New Standards?
William Gibson has said, “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”. But the future gets distributed more evenly over time. Bruce Sterling reports that the UN is going to be texting food coupons to 1000 Iraqi refugees in Syria in a pilot program. All the 130,000 refugees receiving food aid already have cell phones.
But there’s a corollary to Gibson’s statement. Call it Tangozulu’s corollary to Gibson’s Law: “The past is still with us, it’s just found a niche.” Older technologies, obsolete ways of thought, and older patterns of living are still around. Some school districts in WV for example, have given their teachers no funding for paper. Perhaps they’re planning to rely on slate tablets?
