posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

to Björn Bjarnason

12 August 1995

To the Honorable Björn Bjarnason, Minister of Education and Culture

As I have noted that you have put up some home pages asking for input regarding education in Iceland, I am transmitting this formal letter to you via email. (I apologize for not writing in Icelandic, but I am not very good at it even though I have lived in Iceland for five years…)

I am writing this letter to urge your continued support of the Icelandic Academy of Art.

Following I will present some personal opinions concerning the future of the Academy as well as some concrete suggestions and proposals. These considerations are based in my experience in teaching at MHÍ for the past five years as well as numerous guest-teaching positions at other Universities and Academies in Scandinavia and the US. Currently I am serving as Chair of the US-Iceland Fulbright Educational Commission (until September 1995) and as (Founding) Director of the Electronic Media and Photography program at MHÍ. My opinions are not necessarily those of either MHÍ or the Fulbright Board.

I believe Iceland is at a crossroads where the choices, opportunities, and outcomes will be largely determined by how the issue of a national educational policy is developed. As the post of Minister of Education and Culture determines this policy, I believe it to be the most critical cabinet posting in the entire government.

It is important to the future of Iceland that attention be directed to the building-up of a competitive and well-considered program of education in the arts. The recent confirmation of intent as expressed by the Althingi and the government in support of the official formation of the Icelandic Academy must be followed up by concrete action concerning the financial, physical, and ideological future of the institution.
more “to Björn Bjarnason”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

HR 82

I started this post back in March, titling it gut punch from the Feds, but I never finished it. Here we are at the end of the year and that gut-punch—a fiscal one that drained the life out of me this whole year—has been pulled. And pulled retroactively, no less, to the end of 2023: good deal! And, as well it should have!

Since entering the Amurikan to workforce in 1975, I worked enough ‘quarters’ and payed into the system to qualify for Social Security (SocSec). Not a whole lot, but some. So when I was planning what my meager retirement finances would look like, I used the numbers that SocSec officially generated for me based on those earnings. As I lived overseas for a much of my adult life, I had acquired a small pension in Iceland, an even smaller one from Finland, and recently a few dollars from the state of Colorado: together these totaled a few hundred dollars. However, unbeknownst to me—okay, shitty due-diligence on my part—there was a law on the federal books called the Windfall Elimination Provision which dictated through bilateral agreements with, for example, Iceland and Finland, that my SocSec in the United States would be penalized by 60% of the total value of my other pensions. Suddenly I was confronted by the realization that my Social Security in the US would shrink by more than $400/mo. that’s a lot of money when the total was only $1000/mo to begin with and the total of all pensions is less than $1500/mo before taxes.

Because the law mainly applied to anyone receiving a pension in the US—several million people—the 118th Congress, after 20 years of wrangling, came to the conclusion that there were too many valuable constituents getting screwed by this ‘provision’—teachers, police, fire-fighters, other municipal workers, and folks like me with international pensions. I still don’t understand the original rationale for the initiation of the WEP in the 1970s, like any of us were really making a huge ‘windfall’ … ever, while working or now in ‘retirement’. Sheesh. H.R.82 – Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 was passed last week by the House and Senate, and signed into law by the President. It is retroactive to December 2023, right before I parted from the CGS and had to pull the trigger on my SocSec, so I should get all the withheld funds back.

On a side note, I want to recognize the Icelanders who run their pension system, how professional, quick, accurate, informed, friendly, and efficient they have been to work with. It took all of four minutes to get set up at their office in Reykjavík. Same with the Finns, a humane experience with their very funny sense of humor. To the contrary, as I was navigating this issue at the beginning, the woman in the Denver SocSec office, with whom I could only *fax* (!!!) was quite the nasty character. The offices have an armed Federal guard (oh, wait, that’s supposed to make me *feel safe*?), and the *fax* technology issue was simply incomprehensible (and completely unacceptable in 2024!).

