x-förmige

meta-clockwork or synchronized worlds

The grey eminences of weights and measures in Paris who keep the Meter and the Gram, like the warp and weave of the Fates, are gifting the world with an extra second (Schaltsekunde) to compensate for the drift of the winding down rotation of the Earth in comparison to the their household atomics that keep Universal Coordinated Time, the reference point for most of the planet’s civilian timekeepers. With ever more exacting calipers, it seems that the Earth has drifted a whole second off the mark, since it was last adjusted on the last day of the year in 2008.

Time, though surely an analogue thing and not discrete, is by convention or definition, the parsing of now, and formalized in 1967 as the resonance of Cesium atom: at that moment a day was exactly twenty-four hours long and because of the regularity and precision of the experiment, atomic clocks promised to be accurate within two seconds over a span of 65 million years, from the present all the way through the eons to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The inconstant Earth however proved to be more unpredictable, speeding up or slowing down with shocks big and little, like earthquakes, the Moon and the orbits of artificial satellites, probably by an amount as significant over the decades as the meteor impact that caused the mass-extinction event millions of years prior. The hands of a clock have to pass through every degree of a circle and can’t skip around—but the pendulum can be slowed down or stopped, for a second out-of-time to take a relaxed, deep breath. That the Earth shifts unpredictably does make me a bit uncomfortable, for all the ages of study by geomancers, navigators, physicists and philosophers one would think we wouldn’t have an inelegant solution, and I wonder how closely we are following the passage of the Sun overhead or peering into the vibrations of the elements and what standards and perspectives are most sensible.

teufels kreis

Among the many woes and aspects bemoaned about our very global economy—and a worry not countermanded by some other positive element but unilaterally punishing—is the potential that no matter how carefully planned, sacrifice and contingencies made flexible and more than yielding, the weakness or strength, decisions or sentiment touching any other markets could undo all the hard work, arrangements and negotiations and exacerbate problems by posing even bigger set-backs. Eurocrats and eurozone functionaries are gathered together for another installment of talks to issue a way forward, which is of course not just a dodgy doddering through, and a road map is something, although a path fraught with obstacles. Approaching a meeting with only the aim of maintaining a system at all costs rather that with convictions and principles only results in empty compromise, escalation and the true vicious circle (Teufels Kreis)—throwing money at problems and amounts to same good as not discussing or ignoring a problem as a surrogate solution. The diplomacy of map-making, no matter how the landmarks may be shifted or toppled by macroeconomic factors or caprice, are still indelible features to be navigated.

no need to shout

JOY OF MAN'S DESIRING!

dossier or when hacks attack

Having the ability to wield death-dealing thunderbolts from above under the technology of drones of course supposes that the same capabilities for all are not that far behind. Spying via satellite was a bit more of a challenge until all but the sharpest telemetry was disseminated to everyone; such advances lower the common denominator.

The early and eager adoption quickly slide from the anodyne and helpful, I think, like traffic control and emergency response to clawing to the top to relegate disagreements to aerial slap-fights between UAVs and reduce war to supposedly surgical gaming. It’s all very tit-for-tat. Now, as I suspect is the case for most electronic items of private and public (government) convenience, like cellular phones, RDIF passports and identity cards, automated voting machines, x-ray airport scanners and even QR tagging (I suspect some merry pranksters are already swapping out the 2-dimensional bar-code that one’s phone scans to retain a completely different message and reminder), some in the industry are pointing out that these systems are quite susceptible to hacking and reprogramming. Maybe drones really do keep us safe and the security is impenetrable or maybe suffering such cautious criticism is intentional, providing plausible deniability should an grave accident happen, falling out of the sky, causing a crash or targeting the wrong person and provoking war. Governments could always say their Skynet was hijacked. Having such power at one’s disposal to keep one’s hands clean also demands greater responsibility in the business of propagation, investigation and staying well-informed.