This is a review of a documentary.

When I first heard about the Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Gyre, I thought about Neale Stephenson’s Snow Crash. There’s this refugee raft city, cobbled together around a dead tanker that is slowly drifting counter-clockwise from Asia to the States. It’s been at sea for years, turning into this kind of Darwinian pool of only the most vicious and desperate survivors and the whole thing’s going to come ashore in California…

The second time I heard about the Gyre, I was in Montreal. A young woman had just been accepted into a graduate program and she was telling me about this continent of trash that was out there.

“It’s a whole floating island,” she said.

She wanted to do something with plastic-eating fungii for her thesis. She was going to do some research and see if she could seed the floating islands with mushrooms. See if the continent could support life, a kind of enormous artificial island. A sixth Olympic ring the size of one or more Texases.

I haven’t been in touch with her, so I don’t know what happened to her thesis project when her research inevitably discovered that her garbage island is just as fictional as Stephenson’s raft city. What’s actually out there is much, much worse.

Toxic Garbage Island

The documentary, by Vice’s VBS.tv follows a group of filmmakers who take a ride out to the Gyre on the Agalita, one of the few vessels doing research into the Gyre. It’s divided into 3 parts and at some point during the second part, I began to get impatient. When were we going to see the garbage continent?

Getting to the Gyre takes seven days by boat. For the first hour of the documentary, you are given a glimpse into each day. The crew get more and more bored and frustrated. Toward the end of part 2, the Captain explains to the filmmakers that they aren’t going get their money shot.

“Everybody says show me a picture of the Garbage. Well, it’s spread out, it’s diffuse. This is an enormous ocean. You’re not gonna find a dump, there is no trash dump down here.”

Plastic breaks down in the sun. The pieces get smaller and smaller but not nothing eats the polymers. So you end up increasingly tiny bits of plastic suspended in the water. The area the size of one or more Texases is filled with plastic garbage at various stages of breaking down. It’s plastic soup. Chunky plastic soup. Inhospitable to life, chunky, plastic soup.

Water in the Gyre is relatively stable. Before the plastic started to accumulate, biological stuff did. The micro-organisms that feed on that stuff thrived and the creatures that ate them thrived all the way up to large mammals and sea birds. A lot of creatures came to expect that the Gyre would be a buffet. They still go up there, looking for food. So you end up with this (warning: that image is disturbing as hell).

True to the captain’s word, the filmmakers never do get their money shot. But after sitting through an hour of movie voyage, when they come across a construction helmet and then a floating jar and then a tangle of net you begin to get a sense. There are bits of garbage everywhere. They are seven days out to sea, just about as far from humans and land as they can possibly be and they are picking up stuff that you’d expect to see in a poorly maintained marina. There’s a lot of it.

The Sublime

In University, talking about the sublime, we looked at Kant’s interpretation; the feeling you can get of utter smallness and powerlessness in the face of a vast universe. To experience this feeling, you need to come across events or things that reveal your weakness without threatening your existence. A safe enough distance from you that you can contemplate it but immediate enough that that you know for certain that you are powerless in the face of it.

When we used examples, we’d normally talk about stuff like watching a roaring thunderstorm from a cave. We’d compare being chased by a bear (terror, not sublime) to observing the pounding majesty of a massive waterfall (sublime). Sitting in class, ‘lo those many years ago, it never occurred to me that I’d have this feeling in the face of a floating sea of suffocating garbage.

Watching The Documentary

You can see the whole thing for free on VBS.tv.
Toxic Garbage Island Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

The Monsanto House of the Future

“The future”’s glamor, its sexiness. It’s never just one day. We don’t imagine May 20, 2050. The present is almost always the one given day.
Unless something starkly Ubertrending happens, and usually something bad. And that’s when the present feels like “the future”.
–William Gibson on twitter.

I feel like I live in the future ALL THE TIME.

