23 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2019
    1. “A tribal chief will decide he wants to dig a big fishpond, so he will make a deal with a local militia captain. The captain will arrest people and find them guilty of some crime and then sell them to the chief to ‘work off’ their fines.” Businessmen buy workers this way as well. As one man put it, “A businessman will pay the police to arrest people, and then sentence them to three or six months of work, but once they are in the mine they just belong to the businessman, they’re not allowed to leave.”

      This sounds wide spread and gigantic. How can it be stopped as it seems impossible to arrest all of these people?

    2. There’s an intimacy in the stone we use to mark the final resting place of someone we love; there’s another sort of intimacy in the less obvious but still essential minerals that let us speak with our loved ones on phones or write to them on computers.

      Happy that many people in my family are switching away from burials with tombstones and such if this is where the slab comes from.

  2. Jan 2019
    1. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

      A scanner

    2. For this reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist.

      Not just for scientists. Everyone can now do advanced mathematics with help of a computer or cellphone. Just type it in google.

    3. will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record?

      Not just the author but everyone can do so. My dad does it whenever he wants to search something on his phone or send a text.

    4. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable.

      Or no film at all, just a digital version that records it on a device that can easily be transferred to a computer with just a cord.

    5. The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within easy reach of his fingers.

      Now the common public has selfie sticks that take pictures on a phone that can do more than simply call someone.

    6. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy, have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

      This makes me think of A Farewell to Arms where one of the surgeons was considered the best in his field during WW1 but how his knowledge of amputation and dealing with bullet wounds would not work for him after he returned home from the war as that is not a common need when away from the battlefield.

    7. burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end.

      What is interesting is how individuals still share their knowledge to create new things, artists and scientists collaborating together, but how there is still that tight restriction that controls what can be done. New inventions, artworks, music, and tools are still copyrighted and individuals must apply to work with them. You also have inventors that place an outrageous price tag on some of their products, limiting the number of people who can buy them and find out what things they can do that are beyond even the mind of the tool's creator.

  3. Jan 2018