Say Goodbye tothe Suburbs.

Have you noticed that we are in the middle of another almighty shift in human movement? We all learned in school about the Industrial Revolution, and how it forced the end of the Agrarian way of life for Millions in the West. You got the vision of millions of people being herded in never ending bedraggled columns toward the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of the soot-covered cities. The City where I was born was like that. Prior to the 1850’s, it was a few canal locks on top of a hill whose only claim to fame was that the valleys to its west used to be a country hunting estate for Henry VIII.

Of course, once factories started to require freight, canals became the preferred method of transportation, and this small town became a city in a matter of months, apparently.Growing up, I knew I lived in an automobile manufacturing city close to Europe’s largest Freeway exchange, with a large ‘green belt’ around it, just a few miles outside the suburbs where my family moved to – an actual 20 minute bus ride from downtown, how exotic!

These days I live in a city that has shrugged off it’s Lumber past for the most part, and has become part of what the more modern thinkers amongst us describe as a global cyber-network, more attached to a city down the coast in a different country than it is to it’s own nation’s capital. Among the most exciting real estate developments in recent years has been the transformation of a run down warehouse district (A relic of the port city we always were, but that has now moved to a more easily managed part of town), into a hip, young, cyber-entrepreneur type of clichéd downtown ghetto: Restaurants and bars that are way too expensive for what they sell, a Starbucks every ninety feet – that kind of thing.

This major shift in the migration habits of the current generation is due to the Internet. Now, kids are learning how to navigate spaces much bigger than the direct world they will graduate into. They are then using this knowledge to run their own businesses from a laptop and a cell phone, so they don’t need space to make money. With post-boom generations becoming smaller, there is no pressure to marry and have their own children, so the entire edifice of satellite cities, bedroom communities and the daily commute will be over in the next decade. Our current view of 2-up, 2-down semis in the suburbs will be the same as we now look at 4 story, 5 bedroom, and 4 bath Victorian mansions. OK for some, but way over the needs of most of us. As oil prices go up, and the automobile becomes too expensive to run, what will happen to the suburbs?

Of course, if they become too expensive to run by their city councils, eventually they will be swallowed up by their nearest cities – the very ones that birthed them in the 70’s. Whole neighbourhoods will be bulldozed to cut down on costs, and to save them from criminal activity. Eventually, they will be returned to farmland to promote local produce manufacture in the new, warmer climate.

In other words, the entire suburb culture in the 2040’s, could well look very much like it did in the 1950’s: A One-Century experiment in growth for one generation that was shown to work, but with many flaws that greed alone couldn’t answer.

Netizens: Freedom, or…….

While applauding Google’s decision not to compromise its beliefs in order to simply gather more eyeballs in China, the subject of cyberspace freedom is, once again, being discussed. The Search Engine behemoth isn’t making any money in China, so it’s not as if this proud stance will cost them anything, but it makes the right decision to do this and state that “Do no Evil” is more than a motto. Most companies would take the position that more eyes mean higher rates for Ad Words so on behalf of all of us, Thanks ‘Googs’. When contrasted with the US financial institutions, the company is certainly making a case that it’s ideals are worth more than it’s share price; a ray of sunshine in the gloom of corporate America. But does the existence of an unpoliced Internet as a whole in our lives mean now what it used to?

The Chinese government may well have been spying on G-Mail account holders, but is it the only Government doing so? It’ a knee-jerk reaction to look at this as a case of a Communist regime, once again taking people’s freedoms away, but if you don’t think that most Governments are doing this, you are dreaming. If your own ruling political party’s secret service were watching you, do you feel any freer where you live than in Beijing? The fact that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, made such a public fuss about Google’s decision may sound like freedom loving America bitch-slapping it’s Eastern foe, but we all know that all US citizens are being spied on.

The freedom to read and write what you want across a borderless global system comes at a cost: Hacker’s, Viruses, Spam, and predatory individuals are something that we put up with in order to chat with someone in a far flung corner about the mundane seconds of our own lives. If you believe that the ‘net is home to evil doers that don’t need to communicate in public, then what does that say about your feelings concerning the outbreak of laptops in coffee shops? Are those people that you don’t really want to talk to really Twittering on about what they just bought, or do you believe that their conversations a re more nefarious?

