Emily Calendrelli
Check out Emily’s recent article on the Corporate Battle for Global Connectivity.
She opens the article with:
“Twenty years ago less than one percent of the world was connected to the internet. In 2015, roughly forty percent of the global population can log on to the World Wide Web”

That’s a jump from around 50 million to nearly 3 Billion people on the World Wide Web right now!

Yes, 3 BILLION!
I mean think about that. My 18-20 year-old students think the internet is NORMAL. When they were born only a select few were on the Net, but since they have been adolescents in high school, billions of people have been connected on the Web and they are used to instant access to it being in the palm of their hand via smartphone….as being NORMAL. Dig it. The changes are coming down faster and faster, and faster.
Fuck, I’m getting old, and loving it.

To bring internet service to the other 4 billion (and growing) folks on the planet, various companies have tried to establish or are proposing satellites and other vehicles in different levels of earth orbit. All this to set up internet communication to people living in less developed areas of the world.
Emily’s expertise is in space and technology communication and this article, first in a series of 3 really covers the challenges corporations face in technology and finance to pull off a network of satellites, balloons, or solar-powered drones, that could provide the consistent signal capability to relay internet data to more remote parts of the globe.

It is another great read from Emily, do give it a look.

This is another example among so many of what we can do, are doing as a species when we apply our energies to innovation and communication between humans instead of upholding the old outdated ideas and social rules of religion. So much manpower is wasted daily all over the globe arguing over religious trivia, fighting between religious groups, cleaning up the mess religious teachings have wrought at both the societal and individual level. Religions restrict what we can do, especially with women.

Here’s Emily at a NASA facility, dressed casually for most Western societies. Yet how many religious groups around the world, especially Muslim, and Xian, and others would claim she was dressed entirely too provocatively for a woman? If she were a man, form fitting jeans and tight sleeveless shirt would pass without question. But how many religious groups would claim her pants were too tight, her top as well too revealing of her form? The Mormons and Muslims and many other groups would object strenuously to her baring her arms. Where are her sleeves? Totally inappropriate to so many. What a crock, huh?

And how many religious rules are out there that would discourage Emily’s education and career that may take her as far as her talents and energies will? She might rise to the top of her profession, becoming a director, manager, even CEO of some communications/technology firm. But she could not rise to be any sort of authority in Islam, nor head of the Catholic Church, nor any sort of authority in number of other religious sects.
Because she is a woman.
Emily and so many other career women around the world have become liberated from any religious restrictions to their lives. So many others, still live under the repression of patriarchal rules dreamed up thousands of years ago that only religions uphold. I’ve written on the plight of women in some Islamic countries and the courageous actions of activists for women’s education and rights like Malala previously.
All women should have the same chance as Emily and most women living in the modern world, getting educated and moving to the forefront of what we can accomplish as a species, for everyone’s benefit. Like Internet access for all. And the internet may be the biggest killer of old, utterly outdated and repressive ideas so many of which hold women down all over the world.

This is what we can do when not doing religion.

end religion now
All of them.

(574)

Comments

comments