Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
i <heart> geert, always have
  

    
*The R. U. Sirius of Mondo 2000 predictions for the near-term
future.  The twenty-first century has had its effect on Ken.  He's
coming across almost elder-statesman here.

*And speaking of Ken Goffman, I'd like to take this small
opportunity to formally thank Ken for not foolishly dropping dead of
nootropics, or nutraceuticals, or massive overdoses of Vitamin C, or
any of that other stuff that was considered the acme of hip in the
heyday of Mondo 2000. Ken's demonstrated willingness to stay alive
into the sordid depths of the genuine 21st century has helped my
morale quite a lot. I hope he lives to be 95.

http://www.mondo2000.com/2017/12/29/predictions-for-the-future/
  

    
And, speaking of Nettime and things decdentralized - an open letter
to Mark Zuckerberg from Olivier Auber (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Auber )

Open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.

Hi Mark!

Best wishes and congratulations on your good resolutions 2018!

1) you tell us you have realized that "with the rise of a small
number of
big tech companies ? and governments using technology to watch their
citizens ? many people now believe technology only centralizes power
rather
than decentralizes it."

Only a belief? Isn't it a little real? And you're here for
something,
aren't you?

On top of that, you tell us that you are "interested to go deeper
and study
the positive and negative aspects of these technologies (of
decentralization)"

It's cool ! You should know that others have been working on
decentralization for a long time - already long before Facebook was
created
- to create the conditions for a more equitable and healthy society.
If
your awareness is real, you can probably help us. We lack
developers!

2) You also seem to have understood that your algorithms made people
crazy
by flooding them with sponsored posts and fake news. You say:
"strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and
happiness." So
you're going to modify some lines of code to reinforce what you call
our
"strong ties" that have a lot of "value" according to you. In the
end you
want "the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent".

It's cool ! However, my dear Mark, you must understand that this
time is
even more precious than what you imagine.

For my part, let's say I spend(t) about an hour a day on Facebook
developing these strong ties and my own professional documentation.
Apart
from that, I also spend(t) some "recreational time". This point is
mentioned below*.

But as my strong ties and my documentation are irrecoverable by the
Facebook backup system as I explained to your college Yann LeCun**,
I must
note that Facebook stole them from me.

Let's see how much it costs ...

365 hours a year, that is round to 50 days. If I count my day price
at USD
1,000 (it's very reasonable, FB's lawyers are paid USD 1,000 per
hour),
that's USD 50,000 a year. Since I have been on Facebook for 7 years,
I will
send you a USD 350,000 bill

All the statistics indicate that I am an average user of Facebook in
terms
of duration of use. Hence we can multiply this cost by the number of
users
(not the current 2 billion but say 1 billion as an average number
during
the past seven years). Thus we obtain the figure of:

USD 350,000,000,000,000
Three hundred Fifty Thousand Billion Dollar

In conclusion, my dear Mark, you provide a true interoperability of
personal data that would allow people not to be hostages of Facebook
and
its centralization, or you repay all of them!

Yours

Olivier Auber
  

    
Re #177

"The world will continue to be mostly owned by about a hundred
people."

My personal fav... Our choice! to either work on Maggie's Farm or do
something worthwhile - while we still have the time.
  

    
For those not aware, Facebook forced Mike to stop using R.U. Sirius
as his FB name... the campaign to overturn that decision was stopped
in its tracks by Mr. Z. so that FB would be a platform that truly
represents real people....immediately followed by fake accounts and
Russian disinformation campaigns - ON Facebook.

But it's okay, Mark apologized and it will all be better now.
  

    
Bruce and Jon, and all of you who have actively participated, and
lurkers everywhere, thank you so much for stirring up the pot and
helping us focus our attention and endeavors, once again..

I cannot believe I have to wait another year for this....I feel so
alone :) NOT!!!
  

    
#180 My bad!! Meant to say Ken, not Mike...was multi-tasking in my
head. At 70 years old that is a dumb thing to do as I now find
myself on the way to do something, can't remember what it was, and
have to go back to where ever I first had the thought in order to
remember it !! :)
  

    
We're into the last day of the 2018 State of the World.