My camera is a sleek flat rectangle just like in Transmetropolitan. Except that my camera is also a phone and a networked computer which contains a map of the world that knows where I am along with a growing portion all of the knowledge.

I have the Internet. Everyone has the Internet. We’re giving out laptops to children, except that this might not matter, because everyone wants a cellphone instead. What’s a cellphone? It’s the word we use to prevent our brains freaking from the fact that we all carry around personal radios, (with way more function than Star Trek communicators) that link us to a global satellite network. Like talking about wireless cable.

I just got back from 2 weeks in Thailand on business. I didn’t have working water every morning, but everyone had working miracle gizmos that we barely noticed. I got frustrated when network difficulties made it kind of choppy to talk to a teleconference of people all around the globe. For free!

The nation state is under pressure from without and within. Corruption is rampant and crushing. More and more corporations and individuals are becoming truly transnational.

Every day, people upload free video of new marvels and wonders. They’re commercializing Electric Cars!

Flying robots (ROBOTS!) are used to fight wars with shadowy terrorist organizations on the edge of law-bound civilization.

Need I mention that the world might be facing either an economic or environmental apocalypse (or both!).

We have a space station now, though it doesn’t really work very well. The Chinese have a space program. And possibly an army of hackers.

Did I mention, there were PIRATES? Not, like, fun swashbuckling pirates, but high tech, globally networked pirates.

This is not the bright gleaming future of certain kinds of science fiction, but it is the messy, complicated future of the science fiction I grew up with. It may be wrong on the details, but in tone, this is sometimes terrifyingly close to the 1980s worlds of Gibson and Sterling and that whole crowd. I think it’s telling that the crew I grew up reading are writing closer to the present these days (or even the past).

P.S. Nuclear Lighthouses.

photo credit: Midnight-digital

Two stories appeared in rapid succession today on Wired’s excellent Threat Level. In the first, Rep. Linda Sanchez defends her, possibly overbroad, anti-cyber-bullying law with the argument that it’s only aimed at hostile bloggers.

In the second, a court upholds a hacking conviction for a man who used his work computer to upload nudie shots. The hacking law was never intended to be used to turn work policy violations into crimes, but there it is.

Here’s hoping that U.S. Lawmakers are able to understand the relationship between these two stories.

photo credit: SliceofNYC

Everywhere I go, I carry a pen and a stack of 3×5 index cards held together by a binder clip. It’s a Hipster PDA 1.0, from before all those apps got installed.

On one of these cards are the words: “Entrepreneurship is alive and well at the Anarchist Book Fair”. I wrote them last spring, during a trip to Montreal. This is kind of condescending thought that runs through my head when I see idealist-ideologues try to navigate the shoals of reality.

The book fair is annual. It’s a focal point – the anarchist social event of the year. People travel from all over Canada and the U.S. to visit friends, network, run workshops, and party. The contradictions don’t seem to bother anybody.

It’s literally an anti-capitalist marketplace, crammed to the gills with people selling books, t-shirts, pins and paraphenilia. It’s a weird, vibrant mirror of a county craft fair, complete with live music, hidden bottles of booze and a snack booth (vegan, organic and sustainable, we are told). And why not? Anarchists need to eat, same as everyone else. The clothes are fashionably ragged, instead of old and faded. The patches are silkscreened with black instead of embroidered in red white and blue. There are cupcakes. When the police stop by to let the organizers know that the skinhead rally has been broken up, they get booed.

Capitalism is on the run, have you heard? The Financial Times is running a whole series on what comes next.

I wonder what the fair will feel like this year. What will the mood be? Triumphant told-you-sos? Gleeful excitement at the opportunities for effecting change? Will there be the same cold worry that the rest of us feel, that the collapse might be real and total and we might not get back up? I’ve met them. When they aren’t writing autonomous anti-oppressive zines, they work in the service industry. They don’t have severance packages, they have 2 weeks notice. And they are living paycheque to paycheque or worse. How many anarchists will look in their wallets and decide they can’t make the trip this year, due to the impending collapse of capitalism.

