tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25922940015914343012023-11-15T10:22:56.061-08:00Big Gav's Book ReviewsBig Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-55005544304090455702014-09-12T17:38:00.001-07:002014-09-13T16:30:34.539-07:00Trollhunter<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Troll-Hunter-DVD-Knut-N%C3%A6rum/dp/B004OBZMBS/crocodiletech-20">Trollhunter</a> is a Norwegian "found footage" mockumentary looking at a government conspiracy covering up the existence of Trolls in the Norwegian countryside.
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The style is a cross between "Blair Witch Project" and "Dark Side of the Moon" (I loved the clip towards the end where the Norwegian PM is talking about trolls impeding the expansion of the Norwegian electricity grid). Three students investigating bear poaching come across a suspicious man (with truly frightening scratches down the side of his vehicle) and decide to follow him. They get more than they bargained for, including a thorough smearing with "troll stench".
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Highly recommended if want to watch something different and enjoy horror movies.
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<iframe width="500" height="281" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vy2nAOdBUlw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-19020127247949643772014-02-05T04:05:00.000-08:002014-02-05T04:05:54.203-08:00Burmese DaysI was travelling through Burma last year and thought (<a href="http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/in-myanmar-retracing-george-orwells-steps/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0">unoriginally</a> it seems) it would be a good opportunity to read George Orwell's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Burmese-Days-Novel-George-Orwell/dp/0156148501/crocodiletech-20">Burmese Days</a> - readily available from streetside hawkers for a dollar or two (one of the pleasures of south east asian travel).
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Burmese Days was Orwell's first novel and (like "1984" but to a lesser extent) reads like an auto-biography of sorts - Orwell served in the Indian Imperial Force of Burma for 5 years in the 1920s before his return to London to become a writer.
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<center><a href="http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/burmese-days/"><img src="http://theorwellprize.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Burmese-Days.jpg"></a></center>
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The book itself is set in a minor outpost of the British Empire, with the colonial administrators grappling with the heat, boredom and political machinations of the natives using techniques ranging from racial superiority, brutal suppression and excessive alcohol consumption.
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Like most of Orwell's books you won't find yourself feeling uplifted by the time you've finished reading it, but it is an interesting companion piece for anyone wandering through Myanmar as it slowly opens up to the modern world.
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E-books of Burmese Days can be found <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79b/">here</a> and <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200051.txt">here</a>.
Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-82436974976884823732013-12-04T02:43:00.001-08:002013-12-04T02:43:57.639-08:00A Delicate TruthI always enjoy a good <a href="http://www.johnlecarre.com/">John Le Carre</a> novel and his recent book "<a href="http://www.johnlecarre.com/books/a-delicate-truth">A Delicate Truth</a>" was no exception.
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Le Carre seems to be taking an increasingly jaundiced view of the British government and it's intelligence agencies, in particular the unholy alliance between "New Labour" and neo-conservative political and industrial players from the US.
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<center><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/31/critical-eye-book-review-roundup"><img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/5/29/1369826783150/John-le-Carr--author-of-A-010.jpg"/></a></center>
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"Delicate Truth" tells the tale of a civil servant from the Foreign Office who is caught up in the machinations of a dodgy Minister and an unethical <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/a-delicate-truth-20130629-2p3os.html">military contracting firm</a> calling itself "Ethical Outcomes".
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"Delicate Truth" has received better reviews than some of Le Carre's other recent novels, with this piece from the Sydney Review of Book being a good example - <a href="http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/cast-as-a-spy/">Cast As A Spy</a>.
<blockquote>A Delicate Truth is a return to form. It’s not The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but it is a much more impressive and engaging book than Our Kind of Traitor, and in many ways it has an edge on A Wanted Man. We are not quite in the heartlands of le Carré’s mythic stamping ground, but we are in a place of murky darknesses and grey confusions. We are in the realm of the horrors that can be perpetuated under the cloak of security, in a world where every cloak must always come with a dagger, and truth and justice are liable to be stabbed to death. A Delicate Truth could scarcely be more pertinent (for what that’s worth) because it is concerned with the kind of moral anxieties that afflicted Bradley Manning – who was mercifully found not guilty on the capital charge of aiding the enemy, but went down heavily nonetheless – and brings to mind the controversies surrounding WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the fugitive American whistleblower Edward Snowden. Indeed, Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times, recently singled out A Delicate Truth as an allegory of the evils currently in play.</blockquote>
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Like all Le Carre novels it ultimately ends in tragedy but I enjoyed the ride.
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<center><a href="http://www.amazon.com/A-Delicate-Truth-Novel/dp/0670014893/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://www.johnlecarre.com/images/143.jpg"/></a></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-60442006646650116662012-11-19T00:42:00.000-08:002012-11-19T00:42:14.724-08:00Galileo's Dream<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Dream-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/dp/B005ZO8DHI/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51LHp8RP9yL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" align="left"/></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6391377-galileo-s-dream?auto_login_attempted=true">Galileo's Dream</a> is one of Kim Stanley Robinson's more interesting works, paying <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/15/galileos-dream-kim-stanley-robinson">homage</a> to what may be the first science fiction book - Johannes Kepler's book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnium_(novel)">Kepler's Dream</a>.
The story tells a detailed history of Galileo's life in Renaissance Italy, interwoven with brief periods of time in the Jovian moons in 3020.
Like many of Robinson's books, this one is long and filled with dense tracts outlining Robinson's theories about science, politics and history. While these can be somewhat heavy going at times, in general this book flows well and leaves you feeling profoundly moved by Galileo's long life and the contribution he made to human history.
Recommended.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-21696350552428984542012-09-09T03:51:00.001-07:002012-09-09T03:52:54.401-07:00The Godfather of Kathmandu<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Godfather-Kathmandu-Vintage-Crime-Lizard/dp/140009707X/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51hpqx9Fx5L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" align="right"/></a>The Godfather of Kathmandu is the 4th installment of John Burdett's Bangkok based series of detective novels.
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In this episode, Sonchai juggles investigating the grisly murder of a Hollywood film director who has gone to seed while having to grapple with the latest task that Colonel Vikorn has set for him in his eternal struggle with General Zinna to see who is the most corrupt individual in Thailand.
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Both plot threads take Sonchai to Kathmandu, where he falls under the sway of a Buddhist guru who wants to reverse the Chinese invasion of Tibet.
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Its not the best book in the series but it is entertaining as always.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-54903766922718912152012-09-09T01:19:00.001-07:002012-09-09T03:51:48.998-07:00Wanting: A Novel<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wanting-A-Novel-Richard-Flanagan/dp/080211900X/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517BRYDDWTL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" align="right"/></a>Richard Flanagan is the Tasmanian equivalent of Tim Winton - one of Australia's truly gifted modern writers.
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"Wanting" interweaves the stories of novelist Charles Dickens, Tasmanian governor Sir John Franklin and an aboriginal girl called Mathinna in an interesting although slightly unsatisfying story that illuminates a period of history that I didn't know much about.
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Not one of Flanagan's best books but worth a read nevertheless.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-79360344764255129602012-09-07T19:23:00.001-07:002012-09-09T00:31:35.618-07:00Good ReadsI've been using "<a href="http://www.goodreads.com">Goodreads</a>" a lot lately - its like a Trip Advisor for book readers - worth checking out.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-33075257507273128472011-06-20T05:14:00.000-07:002011-06-20T05:27:10.030-07:00Tijuana StraitsKem Nunn's 2004 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tijuana-Straits-Novel-Kem-Nunn/dp/0743279824/crocodiletech-20">Tijuana Straits</a> doesn't quite scale the heights I remember "Tapping The Source" and "The Dogs Of Winter" scaling a decade ago when I read them, but its still a worthy addition to the surf fiction genre.<br /><br />Nunn does have a knack for building tension in his stories, with a grotesque gang of evil-doers enabling the redemption of another damaged surfer as he wrestles away the demons from his past in the strange borderlands between California and the polluted wastelands of Tijuana to the south.<br /><br />Rick Kleffel at <a href="http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/2004/nunn-tijuana_straits.htm">Trashotron</a> has the best review out on the web :<br /><blockquote>On the border between California and Mexico, between land and sea, Kem Nunn finds Sam Fahey, a man who could have been a contender in the world of big-wave surfing, but was carried away by the white trash currents of his childhood on the border. In 'Tijuana Straits', Nunn brings readers his powerful novel to date, a compelling story of wasted potential and potential danger. The filth of our country runs down the rivers and slops into the streets of Tijuana, creating monsters of men. Nunn's powerful novel is blisteringly savage and painfully perceptive. We're poisoning ourselves. We may be dead and not even know it.<br /><br />Long past his glory days as a young surfer, long past even his days as a drug runner and small-time criminal, Sam Fahey is now an older-than-his-age employee of the government who tends to the endangered species that manage to survive in Tijuana Straits, the small valley just north of the border. When he saves the beaten, bruised and almost insensible Magdalena from wild dogs roaming the sand dunes, he makes a spot decision to take her in. Magdalena is an activist from over the border, who is fighting the multi-national corporations that have created the toxic wastelands known as the maquilladoras. She's uncertain how or even why she arrived in Tijuana Straits. Both she and Sam are soon to find out.<br /><br />Nunn keeps his story close and tight. His prose is evocative and lyrical but tough and to-the-point. He creates landscapes that are so intense as to be thoroughly immersive. The tiny ecosystem of Tijuana Straits, from the Outer Peak in the ocean where the Mystic Ridge breaks, to Garage-Door Tijuana, an intricate maze of trash and treasure comes meticulously to life in Nunn's prose. He also creates the hellish world of the maquilladoras in Tijuana proper. This bleak landscape of ruin, rust and toxic waste shambles to life and itself gives birth to monsters. Every terrorizing story about bad drugs and bad neighborhoods comes to fiery life as Nunn creates the compelling and ferocious Armando Santoya.<br /><br />Santoya's stories -- and the stories of his comrades from the maquilladoras -- are intense, compelling stories of terror and horror. Nunn writes powerfully and passionately enough to evoke the supernatural dread within the natural world. He peels the skin off of an ugly reality and finds the deeper ugliness within, nestled next to a humanity so stepped-upon, so beat-down, so used that the terror is intimately mixed with sympathy. Nunn's monsters are ultimately human and ultimately frightening. And for readers, nothing is quite so bracingly enjoyable as glancing in the mirror and seeing your own scarred face, sheeted in the blood of others.<br /><br />But Nunn's novel isn't merely a tale of terror. The horrific landscape of the maquilladoras borders on the beauty of the Pacific Ocean. And though Sam Fahey is damaged goods through and through, he's still a human being capable of greatness. Nunn's love of the huge, cryptic slab of ocean that washes upon our shores is borne out in passages that mine the power of nature, that excavate with a single man on a single board and find somewhere on the border a purity that evokes peace. It's the purity that brings redemption, that cleanses the filth from our veins and our lives. </blockquote><br /><center><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tijuana-Straits-Novel-Kem-Nunn/dp/0743279824/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780743279826_9780743279826.jpg"/></a></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-64206162703530816712011-06-14T01:02:00.000-07:002011-06-14T01:06:11.153-07:00All watched over by machines of loving grace (part 2)I watched the second episode of "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2011/05/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving.html">All watched over by machines of loving grace</a>" today and found it interesting but mildly annoying.<br /><br />I'd noted the parallels in the first episode to Fred Turner's book "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2010/03/from-counterculture-to-cyberculture.html">From Counterculture To Cyberculture</a>", so I wasn't particularly surprised to see Turner make an appearance in this episode, along with Stewart Brand, and the tracing of these ideas back to <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2009/02/buckminster-fullers-critical-path.html">Bucky Fuller</a>.<br /><br />What was new about this episode was the repeating of common misconceptions about "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/02/limits-to-scenario-planning.html">The Limits To Growth</a>" and the strange line of reasoning that seemed to argue that the search for "equilibrium" (ie. a scenario where our overall impact on the environment is trimmed to the point where we don't end up having the population crash as we overwhelm the planet's carrying capacity) that "Limits" undertakes is really arguing for a form of political stasis where no radical change is to be contemplated. <br /><br />While this may have been a goal of the <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/11/hubbert-king-of-technocrats.html">Technocrats</a> that preceded them, it doesn't ring true for the systems theorists.<br /><br />Curtis even notes that Jay Forrester and the "Limits" crew explicitly said they weren't considering politics, but discounts this as a form of dishonesty rather than accepting that the book is just outlining scenarios around resource consumption, population and pollution rather than being a political manifesto (which would have been entirely counterproductive).<br /><br />Where is does veer towards politics (in the section entitled "Transitions to a sustainable system", where it prescribes the changes required to make our global economy sustainable), the practices recommended are both positive and a change from the general status quo today - it doesn't read like a manual for perpetuating elite control and forbidding political change, with the non-technical recommendations including :<br /><br />* poverty reduction<br />* nonviolent conflict resolution<br />* accurate/unbiased media<br />* “decentralisation of economic power, political influence and scientific expertise”<br />* “stable populations” and “low birth rates” by “individual choice”<br /><br />Curtis' main point (like Turner's before him) - that the counterculture / hippie / cyberculture ideal of a world without politics is a fantasy - is valid, but he really goes off the rails trying to blame the systems theorists and ecologists for the problems of the world today.<br /><br />The section about the colour revolutions in eastern europe, in particular, seemed wildly off base - he assumes that this genuinely was a case of leaderless uprising spontaneously organised via network culture - when instead they were orchestrated from the US to expand western influence at the expense of the Russians - and naturally enough faltered once the population realised that their interests weren't really being advanced at all by the changes (just as we'll most likely see with the current "Arab Spring" equivalent).<br /><br /><center><iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Yq0xVuRG4ng" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center><br /><br /><i>Cross posted from <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2011/06/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving.html">Peak Energy</a></i>.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-32832046525196149992011-03-08T17:58:00.000-08:002011-03-08T17:58:00.270-08:00Why The Car Isn't Going Away: What Makes Us Tick<a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-Us-Tick-Desires/dp/073362507X/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ytNspXvBL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" align="right"/></a>I read <a href="http://blog.booktopia.com.au/2010/09/27/hugh-mackay-author-of-what-makes-us-tick-answers-ten-terrifying-questions/">Hugh Mackay</a>'s book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-Us-Tick-Desires/dp/073362507X/crocodiletech-20">What Makes Us Tick?: The Ten Desires That Drive Us</a> over the Christmas break and found it to be a reasonably entertaining piece of pop psychology.