor plumbing. Those growing up in the internet generation aren’t learning skills such as map reading or general research due to introduction of blanket wireless and the increasing reliability of computers and mobile internet, within the next century maps will not be printed on paper. Just as I was never taught how to use an abacus nor will my children be taught how to program a VCR as very soon videotapes will join the ever growing pile of discarded technology, replaced by personal digital recorders.
This generation is evolving without those “essential” skills because the internet is demanding it.
Huxley’s Brave New World could easily be used to describe the affect that the internet has had on society. Those that are controlling our future through innovation and the internet are the Alpha’s, whilst those that refuse to see the endless possibilities that the internet holds in this new, evolved society are merely the Epsilons. As the internet and technology expands even further we’ll see a host of new technologies open up to make our lives not only easier but better. We are confronted with a new period of evolution; there is no ice age and the fruits are high enough to reach but this age of evolution will have as much if not more impact on humanity. Society will learn to embrace whatever we face and if it is anything like the impact that the internet has had then we will learn to mould our lives around it and dispose of all that is deemed unnecessary.

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This is a web page dedicated to my opinion. Feel free to disagree with me as I love to debate.

Regards,

Raffe