Hooray, Hooray! It's Judgement Day!

Ecology, energy efficiency, compact living, locally sourced food, third world worries... Are they sympoms of a mega-trend, or rather a necessity? Now that the glaciers are melting, the rain forests are shrinking, the deserts are growing and we have yet another financial crisis at our hands - what can we do? Perhaps, the popularisation of these issues is our way of dealing with the fact that we have no choice but to start making some changes. Since we have to go through with it anyway, why not convince ourselves that it is cool, just to make it less daunting to begin recycling our shit.

Or maybe it is just the cynic in me that thinks of us humans as comfortable creatures, driven mostly by equal parts of fear, shame and lust. Haha! I see you! Just put the blinders on and rename genocide to population control - it will feel much better. Allegedly. So, we finally step out of the shade to face the truth on judgement day. With pride, politically correct "altruism" and vanity saturating our souls, mind you.

Oh, and check out this page (which is also a moderately, but surely amusing book): The Lazy Environmentalist. The mission is to convey methods of conveniently becoming eco chic and such. Get the nice paperback here.

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Cy-nic-al, (sin'ik'al), a.:  contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives.

- How can you not love the word?

By the way, here he is, the old bastard Diogenes:

Navigating by Compass?

An example of a news portal, that could well, if steered with skill and foresight, become one of the networks I discussed briefly in a previous blog post: Nyhetskompassen.se. Another is iGoogle. I know, the whole "i"-prefix thing-of-the-past is becoming increasingly annoying, but the concept will definitely hit us hard in a short matter of time.

Rosebud, Schmosebud... Go to Bed, Grandpa!

We have all studied and debated the future of news papers. it is now more or less a fact that the printed paper will disappear in a proximate future and give way to the web based version. But most of the time, the discussion is till based on the assumption that the format and content will remain generally the same, with editorial work, journalistic filtering and such.

I am not so sure about the validity of that assumption, though, when viewed against the current development of new (obviously mostly web based) media and information accessing and processing. I see a clear tendency towards people demanding increasingly more first-hand and immediate information. When we are searching for the latest speeches given by presidential candidates or facts and figures about practically anything, we tend to consult blogs, YouTube and Wikipedia before the daily news papers, simply because we can skip one major middleman. Furthermore, we also rid ourselves from a great deal of biased filtering that we no longer have a need for, now that we have the tools and skills we need to navigate efficiently and conduct the sorting ourselves.

My view of the future news feed provider, is more of a "News-Wikipedia" than timesonline.co.uk, in the sense that it is quicker, self-sanitating, often first-hand and not dependant on a limited editorial staff. Rather than the classic web based new papers of today, I imagine web portals/networks of news providers in the form of bloggers or on-location film-makers etc., with wide possibilities of worldwide commenting and debating. The whole problem of fast-paced editing and changing of the content of articles would probably not be very much of a hassle, since we are always online anyway (pretending to work). I mean, I check dn.se, di.se and other sites at least ten times a day only because I can. Like Wikipedia, the continuously, organically changing content works just fine! Who hasn't used the old Wiki successfully for panic-studying before exams?...

To me, it would feel natural for any open society in a globalization trend, to get rid of the narrow delimitations of today and start acting as true parts of a shared world. Plus, the whole pretentious white-boy lifestyle (you know: bicycling, urban densification, obscure Glasgow indie, locally grown, ethnic majority complex...) probably would adore and embrace the added authenticity, objectivity and legitimacy values of reading about the Midde East when it is written by people from all sides and with all kinds of agendas who are actually there. We just love to flatter our own intellects by forming our own opinions from "pure data". The real deal... yeah!

So, I look forward to the future news portal, where the traditional news paper sites are reduced to providers and suggesters of potientially interesting topics and fields of study, for further investigation elsewhere. When DJ:ing we want the cues and track, not the ready made mixes. You know: fuck that. That's just embarassing.

Don't Take It Personal

Lovely stuff, stuff and more stuff!

Generally, convenience sounds like a really great thing. At least if you ignore the whole Daniel Gilbert idea of people pursuing other stuff than what they really want. So we keep demanding all these qualities from technology. We want accessibility, communication devices, efficiency in every way possible, endless means of self-expression, and so on. Just look at what personal technology we had in our pockets fifty years ago. It was like, a wallet, a set of keys, and maybe some smokes and a wrist watch. Today we probably have five times as many gadgets flopping about in our designer pockets and purses. All this stuff, stuff, stuff!

