Friday, January 1, 2016

interweb


INTERWEB

Note: Happy New Year.  This year is guaranteed to be far worse, so get ready to enjoy the ride.  Far too much havoc is being loosed upon the land for it to be otherwise.
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Some time ago, over wails of anguish and denial, the Druid Dude set out to show how subsidized and vulnerable the Internet was.  In short, only a modern unique set of fortunate circumstances are allowing the Internet to consume such huge amounts of electricity and resources sold at bottom barrel prices to insatiable consumers.  What I would like to add today is the parasitic nature of most of its users, besides the end consumer, to illustrate why those vulnerabilities will wreck the Web relatively quickly once economic forces are altered.  If it happens independently of the general collapse this concerns me as my publishing is dependent upon its functioning ( I don’t know if I’d have enough subscribers to even justify buying a CD burner to send a monthly e-magazine through the mail ).  If it happens as part of the bigger collapse then of course it is no big deal in the great scheme of things.  You do have to admit, it is a bit scary how crack cocaine addicted we all have become on our computers hooked up to SkyNet.  I wouldn’t miss e-mails ( the original function of the first Net was University communications to stop research duplication, not nuclear war communications survival as most assume.  That might have been budgetary propaganda ) as mostly all I get is commercial mail.  I would miss publishing, because before the Net, you had to pay to get readers.  Not just advertising but actual publishing ink and paper and postage for them.  Self-publishing was NOT a paying proposition.  What is the point of writing if nobody reads you?

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But most of us ARE news junkies on the web, and it provides nearly all our entertainment.  Between shopping at Amazon for books and streaming Netflix, I’m as addicted to Internet entertainment as all those fools on Facebook and so we come to my main point about today’s reliance on the net.  It IS entertainment far and above any of its other functions, the modern day television ( even heavily used by those who denounce TV as Lucifer’s Glass Enema ).  There is no sense in subsidizing its existence outside of being the other vital half to our handlers of bread and circuses placating the masses.  Right now, corporations profit off of its use while the proletariat is mesmerized by its warm glow, and we all know the ultimate fate of corporations in a trade war Peak Oil PetroDollar Death economy-eventual doom.  In the meantime, companies use the Internet as another robot replacing workers-big time.  The Post Office replaced pesky hard to sort and deliver first class mail and advertising catalogs with parcels.  Without the Internet pimping online stores, they wouldn’t have enough business to stay in business.  The only reason there are any Mom & Pop businesses left in this wretched economy is the Internet.  They sure can’t afford rent for a retail business.  Amazon, much to its surprise, found itself downloading over half its book sales rather than mailing physical copies of them ( Amazon couldn’t even  have started without the net ).  Newspapers have no one but themselves to blame for their demise, wretched content not worth anyone’s time let alone their money, but some can still limp along on the Internet. 

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Too many businesses are alive just because of for-all-intents-and-purposes free to use Internet.  When the economy gets bad enough that those aren’t even in business ( you still need customers even if everything else is free to create and move about ), there is your signal the Internet is dead and just waiting to be buried ( one imagines the last subsidy to go will be the NSA propping up the data gatherers ).  Most likely it will happen in our lifetimes ( and by “our” I mean my mostly 50+ year old readers-by the time we are old enough to prep properly we are almost too old to enjoy the collapse, mores the pity ).

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12 comments:

  1. And my first official act of the New Year was to purchase the newsletter. Great way to start off 2016 :-)

    Happy New Year, LB!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Love ya, man. Last months purchases tanked in half, strangely.

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  2. I'll be 61 next month and will start collecting SS when I turn 62. In probably another year after that I will most likely be out of the computer realm. My old XP machine died last July and I got a new HP Win8.1 machine and it is anything but productive. I swear the thing is nothing but a toy and trying to get any work done on it is endlessly frustrating. I imagine a win 10.0 machine is even more non-productive. Unless you call entertainment productive.

    I predict that in a couple years I will go back to designing buildings by hand, that is, technical ink pens on vellum on a drawing board (I still have all my old equipment) and then taking the hard drawings to the UPS store to be scanned into pdf files and emailed to the clients from a surface tablet or something. I'm really disappointed in how all this computer stuff is turning out, since I have been savvy since 1983 when I bought my first computer and taught myself BASIC programming.

    I see the end, and it is nearer than most people think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Internet is not what all its advocates were hoping for, just 20 years ago. A shame. Oh, the potential. Computers are now dirt cheap, amazing compared to just ten years ago, with pure crap OS. Getting what we pay for I guess.

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  3. I recall the old days when the Sportsman's Guide, Ken Nolan, Mass Army Navy surplus, Campor, and a few others would arrive in the mail. Whipping out the calculator, figuring shipping, tax, filling out the order form, getting the money order, envelope, stamp, etc and so on. Seems so primitive and long ago now, but really not so long ago.

    On the radio last night there was a chap discussing the possibility of an emp event. One bomb detonated about 150 miles above our atmosphere, or really, even a massive solar flare could destroy our entire grid and take it out for several years, resulting in a massive die off. The web and the grid are pretty vulnerable it seems. And I cannot say with certainty that the civilian version of the web would have the same redundancies included as would have ARPANET.


    As far as the newspapers go James, it seems that the only people that actually get them anymore are older folks that have been reluctant to enter into the computer age.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 13 or 15 years ago was the last oldschool newspaper I encountered. You would think someone could offer a better product, even if not a better price.

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  4. Re: internet is crack for news hounds.

    Her ya go. Confirmation bias for the desert hole-dweller and his internet followers:
    http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/Afghans-Rediscover-The-Lee-Enfield-1-22-2009.asp

    It may take a while, but the Afghan Strategy is a not-loser.

    pdxr13

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    Replies
    1. I saw many wrong conclusions and omissions, but as a general affirmation that I am as a god amidst bare ass savages, this was a good article. Thanks.

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  5. Let me affirm that you make more sense than 80% of the people I know in meatspace. Many of the 80% are texting illiterate confused savages and tax-feeders who will go feral as soon as they can't get gas/booze/pharma, let alone food/water. There will be work to do for the few remaining men.

    pdxr13

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    Replies
    1. Only 80%? Isn't that, like, only a C+?

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    2. A Gentleman's A- at public school is over 78%, and is part of how we are doomed.
      http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mse6CaxAa-M/VoIfNpzrC8I/AAAAAAAAAgs/B4twJkFsVog/s1600/HandsUp_Propaganda.jpg
      Politix to your NW, across the vast Western Desert, in the valley of 60" of annual rain (14" in Dec 2015!):
      "The Peoples Democratic Socialist Republic Of Oregon is controlled by a bi-sexual leftist governor, a gun-grabbing leftist majority legislature, and a whining, slack-jawed leftist majority of Obama-worshiping deviates who inhabit the Multnomah-Portlandia-Beaverton-I-5 Corridor to Eugene, Blue Hive. This FSA voting bloc controls Oregon politics." Quoted from letters at WRSA.

      pdxr13

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    3. So, I', hearing 80% is kind of insulting? :)

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