Re:Old-style environmentalism
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
You forget that environmentalist organizations have reached a state of considerable variety. Part of this variety extends its mandate to a global reach, in keeping with the principle that there is a planetary ecosystem. Some problems, like the concentration of particularly toxic chemicals gathering in the Arctic and on mountain peaks, are by definition global. There are many 'exceptions' besides rivers, especially if one's a bioregionalist.
In fact, you're failing to recognize that many of the more mature environmental organizations have adopted a policy of connecting the local to the global, which means acknowledging the effects of local actions on larger systems. Most of the committed environmentalists I know are striving for a personal semblance of a sustainable lifestyle. Of course, there are many exceptions; but then, I know some pretty irrational scientists, and we all know about business leaders who care more about themselves than shareholders or the betrayal of public trust by lawyers and politicians. That's humanity for ya. Look for sincerity and try and deal directly with that, when possible. You don't want to come off as a knee-Jerk, do you?
A problem with these sources is that they all seem to be skewed to a single point of view,
Which view would that be? I don't think they have a single point of view. Unless you're being touchy about them having an interest in sustainability, but then, that's the gist of the thread, and that's the reason they're linked to.
and the environmental movement has, at least to me, blown most of its credibility
You write as though there was a single entity you're complaining about, and it's ludicrous. The links in question are all run by people with dirt under their fingernails. They're mostly farmers who came to be concerned about environmental issues because of their experiences and education.
Should I discount geology as an un-credible field because some wingnuts claim the earth is expanding? Deal with specifics when discounting a 'movement', or be a troll.
on forecasts of doom that repeatedly fail to come true.
Now, I'm tempted to trot out all the warnings that unfortunately came true, but that is really beside the point. The point is that environmentalists have a precautionary role to play. They are often the true conservatives. They are spurred into action by social recklessness, and it's not always easy to distinguish true risk from apparent risk, until after the fact. We didn't blow up the planet in a nuclear holocaust! Hurrah! Those loser peaceniks, they had no credibility!
The numbers I have do show a drop off in the total food production after 1990, but that seems to be mostly explained by a drop in the number of acres cultivated, as crop subsidies and the collapse of the soviet union's command economy lead to much acerage being taken out of production. Indeed, the figures I have (conveniently organized on pages 95 to 98 of "the skeptical environmentalist") show production per hectacre actually increasing over any reasonable timescale.
Obviously, you didn't follow the links you're complaining about, you saw that they embodied a certain ideological opposition to you and went off to Lomborg's often justified rant about statistics (though he uses them dubiously himself). Sustainability cannot be reasonably defined in terms of the quantity of food produced. To do so is dogmatic reductionism.
Sustainability in the food sector is about two main things: food security and biodiversity. Having enough food is a subset of food security... then there's all the other stuff. *sigh* -- look it up.
[AC Troll Alert] Actually, it isn't, the poster using that analogy probably did so to make the point that industrial agriculture abuses a kind of productivity and sustainability credit.
When you use intensive chemical inputs to manage fertility at the expense of microbial, worm, and other essential topsoil biodiversity, that's fertility on credit. Sooner or later, unless you continue to manage using pesticides and synthetic nitrates, you'll risk dust bowl scenarios. The real crop of a sustainable farmer is topsoil biota; the commodity crop is the happy byproduct.
Likewise, messing with crop diversity by standardizing seeds is a kind of food security credit that translates into big money. Monocropping seems like a strategy of abundance now, but we're forced by it into expensive re-breeding or GE projects to compensate for lost expertise in the resistance to adverse conditions provided by diversity (the Inca had an estimated 3000 varieties of potato, spread across 5 species, when Pizarro arrived--mostly to provide crop reliability). We're already feeling many of the effects of this monocrop trend in N.A., but it is particularly felt in places where the green revolution went overboard. A good early example: how costly were the great potato famines?
Essentially, that analogy uses the old saw: "we don't own the earth, we borrow it from our children."
Re:Kind of emphasizes a major point.
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 1
Vancouver will be fine, just say goodbye to the beaches and False Creek (oh, maybe you live in Kits Point). It's Richmond you'll have to worry about. But Richmond will probably liquefy in the next big quake before the waves rush in anyway.
Re:Agricultural output
on
Global Dimming
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· Score: 4, Informative
What evidence is there that modern farming methods are unsustainable?
