links for 2008-05-17

• Love Will Tear Us Apart
  Joy Division lyrics.
  (tags: joydivision LWTUA)
• The Cognitive Age - New York Times
  David Brooks on the skills revolution
  (tags: NYT globalisation)
• …My heart’s in Accra » How to study surveillance
  Ethanz on what governments are able to watch of your online behaviour
  (tags: FOE FOI IGF surveillance ethanz)

Comments

[R. Titus]

One of the great songs..

Cognitive age article is interesting.. To me the most surprising thing about globalisation is the foolish thought that there is any controversy about it. To me a bit akin to arguing about the probability of a future sunrise.

What's far more interesting to me is the thinking, discussion around two issues:
1 - Cultural distortion - the McWorlding (McMansion, McCar, McMall) of the planet... loss of pure differentness - isolated and unique. Watching a film the other day I was struck by how alien the native culture was to the Victorian explorers, there is no place on earth like that left.
2 - New cultures evolving from the mix of phenomena #1. (Harajuku is my favourite example of this..) a cultural mash-up which is both fun, confused and at the end just wonderful! Possibly even more alien and invigorating - and no trip to Borneo required.

[Richard Sambrook]

Hi Richard - agree re globalisation, although there's also the "opposite and equal reaction" - forces pushing greater localism and nationalism - and about the wonders of mash-up...!

As for Joy Division, I just watched Closer, the movie about Ian Curtis which I thought was terrific. Hadn't realised he was the same age as me....