| Year |
World Population
|
Yearly Change |
Net Change |
Density (P/Km²) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 8,045,311,447 | 0.88 % | 70,206,291 | 54 |
| 2022 | 7,975,105,156 | 0.83 % | 65,810,005 | 54 |
| 2021 | 7,909,295,151 | 0.87 % | 68,342,271 | 53 |
| 2020 | 7,840,952,880 | 0.98 % | 76,001,848 | 53 |
| 2019 | 7,764,951,032 | 1.06 % | 81,161,204 | 52 |
| 2018 | 7,683,789,828 | 1.10 % | 83,967,424 | 52 |
| 2017 | 7,599,822,404 | 1.15 % | 86,348,166 | 51 |
| 2016 | 7,513,474,238 | 1.17 % | 86,876,701 | 50 |
| 2015 | 7,426,597,537 | 1.19 % | 87,584,118 | 50 |
| 2014 | 7,339,013,419 | 1.22 % | 88,420,049 | 49 |
| 2013 | 7,250,593,370 | 1.24 % | 88,895,449 | 49 |
| 2012 | 7,161,697,921 | 1.25 % | 88,572,496 | 48 |
| 2011 | 7,073,125,425 | 1.25 % | 87,522,320 | 47 |
| 2010 | 6,985,603,105 | 1.27 % | 87,297,197 | 47 |
| 2009 | 6,898,305,908 | 1.27 % | 86,708,636 | 46 |
| 2008 | 6,811,597,272 | 1.27 % | 85,648,728 | 46 |
| 2007 | 6,725,948,544 | 1.27 % | 84,532,326 | 45 |
| 2006 | 6,641,416,218 | 1.27 % | 83,240,099 | 45 |
| 2005 | 6,558,176,119 | 1.27 % | 82,424,641 | 44 |
| 2004 | 6,475,751,478 | 1.28 % | 81,853,113 | 43 |
| 2003 | 6,393,898,365 | 1.29 % | 81,491,005 | 43 |
| 2002 | 6,312,407,360 | 1.31 % | 81,660,378 | 42 |
| 2001 | 6,230,746,982 | 1.33 % | 81,848,007 | 42 |
cyanosapiens
In the long run, we may be able to environmentally overcome our thickening web of industrial toxic wastes but, if we follow the cyanobacterial model, vast numbers of humans would be destroyed before natural selection kicked in. And despite our rather inordinate confidence in our own technological prowess, biology remains much more effective than human technology in devising elegant long-term solutions to pollution and population control. In fact, we humans have never sustainably done the former, and we show no signs of being able to do the latter (although war is the top contender). Plus, cyanobacteria compose not just a single species (as we do) but also an entire multispecies “phylum [that] exhibit[s] enormous diversity in terms of their morphology, physiology and other characteristics (e.g. motility, thermophily, cell division characteristic, nitrogen fixation ability, etc.).”
Clarke, Bruce, ed. Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet. First edition. Meaning Systems. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2015.
Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification
Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):
The Regime of Amplification
Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!
*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.
we are ‘population’
A phrase in a comment in the New York Times: … “Which is to say most of us are just … population.”
This spins off in(to) mind: what is the source of the wide malaise that is grips the world? Too many souls accumulate — too much Life, too much be-ing, too much geist circulating, disturbing the thin skin of the planet. Human life destroying other forms of Life, but all Life, ensemble, still increasing — the rise before the fall, the sheer pulsing mass of diversity, evolutionary dead-ends, and virilogical substrate. uff.
‘One day at a time’ addresses one reality, but it may only be an evolutionary artifact introduced by the pressures of nomadic or foraging existence. And it delivers us to the door of extinction.
Haber-Bosch and global population
The following from a BBC article on nitrogen that explores the energy relationships (chemical bonds) that nitrogen forms in relation to other substances.
…
These days, explosives make up only a tiny part of the market for the huge quantities of ammonia produced using the Haber-Bosch process. Most goes to manufacture fertiliser, and all this “synthetic” nitrogen has vastly increased agricultural output across the world over the years.
The majority of the nitrogen in your body probably came from the Haber-Bosch process. And without it, more than half of the world’s population would have nothing to eat.
The incredible yields synthetic fertilisers deliver explain why obesity has replaced hunger as the rich world’s biggest nutritional challenge.
…
[The] Haber-Bosch [process] is reckoned to use 1% of the world’s energy supplies, which reflects just how hard it is to rip those triple-bonds apart.
The crop yields not only explain obesity, they explain a more fundamental concept — that the initial presence alone of half the world’s population is due to a manufactured energy source, and that source is drawn directly from petroleum for its feedstock and its energy source. Without that primary energy source, at least half the world’s population would not have arisen from healthy and fertile parentage: they would simply not exist to begin with!
we’re talking final causes here…
[C]urrently espoused, ecosystem management is a magical theory (see Ludwig 1993) that promises the impossible — that we can have our cake and eat it too. Worse, however, it addresses only the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. The problem is not how to maintain current levels of resource output while also maintaining ecosystem integrity; the problem is how to control population growth and constrain resource consumption. And the solution to the problem is not anthropocentric-based ecosystem management, it is rejection of the doctrine of final causes. Humanity must begin to view itself as part of nature rather than the master of nature. It must reject the belief that nature is ours to use and control. Once this is accomplished, we can accept that the land has limits, and that to live within those limits we must halt population growth and reduce consumption. I believe this rejection of the doctrine of final causes is at the very heart of the biocentric view of ecosystem management (see Noss & Cooperrider 1994). Unfortunately, the “seismic shift” in the mindset of humans (Grumbine 1994) required by this
view of ecosystem management may never occur and, if it does, it will be a slow process that may come too late.
Stanley, T.R., 1995. Ecosystem Management and the Arrogance of Humanism. Conservation Biology, 9(2), pp.255–262.
basic facts
One of the most basic facts about North Korea is that this country seems to be unstable in the long run. In spite of some economic improvements of the recent decade, it still remains very poor if compared to all its neighbours, and this gap keeps growing. The Kim family regime can maintain the stability for long time, but the information about the success of other countries — above all, South Korea — is filtering in, and gradually ferments discontent. — Andrei Lankov, AlJazeera
This is a simple statement of situation: where the question of stability directly relates to the amount of energy available to the system. All systems have a certain instability directly related to the size of their energy sources. Food, hydrocarbons, and other resources are not easily available to the Regime, causing upward tending instability. Hierarchic control exerted from the ‘seat’ of power (where resource energy flows are dictated) projects flow protocols downward, but when that projection of power has itself a diminishing source, control structures destabilize.