Good question, though not too hard to research as there's a volume of data and it's a hot issue. Of course, it's controversial, since much of the research is influenced by agribusiness (esp. here in Canada -- AgCan is in industry's pocket) and that means that research is overly reductionist or just plain skewed.
Keywords to look for in your reference search: loss of topsoil in green revolution scenarios (effects of tilling, bare soil, industrial watering, monocrops, heavy feeding crops, pesticides); dependence of farming on chemical inputs; loss of seed sovereignty; crop diversity reduction; the effects of large-scale monocropping on the environment; water usage; permaculture; loss of local knowledge (microclimates, local pest management, seed varieties --again--, plant companions, etc); misguided pest management (overused pesticides etc.); distribution and ownership models that reduce local food security; and so on.
Umm, ever heard of "have your cake and eat it too" -- at the end of the day he doesn't have to reboot, and if the install is fubared, delete the drive image file and start over painlessly... plus having any number of them running at once is pretty neat, while working in Excel and burnin' in the background... try that on yr klone and see if you keep your hair.
You need to go back and read the trilogy [you don't have to read it carefully to get this]. There is much ado about the complicated economic relationships driving the development of terraforming [not just some boneheaded sense of capitalism vs. socialism], and frequent reference to the unprecedented expense of these mega-mega-projects. There is no "optimistic assumption" that terraforming is without effort, quite the contrary. It's described as the most expensive and difficult human endeavour ever undertaken, made easier by automation and new technologies, but massive nonetheless. The cost of all this is borne out by the long view of the organizations involved. You were perhaps mislead by quirky characters like Russell who are so focussed on their jobs that the politics and economics ennabling their work are alien to them, and that obvious failing is a significant bit of character development.
The most pertinent references to capitalism and the "metanationals" of the time are explorations of trends like conglomeration, client states, and neo-syndicates. At the time the book was written, one division of Mitsubishi had a larger economy than Indonesia, and very little literature, even SF, explores issues like this. Alternative economies being explored by those under some kind of economic yoke is a history enshrined in the American past. So why is it inane? Because some of the influential characters are foaming-at-the-mouth pinkos and libertarians? Eco-economics is much less described in the series than issues of history and memory, or many of its other epic themes, but it's relevant to ideas of how frontiers involve developing new economics.
I'm interested in your examples of speculative fiction of the near future where political extrapolation/exploration is not inane.
"Ideology is like halitosis: it's something someone else has." [Paraphrasing Eagleton]
About the same time they adopt Robinson's inane socialist utopia. What is it with you non-scientists defining the world by science fiction authors? It's perplexing.
SF is a thought experiment in the social realm, technology included, and you shouldn't expect much less. Robinson is using utopian ideas influenced in large part by Fredric Jameson [among others], which means he's fairly well-informed on large-scale social trends. (Not to mention making probably the best literary adaptation of geomorphology to Mars.) SF usually tends to either the utopian or dystopian or some mix, because that's a big part of what makes it exploratory and entertaining. The interesting thing about the politics of the Mars trilogy is that he's examining how the new frontier will play out, given the dominant social trends of the past few hundred years... Not really meant to be predictive, merely plausible and instructive.
The idea of the 'time slip' is interesting from the point of view of how people removed from 'the old country' deal with new frontier conditions and old traditions [he's very focussed on the history of the American West]. If his use of ideology seems alien to you, that's part of what he's getting at. Deal with it.
[P.S. -- ever hear of satellites? Naw, just an SF pipe dream.]
The parent post is mismoderated Informative... it's mis-informative. ITMS will not run on Win98, in fact I upgraded a MS Office + webbrowsing + mp3 playing machine to Win2K just for the purpose of running iTunes (couldn't stand winamp's playlists or interface anymore). Now all the production Macs in the studio can play the music stored on the PC as they see fit... easily, duh-easy.
they tend to have some wierd religous and political views
* Eating the God (Communion) = weird
* Revelations (the Book) = weird
* Not eating seafood = weird
* Stoning adulterers = weird
* Parading around giant wooden penises (Kabuki) = weird
* The inherited rich deserve their wealth = weird
* Manifest Destiny = weird
* Homophobia = weird
* Racism = really weird
I guess it's all a matter of perspective. Sure waiting for the aliens to take us all home is weird... but so is pretty much everything taken to an extreme or even just taken for granted locally. Weird is good, though true diversity's better [/political view].
