While the internet and rolling 24hr news channels did what they do best - breathly moment by moment updates on what is happenning, the dailies and weeklies in France did what they do best - provide context, colour and the big picture analysis of what happened.
A man is facing prospect of trial. The media has put the world's coverage of the situation on trial, so to the American Justice system, the French justice system, the IMF, the Socialist Party, a nations view's on privacy and the behavior of powerful old men. All brought to life in words and illustration.
The world has been going fast and faster and fastest for a while now.
Accross time and geography.
The internet for the past 40 years has exacerbated this. Tangible and especially heightening our impression of everything accelerating.
We have now acheived real time essentially. Get information instantly. Transmit and complete tasks instantly. Manufacture new products faster than trends can support them.
The next leap will be some form of reshaping time and space. Till then we have essentially acheived 'peak now.'
Till the our scientists get cracking and figure it out, we should celebrate the acheivement of nowness, and move past the acheivement of instanst life.
It is a good time to think about long term implications of instnantaneous everything. I love this Google film emotively highlighting a life of instantaneousness. Figure out how it can do things better, not just differently.
Just as globalization economically is delivering diminishing returns and returning to tighter geographical and cultural roots is paying greater returns (eg. McDonalds localizing menus in no-markets) how will we deal with peak now when it comes to consumer content and interacting with people we know and entities like brands, governments and associations.
This is bigger than a regectionist group like Slow movements (though they are certainly symptomatic) but a slow reframing of how we deal with information. As news cycles are essentially hours if not minutes down from days or weeks not too long ago how will we seek meaning over information. Meaningful comprehension of complex situations. Rich storytelling that compels when you already 'know.'
Right, well time to head to a terrace and figure it out.
In the middle of hundreds of thousands of socialists, communists, lenninist, unionists and others this guy stompted on the hood of his Triumph and rocked.
There is something visceral and I love about the energy of manifestations in France. People giving a damn and taking to the streets. It also feels in some ways like a time past. People now have other options to inspire and instill change. This guy did feel like a time before I was born when rock and roll was the voice of disent.
The crowd tends to be older at these manifestions, 50 something. I was in Prague in 2000 during the IMF protests/riots- I was 23 and many others seemed about my age. Maybe it feels old on the street because the youth are at home doing change rather than walking down the street yelling about change. More likely, as with most things in our frangmenting world the new and the old are equally important to moving forward.
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