Both the projection ‘structure’ and the actual energy needed to ‘project’ power are never sufficient to maintain control of the population indefinitely. Nor, in reciprocal, are those factors sufficient to ‘motivate’ the population to give unreservedly of its own energy in support of the Regime. Any Regime must maintain in deep and aware consciousness that its primary source of power is, at base, the embodied energy of its people. In more recent times, technological concentrations of power allow this fact to be distorted significantly, but in the end, no Regime will survive a collective turning away of its vassal citizen’s energy and attention. The technological factor, if effectively wielded by a Regime, will allow profound imbalances to build up, imbalances that will inevitably cause catastrophic re-balancing. The nuclear ambitions of North Korea are likely the major contributing factor to the imbalance within the technological factor. Between that and the large standing army, energies that could possibly go to support the ‘regular’ citizen are shunted off to support the rigid command-and-control structures necessary to develop and deploy the nuclear deterrent and the armed forces.
Resistance is futile when a system is returning to dynamic equilibrium. Only another profound energy source will enable a return to a subsequent form of temporary stability. Otherwise, disorder at many levels ensues.
All these concepts apply to any nation-state, and to any system.
memories of MediaMOO
What is MediaMOO?
MediaMOO is a text-based, networked virtual reality environment or “MUD” running on the Internet. Its basic structure is a representation of the MIT Media Lab. Users connect in the LEGO Closet, and then step out into the E&L (Epistemology and Learning research group) Garden:
>connect guest more “memories of MediaMOO”
energy and population
This paper will argue that populations exhibit a behaviour that could be described as punctuated equilibrium. That is, populations generally exhibit long-term homeostasis. During brief and rare periods in history, population pressures lead to the commercialisation of a new source of energy—particularly a higher quality energy source—which in turn will raise the population ceiling, or the number of people the earth can support. At this stage, populations will grow quickly to approach the newly raised ceiling, then growth will slow and a new homeostasis will develop.
The planet could not support the six billion people that exist today without first the commercialisation of coal, then of oil and gas. If these energy sources were necessary for the historically rare and unprecedented population growth that has occurred over the last three hundred years, then this growth might be correlated (and modelled), in some way, after the pattern of consumption of these energy sources.
[. . .]
Biomass Population
Until 1850, most of the world’s population was still supported by traditional renewables (wood, dung, etc.) and animal power (with minor amounts of wind and hydropower). Admittedly Britain was already heavily influenced by coal, but very few other populations were. In 1850, Britain was producing more coal than the rest of Europe combined. In the same year, when the population of the United States was already 23 million, 90% of its energy requirements were still met from wood. So until the mid-1800s, energy from biomass was the main energy contributor to population growth. (It still contributes to population growth. It is estimated that 10% of the world’s energy in the year 2000 is provided by biomass and there are an estimated two billion people that still have no access to electricity.) Wrigley describes this preindustrial era as the Organic Economy, and in England’s case, the Advanced Organic Economy. In this model, it is called Biomass Population.
Biomass Population growth fluctuated in waves of feast and famine; economic growth and population checks. If populations grew too quickly, living standards declined, local carrying capacities were exceeded and food became more expensive. Malthusian population checks ensued: later age at first marriage, decreases in life expectancy and higher mortality. Biomass Population had been growing at a slow, exponential rate with some slight ups and downs for thousands of years. In other words, it exhibited homeostatic behaviour. Population pressures in Europe were relieved through the safety valves of migration. Settlers expanded into sparsely populated regions of the world such as North and South America, Australia and many African and Asian colonies. This enabled small upward shifts in the global population ceiling, or the population equilibrium.
If Biomass Population growth from 800 to 1850 were extrapolated to the year 2000, the value would be 1.09 billion people. This may or may not be an indication of how many people the planet would now be supporting if coal, oil and gas were never commercialised, assuming there were still frontiers to expand into. — Graham Zabel, London School of Economics, Population and Energy, 2000
kudos to NASA
NASA does it again! The intensity and rigor of control necessary throughout the entire process of planning, fabricating, and executing such an expression of the techno-social system is remarkable. These expressions of directed and highly organized energy that a techno-social system makes may be seen as a metric correlated to the health of that system: the military-industrial-academic complex is alive and well. Not only that, NASA has successfully taken on the need to justify its existence to the population in their well-choreographed PR efforts: “Seven Minutes of Terror.”
The Welfare Model
In America as in Europe, Republicans argue, the welfare state is failing to provide either security or dynamism. The safety net is so expensive it won’t be there for future generations. Meanwhile, the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education. Successive presidents have layered on regulations and loopholes, creating a form of state capitalism in which big businesses thrive because they have political connections and small businesses struggle.
The welfare model favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care. This model, which once offered insurance from the disasters inherent in capitalism, has now become a giant machine for redistributing money from the future to the elderly.
This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. It needs replacing. — David Brooks editorial, NYT 15.06.2012
I would propose that the relative abundance of the historically recent welfare state is a direct result of the ‘easy’ availability of hydrocarbons. ANY abundance of energy will allow/encourage a species to expand the controlling complexity of its ‘social’ system. In the human case, it is not only the ‘welfare’ state, but the ‘defense’ state, the ‘agri’ state, the ‘industrial’ state, the ‘education’ state, and so on — the entire cumulative fabric of inter-related social systems. One single aspect (that welfare state) of the cumulative complexity cannot be blamed for our ‘problems.’ Actually, the human species, overall, with the development of its hydrocarbon energy source is wildly successful in its expansion and dominance of the globe in its entirety. The current ‘problems’ are a result of the species reaching the limits of the ability of the hydrocarbon energy source to provide structural organizing advantage and the ensuing stability of expansion/control that all living memory is accustomed to. The growing socio-economic instability of the West is a direct result of competition from other social systems for that once-easily accessible glutted energy source (that the West monopolized!). (Underscoring that the instability is not ‘just’ economic — the instability is a ‘real’ (thermodynamic) feature and a deep characteristic of the entire system — in just the same way that the initial ramping-up of the energy glut affected the entire system’s (negentropic) character of complexity and control of previously un-controlled flows — things like viral infections, the impact of ‘natural’ catastrophes on populations, and the stability of agricultural production, etc.)
more “The Welfare Model”
more cutting room floor
In the continuity of all phenomena that are sensed, a deep interdependence is a fundamental characteristic. Recalling that deployments of amplification systems exist at all scalar levels, a particular TSS may be modeled as a synergy of constituent sub-systems. However, each interdependent social system will approach the process of expressed presence somewhat differently, relative to that interdependence and to historical precedent (pre-existing pathway dependence). Globalization may be seen as essentially the wide-scaled synchronization and standardization of (some of) these differing sub-systems into widely harmonized and ordered pathways—usually to the (energy) detriment of smaller-scaled or more localized systems.
The contemporary globalized Regime stands on a (centralized) system of production and consumption [1] of amplified signals that forcefully promotes the standardization process. The originary signals are still human-to-human as in all systems, but extensive and globally-refined amplification pathways are present in many of these encounters—either by structural chance or by determined choice. In fact this is nothing new for a TSS of smaller size, but the sheer scale of construction of the necessary global infrastructures for collecting and redistributing the flows, as well as the directed flows of amplified energies themselves, is unprecedented in human history. Globalization of the Regime, as a particular scalar culmination of the once-localized system, affects every individual on the planet. more “more cutting room floor”
systems awareness
It would seem that a key characteristic of an awareness of any particular ‘system’ has to include a sense of the ‘setting’ of that abstracted system. That is, reflecting the idea of scalar independence as a thread of systems thinking. This connects to the concept of the meta-structures that are impinging elements from other levels of nested systems. For example, the learning facilitator can focus a critical eye on the physical system of the classroom—arranging the furniture, opening/closing the shades, assigning seats, etc—to effect changes in the efficacy of the learning experience. The facilitator might also focus on individual students and their ‘body-system’—do they seem to have proper nutrition, sleep, are their parents engaged in the process, what is their mental state, etc. At the same time, an awareness of the impact of the state-wide system mandated regulations on the educational program—legal remit, funding, distributed infrastructure, administrative policies, how funding relates to the wider population, and so on—will allow, among other choices, strategic decisions to be made in relation to the classroom process. The point being 1) no matter what system one is talking about there are other levels of nested/embedded systems that should not/cannot be left out of general consideration and 2) the effects of an other level (‘higher’ or ‘lower’ both) may completely overwhelm (negate, support) the effects of one level being examined.
Veteran Fact Sheet
Veteran Statistics
— There are approximately 25 million veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces alive today (7.5 % are women).
— Some 7.2 million of those veterans are enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) system; approximately 5.5 million receive health care and 3.4 million receive benefits.
— Since October 2001, approximately 1.6 million members of the Armed Forces have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. As of December 31, 2007, more than 800,000 veterans of these conflicts were eligible for VA health care.
— There are about 37 million dependents (spouses and dependent children) of living veterans and survivors of deceased veterans. Together they represent 20% of the U.S. population.
— Most veterans living today served during times of war. The Vietnam Era veteran, about 7.9 million, is the largest segment of the veteran population.
— There are approximately (as of October 2007) 2,911,900 WWII veterans alive, but they are passing away at a rate of 1,000 per day (approx. total today 2,583,400)
— In 2007, the median age of all living veterans was 60 years old, 61 for men and 47 for women.
— Median ages by period of service: Gulf War, 37 years old; Vietnam War, 60; Korean War, 76; and WW II 84.
— The percentage of the veteran population over 65 is 39.1%.
— Sixty percent (60%) of the nation’s veterans live in urban areas and six states account for about 36% of the total vet population. They are California, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, respectively.
— Veteran Population by Race: White 80.0%; Black 10.9%; Asian/Pacific Islander 1.4%; Hispanic 5.6%; American Indian/Alaska Natives 0.8%; Other 1.3%
— Approximately 150,000 of our nation’s veterans are homeless.
Suicide Rates
— Veterans are more than twice as likely as non-veterans to commit suicide and the “Katz Suicide Study,” dated February 21, 2008, found that suicide rates among veterans are approximately 3 times higher than in the general population.
— The VA’s own data indicate that an average of four to five veterans commit suicide each day.
— A document from the VA Inspector General’s Office, dated May 10, 2007, indicates that the suicide rate among individuals in the VA’s care may be as high as 7.5 times the national average.
— According to internal VA emails, there are approximately 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans seen in VA medical facilities.
— The VA has hired suicide prevention counselors at each of its 153 medical centers to help support the national suicide prevention hotline.
PTSD
— Approximately 300,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – nearly 20% of the returning forces – are likely to suffer from either PTSD or major depression, and these numbers continue to climb.
— An additional 320,000 of the returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan may have experienced traumatic brain injuries during deployment.
— By fiscal year 2005, the VA’s own statistics indicated that PTSD was the fourth most common service-related disability for service members receiving benefits.
— While there is no cure for PTSD, early identification and treatment of PTSD symptoms may lessen the severity of the condition and improve the overall quality of life for veterans suffering from this condition.
Unhappy Meals
This article/essay by Michael Pollan is an extremely well-framed case-in-point about how a techno-social system (TSS) will — with science leading the way — reconfigure the energy flows (FOOD!) that we are immersed within. And how evolved sub-systems with a Machiavellian stake in the distribution of power in the TSS will fall all over themselves to retain the power they already have, or will develop new ways to siphon the power away from individuals participating in the system. Individual participants, aggregated as “the population” are still the main source of accumulated hierarchic power in the system. Anyone hoping to accumulate a power-base has to, at some level, attract the attention (life-energy/life-time) of that base. The food industry (and its constituent sub-industries) is no exception, nor is the ‘big science’ sector (which has to justify its existence through churning out ‘sensible’ information (nutrition research: always filtered, dumbed-down, by intercessory media voices)) — and neither of these ‘players’ are willing to be ‘regulated’ by the government which subsidizes their existence. Remember all those “drink milk” ads some years back? All the subsidies have gone underground, so is mostly invisible to the undiscerning eye. The consumer only sees the contents of the grocery-store shelves.
more “Unhappy Meals”
other thoughts via John McPhee
“If the profession of an engineer were not based upon exact science,” he said, “I might tremble for the result, in view of the immensely of the interests dependent on my success. But every atom that moves onward in the river, from the moment it leaves its home among the crystal springs or mountain snows, throughout the fifteen hundred leagues of its devious pathway, until it is finally lost in the vast waters of the Gulf, is controlled by laws as fixed and certain as those which direct the majestic march of the heavenly spheres. Every phenomenon and apparent eccentricity of the river — its scouring and depositing action, its caving banks, the formation of the bars at its mouth, the effect of the waves and tides of the sea upon its currents and deposits — is controlled by law as immutable as the Creator, and the engineer need only to be insured that he does not ignore the existence of any of these laws, to feel positively certain of the results he aims at.” James B. Eads, engineer, quoted in “Atchafalaya” by John McPhee
versus
“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver — not aloud but to himself — that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.” — Mark Twain in “Life on the Mississippi” quoted in “Atchafalaya” by John McPhee
from The Control of Nature: Atchafalaya — John McPhee, 23 February 1987 in The New Yorker.
and this from Bill Gammage in a precursor of his recent book “The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia” (Allen & Unwin, 2011)
I suggest that people turned to crops, herds and stores to protect them from other people. The reason farmers stepped onto the road to civilisation was military.
Aborigines ensured that usually they had plenty of food by controlling their population and by maximizing their resources. But their truly great achievement lay in how they protected their resources — not by military force, but by religious sanction. Even under extreme duress Aborigines rarely took food that was not theirs. That may have been so in early Europe and elsewhere too — most societies attempt to sanctify property. If so, it broke down. Farmers were led to protect their food, thus lost the predictability and security that widely dispersed resources gave hunter-gatherers, and thus had to work hard and make hard work a virtue. Work, sedentism and storing generate individual and collective strivings for surplus, for wealth. That is the road Europeans took, and Aborigines avoided. In August 1770 James Cook could not have known whether Aborigines were ‘far more happier’ than Europeans, but he was right to see that they were content in ‘all the necessarys of Life’, which we Europeans, ever restless for more, can never be. — Bill Gammage, 2005
highly recommended!
Systems depend on power, which they use to develop structure and functions that self-organize according to laws of energy transformation and use. As suggested by Alfred Lotka in 1922, maximum power results from self-organization according to the natural selection of systems designs. This chapter explains energy laws, including the maximum power principle and its control of production, growth, competition, succession, energy storage, diversity, and the oscillatory pulsing of all systems. more “highly recommended!”
Friday, 18 August, 1961
Warm
Went to Charlottetown for a little shopping and sight-seeing. Stopped in at the Provincial Building where the Canadian Confederation plans were made in 1864. There were also some good pictures of the Queen & Phillip. Charlottetown must have a population of 50,000 or so.
This was the last day of the Fair, but we did not go.
Bill Cantelo from Park Street stopped by our camp at 0920 & said he would pick me up at 0900 tomorrow for a fishing trip.
Nordic Nazi recollections
Hitler’s worldview included copious referencing of Nordic creation mythologies (thus his love of Wagner!). One consequence of this obsession was the emergence of strong pro-Nazi movements leading up to, through, and most disturbingly, after WWII in all the Nordic/Scandic countries (Nordic countries comprise all the Scandinavian countries (Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark), plus Finland). Some Icelanders eagerly supported these Nazi ideologies — documented in black-and-white images of uniformed goose-stepping rubes on parade in downtown Reykjavík before the 1940 British occupation, and the refusal of Icelandic authorities to allow African-American soldiers into the country during the later US occupation. These warped sympathies have persisted right up to the present time: a fact that was brought to my attention by a sequence of articles published in Iceland’s main national newspaper, Morgunbladið, back in the early 1990’s when I had recently immigrated to Reykjavík to take up residence with my future ex-wife, an Icelandic psychologist who I had met in Germany a few years previous. The current events in Norway bring all this back to mind, again… more “Nordic Nazi recollections”
more power to ’em
The nature of value and the role of time are recurring themes in Georgescu-Roegen’s work, consistently placing him outside the static, strictly quantitative and monistic approach of neoclassical economics. And his heretical insistence that markets, societies, and ecosystems all share a common dependence on energy and the relentless laws of thermodynamics led him to the unpopular conclusion that modem human society is not sustainable. Shunning even the alternative visions of steady state, appropriate technology, “small is beautiful,” and sustainable development as so much “snake oil” (Georgescu-Roegen 1993b; 1993c), he stubbornly refused to tailor his message for a population infatuated with slogans and sound bites. For Georgescu-Roegen, a realistic view of the entropic nature of existence translated simply into a wise use of resources; by squandering resources needlessly and carelessly, we reduce future choices, shortening the time span of our species. –John Gowdy & Susan Mesner
Chris Norris Allen 1953 – 2011
Chris Allen, one of my favorite students from way back in Master Black and White Printing at CU Boulder in the late 1980’s, passed today. Chris was a gentle, gracious, and humble soul, at the same time as being a fearless seer. His work at the time he was in my class was sourced in his tightly-knit family situation. He visually mapped the dynamic of his crew of young daughters and wife with an intensity and intimacy that I have not seen rivaled with such personal work. He was hard-working, focused, and completely un-self-conscious about his photography. We had many wonderful conversations about life and photography during that time. His wife, Sandy, was due with their fourth child, and they invited me to attend and photograph the birth which I did do. I remember saying yes to Chris, and then getting the phone call early one morning, “It’s time, come on over.” Uff! What have I done! I was terribly nervous about such an event, having never witnessed a birth before. But the vibe at the house, between the midwives and the kids, was incredibly calm and loving. I was blessed by their trust. more “Chris Norris Allen 1953 – 2011”
conflict
Tapas notes about the Wisconsin pro/anti-union conflict and the Egyptian shift,
Simply unbelievable. I never even suspected that Tahrir Square could echo in the USA.
I reply, sotto voce:
I don’t think it is echoing, except as a media construct, but, really, it’s at least a bit offensive to characterize a whole country as full of fat sleeping slobs, although there are those who are precisely that here (and elsewhere in the corpulent world vs the thin world). There are conscious people here now and in the past. There have been multi-million-person marches in the streets, police rounding up tens of thousands of protesters in JFK Memorial Stadium in Washington, tear gas, shootings, bombings, and so on. While, yes, many in the present population are anesthetized by over-consumption and economic ruin, there remain those who will march and confront the despots in power. It may not be so long before you witness a scale of internecine violence in the US that makes satrap rulers and their suppression of impoverished populations look like a walk in the park. I’d explore the history of this Empire if I were you (or simply reference Tacitus’ “Annals of Imperial Rome” for a start.) This present Empire is fraught with any and all of the possible irruptions known to any comparably-scaled nation-state unit. It was only three generations ago that three percent of the population died in a major internecine war.