The most influential 20th c. SF *writer* might be Capek,
Perhaps, but let me suggest an alternative: Olaf Stapledon. Poorly known, and not a good novelist, but he writes the history of humanity for some 8 billion years in Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future and the history of the entire freakin' cosmos in Star Maker -- pub. in 1930 and 37, respectively. So what you say? Well, despite the lack of characterization or compelling storytelling, he was a master of grandly sketched plot ideas, and crams hundreds of them into those two books. I challenge you: take the plot premises of 20 major pre-cyberpunk SF novels (plus ST:TNG episodes etc.) and you'll find them wholly or in large part suggested by Stapledon--if you can stomach his prose. A good example: Childhood's End (& 2001:ASO) by Clarke.
I'm not suggesting that all those SF writers read Stapledon, or that their works are derivative--though there may be some truth to it--nor that you should rush out and read his turgid cosmic histories, just that his influence was in the form of providing a scope for future history and an enormous repository of useful (and well-used) plot ideas.
...religion and politics they get into sometimes I can live without. Just stick to writting guy's [sic], that is what you do best.
Awright! let's see... point me to some great work without religion or politics involved. Or, maybe you're saying that if you agree with the worldview etc. of the writer, it isn't religion or politics, but fact.
Even if the commentary isn't overt or intentional, any fictional writing (note the spelling please) is imbued with religion, politics, and everything in between. In fact, some of the most political implications are in writing that doesn't acknowledge a position.
If you're concerned about the dangers of rampant patenting, especially by the 'Life Sciences' sector, check out the research by the ETC group.
They started as an agriculture research and advocacy group (RAFI) and morphed into ETC about the time they started discovering how broad the patenting system's enclosure of life forms and genetic structures was getting. It's an issue with huge implications, since ideas, biological structures, and living beings are being patented in sometimes outrageous ways.
The military doesn't run New Zealand's Scott Base [webcam], it's run by Antarctica New Zealand, a gov. mandated multi-purpose institute. But the military has a presence there as well.
I once got a call at 4am from a friend in the NZ military in, um, '92. They were testing the base's new telecom equipment. He's been stationed there a number of times over the years.
"Duplicating a song that you do not own a copy of is theft."--
Incorrect.--
It is copyright violation.
Well, not in Canada. Chapter and verse from the Copyright Act:
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work,
is embodied onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
What that means is that we can make personal copies without paying, so long as we don't turn around and redistribute in any way. It's called "fair use," eh. I think this is partly based on the concept that we're paying for the reproduction not the art, and if we do the reproducing ourselves...
There's a down side of this emphasis on reproduction. If I tape your stories, and we don't explicitly give you copyright, I get the copyright to that recording since I paid for the recording media. Your stories as ideas? tough luck, they're in limbo (except this particular recording, which is mine all mine). There is a precedent for 'moral right' in Canada which alleviates this some: if you commission art from me, you own it and control copyright, but I can say in the courts that you have to take it off your armadillo porn site.
the fact that if you're downloading music without permission of the copyright holder, you're a thief.
You know, it occurs to me that what is going on when people state things like this, despite all the evidence clarifying the difference between copying and taking, is an idiomatic reference to something else. Yes they're pushing the term 'theft' away from a precise meaning, because they need to express something that's difficult to grasp.
I really don't think most advocates of this position believe that they're talking about stealing the 'work' in question, they're talking about the deprivation of revenue, and that is what's being stolen, not the 'work'.
Since we're fish swimming in the sea of capitalist ideology, it's a bit taboo to mention that the revenue from the product and the creative work are at odds, and semi-independent. So we see these semantic struggles to apply the idea of depriving potential revenue to enjoying art without paying. After all, if everything is reduced to commodity, and only exchange value is a valid measure of fairness, then an artistic work is simply a product, and market rules always favour the vendor.
Once you're convinced that the product being exchanged is the artistic work (i.e. forgetting that it's a reproduction in a particular medium), it's a small leap to conclude that deprivation of revenue is theft.
Note to capitalist self: remember that when you buy even everyday objects, you're buying the reproduction and distribution of the thing, and the designer still has the ideas, which if they're moral and ethical they'll share after they've made some cash.
No... we... don't! I'm more of a producer than consumer (haven't purchased OR p2p shared much 'content' over the past 6 years--kids' stuff excluded) and I work with communications theorists and various content producers. As with most things, this is not a digital social problem, it's analog. Not black and white. Not thief or hero.