<br /><br />Mackay identifies 10 driving "desires" that guide our lives (some good, some often bad):<br /><br />- the desire to be taken seriously (which he identifies as the "primary" desire)<br />- the desire for 'my place'<br />- the desire for something to believe in<br />- the desire to connect<br />- the desire to be useful<br />- the desire to belong<br />- the desire for more<br />- the desire for control<br />- the desire for something to happen<br />- the desire for love<br /><br />The section on "the desire for 'my place'" includes an interesting take on the role of the car in western society today:<br /><blockquote>The western world is characterised by speed, restlessness and motion (look at any major airport at almost any hour of day or night), so its hardly surprising that for many people in modern urban settings, 'my place' is neither a building nor a piece of the Earth's surface, but that somewhat ubiquitous mobile enclosure we call the car.<br /><blockquote>My very own space ? I'll tell you where that is - behind the wheel of my car. It's the only place I ever have to myself and it's the only place where I seem to get any real peace.</blockquote><br />I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people say the car is the most comfortable place they ever inhabit; the place where they feel totally in control (helped immeasurably by the symbolism of the steering wheel in their hands and an accelerator pedal under their foot); the place that feels more like a personal space than anywhere else they spend their time...<br /><br />Cars are for escaping into, for meditation, for thinking, for praying, for courting, for sex, for conversation, for eating and drinking, for sleep, for letting off steam and for generating unrivaled - and positively dangerous - feelings of power. Oh, and for driving too: cars are our most flexible and efficient means of transport, though at enormous cost to life and limb - to say nothing of the cost to the quality of the air we breathe and the health of the planet.</blockquote><br />The role the car now performs seems (in my mind at least) to guarantee the success of electric vehicles in a post oil wold - for all the benefits of public transport, transit oriented development and walkable neighbourhoods, none of them offer a personalised space that people can take with them when they are on the move.<br /><br /><i>Cross posted from <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-car-isnt-going-away-what-makes-us.html">Peak Energy</a></i>.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-18193741587991488562011-02-18T03:21:00.000-08:002011-02-18T21:29:16.005-08:00Zero History<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zero-History-William-Gibson/dp/0425240770/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515G53k0a6L._SL75_.jpg" align="right"/></a><a href=""http://www.amazon.com/Zero-History-William-Gibson/dp/0425240770/crocodiletech-20"/>Zero History</a> follows in the footsteps of William Gibson's previous 2 books, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Recognition-William-Gibson/dp/0399149864/crocodiletech-20">Pattern Recognition</a>" and <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/08/money-shot-william-gibsons-spook.html">Spook Country</a>", with the atmosphere in the novel remaining much the same as before.<br /><br />Bruce Sterling provided a cool idea ("the ugliest t-shirt in the world") for the finale which brought together the full gamut of characters and macguffins in a satisfying way.<br /><br /><a href="http://boingboing.net/2010/09/06/gibsons-zero-history.html">Boing Boing</a> has a good micro-review of the book and Wired has an <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/09/william-gibson-interview/all/1">interview with Gibson</a> about it.<br /><blockquote>William Gibson's latest novel, Zero History, is his best yet, a triumph of science fiction as social criticism and adventure. Continuing on from 2007's Spook Country, Zero History features a reformed, dried out version of Milgrim, the junkie anti-hero from Spook Country. He's been rehabilitated at the expense of Hubertus Bigend, the shadowy power-broker whom we first met in Pattern Recognition. Bigend has got Milgrim hunting for the designer behind a mysterious line of fetish-denim, in the hopes of remaking it as the basis for a lucrative US military contract; this being Bigend's idea of novelty-seeking good times.<br /><br />Joining Milgrim is Hollis Henry, the former pop star from Spook Country, still reluctantly in Bigend's employ, but even more conflicted, and missing her ex-boyfriend, a thrill-seeking nutjob whose idea of a good time in jumping off tall buildings in a glidersuit. Milgrim -- and later, Hollis -- track the secret denim from South Carolina to London to Paris and back to London again, and very quickly find themselves embroiled in an intrigue involving US spooks, experimental UAVs, rogue infosec specialists, and a palace coup at Blue Ant, Bigend's legendary design and branding firm.<br /><br />What makes Zero History into Gibson's best so far is how absolutely perfectly he captures the futuristic nature of the present day. Milgrim -- a junkie dried out after a ten year fugue of living rough and stealing to buy pills -- is well-suited to this task, emerging as if from a time-machine into the 21st century in full swing, able to narrate its essential strangeness without seeming contrived. But all of Gibson's characters are in the business of understanding how we got to this futuristic present, and on every page, there is a jolt of pleasant dissonance as Gibson does the conjurer's trick of making you look at your surroundings with fresh eyes.<br /><br />Here is a book that is both contemporary, and futuristic -- and anachronistic, filled as it is with characters who long for simpler times, who fetishize antique computers and vintage memorabilia. It's a book that doesn't so much feel written as designed, cunningly filled with trompe d'esprit effects that fool your brain into staring at your own life from the objective distance of a Martian. </blockquote><br /><center><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="500" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DtpfhB98ovA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-30657302700713902232011-02-18T01:29:00.000-08:002012-09-09T03:53:11.471-07:00Moon<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Sam-Rockwell/dp/B002T9H2MO/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51qsG9GDsCL._SL500_AA300_.jpg" align="right"/></a><a href="http://www.sonypictures.com.au/movies/moon/">Moon</a> is an entertaining psychological thriller with a slightly Gattaca'esque feel to it.<br /><br />The movie is, unsurprisingly, set on the moon, and features Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell. Sam has two weeks left of a three-year stint overseeing the <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2007/08/mining-moon.html">mining of Helium 3</a> from the far side of the Moon. <br /><br />Sam longs to see his wife and daughter again, but in the meantime is cared for by an over-protective computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Before his stint ends, there is an accident, and when Sam re-awakes he is startled to encounter another Sam…<br /><br />The movie got great reviews from <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2692969.htm">At The Movies</a> and an impressively high 90% rating at <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10009075-moon/">RottenTomatoes</a> - and I've got to say I rate it highly as well, both for the acting and for some of the ideas explored (although I thought the ending was a little weak).<br /><br /><center><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="500" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/twuScTcDP_Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-33359982293394572572011-02-18T00:45:00.000-08:002012-09-09T03:53:32.370-07:00127 Hours<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041KKYDI/crocodiletech-20">127 Hours</a> was inspired by the true story of Aaron Ralstron, an adventurous young man in his 20's who went on a solo trip through Canyonlands National Park in Utah and, low on water and food, got his arm caught between a boulder and a wall of rock.<br /><br />Ralstron wrote a book about his experiences (entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/127-Hours-Between-Rock-Place/dp/1451617704/crocodiletech-20">Between a Rock and a Hard Place</a>) and received considerable publicity at the time, so the story wasn't a mystery to me, however given that it was showing at the <a href="http://www.stgeorgeopenair.com.au/">Open Air Cinema</a> I thought I'd check it out.<br /><br />While the venue was (as always) awe inspiring, the film itself felt flat - <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/cinetology/2011/02/14/127-hours-movie-review-hard-edge-entertainment/?source=cmailer">Crikey</a> sums it up:<br /><br /><blockquote>While 127 Hours impresses on a technical level the film’s bouncy aesthetics and restless energy don’t do its psychological depth any favours. The film lacks the emotional core it desperately needed for the story to resonate. It should have felt inspiring as a triumph over adversity human interest story but, sadly, it doesn’t.</blockquote><br /><center><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="500" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OlhLOWTnVoQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-47227629061031146672010-09-07T01:39:00.000-07:002012-09-09T03:53:45.756-07:00Tony Blair's Ghost WriterGuy Rundle has a meandering piece of commentary at Crikey looking at the minority governments in the UK and Australia which closes with a note about the cancellations of Tony Blair's planned signing of his auto-biography at Waterstones in London - <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=170001">Faith, hope and clarity? Nah, it’s faith no more</a>.<br /><blockquote>Desperation and bad faith is the leitmotif of our final contestant, Tony Blair, who has just announced that he will be pulling out of his anticipated huge book signing at Waterstone's on Piccadilly, after a Dublin signing was turned into chaos by protesters.<br /><br />The Waterstone's signing, with a page of security instructions, was to b a late fixture in the protest calendar; hundreds if not thousands would have turned up to bear witness against this delusional mass murderer one last time. By tonight, Blair must have realised that that was all it would be remembered for. There is already a proliferating campaign to reshelve his portentous work in the "crime" section. Blair's response to the gathering storm: he was cancelling his signing because of the possible presence of British National Party protesters.<br /><br />Yah, right. Faith gone bad is the word.</blockquote><br /><center><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/feb/16/roman-polanski-the-ghost-writer"><img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2010/2/15/1266239275210/Scene-from-Roman-Polanski-001.jpg" width=500/></a></center><br />Tony Blair figured prominently in Roman Polanski's latest film, "The Ghost Writer", which I saw recently and thoroughly enjoyed.<br /><br />The movie is based on a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Writer-Robert-Harris/dp/1439130477/crocodiletech-20">novel by Robert Harris</a>, involves an unrepentant former British prime minister who took the UK into the war in Iraq.<br /><br />It includes thinly disguised portraits of Cherie Blair and the late Robin Cook and floats an interesting theory as to why Blair was so unconditionally supportive of the neoconservative war in the middle east, mentioned glnacingly here in this <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/the-ghosts-of-tony-blair_b_509269.html">HuffPo review</a>:<br /><blockquote>The novel by Harris -- he was a friend of Blair who broke with him over the Iraq War -- is very good. As is the basic story, good enough for me to know the novel well and still enjoy the twists and turns of the film.<br /><br />Blair, the only Labour Party leader in the history of Britain to win three national elections -- beginning with his Obama-like popular ascension to the office of prime minister in 1997 -- was well on his way to becoming the global statesman of the age before he fatefully threw in with with the seemingly far more conservative Bush/Cheney White House. Together, they invaded Iraq and pursued ruthless tactics in what was called the war on terror.<br /><br />Which, in the end, left many wondering in astonishment and anger how Blair could have been such a down-the-line, uncritical partner in disastrous policies. And which left Blair himself, struggling to explain, saying that he would have invaded even had he known that the intelligence he'd had spun up to present an imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction was illusory, dodging angry crowds of protesters to testify before an official inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War in late January.<br /><br />But before that, Blair, long the favorite to become the first president of the European Union, found himself last fall in the same city as Polanski. The director was in Zurich because he was in jail there following his shock arrest on a three decade-old sex charge. Blair was in Zurich to meet with Swiss financial and corporate power brokers to try to save his candidacy for the European presidency.<br /><br />While Polanski, to the surprise of many, was able to complete the production of The Ghost Writer while incarcerated, Blair's time in Switzerland proved less successful. He delivered a speech to appeal to leaders of the continent's dominant center/right faction, arguing that government intervention into markets should not go too far. But leaders from the right still found him too liberal and leaders from the left could not forgive his tight alliance with Bush and Cheney on Iraq and the war on terror.<br /><br />Harris's story (he co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski) provides an answer as to why Blair, Adam Lang in the thinly fictionalized version, threw in with Bush and Cheney. It may be outrageous balderdash, but it is quite logical.<br /><br />And for many, as Blair undoubtedly knows, a logical explanation will do.<br /><br />Which is why he, along with Polanski, is quite likely a ghost of what he'd been.</blockquote><br /><center><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QRDq4td-qAk?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QRDq4td-qAk?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><i>Cross posted from <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2010/09/tony-blairs-ghost-writer.html">Peak Energy</a></i>.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-39641406587909069362010-06-24T04:20:00.000-07:002010-06-24T04:37:29.865-07:00Get Him To The Greek"<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2917503.htm">Get Him To The Greek</a>" features Jonah Hill as Aaron Green, as a junior executive at "Pinnacle Records", who is sent by his boss (played by Sean Coombs) to fetch notoriously unreliable British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) to play an anniversary concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.<br /><br />Once Aaron reaches London he finds himself trapped in a fairly debauched version of the mis-matched guy travel movie (think "Midnight Run" or "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", but with a lot more gross-out humour involved), as they sample the delights of London, New York, Las Vegas and LA on the way to the gig.<br /><br />The movie made me laugh out loud more than anything I an remember in recent years and in the aftermath I've decided I've got to get a furry wall for my house.<br /><br />The ending is a little flat (but I guess mandatory for Hollywood) but definitely worth watching.<br /><br /><center><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N6ixkr0-qvo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N6ixkr0-qvo&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-34655374404011047902010-06-24T04:09:00.001-07:002012-09-09T03:52:28.301-07:00Bangkok Tattoo<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bangkok-Tattoo-John-Burdett/dp/1400032911/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gUFcNinXL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" align="left"/></a>I just returned from a visit to South East Asia and, as luck would have it, had taken John Burdett's book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bangkok-Tattoo-John-Burdett/dp/1400032911/crocodiletech-20">Bangkok Tattoo</a>" along with me, which proved to be both entertaining and provided some interesting background material for the Sukhumvit Road area I stayed in in Bangkok a couple of time during my travels.<br /><br />Bangkok Tattoo is a murder-mystery story featuring a slightly corrupt Thai policeman, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and his rather less upstanding superior officer, Colonel Vikorn, and their efforts to first cover up, and later solve, the mystery of an American found dead near one of Bangkok's red light districts - Soi Cowboy, where a go-go bar they own is located - while grappling with a range of unsavoury characters ranging from drug smuggling army officers to CIA agents to Islamic fundamentalists.<br /><br />The novel functions as an interesting tourist guide to Bangkok (with a bit of Buddhist philosophy thrown in for good measure) as well as providing a rather jaded view of the American "war on terror" - worth a read.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-77976230922525826452010-05-13T03:48:00.000-07:002012-09-09T03:52:40.631-07:00Bedroom Secrets of the Master ChefsIrvine Welsh is the master of tales of the grotesque, and in spite of his books all being set in the same milieu, amongst the alcoholic and drug abusing working class of Edinburgh, he usually manages to bring enough new ideas to each story to make them worth reading, in spite of the regular feeling of deja vu.<br /><br />The main characters of this story are food inspectors working for Edinburgh council, with one of their "customers" being an obese celebrity chef who is, in part, famous for his book "Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs".<br /><br />The food inspectors quickly grow to loathe one another, but find themselves tied by a magical bond which seems destined to lead one or both of them to their demise.<br /><br />If don't mind having to interpret Scottish and enjoy an endless stream of foul language and gross imagery, then you'll probably find the book entertaining.