Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Brian, no disagreement here, I didn't say that nobody's investing in
hard infrastructure. It's good to acknowledge that the infrastructure
is still there, and there's new business opportunity in managing an
infrastructure that's decoupled from the businesses that use it. So you
get something like Launchpad Coworking:
http://blog.launchpadcoworking.com/

Does this sort of thing relate to Frank's point about
starvation/dictatorship driving sustainability? Which sort of relates
to the point about denial that global warming's a real threat, which is
more like waiting until it's too late - until the problem is in your
face - before you take action.

If you're faced with imminent starvation, the issue of sustainability
is more broadly obvious and readily addressed.  If you're not faced
with starvation and and only a few have the foresight to see why
sustainable systems are necessary to keep the goose alive and well and
laying those shiny eggs, those few can assert their understanding
through dictatorship and make sustainability happen.

(Here I'm envisioning a different telling of "Jaws," wherein a more
aggressive sheriff Roy Scheider pulls a gun, jails Murray Hamilton and
his city council, declares martial law and closes the beaches.)

Can we create a sustainable society (or, as Armistead and I say, a
sustainability economy), and in the Bright Green way, emphasize that
there's business opportunity in sustainability, so the markets are on
board, big business is on board, and you have a shared understanding
(no doubt facilitated, in part, by social media) driving the move to
sustainable solutions?

So there are these options, I think: the mayor's in denial and the
shark eats a few kids, or the sheriff stages a coup and closes the
beaches... or everybody's texting and blogging and tweeting about the
shark, and the beaches are empty, regardless of any action on Roy
Scheider's part, and despite Murray Hamilton's denial. And that's what
we mean when we say the Internet makes a difference.
  

    <scribbled by lrph Thu 8 Jan 09 08:26>
  

    
(previous post from offsite reader Lachlan Yeates)
  

    
Repost from offsite reader Lachlan Yeates (from Scribbled post <102>
due to technical difficulties.....)  


When Confucius was asked the first thing he would do upon taking
office, he
replied that he would "rectify names", as "If names are not rectified
then language will not flow. If language does not flow, then affairs
cannot
be completed." In the same way, whenever we try and talk about thing
"new economics of the commons," it is nearly impossible to have a
sensible discussion, as not only are there no precedents to work with,
there
are not even any words to discuss it with, sort of like newspeak in
reverse.
It was part of the reason novel concepts such as democracy and atheism
took
so long to get off the ground, as the relevant concepts could not be
adequately expressed.

If we are to seek some precedents, I suggest the classics. The
politicians
of ancient Athens gained power by supporting the needy, starting
schools and
building public monuments. The concept of "gravitas," so inherent in
the
Roman system, important enough to cause Caesar to march on Rome, has
disappeared from the English language, and has found no replacement.

Perhaps Sarko and Obama are a new type of politician riding on the
blogosphere?
  

    

"Last year a a good-works oriented friend bought me lunch and
picked my brain on getting a job in the clean power sector.  I
suggested she go work for GE for 2 or 3 or 5 years; not only would she
be able to sock money away against lean years later on with a
venture-funded start-up,  she'd get experience that such a company
might really value enough to hire someone who has it.

"Funny, she didn't seem to like this advice.  (Journalist, heal
thyself.)"


*Well, General Electric is very into electricity.  I'm not saying your
friend should have gone to work there.  I *am* saying that you can't
change methods of generating electricity by standing at a coal mine
with a reporters' notepad.

*It may very well be that green-energy roughnecks are mostly energy
roughnecks rather than conscientious social activists. West Texas
wind-boom guys are the children of West Texas oil-boom guys. Most
serious solar-power guys I've met look and act like roofing
contractors.  

*I'm sure this is deeply regrettable in some ways, but do you really
wanna climb ladders and bolt unwieldy panels to rooftops?  You don't?

*Then maybe -- given that this is necessary labor you're unwilling and
unable to do -- maybe your proper attitude ought to be one of respect
and support for such people.  

*One ought to be especially careful about any snotty white-collar
dismissals of green-collar activity.  For the people with wrenches and
hammers, commentators trying to solve  big problems with technosocial
conscientious transformation don’t necessarily sound like brilliant
symbolic analysts.   They tend to  come across like gabby,
granola-munching mandarins.
  

    

"Bruce, what's life like in Torino?"

*Man, I could write a book.  Which is kinda the idea.

*But to stick to the urban-suburban topic (which I'm enjoying), this
is a car town.  Torino is the Detroit of Italy.  The car biz collapsed
in the 1980s.  The blue-collar assembly guys all left.  About ten years
ago foreigners started showing up  --  emigres, all kinds. There's a
small army of us in here now, a hundred thousand.

