Last week was a shorter week than normal, as Friday the 1st of November is a bank holiday in France, and hence the island. In fact, we have both the 1st and the 2nd, a lot like in Mexico. Many businesses were open Saturday morning, though, and Iāll get to that a little later.
As you know if you read this regularly, I was on the electoral list for the ARIN Advisory Council.
The current climate on the island continued this week with several incidents of violence and general unrest. For me, I was pretty much holed up all week as a barricade in two areas persisted, and it was not practical to pass during the week. I could only get some provisions from the islandās commercial centre late Friday afternoon. Things seemed to have calmed down a little, but the tension is still palpable.
It has been another week of tension on the island despite an accord being signed by several actors in the discussions. It wasnāt unanimous, meaning the conflict is not over. This will not be resolved until a much deeper discussion is had and a long-term plan is implemented. Iāll let you know how it goes.
There have been no Internet shutdowns so far, and I donāt expect that to happen in the current climate.
It has been a challenging week and not one conducive to reflection or giving me time to think about what I want to write about here. But as this is an exercise in getting me to write regularly, as much as it is a space for me to think about tech and how it relates to our lives, particularly here in the Caribbean.
If you havenāt been following or donāt get to see news from the French West Indies, weāve been having a week of unrest and violent protests on the Island after a number of peaceful protests seem to stir up a general malaise in the population, which seems to have been hijacked by a small group of well-organised individuals that set about looting, pillaging and burning shops, cars and just about anything that could be burnt.
I donāt know. I must have gotten up in a bad mood or something. This is to announce the colour of this issue š. These are a few thoughts and are certainly not fully thought out, but I thought Iād put them out there for discussion anyway. š¤·āāļø
Thereās something seriously wrong with Big Tech at the moment. From the proclamations of Mark Zuckerberg (the laughably pathetic Julius Caesar cosplayer) that he no longer should care what he says and does to something like half of the worldās population through his privacy-ignoring āsocialā media project to Eric Schmidtās declaration that climate change is bad, but a parlour-game guess-the-next-word text generator will solve it, to Sam Altmanās insistence that his particular brand of LLM is going to āsolve all physicsā, not that he knows anything about physics of course, and who couldnāt ignore Elon Muskās Ketamine-fueled descent into fascism and continual abject stupidity.