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bedroom-Secrets-Master-Chefs-Novel/dp/0393064530/crocodiletech-29"><img src="http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/09/04/Welsh_060904111037385_wideweb__300x458.jpg"/></a></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-2556358402032591922010-05-08T04:20:00.000-07:002010-05-08T05:55:08.785-07:00Into The Wild<a href="http://www.intothewild.com/">Into The Wild</a> is based on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Into-Wild-Jon-Krakauer/dp/0385486804/crocodiletech-20">Jon Krakauer's 1997 book</a> of the same name, chronicling the adventures of Christopher McCandless. The film was directed by Sean Penn (who also wrote the screenplay).<br /><br />The movie has a pretty low key, documentary type feel to it, telling the story of McCandless's early adult years and his troubled relationship with his family via a series of flashbacks, interspersed between the story of his venture into the wilds of Alaska, where he lives alone in an abandoned bus, tryig to build up sufficient wilderness skills to be able to survive on his own.<br /><br />Its an interesting story, albeit a slightly depressing one, and the film is well executed.<br /><br /><center><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2LAuzT_x8Ek&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2LAuzT_x8Ek&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-54027278496063093512010-05-08T04:16:00.000-07:002012-09-09T03:54:07.522-07:00From Counterculture To Cyberculture: The Life And Times Of Stewart Brand<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-Stewart-Network-Utopianism/dp/0226817423/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/counterculture.jpg" align="right"/></a>This post is the latest installment of my series on Bucky Fuller and was prompted by my reading <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/fredturner/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/2">Fred Turner</a>'s book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-Stewart-Network-Utopianism/dp/0226817415/crocodiletech-20">From Counterculture To Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism</a>", which looks at the influence Bucky Fuller had on a range of people, in particular Stewart Brand, who helped create first the hippie counterculture and the back to the land movement of the sixties and seventies, then later the cyberculture that grew up around the San Francisco bay area. <br /><br />I won't try to review the book here as I wouldn't do it justice - but I highly recommend it if you have any interest in this particular piece of history.<br /><br />Brand has had a significant influence on the environmental movement which has continued through to the current day and the evolution of his views over that time is worth spending some time considering.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://media-cyber.law.harvard.edu/VideoBerkman/fred_turner_2006-12-01.mp4"><img alt="fred_turner_2006-12-01.jpg" src="http://www.smartmobs.com/fred_turner_2006-12-01.jpg" height="345" width="347"></a></center><br /><br />Turner has some great excerpts from his book at "EDGE" magazine - <a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/turner06/turner06_index.html">STEWART BRAND MEETS THE CYBERNETIC COUNTERCULTURE</a>.<br /><blockquote>As they came of age, Stewart Brand and others of his generation faced two questions: How could they keep the world from being destroyed by nuclear weapons or by the large-scale, hierarchical governmental and industrial bureaucracies that had built and used them? And how could they assert and preserve their own holistic individuality in the face of such a world?<br /><br />As he sought to answer those questions, Brand turned first to the study of ecology and a systems-oriented view of the natural world. Later, after graduating from Stanford and serving several years as a draftee in the army, he found his way into a series of art worlds centered in Manhattan and San Francisco. For the artists of those communities, as for Brand's professors at Stanford, cybernetics offered a new way to model the world. Even at the height of the cold war, many of the most important artists of this period, figures such as John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg, embraced the systems orientation and even the engineers of the military-industrial research establishment. Together they read Norbert Wiener and, later, Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller; across the late 1950s and well into the 1960s, they made those writings models for their work. At the same time, both the artists he met and the authors they read presented the young Stewart Brand with a series of role models. If the army and the cold war corporate world of Brand's imagination moved according to clear lines of authority and rigid organizational structures, the art worlds of the early 1960s, like the research worlds of the 1940s, lived by networking, entrepreneurship, and collaboration. As he moved among them, Brand came to appreciate cybernetics as an intellectual framework and as a social practice; he associated both with alternative forms of communal organization.<br /><br />Ecology as Alternative Politics<br /><br />Brand first encountered systems-oriented ways of thinking at Stanford in a biology class taught by Paul Ehrlich. By the end of the decade, Ehrlich was famous for predicting in his book The Population Bomb (1968) that population growth would soon lead to ecological disaster. In the late 1950s, however, he was concentrating on the fundamentals of butterfly ecology and systems-oriented approaches to evolutionary biology. These preoccupations reflected the extraordinary influence of cybernetics and information theory on American biology following World War II. At the level of microbiology, information theory provided a new language with which to understand heredity. Under its influence, genes and sequences of DNA became information systems, bits of text to be read and decoded. In the 1950s, as Lily Kay has pointed out, microbiology became "a communication science, allied to cybernetics, information theory, and computers." Information theory also exerted a tremendous pull on biological studies of organisms and their interaction. Before World War II, biologists often focused on the study of individual organisms, hierarchical taxonomies of species, and the sexual division of labor. Afterward, many shifted toward the study of populations and the principles of natural selection in terms modeled on cybernetic theories of command and control. ...<br /><br />For Brand, even as a student at Stanford, the ability to think outside the dominant paradigm of cold war conflict both marked and made possible an advancement in human evolution. The liberation of the individual was simultaneously an American ideal, an evolutionary imperative, and, for Brand and millions of other adolescents, a pressing personal goal.<br /><br />The question was, How could that liberation be achieved in daily life? Brand's search for individual freedom led to a decade-long migration among a wide variety of bohemian, scientific, and academic communities. In the course of these travels, Brand encountered both communal ways of living and a series of technocentric, systems-oriented theories that served as ideological supports for communalism. Often enough, the theories themselves were not explicitly theories of social organization so much as theories of local social practices, such as how to make art or how to take LSD or how to run a business meeting. As he moved among these communities, however, and later, when his Whole Earth Catalog became a forum in which such communities met, Brand began to see how the systems orientation of Paul Ehrlich's population biology, combined with new, countercultural modes of living, might offer an appealingly individualistic lifestyle—not only for him, but also for anyone else who could abandon the halls of bureaucratic America. ...<br /><br /> The same tension between global humanist ideals and local elite practice would haunt much of the New Communalist movement over the next decade, and the Whole Earth network for years after that. But in the early 1960s, the linking of the global and the local helped account for much of Marshall McLuhan's appeal within the emerging counterculture. McLuhan's simultaneous celebration of new media and tribal social forms allowed people like Stewart Brand to imagine technology itself as a tool with which to resolve the twin cold war dilemmas of humanity's fate and their own trajectory into adulthood. That is, McLuhan offered a vision in which young people who had been raised on rock and roll, television, and the associated pleasures of consumption need not give those pleasures up even if they rejected the adult society that had created them. Even if the social order of technocracy threatened the species with nuclear annihilation and the individual young person with psychic fragmentation, the media technologies produced by that order offered the possibility of individual and collective transformation. McLuhan's dual emphases also allowed young people to imagine the local communities they built around these media not simply as communities built around consumption of industrial products, but as model communities for a new society. In McLuhan's writing, and in the artistic practice of groups like USCO and, later, the psychedelic practices of groups like San Francisco's Merry Pranksters, technologies produced by mass, industrial society offered the keys to transforming and thus to saving the adult world.<br /><br />No one promoted this doctrine more fervently than the technocratic polymath Buckminster Fuller. Architect, designer, and traveling speechmaker, Fuller became an inspiration to Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth network, and the New Communalist movement as a whole across the 1960s. The geodesic domes Fuller patented soon after World War II came to be favored housing on communes throughout the Southwest. Fragments of his idiosyncratic conceptual vocabulary, such as "tensegrity," "synergy" and "Spaceship Earth," bubbled up steadily in discussions of how and why alternative communities should be built. And Fuller himself—seventy years old in 1965, short, plump, bespectacled, and, when he spoke in public, often clad in a three-piece suit with an honorary Phi Beta Kappa key dangling at the waist— seemed to model a kind of childlike innocence that many New Communalists sought to bring into their own adulthoods. If the politicians and CEOs of mainstream America were distant and emotionally reserved, Fuller was playful and engaged. And like his young audiences, he displayed a highly individualistic turn of mind and a deep concern with the fate of the species. Fuller made his name designing futuristic technologies such as the three wheeled Dymaxion car and, most famously, the geodesic dome, but the roots of his interests reached deep into America's pre-industrial past. ...<br /><br />Fuller, like Emerson, saw the material world as the reflection of an otherwise intangible system of rules. But unlike Emerson and the Transcendentalists, Fuller linked that system of rules not only to the natural world, but also to the world of industry. During World War I, Fuller had watched his four-year-old daughter Alexandra die of infantile paralysis, contracted in part, he believed, because the family's home was badly built. At the time, he was working as a contractor with the navy. Earlier, as a junior officer, he had seen how, with proper coordination, extraordinary industrial resources could be mustered to solve military problems. In his view, his daughter had died directly from a disease but indirectly from a failure to distribute the world's resources appropriately. This conviction grew during World War II and the early years of the cold war, when once again Fuller saw the full scope of industrial production at work, as well as the inequality with which the world's resources were distributed. What humankind required, he came to believe, was an individual who could recognize the universal patterns inherent in nature, design new technologies in accord with both these patterns and the industrial resources already created by corporations and the military, and see that those new technologies were deployed in everyday life. <br /><br />In a 1963 volume called Ideas and Integrities, a book that would have a strong impact on USCO and Stewart Brand, Fuller named this individual the "Comprehensive Designer." According to Fuller, the Comprehensive Designer would not be another specialist, but would instead stand outside the halls of industry and science, processing the information they produced, observing the technologies they developed, and translating both into tools for human happiness. Unlike specialists, the Comprehensive Designer would be aware of the system's need for balance and the current deployment of its resources. He would then act as a "harvester of the potentials of the realm," gathering up the products and techniques of industry and redistributing them in accord with the systemic patterns that only he and other comprehensivists could perceive. To do this work, the Designer would need to have access to all of the information generated within America's burgeoning technocracy while at the same time remaining outside it. He would need to become "an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist." Constantly poring over the population surveys, resource analyses, and technical reports produced by states and industries, but never letting himself become a full-time employee of any of these, the Comprehensive Designer would finally see what the bureaucrat could not: the whole picture. <br /><br />Being able to see the whole picture would allow the Comprehensive Designer to realign both his individual psyche and the deployment of political power with the laws of nature. In contrast to the bureaucrat, who, so many critics of technocracy had suggested, had been psychologically broken down by the demands of his work, the Comprehensive Designer would be intellectually and emotionally whole. Neither engineer nor artist, but always both simultaneously, he would achieve psychological integration even while working with the products of technocracy. Likewise, whereas bureaucrats exerted their power by means of political parties and armies and, in Fuller's view, thus failed to properly distribute the world's resources, the Comprehensive Designer would wield his power systematically. That is, he would analyze the data he had gathered, attempt to visualize the world's needs now and in the future, and then design technologies that would meet those needs. Agonistic politics, Fuller implied, would become irrelevant. What would change the world was "comprehensive anticipatory design science.' ...<br /><br /> At another level, though, the swirling scene at the Trips Festival, and Brand's role in it, represented a coming together of the New Communalist social ideals then emerging and the ideological and technological products of cold war technocracy. The festival itself was a techno-social hybrid. The Longshoreman's Hall surrounded dancers with the lights, images, and music of electronic media. The bodies of many dancers were infused with LSD. To the extent that they felt a sense of communion with one another, the sensation was brought about by their integration into a single techno-biological system within which, as Buckminster Fuller put it, echoing Norbert Wiener, the individual human being was simply another "pattern-complex." Brand himself had organized the event in keeping with the systems principles he had encountered at Stanford and afterward. Far from asserting direct control over events, he had built an environment, a happening, a laboratory. He had set forth the conditions under which a system might evolve and flower, and he had stocked the biological and social worlds of those who entered that system with technologies that allowed them to feel as though the boundaries between the social and the biological, between their minds and their bodies, and between themselves and their friends, were highly permeable. He had helped found a new tribe of technology-loving Indians, artistic engineers of the self. Very soon these new Comprehensive Designers would set out from San Francisco to found their own communities in the wilderness.<br /><br />When they got there, thought Brand, what they would need most would be tools and information. </blockquote><br /><b>Stewart Brand</b><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand">Stewart Brand</a> is a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19wwln-domains-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine">writer</a> / entrepreneur who has started a range of ventures over the years, starting with <a href="http://www.wholeearth.com/index.php">Whole Earth Catalog</a> and moving on to <a href="http://www.well.com/">the Well</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Business_Network">GBN</a> (the Global Business Network) and most recently the <a href="http://www.longnow.org/">Long Now Foundation</a>. He also has had strong connections to <a href="http://www.wired.com">Wired</a>, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (<a href="http://www.eff.org/">EFF</a>) and MIT's <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/">Media Lab</a> (and, in his early days, Ken Kesey and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Pranksters">Merry Pranksters</a>).<br /><br />Stewart's particular genius has been in the creation of forums (ranging from magazines to conferences to online discussion groups to consulting organisations) that have enabled people with expertise in different disciplines to come together and exchange ideas about innovative uses of technology.<br /><br /><b>The Whole Earth Catalog and the back to the land movement</b><br /><br />One of the better <a href="http://lis810-labor.blogspot.com/2007/04/book-review-from-counterculture-to.html">reviews</a> of Turner's book looks at the emergence of sixties youth culture and influence thinkers like Marshall McLuhan, Paul Ehrlich and Bucky Fuller had on Brand the counterculture in general.<br /><blockquote>Turner gives the label “ New Communalism” to the utopian impulses that led both to the portion of the sixties counterculture which found its central text in the Whole Earth Catalog, and to the embrace of technology which found itself eventually at home in the 1990’s with some aspects of insurgent Republicanism. He suggests further that the values of the communal 1960’s utopian movement exemplified by Brand and his Whole Earth Catalog were not co-opted and distorted in later years by the forces of capitalism or the state as some believe, but rather became a part of the cyberculture of both creators and users of computers and new forms of computing.<br /><br />The book opens with the defining computational metaphor as expressed by contemporary writers such as Esther Dyson, John Perry Barlow and Kevin Kelly: digital technologies transcend the world of governments and restrictions, and are instead tools by which stultifying bureaucracies can be overthrown and new, flexible ways of living, working, and producing for a strong economy can be achieved. Yet, to the students of the Berkeley Free Speech movement in which these writers began and which provided the origin of the counterculture, cybernetics represented a militarized and menacing force antithetical to the longed-for new society. The students of the Berkely Free Speech movement of the 1960’s and their colleagues across the country sometimes demonstrated and protested using computerized punch cards as the emblem of a repressive society.