I was going to thank the politicians who made the repeal happen, but research into that made me nauseous. The Social Security Fairness Act was submitted to every Congress back to 2000! Duly noted: how, towards the final vote, most Republicans started to pile-on for a free ride of positive press after they had long-opposed passage. Pragmatic and corrupted power-seekers all, no kudos to any of them that I hope to receive my just payments—as I *should have* at the beginning. That modest increase will help cover ever-rising utility, medical, and food bills!

posted

Francis, bara að segja

[…] The misuse and destruction of the environment are also accompanied by a relentless process of exclusion. In effect, a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged, either because they are differently abled (handicapped), or because they lack adequate information and technical expertise, or are incapable of decisive political action. Economic and social exclusion is a complete denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against human rights and the environment. The poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse of the environment. They are part of today’s widespread and quietly growing “culture of waste”. […]

Pope Francis, 2015. Pope Francis’ Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly. The New York Times. Available at: https://tinyurl.com/qdmyswf [Accessed September 25, 2015].

posted

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”

posted
  • author: Eric Kluitenberg
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility

The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.

The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

info growth

the creative use of digital networks needs to proceed with an understanding of the underlying principle of human relation as the situated potential for the real exchange of energy. I have stated this so many times, in so many variations that I’ve gotten tired of it. is it obvious? or useless?

the following from the introduction to a conference taking place in London at the London School of Economics in April. I’d like to go, but can’t afford it. no scholarships available.

Taken together, these developments establish a new socio-economic environment in which information-based operations, and information goods and services acquire crucial importance. This is clearly shown in the rapid ascent to economic dominance of internet-based companies that demonstrate superior data editing and information management strategies. New commercial possibilities steadily develop around the production, ordering and distribution of information, as data become interoperable across sources and older forms of information (e.g. image, text and sound) are brought to bear upon one another. But information growth has wider social implications as well. The involvement of information in every walk of life redefines the relationship between information and reality, and reshapes the social practices through which information is stored, retrieved, understood, disseminated and remembered. Increasingly, information mediates between humans and reality. In this context, the activities of ordering, making sense, evaluating, navigating and acting upon information step onto the centre-stage of contemporary life, impinging upon skill profiles and personal choices. They often do so under conditions in which the established boundaries between individuals and institutions are rendered shifting and negotiable. — Jannis Kallinikos and Jose-Carlos Mariategui

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

The Wild Surmise

Sue Thomas poses some interesting questions in her search for possible synergies between the cyber and the natural. it’s an open project — add you own answers on her site!

Please describe where you lived and your strongest memories of nature during the years of your growing up. I’m interested in both positive and negative recollections of anything from the smallest plot to the largest wilderness, including animals and plants.

sotto voce: I am a native of Alaska, born there as a Cold War military child. My father, a senior Pentagon analyst, sport-hunted grizzly and polar bears among other magnificent animals. We moved to Boston, then Southern California, then Washington DC, living in suburban or rural fringes of cities. A primal memory was of viewing a total solar eclipse from a beach in Acadia National Park in the northeast state of Maine, USA, at five years old. Watching the sun be consumed, until there was only a shimmering ring of fire surrounding a black hole in the sky. My father was an amateur astronomer, and I accompanied him on a further four total eclipse expeditions. Along with these specific memories, there are general memories of sleeping in the woods, of eating around a fire, of washing in streams, mosquitoes, and dark star-brilliant skies. more “The Wild Surmise”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Partial Description of the World

I don’t normally post long passages of other writers, but Alan (Sondheim) posted this to nettime today: it penetrated the fog of hypo-texts that floods a typical day in front of screen-life.

