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July 28, 2005
Little Apocalypse / Sudden Pressure Loss Wanted.
In the even of pressure loss
... All our lines are busy now ...
I will be laughing out loud anyhow
(David Byrne)
Over the last days, I have spent countless hours, Euros and Sterling on busses to airports. I've run miles to faraway gates and had fun switching from super-friendly to confrontational ("So the inflight-magazine can stay here while my little Powerbook needs to be stowed away?"). I'm still hoping for the event of sudden pressure loss to provide some real in-flight excitement slash entertainment.
Posted by dr at 2:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 25, 2005
Milk in the dessert: The BBC's African adventures
For the first time in years, I now live in a place that has a TV set in the living room. Happy-clappy infotainment with my brekkie, scream-at-each-other-like-theres-no-tomorrow shows in the afternoon, the tenth season of people locked up in a Big Brother container in the evening and then maybe some James Bond movie made in a time where a film-maker thought that wrist-watches could, one day, produce a magnetic field capable of deflecting deadly bullets. I've stopped short of adding TV to my list of acquired addictions. But my disappointment in what is done with people's TV license fees is profound.
I've known that afternoon TV is bad, and I've known that most channels produce crap. But even the supposedly world-class journalism of the BBC is sometimes complete and utter crap. The've had a reporter in Africa for a few days, doing little pieces and live-interviews with locals. What do I see? One morning, the reporter portrays a local flower production company in Nairobi (I think). I see hundreds of flowers in a brightly lit room, and then short interviews with three local managers. They don't really reply to the reporter's questions, but say again and again how devoted they are to getting things right for their customers. Mind you, that's not me and you - but that's Walmart and ALDI. Are the workers protected? "Oh yes they are, we have good worker protection here", replies the manager. Great information I'm getting.
Does that flower company have an impact on the community? What do they learn from trading internationally? Where are the big problems? What would actually interest me seems to have no room in the morning show.
The 30-second interviews go on. The Kenian quality control manager has no idea how many different flowers they have (stupid reporter's question, anyways), and she cannot make up a figure. Instead, the reporter tells us somebody's cousin studies in England. Bad case of forgetting to brief your interview partners. A good reporting idea gone bad. Too sad. Would the BBC recommend shipping fresh milk to feed kids in the African dessert?
I guess I would have to watch a week worth of morning shows before making a general statement about the quality of that show. I haven't gotten around to it, and maybe I never will.
Posted by dr at 8:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2005
Globalization II: Caviar in Ketchup
I received complaints about my last post. Globalization is great, says my friend Roderich - he likes the cheap deals at the grocery store. But, he continues, the disadvantages are grave, in particular culturally. While people may be getting wealthier financially, cultural diversity is on the decline.
But, culture is always a mélange. Culture has evolved over many decades. We don't even have to look to the cultural hot pots of London or New York City. There are simple examples: our languages for example are pretty much always a mixture of supposedly "foreign" influences. The fact that some of us don't like franglais stems from our lazy habit of preferring the known and call that "pure".
People will decide what goes well together, culturally. The process organizes itself, it's not up to intellectuals, and it's not up to the friendly, big-mouted idiots from the marketing department, either.
Some of the results may sound awful, and Roderich promised to serve me caviar in ketchup next time I see him. The French may say computer or still ordinateur, but in the long run and overall, Rodi is right: cultures will converge - and new ways of communicating and interacting with each other will emerge.
It is up to all of us to not succumb to Hollywood movie culture and Japanese electronic culture, just because they manage to produce boring, mass-market-compatible products that satisy the least common taste demoninator. I prefer computers designed in California and movies made in Japan.
The big change we call globalization is a gigantic speed-up of this process. Cultural transactions, the exchange of information in a form shaped by individual cultural standards, happen instantaneously. My e-mails reach people in New Zealand with no delay. Physical distance does not help delinate cultures any more. So how earth can different cultures still emerge?
Just because a person in India has an e-mail account doesn't mean I will engage in a furious e-mail exchange with them. Cultural transactions are driven by common goals, and I one possibility is that "the new kind of culture" will form within groups that share common goals.
Consequences? Travel may be less exciting in two hundred years. Once all those old things, I mean, cathedrals and temples, castles and monuments are gone, all that will be left are Coca Cola, the same eurasian fusion food, a few big languages like Chinese and English, in short, all the stuff we have at home as well.
Causes and scapegoats? Probably not the G8, not simply free trade. I believe that the cultural globalization is a result of electronic data networks, of television and dubbed movies and,
yes, cheap flights around the globe.
I would not want to miss any of these conveniences. But I consider myself lucky that I, as a European, can enjoy the cultural diversity that might be gone by the time my grandchildren retire.
Posted by dr at 7:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 5, 2005
Anarchists' riots here in Edinburgh: naive and nationalist
The windows at the supermarket that I went to the other day were barricaded. "Dark in here today," I go. "What's it like outside," asks the cashier, "how bad are the riots?"
Not much of a riot, what's going on there, I believe. Anarchists have managed to stage a little protest around the city of Edinburgh. The general public has probably never believed that vandalizing cities where G8 summits are held won't help at all. Did the poor get fed after some idiots went haywire in Geneva? Probably not.
Globalization is the reason I can lead a somewhat international life - living here and there, getting work in another country without problems. It's the single biggest reason why I speak a not-so-broken English, and why they have more and more English words are turning French into Franglais. Courri-el for e-mail, I love it.
Some of my friends say it's the reason why children in Africa die of hunger - because we abuse our market power and steal their goods. It's the reason why people in Germany are losing their jobs to newly built factories and software companies in India.
But I'm wondering what's bad about me being able to afford a bunch of nice shirts that are made in Turkey and not from Scottish wool? What's so bad about it when a factory employing hundreds of Germans is closed, as long as the Opel (Vauxhall / GM) cars they used to manufacture are now made by dedicated Polish people?
People in Bangladesh need their jobs too, and they're probably pretty happy to sew my shoes together. It's nationalist to just pity the local jobs lost. And don't tell me the entire textile industry there is only a sweatshop business, driven by exploiting young children.
The social standards we developed over the last 100 years in the western world will find their way to these countries, which can now produce things for cheap because of their low wages. Hasn't this already happened in the South-East-Asian "Tiger" states?
We're also exporting freedom. Freedom to trade is an essential right: It's my freedom to go buy things in one country and bring them home with me. Free markets come to their logical end where monopolies create an imbalance, where big trusts blackmail and pressure small traders. That's what fair trade is about.
One of the points on Tony Blair's agenda: promote economic dependencies and relationships between African countries, because they bring stability. I don't invade my neighbor if I can make good deals with him. Wars like the one in Rwanda, on the other hand, guarantee continued poverty. Corruption and dictatorship maintain the misery even in resource-rich countries. Africa needs to do its part and end bad governance, now.
We, the western world, have a responsibility to not let corrupt African military dictators take away the money that Shell pays to exploit their oil fields. I don't believe Shell has monitored responsibly where its funds go. At the same time, bad governance is why it's so important for governments to not give unconditional funding: we need to make sure that aid is sustainable. We need to drop debts only where it actually helps the poor. Any demands from protesters for unconditional aid are just naive.
It probably doesn't pay to cultivate a differentiated view of reality. But the world is a muddy pond with all sorts of fish. Truth is not black or white, and the solutions we need are like the problems: multi-faced.
Posted by dr at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack