In the (paywalled) FT article How boredom gave us chaos, Janan Ganesh proposes that people are more likely to get fascinated by fringe issues when everything else in life is fairly stable – that we need a certain level of change, and go looking (and voting) for it if we feel we’re, well, a bit bored.
“People can put up with a certain quotient of change. If this isn’t filled in everyday life, they become open to topping it up elsewhere. And so a radical politician will get a hearing, almost out of boredom. In other words, populism isn’t a howl against the “pace of change”, but something nearer the opposite.”
I think this does over simplify slightly and there are certainly other factors in play, but it also highlights just how “safe” – if not necessarily fair – western civilization has become. That is, you might be in huge debt coming out of education and be facing unemployment in the face of undervalued skills and anything creative or productive, but at least your fallback and coping strategy involves subscribing to a never ending media feed.
Content-wise, we are catered for now. We need never be bored. And therein lies the true boredom – the endless stream is in itself predictable.
I don’t have a Game Boy Camera but always look upon them with awe. People are still merrily not just taking photos on them, but hacking away with them – one person managed to get a Game Boy Camera working with a Nintendo Switch 2, while it’s also nice to see a giant zoom lens getting attached to one.
The Teapot Monk has a new podcast about the tao which I’ve started following. I’ve wandered away from the tao path in recent year with everything being busy, which … isn’t great for me. If there’s anything close to some kind of spiritual belief for me, it’s the premise that Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and the I Ching set out – flow, wu wei, processes and progress, an unfolding of reality.
The latest sustainable phone, the Fairphone 6 has been announced. I’m still good with my FP3+, but I do particularly like that there’s a big switch (literally) to go into an “Essentials” mode (or perhaps “Normal” if you were raised before the internet). It’s also still running Gemini which might be a thorny one if you want to get away from the encroaching AI surveillance model, but hopefully alternative OSes will be compatible with the big switch.
A record DDoS attack of 7.3Tbps has been seen. I’m not surprised by the announcement, but – like many things in the world – I’m trying to get my head around what it means for me as a ickle-wickle freelancer trying to help keep clients’ servers healthy. Obviously there’s a lot about risk potential and whether a client is an attack target. But it does sometimes feel these days that defending your tech setup is a losing game. It’s not, there’s still everything you can do, but it can feel like it when you see how advanced the Bad Side of tech is getting. Understanding your risk threshold in the context of business needs and sustainability is key, as are (feasible) contingency plans. But are these things scaling up to the point where small teams just can’t manage tech, fundamentally?
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