Stamp of the Day: Then and Now

Then: Phone booth.  Now: iPhone

Then: Printed maps. Now: GPS.

Then: Ice boxes.  Now: Refrigerators

Then: Black and white TVs.  Now: Flat-screen TV.

Then: LPs and record players.  Now: iPods.

The technological development during the last 50 years is featured on these Australian stamps.  I can write a million words on this, about its pros and cons, but that will have to wait.  In the meantime, I'd like to point out that phones used to function without having to have batteries or being plugged into an electrical outlet, maps work when the power is out, and I don't think anybody would like an icebox in their regular kitchen.

More on the future, or the lack of it...

In today's New York Times, opinionator Thomas L. Friedman is writing about the unrest in the world, from burning London, arabic uprisings, Tea Party craziness, to unhappy people.  What is going on here, really? He writes:

"There are multiple and different reasons for these explosions, but to the extent they might have a common denominator I think it can be found in one of the slogans of Israel’s middle-class uprising: “We are fighting for an accessible future.” Across the world, a lot of middle- and lower-middle-class people now feel that the “future” is out of their grasp, and they are letting their leaders know it." 

Read it all here, it is very interesting and I think he hits on several important points on what is going on and why we are all so frustrated, especially the younger generations.

A happy, fulfilled and easy future is maybe out of our grasp. At least it is easy to feel trapped, helpless, and frustrated over all the things that seems to get worse and worse when you look forward in time. And more and more people feel like this.  Here in America, for the first time ever, the children born today are predicted to live shorter lives than their parents (mostly due to diabetes and similar epidemic diseases), but most on people's minds are not health, but jobs, homes, food, and simply "how to get a good life".  Young people can't afford homes.  There aren't enough jobs.  Who cares about how much taxes you have to pay when you can't even get a job?  (The tea party seem to have forgotten about that angle of things.).

And when the future seems uncertain, with climate change, stock markets roller coasting, and untrustworthy politicians, those on top that have more hang on to it more, and those that have less feel desperate and loose more.  What do you think, readers of the blog?

 

And here above is something else to ponder... (text borrowed from the internet)

a blast from the past

38A: Alethopterius serlii (seed fern) [Pennsylvanian, 300 mya, upper Carboniferous], originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

While we ponder the future, it might be interesting to ponder the past as well. This seed fern fossil from Pennsylvania is over 300 million years old. It is pretty amazing that you can see and touch something that old I think. If you look close you can even see the veins in the leaves. The seed ferns are all extinct now, and was a separate lineage leading up to the seed plants.

I don't think we even can imagine 1 million years, really. When we talk and plan for the future we think 10-20 (maybe 50) years ahead, not 1000 years, not 10 000 years. And here is this leaf that is 300 000 000 years old. It puts things in perspective, I think, but we often forget about the timescale of things. 

So, what now?

I guess I'll start with saying hi to all the readers of this blog.

Hi! :)

I am one of the relatives and I said to LS this spring that I felt like starting to write on this blog - I had so many ideas and things I wanted to share. Well, summer got the best of me and my login got left unused in a dark corner of my computer. But LS latest blog about the future and now really got me thinking, so here goes my first blog entry. I guess the next one will be a proper presentation of myself.

So, regarding the future. I recognize a lot of the same patterns, problems and attitudes here in Sweden that LS describes. And from a lot of the countries I have been visiting too. But what strikes me is that this is only true in the Western countries. If you go to Asia - China, Vietnam and even the really poor countries like Mongolia or Cambodia - you will meet a huge optimism, big beliefs and hopes for the future and lots of ideas for how the world will evolve.

I believe that this is natural in many ways. The 20th century has been marked by a huge increase in living standards in the West - we have moved from large families and low life expectancy to smaller families and a very high age. This has been followed by a rocketing in economy and growth - and with this comes of course optimism, dreams and thinking about the future for humanity.

This is what is now happening in Asia, in South America and in some parts of Africa - they are all moving towards a much better life and feel as optimistic as the West did 50 years ago.

The West on the other hand have in many ways reached a plateau of living standards and we also have to face that more and more people reach the same plateau, thus losing the feeling of having a superior life. With this also comes problems of environment and food for everyone - problems caused by us spending a lot more of Earth's resources than we should.

Our economies and societies also seems to be shaped after always growing. They are made to becoming bigger and when we reach the plateau of economical growth we start facing a lot of problems. This can be seen in US now where a lot of tough decisions has to be made and perhaps even clearer in Greece. The politicians in Greece are heavily pressed by the rest of the world to take some very tough decisions and also extremely pressed by their own people who are pissed off - pissed off by having to lower their standards, their salaries and their way of life, due to no fault of their own. But perhaps that's what it takes when a country suddenly reaches the plateau and is no longer growing? In that case, US and many other countries have some very tough times ahead...

