Virtureality

The author of the legendary Spanish novel Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha), Miguel de Cervantes (assumed birtday 29.9.1547), died 400 years ago, 23.4.1616.

As is also the case with William Shakespeare (baptised 26.4.1564), who died the same date, 23.4.1616. (But according to a different calendar, so in fact 11 days later.)

Both Cervantes and Shakespeare have still much to say - to us and to and about our modern world. Still I had not come to realise, that you could read Don Quixote as an allegory concerning the internet, social media and virtuality. But of course, as Björn Wiman points out in Dagens Nyheter: "Cervantes visste allt om vår tids virtuella verklighet". (Cervantes knew everything about the virtual reality of our time...)

"The story follows the adventures of an hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha.

He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story."
(Wikipedia)

From social mate to social hate

Of course Albert Einstein
didn't mean what I just did, but he came up with something important a hundred years ago:

"He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on general relativity."

"In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influence that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body."

Social Judgement Day | The Facescale

Facebook. Judgement hook.

Facus Christus

If a father would
like to kill
his son
on this
Good Friday.

Bill of Rights or gates open, part two

Yesterday we learned more about Microsoft, as Microsoft and  NSA* had learned more about us for a period of time. I'm referring to The Guardian scoop, wich I commented - in Swedish - last night.

Well, now, it's quite easy to make fun using the first and last name of Microsoft founder and front man. A working class term for a police man back in London in the 1970s appears to have been Bill. For more suggestions you can have a quick glance here. It's interesting though, to shovel down to the roots. The word bill seems to descend from bulla, in latin, meaning document, seal (as in  papal bull).

Any way, you are all familiar with the expression peeping tom. Then, in these days, we have this phenomenon called peeping bill, someone or something following us behind our (virtual) windows. **

But to my head line, Bill of Rights.  As you can see, it's about "a number of personal freedoms", limiting "the government's power in judicial and other proceedings". From this day on, Bill of Rights got a new, shadowy meaning too.

So open your gates, someone or something will bill out here.

And by the way,  look out for the new best sellers "From Watergate to Billgate" and "From Social Media to Socialized Media" .


*) NSA = No Secrets Allowed
**) 90% of you read this by using Windows as a looking glass (oh, we are all a big happy global family under the rule of open source)