I'm impressed by Quinn Norton's writing. I found this sentence in her article "Everything is Broken." Or is it?
It wasn't in 1929. It isn't in numerous countries now. Somalia comes to mind.It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire.
When the power goes down for long periods of time, I suspect she is right: society is built on bailing wire and toothpicks. But sometimes I feel that in many western countries, the larger infrastructure -- not "the infrastructure of our lives," but society's, is stronger than we know.
mk, what's with the tags? i didn't apply this #aaronswartz.minimum_wage tag and the submit page shows "community tag" as a field
Wow, what a call to action there at the end. I'm afraid I fall pretty squarely on Quinn's side, but she's right, that doesn't preclude action of some kind. I'll definitely be thinking more about this over the next few days (and watching the film sometime in there too).