Economic Growth and sustainability, are they at the same side?

The last minute says it all!

Mankind faces now a dilemma: go green or go dead. Which one would you choose? Even though a five-year-old could answer that question, still is not clear if we have perceived the urgency of the matter. China and US have their private contest of who pollute the most; developing countries fight for their right to destroy earth; we still have a locust-swarm behaviour devouring careless all the planet resources.Is there any hope?

In the last two years, especially after the Katrina disaster, mankind seems to have awoken of its golden dream of infinite growth with no consequences and have opened its eye to the nightmare we brought ourselves in. DVDs like Al Gore’s inconvenient truth, the enlargement of Bush’s vocabulary adding to it the word global warming, the growth of the media space upon ecological issues, it has increased the awareness of the problem. But what can be done to amend it?

First of all we have to change the mindset that has lead us hear. We must get rid of those economics models that do not consider our most precious possession - our home the mother earth. Economists love to put a price on everything, why “d´a hell” they think all nature resources are for free? That is the reason why they created the false trade-off between economic growth and care about preservation. Everything we consume is underpriced and companies that do not care about the pollution their value chains generate are getting rich by destroying the world. Our responsibility on this process is to start to demand green companies, if they do not carewe do!!!

Second, we are a major part of the problem; our ways of doing things also gives a hand to the destruction of the planet. We must start to analyse what we can change in our behaviour to make a better world, the first step is to discovery what is our ecological footprint and then start to reduce it. There are several sites on the Web that shows how with a moderate effort we can help to change the world. Always have in mind you are one, but we are 6 billion, so if we all push to the same side, who knows what we can do !!!

Would know the difference between fly and fall if you could not see the ground? Right now our society is on a free fall thinking that it is flying. And if it do not wake up soon it will hit hard the cemetery of civilizations. A great quote I have seen about that it was on Al Gore´s DVD and it was said by Churchil.

“The time of half-measure has passed. We are entering a period of consequences,"

Think about that!!!

Cool websites about it:

Incovenient Truth web site
Natural Capitalism web site (You can read some chapters of the book - it will blow your mind)
EcoWorld web site (good articles)
Footprint Calculator

Perched at the edge of the abyss

If you were at the border of the roman empire when the first German tribes started to move in, would you know that everything you knew was about to change? If you saw the Spanish vessels coming on the horizon would you envisage the massacre that was about to take place? If you heard about the fall of the Bastille would you image that all you once hold sacred would become a thing from the past? And now are we living at one of those times? Can we say what come next?

The (not so) modern nation-states
(soundtrack)

Capitalism is extremely dependent of flows (i.e. flow of capital, goods, services, workers) the faster it occurs more wealth it generates. In the last 30 years the world has seen an intensification of those flows and the figures generated by then are rocketing out of the charts. Along side with that the problems we face, nowadays, often escapes the capability of governments to deal with it. Can local governments not be a barrier to those flows and not become obsolete and irrelevant?, it is the question that keeps resonating in the mind of those who are pay attention.

The last and current US governments have been sabotaging every attempt to create organizations that regulates nation-states (i.e. by not signing the Kyoto Protocol, attacking Iraq without the approval of the Security Council, creating barrier to liberalization of commerce), because this is what nation-states, especially the biggest one, are used to a land with no law. All our societies are based and regulated by laws, but countries are not, they are used to solve their problems like thugs outside a bar. Nevertheless can a world more and more integrated cope with that hooligan’s logic?

After the dawn of a new millennium NATO, a reminiscence of an even darker time, is discussing whether it should or not be placing missiles facing Russia. Don’t they know most of the energy that warm the halls where they have this great ideas come from those frozen fields? Or “El presidente” Hugo Chavez and his vicious speeches against the country that buys most of his oil. Those are example of how this bar-fighting-behavior is irrelevant and have been keeping the eyes of people away from more pressing matters like inequality, terrorism, piracy, global warming, and so on.

Borders (the real and virtual ones), as well, have become a major nuisance to people and business around the world, capital and information run free on the other hand people and goods do not. What is the logic behind having a border? Is it to protect me? But from what? Human beings that, although do not speak the same language and do not have the same customs, share the same dream of a better world? Can’t they come up with a better excuse?

Nation-States are becoming a thing from the past as they once have made the absolute-states. So what will take its place?

