serendipityoucity

New Brainland Map - Portrait
Originally uploaded by Unit Seven.

Which section of the brain is the one that culturally meshes with other people’s brains? Where is the location the memes stick to and how do these get collectively wired? Is there a location where culture, religion, nationalism, ideologies lie? Is there a location that stores humanities historical knowledge? Do our brains evolve across time creating new pathways to move ideas around and to make that knowledge more accessible? Which part of the brain makes crazy things like naming a teddy bear mohamed a crime, having your picture taken for a driver’s license illegal, that decides beauty or which collectively directs that there are certain ways of doing things or that decides something is tradition? If it is not the brain then are our thoughts material? Energy forces? Do they occupy a space beyond us? Are they analogous to clouds/ clusters of energy particles that only some bodies or collections of bodies with certain pathways can access? If thoughts and ideas are so powerful, where are they?

This is something i have been thinking about lately. It is really not worked out, and this fun topographic map of the brain got me wondering out loud a bit!

Tea with the boyz
Originally uploaded by tlauriau.

I just love these two fellahs!

I have worked with archivists for a little time now and think they manage incredibly important repositories of state government, cultural and scientific knowledge.  It is our collective memory and we trust the archivists and the system to keep it as objective as possible. They are so important in fact that they are often the first information targets of war. 

My first emotional connection to an archive happened when I was a the opening of the Centre of Information as Evidence and heard a post modernist paper given by Professor Sue McKemmish entitled Evidence of Us … Always in a Process of Becoming and then read her ground breaking paper entitled Evidence of Me (scroll down). It was then that i realized how these institutions speak of and to us across time.  My story, your story, our story can be re-woven and re-told, re-woven and re-told again and again from the records. 

This summer I watched the film, The Lives of Others.  In the film, I discovered the second reference to the scent archives.  I had read references about them while doing scent research and heard that there were massive repositories somewhere but that was it.  The Germans found a very clever way to ensure they could find you again.  They would interrogate people by making them sit on their hands to capture beads of sweat and scent traces in the cloth they were sitting on.  This cloth would then be removed from the chair, sealed in air tight jars, labelled and archived, should they need to get a sniffer dog to track you down again.  But that is not what struct me most about the film. Towards the end, the lead actor goes to the newly opened East German archive to access documents about himself and his wife as he believes he was under observation by the regime before the fall of the wall.  While doing so he makes a most profound and astonishing discovery of absolute human compassion.  The stories, stories and stories in the transcripts.  The words, the missing words, and the memories associated with the transcripts he reads spoke of a respect and love I have never witnessed or experienced from watching a film before.  The film and the story help me believe in the beauty of the human condition. The possibility of it.  The importance of poets, writers and artists. That film also helped me understand why the East German Engineers and free communication infrastructure people are so dedicated to their work.

Now, the International Tracing Service Archives will open to the public.  The

11 countries that oversee a vast archive in Germany of Nazi documents and concentration camp records have completed ratification of an accord to open its doors to the public, ending more than 60 years of secrecy, the Red Cross said Wednesday.

The archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany, is administered by the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and has been used exclusively to trace missing persons, reunite families and provide documentation to victims of Nazi persecution to support compensation claims.

Mr. Meister said a long list of academics and research organizations already have applied to begin work in the archive, which includes untapped documents of communications among Nazi officials, camp registrations, transportation lists, slave labour files and death lists that detail the mechanics of the Nazi torment. (Globe And Mail)

There will be more stories and many pasts to trace. Lets not forget what we have done and what we can become.

I truly appreciate the pragmatism of scientists.  If an issue needs global attention they will lobby hard and collaborate to make the research happen.  International Polar Year (IPY) research is underway and now Marine scientists of Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) want to develop a

a better network of satellites, tsunami monitors, drifting robotic probes or electronic tags on fish within a decade could also help lessen the impact of natural disasters, pollution or damaging algal blooms, they said.

POGO wants the 72-nation Group on Earth Observations (GEO), meeting in Cape Town from Nov. 28-30, to consider its appeal as part of a wider effort to improve understanding of the planet by 2015.

GEO is seeking to link up scientific observations of the planet to find benefits for society in areas including energy, climate, agriculture, biodiversity, water supplies and weather.

They know exactly what they want, how much they need and how to do it.  Then there will be all that data!

Among ocean projects, POGO wants to raise the number of drifting robotic probes – known as "Argos," and which measure conditions driving climate change – to 30,000 from 3,000 now.

"By my estimates for $50-$60-million a year, the world could have a global system, an ocean tracking network that could follow sharks from Cape Town to Perth or follow tuna from Miami to Southampton, Mr. Ausubel said.

We no longer need to think small regional projects.  Networks and organizational structures are in place for truly global projects

a further $2-billion to $3-billion would roughly match amounts already invested in ocean research, excluding more costly satellites. New technologies were cheaper and meant worldwide monitoring could now be possible.

Now that seems to be a reasonable way to spend money! 

Manholes in NYC from foundries made in India!  oye veigh! 

