Tuesday 29 March 2011

betrรผgerisch or we are unanimous, we are legion

A politician from Germany’s Green Party, whose success in recent state-elections certainly has more to do with such long-standing insults as described and corporate steam-rolling autocracy rather than reactionary fears over atomic energy from just yesterday, presents a marvelous and disturbing expose (auf Englisch) on the dastardly ways that big business has at its disposal for keeping tabs on anyone, and introduces it with the prescient words of Kraftwerk’s Computerwelt.

In order to highlight how a person’s day-to-day activities could be easily triangulated to limn a more than complete picture of one’s movements, dealings and interests and what repercussions changes in data retention rules (Vorratsdatenspeicherung) could have. After winning a lawsuit again the telecommunications firm that warehouses such logs, the politician made these records, six months' worth, available to Die Zeit. Gadgetry should not present the consumer a conundrum between convenence, functionality and being spied upon. Technology does not advance solely as fodder for marketers or advertising space. A second article (auf Deutsch) in the series is also quite an interesting read, addressing not only the trade-off but what is so willing offered up as incriminating evidence.

Monday 28 March 2011

meritocracy or redirected from micro-publishing

Though the temptation was not so easily accessible back in my college days, no one has ever been able to explain to me the academic prejudice against Wikipedia, albeit relaxed somewhat recently. Specialists always have hegemony in their respective domains, and it is as if it were fear for an oligarchy of nerds or fans (there must be a Greco-phone word for government by freaks and geeks)—however benevolent or enlightened—or a turning-away from knowledgeable and vetted sources.
Nonetheless, Wikipedia has persevered, growing both as an institution and a community. I had missed this feature before, but opening up the menus in the marginalia, one is treated to all sorts of undaunted scholarly applications, like Book Creator.
The umbrella-topic structure of Wikipedia articles, strung along in a daisy-chain for reference,
I believe would be perfectly suited to drafting a study-aid or especially to supplement a travel-guide, something a bit more in depth that branches out, like a Choose your own Adventure book but within a framework and not as boundless as the open internet. One’s handiwork can be saved and formatted in a variety of ways, and then e-mailed for distribution. With just a few extra steps, one’s books can be viewed and saved on any tablet device, ready to be quoted, reworked and re-imagined.  It would nicely personalize one's vacation itinerary, modularity, and saving the discovery for the trip and not the exhausted invention of the research and planning. 

Sunday 27 March 2011

democritus or up-and-atom

Watching the developments and set-backs in containing the fall-out from the nuclear reactors in Japan, I remembered an article from a thoughtful website turned book from 2006, “This is not a Place of Honor,” about a campaign for the long now, to ensure that future generations ten-thousand years and more from today would know to avoid the nuclear waste dumps of the present—like the site that was being proposed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Considering human curiosity and the capacity to poke around in dangerous places, how could caretakers of the present communicate risk when all contemporary symbols and speech may fail?
The commission concluded that all conceivable warnings and barriers, including a spiky, alien wasteland on the perimeter, might have the opposite effect and entice visitors to the temples of our household atomics. Whether be it waste that was not sufficiently planned for or an uncontrolled disaster, harnessing nuclear energy has enduring consequences that are projected in the impossibly distant future, for which no auditor or insurance adjustor has actuary tables. A recent and equally philosophical post, vis-ร -vis Chernobyl--or the Chernobyl solution of entombment, remembering that the Soviets sometimes staunched oil leaks with small nuclear explosions, explores how lands made unholy through nuclear disasters can be corralled off from the population. What wandering, post-apocalyptic tribe, after all, would not be eager to occupy grounds bereft of competition and sacred to the atomic-age gods? The sources cited even suggest that a religious order be founded to keep the tradition and forbidding knowledge alive from aeon to aeon. What if today’s sectarians and secretive organizations are ancient and forgotten warnings in the same vein?

Saturday 26 March 2011

licht aus

Tonight, anywhere and everywhere, at 20:30 (8:30 p.m.) local time is Earth Hour (EN/DE). Switching what off one can for the hour, and then maybe considering what can stay off before turning it back on, shows support and solidarity for climate-change awareness and conservation. This is another one of those annual observances with a short turn-around time, but the lesson and intent of this symbolic act can be applied far beyond just these sixty minutes. Considering that the environmental catastrophes recently perpetrated, the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the shipwrecked nuclear industry all the thousand daily insults were all about the demand to deliver massive amounts of energy on budget—not to mention the vacillating attitudes on stability in the Middle East, perhaps this small but wide-spread sign and changing practices and habits has even more urgency.