So, what will happen? I believe that we will live with this despair for a while. Until we either come up with a way of society, a way of living and an attitude that can handle not growing and not becoming better - or until the next explosion in living standards. What will trigger this? My guess is when we solve the energy problems for good by really getting fusion to work - and when (not if) that happens I also hope that this jump in living standards will reach the whole world within a decade, rather than waiting more than a century to spread over the continents. And with this I also think we'll restart space flight and start having other dreams for the future of humankind.

So it's really a bright future ahead - as long as we learn to deal with living in the now for a while. :)

Ponderings about now and the future

Here are some thoughts I wrote down while flying on a plane recently just after reading about the last ever NASA shuttle mission taking off...  (Update and clarification - the quoted text is what I wrote myself that day on a scrap of paper, so I am quoting myself.)

"Nobody dares to think big anymore, to dream about the future of mankind.  There is no more manned space exploration, no more belief in world peace and prosperity.

Instead we hunker down, focus on our families and homes, and we distrust politicians, government, and the future.  We can pickles, grow vegetables, save money, are happy to have any kind of job at all, and become more and more disillusioned with how the world works.

We mentally run away from the scary reality of joblessness, climate and weather disasters, the latest reports of food-borne illnesses or worldly disasters by focusing on the small and the personal - update Facebook, take a photo and post it on Flickr, and write about our kids on our blogs.  Or follow 'reality' shows on TV as entertainment, shows that are as far removed from reality as you can get.  

You want a reality show?  Follow a newly graduated PhD trying to get a job.  Or a person trying to communicate with a mortgage broker or customer service rep from GE. Or survive a several day blackout during an ice storm in New Jersey, without electricity, internet, or cell phones.  Most people would despair.   

People use their iphones and other smart internet-connected toys as teddy bears and security blankets to feel relevant, safe and comfortable, but this is so far from the real truth as you can get. This need for false connectedness is like a drug that make you waste your time and not be part of the real reality.

People are desperate, disillusioned, depressed, degraded and (sometimes) deranged. Nobody, except the fools and the overoptimistic, believes that the future is better than now.  And now is not really good in the world."

So, what do we do about this?  How do we make the world a better place?  I hear people all the time say: "There is nothing we can do", "The politicians will never change anything".   But we have to do something or we are just giving up, right?  But what?  The first step is to recognize problems and then to talk about them and then do something about them.  But do what?  I don't know.  I live in a country where the common sense doesn't seem welcome among politicians anymore.

Note - the text above are about general people, not about any particular persons or families.   I am describing the realities I see, not criticizing anybody for feeling a certain way. Believe me, I understand the despairs. But maybe our motto should be "Get real" or "Be real".  That would be a good thing.

Is art is about empty space?

rather empty bulletin board for the sculpture department - depressing I think, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Depressingly few job openings, exhibitions and other opportunities posted on the board at the Sculpture department at MECA (Maine College of Art). Too bad. Or maybe the bulletin board master is on vacation?

Paper or plastic....

This is one of the reasons why I will stick to Filofax paper calendar for all my scheduling for many years more to come:

"Mr. George uses a datebook that fits in his back pocket. “People make comments about it,” he said. “They show me their little technology. But then they sit there tapping on their device, and by the time they’ve gone through all the log-ins and downloading, I’ve already flipped the page.” (source)

Read the NY Times article if you like, it is interesting: Paper Calendar? It’s 2011. I love the simplicity and that my Filofax always work.  I pen something in there and can look it up in a second. And it is private.  And I have had my filofax cover for years and year, and had to rehabilitate it a bit last year with black sharpie pen (it was black leather). Now it looks nearly new again. I also feel smart having a filofax and not having to look stupid hacking and tapping away on a tiny screen on some little toyshaped Donkey-kong like smartphone thingie. To all of you that love your iphones and such - great for you, but I am doing perfectly fine with my way of doing things. Imagine, I never need a charging, never a syncing, never a firmware update, never an internet connection.  I can sit in a cave in Ulan-Bator and look at my calendar :)

What if.... the Change happened?

PP is listening to a book, Dies the Fire (spoiler alert about the book if you follow link), about a sudden event on Earth when technology suddenly drops back to bronze age level.  No electricity works, no engines, no telephones, no modern conveniences.  The cars, buildings, stoves, etc., are still there, but do not work.  What would you do to survive?

Money is worthless, but what is worth something is knowledge, things that can no longer be made (medicines, ball bearings...), and food.  Power too of course.  But you get power not from money but from brute force or access to things that others want.

The book is the first in a series about how two groups of people try to manage this change in northwestern USA, and what happens when you no longer has access to modern technology.  This has led to hour-long discussions here at home.  Would we manage?  What do we have that is useful?

