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posted by Aik Kramer on 8/ 7/2008 12:04 pm

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Waves of information overload the senses. Awkward truths encourage many to get comfortably numb. Then technology lands us in a strange place, some off-beat world, where legislators sit stunned into silence as the whole of society turns itself upside down.

Now we think sideways and sort by opportunity. We talk in metaphors, because the source-code for public discourse has been hijacked by fanatics. There are no procedures for these circumstances, no maps for these territories. A mediated reality has infused us with simultaneously a sense of loss and a sense of excitement. It is as though the moment has gripped us and won’t let go.

We negotiate that place in between hip and hype, individual style so interlaced with mainstream conventions, it renders us nearly invisible. We spiral through cultures, systems, values. Each of us, little units of creative genius, capable of generating powerful trends with a few taps on the keyboard. Under the forces of peer pressure and proximate success our right hemisphere broke free, sped out into the future and sampled something of a utopia.

Looking back on the future puts the present in effect. Before understanding comes confusion. Before change comes that moment of choice, that split second of serendipity. But before that comes what we seem to be in right now; Conflict.

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