I do have a TV but it is only connected to a DVD, and is on perhaps 6 hours a week max. when I watch movies etc.
Flying is down to about 2 or 3 times a year - mostly to visit UK family and friends. Intercity in Finland is easy by train or express bus. You can't be me, I'm taken
But I do go infrequently to industry events and conferences, and that is where I mostly rekindle relationships. Saturday, for instance I'm at a 25 person dinner for IT tyros mostly in the online game industry - that kind of event, typically, will produce a couple of projects for me. I suppose in Finland that reputation is still a mighty powerful attribute because so much business is done on a handshake. It is not the golf course short cuts and inside information that people are after, but reliability and know-how. You can't be me, I'm taken
The parallel I would draw is with marketing. In small communities where everyone knows everyone else you don't need brands as a proxy for quality. You know the supplier, their skills, attitudes and track record. In a huge urban community you only have the barest symbolic cues to go on - and it is precisely these that the "science" of marketing seeks to manipulate.
So a product/service comes with all the "emotional values" and apparent qualities that you are looking for, but it reality is a piece of crap. It was just that their marketing department knew what you would be looking for (as indicators of quality) and manufactured false cues and "emotions" to make you think you were getting what you were looking for.
And the beauty of the process is that many think that the product/service was great (even when it was actually crap) because they can't admit to themselves that they'd been had. (ref. US Republican politics - which are brilliant at persuading people that they have exactly what the electorate want - give them the opposite - and then afterwards persuade people that they actually got what they originally wanted...) notes from no w here
The Anglo model values predation and total dominance and sees them as primary goals, over and above any other consideration - including product quality, sustainability, employee, customer and partner relationships, and ethical standing.
In the Anglo model, marketing is valuable because it enforces dominance over culture and consumers, and dominance over creative talent - that might be wasting its time making art, instead of selling sneakers.
The Euro model shares some of the same aims, but tends to be slightly more relaxed about diversity and experimentation. I think Europeans are also more cynical about corporate aims, and find it harder to derive their identify from them.
yes i think that's true, -continentally- speaking.
which might suggest the anglo model to be one that is au fond naive, if naive makes a polarity with cynicism.
which in turn might stem from the 'entitlement of empire'... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Our former socdem PM, Göran Persson, once said something like the mass ownership of cars is the greatest freedom reform ever for the working class. I certainly understand what he meant. Before the advent of the car, most people had never traveled further than the distance they could walk or ride in a day or two.
And no, before you say it, this certainly doesn't mean that commuting in a car is the ideal way to go to work in an urban area. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Car rental are all but impossible a lot of the time, like on weekends, evenings or whatever. On top of that you have the hassle of actually getting to the place where they rent the car. The extra time spent getting to the rental with the family, renting it, and then doing the same thing when you come back, probably means that nine times out of ten you'll cancel that trip to the lake instead. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
The city was larger than Madrid in Area, despite being 15-20 times smaller in population. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