A good example of what I think it should look like the next step (although still far from perfect) is the European Union. A continent that have been for centuries the center stage of wars and massacres (that would have shamed even the devil itself) and that still hold some grudges at each other, however have managed to put it all behind and decided to share their future as one. The process of how the EU achieved its actual stage should be copied not only to integrate a continent but to integrate the world.

We as s specie that share the same fate should put aside things that really aren’t important and start to focus on things that really matter.

Economic Growth and sustainability, are they at the same side?
(Next post)

Information Society, the birth of the quantum man.
(Next post)

Welcome to the brave new word of Web 2.0.

The term Web 2.0 is a term applied to whole a new way of use the world wide web, this new way of use did not born from a major technological breakthrough but instead a concept change. The biggest concept shift was to see the web as platform for programming development, creating a web of services conversely a web of data. And the opportunities brought by that are endless.

All technologies that are being used by developers to create the Web 2.0 were available before like APIs, but the mentality to see the Web as platform and to allow third parts to use its databases or existent applications to create their own application is new.

Web 2.0 businesses are all about simplicity. The old saying – “less is more” - have never being truer. From design to programming, from organizational structure to process, everything is simplified to the minimum necessary to fulfill a need. They present itself as whole new animal, a new subject for business scholars around the world.

A particular specie of these services are the mashups, business and applications that are born from the mix of two or more existent applications to provide a brand new service. There are almost two thousand of these services and they keep appearing in a ratio of 3 a day. They present a lot of opportunities for investment and investors haven’t been strangers to these opportunities and have invested more than $250 million dollars on this market.

Hear an example of a Mashup in a Web 2.0 service.

www.musicovery.com

It is simple.
It fulfills, in a simple way, a need. (Random music for people that are multitask)
It uses a lot of existent applications to make a unique one.
It has an elegant way of monetize its services.

The future of the Web 2.0 is still blurred, but the prospects of this industry are promising.

Music Tip
Rodrigo Y Gabriela

They are back! The ghost of time will get you!

The most original band of the last 20 years is back, after a seven-year hiatus, they just performed a come back show in Paris. This is the resurrection of the band that died for rock and roll. Hears to you the smashing pumpkins!

The departure of the band was a little sample of the mayhem that surrounds their entire career, during the 11 eleven years they were together. Amidst all the fight between members, problems with their record label and plastic music rocketing the charts, they managed to release a conceptual album, a double album for free on the internet and perform a 4 hours farewell-show.

Now they are back and better than ever! The few songs I’ve heard made me comeback to the first time I heard then back in 96. A light and shade battle for the real meaning of live, a never ending experimentation of sounds, and a sad machine that never give in “because when you give in, then you give up”.

Hear a little sample of what I am talking about (live and demo version of the songs)
Gossamer

Tarantula



Their 7th album will be released in July 2007 and will be called Zeitgeist (Ghost of time in German). Certainly I will get myself one more chapter of this fantastic story.

When 3 is too much!

The last Spider man movie was the most expensive movie in the history of the industry and failed miserably in achieve its goals of follow one the most sucessful franchise in Holywood. But Peter Park's story does not stand alone in trilogy fiasco, it is just on more in an endless list that includes X-men, Matrix, Back to the future, Terminator, among others. This makes one wonder if it is worth to go to the theaters to see other movies sequals.

One of the main problem with those trilogies is that they were not planned to be one. The Hollywood producers think that is just enough to put new enemies, more special effects, some week storylines and everything will fall into place. However, in order to be a sequence the history must be interconnected, it must be a reason why you should spend a 2hours in a unconfortable chair other than make producers richier.

Regardless of the unfairness of comparisson the most sucessful franchises in the movie history were The Lord of the ring and Star Wars. Both movies have something in common they were writen as one piece, that for logistic mather were divide in three or six parts. That way you can garantee that in all parts you have the same level of quality and that every chapter builds in the expectation to the next one. If you just keep adding plots that have no relation other than happening with same charaters, you are just giving more of the same, and that is just boring.

Hoppefuly, the producer of Pirates of Caribean have noticed how important it is to have some coherence. Despite the fact that the trilogy was not planned to be, they were clever enough to create a story that actualy need a third movie to be told. That is why a think that still some hope of seen a sequal this year that actualy make you want to see the names at the end of it.