Does it sound like I am making fun of these contradictions? I assure you I am not. It’s these kinds of barely held tensions that keep a movement alive and dynamic. And we need a vibrant anarchism. We need one that is not caught up in internal struggles of self-definition and specialist rhetoric. Come what may, there is a lot of work that needs doing that doesn’t necessarily get done by businesses anymore. The more people offering solutions, the more likely it is that one gets found.

Who am I kidding? The answer to the Financial Times’ question is probably “more capitalism”.

The Anarchist Bookfair collective affirms and promotes values of mutual aid, direct democracy, anti-authoritarianism, autonomy and solidarity. We reiterate our opposition to capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, colonialism, statism and all other forms of oppression; we will not accept anyone to participate in the Anarchist Bookfair that perpetuates or promotes these attitudes.

-from Montreal’s Anarchist Bookfair statement of principles
photo credit: anarchosyn

Seth’s experience of trying to talk to someone about his broken Kettle has got NOTHING to trying to talk to Rogers.

• While surfing, I get a message saying that I am near my bandwidth limit for the month. I don’t know when my billing date is, so I’m not sure how bad this is. Clicking on the “monitor your bandwidth” link brings me to a login page.

• I have a Rogers book with my account info, but I can’t work out the username and password for this page.
• I read through the book for clues. There is information about logging in to the rogers.yahoo.com site and information about how to check your account once there.
• I know that information, so I log in.
• I find a billing section but have trouble finding usage info.
• Help centre search returns lots of results none of which have to do with my question.
• On the billing page, I find a link to monitor my bandwidth.
• Clicking on it brings me to a new login page.
• I enter the username and password that worked before. It does not work here. They want a different username and password. I still have no idea what this is.
• Luckily, they give me a 1 877 number to call for assistance. I call it.
• A recording tells me that THE NUMBER I AM CALLING IS GOING TO BE DISCONTINUED. Then it repeats the message in French. Then it transfers me to the right number.
• I have to go through the voice recognition menu (pro tip – speak gibberish until it gives up and gives you a human).
• The human tells me my billing date, so I’ll know when the usage limit resets.

Why, oh why couldn’t the process have been

• While surfing I get a message saying that I am near my bandwidth limit for the month and it will reset on [BILLING DATE GOES HERE]?

Every step of the way was clearly designed by people with institutional needs in mind instead of customer experience.

• Why can’t I actually look at my billing through the roger.yahoo.com account info page?

• Why do I need to create a new login and password to view my rogers information?
• Why didn’t my account book COME with a login and password (at least Bell gets this much right).
• Why does their web page send you to a soon-to-be-discontinued phone number?
• Why doesn’t the old 1-877 number just silently route you to their new phone system? How much can it possibly cost to maintain more than one points of entry?

I’m sure there are reasonable answers to each of these questions, having to do with how the architecture of the user authentication systems relate to various protocols. I don’t care. All I know is that I spent 20 minutes trying to find a very simple answer to a very simple question.

(I will say that the actual dude I talked to was very helpful and quick with the answers. So top marks for hiring him. But he’s only a part of the service. I hate how long it took me to get to him.)

News You Can Lose: Financial Page: The New Yorker.

Surowiecki opens with some interesting ruminations about why newspapers are going down. Then, he goes crazy and lays the blame at the feet of the greedy consumer who wants it all for free! The bastards! Soon we’ll get what we pay for!

Here’s the dirty secret of newspapers: For a very long time, most of the content has been crap. Read your local newspaper lately? Remember why you stopped?

Most papers are a strange mix of not-that-great local reporting and columnists mixed with repackaged wire feeds and syndicated content, paid for by bundled advertising. Most of the news in local papers isn’t. At least, isn’t worth paying for. It’s nice that you won the county fair, but it probably doesn’t need to be in my paper. A newsletter for people who care about fairs would be better.

