Author: Chris Barrus

Complexity, Trust and Terror: America Freaks Out

rubbsign2The current NetFuture has a thought provoking piece by Langdon Winner on how just an extended climate of fear erodes the social architecture.

Just as sixth-century Romans abandoned their city when the aqueducts were cut, Americans seem to be abandoning essential parts of the democratic civic culture that developed during the past two centuries. This appalling turn of events is certainly evident in the material features of public buildings and grounds. A visit to Washington, D.C., shows the place transformed by ever-present ugly cement barriers, recurring security searches and ubiquitous surveillance cameras.

The city has been redefined as capital of Homeland, a strange new country where once-cherished freedoms of thought, expression and movement are regarded as luxuries too dangerous to afford.

 

Bolivia’s new tourist attraction:

The world’s most dangerous highway is now a big-draw tourist attraction.

Onlookers inched to the edge of the road and peered 600 feet down into the misty jungle where a shattered bus and its victims lay.

A rope was flung down. Some 50 men pulled and then fell silent when the corpse of an Indian woman rose from the clouds, her clothes bloodied and torn. They stared as rescue workers laid her on the muddy ground with a tropical fern over her face.

Then came a strange click-clacking sound. Swooping down the road came a group of tourists in bright red cycling suits, riding modern mountain bikes and offering an incongruous sight on “el Camino de la Muerte” – the Highway of Death.

Some tourist pictures here, here, and here.