The future of the world

I read this fascinating article on The Guardian website.




Food for thought for sure but it invites as many questions as solutions at this stage.

• First up is the thought 'how many times has something similar been said in the last century or more?'
• I can imagine that there have been many great thinkers from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham and even Malthus who have posited that profit can not be the only aim of business in a civilised world.
• Then, is there any real way to get all the world's business and political leaders around the same table to make it happen?
• In a week when the London Underground proposed later running tubes only to be shouted down by the unions, people whose livelihoods depend on the same system in the same town, can the diverse interests and fields of all business and communities really be brought under one umbrella set of regulations?
• Can we ever reach a point where all the experts agree?
• Even today there are people in power and experts who can't agree on the realities of climate change. Some are absolutely convinced it is not happening, others believe mankind has had a huge and continuing impact.
• Can we be sure that any ideology proposed by any one nation or company is not imposing something entirely alien on others?
• The simple idea of consuming horsemeat has this week shown divisions in Europe that are cultural and historical and that neither side would view as being wrong or negotiable.

It's a noble idea to make the world run on more ethical terms and one I wish more people subscribed to, but is it realistic to expect so many diverse interests to be able to come together and make it work?

How would you change the world for the better?

Gainful employment

As you know I am a bit of an information junkie. I love to look up the answers to anything and everything. Whether it's how particle physics works, who Prince Blucher was, how to make sure a guitarist doesn't get his cables trapped under the drum kit or who needs to know about that recipe for jam roly poly, I want to know and share as much as humanly possible.

If you have seen my other blog you might also know I am in search of my dream job. The major obstacle being that I don't know what I want to do with my life and have no clue what job would be a dream for me.

I am, therefore, trying to imagine ways to combine the two. My craving for answers (and disseminating them) with my search for the perfect work.

I'm a bit late to create Google unfortunately, and am not that interested in programming search algorithms anyway.

Please do let me know if you know of a job that sounds like it would suit me to a T!

Social media

I've just signed myself up to Google+. Since I already use Google email and Google Blogger to write this blog it seemed like a natural next step. So far though I'm not finding it quite as intuitive as I'd liked.

So if anyone has any tips or knows of good places to find advice please let me know in the comments below.

Music Formats

As a teenager I was obsessed with records. I am sure most of my pocket money went on buying albums, usually at the local Our Price store.

Once I was old enough to be allowed to go to London on my own I discovered a fantastic little store inside Kensington Market where I would spend hours just flicking through their vinyl trying to pick a couple of LPs to take home. I would wander round the whole market looking at shoes and coats, candles, scarves, models of dragons and wigs in neon colours, and I would often grab a jacket potato as well. But the majority of the time I was in that record shop.

I would also spend a couple of hours a week putting collections of songs on to cassette tapes.

Record sleeves even got books dedicated to them

Then at the end of my teens the Compact Disc began its rise to ubiquity. In a record shop rack they just don't flip in the same satisfying way, a rack would only stack them two or three deep because of that. The case art work was tiny compared to the twelve inch square glorious design you got with an LP. Album art designers (Storm Thorgerson, Roger Dean, Derek Riggs to name just three) would never have achieved such fame as CD artists.  The disc claimed to be unbreakable so there was never the same sense of care of and reverence as there was with a vinyl disc which could be ruined with a single scratch. As long as I still had a working turntable I was reluctant to replace my vinyl albums with CD versions.

CDs were easier to tape from though and I still have boxes of my compilations, and copies on tape for playing in the car.

At University I wrote a dissertation on competing music formats, describing the rise of CDs and going on to debate the relative merits of DAT (digital audio tape) and DCC (digital compact cassette)  - a debate similar to the VHS and Beta wars of a few years earlier, based as much on the access the patent owners had to recordings they could sell their formats with as the technical benefits of either.

At the end of the 90s I bought a MiniDisc machine and spent many a happy hour recording digital compilations from my CDs.

Unfortunately it was not a format that lasted and before long the MP3 took over. A music format with no physical substance at all. Artwork has to be viewed on a computer, there can be no reverence or fear of damage to something that has no form. Consequently record stores are fast disappearing or becoming game stores. My small collection of LPs, though, has become more valuable to me and I am increasingly reluctant to risk damaging them.

The march of progress moves steadily onward but those little  moments of pleasure that are gone forever are memories I cherish.

How is progress changing your world? Are you at the forefront of technological advances or do you cling to the old ways?