Empire does not mimic the provinces, it corrodes from the center out…
the cost
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live? –- Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.
at the edges of the envelope of power projection
When approaching the edge of a protocol-driven projection of power, the first thing noted is that the edge is in flux, constantly. Depending on the metric flow of the power, and the metric flow(s) of the countervailing chaos, the edge will shift at any temporal and spatial scale. The juxtaposition of controlled and un-controlled situations represents a more-or-less steep gradient from directed to random (or directed to countervailing directed) flows. A good example to consider is the two polarized and hegemonic forces of the Cold War compared to highly ordered (Imperial) military systems being projected into poorly organized social systems.
The edges of hegemonic Cold War projections of power were often located in social spaces of great chaos. But these points-of-contact generally did not impinge on the monumental and rigid structures (enabling ideological rigidity) at the core of Empire. Empire shielded itself with layers of decreasingly ordered spaces. The borders as projected closest to the two primary centers of power were defined by rigidly controlled edges across which there were few incursions or expressions of chaos. Natural borders represent a special case of intervening ‘natural’ chaotic systems which provide a temporary or long-term barrier to impingement. However, a power nexus has to deal with that chaotic border itself to maintain reasonable order there for its own population.
The space containing a vacuum of power is quickly filled whenever there is a localized energy source of a great enough magnitude to fill that space. It is more slowly filled when there is no localized concentrations of power. Again, the maintenance of an ‘edge’ is really about the maintenance of a gradient of order with a certain steepness.
An Imperial power will be more strongly be drawn into vacuums merely by the steep gradient between its highly organized (military) system and that vacuum.
The protocols of nation-statehood (currently) define geographic boundaries of power projections. However, it is clear that these boundaries and the protocols themselves are constantly in flux and themselves are finally defined by balances of power-projection on both sides. (Consider a con-federation versus a republic.) The border on chaos is a border that is under the greatest threat of alteration (because of that steep gradient mentioned previously).
negentropic geopolitics
Today China’s ambitions are as aggressive as those of the United States a century ago, but for completely different reasons. China does not take a missionary approach to world affairs, seeking to spread an ideology or a system of government. Instead, its actions are propelled by its need to secure energy, metals, and strategic minerals in order to support the rising living standards of its immense population. Robert Kaplan — NYT
nothing new here. except the astonishing lack of awareness that general populations have for the possible (probable) implications.
eat the rich
“Eat the rich,” Chris reminds me on the phone. Visiting my sister in NoCal, I was over at Berkeley for a day (could it have been the same trip to meet Marty and Robb for lunch all those many years ago?), and I came across a t-shirt with a skull on it (I think), eat the rich at the top and FMLN (Fronte Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) across the bottom.
When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich. — Jacques Rousseau
The wealthy (as a concentration-point for resources) are a source of sustenance (energy) when the number of the poor and hungry reaches a tipping point. Government, in the form of a cadre of elites who effect a mechanism of control of (social) energy flows, taps into the population of energized bodies (the social), directing their collective energy towards the maintenance of the (sovereign) state. When the cost to the precariate becomes too great, or when they perceive that the rewards they receive from that State (whatever that State is), are not sufficient to counter the drain on their life-time and life-energy, they will cease their participation in that State. Or, slacking, they may blame the State for their state: when it is their State, and is one in which they participate willingly.
technology as life
The view that technology may be represented as a human constructed/refined pathway for the limited sense of controllable ‘natural’ forces (energies, power, flows) seems to be productive, but it needs to be tested more against deterministic or Utopian views of technology. I’m pragmatic about the outcome being an overlooked pathway hidden among the trillion-plus unique URLs in the webiverse. Oh well. Ultimately technology is a set of (often socially-proffered) choices that the individual makes as to where to channel his/her life-energies. The channels or pathways are multiplex and are influenced by collectives of Others (both dead and alive), but ultimately are there for the individual to engage or not. Of course, there are social systems which have set rigid command-and-control systems in place to radically limit the choice of pathways available. Other social systems have evolved elaborate methodologies for persuasion so that the participating population will feel compelled to utilize certain technological pathways rather than others — often not even being aware that their ‘choice’ is an illusion.
There is a precursor situation which influences the development of external shared social protocols and that situation is within the refined evolutionary structure of the body-system. The body, as with any life-form, is itself a powerful system for the (consumption and) directed expression of energies, both internally through various sub-systems, and externally as a unitary and singular body. It is the primary technological system (and then all life is a technology…!).
From The Regime of Amplification to The Road
[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]
Abstract
The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.
Introduction
The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.
The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”
arrival and meditation
Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed perusal of the rotating stellar field in ma’ face.
This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy—it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
more “arrival and meditation”
back on the road
Transit of Utah. From west to east, along a winding trajectory from desert to forest to desert, oil drilling, wind power, gas stations, Mormon farms, gold mines, high-security military bases, municipal alarm towers scattered across the landscape — for warning the population surrounding the bases where testing of bio- and chemical-warfare devices is ongoing — warning them of impending disaster. Continuing on the isolated Pony Express Trail, then descending into populated areas. Calling ahead to Dinosaur to see about road conditions. Plenty of snow on the Uintahs, plenty! At the last minute after checking out the Green River campground on the Utah side, I get word that the Echo Park road is open. So, gas up, including the extra tank, and head in from Jensen. Excellent weather, and finally arriving, no one else around, very good. Get the pick of the few camp spaces, #5, 7, and 9 are the best for shade, seclusion, and access to firewood — though shade is not the issue at this time of year, more important would be the access to morning sunshine to warm up — but since there’s no one else around, I can use the #6 picnic table in full sun in the morning for breakfast. So, I take #7 and offload/set-up quickly: already charged at being here once again…
CLUI: Day Two
Get out to the grocery store, the only one in town, and a slow drive through town. It does seem like a differential planet. The Latino population is about 80% — workers in the casinos, and the rest are the owners and operators. An obvious imbalance. A majority of housing is either single- or double-wides, or, on the (impoverished-for-lack-of-casinos) Utah side, shacks surrounded by the flotsam of personal disorder — a metric of the desirability of energy expenditure on arrangement. Some of the lots approach the structure of middens in this. Middens are primarily defensive in function, shielding the inhabitant from predatory intrusion. Matt showed me one example here on the airbase, of an old man whose place was beyond being a junkyard, it was an accretionary gravitational field for (all) matter. But since his recent death, an increasing level of disorder was applied. Clearly, there is the possibility to distinguish between an active and an abandoned midden.
