a brief and certainly underdeveloped meditation on the relationship between technology and local cultures

jean was just telling me about how in michigan in the winter at her high school, people used to put wet paper towels over the sensors (thermometers) of the heaters so that they would blast heat all day. local wisdom in the 1990's. what does progress mean? better heaters (that won't need such "old-timey" adjustments) will make every room (all over the world) 75 degrees, all of the time. but what changes will that bring for michigan high schoolers? if people adapt their behaviours (as well as thoughts, emotions, relations,. . . culture) to meet their needs, how does the growing number of people who end up with the same needs affect the future of cultures globally? we all still have seperate individual experiences, genetic predispositions, and contact with (relatively) limited clusters of people. . . so?