<br /><br />In spite of the 1960’s students’ perceptions, Turner suggests that the seemingly closed world of the military-industrial complex was not monolithic. Within that complex, beginning with the great collaborative research enterprises of World War II, could be found a computation subculture bound by, in anthropological terms, a “trading language” and a “legitimacy exchange” which facilitated border-crossing and group work by professionals from various backgrounds. At the same time, Norbert Wiener and his associates, pioneers of cybernetics and associated with the wartime computing effort, expressed an idea of human being as automated mechanical information processors but with an added, more benign idea of a system in which men and machines collaborated. Thus it seems, even in the founding metaphors of computing, there were possibilities for divergence in how computing was regarded, along with spaces in which computing work was boundary-spanning and non-hierarchical.<br /><br />It was the youth culture of the 1960’s, emerging as it did as a reaction against the systems which included the computing of the time, which added the notion of a liberated egalitarian society and communal ideals. It was during this time that two youth movements emerged. One was political, as represented by the SDS and the civil rights struggle, which became the so-called New Left. The other, more inward-turning, embracing new ways of consciousness and relationships and accompanied by drugs and rock and roll music, became the “counterculture”. It is in this non-political, utopian stream that Turner places the countercultural origins of cyberculture in the New Communalism. It is here that Turner arrives at the central questions he hopes to answer: how did the systems visions of the cold war and the seemingly antithetical communitarian visions of the New Communalists become so entwined that, years later as the Internet evolved out of the Cold War systems, it could appear to many to be the New Communalist ideal reborn? Here, Turner suggests, is the pivotal role of Steward Brand as the node connecting these networks.<br /><br />Brand’s own intellectual journey into the counterculture began as a Stanford student learning about the then-new system-oriented ecological theories of population biologist Paul Ehrlich. After college and military service, he found his way into the avant-garde arts scene in New York city. These artists were developing a countercultural artistic system which were labeled “happenings”—seemingly spontaneous, egalitarian, and participatory, combining lighting, drama, music, art and systems thinking along with Eastern mysticism and involving multidisciplinary collaboration in a workshop setting. These artists were steeped in the communication theories of Marshall McLuhan which celebrated new media and tribal social forms, and the ideals of futuristic technology of architect Buckminster Fuller. Indeed, Brand credited Fuller as the inspiration for the Whole Earth Catalog.</blockquote><br />Brand maintained that given access to the information we need, humanity can make the world a better place. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog">Whole Earth Catalog</a> magazine he founded was promoted as a "compendium of tools, texts and information" which sought to "catalyze the emergence of a realm of personal power" by making technology available to people eager to create sustainable communities. Brand eventually achieved his goal of persuading NASA to release the first photo of the Earth from space (wandering around for some time wearing a badge saying "Why Haven't We Seen A Picture of the Whole Earth?") and the photo became the cover for the Catalog.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.hohlwelt.com/en/interact/context/sbrand.html"><img src="http://www.hohlwelt.com/img/1324.jpg" align="right"/></a>There is an interview by Massive Change with Stewart that describes his <a href="http://www.miqel.com/fuller_design_science/buckminster-fuller-dome-bio.html">first meeting with Bucky Fuller</a> and the story of his "whole earth" badge:<br /><blockquote>Massive change: What was Bucky Fuller's reaction to your button campaign that asked, "Why haven't we seen an image of the whole earth yet?"<br /><br />Stewart Brand: It was all because of LSD, see. I took some lysergic acid diethylamide on an otherwise boring afternoon and came to the notion that seeing an image of the Earth from space would change a lot of things. So, on next to no budget, I printed up buttons and posters and sold them on street corners at the University of California, Berkeley. I went to Stanford and back east to Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. I also mailed the materials to various people: Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, senators, members of the U.S. and Soviet space programs.<br /><br />Out of everyone, I only heard back from Bucky Fuller, who wrote, "Dear boy, it's a charming notion but you must realize you can never see more than half the earth from any particular point in space." I was amused, and then met him a few months later at a seminar at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. I sat across from his lunch table and pushed the button over to him, asking him what he thought about it. He said, "Oh yes, I wrote to that guy." I said, "I'm the guy. So what do you think? What kind of difference do you think it will make when we actually get photographs of the earth from space?"<br /><br />There was this slow, lovely silence. Then he said, "Dear boy, how can I help you?"</blockquote><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2222523486/"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2084/2222523486_5e1894e314.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />Whole Earth (and later Wired) editor Kevin Kelly has noted that style of the Whole Earth Catalog <a href="http://kk.org/ct2/2008/09/the-whole-earth-blogalog.php">preceded the modern internet / blogosphere</a>, and was eventually made redundant by it.<br /><blockquote>For this new countercultural movement, information was a precious commodity. In the 1960s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels. Bookstores were usually small and bad; libraries, worse. The WEC not only gave you permission to invent your life, it gave you the reasoning and the tools to do just that. And you believed you could do it, because on every page of the catalog were other people doing it. This was a great example of user-generated content, without advertising, before the Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog. ...<br /><br />This I am sure about: it is no coincidence that the Whole Earth Catalogs disappeared as soon as the web and blogs arrived. Everything the Whole Earth Catalogs did, the web does better.</blockquote><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/_elemenoh_/2871291116/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3159/2871291116_b29d1c5ef9.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />The Whole Earth Catalog was succeeded by a journal called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoEvolution_Quarterly">CoEvolution Quarterly</a> (CQ). CQ often included content related to futurism and the science of ecology, including authors like Lewis Mumford, Howard T. Odum, Karl Hess, Ivan Illich, Wendell Berry, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Bateson, Amory Lovins, Hazel Henderson, Gary Snyder, Lynn Margulis, Eric Drexler, Paul Hawken, John Todd, Kevin Kelly and Donella Meadows (and not to forget <a href="http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2005/article/94/2025.if">Bucky Fuller</a> of course), many of whom would be familiar to students of peak oil and the limits to growth.<br /><br />The Whole Earth Catalog was something of a bible for the "back to the land" movement of the hippie counterculture, however its influence waned as the seventies progressed and the hippies became disillusioned with communal life out of the cities and as they faded from media attention.<br /><br />The hippies weren't the first (or the last counterculture) to emerge - there are some interesting parallels with the German <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandervogel">Wandervogel</a> of the early 20th century (who, like the followers of the "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/10/locabucks-are-local-currencies-way-to.html">local currencies</a>" movement of that period, eventually <a href="http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html">went rogue</a>) and with the modern day "<a href="http://kk.org/ct2/2010/02/the-rippies-new-yippies-on-the.php">rippies</a>" trying to go off the grid in the US.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/152639332/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/47/152639332_affd26e17a.jpg"/></a></center><br /><br /><b>The WELL</b><br /><blockquote>Between 1968 and 1972, two communities began to mingle within blocks of the Whole Earth Catalog offices in Menlo Park. One, centered around the Stanford Research Institute and composed primarily of engineers, was devoted to the ongoing pursuit of increased human-computer integration. The other, clustered around the Catalog and the countercultural communities it served, focused on the pursuit of individual and collective transformation in a New Communalist vein. Stewart Brand positioned himself between these worlds and, in a variety of ways, brokered their encounter. - From Counterculture to Cyberculture</blockquote><br /><br />In the mid-1980's, Brand cofounded the "Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link" (WELL) with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Brilliant">Larry Brilliant</a> (now of <a href="http://www.google.org/">Google.org</a>), the prototype online community which still continues today and spawned both the EFF and Craigslist.<br /><blockquote>As it turned out, psychedelic drugs, communes, and Buckminster Fuller domes were a dead end, but computers were an avenue to realms beyond our dreams. - Stewart Brand</blockquote><br />In a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/25conn.htm?pagewanted=print">review</a> of Turner's book, The New York Times noted that it was unsurprising that many members of the counterculture would end up being part of the "computer revolution".<br /><blockquote>It might be argued that so prevalent was the counterculture, and so experimental and energetic were its most vocal proponents, that it would have been surprising had many of them not found their way to the computer revolution. But Mr. Turner demonstrates something more essential in the continuity.<br /><br />First, he suggests, we are mistaken in thinking that the postwar technological world was dominated by hierarchies and rigid categories. Under the influence of the mathematician Norbert Wiener, it became increasingly common to think of humans and machines as interacting elements of “cybernetic systems” — organisms through which information flowed. This also led to a different way of thinking about living organisms and their networks of interaction.<br /><br />Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964: “Today we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.” Buckminster Fuller proposed the idea of a Comprehensive Designer, a creator who would embody “an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.”<br /><br />These writers were the patron saints of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” their books appearing alongside macramé and carpentry manuals, their ideas presumably brought to life in the commune, where the natural and human world would be bound together, creating a single organism from which new possibilities would unfold. </blockquote><br />During this period Brand <a href="http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html">coined</a> the famous expression "information wants to be free", though that was only half of his commentary at the time.<br /><blockquote>On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.” That was eventually compressed into “Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. - Stewart Brand</blockquote><br /><b>The Global Business Network</b><br /><br />The <a href="http://www.gbn.com/index.php">Global Business Network</a> is a group of <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/02/limits-to-scenario-planning.html">scenario planners</a> (some of whom came from <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/01/shells-scenarios-blueprints-or-scramble.html">Shell's scenario planning</a> group and who aren't <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/09/futurists-and-peak-oil.html">particularly convinced</a> by peak oil theory).<br /><br />GBN was co-founded by Brand and is a classic example of his ability to assemble a diverse group of thinkers - in this case <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Business_Network">including people</a> like Francis Fukuyama, Pierre Omidyar, Freeman Dyson, Peter Gabriel, Bill Joy, Amory Lovins, Paul Hawken, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.<br /><br /><b>The Viridian Design Movement</b><br /><br />At the beginning of the 21st century, author and futurist (and GBN member) Bruce Sterling published what he dubbed "<a href="http://www.viridiandesign.org/manifesto.html">The Viridian Manifesto</a>", looking to spark a design movement to solve the problem of global warming and other collisions with the limits to growth. Since Bruce published his manifesto, a range of web sites that I'd categorise as Viridian have sprung up, with some openly acknowledging this heritage and other perhaps entirely oblivious to it - and with many of them also noting Bucky Fuller as an inspiration.<br /><br />Members include WorldChanging (<a href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000532.html">Bucky Stamp</a>, <a href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005412.html">An Evening with Bucky Fuller</a>) - whose editor Alex Steffen also edited the last edition of the Whole Earth Review, Inhabitat (<a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/01/02/inhabitat-loves-bucky/">Inhabitat Loves Bucky</a>), TreeHugger (<a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/bucky-fuller-on-waste.php">Quote of the Day: Buckminster Fuller</a>), Open The Future (Jamais is on the jury for the <a href="http://openthefuture.com/2008/10/buckminster_fuller_challenge_p.html">Buckminster Fuller Challenge jury</a>), Triple Pundit (<a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/top-10-reflections-from-a-first-time-ted.php">What Would Bucky Do ?</a>) and <a href="http://www.massivechangeinaction.virtualmuseum.ca/about/index.html">Massive Change</a>.<br /><br /><b>The Long Now</b><br /><br />One of Stewart Brand's recent projects is a collaboration with computer scientist Danny Hillis to build the "Clock of the Long Now", a 10,000-year timepiece; his <a href="http://www.longnow.org/">Long Now Foundation</a> also runs a number of related projects, such as the <a href="">Rosetta Project</a>, cataloguing the world's languages, and the <a href="http://www.longbets.org/">Long Bets</a> ("the arena for accountable predictions") website.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/science/earth/27tier.html?_r=8&pagewanted=1"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/02/27/science/27brand600.1.jpg"/></a></center><br /><br /><center><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/embed/StewartBrand_2004-embed_high.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/StewartBrand-2004.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=402" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/embed/StewartBrand_2004-embed_high.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/StewartBrand-2004.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=402"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><b>Wired And Newt Gingrich - Did Something Go Terribly Wrong ?</b><br /><br />Turner's book ends on something of a down note, as it describes how Brand and the Wired crew become involved with Esther Dyson, Newt Gingrich and the mid-90s "Republican Revolution".<br /><br />One chronicler of both the counterculture and the cyberculture that followed it is RU Sirius (whose "Mondo 2000" magazine was prominent in the pre-Wired era). RU has a <a href="http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/11/19/counterculture-and-the-tech-revolution/">review of Turner's book</a> in which he notes his disquiet with the period when "Brand's digital countercultural elite" engaged with Gingrich and co.<br /><blockquote>While I welcome Turner's critical vision, I must say honestly that, although I was repulsed by the Gingrich alliance and by much of the corporate rhetoric that emerged, at least in part, out of Brand's digital elitist clan — I think Brand's tactics were essentially correct. Turner implies that valuable social change is more likely to happen through political activism than through the invention and distribution of tools and through the whole systems approach that is implicit in that activity. But I think that the internet has — palpably — been much more successful in changing lives than 40 years of left oppositional activism has been. For one example out of thousands, the only reason the means of communication that shapes our cultural and political zeitgeist isn't COMPLETELY locked down by powerful media corporations is the work that these politically ambiguous freaks have accomplished over the past 40 years. In other words, oppositional activism would be even more occult — more hidden from view — today if not for networks built by hippie types who were not averse to working with DARPA and with big corporations. The world is a complex place.</blockquote><br />RU has some more choice words about the failure of cyberculture (like the counterculture before it) to make the world a better place, lamenting the atomisation of modern society and the power this has gifted to faceless corporations in this <a href="http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/sirius.html">interview with Jon Lebkowsky</a> (another fixture of the Viridian movement) entitled "It's Better to be Inspired than Wired".<br /><blockquote>Cyberculture (a meme that I'm at least partly responsible for generating, incidentally) has emerged as a gleeful apologist for this kill-the-poor trajectory of the Republican revolution. You find it all over Wired - this mix of chaos theory and biological modeling that is somehow interpreted as scientific proof of the need to devolve and decentralize the social welfare state while also deregulating and empowering the powerful, autocratic, multinational corporations. You've basically got the breakdown of nation states into global economies simultaneous with the atomization of individuals or their balkanization into disconnected sub-groups, because digital technology conflates space while decentralizing communication and attention. The result is a clear playing field for a mutating corporate oligarchy, which is what we have.