When I d/l a music rip, I'm making a copy for personal use. That's [mostly, probably] acceptable in Canadian copyright law [YMMV, eh]. So it isn't theft, morally or legally! However, I'm ennabling someone else's copyright infringements, because I benefit from their distribution methods. They're abusing a trust, which is what copyright is (I trust you to use this content well, abuse it and I take away your right to copy, yadayada).
But, I and many other artist/producer types distinguish between the creative product and the commercial product, though they may be bundled in the same object or file. The commercial product requires money transactions, as the whole production process has an economic logic. The creation, however, is something that requires a public sense of ownership in order for it to take on a life of its own and persist (i.e. be listened to/ watched/ read etc.). This has little to do with the money transaction. It's a transaction of the spirit, and any good artist ultimately cares about this the most--which is why so many of the great artists wind up poor. The commercial transaction is at odds with the creative spirit, one divides and the other unites.
So in the sense that I want to make more of these recordings, I say Pay! When you don't, it feels like theft [if you would have otherwise paid for it, and you can afford it]. But for every copy that is made and passed around, I say Go, because the thing itself lives on, which is why I really made it, right? That dude bootlegging my stuff on his computer is abusing the economic trust but doing the creative product a favour, thagyouverymuch. If I wanted to make loads of dough, I would start an ad firm or become a golem of the hollywood machine.
The 2004 landslide winner George W Bush is not REALLY elected because [/sarcasm]
OK I know that's a trollish post but it's a common/. sentiment. The key point is that he wasn't actually elected in the last election. Yes, there were numerous 'plausible deniability' reports in the US media about ballots that were confusingly designed, misdirections to the voting place, malfunctioning voting machines, meddled hand-counts, and other kinds of minor confusion all over Florida, but the really big buried story is the database of supposed felons that put around 22,000 (or more) legitimate citizens on a 'no vote' list. Most of those people were africanamerican, and a sure bet of a Gore victory. The database wasn't subject to quality control, came from sources associated with the former Texas governor, and subsequently turned out to be over 90% wrong.
These problems were never rectified or properly acknowledged, and many people were wrongly denied their right to vote. GW took power with less than 600 votes, according to the official count. Please, google this topic, then come back and complain about fictions. Or does the Bush Admin's ideological position justify their means of obtaining power? [Look, I don't think Gore would have been superior, OK? I just think the "we're so democratic" scales need to fall from american eyes.]
Canadians don't have a 1 million man army sitting on the border, and SCUDs with chemical weapons on them, waiting for a chance to invade.
No, but you were very clever to stop all beef imports from Alberta (that's a province). What you've overlooked will be your undoing however. You think that's ordinary beer we're exporting?! How about your comedians--how many of them are actually cleverly subversive Canucks? How about William Shatner? Peter Jennings? Perry f***ing Como? You think it's just coincidence that no one south of Minnesota actually knows anything about Canada?
Democracy is a pretty foreign concept to most parts of the world
Including Florida. Or haven't you noticed all those salty-haired "snow birds" we Canadians are sending down there? You think they're just retirees, right? Do you really think Jeb Bush could have pulled that caper off without the covert ops of the shuffleboard-and-horseshoes thugs? That's right, GW is a pawn of the Canadian Senate (ha! never heard of them, have you?). Our plan for world dominance proceeds apace.
Here's a clue - the Planet will survive long after we're all dead. The Earth will be there when the sun becomes a red giant and eats it. We shouldn't save the Planet, we should save ourselves. Does the Earth 'care' if biodiversity diminishes due to pollution? Does the Earth 'care' if the light pollution causes algae disruptions in the Great Lakes? No. but we should.
That's a very humanistic position, which suggests that homo sapiens' mental capabilities separate us from the rest of the planet. You're saying that the whole enterprise of linking human destiny with the ecological structure of Gaia [or whatever name you give the "vast, self regulating system" that we live inside of] is annoying to you, as it diminishes us and is out of touch with the people.
Here's a clue: people saying 'save the planet' are doing several things: 1) referring to the ecosphere as it is, not just a playground for hominids, 2) pointing out that ecology is an interconnected web with unforseen dependencies, 3) pointing out that our survival as a species may depend on us curbing our global practice of extinction, 4) stating that our humanistic rise above our environment's demands is a liability when it comes to understanding all that, so humanism needs adjustment.
Better to die on my feet than live on my knees, as the saying goes, and for those connected to a natural environment, a diminished ecosphere is an oppression. In many senses, saving the planet = saving ourselves.
