Jim Kunstler, author of Clusterfuck Nation, is the author of today's quote of the day.
Google HQ was a glass office park pod tucked into an inscrutable tangle of off-ramps, berms, manzanita clumps, and curb-cuts. But inside, it was all tricked out like a kindergarten. They had pool tables, and inflatable yoga balls, and $6000 electronic vibrating massage lounge chairs, and snack stations deployed at twenty-five step intervals, with lucite bins filled with chocolate raisins and granola. The employees dressed like children. There were two motifs: "skateboard rat" and "10th grade nerd." I suppose quite a few of them were millionaires. Many of the work cubicles were literally modular children's playhouses. I gave my spiel about the global oil problem and the unlikelihood that "alternative energy" would even fractionally replace it, and quite a few of the Googlers became incensed. "Yo, Dude, you're so, like, wrong! We've got, like, technology!"
Yeah, well, they weren't interested in making a distinction between energy and technology (or, more precisely where Google is concerned, a massive web-based advertising scheme -- because it is finally clear that all this talk about "connectivity" just leads to more commercial shilling, shucking, jiving, and generally fucking with your headspace in the interstices of whatever purposeful activity one may be struggling to enact on the internet).
Comments
Oil?
I think the real solution will be the economic one.
Oil prices going up will force the uptake of alternate energy.
If prices double from 60$ a gallon, then solar, wind, sea, and other power will become feasible solutions.
Power and Technology are intertwined - can't have one without the other, unless we include the cheap and nasty solar calulators (ok plastic is oil, but we can use other things for plastic).
USA is very split brained - the energy pc spec was great at reducing power usage for PC's. But it doesn't match the other side of the fence - the big abusive SUV's they use.
Economics will solve this - once it becomes expensive to buy oil, (and thereforce energy), it behooves the consumer to start thinking how to save.
Hit people in the pockets. Its the only way.
Lawrence / http://www.shanghaiguide.com
the long emergency
To some extent, I think its f
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