We probably would be far better off with our knowledge and old hand tools than most people. Plus we have many books, including topics such as food preservation, homesteading, and old techniques.  I could tell people which plants are edible, which heal, and which ones that kill. PP actually has two long timber saws in the barn.  We might have more axes and hand tools than all our neighbors combined.  They love things like giant SUVs, leaf blowers and cordless phones, which would be pretty useless in a situation like this.

Which store would you raid first to get things you can barter with or need?  We settled on the pharmacy, hardware store and local farm co-op in our discussions, but how to get there and how to get things back?  They are miles away. We have three bikes, but that is nothing you can carry heavy things on.  We need chickens and some goats.  You need a way to get water up from the wells, without pumps that need electricity.  People would starve, people would kill for food, people would marauder...

How do you protect your food crops?  How do you protect yourself?  I realized that if you have a lot of important knowledge in your head, then you most valuable alive.  AREA's horse knowledge would be very useful.  Suddenly, in this perspective, so much of what we can do and want to do today seem so useless when it comes to the survival of the human species (sorry, race, :) see post below). Seriously, how many of us could really, really live off the land without modern technology if we have to?  Not many. Could you survive a week? A month? A year? Where would you go?  Who would you hook up with?

Only 100 years ago people knew so much more.  Just imagine - thrusting someone from the 1850s farming communities into this situation would not have been such a disastrous thing as dumping a New York stockbroker into it today.  Or a teenager from the local high school, or.... We are so far removed today from the real things (production of things, knowledge of nature).  If The Change ever happens, it will not be important if you know how to use Excel or make a great cappuccino (even if those things are perfectly important today in our technology-padded lives).

Today, many people can't tie a knot, read a map, plant a seed, or milk a cow.  In the perspective provided by this book, it seems like the survival of humans is really, really fragile.  We are up in Babel's tower, dependent on electricity, GPS, satellites, internet, gasoline and oil, telephones, and stores where you can buy food.  It might not be gone tomorrow permanently, but it sure could be gone temporarily after weather catastrophes.  What would you do?  Could you make it?  It is an interesting question, and we are still talking about it.... and I haven't even read this book yet.

Lava and smoke

exhibit about Hawaiian volcano eruption, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

A little corner exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago tried to showcase the lava eruptions in Hawaii using darkness, glow lights and LED lights. Did they succeed? What do you think?

When I was walking these exhibits I was thinking that most of these dioramas are missing the impressions of so many of our senses - there need to be scents, sounds, winds, and the feeling of touch to really get the real experience.

Just looking doesn't really do it. But being in Hawaii and smelling the sulfur, stepping on crunchy lava cinder sand and feeling the warm wind is a different thing. Couldn't exhibits try to invoke some of this too? I am not sure how to do the noise and smell or the warm wind, but I bet in the future there will be movie theaters with smell makers, fans, and boxes you can put your hands into to feel any texture or surface (ick, imagine that, anything slimy or gory...).  Virtual but real.  Still, that wouldn't be the real thing.  But I have always thought that to teach history, an experience such as walking down the street in 1850s New York would tell you a lot more about history than any book. 

I love the animal dioramas with stuffed beasts and painted backgrounds with a few silk flowers at museums, but it only gives you maybe 10% of the experience of being outside in nature. It is great that parents take their kids to museums, but they should even more just take them outside to many different kinds of places (and not be afraid of rain, ticks, dirt, germs, and toxic plants). How can you describe something to a kid that has never had that experience? You can't describe sulfur smell, it is unknown to you until you have actually smelled the rotten egg smell from a stinking boiling pot in Yellowstone. So, let's get out more. And put a sulfur smelling station next to the lava exhibit.

Movie review: The Matrix

I feel old. It is not that I am actually not understanding the movie The Matrix, it is just that I think it is irrelevant, weird, and too futuristic. My teenage kids loved it, however. So, what is so special about this movie? I don't get it, please enlighten me.

Extinction is forever?

Someone made a predictive extinction time line here. Look, Hope is already extinct (but Obama is winning!), repair shops will be extinct by 2009, blogging by 2022, coins by 2033, and oil by 2035. How did they calculate these things? Sorry kids, household chores are not extinct until 2047.

Happy birthday, Jules

Today it is the 180th anniversary of the birth of Jules Verne. Born the 8 of february 1828, the french author wrote over 70 adventure and science fiction stories during his career.

I find the science fiction books particularly interesting since they quite accurately describes a future of aviation, submarines, skyscrapers, space travel, man landing on the moon, world wide telecommunications, weightlessness in space, calculators, video telephones and even podcasts, though usually from a steampunk perspective. Among the concepts not yet realized that he wrote about are light propulsion space crafts and, thankfully, ads projected on the clouds.

So how could Jules Verne have such a clear vision of the future? Well, according to his birth certificate (incorrectly dated 1928), he was "a hundred years ahead of his time" already at his birth.

/O.K.

Stamp of the Day: Buckminster Fuller

In remembrance of a post long since posted.