Technology

The launch of Google buzz makes today a prime day to write about technology in Paris, and how it could be similar to technology in other cities around the world. Historically rural would mean someone who lived in the country, separated by distance, from the connectivity of the city. However, in today’s world that reality has changed quite a bit because of the connectivity that billions of people share when using the internet.

Web 2.0 software such as Google’s Buzz is a prime example of how people are being united. A friend in New York could contact a friend in Paris with an interesting news article using Buzz, that friend would receive the articles via g-mail. When I looked into Buzz tonight by checking into it’s blog I was first impressed that there was a scholarship section, then by the large collection of resources from a wide range of topics. I left immediately before I was sucked into a 7 hour blog-o-mare.

Buzz was something I found today to include in this technology post, but there two other events that are happening in my life that helps prove my thesis of revising the definition of rural. My suggestion would be to use it in vernacular where it means technologically isolated. What that would mean is that someone who does not use contemporary internet technologies would be rural. Do no worry reader, you are reading this blog online, so you would not be rural.

Recently, I’ve been applying to job, which sucks because I’ve applied to over 30, and still no job. However, I am on to a good lead. Craigslist, actually is where I found this latest. If it turns into another scam I’ll let you know. The job is translating blogs from English to French. Simple, how does it support my thesis? The bloggers are from India, I’ve rigorously checked the website out, and names and it looks legitimate. No scam, so when I start in March I’ll be easing the mixture of the English and French Speaking blog readers.

While on break from classes this semester I’ve kept myself busy by taking interesting classes from Yale. Course crashing more like it, by reading lectures, watching lectures, and participating by reading or listening to the materials as used by the course. Yale calls this remote education. So, here I am in Paris, connected to Yale via the Internet, relaxing the Ivy league-rural gap. Not the first time either, last semester I participated in an Internet Human Trafficking discussion through Harvard. Yale though offers more than 10 classes online.

When the definition of rural changes perhaps it is also time to adjust the definition of cosmopolitan, to adjust a broken equilibrium. Cosmopolitan means familiar with a mixture of cultures. I would update these definitions rural would mean isolation from a method of mixing cultures, thus cosmopolitan would mean familiar with a method of mixing cultures. The Oxford English dictionary does not define beyond familiarity in cosmopolitan.

Familiarity could mean at ease with multiple cultures, weather that means as a direct participant, or a direct observe it is not clearly defined. At ease could mean to make the unpleasantness of mixing cultures less intense, and that could be done by either observing or participating, whichever one makes one at ease.

Perhaps, doing things online does not give a participator direct access to an event, but it does help in mixing cultures separated arbitrary borders. I am not saying live life behind a computer. When separated by a boundary, the Internet could be a way for one to make an arbitrary border at ease.