So after a few years of r&D half a dozen custom built protoypes (to be discarded as non-biodegradable junk) and other discarded parts they can have something that probably took more energy to make than a small town uses in a year, but then fly it around the world using only energy from the sun...
A Proof of Concept product is always more costly. You can think of R&D costs not concentrated in a single product, but amortized across the series of product lines inspired by the new engineering, whether those costs are money or calories or a balance of available resources. The long-term savings (in all economic senses) represented by efficient design suggests a real bargain for global society.
The publicity stunt aspect of this is really a kind of marketing for sustainable tech in the long view.
Slashdot Mirror
You forget that environmentalist organizations have reached a state of considerable variety. Part of this variety extends its mandate to a global reach, in keeping with the principle that there is a planetary ecosystem. Some problems, like the concentration of particularly toxic chemicals gathering in the Arctic and on mountain peaks, are by definition global. There are many 'exceptions' besides rivers, especially if one's a bioregionalist.
In fact, you're failing to recognize that many of the more mature environmental organizations have adopted a policy of connecting the local to the global, which means acknowledging the effects of local actions on larger systems. Most of the committed environmentalists I know are striving for a personal semblance of a sustainable lifestyle. Of course, there are many exceptions; but then, I know some pretty irrational scientists, and we all know about business leaders who care more about themselves than shareholders or the betrayal of public trust by lawyers and politicians. That's humanity for ya. Look for sincerity and try and deal directly with that, when possible. You don't want to come off as a knee-Jerk, do you?
Which view would that be? I don't think they have a single point of view. Unless you're being touchy about them having an interest in sustainability, but then, that's the gist of the thread, and that's the reason they're linked to.
and the environmental movement has, at least to me, blown most of its credibility
You write as though there was a single entity you're complaining about, and it's ludicrous. The links in question are all run by people with dirt under their fingernails. They're mostly farmers who came to be concerned about environmental issues because of their experiences and education.
Should I discount geology as an un-credible field because some wingnuts claim the earth is expanding? Deal with specifics when discounting a 'movement', or be a troll.
on forecasts of doom that repeatedly fail to come true.
Now, I'm tempted to trot out all the warnings that unfortunately came true, but that is really beside the point. The point is that environmentalists have a precautionary role to play. They are often the true conservatives. They are spurred into action by social recklessness, and it's not always easy to distinguish true risk from apparent risk, until after the fact. We didn't blow up the planet in a nuclear holocaust! Hurrah! Those loser peaceniks, they had no credibility!
The numbers I have do show a drop off in the total food production after 1990, but that seems to be mostly explained by a drop in the number of acres cultivated, as crop subsidies and the collapse of the soviet union's command economy lead to much acerage being taken out of production. Indeed, the figures I have (conveniently organized on pages 95 to 98 of "the skeptical environmentalist") show production per hectacre actually increasing over any reasonable timescale.
Obviously, you didn't follow the links you're complaining about, you saw that they embodied a certain ideological opposition to you and went off to Lomborg's often justified rant about statistics (though he uses them dubiously himself). Sustainability cannot be reasonably defined in terms of the quantity of food produced. To do so is dogmatic reductionism.
Sustainability in the food sector is about two main things: food security and biodiversity. Having enough food is a subset of food security... then there's all the other stuff. *sigh* -- look it up.
[AC Troll Alert] Actually, it isn't, the poster using that analogy probably did so to make the point that industrial agriculture abuses a kind of productivity and sustainability credit.
When you use intensive chemical inputs to manage fertility at the expense of microbial, worm, and other essential topsoil biodiversity, that's fertility on credit. Sooner or later, unless you continue to manage using pesticides and synthetic nitrates, you'll risk dust bowl scenarios. The real crop of a sustainable farmer is topsoil biota; the commodity crop is the happy byproduct.
Likewise, messing with crop diversity by standardizing seeds is a kind of food security credit that translates into big money. Monocropping seems like a strategy of abundance now, but we're forced by it into expensive re-breeding or GE projects to compensate for lost expertise in the resistance to adverse conditions provided by diversity (the Inca had an estimated 3000 varieties of potato, spread across 5 species, when Pizarro arrived--mostly to provide crop reliability). We're already feeling many of the effects of this monocrop trend in N.A., but it is particularly felt in places where the green revolution went overboard. A good early example: how costly were the great potato famines?
Essentially, that analogy uses the old saw: "we don't own the earth, we borrow it from our children."
Vancouver will be fine, just say goodbye to the beaches and False Creek (oh, maybe you live in Kits Point). It's Richmond you'll have to worry about. But Richmond will probably liquefy in the next big quake before the waves rush in anyway.
