Solaris Rising Read Online Free
even knows what you do, not really. Felix Cofie thanks you, the spirit house is looking lovely, it’s so him, all the football mementos, and I’ve added a few things myself; little things he and I would know.
Yes it’s me. You’re surprised. What surprises you, Azumah? That I’m writing the posts for Felix Cofie, that I am one of those terrible dangerous people who want to bring down the Fourth Republic, or that I know how to write a post and work the Teshie system at all? That last is easy – it’s the way these days. It’s the future of the nation – look at that Obo Quartey boy in his smart suit and his Mercedes. He came from just up the street, you know. I learnt down at the community centre. They have special classes. All my friends go, it’s the place to be. We type and have tea. I even have a little netbook, an old homeworker one. They sell them off very cheap.
Where do people get this idea that only the young care enough to change the world? I have eyes, I have ears, and when you get older, your skin grows thin and you can bear the suffering of others less. It scrapes you, rubs you raw. I saw the prices going up at Maxmart, I heard Akron Kufuor from Excelsior Taxis saying that more and more of his money was going on fuel. And I did some reading – we all did some reading, all the ladies in our little network, and we saw why the prices were going up and where the money was going to – who the money was going to – and we learned about what they call ‘resource curse’ and we thought, like a lot of other people, this is not our nation, this is not our people, this is not the way we are; we are better than this, we are better than oil. And it was an easy thing to do, to have this idea that I could pretend to be Felix Cofie, and give him a voice. We are full of stories of people being warned by spirits in the bush and ancestors in the special place in the house and I thought, now we can make this real. The dead really can warn and advise and nag.
And do you know, it’s fun. It’s fun to be your father. Because, do you know, I miss him. Can you believe that? I miss him every day. Oh, he would sit in his chair and say maybe three words a day and never pay attention to anything more interesting than how well or how badly FC Maamobi were doing, but I missed that. And I found I could give him a voice to say in death all the things he never could in life. And it made me remember why I loved him in the first place, what a big fine and loud man he once was, and how handsome. How good he was, how he cared. Life can drive that out of you.
Dangerous? No there is no danger. They will not come and break in my door with sticks. We would never stand for that around here. If they attack an old woman after they attack the dead, well, they are not far from a fall. And anyway, they won’t find me. No no no. There is a new security patch for Teshie, some clever boy wrote it. No, there are more things Felix Cofie needs to say.
That tea must be cold. Would you like a little warm-up?
(Obo Quartey on The Dead Net: Teshie.org,
social networking and social transformation.
TED talk, concluding section)
…In themselves, the technologies don’t effect social change. I don’t even particularly believe that they enable social change. Teshie.org didn’t offer anything radically new – none of the networking platforms do. There have only been two world-changing communications technologies. The first is the telegraph; the ability to send message by wire – and that’s 19 th century. Switching and networking. The other is the ability to put that in your pocket and carry it around. What Teshie did was offer us the most appropriate means, and by that I mean the most culturally appropriate. Our small, well-mannered uprising of the dead would not have worked anywhere else… and they weren’t looking for revolution. Just some admission of wrong-doing, maybe a resignation. That we got a revolution – yet again, credit
Yes it’s me. You’re surprised. What surprises you, Azumah? That I’m writing the posts for Felix Cofie, that I am one of those terrible dangerous people who want to bring down the Fourth Republic, or that I know how to write a post and work the Teshie system at all? That last is easy – it’s the way these days. It’s the future of the nation – look at that Obo Quartey boy in his smart suit and his Mercedes. He came from just up the street, you know. I learnt down at the community centre. They have special classes. All my friends go, it’s the place to be. We type and have tea. I even have a little netbook, an old homeworker one. They sell them off very cheap.
Where do people get this idea that only the young care enough to change the world? I have eyes, I have ears, and when you get older, your skin grows thin and you can bear the suffering of others less. It scrapes you, rubs you raw. I saw the prices going up at Maxmart, I heard Akron Kufuor from Excelsior Taxis saying that more and more of his money was going on fuel. And I did some reading – we all did some reading, all the ladies in our little network, and we saw why the prices were going up and where the money was going to – who the money was going to – and we learned about what they call ‘resource curse’ and we thought, like a lot of other people, this is not our nation, this is not our people, this is not the way we are; we are better than this, we are better than oil. And it was an easy thing to do, to have this idea that I could pretend to be Felix Cofie, and give him a voice. We are full of stories of people being warned by spirits in the bush and ancestors in the special place in the house and I thought, now we can make this real. The dead really can warn and advise and nag.
And do you know, it’s fun. It’s fun to be your father. Because, do you know, I miss him. Can you believe that? I miss him every day. Oh, he would sit in his chair and say maybe three words a day and never pay attention to anything more interesting than how well or how badly FC Maamobi were doing, but I missed that. And I found I could give him a voice to say in death all the things he never could in life. And it made me remember why I loved him in the first place, what a big fine and loud man he once was, and how handsome. How good he was, how he cared. Life can drive that out of you.
Dangerous? No there is no danger. They will not come and break in my door with sticks. We would never stand for that around here. If they attack an old woman after they attack the dead, well, they are not far from a fall. And anyway, they won’t find me. No no no. There is a new security patch for Teshie, some clever boy wrote it. No, there are more things Felix Cofie needs to say.
That tea must be cold. Would you like a little warm-up?
(Obo Quartey on The Dead Net: Teshie.org,
social networking and social transformation.
TED talk, concluding section)
…In themselves, the technologies don’t effect social change. I don’t even particularly believe that they enable social change. Teshie.org didn’t offer anything radically new – none of the networking platforms do. There have only been two world-changing communications technologies. The first is the telegraph; the ability to send message by wire – and that’s 19 th century. Switching and networking. The other is the ability to put that in your pocket and carry it around. What Teshie did was offer us the most appropriate means, and by that I mean the most culturally appropriate. Our small, well-mannered uprising of the dead would not have worked anywhere else… and they weren’t looking for revolution. Just some admission of wrong-doing, maybe a resignation. That we got a revolution – yet again, credit
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