Something I've noticed recently, at least here in the Canadian Pacific Northwest, is that technology and corporate influence don't play a comparatively big role in day to day life as it would in some places like the American east coast or even Europe.
Don't get me wrong, I love to text away most of the day on a basic LG phone... it gives me something preoccupying to do; and I love listening to music on my Apple iPod Touch; I don't think I could survive an entire family trip without it, especially with my tendency to let things I thought I'd dropped long ago to promiscuously return to my mind.
I don't know what it is; maybe it's the lack of Sears billboards when your driving along a highway on Vancouver Island, or the lack of advertisement leading up to the sudden appearance of a suburban strip mall, but not alot aside from the coastal mountain range in the distance really catches my eye. Maybe I've numbed myself to advertisement and as such tend not to notice it, but either way it doesn't seem like the iron fisticuffs of the corporate world have done much to beat this part of the world into the shape of their liking.
There are a few different things that may contribute to this: one, the population in this part of the world seems to be much more aware of what super and/or artificial things suddenly appear in their world due to the abundance of unprohibited nature that surrounds them on a daily basis; two, the municipal governments in this area of the world are indifferent to corporate influence, but keep it to quite a minimum due to the latter reason; and three, global warming has been heavily related to the wrongdoings of corporations, strengthening the previous two reasons to quite a degree in the minds of British Columbians and creating a seemingly unbreakable stigma which is quite hostile to both urban and corporate expansion.
For example: the city of Vancouver, as commercialised as it is, enjoys its view of the seemingly endless mountain ranges to the north, east, and south, as well as its view of the shimmering Strait of Georgia to the west. If any of these where to be significantly transformed by the molding hands of greedy corporate CEO's, Vancouver would notice, and Vancouver would quickly take action.
Before any sort of corporate expansion can legally take place, its almost always run by the people of British Columbia prior to it actually commencing. If not, it may go unnoticed for a couple of years, but eventually there'd be uncomfortable squirming, which would eventually transform into quite a piercing scream as someone fully comprehends what's occurring.
It's happened more than once, and when it does occur, that unsolicited expansion is met in an automatically hostile context. Corporations have now learned, for the most part, and have decided it safer to simply run it past the people prior to actually carrying it out.
They're always met with a slight suspicion, but no one is outright hostile when they're notified unless they're given no choice in the matter.
That's my thoughts of the day (ok, week... I've been working on this for the past 2 or so days), and I hope I've given everyone something to think about. If I haven't, I hope I've at least stirred something up within you... something that will inspire you to look a bit deeper, and to look to a more critical extent.
Hope everyone has a great summer, or at least what's left of it.
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