INVENTION, for invention's sake, in Telecommunications?

20101219Su A

I wrote this this morning, then spoke for about 15 minutes to a 'techie' who phoned me from Telstra on internet security and download speed issues, etc just 30 minutes ago.

I asked him his opinions and knowledge on the points I ask and make in this e-ssay. He basically convinced me that the arguments and qvestions herein, are, fruitless, unnecessary, paranoid delusions of a mad, homeless political bum, with royal connections!

(ALAS! Why I am crazy!!!)

No, he didn't SAY I was paranoid etc.....

But I think he convinced me in the short time we had to chat, that the present telecomms systems, the DIGITAL systems, are durable, and are far superior to any 'updated' versions of the older, more (locally) serviceable technology and electronics, as in analogue radio and TV and internet transmission and reception. I think...?

So assuming he, a younger fellow, so possibly with less bredth or 'depth' of consideration, comprehension and understanding of the macro, global and 'future-issues' I try to address, assuming he's correct, most of the following e-ssay is puff!

I post it nevertheless, both to stir the possum, and in case there IS something of value in my thinkstank on the subject of.......?


INVENTION, for invention's sake, in Telecommunications?


One e-ssay I wanted to scribe for a while, goes to a question of whether digital hitech comms, for phone and internet etc., is the most secure, and the best electronic means, when electromagnetics and other mediums of energy, can interfere?

Is digital more trend than substance?

Is analogue less prone to electromagnetic and other interference?

Can analogue be used to transmit internet-oriented data, and if so, what are analogue's capacities and speeds, compared to digital?

What of today's consumer electronic communications products which now depend upon digital, could have been developed running on analogue?

Does invention do more to lead us down a road to evermore complex, unnecessarily sophisticated, more expensive, less durable equipment, than enlisting tech-Wise minds assessing known products for their usability, and to make a decision about the long term durability, and ongoing viability and availability?

Viability not influenced by the corporate commercial advice-givers, because they always put profit and other related issues before dependable, quality and long term infrastructure.

If, in future, the world is sent into a downward spiral of economic, social and cultural collapse, many accepted mediums of communication may no longer be so readily available.

Digital communication, as far as I know, requires evermore technology to support it's infrastructure, thus, evermore trained 'specialists' (most all of whom are trained through the upclub cults of church-schools) 'techies', or Geeks and Nerds to keep it all running.

Beyond the showroom floor, products today are totally 'market-driven' as-they-say, which means that whatever a marketing agency, an advertising-and-propaganda agency, can convince the public they should buy, is what becomes determined as something the public needs, depending upon how many people are gullible, or are forced into buying.

Forced merely by having no option, or by having all more realistic, more practical, more durable options removed from the market by the tyrant corporate power and warped agenda-setters.

This does nothing to determine the quality of a product.

While the latest TVs, High Definition TV etc., give us the best ever quality of visuals, and sound, no one questions how well they are built, how robust the materials are, how long they are designed to last, and how long the product will remain 1stly, marketable, but 2ndly, how long before some clever-geek invents something that can be marketed as better again than the last system or medium or data-storage design, etc?

While there's money in the pockets and savings of the punters, including the upper 20%, products will continue to be invented, but invented purely for the invention-capitalization market, where large manufacturers are stuck on the too-fast-to-think-Wisely train of having to always create NE-EW! products.

Crapitalism, perhaps.., at it''s worst!

Techies and advertising agencies are most often in their own worlds, worlds which rarely go to these issues of sustainability, endurance or consideration of any social implications, nor implications surrounding whether a new product will be useful in collapsed economic or political situations, like, where imported products and their components are no longer pumped-out by massive, unsustainable factories and industries to the rest of the tech-addicted world? Or in regions or nations which are deprived of supply, for whatever reason, for extended periods.

Aside from the mainstream national, government, corporate and/or multinational telecommunications, there is a huge percentage of street-level users and consumers of modern-day telcomms equipment, who do not need anything like the sophistication, complexity and often specialisation demanded in the manufacture, maintenance and servicing/updating sides, nor in the general need and use of telecomms products.

But no-one has the power to say, “Hey? The equipment I use has been good for decades, and suits perfectly my needs for now and for the future. Why then, must I be forced to spend on new equipment purely because trend and blanket advertising forces good durable products to being superseded?”

Invention for invention's sake?

There can be no doubt that invention is something modern industry, not only in communications technology, is addicted to.

There is little sound reason for this. It cannot be denied that without some loose drive for new inventions we'd still be Pure and Wise, therefore at peace with most other humans, but also with the Earth and Her Lands. But only extremely-few of us would be able to travel, migrate, trade or get rich from other parts of the world.

Certainly, there would be less carnage in the name of god or war!

Education only really goes so far, before a larger percentage of the stuff we learn becomes superfluous facts and information, therefore is/are not really for the higher mental development necessary for personal Ascent to Enlightenment.

And, as far as my observations and research have confirmed, Enlightenment is the only thing any of us should be seeking, before any information or unnecessary knowledge on how to hack-a-bank, hear our favourite music or sell 2nd-hand cars with dividends. On E-bay.

Education (from Latin: 'Educer': to draw out, from within') is what gives us what we need to know for prolonged survival and prosperity. Everything beyond those requirements comes because of our culture of deception, entertainment and distraction.

The modern day technology is undoubtedly advantageous to improve the depth or quality of education in classrooms and places for learning, but the sophistication deployed in today's electronic-stuff is totally unnecessary in most arenas of education and learning, and even in entertainment.

The truth be known, none of it should be regarded as necessary in most fields of time-wasting, outside of the rudimentary needs, where it clearly makes things more efficient.

But efficiency has to include production costs, resource extraction costs, enviro-resource-social-and-cultural costs to build the laboratories, factories, wider supply and distribution infrastructure, employee housing, etc., costs both to the broader society/nation, and to the whole cycle's effects on the environment.

It is painfully, excruciatingly clear, that the vast majority of westernised people, are far away indeed, from anywhere nearly fully comprehending how delicate the planet's environment is, and that too often, gizmos and trinkets and electro-toys, especially produced and sprinkled around on the commercial scales of today's equipment, WILL be, not 'may be' the cause of serious imbalances, between humans and the ecology of Earth in the future. Added to the 'micro' hardware and electronics, is the heavy industry involved in constructing the towers and ancillaries. and ancillaries. and ancillaries.... etc?

Determining how soon such disruptions begin to take effect, is the qvestion?

The same can be said, I reckon, for media also.

That some people suffer for the lack of fidelity and clarity in our older radios or stereo equipment or TVs, doesn't mean the old wireless or tele does not do it's job more than adequately, perhaps for the majority.

In TV technology, the massive improvements from analogue TV 'lo-fi' cathode-ray tubes to the dazzling big LED flat-screen TVs etc cannot be denied in terms of manufacture, picture quality AND weight, etc.

Also the cost to make them is less in money terms, less demand on resources, and in terms of impact on the environment. Assuming 'rare-earth' resources can maintain supply to the demand?

So invention cannot be outlawed totally.

But when invention is sustained purely so the manufacturer and industry can stay in business, out-weighing those earlier-mentioned factors of implications and negative effects on the individual's mind, and, Soul, thus eventually negative effects on society and culture, and possibly upon the environment, there will come a time when, if any less-than-utterly-tyrannical government remains, the imbalance between corporate considerations and social, cultural and personal considerations will both force society to reconsider the merits of unbridled invention, and as likely eventually bring the society which overly depends on the hi-tech equipment, to collapse.

As in Kurt Vonnegut's sci-fi book set after some form of global apocalypse, invention will again be in the hands, workshops and sheds of Jo Public.

But a Jo Public who no longer has access to any sort of retail electronics outlets, outlets which survive and profit only for the masses being almost totally gullible to advertising, and for the masses being pretty useless when it comes to preserving or repairing anything beyond an axe or a cooking pot.

The new inventors of the post-apocalypse eras, will prize general (electronic) stuff most of us send to the rubbish tip, and will either grow or be beaten by the supply of old equipment that still works, can either be repaired or rebuilt from 2nd-hand things, and their ability to capitalise on it's re-usefulness or inclusion into whatever they are trying to fabricate from junk.

And..., the most savvy of the new-order of Geeks and Nerds, as time passes, will most prize the older equipment, methinks, because the older a product is, upto, say, products from after about 1980, usually the better it was made, with less planned obsolescence, of sturdier materials, and..., AND...., it will far more likely be repairable!

Let's face it! The modern fanaticism for micro-technology in everything from garden sprinklers to autos to weapons of mass-destruction, is more trend and hi-tech-tantalising-trinketry than for quality of product, practicability, usefulness or durability.

That we can take with us and listen to our entire music collection walking to the shop, commuting to work or tripping the globe on airliners, and can listen to it or watch when we should be focusing on the job, traffic or teacher, is pretty fantastic, sure. That we can have the immense gadgetry as contained in the day's cell-phones, with it's huge communication reach tucked in our shirt pocket, is a sheer marvel.

But that few if any of these are designed to be tough against more than being dropped once or twice, and are designed with planned obsolescence and the fact that the product will be both superseded and thus dated, so shortly to become unrepairable. These are not considered.

So, the world has become victim of multinational corporate short-term profit-centred thinking, where the real world, outside the laboratories and R&D complexes, does not exist.

