Steiner is not the best writer out there; yet I can certainly relate to his approach and appreciate his perspective.  He’s an engineer, and he’s fascinated with what good will come of the world once we start to drip away our American addiction to oil.  $20 Per Gallon is set into chapters with sequential consequences from increments of the price of gasoline: $4 introduction, followed by a $6 chapter, etc.

Obviously, then, the book is largely speculation.  We don’t have a world where gas costs $20 a gallon in America, and so it’s a silly attempt to figure out what exactly is going to happen at that point in time.  If you’re looking for hard data or absolute proof, then these pages may not satisfy you; but I’d then argue that the same goal was silly at the start.  With that said, Steiner has thought out a whole lot of consequences stemming from massive increases in the cost of fuel: food production, transportation, globalization, and a variety of other topics are dissected and plotted out in the eventual patterns which we most likely will see.

What I like most about the book is the amount of positivity that the author sees for our future.  It is rather easy to see doom in the face of increased consumer cost of just about anything; though in terms of energy, the base component of how we live our lives, a higher ticket price does not mean we will waste away.

On the contrary, Steiner argues largely that we will adapt quite well, and that we will just have to structure ourselves differently than we have in the past forty or fifty years.  Cheap oil has allowed us to be lazy; it’s allowed our food to go to shit; it’s tied us inescapably to cars, in countless numbers, and it’s also allowed us to move our economy away from the borders of the country, taking away our jobs and investments in the same movement.

It may help that I see certain parts of science-fiction in this book.  A big part of what moves us forward as a society is some kind of conflation of what is now fiction and what can be reality in our future.  Steiner seems to understand this, and my only hope is that there are enough people out there who see such signs as opportunities rather than omens of doom.

Compared to where we were fifty years ago, the nature of work has changed rather drastically.  Plastic and silicon is the new gold; and while there are certain initiatives for “green” or somewhat vaguely sustainable processes, these slight shifts are driven by a desire for market differentiation, adding in that extra coolness factor.

The danger of technology isn’t in the machines themselves, but in the motives that cause their creation and distribution.  I keep asking myself whether we need all these incremental improvements, drawn out such that each of the same type of company makes about the same device in each of the current possible means.  How many phones or computers or machines do we need in the course of a year?  Does it matter that there’s something new and slightly improved?

Machines make us more efficient; they help us in our daily lives.  The trick, then, is in drawing the lines between utility and excess; and I feel that so much of what’s swirling around is now tipping towards the latter rather than the former.

I shiver to think of how many manufacturing plants are created and run for all these varied and yet rather similar devices; how many of these are created only to be tossed away a year later; and how many people are working in these horrible jobs in order to satisfy the “market’s” lust.  Gadgets are now status symbol, and I’m not sure if or how this relationship can now become disentangled.

I should also point out this excellent post, “What’s your coltan footprint?” from Context Message, which deals with one aspect of gadget manufacturing and the mark these kinds of processes leave on the planet.

If Monsanto is, indeed, company of the year, then we must all be that much more wary of what the word “company” has began to imply.  The article at Forbes shows figures of market domination and increased profits, despite some pesky “vicious criticism” of the “Satan of agriculture.”

It’s not hard to find counter-arguments, to unravel the horrific stories of what this one particular corporate entity has done for our food supply, for our farming industry, and even for our health.  A one word search in Google for “Monsanto” may at first pull up the company’s own website; though quickly following this hit are countless articles, videos, and other resources telling of the troubles Monsanto has generated in the wake of its profits.

Currently, the articles on Forbes.com has 67 comments; and here, at least, the results are encouraging.  Former supporters of the magazine have mentioned their desire to terminate their subscription, and have angrily outcried at the absurdity of the faux-”journalism” that took place in order to make the original article suitable for print.  If you have not heard of the problems created from Monsanto, this is a perfect opportunity to start.

The trouble is, it’s a sad thing to think that the fight, in so many cases, may be lost on those who the film could otherwise help.  There’s absolutely nothing positive about the Fox network or Rupert Murdoch or anything associated with them.  For most sane people, this makes perfect sense, since there really isn’t very much that’s redeeming about any of it.  More broadly, then, the trouble is that there are already too damned many people who are sucked in, and there’s very little chance that if they like their media, they’ll even spend the time to buy into this particular film.

I’m not saying we should give up; and the problem is brilliantly deep and motivated.  It is essential to have these kinds of films, in order to transition those who are slowly fleeing the dim lights of their absurd television screens into what otherwise would constitute reality, fairness, etc.

If we are to look towards what’s happening in our world, however, I do feel as though there is a space outside this movie, that somehow will take those who are complicit and instead make them think.  Fundamentally, Fox subscribers are lulled into not having to think all that hard.  There isn’t too much to process, because it’s all spit out on a single serving plate, and at the end of a long day that’s an attractive alternative.

