Another Cultural Difference

A look at cultural differences through free Property Magazines: France & America.

I was sorting through lots of papers some time ago (in fact I think I did a post about all of that) and came across two property magazines picked up on holidays: one European, one American.  Before throwing them away, I enjoyed observing the cultural differences between them.  So we have "IMMO 16-17 Charente" from August 2002 (France) and "Showcase Wickenburg" from August 2004 (Arizona).

The first obvious difference is that the American magazine has gone for quantity over quality.  There are many more pages and each house description takes up more room, however only black, red & blue ink is used (pictures are only black and white).  The French magazine is much more colourful and printed on better quality paper, but much thinner.  Do European consumers value quality over quantity compared with Americans - food may be a parallel for this.

Another striking difference is the emphasis on the actual agents in the American magazine - placing pictures of people in cowboy hats at the top of most pages.  There were very few pictures of people in the French magazine.  Perhaps this indicates that America is a much more personal society than Europe.  This would seem to follow the general view that emphasis is placed more on customer service in America  and is probably also a result of the more entreprenerial society.  The French estate agents looked more like proper companies than individual franchisees and this was emphasised by the fact there were less names and more logos ("Agence L'Atrium" vs "Carol Casey Realty Executive")

Other smaller differences include the absence of a legal notice about equality in the French magazine or articles supposedly offering advice on home buying.  Perhaps this reflects slightly on the different legal systems.  The final comparison I wanted to note that, although the French magazine is 2 years older, a minority of agents have listed websites or even email addresses whereas almost all of the American agents have at least an email, with many having websites too.  This probably confirms that France was behind in adopting the Internet.

Overall I prefer the french magazine, it is more durable and the pictures are much easier to see and the language also seems to be much more formal and I expect I am used to the less personal nature of business in Europe.

Picture Blog

Since I ended up with 1000 pennies I decided to put them to some use.  Ironic picture?

Defence of originality?

Considering how difficult it is to find a job at the moment, I am going to try to make a concerted effort to blog down some of my thoughts over the next few weeks.

I personally don't feel that I am at all original or creative. I can see elements of things that have been done before in everything that I do and how it is based upon past experience. This is to be expected - in most cases there are systems that work, conventions to be obeyed. The first case seems to restrict originality in any practical applications and the later in anything artistic. As a society we have developed ways of doing things, for example when watching a film we have learnt how directors build up suspense, portray characteristics, etc. To deviate from these would be like finding a new way to peel an orange that takes twice as long as it does usually. It seems to be difficult for a life system developed under natural selection over millions of years to generate new ideas with a high frequency. Therefore, when I see something that is truly a new concept then I respect the creator even if I don't personally like it.

As a species, if we are to achieve our underlying goal of continued survival, we need people to come up with new ways to solve the problems facing us. For this we need people to continually think outside the box. Though we increasingly commit ourselves across the world to the same standards of living, merging cultures into a single Earthly identity and viewpoint, reducing the variety of ideas, leaving less unique perspectives. Just as we have lost plant and animal species from our fields as farmers all demand the single best varieties, will we lose variation in our cultures? Clearly, one only has to look at the increasingly Western ideals that are spreading throughout China and Eastern Europe for evidence of this. Can we survive by all researching on ways to improve the current "best" products and systems or are we leaving a large gap open in our armour where a virus destroys our chosen variety where one of those we have disregarded would have survived?

I seem therefore to be promoting diversification for the sake of originality. I also strongly believe in the freedom to be a unique individual. Thus I will include one of my favourite defences of the European Union - a collection of many different cultures, to use the motto of the organisation, "United in Diversity". I would advocate that the cultural exchange between countries helps develop new ideas and the best methods are adapted across the continent. To combat this loss of variation, cultures must be preserved and this is done by people expressing their individuality (as well as being heavily supported by EU funding). Citizens are allowed to live in any member state they like and consequently many live where the culture suits them best, preserving it and promoting it. A particular case of difference is language - the tool used to express thoughts can surely have much influence in developing them.