*In my neighborhood the Chinese are feeding the Peruvians.
Demographically its like a little London almost.  But unlike London
which has been polyglot and imperial for centuries, this is just 90s
globalization that's packed into a downtown that was in sharp decline.
It's more like a jumbled warehouse of nations than a multinational
community.

*Also, I have no car in Torino, this car town.  I haven't had a car
since 2005.  I have no plans to get a car, and I kinda hope I never own
a car again.  I walk most places,  I take trams, and really, I suspect
that giving up a car helped my health almost as much as giving up
smoking.  For a guy in his mid-50s I can walk like nobody's business.

Getting out of the car is of those actions that sound like a big
painful sacrifice,  but if you can beat that cruel addiction,  it
improves your quality of life quite radically.
  

    

"Bruce: Yes, I actually got the Tokugawa example from Jared Diamond's
Collapse, thanks. (...)

"Given our track record, I think it's unlikely that we will make a
sustainable society without dealing with mass global starvation.  The
one
ray of light is the Tokugawa, who used a command and control approach
(ahem!) to make Japan sustainable for a few centuries.

"If this doesn't scare you, just think about it: starvation and
dictatorship
seem to be the only proven ways to make people go sustainable."

*Dude, you're just not scaring me here.  Sorry.

*If you've read Jared Diamond's book, why aren't you talking about
Iceland? Iceland is an ecological success in his lights.  Iceland has
the world's oldest democratic Parliament, instead of this repulsive
Tokugawa feudal spy society you seem to want to valorize.  

*The idea that Tokugawa Japan is some kind of model society for
moderns, I find that frankly ludicrous.  Tokugawa society is a very
interesting study -- everything in Japan is fascinating --  but there
is just no way we're venturing into a feudally-based, hand-powered
society with an economy of koku rice measures and third-hand
Confucianism.  

*These guys weren't ecological model-farmers: they didn't understand
the mechanics of rainfall, much less nitrogen fixation.  And while they
were "commanding and controlling" their underlings, they were so
deliberately ignorant of all developments elsewhere that a couple of
American steamboats were enough to traumatize them utterly.  What the
heck is "sustainable" about that?

I reiterate that if you can't imagine how things might change, you
don't get lack of change, you get changes that are unimaginable.
Tokugawa Japan isn't our global post-starvation future.  It's the
poster child for getting blown away by unimaginable change.
  

    

*Every time I get a new announcement from EDGE.ORG, I promise myself
that I won't kill hours reading it, and almost every time I get
seduced.

*Their latest BIG QUESTION at Edge asks about developments that will
change everything within the respondent's lifetime.

I noticed that Yochai Benkler, "Mr Commons-Based Peer Production,"
weighed in.  So I quote him.


"Free market ideology

"This is not a technical innovation but a change in realm of ideas.
The resurgence of free market ideology, after its demise in the Great
Depression, came to dominance between the 1970s and the late 1990s as a
response to communism. As communism collapsed, free market ideology
triumphantly declared its dominance. In the U.S. And the UK it
expressed itself, first, in the Reagan/Thatcher moment; and then was
generalized in the Clinton/Blair turn to define their own moment in
terms of integrating market-based solutions as the core institutional
innovation of the “left.” 

"It expressed itself in Europe through the competition-focused, free
market policies of the technocratic EU Commission; and in global
systems through the demands and persistent reform recommendations of
the World Bank, the IMF, and the world trade system through the WTO. 

"But within less than two decades, its force as an idea is declining. 

"On the one hand, the Great Deflation of 2008 has shown the utter
dependence of human society on the possibility of well-functioning
government to assure some baseline stability in human welfare and
capacity to plan for the future. 

"On the other hand, a gradual rise in volunteerism and cooperation,
online and offline, is leading to a reassessment of what motivates
people, and how governments, markets, and social dynamics interoperate.


"I expect the binary State/Market conception of the way we organize
our large systems to give way to a more fluid set of systems, with
greater integration of the social and commercial; as well as of the
state and the social. So much of life, in so many of our societies, was
structured around either market mechanisms or state bureaucracies. The
emergence of new systems of social interaction will affect what we do,
and where we turn for things we want to do, have, and experience."



*Sounds pretty comprehensive, eh?  As a "sci fi futurist" and "design
visionary" and all that, I really dig it when I come across in contrast
as this very low-key, equivocating, maybe-so maybe not kind of figure.
  

    
<snotty white-collar dismissals of green-collar activity.

