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mistersleepless: the Wave of the Future
Oct. 15th, 2004 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aberrantangelsI wound up telling it as fiction after all. Surprised the piss out of me, lemme tell ya. Word count 531; if that means I'm disqualified from the event, so be it.
The future lies over the sea. Specifically, over the Sea of Japan and the Baltic.
In 2003, the most wired nation-states on the planet (in terms of per capita access to things like cell phones and broadband Internet) were Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Japan and South Korea. So I'm not really clear why the rise of the new powers caught the US so thoroughly by surprise, unless it was the inability of most Unistaters to imagine a world in which they weren't Top Nation.
Now that the US has collapsed, the rest of the Anglosphere is finally starting to visit the major powers in large numbers. But their picture is still shaped by decades of Murdoch Group propaganda.
Ask an Englishman who hasn't been to the Ny Hanseatic Förbund what he thinks of when he hears them mentioned; he'll spin tales of faceless salarymen in drab gray coveralls, motivated only by the voice of the CEO on their cell-implants, never wondering if the "ORG523" he's trading in might be some luridly biological product like bloody dog-eyes or, worse, stem cells.
Ask an Australian what comes to mind when he thinks about the Greater East Asia Connectivity Sphere; his tales will be even more lurid, full of naked futagals fucking each other in the street, taking alternating strokes under the light of Ginza billscreens.
Factually, the Second Wave top-down corporate model is dead in the New Hanseatic League, and dying in the EU. It only survives in Nippon and Koryo because it provides a convenient space to network in, and it's been twenty years since any of those companies was "headed" from the top by a Chief Executive Officer telling his salarymen and OLs what to do, instead of a chief coordinating officer welcoming their ideas for new ways to do.
And the neo-Puritans can't imagine anyone getting naked for any purpose other than bathing and/or sex. The idea of a whole nation-state or geographic group taking its clothes off for a day to celebrate the coming of spring (be it Nakendag in Sweden or 露出した日 [Roshutsu-shitabi] in Japan) automatically equals "public orgies" in their minds. The idea of some people leaving their clothes off until winter comes... they can't understand why it would be allowed.
It's not about "allowing". It's about who's hurt by it, whose pocket is picked or arm broken (ironically, it was one of America's founding fathers who coined the original of that phrase).
The Hanseatics take a more practical view of morphological freedom; they adapt themselves to the conditions they'll be living and working in, becoming Baltic deepmen or Arctic bearskins. Asia has embraced the aesthetic side more than the utility; hence eye-widening, polychromal hair-dyes and, yes, neo-halfs.
The Takarazuka troupes still refuse to admit any girl with a penis, even if she wasn't born with it and has it coming out of a manko. The Izumo Kabuki, ahead of the curve as usual, welcomes girls and girlboys alike, whatever gender they were born. (They still exclude the vagina-challenged, but they can go into otoko kabuki if they're so inclined.)
The world, and welcome to it. 未来の海 [mirai no umi]. Hav om framtida. The sea of the future. Catch the Fourth Wave, baby.
The future lies over the sea. Specifically, over the Sea of Japan and the Baltic.
In 2003, the most wired nation-states on the planet (in terms of per capita access to things like cell phones and broadband Internet) were Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Japan and South Korea. So I'm not really clear why the rise of the new powers caught the US so thoroughly by surprise, unless it was the inability of most Unistaters to imagine a world in which they weren't Top Nation.
Now that the US has collapsed, the rest of the Anglosphere is finally starting to visit the major powers in large numbers. But their picture is still shaped by decades of Murdoch Group propaganda.
Ask an Englishman who hasn't been to the Ny Hanseatic Förbund what he thinks of when he hears them mentioned; he'll spin tales of faceless salarymen in drab gray coveralls, motivated only by the voice of the CEO on their cell-implants, never wondering if the "ORG523" he's trading in might be some luridly biological product like bloody dog-eyes or, worse, stem cells.
Ask an Australian what comes to mind when he thinks about the Greater East Asia Connectivity Sphere; his tales will be even more lurid, full of naked futagals fucking each other in the street, taking alternating strokes under the light of Ginza billscreens.
Factually, the Second Wave top-down corporate model is dead in the New Hanseatic League, and dying in the EU. It only survives in Nippon and Koryo because it provides a convenient space to network in, and it's been twenty years since any of those companies was "headed" from the top by a Chief Executive Officer telling his salarymen and OLs what to do, instead of a chief coordinating officer welcoming their ideas for new ways to do.
And the neo-Puritans can't imagine anyone getting naked for any purpose other than bathing and/or sex. The idea of a whole nation-state or geographic group taking its clothes off for a day to celebrate the coming of spring (be it Nakendag in Sweden or 露出した日 [Roshutsu-shitabi] in Japan) automatically equals "public orgies" in their minds. The idea of some people leaving their clothes off until winter comes... they can't understand why it would be allowed.
It's not about "allowing". It's about who's hurt by it, whose pocket is picked or arm broken (ironically, it was one of America's founding fathers who coined the original of that phrase).
The Hanseatics take a more practical view of morphological freedom; they adapt themselves to the conditions they'll be living and working in, becoming Baltic deepmen or Arctic bearskins. Asia has embraced the aesthetic side more than the utility; hence eye-widening, polychromal hair-dyes and, yes, neo-halfs.
The Takarazuka troupes still refuse to admit any girl with a penis, even if she wasn't born with it and has it coming out of a manko. The Izumo Kabuki, ahead of the curve as usual, welcomes girls and girlboys alike, whatever gender they were born. (They still exclude the vagina-challenged, but they can go into otoko kabuki if they're so inclined.)
The world, and welcome to it. 未来の海 [mirai no umi]. Hav om framtida. The sea of the future. Catch the Fourth Wave, baby.
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Hey, you weren't the only one.
Date: 2004-10-15 09:42 am (UTC)Re: Hey, you weren't the only one.
Date: 2004-10-15 09:58 am (UTC)Re: Hey, you weren't the only one.
Date: 2004-10-15 10:15 am (UTC)