With respect to this particular movie, in any case, it’s certainly a wonderful collection of the absurdity that we in the US have to wrestle against, and taken against other alternatives in our quest for ways to use our time, it truly cannot be missed.

I’m a huge, huge fan of Henry Rollins, both by seeing him speak live and by his many videos and his “dispatches” on henryrollins.com.  I admittedly have not read any of his books; yet.

As an avid Netflix fan, I tonight found and watched the IFC’s “Henry Rollins” Uncut video where Henry is in Northern Ireland.  Needless to say, the particular footage and interviews and commentary were enough to set my blood on fire and making me really wanting to know more.

In general I try not to regurgitate the bulk of the content on which I am reviewing, and I’m going to follow that trend here.  If you have any interest in the situation, I feel strongly that you should watch the piece through for yourself, as it won’t take too long (less than an hour) and is rather well packed.  Namely, Henry interviews a variety of different people from both the IRA and from Union members as well as some other local figures.

What is incredible to me is how those who were interviewed iterated that it was not a fight between Protestant and Catholics, but between independence and rule by the United Kingdom.  What little I did hear about the conflicts in the early 90s hardly ever voiced this sentiment, and the idea that it was an imperial rather than a secular war is just insanity.  The effect of the media and how it constructs and manipulates public opinion is huge; if not to those who are directly involved and know better, but to anyone else in the world who is thereby cut off from proper access to the bolded points which affect so many people.  Furthermore, the mass of current doubt as to whether the current systems are sustainable, and the extent to which the current society is segregated rather than truly “in peace” is very seriously a story which has not been brought to proper light.  Rising fences, constant security, and other forms of military presence are all elements that I, in cheery Boston, cannot even conceive; and this is speaking to only the current “benevolent” state of where they are now, saying nothing to decades of conflict.

There are clearly many more aspects to the story, though I certainly got a good primer in the discussion held by this particular video piece.  I look forward to learning more.

Free implies easy access, and access to information has long been the eventual goal of the Google corporation.  There are a lot of wonderful benefits that come with having information readily available, and in the end it gives us all a bit more power and knowledge.  Murdoch’s move, then, is opposite these directives.  In some frightening application of spin, I can see that the privatized content is supposedly marked as “premium” and more authoritative than cheap or “lowly” alternatives.  I just hope that, in this particular case, that doesn’t attract much attention.

Journalism is incredibly important, and I don’t want to see it go away.  With free options and so many difficulties in finding funding, it’s scary to think that we could go into the dark because of market patterns.  In some ways, charging for content can be and should be a good thing.  I want to help pay, if only in small amounts, to have people find the stories and the underlying problems that happen on both world and local scales.

The trouble, then, is that Murdoch isn’t making this move to stay afloat; it’s a power play designed to generate more profit in an attempt to further whatever agendas he sees fit.  Are we going to see RIAA and MPAA equivalents, finding and persecuting anyone who seems to have copied a Newscorp feed?  Copyright and protection seems a logical extension of this ethos, though I imagine they’ll move slowly enough that it’s off the radar until a few years down the road.

I hope that I’m just being a bit paranoid, though if so many people already can put on Fox news and consider it to “fair and balanced” in any way, shape, or form, it’s not too much of a leap to think of other ways in which the bulk of the population can be manipulated and followed down other dark alleys.  Google needs to keep doing what it’s doing, and in the best case this will be a very public wrong step for Murdoch and other similar conglomerates.

The first third of Outliers was rather exciting.  I’m not so much a fan of hockey, though I do work in computers; and in the computing world, when you’re born certainly can have a big influence on whether you’re behind or ahead of the curve.  Gladwell goes through both youth hockey leagues and innovators in computing to find what it is that sets certain people apart from the crowd.  For hockey players, being born near a cutoff date is most important.  For computing, being born early enough to predate the tech booms and having ample access to programming workstations before anyone else allowed Bill Gates and others to spearhead their own computing revolutions.  The law of 10,000 hours is likewise very intriguing; I won’t give any more of it away, since you can most likely find more information on Google or Wikipedia.

Where Outliers takes a wrong turn, in my opinion, is when Gladwell moves on from hockey and computers and starts to analyze cultural differences and sociological differences.  There is a short sentence or two which marks the beginning of this analysis,whereby Gladwell tersely notes that it can potentially be dangerous to speak in terms of cultural generalities, and that this kind of thinking can easily turn towards racism and stereotyping.  He does not come back to this point, as though a few words are enough to stem the tides of how popular opinion will look upon these words.

The reality is that it just isn’t realistic to talk for pages on end about what makes people from the South violent; or why Asians have trouble asserting themselves, all under the guise that no one is going to use these studies, framed as scientific fact, for less than noble purposes.  In a certain context some of his analysis would be OK: framed with great caution and repeated understanding that generalities about culture do not necessarily describe the people who fall into these categories, we may be able to get away without more bad stereotypes or distaste of the other.  In a mass market book, however, without adequate framing, I feel that it’s a wrong step to jump into such a discussion.  Perhaps in the future we can deal with these kinds of issues in a more conscious manner, though sweeping racism under the rug as a theoretical detail is not what I consider to be responsible.