<br /><br />I mean, people think it's really liberating because the old industrial ruling class has been liquefied and it's possible for young players to amass extraordinary instant dynasties. But it's savage and inhuman.<br /><br />Maybe the Wired elite think that's hip. But then don't go around crying about crime in the streets or pretending to be concerned with ethics.<br /><br />It's particularly sad and poignant for me to witness how comfortably the subcultural contempt for the normal, the hunger for novelty and change, and the basic anarchistic temperament that was at the core of Mondo 2000 fits the hip, smug, boundary-breaking, fast-moving, no-time-for-social-niceties world of your wired mega-corporate info/comm/media players. You can find our dirty fingerprints, our rhetoric, all over their advertising style. The joke's on me.</blockquote><br />RU <a href="http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/11/19/counterculture-and-the-tech-revolution/">interviewed Turner</a> about his book (the audio can be found <a href="http://mondoglobo.net/neofiles/shows/neofiles-060.mp3">here</a> [mp3]), noting the Fuller connection and the failure of the counterculture to achieve long term change because of their refusal to engage with politics.<br /><blockquote><b>RU Sirius</b>: Brand works his way through Wiener to Buckminster Fuller, another systems thinker.<br /><br /><b>Fred Turner</b>: Brand has had a series of very powerful intellectual inspirations. Fuller would be one, Kesey would be another. For Brand, Fuller was a model in two senses. He was a model of systems thinking, and he was also a model of an intellectual entrepreneur. Fuller moved from university to university, from setting to setting, knitting communities together. That's what Brand learned to do. He learned to do it partly by watching Fuller.<br /><br /><b>RU</b>: Fuller was, in a sense, one of the first cyber-Ronin, the wandering techno-entrepreneur type that is much touted later in the 1990s by people like John Brockman and "Wired" magazine.<br /><br /><b>FT</b>: Absolutely. I think of Fuller and Kesey and Brand as P.T. Barnums. They are people who can't ride a trick horse, can't ride an elephant, can't ride a trapeze. And yet they build the rings of the circus; they bring the performers in; and they learn the languages and the styles of the circus. And they speak the circus' meanings to the audience. Brand has very much been the voice of a series of very important circuses.<br /><br /><b>RU</b>: So, into the hippie era, Brand is part of the Merry Pranksters for a while; he does the "Whole Earth Catalog," but he's never really a hippie. And most hippies are not, generally, systems thinkers. "Hey man, spare change, I'm going to Woodstock" isn't systems thinking. Brand is very much off on his own distinctive trip. And yet there is this through-line that takes Brand from the avant-garde through the trips festivals to Whole Earth and on to the Global Business Network and then on through the creation of "Wired." Can you describe what those memes or through-lines are?<br /><br /><b>FT</b>: There's a misapprehension that has plagued a lot of Americans, including a lot of historians, about the 60s counterculture. We tend to think of the counterculture as a set of anti-war protests; as drug use and partying. But we don't tend to differentiate between two groups that were very importantly differentiated in that time: the New Left, and the group that I've called the New Communalists. Brand speaks to the New Communalists. Though it's mostly forgotten now, between 1966 and 1973 there was the largest wave of communal activity in all of American history.<br /><br />Between 1966 and 1973, conservative estimates suggest that 10 million Americans were involved in communes. Brand speaks to that group by promoting the notion that small-scale technologies like LSD, stereos, books, Volkswagens; are tools for building new alternative communities.<br /><br />The New Left wanted to change the world by doing politics in order to change politics. They formed SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). They protested. Brand and his group turned his backs on all that. Brand said, what we need to do is go out and build these communities, and my job is to build a catalog of tools through which people can gain access to the technologies that they can build communities around. So the core idea that migrates from the 60s to the 90s is the idea that we can build small-scale technologies and communities of consciousness around those technologies. So we no longer need to do politics per se. That idea kicks in again in the 80s around the rise of the personal computer, the ultimate in small-scale technology. It gives us the idea of virtual community, a distributed community gathered around small-scale technologies. And it ultimately plays very directly into the beliefs of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s. ...<br /><br /><b>RU</b>: The new communalist movement failed pretty much entirely. The idea of leaving behind the urban and suburban settings and going off and starting your own world failed. Even in terms of ecological or environmental ideas, the hip idea now is urban density. The attitude about tools survived, but the idea of back-to-the-country was pretty much useless.<br /><br /><b>FT</b>: The idea of back-to-the-country didn't work. But I think something deeper didn't work, and it haunts us today, even as it underlies a lot of what we do. The notion that you can build a community around shared style is a deeply bohemian notion. It runs through all sorts of bohemian worlds. The notion that if you just get the right technology you can then build a unified community is a notion that drove a lot of the rural communal efforts. They thought by changing technological regimes; by going to 19th century technologies; by making their own butter; sewing their own clothes — they would be able to build a new kind of community. What they discovered was that if you don't do politics — explicitly, directly, through parties, through organizations — if you don't pay attention to and articulate what's going on with real material power, communities fail.<br /><br />So I argue that there's a fantasy that haunts the internet, and it's haunted it for at least a decade. And it's the idea that if we just get the tools right and communicate effectively, we will be able to be intimate with one another and build the kinds of communities that don't exist outside, in the rest of our lives. And I think that's a deep failure and a fantasy.</blockquote><br />The fantasy hasn't died entirely however, with one unlikely champion being the leader of Britain's rebranded "progressive" conservatives, <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/david_cameron.html">David Cameron</a>, saying we're entering a new era - where governments have less power (and less money) and people empowered by technology have more.<br /><br />Jamais Cascio has echoed Turner's claim that in order to be effective, politics cannot be avoided, in an essay entitled "<a href="http://www.openthefuture.com/2009/08/the_end_of_politics_delusion.html">The End Of Politics Delusion</a>".<br /><blockquote>You have my express permission to kick the next person -- especially someone advocating the embrace of radical forms of technological advancement -- who tells you that they wish nothing more than to get rid of, move beyond, or otherwise avoid "politics." Kick them hard, and repeatedly. They have adopted a profoundly ignorant and self-serving position, one that betrays at best a lack of understanding of human nature and society, and at worst a malicious desire to preemptively shut down any opposition to their goal. ...<br /><br />In the early days of the dot-com era, this attitude resulted in the absence of digital tech industry voices in Washington, DC, allowing the incumbent telecom and entertainment industries free rein to write laws and buy politicians without opposition. Companies and industries that had considered themselves beyond politics found out just how wrong they were. Stung by that experience, today's advocates of the "escape politics" position usually articulate it as more of a wishful whine, as with [Peter] Thiel's line ["In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms..."] ...<br /><br />there's a profound ignorance across the tech advocacy community of the importance of politics to human society. Politics means conflict, debate, and frustration. It also means choice. A world without politics is a world where disagreement is illegitimate. It's a world where your ability to choose your future -- to make your future -- has been taken away, whether you like it or not.</blockquote><br /><br /><b>Brand's Environmental Heresies And The Eco-Pragmatist Manifesto</b><br /><br />Since "Counterculture to Cyberculture" was published Brand has continued to be active, creating a large amount of controversy in the environmental movement with an article on his "<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14406&ch=biztech">Environmental</a> <a href="http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/v7n2/environmental-heresies/">Heresies</a>" - taking aim at 4 areas where he thinks the environmental movement has gone the wrong way - population growth, urbanisation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.<br /><br /><center><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/StewartBrand_2009S-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/StewartBrand-2009S.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=598&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies;year=2009;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=the_power_of_cities;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=rethinking_poverty;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=a_greener_future;event=TED%40State;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/StewartBrand_2009S-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/StewartBrand-2009S.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=598&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies;year=2009;theme=unconventional_explanations;theme=the_power_of_cities;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=rethinking_poverty;theme=a_taste_of_ted2010;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;theme=what_s_next_in_tech;theme=a_greener_future;event=TED%40State;"></embed></object></center><br /><br />Wired had an <a href="http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_brand">interview with Brand</a> where he puts the case for the formation of huge slums in the developing world as a positive thing (the opposite to the argument made in Mike Davis' "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/aug/19/shopping.society">Planet Of Slums</a>").<br /><blockquote><b>Wired:</b> What makes squatter cities so important?<br /><br /><b>Stewart Brand:</b> That's where vast numbers of humans—slum dwellers—are doing urban stuff in new and amazing ways. And hell's bells, there are a billion of them! People are trying desperately to get out of poverty, so there's a lot of creativity; they collaborate in ways that we've completely forgotten how to do in regular cities. And there's a transition: People come in from the countryside, enter the rickshaw economy, and work for almost nothing. But after a while, they move uptown, into the formal economy. The United Nations did extensive field research and flipped from seeing squatter cities as the world's great problem to realizing these slums are actually the world's great solution to poverty.<br /><br /><b>Wired:</b> Why are they good for the environment?<br /><br /><b>Brand:</b> Cities draw people away from subsistence farming, which is ecologically devastating, and they defuse the population bomb. In the villages, women spend their time doing agricultural stuff, for no pay, or having lots and lots of kids. When women move to town, it's better to have fewer kids, bear down, and get them some education, some economic opportunity. Women become important, powerful creatures in the slums. They're often the ones running the community-based organizations, and they're considered the most reliable recipients of microfinance loans.<br /><br /><b>Wired:</b> How can governments help nurture these positives?<br /><br /><b>Brand:</b> The suffering is great, and crime is rampant. We made the mistake of romanticizing villages, and we don't need to make that mistake again. But the main thing is not to bulldoze the slums. Treat the people as pioneers. Get them some grid electricity, water, sanitation, crime prevention. All that makes a huge difference.</blockquote><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Earth-Discipline-Ecopragmatist-Manifesto/dp/0670021210/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://www.theoildrum.com/files/WholeEarthDiscipline.jpg" align="right"/></a>The 4 "heresies" form the foundation of Brand's latest book "<a href="">WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto</a>" (along with another one - geoengineering will be required to mitigate global warming), which Brand discusses in this Long Now seminar called "<a href="http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02009/oct/09/rethinking-green/">Rethinking Green</a>".<br /><br />Personally I'd say Brand has 2 of his original 4 "heresies" right - <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/search/label/population">population</a> (which isn't the problem many believed back in the 1970's - and some grim hangers on still think today) and urbanisation (with "cities are the future" being a key Viridian catchphrase). <br /><br />I remain somewhat dubious about <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2009/09/norman-borlaug-saint-or-sinner.html">genetically modified crops</a> and think Brand is simply wrong about <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/search/label/nuclear%20power">nuclear power</a>, which is (at best) an <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2009/10/nuclear-nonsense-amory-lovins-on.html">expensive</a> diversion of resources from our key task of replacing and extending our existing power generation capacity with truly clean and renewable power sources (in fact, its a remarkable about-face to go from promoting tools for individual use to recommending the ultimate centralised power source, one which can't be used by individuals and always requires massive government subsidies and regulation, and completely at odds with his "Long Now" school of long-term thinking for that matter).<br /><br />The topic of Geoengineering is worthy of a post of its own, so I'll leave that for later.<br /><br />Brand discusses "Whole Earth Discipline" in this talk at <a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/brand09_index.html">EDGE</a>.<br /><blockquote>About 40 years ago I wore a button that said, "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" Then we finally saw the pictures. What did it do for us?<br /><br />The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "we are as gods, we might as well get good at it". Photographs of earth from space had that god-like perspective.<br /><br />What I'm saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it. Necessity comes from climate change, potentially disastrous for civilization. The planet will be okay, life will be okay. We will lose vast quantities of species, probably lose the rain forests if the climate keeps heating up. So it's a global issue, a global phenomenon. It doesn't happen in just one area. The planetary perspective now is not just aesthetic. It's not just perspective. It's actually a world-sized problem that will take world sized solutions that involves forms of governance we don't have yet. It involves technologies we are just glimpsing. It involves what ecologists call ecosystem engineering. Beavers do it, earthworms do it. They don't usually do it at a planetary scale. We have to do it at a planetary scale. A lot of sentiments and aesthetics of the environmental movement stand in the way of that. </blockquote><br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/brand09_index.html"><img src="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/images/brand500.jpg"/></a></center><br /><br /><b>Previous posts in this series:</b><br /><br /><a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2009/02/buckminster-fullers-critical-path.html">Critical Path</a><br /><br /><a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/5152">Is It Time For A Four Day Working Week ?</a><br /><br /><a href="http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6240">Peak Oil And The Tea Party Movement</a><br /><br />The next post in the series will look at one of the key enablers of a fully renewable energy powered future - smart grids - and how they are a stepping stone towards one of Bucky's visions - the Global Energy Grid.<br /><br />Cross posted from <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2010/03/from-counterculture-to-cyberculture.html">Peak Energy</a>.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-30154862378581146282009-12-01T03:52:00.000-08:002010-02-06T03:24:11.199-08:00Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Latitudes-Boldly-Captain-Before/dp/0312422601/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41J2AGQ4WYL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg" align="right"/></a>"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Latitudes-Boldly-Captain-Before/dp/0312422601/crocodiletech-20">Blue Latitudes</a>" is an amusing chronicle of Captain Cook's long ago travels through the Pacific, with author Tony Horwitz trying to visit many of the key locations visited by the intrepid British navigator, ranging from Tahiti to New Zealand and Australia, then back across Polynesia to Alaska and his final ill-fated landing on Hawaii (which always made me think of Hunter S Thompson's book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Curse-Lono-Hunter-S-Thompson/dp/3822848972/crocodiletech-20">The Curse of Lono</a>").<br /><br />Horwitz seems to be a big fan of the self-made Captain, painting an impressive picture of his accomplishments and character over the course of his career, while giving plenty of airtime to the natives of the places he visited, who by and large aren't enthusiastic about the changes that occurred in the wake of the Captain's discoveries of their homelands.<br /><br />Horwitz doesn't simply present a history inspired travelogue - there is an element of detective work as he tries to unearth new knowledge about the Captain, and his alcoholic sidekick Roger provides plenty of humour with his witty asides.<br /><br />From the book - "Cook's concluding passage on aborigines is among the most extraordinary he ever penned:"<br /><blockquote>They may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans: being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Cinveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility which is not disturb'd by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes hem with all things necessary for life ... They seem'd to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own fo any one article we could offer them; this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the Necessary's of Life.