The pieces that construct the elaborate infrastructures of our urban habitats are anachronistic.  The ultra modern settings of the city where designer boots meet cemented sidewalk & moulded metal versus the medieval settings of half naked men and squatting barefoot women in a 38 degree C West Bengal foundries.  The parts of the infrastructure are taken for granted, the infrastructure invisible and the working conditions well who gives a shit?

I am starting to figure out what is bothering me about my involvement in work in and around the digital data, information, knowledge revolution/economy and etcetera.  It has been just below the surface for some time now, eating at me and last week i was so very uncomfortable at the CWIRP workshop even though i met some truly wonderful people and nothing beyond the green broadband topic was particularly upsetting.  I could not figure out what was bothering me.  Something in the equation/algorith is missing but i can/could not put my finger on it.  When i encounter anything new, i am so naively excited.  I toy with it, explore, immerse, disseminate, embed, learn, propagate, proselytize, show off, share, demonstrate, become an apostle until which time the dreaminess and the rainbow coloured aura fades and i see another reality.  And then i feel like and imposter, embarrassed, a betrayer and betrayed. It was like discovering paradise once and then realizing that I and the thousands of others that did also caused its demise - Boracay. It is like discovering the Achilles heal of the gods, the blind spots in the teacher, the madness of great thinkers, the flaws in your lover, the selfishness of your best friend.  The belief is tempered, the god are debaucherous, the teachers limited, the savants nuts then their ideas become dubious, Monday mornings, hangovers & tail end of menstruation and digging for compassion to continue to love your friend let alone trying to conjure that sentiment for the rest of humanity. It is all not so dreamy.

I go to a lab, i help make maps, i want to make data accessible, i want the community to have wireless access, i want knowledge to move and be free, i hope we can all gain knowledge from the 24-7 information access, i want to bridge the digital divide, it is really important that i blog whatever and that those who are barred from communicating can get their messages, sounds, images out to show the world their plight, i want the news, i want the journals in the library, i want digitized maps and books, i want to donate, i want to know, i want dialogue and peace, i want to be entertained and and and… Well, there is a cost to all this.  But the dream, the dream is so wonderful. 

What do you mean it is not just me and a screen and the bits and pieces of stuff on my desk. It is the chips, the routers, the metals, batteries, copper, the men making code, the code, fibre optic cable, plastics, lead, copper, conduits, switching stations, isps, satellites, server farms, air conditioning, call centres, billing offices, memberships, software, undersea cables, policies, personal information, credit card companies, entertainment, distractions, standards, competition, ownership, and of course the manufacturing plants that has to make all this stuff in Malaysia, China, Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, India, etc with the extraction sites (mines, forests etc.) and the disruption of the seas and the clear cutting of the forests for the cables and the mining of uranium and damming of the rivers to power the stuff let alone the waste site for all the gadgets we purchase.  The whole planet has been re-wrapped in fibre in the last 20 years like a big ball of phentex with all these docking stations (but not in all of the essential places) and these bits of programmed metal and glass floating around in orbit and i naively sit with my keyboard & screen going ra ta tat tat! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It is never that easy nor benign and why do i always pretend it is when i learn about it?

So now what? I wish it were easy to weig the costs over the benefits. Do i have to chant - you cannot stop technology’s advances - like the technocrats and scientists and become the automaton whose behaviour is determined by the infrastructure? Why can i not stop thinking in systems? Maybe i have to lay off the science fiction novels a bit?  I think the work in unraveling all these sexy technologies, the need to communicate and share symbols, the art, the knowledge, the body extensions, the sensory means, cybenetics and cyborgian dreams, the technological utopianism, the lack of latrines and the heat of the foundries is getting to me.

Saturday, I was on the last chapter of Neuromancer, it was 8 PM i was still in my jams, the kids out, and in and out of lucid dreams, thinking that maybe i should eat, but instead stayed in bed, then my dear friend Beth - the one who makes my favorite scented perfumes - called me from Cowichan Bay.  I explained my state of mind, to which she replied

Stay with the problem.  Do not revert to your norm of resolving it, defining it, organizing it, stay with it and within it, disarm, explore. And revert to axiom 1, which states that there will always be laundry, even after you die, but it won’t matter then cuz you will be dead.

hmmmmm! 

EPEAT (US) and ECOLOGO (Canada) were featured in a Globe and Mail article today on the The greening of the computer.  The OLPC remains the most environmentally friendly computer since it is designed with:

• a liquid-crystal technology, that is is backlit with light-emitting diodes rather than tiny fluorescent tubes which is energy-efficient and more environmentally friendly because fluorescent tubes contain mercury
• "It is especially energy-efficient for uses that don’t require much processing power because its central processing unit (CPU) shuts down when not needed and wakes up again in a hundredth of a second. The screen stays on, Dr. Jepsen explains, so the computer user doesn’t notice a change, but with the CPU off, the laptop uses only about a watt of power - compared with about 20 watts for a conventional laptop."
• and it "can be powered by a hand crank, a foot pedal, a solar panel or a string-pull device, something like the handle you pull to start a lawn mower. Five minutes of hand cranking will let a child read a book from the XO’s screen for about an hour, Dr. Jepsen says. Some tasks use power faster."

