I do a fair bit of thinking, I suppose it might be my age. In the time I have been ambling about on the planet things have changed in some ways beyond all recognition. I can remember the time when owning a television set was a rareity and the excitement of my family getting our first in about 1958. A time when records were 10" diameter played at 78rpm and easily broken, films only at the cinema or on the telly, no video recorders, not even cassette players.
The internet has been probably the biggest change dwarfing just about everything else in terms of the impact it has had on communications.
Whilst we are still finding new ways to use the medium and exploit it in all sorts of new ways, I wonder what the next new thing will be. Will it be 3d holograms, teleportation or time travel or none of these.
Any suggestions?
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john grass roots said:
Over the next few years with the current government we will all be transported back to the 1980's
Riots on the streets of London
A gormless dork running the country
Mindless cuts in the name of idealogy
Next we'll have the Specials at Number One
Well at least we are 75% of the way there.
See time travel is possible, Britain back to the dark ages in less than 6 months.
What you say is perfectly true, however although our lives will be very much the same technology will change.
Listening to a history of the world in a hundred objects many technological changes were introduced as a means of trading, writing evolved to keep accounts, it was only afterwards it changed to communicate more effectively.
Computers were designed originally to perform mathmatical calculations more quickly, Turin and Flowers produced the first programmable computer to break German cyphers, Lyons had the first commercial computer in the UK to help distribute their cakes more efficiently. We are changed by technology but remain unchanged Dickens did write about the same emotions that we all experience today.
I don't know how much good technology will bring or harm it will do but am fascinated and curious by its' progress.
The reference to Arthur C Clarke was interesting, it was he who first proposed geo stationary satellites for communication. I have read some of his books and some of his ideas are likely to be with us soon.
T & S Plants said:
We have had an economic crash brought about by dismantling the controls imposed on the financial markets during the thirties. This process was started by Reagan and Thatcher and continued by Blair and Brown, what is happening now is a return to the economic policies of the thirties with probably the same results high unemployment, without a decent safety net.
Maynard Keynes saw the problem and came up with deficit finance concept to smooth out the problems we are now faced with, we could perhaps deal with our deficit problem by making the wealthy pay the same proportion of their income in taxes as they feel it is reasonable for the poor to pay. By taxes I include VAT excise duty, N.I, council tax, vehicle duty and all the other little bites in indirect taxes. The poor pay £1 in every £7 in VAT the wealthy less than £1 in every £25, if a lot of that money is earned via offshore bank accounts it is probably even less. By all means make the idle work and take responsibilty for their own welfare but also make sure that those who are earning their money elsewhere pay their taxes here where they live.
Gary RK said: