newspeak

FRED WILSON: Mobile Is Where The Growth Is – Business Insider.

Is it just me or is this not obvious? And has been so for years. Or do these coming in from older generations still see computer technology (even the term stinks of fustian age) as something “new,” the way that, say, the NYTimes continues to place “Technology” in a separate section.

It’s not just that “technology,” that “computers” that ICT in general are now ubiquitous and even definitive of the New Modernity. It’s that all this fascination with what the aged would call gizmos and so on obfuscates the reality of work, use, distribution characterizing modern ICT economies. Actually, outside of ProPublica’s periodic articles on the issue, it’s probably only the NYT’s iEconomy articles that take the needed steps to comprehend the economic logistics of this present world. And that’s just a start. For instance: The role of ICT in, say, Africa or Brazil or India is not about cool gizmos but about necessary communications and the shift from traditional economic practice (read: farming built during an epoch of climate benevolence–the not now world of Global Climate Change or Hell on Earth, HoE) to economic modalities that are slowly being established to accommodate the displaced, displacing workforce. Not about gizmos and not really about survival but all about sustainability: Living today so that we can live tomorrow.