Author: nelboscofc@gmail.com

British Invasion– “Sorted”

Sorted: Another unwelcome British word that has gained traction in American. “Sorted” had a perfectly reasonable application in America as a word meaning “organized” or “catalogued” or anything that involves some separation and/or classification. Now we confront its increasingly wanton use to mean “fixed” or “settled” or, even, “quelled.” Sort of pointless.

 

NB:

The British Invasion is when– unbidden and unneeded– explicitly British words and expressions infiltrate American public commentary and journalism. This is alarming because the resultant multiplier effect could cause an epidemic that infects ordinary Americans’ healthy vocabulary.

Although I strive for tolerance, for the purpose of this series of posts, my fundamental assumption is that American is better than, not just different from, British. This is– mainly, if not exclusively– because American is newer and made improvements to its dialect of origin. I do, however, confess to frequent unfair extrapolation from this arguably reasonable approach to almost wholesale– and borderline unfair– derision of British compared to American. I beg the reader’s forbearance for having fun with such a solemn topic. I’m just taking the mickey– or whatever it is Americans say.

There is No Time Like the Present

Instant access to digital platforms bearing whatever information we want whenever we want it has led to a swift evolution of our notion of the “present.” The evolution is ongoing, however, as the youngest adults among us struggle to define what, exactly, now constitutes the present. The casualties of this struggle include what previous generations would have considered priorities represented by the notion of the present. As part of this evolutionary transformation driven by generational differences, newer definitions of the present and its priorities will prevail sooner rather than later.

In the same way that “virtual reality” has come to complement reality, a “virtual present” has begun to dominate the attention and actions of the younger members of most societies. The concept of the present that has prevailed throughout human existence is under assault. This sometimes means that what humans have always considered the present is now sacrificed to the omnipresent. Examples abound in daily life. Older people notice—often disapprovingly—that “kids nowadays” pay little or no attention to hard copy mail and decline to answer ringing land-line telephones. These formerly dominant methods of transmittal of important information are, to young people, confusing or anachronistic because they demand immediate attention to what they regard as only a slice of the present, rather than the at-will consideration of the many possible presents afforded by digital platforms. Handling a piece of mail or accepting the tether of a phone call requires full attention there and then, rather than partial and/or on-demand consultation, thus interrupting the flow of the “virtual present” that exists across the many commingled simultaneous platforms of the digital world.

A perhaps more serious threat to traditional timelines is that deadlines, too, have come to be regarded as needlessly static in a world at flux. A deadline that arrives by hard copy mail, or even email, cannot hope to compete with the many other streams of information to which no specific window of time is attached—and, indeed, often sinks and drowns in that stream. Younger people today operate under an assumption that deadlines can be dealt with according to one’s own priorities, just like finding something on the internet is. That assumption is sometimes mistaken, yet it increasingly prevails. It is likely that the notion of “deadline” will, in many cases, evolve to fit the reality of omnipresence, rather than remaining attached to a traditional definition of the present.

In fact, modern life provides decreasing incentive to address something right in front of us—the present—when what matters to us is, or should be, omnipresent. This is a fundamental change in the way humans comprehend the present and the attention the idea of “the present” has always commanded. Throughout history, what is “present” has been what is happening or experienced now. The present was also accompanied by its priorities. Those priorities might be addressed or willfully ignored, but at least they merited some attention. That concept of “present,” however,  now competes with many other “presents” that can be accessed anywhere instantly. The present has become something that is no longer firm and immutable. The priorities, attention, and presumed action the present traditionally demanded are now subject to interpretation, evaluation, and—most importantly—comparison with other presents.

The adage, “There is no time like the present” still exhorts us toward action in the way it always has, but the emergence of competing virtual presents furnish a completely new second meaning. Try saying the phrase while accenting the word “no.”  This is a different notion altogether, but one that is demonstrably true today. We can expect even swifter and surer evolution of the concept—presently.

 

N. B. This is a companion piece to a prior post about internet-driven generational sociological change.

 

 

 

 

To Have and to Have Not: The Evolution of Collectors into Connectors

We are witnessing an evolutionary change in humanity’s approach to possessions, collections, and memorabilia. What for millennia drove us to acquire and possess no longer motivates young people who have never known a non-digital world. Human beings were once collectors, but are gradually abandoning that and becoming, instead, connectors.

For millennia, humans lived with an assumption of scarcity and thus collected anything deemed scarce. First manifested in the hoarding of saved food or fuel or livestock, this human urge expanded to include the desire to possess more and more of anything of value. Physical collections and the collecting of art, cars, orchids, stamps, baseball cards, photos, antiques, family memorabilia—pretty well anything—generated prestige, pleasure, and pride among individuals and groups. Collecting became something humans aspired to and spent time enjoying.

