pouët.net

What's wrong with nuclear power plants?

I dig 9. That would rock!

ask children at school what it is they want to learn and allow teacher to make up the lessons

just wait till your kids want to learn about PowerPuff Girls

kelsey a skillfull teacher will convert this into a usefull lesson

“What are the fictions of “the long now” (what is the relationship of the long now and the long tail — does abundance and narrowcast-culture lead to the feeling of a thousand million divergent futures - the future got wide, again)”

I think the problem is that the future, maybe for the first time since WWII, lies on the far side of an event horizon for us, because there are so many futures possible. There’s the wetware future, the hardware future, the transhumanist future, the post-rationalist (aka fundamentalist) future.

And then there’s the future where everything just sort of keeps going on the way it has, with incremental changes, and technology is no longer the deciding factor in things. You don’t need high tech to change the world; you need Semtex and guns that were designed by a Russian soldier fifty-odd years ago.

Meanwhile, most of the people with any genuine opportunity or ability to effect global change are too busy patting each other on the back at conventions and blue-skying goofy social networking tools that are essentially useless to 95% of the world’s population, who live within fifteen feet of everyone they’ve ever known and have no need to track their fuck buddies with GPS systems. (This, by the way, includes most Americans, quite honestly.)

You can’t blame them for this, because it’s fun and it’s a great way to travel and get paid, but it doesn’t actually help solve any real problems, except the problem of media theory grad students, which the rest of the world isn’t really interested in solving.

Feeding poor people is useful tech, but it’s not very sexy and it won’t get you on the cover of Wired. Talk about it too much and you sound like an earnest hippie. So nobody wants to do that.

They want to make cell phones that can scan your personal measurements and send them real-time to potential sex partners. Because, you know, the fucking Japanese teenagers love it, and Japanese teenagers are clearly the smartest people on the planet.

The upshot of all of this is that the Future gets divided; the cute, insulated future that Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow and you and I inhabit, and the grim meathook future that most of the world is facing, in which they watch their squats and under-developed fields get turned into a giant game of Counterstrike between crazy faith-ridden jihadist motherfuckers and crazy faith-ridden American redneck motherfuckers, each doing their best to turn the entire world into one type of fascist nightmare or another.

Of course, nobody really wants to talk about that future, because it’s depressing and not fun and doesn’t have Fischerspooner doing the soundtrack. So everybody pretends they don’t know what the future holds, when the unfortunate fact is that — unless we start paying very serious attention — it holds what the past holds: a great deal of extreme boredom punctuated by occasional horror and the odd moment of grace.

Society is withering, like the fruit on some diseased vine. We have become the playthings of corporations intent on converting our world into a gargantuan shopping precinct. Pleasantness and civility are being discarded as the worthless ephemera of a bygone age - an age when men doffed their hats at the ladies, and small children could be counted upon to mind one's Jack Russell while one took a mild and bitter in the local hostelry.
Instead, we live in a world where children are huge, inelegant hooded creatures lurking on street corners; the local hostelry has been taken over by a chain and serves chemically-laced lager which aggravates the nervous system. Needless to say, the Jack Russell is no longer there upon one's return.
The Chap proposes to take a stand against this culture of vulgarity. By turning ancient rituals of courtesy and dress into revolutionary acts, the immaculately attired Anarcho-Dandyist can use the razor-sharp crease in his trousers to press home his advantage. Once presented with the dazzling sight of rakishly angled trilbies, gleaming brogues and exquisitely mixed dry martinis, hoi polloi's long-cherished nylon sportswear and strawberry milkshakes will suddenly lose their appeal.
It is time for Chaps and Chapettes from every walk of life to stand up and be counted. Naturally unsuited to all forms of exertion, we propose a Charmed Uprising based on excessive languor and delivering pleasantries such as "How do you do?" and "A very good day to you, madam!" with revolutionary zeal. Our methods will be stealth, civility and charm, our targets the behemoths of corporate blandification. We urge sympathisers to assist our cause by engaging in the following revolutionary acts:
Enter the purveyors of ‘fast food’ and request a table for two with “a pleasant view,” then order a breakfast of devilled kidneys, kedgeree and eggs Benedict.
In a high-street coffee chain which offers tea on its menu, ask for a pot of Lapsang souchong, a cup and saucer and some toast with Gentleman’s Relish.
In the premises of Mr Nike, ask to be measured for a suit by the head cutter.
In the type of high street hostelry that has a bouncer on the door, order a Pousse Café (the yolk of one fresh egg, 1/6 gill of yellow Chartreuse, 1/6 gill of Eau de Vie de Danzig, or Danziger Goldwasser).
Enter an ophthalmic optician and ask to see the monocle selection.

Enter an establishment offering “Internet chat rooms” and try to engage someone in conversation.
Offer “gentlemen of the road” (hobos) not money – which they might spend on food – but a nip of cognac from your hip flask.