So as long as natural differences in humans are around, exchanges of views which have brought us so much in the past will continue to proliferate results. Though we must strive to keep them around, whilst being free to choose which ones we identify with. Even though it can't be sensible to only have one system, a uniform Earth would be incredibly dull.

Minimalism

Since returning home form university I have spent far too much time thinking. In particular about the contrast between these two places. One thing that on this occasion seems to be bothering more than anything else is how I have managed to live in a room where I could describe almost everything as an essential and now there’s a house full of things that seem either pointless or obsolete. Hence I seem to be increasingly advocating a minimalist way of living.

We are living in the transition to digital media – CDs are a classic example of old technology now taking up vast amounts of space in the home. A single portable hard drive can replace the entire CD rack. And the same thing is happening with video and perhaps with books sometime in the near future. There are other things too that seem to have their days numbered – there is no place for the stapler in a digital world, for example. Yet these things still make the trip to university - for now. There’s far too much more, however, that’s just been bought. It’s not outdated technology or ornamental and is now just cluttering up the place, often in boxes, but kept for sentimental value or forgotten about.

Its nice to live in a society where we can afford to keep and continue buying all of this junk, but our lives should be more measured on how we spend our time than on what we own. Managing large collections of personal belongings requires much time and a large house and hence more maintenance. I feel that perhaps some of the university style living principles should be applied at home – keeping essentials and focusing on how time is spent. Besides, rather than buying an item individually, we should look to share with neighbours where possible (and probably gain a better purchase). That’s another fundamental aspect of student life that seems to have been forgotten at home
All of this would also, of course, be great for the environment with less emissions and less waste. Yet in today’s Britain this seems incredibly difficult when people measure personal wealth and try to compete with neighbours rather than work with them.

Picture Blog: Transport vs. Technology

The near future sees a big battle between the need to transport and the use of technology.  A face to face meeting or a conference call?  A trip to the cinema or download a film from the Internet? Work in an office or at home?  Take a city break or play computer games for a weekend (surely not!)...?

Inform

I seem to be increasingly valuing information as more important than objects that I own.  Particularly unique and original information.  Having spent weeks this year sorting through files, papers and what seems like (but unfortunately is far from) everything in my room, I have refined my ideas on what I actually want to keep.

If it means something to me, it is important to me to keep it.  It seems that far to much does though, so its difficult to sort through my things.  Firstly, tackling those useless "objects", those things that aren't paper or have a use basically, there seems no point in keeping them unless they are on display.  Yet I still keep several collections of things since ts nice to look at them.  Yet they will be meaningless to anyone else and most likely binned when I'm gone.  So I have found myself taking pictures of things I know if I keep it will be even harder to get rid of them next time I do a sort out is helpful.  I can keep pictures of these things on a hard drive taking up an increasingly negligible space as technology progresses.

The information of the picture lasts far longer than the object that's now in the bin.  Ultimately this is true for everything on the Earth.  When the Earth is destroyed, its existence will still be noticeable to people in the future from the light that has been emitted from the sun and its consequential distortions.  An object can't be transmitted as light but a picture can be easily.

This works brilliantly well for all the paper I have lying around.  Its possible now, although its far too time consuming or expensive, to scan in and even have an OCR program read and index all these pieces of paper and have them searchable - accessible to everyone online perhaps - and have them actually utilised rather than stuck in the boxes on top of my wardrobe.

They will also be kept for a lot longer  - once transferred over the Internet, sent out in radio signals to satellites, broadcast across the whole galaxy.  Hopefully it will easily be possible to scan objects in the future to preserve them fully in the future.  If there is actually any value to any of the "information" we produce.

A quick thought (oh dear!)

To add to the "because I was bored" label, I was looking at the map of the underground in the back of my diary and for some reason wondered if it was possible to traverse every tube line by changing at every station (i.e. not staying on any of the trains for more than one stop).  I found one way if you count the DLR (it goes in a tunnel into Bank so I think thats okay) but couldn't do it without it.  Theres the difficulty of teh Waterloo & city only having two stops and the East London Line being very short.  Anyway, don't read this, there should be more interesting stuff on this page.

You could also get on at Old Street to add the other arm of the Northern Line to the trail.  If I do this I'll update this.