We’re not losing original reporting, we’re losing the middle men that bundled all the content together. Good riddance.

We don’t need to worry about the future of newspapers, we need to worry about the future of reporters. Will there be business models that allow individual or small teams of quality investigative journalists to earn a decent living while also breaking important stories? Will the class of amateur and semi-pro reporters be able to fill in any gaps?

So many redundancies in reporting and news. Do we need dozens of variations on the sports page? How many film critics do we need? How many reporters does it take to cover a press conference? More than zero, but probably less than we have right now.

Content creators in most other industries are going through the painful process of changing the way that they charge for their content, finding some equilibrium between giving a way their stuff for free to attract fans and charging for specialized, related or premium versions. Here’s my non-bold prediction: News reporters will have to do the same.

Cartoonists can survive the death of paid syndication, surely the important content can as well.

photo credit: striatic

Environmentalists who want to get punched? Gift givers who want their friends to take a hint about their sanctimonious attitude? Clueless people?

Take special note of the price. If you can’t read it, that’s $12.99.

I bought my reusable bags for $2 and I didn’t have to be an asshole to ANYONE.

One of my favourite things about financial reporting has always been the way that any change is bad. The dollar would go up and that would be bad, then it would fall and that would be bad.

I took this on Nov 12th when the crisis was only just getting started. Since then, the price of oil has continued to slide. I have no idea if that is a good or a bad thing.

From Seth Godin, the high cost of now.

Sometimes, in our quest for the new, we overpay. Most of the time, moving down the curve will decrease your costs dramatically, without hurting your ability to make smart decisions. Alternatively, when you choose to spend the time (or money), leverage it like crazy.

I bet you are overspending on now. Not everywhere, just in the wrong areas. Worth an audit, probably.

Blackberries and the use and misuse of email is probably the #1 place where a good audit would work at an organizational level. There is no good technical way to distinguish between YOU NEED TO READ THIS NOW emails and READ THIS WHEN YOU HAVE A MOMENT TODAY emails and YOU NEED TO SEE THIS BY THE END OF THE WEEK emails, so the solution has to be social.

The alternative? This buzzing device that constantly interrupts you, most of the time for NO GOOD REASON – very damaging for flow.

Looking around me now, I see five ways that people can interrupt me (phone, cell, txt, email, doorbell) and another half dozen or so ways that they can reach me eventually (comments, Facebook, Twitter etc.). I feel like half of my work is keeping these things under control. Having the discipline to TURN THINGS OFF does wonders, when I am able to do it.

Because there is always this nagging feeling, “What if I am missing something important?”

photo credit: Pulpolux !!!

A company of programmers produces code. A company of managers produces meetings.

Greg Knauss via Merlin Mann

Can we talk for a minute about how irritating this smarmy attitude is? It’s the conceit of anarcho-syndicalists writ small. It’s assembly workers complaining about supervisors, masons complaining about architects, and rogue cops complaining about The Chief. It’s Dilbert.

“We could get so much more done if only management would stop getting in the way.”

Look, if you are going to work on anything that has more than a few moving parts, someone is going to need to coordinate and make sure that everything is moving in harmony. If you are going to have clients or customers, someone is going to need to talk to them, process their needs and then filter them into design changes and requirements docs. If you are going to test your software, someone will need to do triage and fit feature-set to budget and schedule.

Every hour that you spend on this is an hour that you are not programming.

Are you going to too many meetings? THEN YOU HAVE CRAPPY MANAGERS. Good managers hold meetings only when they’re needed and spend a great deal of their time shielding employees from the minute to minute neuroses of clients, investors and the public. Good managers reign in the natural over-enthusiasm of programmers to realistic commitments and judiciously nudge development along the right paths, ensuring that time is not lost on wasted or unimportant features.

Good programmers understand that code is not software and see a value to maintaining an overall direction and vision for a project. Then they either hire good managers or sacrifice one of their own and ‘promote’ them out of active development.

photo credit: Paul Mayne