Now, if we asked for it and got it, what then is the problem? Well, having a shitload of things requires either very large pockets, or a way to make the lovely little trinkets smaller and fewer. Convergence and miniaturization, you immediately think. And yes, that is exactly where we are headed right now! With the camera, music player, calendar and Internet access already in the cell phone, life has become so much tidier. When we have the access, credit and bus cards in the keys, the keys in the cell phone, the cell phone in the finger tip, additional internal memory and data storage, online access to libraries and information, movies and a dashboard in contact lenses, physical maintenance by nano-tech and a nice little music player in the ear for a true soundtrack of our lives, we will have solved the problem. Finally, we shall enjoy the glorious technologies of mankind without being forced to accept bulging Zegna pockets, or tearing the calf leather of the Hermès purse.

It seems as though Ray Kurzweil was right about his smart dust, cell therapy and artificial intelligence, does it not? But what happens with the ever so haunting notion of privacy? If every component of everyday life becomes integrated in our bodies (or vice versa), and we remain constantly connected, we have a serious problem at our hands. Anything built by man is bound to have an Achilles heel, and thus, it can also be hacked, broken and even controlled. "Hooray!" shout the misunderstood teenagers and desperate terrorists all across the world. And concerning artificial intelligence, it might even be technology that controls us - not really the way we intended things to become. 

Where do we draw a line, not to be crossed? Now, of course it is most likely to be crossed anyway, simply because we can. But at least for legitimacy reasons, let us draw the line anyway. Personally, I will not join the debate to any greater extent because of the thrill and fascination of it all. I will just lean back with a nice martini, constantly chilled by a smart glass, and quietly observe when the shit hits the fan.

PS. This little ad is from the seventies, so I'm pretty certain that the copy did not realise the disturbing honomymous association humour induced by the little tagline in the bottom right corner. Sorry about this.

Intermission

Check out Wired for a Music Nerd Quick Fix! Sort of coherent with my previous post concerning shortcuts to defining ourselves.

Demystification of Sexuality

Well, it is slowly but surely getting colder here, up north. And what does one associate with Swedish winter, more than H&M ads and sexism debates? So, I began thinking about why the contents of this debate never change, and what's more; what causes it and where it is headed (if anywhere).


Today, we have a serious problem with the upheaval of sexual mystery. According to Swedish juvenile receptions and diagnostic centers, the vanishing of lust is a common problem among young people. If that is not a major tragedy, I do not know what is.

There are two sides of the problem: the idealists that argue that sex should be completely absent in all parts of society except perhaps in the bedroom, because it creates hierarchies between individuals, as well as between men and women. Personally, I see it as more of a mockery of human nature and the beauty of life and intellect to try to de-sexualise everything. Mystery is key!


The other side, is the overexposure of the naked body and sexuality in all parts of society. It is virtually impossible to go through an entire day without being exposed to magazines that give sex tips, ads for a bunch of stuff that enhance your attraction, etc. The Swedish (in many ways good) transparency mentality that has led to thorough compulsory sexual education at school, sex toys in pharmacies and a complete disarmament of sexual tension is as much part of the problem as the idealist view. Who would ever be curious of anything when everything has already been exposed and dissected?


 What the equillibristic/idealistic and the capitalistic/explorative approaches have in common, is the division of body and soul. The over-intellectualisation of the very things that make us human is really something that could well have come straight from dystopic science-fiction. Even Ayn Rand, who is often blamed for being overly clinical, understood and obeyed sexual tension and mystery in the process of creation and joy of life.


So, I guess the question is: Are we heading towards a lust-free society, or will nature prevail over quasi-intellect? Let's stash up on popcorn and beers and enjoy this year's debate!

Counting the Days of the Corporation?

Yesterday, the interesting topic of creating culture in different dimensions surfaced. A threat to the large corporations and companies, it was said, is that they most often view culture as a field, in which they can play, rather than as a place to belong to.

Would it really be impossible for the corporation to become an integrated part in culture and the creation of it? I imagine various obstacles, such as structural inertia, too long-term financial targets, etc. Are the days of the corporation counted? It really does strike me as a rather unlikely scenario. Surely, the corporation must live on as a phenomenon, since the instinct to expand and evolve, in most industries, requires a certain scale and amount of capital. It is normally so, that start-up ventures (no matter how niched or independent) that grow, after a short while will start making more long-term decisions and invest in fewer, more costly projects, due to the increase in funding possibilities. A typical sign of a mature, inert company on the path towards acquiring typical corporate structures.

Until the global, non-monetary society emerges, the incentive of accumulating money as a means of power, will always remain. Thus, also re-enforcing and reproducing the organisational style of the corporation. However, I cannot see this as a remnant of a dark Gordon Gekko past. Corporations definitely shape culture, but in a slower pace than smaller and less restricted actors, such as the "creative class" from the terminology of cultural geography. So, when contrasted against words like community, non-commercial, sharing, creative collaboration and other components of contemporary trends, the corporation provides a secure, stable background to which society can withdraw to catch its breath and scrutinise its latest creations.