Read moreA web whose very creation may represent humanity’s attempt to understand the concept of our universe. For how will tomorrow’s web be described? It’s a entity that has no beginning** and no end; it’s an ever-expanding repository for all (digital) life.
Quotes
Read moreYour heads are full of rubbish because you have read too many books.
Read moreMost global guerrilla groups have become increasingly focused on economic insurgency to the detriment of ideological motivations. The reasons are obvious: guerrillas that are economically able to self-finance are much more likely to survive long term and gain favor with local populations – this income provides the means for the legitimacy jiu-jitsu necessary to create temporary autonomous zones (TAZs). The coming boom in black globalization will catalyze the spread of these groups even into areas in the West previously assumed immune. Unfortunately, unlike purely criminal organizations in the classic mold, these armed groups will actively compete with nation-states for local legitimacy.
The thought of disposing of the ISS so soon has led to some speculative “alternative uses” for the ISS; one of the most outlandish being the conversion of the ISS into some kind of International Space Ship, retrofitting the station with rockets and sending it to the Moon and/or Mars to act as a manned mothership for planetary activities. Although this excites my science fiction imagination, this possibility seems unlikely (it would be cool though…).
Russia Wants to Build New Space Station, Extend Life of ISS to 2020 | Universe Today
– not specultive, sensible! it’s already bloody up there, do something else with it *please*
stupid, nay criminal, is spending fucking trillions of dollars only to burn the thing up..
Read moreWhere’s our 21st century Kerouac? The man on the train so skullfucked by the hijacked American way that he can’t help but see the world and himself truly? He’s probably in diapers. It’ll take a post-male man to bring literature out of the ladies room.
As for global-scale players, yeah – I don’t want to hammer away at this, but “commons-based peer production” (we could wish for a shorter term) is global. It also kinda works in a local-barnraising regional way, but I suspect it works best in the framework of what some people (cue Jamais Cascio) call a “translocal community.”
Also, if you knock off work when your software project forks, the code just sits there. Whereas if you try that with an Amish barn the cows will freeze. Clearly is nice when the “commons” being constructed is abstract and sitting around in the dusty corners of a bunch of servers somewhere. Or when it can fit in your pocket.
*It is a new means of industrial production and potentially a different economic order; maybe there’s less to it than meets the eye, but it’s new, so, as a futurist, I’m necessarily interested. If I were a guy who was in earnest about “fighting market capitalism,” I don’t think I’d throw any bricks at the cops. I think I’d be devoting my efforts to removing the market price from goods and services, and the commons offers methods for that.
The WELL: Bruce Sterling: State of the World, 2009
– you don’t have to burn shit down to change the world, just obviate it
Read moreWhat worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me. So, I’ve come to despise it.
With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend. This doesn’t mean I’ll be liveblogging a lot of ham-fisted attempts to turn “everything” off. But it does mean making mindful decisions about the quality of any input that I check repeatedly — as well as any “stuff” I produce. Everything. From news sources to entertainment programming, and from ephemeral web content down to each email message I decide to respond to. The shit has to go, inclusive.
To be honest, I don’t have a specific agenda for what I want to do all that differently, apart from what I’m already trying to do every day:
* identify and destroy small-return bullshit;
* shut off anything that’s noisier than it is useful;
* make brutally fast decisions about what I don’t need to be doing;
* avoid anything that feels like fake sincerity (esp. where it may touch money);
* demand personal focus on making good things;
* put a handful of real people near the center of everything.All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better. Everything better. Better, better.
Read moreOne of the most glaring ironies of American life is that, a quarter-century later, the cities have metamorphosed into the suburbs – sans trees and grass. The cities’ fabled diversity has devolved into global chain stores and the electrolyte-enhanced water bottle and the branded baseball cap have become the accessories of a universal comfort and conformity. In a social and cultural sea change, the cities’ rented apartments, once the guarantor of diversity and fluid, exciting movement, have been converted into exclusive co-ops and condominiums
Read moreKnown as the Tarnac Nine, four men and five women aged 22 to 34 are being investigated over far-left terrorism following dawn raids by police in November that targeted several addresses, including a farm with a few goats, chickens and vegetables. Those arrested include a Swiss sitcom actor, a distinguished clarinettist, a student nurse and Benjamin Rosoux, an Edinburgh University graduate who runs the grocer’s shop and its adjoining bar-restaurant.
The alleged ringleader, Julien Coupat, 34, is still being held in prison despite a judge’s ruling that he be released. A former business and sociology student from an affluent Parisian suburb, Coupat moved to Tarnac in search of a non-consumerist lifestyle, saying he wanted to live frugally. The poor village of 350 people is home to a growing number of young people who have escaped the city for a simple life and sense of community. Together, the newcomers ran the shop, a mobile delivery service, the restaurant, a cinema club and an informal library.
Read moreBut the bourgeoisie proper –the co-coordinating, managerial classes- are always cast as villains. In “To Live With Fear” Mary Ingalls is hurt by horse and needs surgery. Though the doctor is a good fellow who wants to do the right thing, the man in charge of the hospital finances, refuses to extend Charles credit. That is, until he is threatened with direct action.
To earn the money to pay him, Charles works in a dangerous and desperate job, dynamiting a hole through a tunnel, and takes irresponsible risks at the behest of his foreman, who is working at the behest of a railway executive. This is an example of the power relationships in hierarchy. The lowest manager, Charles, runs risks because he is desperate, the one above him does so from fear of being fired and the man above him, does so from sheer greed. The men at the bottom are killed by this sick dynamic.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 