Otherwise, listening to the space, and, through the now sparkling south windows, watching the heavy weather rip through. Snow, sleet, hail, wind.
Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Watch the (Hollywood) movie Above and Beyond about Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29, Enola Gay, that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. “Gripping mellerdramer!” as my father would say, wandering through the teevee room on his way to his workshop or darkroom or outside to work on the car or the yard.
myopia and narrow vision
What is certain is that even a skill as abstract as literacy has an unexpectedly strong physical aspect. In the history of humanity, our attention has shifted from the horizon to the length of our own arms: the printed page or the electronic monitor, or at the farthest the television screen. (p. 237)
Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity, Tenner, E., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003
This shifting of attention has deeply affected the eyes, with a documented rise in myopia in more literate societies. Nothing like a myopic population: with the simultaneous illusion of tele-vision being foisted on bodies everywhere!
Edward Tenner, in Our Own Devices examines a number of basic technologies and their affect on embodied cultural/social participation. Think athletic shoes, chairs, eyeglasses, typewriters/keyboards, baby nursing bottles, flip-flops, and helmets. Where did they come from, why did they develop, and ultimately, what is their affect on users.
There are so many examples of this, one need only select any particular technology and begin to meditate on its source, its uses and (mis)applications: the affects on human presence gradually become apparent. The deeper the meditation on these, and the wider the field of affect is likely to surface. Tenner’s detailed histories become a bit tedious if the reader’s curiosity wears away, as the tone of the writing doesn’t change throughout, but it is in the examination of the details that connections can be made and eventually some basic principles emerge. Tenner himself is a bit glib about the meaning of the deduced affectations, and remains neutral with a slightly optimistic outlook.
In the case of computer keyboards, though, for example, he does not go beyond the direct dialectic between inventor, device, and user. Doing this, he neglects the affectations that arise not from direct usage of a device, but the indirect affects which are present as the widest context in which the device arises in a complex techno-social system. Clearly, this is not his goal, rather it appears to be more of an entertaining and surficial cabinet-of-curiosity stroll through the obscure history of everyday objects. In my opinion he misses a potent opportunity to carry through to the deeper relations between technology, technique, fundamental social relation, and embodied be-ing.
Food, Energy, and Society
For most of the time that humans have inhabited the earth, their prime source of power has been their own muscle power. …
Early additional sources of power included human slaves and domesticated animals. The hunting/gathering societies were helped when an extra food gatherer or hunter could join in the task of securing food. Likewise, the labor intensiveness of primitive agriculture increased both the need for and the usefulness of slave and animal labor. …
A slave or extra hunter, of course, would have to be fed. However, two hunters could kill more than twice as much game as a single hunter could kill alone. In this way, additional labor provided a greater return in energy than the energy input required for its maintenance. (p. 68)
Food, Energy, and Society, Pimentel, D., Pimentel, M., Third Edition, Taylor And Francis Group, Boca Raton, Florida, 2008. Food, Energy and Society, [Pimentel, D., Pimentel, M., (revised edition), University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 1996]
I haven’t gotten access to the most current (2008) edition of this major collation of numbers, but the 1996 version is recent enough for the extrapolation process to be framed and the principles to be clearly demonstrated. Unfortunately that extrapolation reveals a worsening situation than they originally laid out (or imagined!) in 1979. With a detailed quantitative analysis of the (energy) costs of all eras and types of food production, as well as an examination of pesticide use, water, biodiversity, and soil resource issues, the separate chapters are full of numbers and comparisons which are remarkable in extent and sobering in their basic message. It would be possible to verify the extensive research in detail by tracking down the fifty-pages of references, but the message is simple: the human species is exerting an ever-increasing energy drain on the global environment merely to subsist, and there are definitely better and worse ways to marginally affect the situation. Humans tend to be wasteful — but any life-form causes this process of entropic waste (energy) production merely by living — it is not an avoidable condition. It appears now that the problems are of such a wide-scale, and the solutions are presently so haphazard (as applied by nation-states rather than through some trans-national instrument), that the inevitable upward geometric curves (population, resource consumption, environmental degradation, etc) will reach their limit. Those curves as they exist in the mathematical domain have no real upward limit and may approach infinity asymptotically. This would represent the system with infinite energy reserves. The earth, taken as a sub-system of the cosmos, is finite, and so are the energy resources it makes available for human use. more “Food, Energy, and Society”
watcher/watched
Selling individual vision to an Other: convincing, forming mental models that will allow compelling suasion; pressing opinions, argument, elegant frameworks; all constructed with language, words, characters, academic form, journalistic style, flaccid prose, basic text, with footnotes or hyperlinks; bibliographic references to other words, other texts: but where is a praxis? Praxis weakens to a barely-lived presence fighting to become in a dominant social structure of insipid spectacle that maintains the attentions of a vast majority of the population. Those being watched increase in number to challenge that of the passive watchers. In many cases the passive watchers are the watched, and vice-versa. The consumption of the passive watchers is expansive, limitless, a whorish gaping maw willing to not just taste, but to gorge on anything that is mediocre, maudlin, bland, and self-serving; safe, pre-digested, pureed, and acceptable. Worked over. ‘urrrrp’
Indigestible fodder, poison, anathema, bloating farce, and gaseous prophesy.
The world is drowning in verbiage.
All protocols lead to artifice.
desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)
Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.
[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system’s process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow’s needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through — steps/degrees of flow alteration.] more “desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)”
innovation
Fundamental innovations almost always seem to come from outside the established market leaders, who suffer ‘path dependency.’ Established firms are usually too committed to a particular conception of what their product is. This commitment is embedded in its manufacturing process and endemic in the thinking of its managers. When a major innovation appears, a leading firm understands the technology, but remains committed to its product and its production system.
Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, Nye, David E., MIT Press, Boston, 2006.