Paul Di Filippo just mentioned in a post elsewhere 10 of the 11
writers included in <bruces>' Mirrorshades anthology (an anthology
of cyberpunk writing published in 1986), ten are still actively
writing science fiction today.

We've been living science fiction for the last three decades... my
latest read in the genre was Cory Doctorow's novel "Walkaway," and
it felt contemporary... it could be about the tomorrow or the day
after. In fact, it may be happening as I type this... no doubt whole
communities of thought and action do exist outside the prevailing
culture and systems of power, invisible to the rest of us by design.
I could imagine the sort of people who used to read Coevolution
Quarterly with its coverage of emerging tech and lifestyles, people
who are exploring patterns of resilience and building adaptive
structures that will persist when the storms come.

People like Vinay Gupta:
https://www.vice.com/sv/article/qbxej5/global-resilience-guru

"Nobody will admit that we are apes with ape problems. Everybody is
carrying around the essentially colonialist fiction that we are in
some way more than the other animals, and once that error is made,
our heads fill with imaginary needs and imaginary stories. We can
pretty much perfect the happy ape level of consciousness in this
world, and all that it's going to cost us is our history of
over-complicating all of this with our pre-evolutionary mythology
about the nature of humanity."
  

    
Well, we’re reaching closure now, and I’m very proud that we wasted
so little time this year trying to outguess or handicap The Donald. 
That was so constructive of us.  I feel proud.

I have now left Ibiza and I am back in Turin.   The air is filthier,
it’s colder and I’m better-dressed.  Onward!

I have learned that the British dance-music press likes to call
Ibiza “Beefa.”  The crowds that flock the discos in Ibiza are known
to them as the “Beefa Massive.”  This is as endearingly stupid as
popular commentary can get, in my opinion.   I will be calling Ibiza
“Beefa” from now on.

I have a feeling I’ll be spending more time in Beefa in 2018,
assuming that they don’t have a second Spanish Civil War, and that
Beefa doesn’t go broke because the Massive from Brexitania can no
longer show up to guzzle the sangria.  But why borrow that trouble,
ladies and gentleman?  Even a harmless Mediterranean dance island
has trouble enough!
  

    
Via email from Shebar Windstone:

About climate change...

For the last two SOTWs, I restrained myself from posting, fearing I
couldn't be succinct or clear enough, & hoped someone else would
step up to the virtual podium. Now, as yet another year's discussion
nears its end & the futures of living beings & the planet itself
seem to be nearing an end, too, I'll risk incoherence rather than
silence. Because "climate change" doesn't come near to describing
what we're up against. Nor does "global warming." *Global disaster*
& *the extinction of life as we've known it* -- or as we can imagine
it -- seem almost inevitable, & most of those who might have the
power to change things apparently prefer today's profits & power to
tomorrow's lives & planet.

Mitigating global disaster would necessitate mobilizing globally;
rethinking & reorganizing every aspect & element of our lives &
lifestyles, work, consumption & leisure; rationing & banning many
old products & inventing new ones; conscripting, volunteering &
reconfiguring forces of labor & production on a scale that would
dwarf all the efforts that ennabled (or necessitated) World War II.
As was true then, this isn't just a matter of what the rich &
powerful could do. In fact, it may be the opposite: It's about what
the poor, workers, consumers, managers, producers, members of
various communities (geographical, social, political, technological,
cultural, etc.) can do to protect ourselves from predatory
governments, corporations, armed forces, & all the other toxic &
deadly forces that are destroying the planet. Plastics, hormones,
pesticides, antibiotics, fertilizers, overconsumption, garbage, oil,
pollution, nuclear waste... ignorance, prejudice, superstition, fear
& terror... there is nothing we use to exploit, enslave, hurt or
kill others that does not boomerang back upon us. There is nothing
we do to exploit, tame, contain or destroy life on the planet that
does not constrain, cripple or destroy our own lives.

