Hey Leslie, Sorry that I could not reply yesterday, but while enjoying a lovely end of the day walk on the beach with my wife, the clouds opened and tried to drown us while the internet gods shouted down… no connection for you! (one of the few disadvantages of living away from it all). Anyway, the rain has stopped, the sun is out, the humidity is rocketing up with ballistic force and I am back online. So, …..sometimes I feel like I am one of those Victorians that you spoke of. I am not quite at the point where I am doddering with my zimmer frame down to the local senior citizens coven for free cups of tea and home-made scones that are so dry that not even pot after pot of the tepid brew is enough to lubricate my degenerating oesophagus, but even so I can relate to the speed at which the world wizzes by. I can recall early in my career (just post the heyday of punk) lugging around a huge bag of 2 and 10 pence coins so that I could, at regular intervals, phone back to the office. These recurrent calls were not quite as onerous as you may imagine as back then there was a public phone box every few hundred yards (yes… we had yards back then). But there was a wonderful new dawn on the horizon. One day the producer that I was working for told me that I no longer needed to be crippled by my swag bag, as she pointed with pride to my desk, where I saw a large, fine leather case complete with a carry strap. I could hardly contain my excitement as I turned to her and said…..Fantastic…what the hell is it? ….It’s a Motorolla …..a motor who?... She explained that no longer did I need to run from my car through the pouring rain (I lived in Manchester, UK) to the phone box; I could sit in my warm, dry car and phone through updates. I was gob smacked…the future had arrived. Cut to the one week later with me standing on the roof of my car in the pouring rain as it was the only bloody place that I could get a half decent signal. I think what I am trying to say here is that, yes, we are definitely at a point in time when a technological and social seismic shift is about to take place, but as much as we may hope that it will be a beautiful fertile landscape, we need to acknowledge that we are bound to need shovel a bit of manure if it is ever going to be a bed of roses (though from the little I have read of your posts to date I imagine that you are of a similar opinion).

I could not agree more regarding the need for a more decentralised and equitable approach to how we structure our society. Indeed, my wife and I decided some seven years ago that the “bigness” of everything was all getting a bit too much so we took up an option that my wife had to island hop around the pacific for a while. So, to a certain extent we unplugged, and in doing so we found that we stepped into an inherently much more decentralised environment (though far from perfect, my wife works in the health sector of international aid). When I say a decentralised environment, I do not mean to suggest one that is free of the effects of governments or large institutions etc. but rather, a society that traditionally has a sharing mentality at its core. Currently we are living in Tonga, we have 3 banks (yes I mean banks but I also mean branches), there is no real multinational representation here other than the fact that we can buy coke and occasionally there are some meds available at the hospital. We have no Uber, if someone needs a ride, then they jump in the back of someone’s ute. Recently a few locals have slapped a taxi decal on the side of their car, but this is mostly for when a cruise ship is in and the pasty tourists, who melt in the heat, need to get to an aircon unit stat. We have a central market, but most people, if they are not eating what they produce, get their food from a neighbour who grows different produce and who has set up a table on the roadside at the front of their house. If someone has no money then they simply trade with what they have produced or with some other service or skill that they have. The idea of anyone going hungry in Tonga simply because they do not have any money is a completely alien concept.
I am not suggesting for one minute that Tonga or any of the Pacific Islands possess the tonic that will cure our “Western” ailments, far from it. I have faith in the blockchain and think that it highlights a potentially much more equitable future and that is shows great promise as a leveller and as a way to recalibrate how we live. But I do think that as much as we look to the future and value progress, that we would be wise to try and remember some of the things that we may have forgotten. Anyway, I ramble so I should move on. Thanks for the food for thought, my apologies for it being more of an emotional response that an intellectual examination. I will try and get back to the initial post that I started later (life chores and the internet gods allowing) I will also follow as I am sure that you have much more to say. Till we speak again take care, Cheers J