Technology, at base, may be defined as a means or pathway to gather and concentrate the (productive) energies of individuals in a social grouping. The difference between inventions lost in the detritus of history and those that become widely integrated in a social system is not necessarily related to the efficiency of the technology itself. The primary difference lies in the efficiency with which the broader social system uses the technological pathway as an effective means of tapping into the individual energies of the population. The broader social system is usually controlled by a subset of people, elites, who impose the pathway on the whole (and who tap off a surplus of energy from the pathway). It is controlled by those who define the pathway of flow. Set pathways have come into being to benefit those who are accessing the concentrated powers they provide. When a pathway is set, it has a built-in inertia which more-or-less resists alteration. This inertia is a mapping of a (counter-(r)evolutionary) resistance of human systems to change. The resistance comes from the relationship of energy flow that the pathway is defining. Individuals participating in either giving and receiving energy are reluctant to change the architecture of that relationship: it is a symbiotic relationship. There can be no receivers without those willing to give their life-energy and attentions to the receivers. Change comes hard. Innovation, the tendency to seek (newer and more) optimal pathways, is always negatively affected by this resistance to some degree. A(ny) technological pathway, once fixed upon, is adapted to and becomes the norm. (The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster is a nice fictional sketch of this from 1900.)
Nye addresses many other topics aside from innovation, so I’ll be picking through his book in the next days.
movement and encounter
Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.
It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.
There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered. more “movement and encounter”
MEP and other things
Presuming the Terran system is a (fully) self-regulating system, then the hypothesis would have to include the entire evolutionary process which produced human beings among other biota under the particular macroscopic and microscopic availing conditions. Self-regulation would then suggest that the system will solve the current problems of human over-population and resource spoilage as it solves all other oscillations of what is a system in thermodynamic disequilibrium. Biospheric self-organization (among a holistic range of other mechanisms that we likely have no clue about in the moment), will do it’s thing. Despite, in spite of, and at the effect of what a specific biotic evolutionary line is doing. There is plenty of data showing wide-scale fluctuations in, for example, atmospheric components related to changing biotic fluxes.
The Military
(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)
The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS (techno-social system) and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.
A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified (and directed) energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
more “The Military”
energy/complexity
Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the “crash” that many fear — a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the “soft landing” that many people hope for — a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a Utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. — Joseph A. Tainter
There is much to explore in the ideas around organizational complexity/simplicity correlated with high/low energy requirements for a system — essentially basic thermodynamics (it always comes down to this). If the wider (widest) scale of human systems could scale social complexity down, the energy requirements would experience a correlative drop. But this is a very substantial IF. And it would mean that the energy reach of the average individual would consequently contract. And human natures seem to preclude any sacrifice of control that is a crucial part of the existing order. China fancies itself victorious, clambering over other nations to arrive soon at the top of the influential complexity heap, but it will soon discover that the price for this status is, literally, high. And it too, as a complex system, will gradually implode again. Though likely not after extracting, demanding, a high flow, or tribute, as the US is now doing, from the global system. That flow comprising the over-consumption and thus concentration of widely distributed materials which now, in their post-use state leave the globe energetically worse off. In the end this is not an issue of nation-state guilt, it is simply the evolutionary state of the tool-wielding bipedal mammalian species. The (over-consuming) developed world crosses many demographic and geographic borders, while likewise the under-consumers are widely distributed.
The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance. — David Price
property
as an example of the problematic of owning, and of property in general, as it is defined in Western social codes:
The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign — for all these titles are synonymous — imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once . . . [and so] property engenders despotism . . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings — kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
and
Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
technological affectation
If film can do this:
Film serves to train human beings in the practice of those apperceptions and reactions required by the frequentation of an apparatus whose role in their daily life ever increases. To make this whole enormous technological apparatus of our time into the object of human interiorization and appropriation [innervation] — that is the historic task in whose service film has its true meaning. — Walter Benjamin
Then is there any reason to doubt a connection between the declining power and influence of the (technocratic mediocracy of the) United States and the implementation of the Internet as-it-is today? Is there any connection between the tendencies of its population to spend their (limited) life-time in tele-communication (and tele-consumption!) and the demise of civil society? People seemingly now avoid confronting the (unknown) Other and rather cluster as mirrored-Selves, with a cumulative effect of breakdown of a (diverse) cultural fabric into a checker-board of self-interest groupings which spend time defending the borders of their squares from the surrounding Evil unknown.
this conclusion proposed in the sense that if film can have that profundity of affectation on human nervous systems (the primary interface with the world-as-mediated-by-body; or the primary EM antenna-structures), then what of all the wide press of technological development seeping into all parts and orifices of perception and reaction?
burp (gun)
An army marches on its stomach. — Napoleon
as if this is enough to justify the concept of energy usage and amplification: it is precisely these fundamentals which directly illustrate the connection between collective energy resource regimes and, in this case, the amplified energy projection potential of militaristic social structures. the balance between the starvation of the general population and the full bellies of soldiers is a core decision of those controlling a nation-state. think North Korea, think Soviet Union, think any state.
Randy Olson
(00:56:52, stereo audio, 109.2 mb)
attend a screening last night of Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos at the RagTag Cinema in Columbia. he was in attendance. and again this morning, he gave a presentation for science academics at the university as a part of their Darwin Days (where the Chair of the Life Sciences Department pointed out they were not allowed to say “celebration” but rather “commemoration”). the film’s premise was to map out the way both sides of the evolution/creationist divide are communicating and presenting their POV to the public. scientists are shown to be poor communicators, creationists shown to be poor communicators except for some who know the value of style and appearance (the Discovery Institute being the chief antagonists posing as a non-partisan think-tank). they are the ones leading the issues. in the same way Republicans have been successful in constructing the narratives guiding the story-following population to the conservative Nirvana. Olson, a former Harvard PhD biologist transitioned to Hollywood via a degree at USC’s film school. he now tells stories that bridge the divide between science and the general public. but the leap from stories to action — stories that form a context for action — well, there is generally a passivity that is a condition of listening/watching a story recitation. listening to stories has to stop at some point. so, the story has to have a transitional mechanism leading to action. how does that work? telling a story and have action arise out of the exchange of energies. the attentive focus of absorbing a story transforming into world-changing action. in the evening Nick and I catch the screening of Sizzle also by Olson. overheard today:
mass media is directed at the pelvic floor, but what about having Kegels for Consciousness…?
later a repaired drum appears, as does a Tibetan singing bowl, and a basket full of instruments. resonant sound-making ensues.
Ice Land
Wow, the lid is blowing off the formerly staid and sheep-like Icelandic society. Following the collapse of their entire economy from top to bottom, side to side, Icelanders are finally making a vocal and physically critical look at the excesses of the political and business leaders who they have supported without question over the last couple decades.