At this point I can’t say that I’m all that much more advanced.  I do, however, have a desire to keep up on what’s happening, with a limited amount of time to do so.  Computer work, sound work, media, and other forms of reading seem to seep away the time, though I’ve been making roads towards something like awareness.

Since I picked up my Sony Reader Touch, I’ve been using the wonderful calibre software by Kovid Goyal.  One great feature of this software is that it allows for automated download of the daily web version of the New York Times which then can be sent over to the Reader.  While the free web version is a cut down version, the Sunday editions easily gross over 1,000 pages in the electronic format.  Weekday editions are about half that size, on average.  As much time as I like to dedicate to seeding my head with the various articles, there’s just been too much to take in, even over the course of the day.

Previously, I tried out CNN via Google Reader to do about the same job.   The Times, however, has some amazing writers and editors, and I haven’t found any source to be quite as good in that regard.  I have tried out other sites from time to time, though I keep coming back to them and have never been disappointed.  Moreover, being able to have that content in quasi-paper form on my Reader is incredibly useful, especially for longer articles which are a bit tougher to get through via computer monitor.

Freeloading and subscriptions

The reality of newspapers is that they’re having a lot of financial trouble.  Especially outlets which still have an actual print version, such as the Times and the Boston Globe, it has been increasingly hard for them to compete with other free sources of information online.

The Times does currently have a subscription model via an Adobe Air application called the Times Reader.  For $3.50/week, you can get the same content as I’m getting now with calibre, but in a desktop-only client.  You can, from within the application, print each article to a PDF; though they are images, not text, which drives the filesize way up.  Compared to having the content in EPUB or LRF or PDF in one step, it’s certainly a step backward, and is certainly not adding any lasting value for me.

Effectively, the cost of the Times Reader is there to stave off the cost of the missing ads from the free the web version; to most web users, however, it is easy enough to ignore the ads without any real cost.  This is a fundamental problem with most newspapers in this digital age, and I hope that in the future there are more options out there which allow for cheap yet not-free access to good content.

I don’t personally own a Kindle, though my understanding is that this is the closest thing to a reasonable subscription model for newspapers.  Sony will release their Reader Daily Edition in the next few months, too, which has wireless access and, hopefully, some reasonable subscription options.  As always, this is also a spot for DRM to rear its ugly head; however, with wireless delivery to the device alone, and the inability to draw the articles back off the device via USB, etc., this seems like a reasonable compromise.

Generally, I’ve felt that New York City is just flat overwhelming, to a slight point of suffocation, though for whatever reason I found it a lot smaller and more manageable this time around. This is partly due to understanding Manhattan a bit better, and being a bit more comfortable with the MTA.

The Summit was definitely some work. 10am till 7pm w/ scarcely any breaks, almost entirely consisting of 7 minute presentations by some rather high impact people.

The trick with the Internet these days is that everyone is Watching You, now, and my mind is a bit burnt even a day later, so I’m not going to dive into specifics as much as I can manage.

With that said, there were a lot of incredibly inspiring people who spoke. I’m sitting here back in a bit of awe as to how it’s all organized. The word, organization, too, takes on different meaning when it comes to building masses of people and thoughts and ideas and ideals. It has very little to do with organizing papers and pens in rows; and it’s not managing in the way that a boss directs a mass of underlings from one project to another. Personally, too, what organization I may have in my head general flits off in some other direction before the stake reaches fully into the chest of the vampire.

Maybe what we all need is a bit more blood on our shirts, even if it’s derived from our own machinations.

What’s striking to me is how so many of the presenters from the Summit just flat made their work look easy. “I took step A and then made it step B, and even though I got arrested or held up by force X prior to completing step C, by step D ..” What? If you’ve never heard of any of the artists listed on the program, I suggest you look up some of their names, and perhaps try to find where the word “fearless” fits in and in how many instances for each action they took.

Me, myself, and I ..

I already know at this point that I, Richard Laskey, do not have it in me to do a number of the types of actions that I had been able to glean from the presentations this weekend. I’m just not built for it or am too sensitive. I might like to say otherwise, but the reality is that I’m also sure I can contribute more effectively in other ways.

Currently, if nothing else, I know I can write. There is a lot of fucked up shit in the world, and there’s a number of reasons to bring important issues to light. Part of writing can, in some instances, also take on editing, to some degree: shaping the ideas and concepts into something a bit more compact, packing a tad more punch to the line.

I also tend to write into the void; and while I hear from friends who read what I write that they enjoy my voice, I also want to make it more of a point to connect certain efforts where they otherwise might be missed links.