The means of invention, production, reproduction, distribution,
recycling & repurposing must be brought within the grasp & control
of all of us. And whatever cannot be recycled or repurposed should
be banned -- or, at least, carefully & thoughtfully controlled &
disposed of. Plastic bags, to-go containers & implements, wasteful
packaging, single-use anything - maybe even plastic anything --
should be made illegal & obsolete overnight! Private gas-powered
vehicles should go the way of the horse & buggy. Needless to say,
war & the weapons of armed conflct, whether domestic, international
or inter-species, should also be made illegal. What to do about
meat-eaters & exploiters of females of other species shouldn't even
be a question -- but as a consumer/exploiter of meat & dairy
products/producers, & as a friend & relative of farmers, I know it
will be! If I could afford to travel more often, I'd say more about
personal carbon footprints, but right now, I can only suggest that
every person & every product & its packaging should have their
carbon costs & their recycling/ repurposing/ disposal costs included
in our/their prices & taxes. This should be a no-brainer! (Why isn't
it???)

I used to think that corporations wouldn't support environmentally
safe measures & products until they could figure out how to profit
from them. But now I have to ask: Is there is any kind of profit
that does not extract flesh & blood from workers & consumers, vital
or crucial elements from the earth? If we could conceptualize
ourselves as living & working in one big co-op or one big union with
all living creatures & with the natural resources & forces of the
planet itself, how would we manifest our solidarity, our mutual
inter-dependence, our power, our love & respect for ourselves & all
others in the circles or cycles of the only lives that will ever be
possible for us?

Finally, what other suggestions could I be making, what other
questions should I/we be asking?
  

    
We’re in for a rugged year ahead, and I think we should close by
admitting that frankly.   There are few people who annoy me more
than perverse, against-the-grain yea-sayers.  “Yes, it’s true that I
lost both my feet in that avalanche, but  now I can make new friends
selling all my used shoes on eBay!”  It’s true that every cloud has
some silver lining, but if it’s an F-5 funnel cloud, there’s
something irresponsible about telling people to go gawk at the shiny
part.

This too shall pass, clouds, linings, the works.  We suffer, but I
find consolation in artwork.  Not that artwork makes the State of
the World any better objectively, but, well, it’s consoling.  So
I’ll wrap things up by offering some tips about music.  After all,
I’ve been in Ibiza.  Music, why not.
  

    

Okay, there’s music that I actually like, and then there’s music
that interests me.  There’s music I enjoy, and then there’s music
that feels more like cultural news to me.  

I used to enjoy many kinds of music, ‘cause it was groovy, and then
there was a fraction of painful music that I listened to, in a
self-conscious college-guy fashion, to expand my boundaries of
taste.

Nowadays there’s one kind of music I still actually like.  Duke
Ellington.  To tell the full truth, I like most of Duke Ellington,
while there’s some commercial medley stuff the Duke did late in life
that I recognize as rubbish because he also knew it was rubbish. 
But Duke Ellington is, like, my last island of naive, unfeigned
appreciation.  Unjaded.  Youthfully enthusiastic, even.

Then there’s digital music:  techno, house, disco, electro, trance,
dubstep, grime, trip-hop and drum-n-bass.  I listen to megatons of
this stuff.  I don’t know why, because I know I don’t much “like
it.”   Maybe because it’s so available.  

I don’t go to live shows, I don’t wear the clothing, I don’t need to
meet anybody at any club, club drugs bore me.  So I’m a rather
unlikely fan of this splintered super-genre of digital music.  

But I do study it.  A lot.  I’m thinking that probably I put up with
it because it *IS* so digital.  I’m an earnest devotee of many forms
of contemporary tech-art. So I can cheerfully put up with music that
has too much circuitry and software in it.  I even get it about
fade-ins, tracks, loops, builds, drops.  I recognize the
characteristic wub-wubs and shrieks of particular forms of hardware.
Not enough to ever desire to create any such music myself, but,
well, I don’t code, either.  Nevertheless, I’m sure that my 2018
will have a soundtrack of this kind.  Making coffee in the morning,
doing housework, that’s what will be playing.  Probably more than in
2017, and louder, and from more artists.
  