If you don’t trust anyone enough to talk to them in public, then you get the Internet you deserve. It’s easier to have numerous instantaneous pen pals across the globe than to open up about yourself to a real live person, but what does that say about the generation now in their teens, and what are they opening themselves up for in the future? There may be an argument for some kind of expanded control if the entire planetary communication is now online. We have always measured our species’ advances in technological terms, but we may have created something here that will enslave us. If this is true, the decision to keep one tiny part of the globe out of the conversation because someone may be listening may do more harm than good.

Is the end really near?

In a marketing position, you are always looking for new ways to deliver ‘the message’. Any way that you can insert a description of your good or service into a stranger’s subconscious is a plus. Over the last few years, online commerce has (supposedly) taken off to the extent that everyone is doing it. I have yet to define ‘everyone’, because to me this number appears to be about 7 customers and 100,000 companies trying to sell, but perhaps I’m wrong. My question is a simple one: Why are they doing it? Is it because they simply cannot be bothered to go outside, meet someone else, check for comparison prices, or talk to someone that works in retail? Is it because eventual control over the purchasing process, and the possibility of a good financial deal is the be all and end all of every buying decision? I think that we are being sold faulty goods, here: Let’s drill down a little. I shall be 50 years old this year, and I spend a lot of time online. There are many reasons for this, but in the mid-nineties when I was introduced to online worlds, I found it interesting in an anonymous kind of way. You could say and do anything online (or watch it.), and no one really knew you were doing it. It’s a childish emotion, I know, but it was fun for a while. My attention span has never been truly measurable without a micrometer, but that’s just me. Being adolescent-minded, it was obvious to me at the time that the pioneers of the Internet were ones that would interest kids that would grow up with your website, so their thought processes were aimed a certain way, anyway. But what happens when Internet users don’t grow up? Because that’s where we are at. There has been a lot of fear over the death of newspapers, lately. Does anyone read anymore? Not the internet generation, that’s for sure. The answer isn’t a lack of knowledge about this generation, it’s a case of newspapers not talking down to their readers (Obvious exceptions accepted.). It’s the case that to read the entire newspaper, you have to have an interest in politics, international diplomacy, business, spots, pop culture, fashion and the workplace. That’s a little dry, when you have the choice of reading about Johnny Depp’s love life. If you don’t have an interest in what someone else is thinking, you aren’t going to educate yourself. If you are more at home just doing what you want, and reading about what is interesting to you, you aren’t going to find much interesting enough to hold your attention. For the last 70 years, we have been beholding the end of some medium or other: Newspapers were going to be killed by the movies; movies by radio, radio by TV, TV by cable; cable by the net, and we are all still enjoying all of it. Why? Because everyone learned to adapt, and offer something different. What we aren’t going to change is the infantilization of the current generations mid-thirties and below. While they are still stuck on celebrity website gossip, the remaining 10% in power are reading newspapers and are making decisions that affect all of us. They are manipulating exchange rates, organising the fall of governments, and the price of oil. The only thing anyone can do is to try to educate themselves about what is happening. How the real estate crisis in the States has resulted in a generation in their late fifties having to work for five more years. How the continuing rise in oil prices are due to the peak of easily accessible supply that means that it will run out about 3 years after the US social safety net runs out of money. At this time, the 4-500 miles either side of the equator will be uninhabitable thanks to global warming, and about a billion people will be shoehorning themselves into the rest if the World. When I was growing up, we paid a license fee in order to be able to watch TV. That fee ran the national broadcaster that allowed it to broadcast all that boring stuff that you should be watching. I DID gain an interest in business and cricket, I didn’t in Opera and ballet, but it was there if someone wanted it. What is wrong with defining a piece of the 500-channel TV universe and multiple radio offerings?  If we are to have any hope in our race, it is those in their twenties right now that will have to right these wrongs within the next 20 years. What a pity that the majority of these are tweeting about their underwear, rather than learning how to fix the place.