In many ways, this instinct no longer governs the youngest among us: they have an assumption of availability rather than an assumption of scarcity. This trend is demonstrated daily in ways large and small. Parents save news clippings, schoolwork, videos and photos (the latter, in a concession to modernity, perhaps saved on the hard drive of their computer). Their children do not. Many, if not most, parents still assume that these items are finite and scarce; children assume that they are eternally available on digital platforms. What humans considered the intrinsic value of ownership and intimacy with collected possessions does not register as strongly with young people. To them, the notion of “owning” or “collecting” things is somewhat quaint and pointless. What they want or seek will always be there, on a website, app, or other medium, so why “keep” it?

Furthermore, to the young, living under the assumption of scarcity rather than availability represents a needless burden. Such an assumption limits options and monopolizes time, space, and other resources that might be spent sampling more and varied interests. A collection of music on CDs or a shelf of carefully organized scrapbooks and photo albums falls squarely into this category.

The difference of approaches leads to generational misunderstandings and failure to appreciate one another’s perspectives. Older generations were raised to keep certain things; they thus consider younger generations’ “failure” to demonstrate enough interest in these things impatience or misplaced dedication to fads and impermanence. The young believe their approach represents faith in the notion of eternal presence, not items hoarded for momentary consultation. They don’t think of their method as the embrace of impermanence. They move on from one digital collection to another, but know that the “old” item is always just a click away, not mothballed in a closet or attic.

Which approach is right? As in all evolutionary processes, that question is irrelevant. It’s happening, and it’s happening everywhere and to everyone. While the young have been the vectors of this evolution in the notions of scarcity and possession, the speed of this change is felt by all. A means of judging the extent and impact of this fundamental human shift is simple: consider the importance of wi-fi and smartphones to the middle class anywhere in the world. They have become indispensable commodities for every generation anywhere humans can afford them.  People in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond—not just teenagers and younger adults– now rely on smartphones and the availability of wi-fi as essential components of their lives. Yet smartphones and wi-fi are but two of the vehicles propelling our evolution from collectors to connectors. There are more vehicles to come. And they will not need to be possessed, kept, saved, owned, or collected.  All anyone will need to do is connect.

Macroeconomic Equilibrium, Social Justice, and Political Freedom in Two Easy Steps

All the nations which today have achieved the highest degree of human development and citizen satisfaction, without exception, relied and rely on two factors to get there and stay there: Freedom of expression and education of girls.

Ensure those two things in your society and just about everything else eventually takes care of itself. It really is that easy.

Endangered Expressions– Bigger than a Breadbox

This is an expression that has almost gone completely stale. When I Googled “bigger than a…” the rest of the expression was the first suggestion, but that might be Google accounting for my age cohort’s known preferences, because the expression has very little relevance or resonance today. Nobody under 40 is likely to know what a breadbox is.  Furthermore, “bigger than a breadbox” is not the most precise measurement in the world. Still, invitation to imagine a size was part of the expression’s charm in its erstwhile usage, just like someone used to be invited to “set for a [completely untimed] spell.”

The vague lack of specificity is telling and, sometimes, trying, however, when trying to explain the expression to those who haven’t heard it. How do you describe to someone who has never seen a breadbox just how, um, big it is?

British Invasion- Soccer/Football- “Match”

More than a few explicitly British football (soccer) terms have perniciously crept into U.S. soccer commentary, despite the precedence of perfectly serviceable American alternatives.

Match: Term for “game” used in football/soccer context only to sound British. “Match” is, of course, a fine word with an honorable place in American sports. In addition to its traditional home describing a tennis or boxing contest, it is a useful synonym for “game” when sportswriters or commentators want to stretch a bit describing other sports. That said, “match” has no place as the default word describing soccer competition that involves the United States or Americans. That matchless word is “game.”

 

NB:

The British Invasion is when– unbidden and unneeded– explicitly British words and expressions infiltrate American public commentary and journalism. This is alarming because the resultant multiplier effect could cause an epidemic that infects ordinary Americans’ healthy vocabulary.

Although I strive for tolerance, for the purpose of this series of posts, my fundamental assumption is that American is better than, not just different from, British. This is– mainly, if not exclusively– because American is newer and made improvements to its dialect of origin. I do, however, confess to frequent unfair extrapolation from this arguably reasonable approach to almost wholesale– and borderline unfair– derision of British compared to American. I beg the reader’s forbearance for having fun with such a solemn topic. I’m just taking the mickey– or whatever it is Americans say.

The Killing Floor: A Proposal for Minimum Casualty and Damage Reparations

Reparations for civilian casualties and material damage resulting from erroneous bombings or attacks by a nation’s armed forces should be—at the very least– equal to the amount of money spent on the attack. For the purposes of this short proposal, the United States’ armed forces are used as an example, but the proposal applies to any nation with a modern, well-trained, and well-equipped army.