    
I don’t even mind the musicians, which is a tough thing for a
novelist to admit.  Since “everything that happens to musicians will
eventually happen to everybody,” if you’re kind, supportive and
indulgent to musicians nowadays, it’s like some universal
philanthropy.  

I particularly enjoy giving musicians money.  Nobody wants me to do
that; all the majors, Google Apple Facebook Amazon Microsoft,
they’re hell-bent on destroying musicians and removing any practical
acts of support that I might offer them.

Musicians mostly have to survive by touring nowadays — they’re like
vaudeville guys before the invention of recorded music — or else
they merch out on high-profit-margin items likes shoes and soft
drinks.  Okay, I don’t drink those drinks, I don’t wear the shoes
and I don’t pay gate at their shows either.  Is six bucks on
Bandcamp gonna kill me?  Take the money, come on.
  

    

I listen to musicians, although most musicians can’t talk much.  If
they could speak fluently then they wouldn’t need instruments. 

Digital musicians are a little better, though.  They’re less
enslaved by the dire need to spend years in Mom’s basement learning
blues guitar.   You can read an interview with the average techno
DJ/producer type, and even the bespectacled women among them will
shyly admit stuff like “Well, I was planning on getting my
biochemistry doctorate, but  then I started playing tracks for
friends from my parents’ colossal vinyl collection, and one thing
led to another so I quit my day-job at the genetics lab and now I’m
touring Australia.”   

I’ve even seen interviews with trance-music guys where they blithely
admit stuff like, “I enjoy making 5,000 people happy at parties, but
I kind of wish the music was more complicated.”  There’s something
endearing about that.
  

    
One might take, for instance, “Billain,” my favorite practitioner of
jagged, extreme drum’n’bass “neurofunk.”  This guy is obviously a
genius, even though he’s from Sarajevo and somehow chose to stay,
live and work there.  I first listened to his music because I
literally couldn’t believe what was happening in the soundtrack. 
Now it’s fair to say that I’m his genuine fan.  

I know his biography, I’m aware of what he’s up to.  I play tons of
Billain around the house.  His work speaks directly to my Belgrade
sensibility, the “Boris Srebro” aspect of Bruce Sterling, a guy who
has a home in the Balkans.  

I wouldn’t recommend that everyone should listen to Billain, because
Sarajevo neurofunk can kill small animals even at moderate volume,
but his epically overblown cyberdystopia landscapes cheer me up. 
They’re good for my morale.  They brighten my day, somehow.  I buy
every track the guy puts out.

https://soundcloud.com/billain
  

    

*I know I’m going on about music a bit — it’s a rousing, anthemic
close, okay? — but if you’re getting impatient, then here, just look
at this video.  This is “Courtesy” and “Avalon Emerson,” two
millennial women DJs, at Sonar Festival. This is a modern
Californian and a European, going at it hammer and tongs, arm in
arm.  They are, in the parlance, “smashing it.”

*If you don’t like this hour-long set, well, this form of music is
not for you.  It’s not gonna get any better than this.  This is
top-end for 2017, this is state of the art.  

*I quite admire Avalon Emerson.  She’s a Silicon Valley coder geek
with an astral IQ and a real paying job who prefers to play music. 
Good for her.

*Courtesy is from Copenhagen, and it’s rather rare for well-behaved
and civilized Danish women to make a large crowd go insane. 
Especially when her facial expression rarely changes and all she
does is twitch knobs a little and sip from a water bottle.

https://youtu.be/G2Oh4r1bi4E
  

    

*It might well be argued: “Hey, if you say you like ‘techno music,’
why don’t you just listen to Sven Vath and Pete Tong?  Because it’s
just tracks and loops, ramps and drops, it’s all yard goods, it all
sounds exactly the same! Nobody from outside the scene could tell a
1992 track from a 2012 track!”

And, well, yeah.  That’s true.  It’s a little odd, but digital music
is scarcely progressive at all.  The hardware jostles around a lot,
the musicians and the “massive,” they’re remarkably conservative.  