Good question, though not too hard to research as there's a volume of data and it's a hot issue. Of course, it's controversial, since much of the research is influenced by agribusiness (esp. here in Canada -- AgCan is in industry's pocket) and that means that research is overly reductionist or just plain skewed.
Keywords to look for in your reference search: loss of topsoil in green revolution scenarios (effects of tilling, bare soil, industrial watering, monocrops, heavy feeding crops, pesticides); dependence of farming on chemical inputs; loss of seed sovereignty; crop diversity reduction; the effects of large-scale monocropping on the environment; water usage; permaculture; loss of local knowledge (microclimates, local pest management, seed varieties --again--, plant companions, etc); misguided pest management (overused pesticides etc.); distribution and ownership models that reduce local food security; and so on.
Some good places to start looking outside of google:
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Sustainable Farming Connection
FarmFolk/CityFolk
The Ram's Horn
World Resources Institute
WorldWatch Institute
Pesticide Action Network
Sustainable Agriculture Network
Permaculture
ETC Group
There, that should get you started. You want evidence? there's plenty out there.
Umm, ever heard of "have your cake and eat it too" -- at the end of the day he doesn't have to reboot, and if the install is fubared, delete the drive image file and start over painlessly... plus having any number of them running at once is pretty neat, while working in Excel and burnin' in the background... try that on yr klone and see if you keep your hair.
I think that only a few people are cruel, a few are stupid, but most are confused and misinformed or are stuck in lousy power relations.
The cruel people tend to take leadership... more cruelty available to those in power.
It only takes one asshole in a thousand to mess things up. Assholes always get more airtime than they deserve.
One PointyHairedBoss, and the whole ISP looks like a bunch of assholes.
"It had zero redeeming features."
:-)
I can think of, well, one: awesome camera-on-a-rope shots.
I'm on a university network and can't play it decently, serious stutter.
You need to go back and read the trilogy [you don't have to read it carefully to get this]. There is much ado about the complicated economic relationships driving the development of terraforming [not just some boneheaded sense of capitalism vs. socialism], and frequent reference to the unprecedented expense of these mega-mega-projects. There is no "optimistic assumption" that terraforming is without effort, quite the contrary. It's described as the most expensive and difficult human endeavour ever undertaken, made easier by automation and new technologies, but massive nonetheless. The cost of all this is borne out by the long view of the organizations involved. You were perhaps mislead by quirky characters like Russell who are so focussed on their jobs that the politics and economics ennabling their work are alien to them, and that obvious failing is a significant bit of character development.
The most pertinent references to capitalism and the "metanationals" of the time are explorations of trends like conglomeration, client states, and neo-syndicates. At the time the book was written, one division of Mitsubishi had a larger economy than Indonesia, and very little literature, even SF, explores issues like this. Alternative economies being explored by those under some kind of economic yoke is a history enshrined in the American past. So why is it inane? Because some of the influential characters are foaming-at-the-mouth pinkos and libertarians? Eco-economics is much less described in the series than issues of history and memory, or many of its other epic themes, but it's relevant to ideas of how frontiers involve developing new economics.
I'm interested in your examples of speculative fiction of the near future where political extrapolation/exploration is not inane.
"Ideology is like halitosis: it's something someone else has." [Paraphrasing Eagleton]
SF is a thought experiment in the social realm, technology included, and you shouldn't expect much less. Robinson is using utopian ideas influenced in large part by Fredric Jameson [among others], which means he's fairly well-informed on large-scale social trends. (Not to mention making probably the best literary adaptation of geomorphology to Mars.) SF usually tends to either the utopian or dystopian or some mix, because that's a big part of what makes it exploratory and entertaining. The interesting thing about the politics of the Mars trilogy is that he's examining how the new frontier will play out, given the dominant social trends of the past few hundred years... Not really meant to be predictive, merely plausible and instructive.
The idea of the 'time slip' is interesting from the point of view of how people removed from 'the old country' deal with new frontier conditions and old traditions [he's very focussed on the history of the American West]. If his use of ideology seems alien to you, that's part of what he's getting at. Deal with it.
[P.S. -- ever hear of satellites? Naw, just an SF pipe dream.]
The parent post is mismoderated Informative... it's mis-informative. ITMS will not run on Win98, in fact I upgraded a MS Office + webbrowsing + mp3 playing machine to Win2K just for the purpose of running iTunes (couldn't stand winamp's playlists or interface anymore). Now all the production Macs in the studio can play the music stored on the PC as they see fit... easily, duh-easy.
