Slide rules, chamber pots, and buggy whips-

My first time in college was a few years back. For one class a tool was required. It is called a slide rule. It is a calculating device, used much like a calculator is used today. This was way back in 1971. Though electronic calculators existed, they were rare and expensive. The slide rule had been around for some time, and they were affordable to college students.

I learned to use it, after a fashion, but never mastered the tool. Now they are relics of another time, collectible in like fashion to abaci. Just for fun I also learned how to calculate with an abucus. I have considerable respect for the electronic calculator after having learned these more ancient calculating systems. I also have great respect for the people who built the present using such interesting tools.

How do they relate to chamber pots and buggy whips? Well, they were all produced through maufacturing, were once common and sold in sufficient numbers to be relatively inexpensive. They are now less common, rarely used, and more of a curiosity than a common element in modern life.

I can imagine that an owner of stock in a company producing these items would have seen a steady income for a good many years. However, if that owner of stock did not occasionally assess and update their portfolio, reliance on these particular sources of income would eventually have dried up and left the owner destitute.

Few people have a fondness for slide rules. An occasional collector, perhaps. I don't actually know anybody who depended on a buggy whip to accelerate their vehicle, but I can't see it being something that encourages feelings warm enough to want to return to those old ways. Having actually used a chamber pot, I know by experience that more contemporary plumbing improves the experience of eliminating waste by an astronomical degree.

Sure, collecting some anachronistic items can be fun. However, there are reasons people have moved past such things. It is good to retain the concept and some skills with old ways of doing and thinking. Keeping blacksmithing skills and similar arts alive in our culture provide educational perspective. They also insure a fall-back resource in the event of a catastrophic breakdown in culture.

Similarly, keeping alive some sense or flavor of old ways of thinking can serve to provide cultural perspective, and also add some leaven in thinking toward the future. To consider ancient ways of thought and hold the people of ancient times in disdain simply because they were "backwards" is disrespectful and unwise. Those old ways of thinking were steps toward how we think in our own time. A little effort to understand and respect old ways and how they became modern ways can yield a richness and depth of experience in living today.

I have intentionally sat at night on several occasions, writing with a steel nibbed pen (the kind you dip in a pot of ink) by the light of a candle. Giving myself over to the mood I used my imagination and felt an emotional link with the hundreds of generations of humans who sat similarly lighted at a similar task. I have used old methods for performing calculations to get a sense of history to enrich my understanding of applied modern mathematics.

Now is a good time to be alive, because it is the only time we are alive. The past is a resource, a source of information, richness and pleasure. The future is an adventure yet to be set out upon. Here and now is the place where potential becomes real, and where history begins.

The intersection of Here and Now. A great place to be alive.

Building Economic and Social Models-

Occasionally I spend some time speculating about how the world will be in the not-too-distant future. At times my intuitive speculations work out. I foresaw the period of economic stability in the 1990's, and was actually surprised that the bubble burst so far from the turn of the century. We had five more years than I anticipated.

What was my prediction based on? Mostly my understanding that people don't really want to mess with something that is working well at the beginning of a period of prosperity and stability. I remembered the periods of inflation and shortages of fuel and some items such as sugar. Most people making decisions were familiar with those things, as well. Huge interest rates, big swings in the market.

I think that most of the people monkeying with the system gave up after those volatile times, and the economy was permitted to flow more naturally and freely. As it stabilized and some emergent technologies began to integrate into the general flow of the economy, nobody wanted to do anything particularly radical.

Perhaps the best example was when the Republicans pretty much reelected Bill Clinton for his second term. Not that anyone was actually thinking that Clinton was responsible for the period of prosperity. Just that nobody wanted to alter things too much. Don't mess with it. Let it grow naturally.

So, we had a good run. However, it became comfortable enough for some people who made a crap load of money in this period to try to turn that crap load into a shit load of money. Monkeys. It finally tipped a bit, and other monkeys put in their hands to get a piece before it all fell apart.

Of course, emerging economies such as China and India had a significant impact as well. It shifted the demand side of the equation and certainly opened things up for speculation. The comfortable became uncomfortable, and they began trying to control things. Too many monkeys.

Along with this is the unknown element of multinational corporations. People could no longer align their interests simply along national lines.

Add to the mix the massive flow of information across the Internet. Not just "things I want to know" information. Money. Property. The blurring of the lines between virtual worlds and the world we perceive as real. Information is power, but power flowing out of control is chaotic. It is explosive.

While I truly believe in Libertarian principles, I recognize that they won't really form the foundation for a model for societies or their economies. I will continue to promote liberty, because I see it threatened. However, the Libertarian model really won't work.

I really can't come up with a model. The world has become smaller even in my individual experience. In recent years I have interacted with people around the world. I have touched and been touched by people in distant lands and different cultures via the Internet. Each day, as I reach out through the new media, I am changed and being changed.

A small world does not really allow for great personal liberty. In this I think Japan is a model. A large population living in a limited space created a culture that is not particularly Libertarian. It is a culture that is ruled by conventions.

That being said, Japanese people have found ways to be creative and inwardly free. I do not know how to think and feel Japanese, so I really don't know to what degree an individual living as a member of that culture might long for and realize personal freedom. Still, when I look upon that culture from outside I see things that look like individual expressions of personal liberty.

I don't think Japan is our model, however. Nor the changing cultures and economies of Europe. American culture has a large influence, but it is not big enough for the world. For all of our American bluster and shared egos, we are not sufficient. The Neo-Cons are wrong in thinking that America should dominate the world in this century. We are not big enough.

No existing nation or culture is big enough. This is a huge shift, and nobody really has a model that is comprehensive enough to represent what is going on in the world.

I will keep watching, and keep thinking. I may not have a model, but my intuition tells me that things will be exciting.

Exciting, in the best and worst senses of the word.