So here I sit, parked on the side of the road in between meetings, up here in Jozi.  Tablet, connected to phone, both plugged into car...it seems so normal, and yet I remember wishing to be able to do this sort of thing many years ago.  It is a straight forward reality now, and easily / cheaply done...

Firstly, why am I posting this in the "Digital" Section, and why am I posting this early (by 4 days) as his actual 70th birthday is on 8th January 2012?

I changed the title to this blog.  His death caused me to revisit some of the fabulous books he wrote.  God is Not Great, Letters to a Young Contrarian, Arguably, and his autobiography - Hitch-22.  I realised over the course of re-reading those incredible works, that his work has influenced me.  He was a truly great mind, and a brilliant orator.  The world is much poorer today, for not having Hitch about, but he did achieve immortality, in that his literary works will endure.

To me, spending the month of December in somewhere like South Africa, or the UK, indeed much of the Western World, is like having a taste of what it would be like to live in a single party, dictatorship.  Same songs everywhere (everywhere, meaining everywhere public - malls, shops, offices, hospitals, stations, airports), same "uniforms", same exhortations.  Everyone is forced to join in.

I have been so busy in recent weeks, hardly been home in weeks.  Travelling both within & outside our borders, almost all work.  I was briefly in the UK, and was able to catch up with family & friends there, which I have not been able to do for over 3 years.  At least Skype means that I am no longer shocked with the aging process of family & friends.

I don't normally just regurgitate other blogs, or news stories, but I try to give them my own spin.  However this posting is just too good on its own, and it combines the two issues that interest me; Disability and Technology.

I don't like theocracies.  I don't like countries that take away basic human rights from their citizens.  I don't like dictators.  Therefore, I don't like the Saudi Royal family.

I really hate spam.  I have to have spam filters on my email accounts to block unwanted sales pitches, but I get especially annoyed with SMS spam as it is much less easy to block.  So maybe we ought to follow the Indian example in order to block SMS's?

Recent news got me thinking.

So I have posted several times recently on the same topic - on how technology, especially Web 2.0, Facebook & Twitter have been instrumental in the "Arab Spring". The World has been able to witness the brutality of several theocratic dictatorships, and how they try to suppress the Freedom of Expression. It has been remarkable to be able to track these in "real time", and even to interract with people on the ground. It enables us to circumvent the bias of different media outlets (although I still highly rate both the BBC & Al Jazeera very highly). That is the good.