They tend to  come across like gabby,
granola-munching mandarins.>


That sounds much more "snotty" to me than Benkler's depiction of the
core issue: "the way we organize our large systems to give way to a
more fluid set of systems, with greater integration of the social and
commercial."  

For example, of course the "green" initiatives of Commander-In-Chief
Obama will require the rank-and-file to implement the directives, and,
in between, the whole campaign will need to be sold to a taxpaying,
consuming public.  And, on the ground, maybe some longhair artisan type
will figure out how to install the raw solar panels with an eye for
functional aesthetics.   
  

    
American right-wing guys who hate oil.  Okay, mostly they hate
Saudis, but that's how it plays out for them.


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I'm on the run right now, but I have to chime in to say how much I
resonate with Benkler's last paragraph. He's a guy who should be in
Obama's cabinet. Social Integration Czar.
  

    


*Well, General Electric is very into electricity.  I'm not saying your
 friend should have gone to work there.  I *am* saying that you can't
 change methods of generating electricity by standing at a coal mine with a
 reporters' notepad.


I might decamp to big business or big government at some time or another
(and no reason to debate it further); given the state of journalism, I may
have to. but standing around with a notepad might not be *totally*
useless.  Reporting in the wake of the one billion gallon coal sludge spill
in Tennessee has certainly made visible all the unregulated coal ash ponds
across the country, which weren't on the tips of anyone's tongues before.

300 acres of once-pleasant countryside and scenic rivers drowned under
toxic black mud is a much more visceral disaster than 384 ppm of CO2 in the
atmosphere.  And if reasonably objective reporting gets those photos and
video out to a mass audience (which it has), instead of just the usual deep
green suspects, and contributes momentum to retiring coal-fired power, then
journalism helped changed methods of generating electricity.

Why are you a journalist?  Why am I?  At least partly because we're pretty
good at it, as verified by the fact that people pay us to do it.  And since
there are many easier ways to make just as little money, probably we kind
of like it -- or at least like doing something we're good at.
  

    
From Frank again.

--snip--
"Given our track record, I think it's unlikely that we will make a
sustainable society without dealing with mass global starvation.  The
one
ray of light is the Tokugawa, who used a command and control approach
(ahem!) to make Japan sustainable for a few centuries.

"If this doesn't scare you, just think about it: starvation and
dictatorship seem to be the only proven ways to make people go sustainable."

*Dude, you're just not scaring me here.  Sorry.

*If you've read Jared Diamond's book, why aren't you talking about
Iceland? Iceland is an ecological success in his lights.  Iceland has
the world's oldest democratic Parliament, instead of this repulsive
Tokugawa feudal spy society you seem to want to valorize.

--Hmmm, since I got the example of
 the Tokugawa from Collapse, it should be
self-evident that I read the book.  I don't particularly lionize the
Tokugawa
I'm just pointing out that it's the only society that I know of (someone
please find another
example for me!) that didn't get to sustainability through famine.  Iceland
doesn't qualify
because they had at least one bout of famine.  There are lots of cultures
that have learned
through famine (including the others that Diamond cites, such as the New
Guinea Highlands).

I'm hoping there's an alternative that doesn't involve command/control or
starvation.

*The idea that Tokugawa Japan is some kind of model society for
moderns, I find that frankly ludicrous.  Tokugawa society is a very
interesting study -- everything in Japan is fascinating --  but there
is just no way we're venturing into a feudally-based, hand-powered
society with an economy of koku rice
 measures and third-hand
Confucianism.

*These guys weren't ecological model-farmers: they didn't understand
the mechanics of rainfall, much less nitrogen fixation.  And while they
were "commanding and controlling" their underlings, they were so
deliberately ignorant of all developments elsewhere that a couple of
American steamboats were enough to traumatize them utterly.  What the
heck is "sustainable" about that?


Wrong on most counts, sorry.  There's a book you should read, by F.H. King,
titled Farmers of Forty Centuries,Or Permanent Agricultural Practices in
China, Korea, and Japan.
This was first published in 1911.  Dr. King was a professor at the
University
of Wisconsin (the current soil science building is named after him) and he
toured
the countries in question in 1904 to learn how they did their agriculture.
When
 he did
his research, Japan had three people per acre, or three times the density of
Holland, and
and they had twice the number of horses and cattle per acre than the US.

While they didn't have the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation process, they knew
as much about using
legumes in crop rotation as we do, along with manuring, sophisticated water
management, and quite
honestly, better waste management than we have now.  Their sanitation
workers bought the privilege of
emptying the urban privies, because they could sell "night soil" to the
farmers for a profit.  The
farmers composted human waste, and spread it on the fields (and apparently
made it safe, since
they seldom dealt with things like dysentery).  A Japanese official King
talked to thought
westerners were stupid to flush something so valuable down the drain.

