Freedom

This page is very much a work in progress, and once I get time to finish it, I think some of you will be very sympathetic to the flaws in our way of life it highlights. Although I have been planning this page for years, I started it today on Sept 11 2012 after seeing this great related article in The Verge by Benjamin Jackson.

• You are in the train/bus/car on the way to somewhere.
• Your phone beeps and the notification bar indicates it is an urgent email from a co-worker. There’s a large attachment to review.
  • You fire up your laptop and connect it to the wireless network using the hotspot function on your phone.
  • Alas, with 3 & 4G signals limited to specific cities, air time carrier showrooms and stretches of the motorway (where you won’t be able to stop to use your gadgets anyway because it is illegal to sit in your car on the hard shoulder), there is only a 2G signal and your laptop email client/web app keeps reporting it cannot connect or the attachment begins to download but at such a slow rate you will be there for several hours.
  • You give up and shut the laptop lid quickly in frustration.
  • The signal downtown is as usual, speedy in all it’s 3G/4G goodliness, but like the rest of the planet, you don’t need carrier provided wireless because you’ll either be at work, in a cafe/bar/fast food joint or public building where a speedy WiFi signal will more than likely be available. IE, city based high speed wireless broadband is a total waste of resources. And when you’re walking around town, the chances are, you’ll be talking or texting, NOT downloading content or streaming a movie – else switch on that lamppost alarm!
• Sorry, I have to go eat (7pm GMT), but eventually this page will be quite long and detail all sorts of daily frustrations that reveal how so much of what we’re ‘sold’ is worthless and/or deceptive.