You might opine that lately more women are showing up, and the women
musicians in techno electro house etc et-al are somewhat more
creative than the standard club DJs.  I have no problem with that
theory.  If you’ve got another Grimes in the disco closet, bring her
on.  I could handle an entire coven of Grimeses.  A dozen covens of
Grimeses wouldn’t hurt my feelings any.  Plenty of room on the
playlist.

So who will I be listening to in 2018, to get me through month after
month of inevitable shock, occasional disaster, and relentless
official inanity and vulgarity?  Well, if I was a real true-blue
techno guy, then I’d be digging in crates for “rarities.”  Because
that’s what they  always do. If you’re Nina Kraviz from Moscow, you
can slay just because of your global skills as a sonic archivist.

But personally, I’ll be listening to young DJs.  The ones who came
over the parapet recently, the contemporary crop of wannabes. 
Because they’re the ones who need the boost.  They might be
“better,” or new-and-improved, but I’m not sure that I even care if
they’re better musicians.  They’re certainly not in better times.  
  

    

Brian Eno says that great musicians are those who have a great
audience, and these creatives don’t have a great audience — they’ve
got social media trolls and a business that wants to liquidate them
and stream their life-blood by the liter.  But I’m with ‘em anyway. 
Maybe I can help in some small way; everyone shows up at New Years,
but the futurist shows up in February, when it’s just as cold but
there are no free drinks.  So what the heck.  Whatever happens to
them will happen to everybody.

Willow, Noncompliant, Archie Hamilton, Beatrice Dillon, Saoirse,
Gideon, La Fleur, Volvox, Dr. Rubinstein, DJ Lag, Lauren Lo Sung,
OR:LA, Rroxymore, Anastasia Kristensen, Courtesy, Byron the
Aquarius, Nabihah Iqbal, Josey Rebelle, Debonair, Bedouin, Avalon
Emerson, Jlin, Peggy Gou, Objekt, Call Super — and anybody they link
to.  Good luck with that!
  

    
I dropped some of those musicians into a playlist:
https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXyliAjruocz76IkCsBewDwa4nOOmSC0ZHDb
Q3ZvvPFMEB7czQFD3FY9ATI9HZZ3_xX1q2dt3WwdrfNNYrzptIHIBaFpP2g%3D%3D
  

    
Perfect for SOTW 2018: 
"CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work"
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ces-was-full-of-useless-robots-and-machines-that
-dont-work

Is this our future? Thinking about Bill Barker's tongue-in-cheek
logo parody, which said "In the future, everything will work."
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/60/05/be/6005be2dcfc64109edb4c65e6f9ea1a7--limited-e
dition-prints-the-future.jpg

Another aspect of the word "work": let's do less of it.
http://theweek.com/articles/747843/case-28hour-work-week

"Perverse as it may seem, longer hours have become a mark of
privilege in the U.S. labor force: The well-educated, the highly
paid, white workers, and male workers all log in the most. Why?
Because in an economy where increased overall productivity doesn't
result in increased wages or leisure time, working obscenely long
hours to rake in more money is the one surefire way to increase your
standard of living."
  

    
Unfortunate juxtaposition of those two simultaneous 7:18 posts -

-pleeeeeze, can we talk about climate catastrophe!

and

-here's my soundtrack to the hard years ahead


fiddling while rome burns
  

    
"... pleeeeeze, can we talk about climate catastrophe!"

National Resources Defense Council has a list of actions you can
take to stop global warming. "Healing the planet starts in your
garage, in your kitchen, and at your dining-room table."
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-you-can-stop-global-warming

How many of those actions are you taking in your own life?
  

    
Anthropogenic climate change isn't going to cause "*the extinction
of life as we've known it*". It's going to bring humans close to
extinction or worse, it's going to cause many species to disappear.
Life will go on.
  

    
Well, with humans gone, that would be "the extinction of life as
we've known it".
  

    
You can't step into the same river twice. We can focus on effects on
civilization rather than exaggerate the expected impact, which is
indeed horrific.