Ethos

look what I found!?

I was driving to my girlfriend’s house the other night which is only a kilometer away and was shocked at how many computers had been left out on the side of the road for hard rubbish collection. Most of them were probably only 3-5 years old, and they would have been bought for $2000+. It’s amazing how quickly the cycle of technology turns and with it brings an enormous amount of waste. Surely there is an after-life for this product that is more sustainable that putting it in the ground?!

Space consumption

The European Space Agency has just released images showing all the satellites and human-made debris now orbiting space as a result of 51 years of launching stuff since Sputnik. That’s about 6,000 satellites up there of which only 800 remain operational plus thousands of other objects from launches and accidents. 

The Designers Accord

 

If memory really is the new sex, then pass the mental Viagra

A funny take of society today, and at our rate of consumption scarily true!

by David Brooks, New York Times

THEY say the 21st century is going to be the Asian Century, but, of course, it’s going to be the Bad Memory Century. Already, you go to dinner parties and the middle-aged high achievers talk more about how bad their memories are than about real estate. Already, the information acceleration syndrome means that more data is coursing through everybody’s brains, but less of it actually sticks.

It has become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life — to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high. In the era of an ageing population, memory is the new sex.

Society is now riven between the memory haves and the memory have-nots. On the one side are these colossal Proustian memory bullies who get 1800 pages of recollection out of a mere cookie-bite. They traipse around broadcasting their conspicuous displays of recall as if quoting Auden were the Hummer of conversational one-upmanship.

On the other side are those of us suffering the normal effects of time, living in the hippocampically challenged community that is one step away from leaving the stove on all day.

This divide produces moments of social combat. Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

Your response here is critical. You want to open up with an effusive burst of insincere emotional warmth: “Hey!” You’re practically exploding with feigned ecstasy. “Wonderful to see you, too! How is everything?” All the while, you are frantically whirring through your memory banks trying to anchor this person in some time and context.

A decent human being would sense your distress and give you some lagniappe of information — a mention of the church picnic you both attended, the parents’ association at school, the fact that the two of you were formerly married. But the Proustian bully will give you nothing. “I’m good. And you?” It’s like trying to get an arms control concession out of Leonid Brezhnev.

Your only strategy is evasive vagueness, conversational rope-a-dope until you can figure out who this person is. You start talking in the tone of over-generalised blandness that suggests you have recently emerged from a coma.

Sensing your pain, your enemy pours it on mercilessly. “And how is Mary, and little Steven and Rob?” People who needlessly display their knowledge of your kids’ names are the lowest scum of the earth.

You’re in agony now, praying for an episode of spontaneous combustion. But still she drives the blade in deeper, “That was some party the other night wasn’t it?”

You lose vision. What party? Did you see this person at a party? By now, articulation is impossible. You are a puddle of gurgling noises and awkward silences. After the longest of these pauses, she goes for the coup de grace: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

You can’t tell the truth. That would be an admission of social defeat. The only possible response is: “Of course I know who you are. You’re the hooker who hangs around on 14th Street most Saturday nights.”

The dawning of the Bad Memory Century will have vast consequences for the social fabric and the international balance of power. International relations experts will notice that great powers can be defined by their national forgetting styles. Americans forget their sins. Russians forget their weaknesses. The French forget that they have forgotten God. And, in the Middle East, they forget everything but their resentments.

There will be new social movements and causes. The supermarket car parks will be filled with cranky criminal gangs composed of middle-aged shoppers looking for their cars. As it becomes clear that a constant stream of blog posts and emails decimates the capacity for recall, people will be confronted with the modern Sophie’s choice — your BlackBerry or your mind.

Neural environmentalists will emerge from the slow foods movement, urging people to accept memory loss as a way to reduce their mental footprint. Meanwhile, mnemonic gurus will emerge offering to sell neural Viagra, but the only old memories the pills really bring back will involve trigonometry.

As in most great historical transformations, the members of the highly educated upper-middle class will express their suffering most loudly. It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.

First they lose the subjects they have only been pretending to understand — chaos theory, monetary policy, Don Delillo — and pretty soon their conversation is reduced to the core stories of self-heroism.

Their affection for themselves will endure through this Bad Memory Century, but their failure to retrieve will produce one of the epoch’s most notable features: shorter memoirs.

Consumerism - Before & After 2

 

Name: S. MacDonald

Remark

Future Greeters is a great satire on consumerism. It is set in a futuristic world where monopolies dominate in every sphere. It is full of wit, futuristic ideas and inventions and takes the reader on an unforgettable journey through the world postulated by its theme. A great read. Sadly only available at Lulu.com as a print on demand title.