('Where yoo beeen, Omaxee???”)

A long way from the Universal Wisdom of Ancient China we are, where while Eurapeans and even Hebrews were wandering around in rustic, primitive cultures, the Chinese Ruling classes were able to discern the dangers of allowing gunpowder to become a part of the culture, and of the arsenal of warlords.

Similar questions really should be put to the pharmaceutical industry. The governments blackmailed into their pay, abide by the drugs 'professionals' determinations, so the mass are forced to become dependent upon laboratory drugs, at ever-increasing production and retail cost, evermore artificial, increasingly chemically-dangerous to the physique and to the brain and mind, absolutely ridiculous in terms of costs-and-facilities-to-produce, yet have so much power over governments that the public purse, that-is Jo Public, subsidises the pharma-corp, and indeed the industry!

I throw in this charge against the pharmaceutical drugs industry because I smoke marijuana for it's therapeutic medical qualities.

Other aspects of marijuana add weight to the arguments against any prohibition, such as the immense value, in all aspects, from growing, cultivation and consumption as a relaxant, as a fibre and as a vital and near-complete source of complex nutrition, ie., AS FOOD!

But as with other relatively harmless natural 'drugs', medicines, herbs and plant products, the legality of marijuana is not alone an issue of powerful pharma-corps corrupting the business of government.

Marijuana, cocaine and heroin, by no coincidence the most popular ways to get a 'high' in a constantly 'down' culture, are kept as illegal to grow, possess or consume because of that other chemical industry which spends more than many national budgets, just on it's advertising - alcohol!

Apparently, Britain makes some 75% of it's total export income singularly from shipping scotch whisky to mugs like us elsewhere in the world?

(Perhapppsss....? Ziss iss vhy Io drunk Wodka mayte....!?)

As these distillers are all well-soaked (drunk indeed!) in IMF economics and be-damned crapitalism, and as Britain and Germany (und... RUSSIA!) effectively control the globe's finances, laws, trades and markets, the whisky-economy of Britain will never voluntarily let go of that cash cow of huge profits from grog, by legalising those demonised-yet-qualified relaxants and leisure-drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

The point here is, in relation to digital 'tomorrow-technology', naturally-occurring medicinals such as marijuana, cocaine and opium, even after perhaps 200 years of chemists trying to make their soluble pharma-drugs to replace them, are still, in their proper place, safer, more effective, with less negative effects, easier and more natural to make and more pleasant to imbibe.

So what is really behind the drone away from safer, natural medications to more dangerous, more difficult to make, financially, socially and culturally more expensive little-white-PILLS?

Well..., aside from the gross deceits inherent throughout the advertising and marketing industries, 'trend' - fashion - the mere fact that it is advertised to the braindead Christians with too much money in their cookie jars!

Automobiles? As well....!

Indeed? Indeedy-indeed!?!

Truth is..., there's next to nothing invented of the last 1-or-2 hundred years that any Enlightened Culture would regard as 'ESSENTIAL!!!'

As we're welded onto the express train of 'consume and destroy, HONORABLE CULTURE BE DAMNED!', it's unlikely that any Wise thing will be done to address this other aspect of our terminal-destruction culture of “invention for invention's sake”.

So I guess those of us who DO want something of their own blood, culture or household to survive more than 30, 50, 100 years, will be Wise to this flaw in modern society/culture, and, to those longtime ends, as well as to the more immediate needs, demands, and wants, will keep alive the knowledge on how to make a 'crystal set radio', advancing up to AM and FM-type radio transmission equipment, possibly even going deep-retro to the old faithful 'valve' electronics, etc.

Because, if this delusional, manipulable, delicate micro-tech, 'Hi-Def' world of corporate finance, crapitalism, plunder, affordable energy, INVENTION and advertising hot air hardens and hits-the-fan, durable, modifiable, lower-technology, dependable, repairable, fathomable, communications equipment will mean the difference between one Tribe or Gang surviving and finding the essentials to prolong, and others imploding, killing themselves and each other and/or starving.

So..., if I had an option, in comms equipment, I'd be sure to investigate the answers to the questions I opened this rave with......

But, as I'm on a finite time-scale, it would be far more valuable if our governments commissioned some Wise Fellas, to divine the facts surrounding digital electronics and communications?

And drugs...!

And motorised transport...!

And energy-production/consumption....!!

And....'god'???? (Anyone for an INQUISITION????!)

From the Travelling 4x4 Tent of
Countryzen bin Eartha

Outlaw, for
GLOBAL
Land,
Tax,
Housing,
Agricultural,
Cult,
Drug,
Work,
Education and
Environmental
LAW REFORM

Uluruba.