* Eating the God (Communion) = weird
* Revelations (the Book) = weird
* Not eating seafood = weird
* Stoning adulterers = weird
* Parading around giant wooden penises (Kabuki) = weird
* The inherited rich deserve their wealth = weird
* Manifest Destiny = weird
* Homophobia = weird
* Racism = really weird
I guess it's all a matter of perspective. Sure waiting for the aliens to take us all home is weird... but so is pretty much everything taken to an extreme or even just taken for granted locally. Weird is good, though true diversity's better [/political view].
Perhaps, but let me suggest an alternative: Olaf Stapledon. Poorly known, and not a good novelist, but he writes the history of humanity for some 8 billion years in Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future and the history of the entire freakin' cosmos in Star Maker -- pub. in 1930 and 37, respectively. So what you say? Well, despite the lack of characterization or compelling storytelling, he was a master of grandly sketched plot ideas, and crams hundreds of them into those two books. I challenge you: take the plot premises of 20 major pre-cyberpunk SF novels (plus ST:TNG episodes etc.) and you'll find them wholly or in large part suggested by Stapledon--if you can stomach his prose. A good example: Childhood's End (& 2001:ASO) by Clarke.
I'm not suggesting that all those SF writers read Stapledon, or that their works are derivative--though there may be some truth to it--nor that you should rush out and read his turgid cosmic histories, just that his influence was in the form of providing a scope for future history and an enormous repository of useful (and well-used) plot ideas.
Awright! let's see... point me to some great work without religion or politics involved. Or, maybe you're saying that if you agree with the worldview etc. of the writer, it isn't religion or politics, but fact.
Even if the commentary isn't overt or intentional, any fictional writing (note the spelling please) is imbued with religion, politics, and everything in between. In fact, some of the most political implications are in writing that doesn't acknowledge a position.
They started as an agriculture research and advocacy group (RAFI) and morphed into ETC about the time they started discovering how broad the patenting system's enclosure of life forms and genetic structures was getting. It's an issue with huge implications, since ideas, biological structures, and living beings are being patented in sometimes outrageous ways.
I once got a call at 4am from a friend in the NZ military in, um, '92. They were testing the base's new telecom equipment. He's been stationed there a number of times over the years.
Well, not in Canada. Chapter and verse from the Copyright Act:
What that means is that we can make personal copies without paying, so long as we don't turn around and redistribute in any way. It's called "fair use," eh. I think this is partly based on the concept that we're paying for the reproduction not the art, and if we do the reproducing ourselves...
There's a down side of this emphasis on reproduction. If I tape your stories, and we don't explicitly give you copyright, I get the copyright to that recording since I paid for the recording media. Your stories as ideas? tough luck, they're in limbo (except this particular recording, which is mine all mine). There is a precedent for 'moral right' in Canada which alleviates this some: if you commission art from me, you own it and control copyright, but I can say in the courts that you have to take it off your armadillo porn site.
You know, it occurs to me that what is going on when people state things like this, despite all the evidence clarifying the difference between copying and taking, is an idiomatic reference to something else. Yes they're pushing the term 'theft' away from a precise meaning, because they need to express something that's difficult to grasp.
I really don't think most advocates of this position believe that they're talking about stealing the 'work' in question, they're talking about the deprivation of revenue, and that is what's being stolen, not the 'work'.
Since we're fish swimming in the sea of capitalist ideology, it's a bit taboo to mention that the revenue from the product and the creative work are at odds, and semi-independent. So we see these semantic struggles to apply the idea of depriving potential revenue to enjoying art without paying. After all, if everything is reduced to commodity, and only exchange value is a valid measure of fairness, then an artistic work is simply a product, and market rules always favour the vendor.
Once you're convinced that the product being exchanged is the artistic work (i.e. forgetting that it's a reproduction in a particular medium), it's a small leap to conclude that deprivation of revenue is theft.
Note to capitalist self: remember that when you buy even everyday objects, you're buying the reproduction and distribution of the thing, and the designer still has the ideas, which if they're moral and ethical they'll share after they've made some cash.
No... we... don't! I'm more of a producer than consumer (haven't purchased OR p2p shared much 'content' over the past 6 years--kids' stuff excluded) and I work with communications theorists and various content producers. As with most things, this is not a digital social problem, it's analog. Not black and white. Not thief or hero.