Synopsis

“S” has discussed notions of consumerism and a monopolised future. Monopolies for arguments sake can be considered the “big” companies, obsessed with market shares of 100% at no expense. Some economies depend of this to function, some people live and dictate this. “S” may have gone either way in an ‘after’ thought. I see the change being global warming where we stuff our planet to the point where it implodes. Something like in Babel when the people became sloths and gorged on the land until its creator destroyed in. But through global warming and world destruction comes rebirth, symbolised by the earth with new life emerging.

 

 

Beautiful - Before & After 1

Name: Marilyn

Remark

My favorite book is a special edition of Lord of the Rings on Indian paper - the type they use for Bibles. It contains all three books in one volume, plus all the appendices, maps, legends, family trees and alphabets, and is no larger than your average library book. The paper and print are of a quality that makes it beautiful just to handle - and I cant remember how many times I’ve it through. Its top of my list of things to grab if a bushfire ever comes near.

 Synopsis 

I was drawn to Marilyn’s story because I can relate to an obscure love for something of quality. I understand her love of fine papers and ordered structured layouts, quality that instills beauty into an object. Mondrian is a particular favourite artist of mine. His structured, primary layouts were my inspiration towards graphic design. Thick black lines separated structured forms. The coloured squares were all painted with strokes in one direction, where the white plains were given depth through juxtaposed brush strokes.  

My image is questioning towards what might happen to Marilyn if in fact her copy of the book, with its lovely bible htin paper were to be consumed by bushfire or metaphorically, perhaps she lost hope in the future. Where would the lines be drawn? Perhaps her primary focuses may be lost and left against a blank canvas of vertical and horizontal thought.

Before & After

My personal before/after self portrait above - I’m really paying homage to the change in my design practise. In the first few years of study, I was absolutely consumed by what looked cool or ‘good looking’ design. Still am. We’ve just got to look at the factors that make a piece of design cool. Maybe instead of the look and feel we give more praise to how responsible it is…. maybe…  

World turns to renewable energy for sustainable supply

An article I found on the International Renewable Energy Conference held in Washington this week. Interesting to see how each country is tackling their energy consumption. The article was posted on a Chinese website - a huge consumer of fossil fuels.

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Xinhua) — Delegations from more than 100 countries descended on the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) Tuesday, vowing to push forward the development of renewable energy sources to combat climate change and ensure energy security.

    ”Our task is to develop the policies, incentives, and forms of international cooperation that will realize the full benefits of renewable energy in order to ensure adequate supplies of energy for all economies, large and small, in the future; to exercise responsible stewardship of the environment; and to promote continued growth of the global economy in the decades ahead,” said John Negroponte, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, at the opening of the three-day conference.

    Clean, renewable energy, such as solar power, wind and biofuels would open up “new frontiers” for industrial production, commercial interaction, and technological innovation, said Negroponte.

    Existing energy technologies cannot meet the dual requirement of satisfying the growing global demand for energy while reducing carbon emissions. Therefore, it is “imperative” that we bring to market new energy technologies that diminish our dependence on fossil fuels, he added.

    At the first ministerial-level plenary session, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman pointed out that with the demand for energy increasing at a soaring pace, renewables are necessary to meet global energy demands.

    Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla challenged WIREC participants to consider the true potential of renewable technologies.

    By combining research and capital, there is no end to the potential of renewable energy, he said.

    On the first day of the U.S.-hosted meeting, more than 60 pledges were announced to increase renewable energy. Developed nations in Europe contributed a number of impressive commitments.

    Denmark promised to reduce the use of fossil fuels by a minimum of 15 percent by 2025; increase the share of renewable energy to at least 30 percent of energy consumption by 2025; increase energy efficiency by 1.4 percent per year for 2010 to 2025.

    Italy pledged a 55 percent tax deduction over three years for solar heating and a tax credit on heating from geothermal sources and bio-mass used for district heating. It also established an incentive fund for ultra efficient buildings.

    The Netherlands will increase the share of renewable energy to 20 percent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in 2020. The Dutch government aims to buy 100 percent sustainable products in 2010.

    A handful of African nations also volunteered substantial actions in renewable energy.

    Tanzania pledged that 1 million residents would gain access to electricity from renewable energy resources.

    Cape Verde committed to increasing renewable sources of energy to 50 percent of the market share by 2020, and to have one island running completely on renewable energy by that time.

    The first day of the conference saw an exceptionally high attendance, with nearly 3,000 participants registering for the ministerial conference. More than 100 delegations sent over 600 official delegates, including more than 100 ministers of agriculture, energy, environment.

    U.S. President George W. Bush is expected on Wednesday to address the meeting.

    This is the third such gathering after the first meeting in 2004 in Bonn, Germany, and a 2005 follow-up in Beijing, China.