The power grid provides 60 Hz here at approximately 115-117 volts; this is maintained by dynamos driven by steam or coal or oil or hydro held together in a malleable grid. The grid enters the city, where electricity is parceled out through substations to cables continuously maintained and repaired. Here, the cables are below ground. They drive my Japanese Zaurus PDA which utilizes an entire linux operating system on it. The Zaurus connects to the Internet through a wireless card that most often connects to my Linksys router, which is connected both to the power grid and the DSL modem by a cat cable. The DSL is operated by Verizon with its own grid at least nation-wide and continuously-maintained. The DSL of course connects more or less directly to the Internet, which is dependent upon an enormous number of protocol suites for its operation, the most prominent probably TCP/IP. The addresses of the Internet, through which I reach my goal of NOAA weather radar, are maintained by ICANN and other organizations. These organization are run by any number of people, who employ the Net, fax, telephone, and standard mail, to communicate world-wide. more “Partial Description of the World”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

killing hidden waters

Groundwater is essentially nonrenewable in the arid west because the economies that exploit it cannot abide a low rate of use. By combusting nonrenewable coal and nonrenewable oil and nonrenewable natural gas, they have managed to lift nonrenewable water at incredible rates. By using water with abandon they can compete with more humid regions, where it is basically a free good. This extractive process, like the looting of ore deposits, soil, forests, and fuels, is the machinery behind the expressions “conquest of nature” and “the miracle of the deserts.” Rip away the veneer of western history and this consumption of resources links the centuries.

[and the final paragraph of the book:]

This writing has always been on the wall. It is not a revelation to learn that cheap energy makes societies boom, that groundwater in arid regions has negligible recharge, that humans tend to use as much of anything as they can lay hands on. We can ignore these facts and pump, mine, and combust with abandon, or we can recognize these facts and attempt to construct a sustainable society. There will be no painless answers, nor were there any in the past.

Bowden, Charles (2003) Killing the Hidden Waters: The Slow Destruction of Water Resources in the American Southwest. Austin: University of Texas Press.

I was not expecting what he presented, and was fascinated when he repeatedly makes the connection between levels of technological implementation and several attendant processes — the consequent overall social structure, the impact on the environment, and the absolute energy cost of the different implementation levels. Starting with indigenous tribal groups and continuing through the contemporary inhabitants in the desert Southwest, he examines the usage of a range of resources — water, fossil fuels, soil, and forests — and makes a good case for the cataclysmic risk of unsustainable use. Indeed, pointing out the obvious, he makes it clear that unsustainable use (always) ends in some kind of socio-economic collapse — perhaps deferred temporarily by substituting one resource for another — but eventually depletion precipitates a collapse. Noting a sequence of energy-coalescing advances (the horse for the Comanche Indians, fossil groundwater for the High Texas Plains (the Llano Escatado), the metal shovel for the Pima indians, etc), Bowden examines the consequences of resource exploitation via those technological advances and compares the social system both before and after access to the resource (as afforded by the technology change). Basing the view on the intrinsic energy value of the resource, he forms a powerful critique against contemporary social systems that blindly insist on technologically maximizing usage of a non-renewable resource base. It is probably necessary to be reminded that these cycles occur across any (and all) civilizations, down to rather small population groups.

Compared to my own energy-based worldview, Bowden confirmed some examples that I often use in class — where the history of civilizations may be directly correlated to the existence of one or more non-renewable resources which causes the ‘rise and fall’ of the society. The rise is facilitated when the resource-base becomes exploitable through technological advance or through simple physical access to the geographic locus of the resource followed by the subsequent fall when the access is denied or the extent of the resource is exhausted. One example I use are the British hardwood forests that, through technical advance became the basis for the construction of the British fleet which eventually defeated the Spanish fleet. When those forests were depleted, the British had no substitute for the first-growth elm and oak trees which were used for the unitary keels of ships-of-the-line. Not long after the depletion of British forests towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, coal, a potent form of concentrated solar energy is discovered, and drove the industrial revolution. British Imperial hegemony follows the decline in this readily available coal. And, aside from a tenacious clinging to Gulf oil resources following World War I and continuing as a secondary partner to US hegemony, the British Empire is in very late decline. This example is over-simplified, but it is not difficult to make the case that a single fundamental resource or energy source or a combination of a few underlies any concentration of social power. And, conversely, it is not difficult within any social system to identify those primary sources, given that much of the attention of the social system as a whole is dedicated to the secure utilization of those resources.