The United States armed forces are the best in the world– and they cost a lot more than that. Ordinary citizens probably have no realistic, non- budget numbers, detailed sense of how much money the U.S. spends on its armed forces, nor would they. One way of providing a snapshot of just how much it costs the U.S. military to wage war might be to adopt a simple reparations equation: When U.S. armed forces make mistakes that lead to the death of non-combatants or the destruction of property, any reparations paid should use as a baseline—not a total– the cost of the mission that made the error.

An example would be the erroneous October 2015 attack on the Medicins sans frontieres facility in Kunduz, Afghanistan.  The baseline—not the total– reparations for the cost of rebuilding the hospital and “condolence payments” to victims should be the cost of the operation itself. How much did it cost for the transportation, munitions, equipment depreciation, targeting, communications, logistics, security, planning, salaries plus combat pay, and everything else that was required for that one mission? Once that figure is determined—which would probably, in itself, be a useful exercise—it becomes the baseline figure for any reparations. Not the upper limit, but the floor for determining payments.

The Kunduz attack was, of course, an accident, and any casualties and damage were unintended. It was also probably pretty cheap compared to most U.S. air attacks, since it appears to have involved one C-130 plane and relatively cheap munitions. Many missions involve numerous fighter/bomber jets that cost far more per hour to operate. They also often fire very expensive missiles. Missiles fired from ships or land are also extremely expensive.

Many missions are, of course, much less expensive. They might be a patrol of soldiers on foot or in a convoy of a few vehicles. Even these missions are more expensive than they might seem, however, as they, too, involve equipment, salaries, bonuses, training, munitions, planning, logistics, and many other costs.

U.S. military operations are very expensive—even those which cause unintended casualties and damage. Reparations for accidental death, casualties, and damage should at least be equal to the cost of inflicting them. Adopting this proposal would not only provide a minimum “killing floor” for compensation, but would also remind armed forces and citizenry alike just how much discretionary budget is spent on military operations.

British Invasion- Better British- “Judgement”

Judgement: This is a rare example of a word that is spelled better in English than in American. Just look at it and judg for yourself.

NB:

The British Invasion is when– unbidden and unneeded– explicitly British words and expressions infiltrate American public commentary and journalism. This is alarming because the resultant multiplier effect could cause an epidemic that infects ordinary Americans’ healthy vocabulary.

Although I strive for tolerance, for the purpose of this series of posts, my fundamental assumption is that American is better than, not just different from, British. This is– mainly, if not exclusively– because American is newer and made improvements to its dialect of origin. I do, however, confess to frequent unfair extrapolation from this arguably reasonable approach to almost wholesale– and borderline unfair– derision of British compared to American. I beg the reader’s forbearance for having fun with such a solemn topic. I’m just taking the mickey– or whatever it is Americans say.

The Useless Tricycle

We have an old tricycle in our house. It belonged to one of us as a small child— years ago and on another continent. It was not even new then. Then it belonged to three others in our house when they were small children—not as many years ago and on three continents.

It is now useless technology, or at least it fits one definition of useless technology encountered during a recent discussion of that topic. A potential definition of the concept is a technology that is vestigial– like a human appendix, it remains, though its usefulness has been obscured by time.

I thought of the tricycle. It’s useless technology, or at least vestigial technology that is useless in its current context, barking shins as it is occasionally bumped into a short, jerky, lonely roll across the floor of the garage.

But when it transported small children racing down hallways or patrolling courtyards, it was useful technology. Unlike many technologies, it never became obsolete. Unlike many technologies, it kept its promises. Unlike many technologies, it did not require maintenance or repair beyond the capabilities of its stewards. Unlike many technologies, it hid no unexpected negative side effects. Unlike many technologies, it could not be compromised to serve the dark side.

It is just a tricycle.

And it’s not even useless. While it no longer carries imaginative, energetic young minds and limbs, it carries plenty of memories. It serves as both a magnet for and repository of recollection, recall, and rejoicing for the happy conveyance it was and remains. For the love it inspired, a love that burnishes it bright beneath its temporary coating of dust.

Our tricycle is vestigial technology right now, yet never will it be useless.

British Invasion– “Sacked”

Sacked: While this word is not demonstrably worse than “fired” or “let go” or any of the many terms traditionally used by Americans, it is demonstrably British and thus has no place in our media unless it’s part of a quotation by someone speaking British. This pig should be put back in its poke.

NB:

The British Invasion is when– unbidden and unneeded– explicitly British words and expressions infiltrate American public commentary and journalism. This is alarming because the resultant multiplier effect could cause an epidemic that infects ordinary Americans’ healthy vocabulary.

Although I strive for tolerance, for the purpose of this series of posts, my fundamental assumption is that American is better than, not just different from, British. This is– mainly, if not exclusively– because American is newer and made improvements to its dialect of origin. I do, however, confess to frequent unfair extrapolation from this arguably reasonable approach to almost wholesale– and borderline unfair– derision of British compared to American. I beg the reader’s forbearance for having fun with such a solemn topic. I’m just taking the mickey– or whatever it is Americans say.