Anyway, read up on Japan.  I don't lionize or even condone much of what the
Tokugawa did, but they,

along with the Chinese and Koreans, did a heck of a job managing their
fields.  I'll tell you in
advance that King's book is going to look familiar, because it's on the
shelves of a lot of organic
farmers.

As for Perry's steamships in 1854, remember that 50 years later, the
Japanese beat
the Russians using modern armaments. After a revolution.  That doesn't
suggest a sick
society to me.

One major mistake is to assume that expertise in military technology equates
with
expertise in agricultural technology.  The Japanese are a great counter-
example.
So are the Aztec and Inca, who fed more of their people than did the
Spaniards
who destroyed them.  As Charles Mann notes in 1491, there were more people
in
Tenochtitlan and Cuzco than there were in most European cities.  The Aztecs
were
stone age, and the Inca were bronze age, by their armaments.  By their ag
skills,

they were beyond the Europeans (who invented maize and potatoes, after all?)
Since the Inca homeland is also the homeland of the potato blight that
nailed Ireland,
I'd say they knew what they were doing.

As for the limits of imagination, I don't deny the importance of
imagination.
Far from it. Here I'm doing the boring scientific thing of laying out the
evidence
of what has worked in the past.

If anything, my fear is in part based on my imagination, because I can
pretty easily
imagine a sustainable society.  The fact that it's apparently so hard to
implement
a sustainable society suggests that the limiting factor isn't imagination,
it's getting
people to live within limits.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

Despite my pessimism, I'm enjoying reading this, and I find it quite
informative.  Keep it up!
  

    
A couple points for semi-anonymous Frank from your humble
immoderator...

1) You may have missed my "Jaws" analogies, but one point was that a
robust many-to-many information ecology can make a difference, and the
human race is rapidly evolving a communication infrastructure that
could be relevant, not just in response to great white sharks or
accelerating global warming, but also to an acknowledged need to live,
work, and act with sustainability as a goal Sustainability depends on
awareness, knowledge, analytics, and persistent social interaction, all
potentially well-supported within the evolving cypber/noosphere. I'm
therefore skeptical of arguments from histories of societies and
cultures that were not similarly wired. And I don't think I'm being
techno-utopian here. Persistent omnidirectional scale-free networks of
communication just inevitably make a difference, I think.

2) I'm also skeptical of history, period, because historical accounts
are riddled with misperceptions, half-truths, surreal abstractions, and
outright lies. "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it," but
we must take all history with a grain, perhaps a massive rock, of
salt. All history and all reporting, contemporary "news" too. The best
journalists (including Emily, Bruce, and hopefully me, when I'm wearing
that hat) have learned to pay clear and close attention to feedback,
and are always prepared to revise and update. It's harder to revise and
update history that's been passed through many perceptions over time,
as you get farther from the actual facts.

Recalling the Firesign Theatre: "Everything you know is wrong!"
  

    
*Frank, I'm actually rather keen on Tokugawa Japan and I
also read Diamond's book, so I don't believe we're disagreeing
on any facts here.  I just refuse to be scared by the idea
that the future of agriculture has to resemble the past of Tokugawa
peasants industriously shipping their nightsoil.  I don't care
how many organic groceries think this archaic activity is superb.
You simply haven't convinced me that this is the way
forward, and that every other mode of life has the skeleton
grin of starvation.  Sorry, I'm just not buying it.
Not because it's boringly scientific but because it's
absurd.
  

    
*Meanwhile, somewhere in the halls of Washington...

The legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist made five
recommendations to Congress and President-elect Barack Obama to
jump-start a green-tech revolution and fight global warming:

Modernize the grid: As part of the economic stimulus package, Doerr
said Congress should invest in a more efficient electric grid that can
deliver solar and wind power to consumers across the country.

Put a price on carbon: A cap-and-trade system and a carbon tax that's
refunded to taxpayers could drive up the costs for coal plants and make
low-carbon sources, wind and solar, more competitive.

A national renewable energy standard: Doerr believes the federal
government should follow California and two dozen other states that
require utilities to generate more of their power from renewable
sources.

New incentives for utilities: California utilities will spend $3
billion on energy-efficiency measures over the next 18 months because
state rules give companies major incentives to conserve energy. New
federal rules could force other states to follow suit, he said.

More federal energy research: The federal government spends less than
$1 billion a year on renewable energy research. Doerr urged more
federal research and loan guarantees to help new technologies get off
the ground.

*Obviously I'm not perfectly contented with all of this -- as a snotty
granola-munching mandarin, I'm never gonna be perfectly contented with
anything, ever --  but we could do worse.
  