When I d/l a music rip, I'm making a copy for personal use. That's [mostly, probably] acceptable in Canadian copyright law [YMMV, eh]. So it isn't theft, morally or legally! However, I'm ennabling someone else's copyright infringements, because I benefit from their distribution methods. They're abusing a trust, which is what copyright is (I trust you to use this content well, abuse it and I take away your right to copy, yadayada).
But, I and many other artist/producer types distinguish between the creative product and the commercial product, though they may be bundled in the same object or file. The commercial product requires money transactions, as the whole production process has an economic logic. The creation, however, is something that requires a public sense of ownership in order for it to take on a life of its own and persist (i.e. be listened to/ watched/ read etc.). This has little to do with the money transaction. It's a transaction of the spirit, and any good artist ultimately cares about this the most--which is why so many of the great artists wind up poor. The commercial transaction is at odds with the creative spirit, one divides and the other unites.
So in the sense that I want to make more of these recordings, I say Pay! When you don't, it feels like theft [if you would have otherwise paid for it, and you can afford it]. But for every copy that is made and passed around, I say Go, because the thing itself lives on, which is why I really made it, right? That dude bootlegging my stuff on his computer is abusing the economic trust but doing the creative product a favour, thagyouverymuch. If I wanted to make loads of dough, I would start an ad firm or become a golem of the hollywood machine.
OK I know that's a trollish post but it's a common /. sentiment. The key point is that he wasn't actually elected in the last election. Yes, there were numerous 'plausible deniability' reports in the US media about ballots that were confusingly designed, misdirections to the voting place, malfunctioning voting machines, meddled hand-counts, and other kinds of minor confusion all over Florida, but the really big buried story is the database of supposed felons that put around 22,000 (or more) legitimate citizens on a 'no vote' list. Most of those people were africanamerican, and a sure bet of a Gore victory. The database wasn't subject to quality control, came from sources associated with the former Texas governor, and subsequently turned out to be over 90% wrong.
These problems were never rectified or properly acknowledged, and many people were wrongly denied their right to vote. GW took power with less than 600 votes, according to the official count. Please, google this topic, then come back and complain about fictions. Or does the Bush Admin's ideological position justify their means of obtaining power? [Look, I don't think Gore would have been superior, OK? I just think the "we're so democratic" scales need to fall from american eyes.]
No, but you were very clever to stop all beef imports from Alberta (that's a province). What you've overlooked will be your undoing however. You think that's ordinary beer we're exporting?! How about your comedians--how many of them are actually cleverly subversive Canucks? How about William Shatner? Peter Jennings? Perry f***ing Como? You think it's just coincidence that no one south of Minnesota actually knows anything about Canada?
Democracy is a pretty foreign concept to most parts of the world
Including Florida. Or haven't you noticed all those salty-haired "snow birds" we Canadians are sending down there? You think they're just retirees, right? Do you really think Jeb Bush could have pulled that caper off without the covert ops of the shuffleboard-and-horseshoes thugs? That's right, GW is a pawn of the Canadian Senate (ha! never heard of them, have you?). Our plan for world dominance proceeds apace.
That's a very humanistic position, which suggests that homo sapiens' mental capabilities separate us from the rest of the planet. You're saying that the whole enterprise of linking human destiny with the ecological structure of Gaia [or whatever name you give the "vast, self regulating system" that we live inside of] is annoying to you, as it diminishes us and is out of touch with the people.
Here's a clue: people saying 'save the planet' are doing several things: 1) referring to the ecosphere as it is, not just a playground for hominids, 2) pointing out that ecology is an interconnected web with unforseen dependencies, 3) pointing out that our survival as a species may depend on us curbing our global practice of extinction, 4) stating that our humanistic rise above our environment's demands is a liability when it comes to understanding all that, so humanism needs adjustment.
Better to die on my feet than live on my knees, as the saying goes, and for those connected to a natural environment, a diminished ecosphere is an oppression. In many senses, saving the planet = saving ourselves.
A Proof of Concept product is always more costly. You can think of R&D costs not concentrated in a single product, but amortized across the series of product lines inspired by the new engineering, whether those costs are money or calories or a balance of available resources. The long-term savings (in all economic senses) represented by efficient design suggests a real bargain for global society.
The publicity stunt aspect of this is really a kind of marketing for sustainable tech in the long view.
" wrote an applescript to umount those shares on a drop"
:-)
Care to share?