Beer Below the Falls (1965)

Unchanged since 1965

Revisiting the falls...

Frank: I last came here in ’65.
Nancy: Ooh. Fifty-five years ago? That’s a long time back. You came by motor bike?
Frank: No. By car, an old Austin. Warwick’s car. The two of us drank beer here in the late afternoon below the falls.
Nancy: Very different then, was it?
Frank: The falls are the same but back then it was pretty remote. Up a shingle road. It was the last time I saw Warwick. He was studying psychology but he suddenly went back to his hometown. Heard he became a panel-beater.
_________
Voice-over
Finding people after many years who never made it onto the internet can be hard. Some we may never locate. Our memory may recall a car, or the name of the beer, but personal recollection may not help much.

The Wisdom of Slow Decisions

After a frustrating purchase…

Ella: I bought a pocket wifi, ignoring the “Fools rush in” principle. Put a card in, no internet connection.

Bella: Did support help?

Ella: It took an army of them, four hours. First, they had to register the data card number with my passport number. Second, the data card was telephone, not internet data. Third, the card was upgraded, at extra cost, still no connection. Fourth, went to carrier helpdesk, the guys there couldn’t find the problem. Nice but hopeless. Fifth, called the pocket wifi helpdesk, no reply. Sixth, someone said the 4G card wasn’t compatible a 3G pocket wifi, did that, no result.

Bella: A litany of joyless frustration?

Ella: I was ready to leave the pocket wifi with them forever. Smiling nicely, of course. But finally a techie girl tweaked the pocket wifi settings and it came online.

Bella: Heaven comes to he who waits?

Ella: Patience did win the day.

___________

Voice-over

Try before you buy, or buyer better beware!

...

Destructive Creation: Sputnik to WWW

Beep-Beep-Beep 

Disruptive innovation and creative destruction: In 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik 1.

Nikita: That worried the Americans! It threatened their defence system. If Russian rockets could put up a satellite, then their ICBMs were a threat to the U.S.

Hank: So the Americans set up DARPA and one of the things that did was to make a nationwide network of computers so they could communicate even if one area was bombed.

Nikita: Bones of the internet. Trickledown from military technology to civilian technology.

Hank: Trickledown? This was destructive creation affecting everything: from warfare to culture.

Nikita: You mean creative destruction?

Hank: I just thought destructive creation had more impact.

___________

Voice-over

Sometimes a breakthrough in one field has an unexpected effect in another field.  Online newspapers displace daily paper deliveries. In this case the beep-beep-beep of Sputnik’s technology heralded massive disruptive innovation. Rocket science jump-starts information communication technology.

Of course the internet didn't just piggyback on Sputnik. See a short film, Internet Pioneers,  at http://youtu.be/cttRglPZ7d8

…

Is Google making us stupid?

Carl challenges Jerry in his spending too much time on the Internet.

...

Carl: And there’s a study been done that shows you young people have no concentration, you don’t have the attention span to finish a book.

Jerry: A study, huh?

Carl: A scientific study, mind you.

Jerry: Hmm.

Carl: And you know why? It’s because of Google. You go hop, hop, hop all over the place and haven’t the patience to pursue an argument to its logical concussion.

Jerry: I think you mean conclusion.

Carl: That’s what I said.

Jerry: Not so sure. Last night I was watching an old documentary, The Living Planet, and I got interested in lichens and cobras and who made it, David Attenborough, so I googled away and found his brother Richard Attenborough who directed Ghandi and pretty soon I felt I’d caught up on a lot of stuff.

Carl: You see, a whole of lot unrelated facts.

Jerry: Well twenty years ago, I’d have gone to sleep watching the documentary and finding out all that stuff would have needed a trip to the library and I wouldn’t have had time to go and I wouldn’t therefore have followed up and deepened and widened what I learned from the documentary.

Carl: Still say you only get trivia from Google.

Jerry: Depends. I can give other studies that show young doctors get a broader knowledge from Internet delivered materials with lots of links than long linear lectures. It’s a different generation and they learn differently.

__________

Voiceover

An article entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" has appeared in the July August 2008 issue of The Atlantic Monthly written by Nicholas Carr. It’s worth reading despite its conspiracy-theory flavor, it’s also an intriguing idea, although as the author cautions, “anecdotes alone don’t prove much.”

And that is how many such discussions, like those Carl and Jerry are engaging in, progress. Anecdote countered with anecdote.

Data is of course crucial but the hypotheses driving such studies are preceded by and formulated through introspection. It all begins with anecdotes.

...

Dieting by diversion

Janet and Gladys are in a meeting. Both sometimes worry about getting overweight. Janet shows Gladys the story about Nancy Makin.

...

Janet: Did you see this article about the woman who lost weight without even trying? Went down from 500 pounds to 170?

Gladys: I saw the story yesterday. And didn’t go outside for twelve years!

Janet: And then got help by chatting anonymously online.

Gladys: So the Internet helped. People communicated with her because of what she wrote, not because of what she looked like.

Janet: The bit I liked was that as a result she didn’t diet, or have surgery, or take medication to slim down. She did something else and she forgot about binge eating.

Gladys: Like the best way to get what you want is to help someone else get what they want.

Janet: Not quite the same. Maybe a closer analogy is to get better at another language by studying something else in that language.