</blockquote><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk/430892575/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/164/430892575_e0e7c4e1ac.jpg" width=400/></a></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-56354376068592905452009-12-01T03:30:00.000-08:002009-12-01T03:46:08.887-08:00Looking For Eric<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Looking-Eric-DVD-Cantona/dp/B002CGRDUA/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/617LZfWIuYL._SL500_AA240_.jpg" align="right"/></a>Like <a href="http://biggavsbookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/gran-torino.html">Gran Torino</a>, "<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2671663.htm">Looking For Eric</a>" is a political fable, though in this case its a socialist tale rather than a libertarian one.<br /><br />"Eric" tells the tale of embattled Manchester postie (and United fan) Eric, suffering from depression and with 2 broken marriages behind him and 2 slightly troubled teenage boys to look after on his own.<br /><br />Eric struggles to keep in control of his life when one of his sons gets into trouble with a local gangster, and finds refuge in a phantom Eric Cantona, who materialises out of thin air from time to time to offer him advice.<br /><br />The film had a number of flashbacks back to highlights (and lowlights) of Cantona's soccer career which brought back pleasant memories of my first stint in the UK - and overall the tale of worker solidarity helping Eric to put his life back together and overcome his gangster problem was quite an uplifting one.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-49208315990913957332009-09-29T02:00:00.000-07:002010-02-06T03:27:27.568-08:00Gran Torino<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gran-Torino-Theatrical-Release/dp/B001KVZ6FC/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31bzNlE%2BCTL._SL500_AA280_.jpg" align="right"/></a>Clint Eastwood's latest movie, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gran-Torino-Theatrical-Release/dp/B001KVZ6FC/crocodiletech-20">Gran Torino</a>", didn't always get <a href="http://au.rottentomatoes.com/m/gran_torino/">great reviews</a> (although Margaret and David from <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2475973.htm">At The Movies</a> liked it well enough), but I found it a worthwhile and enjoyable film to watch.<br /><br />In similar fashion to the way "Unforgiven" (Clint's best movie) rehabilitated him as a Western movie maker, "Torino" follows in the footsteps of the "Dirty Harry" movies, but with much more grace.<br /><br />In this film, Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a retired Detroit auto-worker who has recently been widowed, who lives in a rundown Detroit neighbourhood now populated largely by Hmong refugees.<br /><br />The film doesn't have the slick production values of Unforgiven, but the acting is high quality and you get a good feel for life in the decaying suburbia of the rust belt.<br /><br />Walt doesn't much like his new neighbours (or his now remote children and their families) but he finds himself drawn into their world as gang trouble disrupts the lives of the newly arrived family next door.<br /><br />Like most of Clint's movies, this is a libertarian fantasy of sorts, with one man defying an unpleasant collective and finding a way to overcome them (I was expecting a re-run of the ending of Unforgiven as the movie unfolded, but was pleasantly surprised to see a novel ending). Unlike his other fantasies, in this story the lone hero relies on the state to administer justice in the end, so maybe Clint is mellowing as he reaches the end of his career.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-24106783049770872432009-02-15T04:08:00.000-08:002009-02-15T04:30:36.417-08:00Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path<a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/01/02/inhabitat-loves-bucky/"><img src="http://www.inhabitat.com/images/bfullerstamp.jpg" align="right"/></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a> was the last of Buckminster Fuller's books, published shortly before his death in 1983 and summing up his lifetime of work.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller">Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller</a> was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor and visionary who devoted his life to answering the question "Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?". He is frequently referred to as a genius (albeit a slightly eccentric one).<br /><br />During his lifelong experiment, Fuller wrote 29 books, coining terms such as "Spaceship Earth", "ephemeralization" and "synergetics". He also developed and contributed to a number of inventions inventions, the best known being the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes (buckyballs) were so named due to their resemblance to geodesic spheres. Bucky was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1981.<br /><br /><blockquote>There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance - Buckminster Fuller</blockquote><br /><center><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JBSGE3C1L._SS500_.jpg"/></a></center><br /><br /><b>Critical Path</b><br /><br /><blockquote>Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis - a crisis without precedent.<br /><br />First, it is a crisis brought about by cosmic evolution irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole.<br /><br />Second, we are in an unprecedented crisis because cosmic evolution is also irrevocably intent upon making omni-integrated humanity omnisuccessful, able to live sustainingly at an unprecedentedly higher standard of living for all Earthians than has ever been experienced by any; able to live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending its cosmic energy savings account (i.e., the fossil fuels) or spending its cosmic-capital plant and equipment account (i.e., atomic energy)-the atoms with which our Spaceship Earth and its biosphere are structured and equipped-a spending folly no less illogical than burning your house-and-home to keep the family warm on an unprecedentedly cold midwinter night.<br /><br />Humanity's cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity-and star (99 percent Sun)-distributed cosmic dividends of water power, tidal power, wave power, wind power, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vulcanism, and so on. Humanity's present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one percent of the rate of its energy income.<br /><br />Tax-hungry government and profit-hungry business, for the moment, find it insurmountably difficult to arrange to put meters between humanity and its cosmic energy income, and thus they do nothing realistic to help humanity enjoy its fabulous energy-income wealth. Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br />Critical Path covers a wide range of topics, ranging from an unorthodox history of human development since the dawn of recorded history to his views on the purpose of humanity, a review of how Wall Street lawyers undid the New Deal, a history of his own personal development and 'self disciplines", discussions of some of his key ideas like the "geoscope" and the "world game", a chronology of scientific discoveries and artifacts and finally his recipe (critical path) for solving our key problems.<br /><br />As one reviewer <a href="http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/review/id1090/pg1/">noted</a> Bucky's writing style is pretty unusual and takes some getting used to - "Critical Path has many of the hallmarks of so-called "crackpot literature": unorthodox punctuation (massive, annoying hyphenation), strange language (overuse of the prefix "omni-"; humans referred to as "Earthians"), an impossibly broad scope, and noticeable hubris because the author is sure that he has all the answers".<br /><br />Another reviewer at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R3PA6CKM6WQNG6/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm">Amazon</a> exhorts people to "Do yourself a favor and become familiar with this friendly genius".<br /><br /><blockquote>Critical Path is a summation of a life devoted to the betterment of all humanity and based on the premise that one individual can make a difference if he or she takes care of the things that need to be done. Through our combined learnings and accumulated metaphysical know-how, humanity has reached a point where we can all do whatever it was we were doing before we had to earn a living.<br /><br />Unless of course the "pirates" of capital, aka "The Grunch" cheat us of our rightful inheritance.<br /><br />Critical Path is about the evolution of know-how from the beginning of humanity to the present. Fuller charts out where we came from, the accelerating advance of learning, the ephemeralization of tools and technology and where we go from here.<br /><br />He also charts out where the "pirates" came from and how they maintain their grip on things. Indeed I was surprised at how candid Bucky's comments are in this regard. It's as if he somehow got inside the inner clique and is reporting its machinations to the rest of us. Read it and see!</blockquote><br />Bucky was aware of the limitations and problems posed by our use of fossil fuels for energy, and (like <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/11/hubbert-king-of-technocrats.html">M King Hubbert</a>) believed that we could and should use technology to become vastly more efficient in our energy use and to harness other, renewable, forms of energy.<br /><br />Bucky believed in a transformation of our economic and political systems, via what he called a "design science revolution", which will result in the "conversion of all humanity into an integrated, omniharmonious, economically successful, one-world family", rather than the confrontational political action favoured by other would be transformers of society of his era.<br /><br /><b>Ephemerialization And Acceleration</b><br /><br /><blockquote>Weighing only fifty-five pounds, with a wingspan of ninety-six feet, the human-powered Gossamer Albatross was able to fly across the English Channel because the structural materials of which it was built were many times tensilely stronger than an equal weight of the highest-strength aircraft aluminum. The tensile strengths of the Albatross's structural materials were sixty times stronger per equivalent weight than the strongest structural materials available to Leonardo da Vinci for realizing the design of his proposed human-powered flying machine. The Albatross's high-strength carbon-fiber and Mylar materials were all developed only a short time ago since World War II.<br /><br />A one-quarter-ton communication satellite is now outperforming the previously used 175,000 tons of transatlantic copper cables, with this 700,000-fold reduction in system-equipment weight providing greater message-carrying capacity and transmission fidelity, as well as using vastly fewer kilowatts of operational energy.<br /><br />Continuing to attempt to fit our late-twentieth-century astronautical man-on-Moon-visiting capability into a nineteenth- century horse- and- buggy street pattern, house-to-house-yoo-hooing life-style (and a land baron racket) is so inefficient that the overall design of humanity's present social, economic, and political structuring and the physical technology it uses wastes ninety-five out of every 100 units of the energy it consumes. (Our automobiles' reciprocating engines are only 15-percent efficient, whereas turbines are 30 percent, jet engines 60 percent, and fuel cells used by astronauts 80 percent.) In the United States, throughout all twenty-four hours of every day of the year-year after year - we have an average of two million automobiles standing in front of red stoplights with their engines going, the energy for which amounts to that generated by the full efforts of 200 million horses being completely wasted as they jump up and down going nowhere.<br /><br />Environment-controlling buildings gain or lose their energy as "heat or cool" only through their containing surfaces. Spheres contain the most volume with the least surface - i.e., have the least possible surface-to-volume ratio. Every time we double the diameter of a spherical structure, we increase its contained atmosphere eightfold and its enclosing surface only fourfold. When doubling the diameter of our sphere, we are not changing the size of the contained molecules of atmosphere. <br /><br />Therefore, every time we double a spherical structure's diameter, we halve the amount of enclosing surface through which an interior molecule of atmosphere can gain or lose energy as "heat or cool." Flat slabs have a high surface-to-volume ratio, and so flat slab fins make good air-cooling motorcycle and light-airplane engines. Tubes have the highest surface-to-volume ratios. Triangular- or square-sectioned tubes have higher surface-to-volume ratios than have round-sectioned tubes. Tall slab buildings and vertical, square-sectioned, tubular-tower skyscrapers have the maximum possible energy (as heat or cool)- losing capability.<br /><br />One two-mile-diameter dome enclosing all the mid-Manhattan buildings between Twenty-second and Sixty-second streets and between the Hudson and East rivers, having a surface that is only one eighty-fourth that of all the buildings now standing in that midtown area, would reduce the heating and cooling energy requirements of that area eighty-four-fold. The human pedal-powered airplane and the communication satellite are only two out of hundreds of thousands of instances that can now be cited of the accomplishment of much greater performance with much less material. The inefficiency of automobiles' reciprocating engines - and their traffic-system-wasted fuel - and the energy inefficiency of today's buildings, are only two of hundreds of thousands of instances that can be cited of the design-avoidable energy wastage. But the technical raison d'etre for either the energy-effectiveness gains or losses is all completely invisible to human eyes. Thus, the significance of their omni-integratable potentialities is uncomprehended by either the world's leaders or the led.<br /><br />Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realise that sum-totally the omni-engineering-integratable, invisible revolution in the metallurgical, chemical, and electronic arts now makes it possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time per given technological function that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a "higher standard of living than any have ever known. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br />Bucky coined the term "ephemeralization" to describe the process of "progressively accomplishing more with less". He points out that over time, we get better at using materials in more sophisticated ways, and at discovering newer, better materials - and thus need smaller quantities of materials to achieve particular goals.<br /><br />One example used by Bucky was the two years Magellan took to sail around the planet in a wooden sailing ship in 1520. 350 years later it took a steel steamship two months. 75 years later a metal plane took 2 weeks to fly around the planet. 35 years later a space capsule, made of exotic metals, takes 1 hour to circle the planet. <br /><br />Bucky points out that not only can we do more with less, but the rate of "doing-more-with-less-ness" is increasing - there is an acceleration taking place.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shapeshift/707543617/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1283/707543617_847b7377c2.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />One area of research that Bucky would have been involved in if he was still around was the field of nanotechnology - in particular carbon nanotubes, which some groups are trying to turn into "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-with-buckypaper.html">buckpaper</a>", which is ten times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite.<br /><br /><b>Geodesic Domes</b><br /><br /><blockquote>I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented. - Buckminster Fuller</blockquote><br />Bucky is probably best known for the development and popularisation of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_dome">geodesic dome</a> –light-weight, strong and cost-effective structures. <br /><br />Bucky was enthusiastic about domes because they enable habitats to be constructed which minimise the use of building materials and maximise the space enclosed. The geodesic dome is able to cover more space without internal supports than any other enclosure, and becomes proportionally lighter and stronger the larger it is. Domes can be erected very quickly from lightweight pieces by a small crew. Domes are also aerodynamic and can withstand considerable wind loads. Solar heating is possible by placing an arc of windows across the dome.<br /><br />Fuller is most famous for his 20-story dome housing the U.S. Pavilion at Montreal’s Expo ’67. Later, he documented the feasibility of a dome two miles in diameter that would enclose mid-town Manhattan in a temperature-controlled environment, and pay for itself within ten years from the savings of snow-removal costs alone. A number of iconic buildings have been built using geodesic domes in recent times, including at the <a href="http://www.edenproject.com/">Eden Project</a> in Britain and the <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1228511">Epcot Center</a> in the US.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaycollier/55720796/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/55720796_901ef8be5c.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />From a practical viewpoint, geodesic constructions have some drawbacks. They have a large number of edges in comparison with more conventional structures, each of which must be prevented from leaking. Spaces enclosed within curved boundaries also tend to be less usable than spaces enclosed within flat boundaries.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/expressmonorail/2245929644/"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2152/2245929644_8472193b7b.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />Geodesic Domes weren't the only effort Bucky made to try and improve the quality and availability of housing, with <a href="http://www.retrofuture.com/index.php/2009/01/30/buckminster-fuller/">The Dymaxion House</a> and the <a href="http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq-5.html#circular-city">Ole Man River City</a> proposal for St Louis being some other examples.<br /><br />Bucky viewed Geodesic dome habitats as capable of becoming self-sustaining, with the dome capturing solar and wind energy both directly and via the production of biofuels from crops grown within, He also envisioned that water would be completely recycled, as would the wastes produced, by using them for fertiliser and to generate biogas.