News from Iceland usually centers around glaciers, volcanoes, whaling, tourism, or in more recent years, music. But all that has been displaced by the spectacular fall from fifth highest on the world’s standard of living index to International Monetary Fund-ed pauper-hood, all in a couple months.
And of those same government officials, politicians, and business people, not one has paid any public price for their despotic (nepotistic!) greed (aside from some of their Empires collapsing, surely, though, after they have secreted away the cream). The Chairman of the Central Bank and former Prime Minister David Oddsson — nicknamed in the 1990s Little Hitler by the few who saw his rule as one based on enormous reserves of ego rather than economic expertise — has refused to resign or even admit any errors in judgment while the entire national economy has collapsed.
Not prone to display dirty national laundry in the international arena, Iceland has been ridiculed with an unprecedented vehemence in British and other international press outlets, often at the hands of expat Icelanders who are so fed up with the whole scandal that they are breaking the public self-critical taboo. Several leading international economists, familiar with the Icelandic situation are reminding the public of the warnings that were proffered months ago of the possibility of impending crisis, all which were ignored by a government who, in the run-up to the crisis, repeatedly claimed the economy was sound.
In private conversations, I frequently pointed out the deep nepotism in the architecture of power that suffused Icelandic society as well as the reciprocal sheep-like obedience of the general populace; especially among the government politicos but really everywhere in a system that sustains perhaps only three of the possible six degrees of separation. Everybody knows everybody.
At any rate, I had wanted to post some links to pertinent resources in this fast-developing situation if only that it might be an object lesson on the excesses of a system that Iceland was very talented in upholding — that of consumer capitalism in all its vain-glory.
There’s the Iceland Weather Report by native, Alda Sigmundsdóttir. She has taken some major strides over the history of her blog, most recently doing interviews with voices critical of the current regime including one with the Icelandic economist Thorvaldur Gylfason.
Another voice which I concur with strongly based on my long experience with Icelandic culture is voiced by New Zealand economist Robert Wade. Small dribbles of news in the more traditional style of Icelandic media (passive echoing of officials) may be found in English at the Morgunbladid (the main national newspaper). They have been absolute supporters of the Oddsson regime and the reactionary Independence Party that he represents.
I could relate many stories from Iceland, and, indeed, have done that here over the last 14 years, but these days, my attitude is that they deserve what has happened. The broader population accepted uncritically the fiscal direction of the Independence Party and the incredibly greedy business elite (very very large fish in a very very small pond). Some Icelandic voices have recently pointed out this very sheep-like behavior on behalf of the public — as something that hopefully is in the process of being purged through increasingly violent protest actions that are both long overdue and at the same time completely not disturbing the equilibrium of the ruling elite.
thesis proposal :: Background
Background for Research
While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.
Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”
thesis proposal :: Methodologies, Background, Timeline, Contexts
Concerning Particular Methodologies
Dialogues, Networks, and Collaboration — Much of my creative practice, research, and indeed, presence is built on the activation of robust and sustained dialogues with a wide range of Others both remote and local. These dialogues form a network. The most powerful situation I can imagine for creative research and production is an open human network. I am keen to engage on the ground with the Australian, Sydney-based, and UTS creative community. I am familiar with the milieu, having been in Sydney for six weeks in 2006 as a visiting artist at COFA, and I very much look forward to being there again. I have an extensive personal/professional network of Antipodal creatives which dates back to the early 1990s that I will be pleased to activate on a more face-to-face basis.
Distributed Performance — My own applied international research in distributed performance and tactical media over the last fifteen years is centered around synchronous live network-based social activities. Engaging a wide range of technical solutions, my work is a direct utilization of amplified digital networks as the locus for creative action. These areas of research experience include a variety of performance-based activities in theater, dance, sonic, and other expressive arts occurring in or augmented by collaborative networked situations. As a self-proclaimed networker, an area of core awareness in my research is the concept of presence — and how that human presence is directly and indirectly affected by any/all technologies that filter and attenuate that presence: how human expression across a network system is precisely formed and informed by the impression of the technologies used.
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cheap meat
Ken updates his latest cheap meat dreams and acorns activities — and active he is, as always, based there in the central Canadian town of Winnipeg (aka the city with the second largest global Icelandic-speaking population after Reykjavik and before Akureyri, Iceland). what do ya know!
hmmmmm…
YES! WE CAN!
Lulled to sleep after midnight (well, I was tired and had a migraine) on Monday night by the sounds of John McCain’s last ever presidential campaign rally drifting over the chilly night air from a couple miles away on Courthouse Square. Hank Williams Jr. and the roaring sounds of either people cheering or cars driving by, I couldn’t tell in my sleepy haze. Nor could I manage to get out of bed to mosey down there and document, another missed opportunities.
This region of Arizona is one of the most right-wing of any places in the US, for whatever reasons (historical and economic), and there is rife anger and fear bordering on paranoia among those elements (it’s a Marxist Muslim foreign takeover!). It’s a pity, it’s an illness, and it is not going away.
Don’t forget 62,450,831 to 55,393,194 (with about 98% counted…) represents a difference of only 2.4% of the total population.
wacky yachts
Meeting life, being submerged in its flow remains only a goal. Like breathing. Where a developed consciousness of breathing becomes a stabilizing influence on the extremes of condition that impress the body and the soul as night turns to day and day following transitions to night.
By the same author of Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, Andrea passes this wacky niblet (below) along. The yacht question is incredibly germane in the situation these days when a vast swath of the population still takes hits on the market (is foolish to listen to dullards/brokers) and then calculates for a few seconds in some small cavity in brain why the brokers still have the yachts, but then passes over any clear thought in order to stay up with discussions about lipstick in the national election. sheesh.
Wacky had plenty of other stuff too. He had different shells that he had found himself when he visited the seashore. Some of them had been on the beach, but some of them he had got out of almost two feet of water, which meant that when he had reached down for them, he had nearly had to put his nose in the water, because you have to take those chances if you want to get something valuable. The snail shells made a sound quite like the ocean, and the clam shells were going to be useful to keep collar buttons in as soon as he got old enough to wear collar buttons.
He had only one college pennant, but it was of the Colorado School of Mines, which is a college where they teach you to dig. Mr. Wallaby said that was more than they taught you in other colleges, so he wouldn’t need any other pennants. — Fred Schwed, Jr., “Wacky, The Small Boy,” 1939