0600 Benedict’s Newsletter: No. 335 arrived yesterday and I scanned it on my phone. 15% of global internet traffic is Youtube and 11% is Netflix – more than a quarter of the traffic. Then I read his essay Covid and cascading collapses. You should too. Ever seen a soufflé collapse when the oven door opens? Technology collapses don’t happen the way you think or remember. And that makes them hard to predict. But what does seem useful is to know is Lenin’s astute observation that you can get a decade of inevitable in a week.
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Creativity
I’ve travelled rather more widely during this curfew than you might expect. It matters not that I only leave the house to walk the dog, replenish the cupboards or sometimes ferry our daughter to her hospital treatments. Even those journeys are more than most may be able to do.
My Fitbit encourages me with milestone reminders that are a disinformation of virtual comparisons. I’ve never walked the length of India or chased Monarch butterflies in migration. I suppose I have ascended to the clouds, not so often on foot as in planes. But I can’t ever wear the ruby slippers earned this time last year on a 50 km hike across the Dublin Mountains Way. That’s a walk memorialised by real effort, actual pain, wonderful exhilaration, some boredom, wind driven chill, magnificent views and the stupidity of postponed toilet breaks. And yet, here I am, writing about ‘badges’ and showing my version of them as a virtual walker’s map depicted in iPhone photo ‘badges’.
All photographs © Simon Robinson