<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jN3FMx1TYt8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jN3FMx1TYt8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><b>Geoscopes</b><br /><br />Bucky envisaged that a tool he called a "<a href="http://www.bfi.org/node/564">Geoscope</a>" would enable people to both comprehend the state of the world and their position within it, and from there to assess both the problems facing the world and the solutions to them.<br /><br />The Geoscope is an electronic environment that shows the whole world and enables all manner of data regarding the past, present and future state of the world to be displayed on it, ranging from the weather, to population, to resource consumption, to the position of actual items.<br /><br />The giant globes Fuller imagined don't seem to have become a reality anywhere, but the combination of data on the internet and applications for making data available in a global context like <a href="http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/">NASA Worldwind</a> and <a href="http://earth.google.com">Google Earth</a> (and its more recent <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090202-google-oceans-missions.html">Ocean</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/sky/">Sky</a> companions) have brought the basic Geoscope vision tantalisingly close to reality.<br /><br />As we add more and more data into the available data sets - particularly relatively realtime information about the current state of the world should make for better analysis of how we are doing at solving problems.<br /><br />Energy data, for example, can be captured via smart meters and smart grids, with Google recently trying to prompt interest in a platform for making energy use data available online via their "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-gets-smart.html">PowerMeter</a>" tool.<br /><br />Another (largely theoretical) area that has a lot of potential is Bruce Sterling's "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/09/next-internet-internet-of-things-smart.html">Internet of things</a>", which would be a useful building block for a world where everything is fully recycled.<br /><br /><blockquote>The most usefully informative model of the Geoscope now under consideration is a 200-foot-diameter, structurally gossamer, look-into-able and look-out-able, geodesic sphere to be suspended with its bottom 100 feet above ground by approximately invisible cables strung tautly from the tops of three remotely erected 200-foot-high masts.<br /><br />The vast number of computer-selected, colored, miniature electric light bulbs displayed on the spherical frame's surface of the 200-foot-diameter Geoscope, with their intensity and diminutive size as well as their minimum distance of 100 feet from viewing eyes (as seen from either the center of the sphere or the ground outside and 100 feet below), will altogether produce a visually continuous surface-picture equal in detailed resolution to that of a fine-screen halftone print or that of an excellent, omnidirectionally-viewable, spherical television tube's picturing. It well may be that by the time the first 200-foot Geoscope is undertaken, we may be able to develop a spherical TV of that size or a complex of spherically coordinated TV tubes. This giant, 200-foot diameter sphere will be a miniature earth -- the most accurate global representation of our planet ever to be realized. ...<br /><br />This 200-foot-size Geoscope would make it possible for humans to identify the true scale of themselves and their activities on this planet. Humans could thus comprehend much more readily that their personal survival problems related intimately to all humanity's survival. ...<br /><br />The Geoscope's electronic computers will store all relevant inventories of world data arranged chronologically, in the order and spacing of discovery, as they have occurred throughout all known history. ...<br /><br />Another change to be illustrated is resource transpositioning, such as the shift in geographical location of the world's iron metal from the mines of yesterday, much of which is now converted into world-around city buildings, railway tracks, and bridges, all of which later are scrapped when the buildings or railways become obsolete. ...<br /><br />With the Geoscope humanity would be able to recognize formerly invisible patterns and thereby to forecast and plan in vastly greater magnitude than heretofore. "The consequences of various world plans could be computed and projected, using the accumulated history-long inventory of economic, demographic, and sociological data. All the world would be dynamically viewable and picturable and radioable to all the world, so that common consideration in a most educated manner of all world problems by all world people would become a practical everyday, -hour and -minute event." - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><b>The World Game</b><br /><br />Bucky proposed a “great logistics game” and “world peace game” (later shortened to the “<a href="http://www.bfi.org/our_programs/who_is_buckminster_fuller/design_science/world_game/introduction_to_buckminster_fullers_world_game">World Game</a>”) that was intended to be a tool that would enable his "design revolution". Bucky viewed the "world" as the relevant unit of analysis when considering the solutions to our problems, and that "games" are something that are accessible to everyone, rather than just those interested in policy and/or power. <br /><br />The idea of the World Game is to make all relevant information about the world available to players, and for players to be able to disseminate their findings widely. The goal is to enable everyone to contribute to solving problems, and for the solutions to be widely vetted and a consensus on their implementation reached (versus the usual top-down approach of an elite few deciding policy and then implementing it).<br /><br />The World Game needs a comprehensive database that provides players with as good (or better) data than their government and business counterparts. This database needs to include an inventory of the world's resources (where everything is and in what quantities and qualities, from minerals to goods and services, to people and their needs and capabilities). Players also need an information source that monitors the current state of the world, bringing live news into the “game room” live. <br /><br />Bucky envisioned the World Game to be a place where people aimed to "Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone".<br /><br />While none of this existed in any meaningful form in the 1960's when Bucky first proposed it, and initial implementations were clunky to say the least, over the last decade or so we've reached the point where most people (at least in the developed world) have good enough internet access that they could start to become "players" in the game (whether a formal <a href="http://www.brainsturbator.com/articles/bucky_fuller_and_his_world_game_an_intro_to_saving_planets/">online version of the game</a>, or the rather more informal one the various arms of the blogosphere concerned with energy and sustainability have spontaneously created).<br /><br /><blockquote>World Game finds that wealth measures the degree to which humans have used their minds to discover scientific principles and have used those principles to invent artifacts and environment-controlling and -implementing, complex- artifact systems which, as powered only by daily energy income, can be demonstrably shown to be able to take care of given numbers of people for given numbers of forward days. "Taking care" of humans means to provide them with "pleasingly," healthily, satisfactorily stabilized environmental conditions under all of nature's known potential variables while adequately feeding them, giving them medical care, increasing their degrees of freedom, and increasing their technological options (see Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth). <br /><br />As already mentioned, World Game finds that the world's wealth and its medium of interchanges - ie. the world's monetary accounting systems - have been divorced from one another. Those bankers and insurance-company managements that have learned how they may legally employ to their own exclusive advantage the vast magnitudes of savings of real wealth deposited with them by those who have produced the wealth and who are quite unaware that those deposits are taken out of the bank and loaned out at swiftly increasing interest rates to others in such quantities as to underwrite the magnitude of purchasing, production, and sale of products that can be produced only by the involvements of such vast magnitudes of realwealth tokens, and may therefore overpower all wealth capabilities of any of the individual depositors of the savings-account deposits of the realwealth products. <br /><br />World Gaming requires progressive inventorying of condensed recalls of already introduced major concepts and their integration with one another, plus additional new concepts to produce newer and greater synergetic realization. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hYtQ_-rpAUo&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hYtQ_-rpAUo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><b>The Dymaxion World Map</b><br /><br />Bucky was the creator of the <a href="http://www.bfi.org/our_programs/who_is_buckminster_fuller/design_science/dymaxion_map/the_fuller_projection_map">Dymaxion map</a> and patented it in 1946. The Dymaxion Map is a projection of a world map onto the surface of a polyhedron, which can then be unfolded to a net in many different ways and flattened to form a two-dimensional map which retains most of the relative proportional integrity of the globe map.<br /><br />Bucky claimed his map had several advantages over other projections for world maps - it has less distortion of relative size of areas (particularly when compared to the Mercator projection) and less distortion of shapes of areas.<br /><br />The Dymaxion map has no "right way up". Bucky argues in "Critical Path" that in the universe there is no "up" and "down" or "north" and "south" - only "in" and "out", with "in" meaning 'towards the gravitational center' and "out", meaning "away from the gravitational center". <br /><br />The Dymaxion map doesn't have a single "correct" view. The triangular faces of the icosahedron can be peeled apart in different ways. One way results in an icosahedral net that shows an almost contiguous land mass comprising all of earth's continents - not groups of continents divided by oceans (this is the view generally used). Peeling the icosahedron apart in a different way presents a view of the world dominated by connected oceans surrounded by land, with Antarctica in the centre.<br /><blockquote>It was to provide a satisfactory means for humanity to see correctly the entire surface of the globe all at the sae time that the Dymaxion Sky-Ocean projection was designed. With it, for the first time in history, humans can see their whole planet Earth's geography displayed on one flat surface without any visible distortion in shape or relative size of any of its data and without any breaks in its continental contour - that is, the whole world surface is viewable simultaneously as one world island of unbroken contour in one world ocean. Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vfOcYUWfVqE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vfOcYUWfVqE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center><br /><br /><b>Globalisation</b><br /><br />Bucky was no fan of nationalism and viewed the nation state as a relic of the past ("operatively obsolete" as he put it), maintained to enable various elites to continue their privileged position via a strategy of divide-and-conquer, instead advocating a form of world government and an accounting system based on energy.<br /><br /><blockquote>With legal planning of their lawyer-advised banking leaders, the "haves" have now succeeded in cornering all the world's monetary gold as well as the preponderance of the world's petroleum resources - along with their refineries and world-around petro-delivery systems together also with acquisitions of all the atomic power-generating plants, originally paid for by the US taxpayers - and thereafter in severing the monetary system from the wealth system while marking up the negotiable equity value of gold and petroleum tenfold. <br /><br />They also have contrived their own game of international monetary banking of international balances of trade and credit accounting, greatly aided by the priorly established existence of 150 "sovereign" nations around planet Earth.<br /><br />That division of world political power into 150 sovereign nations is a consequence of thousands of years of successive and individually independent contriving of history's most powerful leaders. The number-one strategy of the successful leaders of history's successively established supreme socioeconomic control systems has always been to induce the spontaneous self-divisioning of those designed to be conquered and to keep them spontaneously self-dividing and their divisions lethally interarrayed against one another in order to keep them conquered. <br /><br />The longer the self-divisionings can be self-perpetuating, the more spontaneously are the divisions accepted institutionally by the successive generations as being "natural" divisions ... The prime vulnerabilities of humanity, which make it subject to spontaneous self-dividing, are those of different speech patterns, skin color, religions, social customs, class or caste systems, political preferences and all varieties of individually unique "troubles", suffering and discontent.<br /><br />The historical consequence of this aeons-ago-commenced employment of this grand strategy of 'divide to conquer and keep divided to keep conquered" accounts for the "natural" acceptance today by world peoples of the seemingly "God-given" existance of 150 sovereign nations of the world and their respective geographical division of all the world's dry land. ...<br /><br />The plotted curve of the rate of gain for increasing proportions of all humanity being thus swiftly advantaged by the doing more for more people with less and less matter and energy per function - all accomplished with computers, satellites, alloys, etc. - indicates that 100 percent of all humanity will be thus advantaged before 2000 A.D. In less than twenty years (less than one generation) all humanity is scheduled by evolution (not by any world planning body) to become physically more successful and,metaphysically more interestingly occupied than have any humans ever been in all known history-provided that humanity does not commit ignorance-, fear-, and -panic-induced total-species suicide. <br /><br />Why might they panic? All the present bureaucracies of political governments, great religious organizations, and all big businesses find that physical success for all humanity would be devastating to the perpetuation of their ongoing activities. This is because all of them are founded on the premise of ameliorating individual cases while generally exploiting on behalf of their respective political, religious, or business organizations the condition of nowhere- nearly- enough-life-support-for-all and its resultant great human suffering and discontent. <br /><br />Reason number two for fear-wrought panic is because all of the 150 nations of our planet are about to be desovereignized by evolution; that is, they are about to become operatively obsolete - about to be given up altogether. There are millions in the U.S.A., for instance, who on discovery that their government was about to become bankrupt and defunct would become activist "patriots," and might get out their guns and start a Nazi movement, seeking dictatorially to reinstate the "good old days." If people in many of the 150 nations succeeded in re-establishing their sovereignties and all the customs-barrier, balance-of-trade shacklings, it would soon be discovered that the 150 nations represent 150 "blood clots" imperiling the free interflowing of the evolution-producing metals and products recirculation as well as of the popular technical know-how disseminating. <br /><br />We have today, in fact, 150 supreme admirals and only one ship - Spaceship Earth. We have the 150 admirals in their 150 staterooms each trying to run their respective stateroom as if it were a separate ship. We have the starboard side admirals' league trying to sink the port side admirals' league. If either is successful in careening the ship to drown the "enemy" side, the whole ship will be lost. <br /><br />Long ago the world's great religions learned how to become transnational or more effectively supranational. Next the world's great ideologies learned how to become supranational. Most recently the world's largest financial- enterprise corporations have become completely supranational in their operation. Big religion, ideologies, and businesses alike found it intolerable to operate only within 150 walled-in pens. Freeing themselves by graduating into supranational status, they have left all the people in the 150 pens to struggle with all the disadvantages of 150 mutually opposed economic policies. The European Economic Community is a local attempt to cope with this world problem. <br /><br />The United States of America is not a nation. Nations are large tribes of humans that have been geographically isolated for millennia and have progressively inbred the physical types surviving under those unique geographical conditions. As mentioned, the U.S.S.R. had 146 naturally evolved nations" to integrate, the physiognomies of each U.S.S.R. nation looking quite different from the others'. The United States of America is a crossbreeding integration of humans from all the nations of the planet Earth; though often speaking of itself as the United States of America, it is not America. Its population is only one-half that of North and South America. The North Americans, consisting of Canadians, the U.S. citizens, and Mexicans, are evolutionarily cross-breeding into a single hybrid family of world humans. ...<br /><br />It is the invisibility of the alloys and chemistries and of the electronic circuitry of the design science revolution which finds that revolution to be as yet uncomprehended and ignorantly opposed by humanity's reliance only on yesterday's politically visible means of problem-solving. It is both the invisibility and misinformedness that occasions the lack of spontaneous popular support of the invisible design science revolution by the most powerful political and money-making systems. Big government can see no way to collect taxes to run its bureaucracy if people are served directly and individually by daily cosmic-energy-wealth income. Money-makers cannot find a way of putting meters between people and the wind, Sun, waves, etc. Neither big government nor big business pays any serious attention to the fact that we can live on our energy income, rather than on nature's energy savings account (fossil fuels), or by burning our Spaceship Earth's physical hull, which consists entirely of atomic energy in the form of matter. ...