    
At what point did European countries learn about the use of
fertilizer? Apparently the Pilgrims needed to be shown how to put fish
in with the corn kernels, or was it just because they hadn't been
farmers before?
  

    
*Meanwhile, news just in from SF.CA's own RE/SEARCH Publications.
Vale has gotten Kunstler fever, and now plans a RE/SEARCH collapse
survival guide -- presumably something to do with the Bay Area's
time-honored "Survival Research Laboratories," eh?

*Boy, THAT cheery publication oughta be something to see.
I can't wait to page through it while sending my robot
chainsaw legions to destroy the world's last organic farmers.

*Vale is asking his readers for help!


"Still Alive and Kicking: Don't know about you, but, having been under
the spell of James Howard Kunstler and other Peak Oil prophets, we are
hunkering down in anticipation of the greatest economic catastrophe
ever seen in our lifetime. Would anyone be interested in a RE/SEARCH
SURVIVAL GUIDE? That's what we truly want to work on! Send us feedback,
just to prove you actually READ this newsletter! Send us your favorite
"future survivalism" links!"

*Yes, I actually read his newsletter and I can prove it:

WELCOME TO V. VALE's [Abbreviated] RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER #79, January
2009
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs |
info@researchpubs.com
  

    
>It's harder to revise and update history that's been passed through
many perceptions over time,as you get farther from the actual facts.<

Great immoderation!!

Will confidently filtering "history" through the hubris of the present
ever help us deal with the stormy present let alone the unknown
future?  

Skepticism suggests that we employ a least a little of that
old-fashioned virtue: prudence.
  

    
Kunstler is a classic moralist millenarian.  Of course, the sins he
believes we are guilty of are aesthetic, but his eschatology is perfectly
parallel to that of premillenialist Christians.  He anticipates a
catastrophe brought on by our own wickedness, a sweeping-clean of the
masses of humanity, the destruction of all those cultural ills he decries,
and afterward, a pastoral Eden of small towns.  With very tasteful
architecture.  And no strip malls.

All good fun.  But I wouldn't start buying shares in Sears in anticipation
of a return to the late 19th century, myself.
  

    
I fear though that Kunstler may be closer to the truth than most, not
because solutions to our problems aren't technically possible, but
because they will prove to be politically impossible.  Roughly half the
population has only a tenuous connection to reality, as do their
elected representatives.  You aren't going to get any effective
solutions from that crowd, and our population - and resource
consumption - is simply too vast to support us for long if rational
policies aren’t put in place essentially now.
 
  

    
bruces, the original Viridian Manifesto listed artificial food in the
"What We Want" category. What did you imagine artificial food to be
at that time - inkjet bivet steak and GMO pomme frites, Adria's latest
creation, or something else entirely? Did food science move in the
direction you had in mind?
  

    
It's the P.C. color, but is soylent green artificial?  (Oops, now I
sound snotty ;=)
  

    
Keep your soylence, Scott. *8^)

Local food is a cause that's happening:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food

>>>
Local food (also regional food or food patriotism) or the local food
movement is a "collaborative effort to build more locally based,
self-reliant food economies - one in which sustainable food production,
processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the
economic, environmental and social health of a particular place" and
is considered to be a part of the broader sustainability movement. It
is part of the concept of local purchasing and local economies, a
preference to buy locally produced goods and services. Those who prefer
to eat locally grown/produced food sometimes call themselves
"localvores" or locavores.
<<<

So artificial food doesn't seem to be the "what we want" du jour - we
seem to want more local farmers' markets and a better sense how to live
on just those foods that don't travel. 
  

    
I couldn't figure out why Kunstler was so fixated on the end of recorded
music and the resurgence in people sitting around singing together until I
learned that JHK was an unsuccessful musical theater performer.

Aspirational apocaphilia.

Local food has a little bit of a faddish quality, in that the carbon
benefits aren't always clear-cut (e.g., because of differing ranching
practices, lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped to the UK apparently has
a lower carbon footprint than lamb raised locally in the UK). Faux meat 
("cultured meat", vat-grown meat, meat-jet printers, etc.) could make a 
big difference to overall carbon footprints, but I suspect we'll be eating 
kangaroo burgers before we're eating Soylent Steak ("It's Peoplicious!").

Bruce, I haven't seen you do much about geoengineering. With the news 
today that a combined German/Indian operation is going to do a deep ocean 
iron feritilization experiment (in contravention of a voluntary 
moratorium), it just seems more and more likely that geo is going to 
happen whether we like it or not. Any thoughts on the subject?