<br /><br />World Game will become increasingly effective in its prognoses and programming when the world-around, satellite-interrelayed computer system and its omni-Universe-operative (time-energy) accounting system are established. This system will identify the kilowatt-hour-expressed world inventory of foods, raw and recirculating resources, and all the world's unique mechanical and structural capabilities and their operating capacities as well as the respective kilowatt-hours of available energy-income-derived operating power with which to put their facilities to work. All the foregoing information will become available in respect to all the world-around technology's environment-controlling, life-sustaining, travel- and communication-accommodating structures and machines. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><b>The Global Energy Grid</b><br /><br />Bucky recommended the creation of a "global energy grid" as a step towards ending both the era of the nation state and our dependency on fossil fuels, and as a way of distributing renewable energy around the planet, dealing with the intermittency and availability problems suffered by solar and wind power in particular.<br /><blockquote>It is engineeringly demonstrable that there is no known way to deliver energy safely from one part of the world to another in larger quantities and in swifter manner than by high-voltage-conducted `electricity.' For the first half of the twentieth century the limit-distance of technically practical deliverability of electricity was 350 miles. As a consequence of the post-World War II space program's employment and advancement of the invisible metallurgical, chemical, and electronics more-with-lessing technology, twenty-five years ago it became technically feasible and expedient to employ ultra-high-voltage and superconductivity, which can deliver electrical energy within a radial range of 1500 miles from the system's dynamo generators.<br /><br />To the World Game seminar of 1969 I presented my integrated, world-around, high-voltage electrical energy network concept. Employing the new 1500-mile transmission reach, this network made it technically feasible to span the Bering Straits to integrate the Alaskan U.S.A. and Canadian networks with Russia's grid, which had recently been extended eastward into northern Siberia and Kamchatka to harness with hydroelectric dams the several powerful northwardly flowing rivers of northeasternmost U.S.S.R. This proposed network would interlink the daylight half of the world with the nighttime half.<br /><br />Electrical-energy integration of the night and day regions of the Earth will bring all the capacity into use at all times, thus overnight doubling the generating capacity of humanity because it will integrate all the most extreme night and day peaks and valleys. From the Bering Straits, Europe and Africa will be integrated westwardly through the U.S.S.R., and China, Southeast Asia; India will become network integrated southwardly through the U.S.S.R. Central and South America will be integrated southwardly through Canada, the U.S.A., and Mexico.' ...<br /><br />The world energy network grid will be responsible for the swift disappearance of planet Earth's 150 different nationalities. We now have 150 supreme admirals, all trying to command the same ship to go in different directions, with the result that the ship is going around in circles – getting nowhere. The 150 nations act as 150 blood clots in blocking the flow of recirculating metals and other traffic essential to realization of the design science revolution. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br />Bucky's research led him to conclude that humanity could satisfy 100% of its energy needs while phasing out fossil fuels and nuclear power. In one example, he calculated that a wind turbine fitted to every high-voltage transmission tower in the US could generate three-and-a-half times the country’s total power output at the time.<br /><br />Bucky also noted that population growth and use of electricity are inversely correlated - the greater use a society makes of electrical power, the lower its birthrate becomes. This relationship is the basis of the theory that part of the solution to the problem of expanding populations exceeding the planet's carrying capacity is to make people richer - thereby lowering birthrates to the point where the global population will stabilise.<br /><br /><blockquote>Graphs of each of the world's 150 nations showing their twentieth-century histories of inanimate energy production per capita of their respective populations together with graphs of those countries' birthrates show without exception that the birthrates decrease at exactly the same rate that the per capita consumption of inanimate electrical energy increases. The world's population will stop increasing when and if the integrated world electrical energy grid is realized. This grid is the World game's highest priority objective. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><b>Money And Work</b><br /><br />In Critical Path, Bucky cites Francois de Chardenedes' view that petroleum, from the standpoint of its replacement cost out of our current energy "budget" (essentially incoming solar radiation), had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon (US$300,000/L) to produce. From this point of view its use as a transportation fuel by people commuting to work represents a huge net loss compared to their earnings.<br /><br />Instead, Bucky suggests people should be paid to stay at home in many cases, with jobs that produce useful goods and services being awarded to those talented and motivated enough to do them well and, more generally, people performing perhaps a decade of national service before retiring to a life of leisure to make sure all necessary work is done.<br /><br /><blockquote>The computer will also have verified both of the important findings of the brilliant Denver, Colorado oil geologist, Francois de Chardenedes ... regarding the amount of energy employed as heat and pressure, for the length of time initially that it took nature to photosynthetically process Sun radiation into the myriad of hydrocarbon molecules that comprise all the vegetation and algae ... a large percentage of which Sun-energy-nurtured-and-multiplied molecules are ultimately processed into petroleum.<br /><br />The script of de Chardenedes' "Scenario of petroleum Production" makes it clear that, with all the cosmic energy processing (as rain, wind and gravitational pressure) and processing time (paid for at the rates you and I pay for household electricity), it costs nature well over a million dollars to produce each gallon of petroleum. To say "I didn't know that" doesn't alter the inexorable energy accounting of eternally-regenerative, 100-per-cent efficient - ergo, 100-pr-cent concerned - physical energy Universe.<br /><br />We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980 jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollars' worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><b>Pollution and Recycling</b><br /><br />Bucky viewed pollution as an unnecessary evil, noting that nature doesn't produce any pollution and recycles all wastes - a theme that has continued to be developed in more recent years, via the "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2006/02/cradle-to-cradle.html">cradle to cradle</a>" manufacturing and "<a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/05/biomimicry-are-humans-smarter-than-sea.html">biomimicry</a>" movements.<br /><br /><blockquote>It is a fact that we can now technologically recover and sort out the valuable chemistries in all the chimney-escaping or sluiceway-escaping 'wastes,' which, though unwanted by the local manufacturers, are necessary chemical-element components in the overall syntropic success of eternal regeneration of Universe. Nature has no pollutions--it has very valuable chemistries that function only under special conditions, so the critical path strategy is to get all the money-maker-unwanted chemistries shunted into all their syntropically functioning routes. Pollution is simply energy--in the form of unfamiliar matter--which the timing of omniregenerative cosmic system cannot immediately use but must use later. <br /><br />World government will require all industries to install the already-successfully-proven technology and therewith precipitate and recover all their profitwise-unwanted chemical by-products. Underwriting all those costs of installation and operation, world government will give tax credits to all those industries complying with the order, so that those industries can compete with those in the industry who do not have such pollution problems. World government will then stockpile all the chemical substances recovered from all previous liquid, gaseous, or solid dumpings, fumings, or runnings- off-known ignorantly as "pollution." The value of the recovered resources will more than offset the tax rebates given by the government in order to enforce precipitation. All the chemical substances in all their states are essential to the maintenance of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe. Nature has no "pollution." This is a word coined in human ignorance regarding the presence of the right chemicals being released in the wrong places by those who profit only through selfish preoccupation and nonconsideration of others. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><br /><b>Nuclear Power</b><br /><br />Bucky viewed the nuclear power industry with a fair degree of loathing, viewing it as an industry that had been paid for with vast sums of taxpayer money that had then been handed over to private sector interests without any compensation to those who had funded it.<br /><br />He viewed nuclear power advocates as being interested in maintaining a centralised, scarcity based model for energy generation compared to the model of abundant, distributed energy generation using renewable sources that he viewed as an integral part of his 'design revolution".<br /><br /><blockquote>The big oil companies knew long ago that humanity would ultimately run out of an adequate supply of petroleum and other fossil fuels, though coal may last a thousand years. That's why [...] the oil companies acquired control of the know-how on atomic energy as well as all the atomic plants and equipment paid for originally by the U.S.A. government. The power structure's only interest is in selling energy--and only energy that they can run through a meter. They're not in the least interested in anyone getting windpower--except themselves. Very rich men love having their sailing yachts wind-driven to Europe or the South Seas, but this is not for the people. People's power must be piped or wired to them only through meters.<br /><br />When in 1972 all the power-structure capital had converted its dollars into gold, oil, or other highly concentrated and mobile equities, then-President Richard Nixon severed the U.S.A. dollar from its government-guaranteed gold equity value of $35 per ounce, the U.S.A. people's dollar buying power plummeted--now, in 1980, being worth only 5 cents of the 1971 dollar. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><b>Similarities To Technocracy</b><br /><br />Parallels have occasionally been drawn between Bucky's vision and that of the <a href="http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/11/hubbert-king-of-technocrats.html">Technocracy movement</a>, with political activity considered largely unproductive and decision making left to scientists and engineers (in Technocracy's case) and "computer"s (in Bucky's case), and the knowledge of the finiteness of fossil fuels underpinning many of their recommendations.<br /><br />Bucky's world accounting system based on energy also has parallels in Technocrat thinking.<br /><br /><b>Conclusion</b><br /><br />Bucky predicted that the global energy grid would be operational by 1989. Like his prediction that we would see wide use of Geodesic dome cities and dwellings by 2000, this prediction has yet to materialise, but this hasn't stopped various groups of people continuing to promote his ideas and long term vision.<br /><br /><blockquote>Cosmically acceptable and effective decisions of humanity regarding [how to keep all humans and their ecological support system operating successfully on our vastly adequate daily income of solar atomic energy] will not be made by leaders single or plural, political or religious, military or mystic, by coercion or mob psychology. <br /><br />The effective decisions can only be made by the independently thinking and adequately informed human individuals and their telepathically inter-communicated wisdom--the wisdom of the majority of all such human individuals--qualifying for continuance in Universe as local cosmic problem-solvers--in love with the truth and in individually spontaneous self-commitment to absolute faith in the wisdom, integrity and love of God, who seems to wish Earthian humans to survive. - Buckminster Fuller - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-R-Buckminster-Fuller/dp/0312174918/crocodiletech-20">Critical Path</a></blockquote><br /><b>Further Reading</b><br /><br />* <a href="http://www.bfi.org/node">Buckminster Fuller Institute</a><br /><br />* <a href="http://www.grunch.net/">Grunch Of Giants</a><br /><br />* Stanford University - <a href="http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/fuller/">Buckminster Fuller Archive</a><br /><br />* <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/r_buckminster_fuller.html">Buckminster Fuller Quotes</a><br /><br />* <a href="http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id169/pg1/index.html">Disinformation: Buckminster Fuller</a> (many links)<br /><br />* <a href="http://www.geni.org/">GENI</a>: Global Energy Network Institute<br /><br /><b>Next</b><br /><br />This post is the first in a 4 part series. <br /><br />Next up I'll look movement toward a 3 or 4 day working week.<br /><br />Following that I'll look at at how Bucky's ideas influenced modern day techie culture, via both the cold war technocrats and the hippie "back to the landers" of the 60s and 70s, with a review of Fred Turner's book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-Stewart-Network-Utopianism/dp/0226817415/crocodiletech-20">From Counterculture To Cyberculture</a>". <br /><br />I'll conclude with an in-depth look at progress towards the global energy grid Bucky advocated, and why its become an increasingly good idea.Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-43446314267056928352009-01-31T03:52:00.000-08:002009-01-31T04:12:24.604-08:00Lost In My Own Backyard<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-My-Own-Backyard-Yellowstone/dp/140004622X/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519D3JT7EKL._SL500_AA240_.jpg" align="right"/></a>Tim Cahill is one of my favourite authors - a rare example of a travel / adventure writer who doesn't take himself (or his subjects) too seriously.<br /><br />In "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-My-Own-Backyard-Yellowstone/dp/140004622X/crocodiletech-20">Lost In My Own Backyard</a>", Tim writes about one of his favourite places to hike - Yellowstone National Park.<br /><blockquote>I live fifty miles from the park, but proximity does not guarantee competence. I’ve spent entire afternoons not knowing exactly where I was, which is to say, I was lost in my own backyard - Tim Cahill</blockquote><br />Yellowstone is the oldest national park in the world, but attracts more visitors than any other park in the US. Tim points out that over 99.9% of them never venture beyond paved roads and fenced viewpoints.<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/logicalrealist/1372686648/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1158/1372686648_d2277c654c.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />This prompted him to try to describe the park's less visited areas, such as Mount Washburn marveling at fumaroles, mudpots, and other geothermal oddities, the vast petrified forests described by early explorers and the weird "rock hoodoos" in the "Goblin Labyrinth".<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kristaeleman/2807418301/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3065/2807418301_60f8ac511e.jpg?v=0"/></a></center><br /><br />The book is divided into three parts:<br /><br />* "The Trails" looks at a variety of day hikes<br />* "In the Backcountry" explores three backcountry trails that veer far from the beaten track<br />* "A Selected Yellowstone Bookshelf” is an annotated bibliography of Tim's favourite books about the park<br /><br />The book is a slim one, and Tim keeps up his usual banter throughout, throwing in as many odd stories and pieces of history as he can to help describe the park,<br /><br /><center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/3048801458/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3222/3048801458_144d412b5e.jpg?v=0"/></a></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2592294001591434301.post-76108683780152846322009-01-31T03:16:00.000-08:002009-01-31T03:17:50.792-08:00The Night Watch<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Watch-Book/dp/1401359795/crocodiletech-20"><img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/213SVVSDFHL._SL500_AA180_.jpg" align="right"/></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Watch-Book/dp/1401359795/crocodiletech-20">The Night Watch</a> is a book by Russian author <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Lukyanenko">Sergei Lukyanenko</a>, the first in a 4 part series that are also being turned into a sequence of movies.<br /><br />The book tells the story of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_(Russian_novel)">The Others</a>" - two groups of more-than-human beings with magical powers that are divided into the Light and the Dark. The Others descend from the humans (shamans, soothsayers, and wisemen) from past ages who figured out how to step into the Twilight - a magical realm beneath the surface of all things.<br /><br />The Night Watch is an organization responsible for policing the actions of the Dark Others, while their opposing numbers in "The Day Watch" in turn police the actions of the Light Others. Each group is bound by a centuries old treaty that aims to maintain a balance of power between the 2 forces.<br /><br />The protagonist of the story is Anton Gorodetsky, a junior member of the Night Watch recently assigned to field work, initially to track and capture an unlicenced vampire operating within Moscow. The story follows Anton's growth as he participates in a series of clashes between the Light and the Dark, with the final chapters taking a somewhat political turn - with the Light plotting to create a global utopia in which the Dark has no place (something they have tried twice to achieve and failed in the previous century, first via communism and later via fascism). The Dark meanwhile, has "freedom" as its mantra which it uses to attract emerging Others.<br /><br /><center><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FYF5EhoIsA8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FYF5EhoIsA8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></center>Big Gavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00682404837426502876noreply@blogger.com0