EPEAT provides a list of products and grades them according to a basic list of 23 criteria that gives them "bronze" status and additional optional features can elevate a product to "silver" or "gold". The EPEAT Registry

includes products that have been declared by their manufacturers to be in conformance with the environmental performance standard for electronic products - IEEE 1680- 2006.  The standard is summarized here, and may be purchased from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  EPEAT operates a  verification program to assure the credibility of the Registry.

ECOLOGO run by Environment Canada covers more categories of products. But unlike EPEAT, EcoLogo requires third-party testing to certify products and it seems that no computers have earned that certification yet while some peripheral devices have.  Go to the consumer products part of the list and look for the word computer to see what is there.

The EcoLogo^M Program is a Type I eco-label, as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in its standard - "Environmental Labeling" (ISO 14024). This means, the Program compares products / services with others in the same category, develops rigorous and scientifically relevant criteria, and awards the EcoLogo^M to those that are environmentally preferable throughout their entire whole life a thorough evaluation and auditing process.

Additionally, the EcoLogo^M Program is one of only a handful of such programs internationally that has been successfully audited by the Global EcoLabelling Network (GEN) through their GENICES accreditation program to ensure compliance with ISO 14024 principles.

EcoLogo^M certification criteria documents (CCDs) are developed in an open, public and transparent process, with a broad base of stakeholder participation including user groups (e.g. procurement associations, institutional purchasers and consumer protection organizations), product producers (e.g. industry members and associations), government / regulators, general science-based representatives (e.g. academics, life cycle experts and other scientists), environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), and other environmental advocates. The criteria address multiple environmental attributes related to human health and environmental considerations throughout the life cycle of the product. Currently, there are 122 Certification Criteria Documents addressing over 250 product types.

This was a fun inteview, article and the video is a hoot!

Ann Marie was surfing blogs and came across my posts on freeganism and queen of recycling and then contacted me to do a piece for Buy Nothing Day.  I agreed thinking she was a fellow blogger and only when she arrived did i realize she was a journalist.

I have always loved treasure hunting, and well, this may have come from the days as a child watching my dad and the bears at the cottage dump.  He used to get really excited at finding useful objects. These were some of the few times I would see him being truly delighted. He would exhibit a wonderful childlike happyness accompanied by some colourful French Canadian Swear words! Swear word, swear word, c’est bon sa!

I simply love the annonymous street level trading, digging, the possibilities, plans and then letting them go by returning the re-used used objects back into the urban exchange network.  I never really understood the rich ladies consignment shops.  It is so much more fun to just give the stuff away, they so do not need the money while the women who purchase the new work suit really need the clothes.  It was also fun to give away books, I had a gypbrock sign with "free books" on it, all my nerdy statistical, economic geography, economics 101 and management of information systems books went while the Canadian Association of Geography Journals, well they were a little slow to go.  The saved space went to a painting that needed a home. 

All that aside, I am most pleased when the things I like to do most are also good for the community and the environment, and in this case that was not at all the motivation but it all turned out great.

Last night my inbox received 8 or so spno-data list messages from Roni Summers Wickens.  She has been struggling with breast cancer for the past couple of years, and it was rough.  It is probably the only thing that could slow that woman down, and it did. Then suddenly there she is, resurfacing with a million emails trying to figure out the new statistical data package the SPNO acquired and to get her new laptop operating while recuperating from breast removal surgery.

She underwent a hellish chemotherapy.  To cheer her up, her husband purchased her the mostest sexiest pair of boots, and many lascivious and sexy stories followed.  Roni has a hot marriage! Imagine a gorgeous 43 year old fit babe from Quinte showing up in tight fitting jeans, spiked knee high leather boots with henna patterns on her bald scalp for chemo in rural Ontario.

But then stuff happened after chemo and the breasts had to go.  She talked to me a bit about sex and breasts, the foreplay, nipple tugging fun things we like to do and how a mate’s habits lead his hands to that region of your body and how that has to change, and you change. Seems that now she has quite the boot collection and her love life remains all steamy. Her staff had a goodbye boobie party for her, apparently made a spectacular plaster body cast and gave her a very generous gift certificate to purchase a "pair of kick ass boots!"

So, when i get an email from Roni with questions like:

Does anyone remember where median family income by marital status was located? Is it possible that it came to us through those of you that participated in the data liberation stuff? Specifically looking for 2001 median family income of female led lone parent families and median family income of male led lone parent families for the following geographies…

I know that the universe if back in alignment, I get a really big fabulous grin and it makes me cry! 

Hmmm! what can i not purchase!

I was at a workshop last week and saw a presentation on green broadband.  I have not deconstructed the models presented, but was a bit skeptical with the argument, particularly if the full production cycle and energy costs of the digital economy are not factored in. 

What of the energy consumption of server farms that give us 24-7 access to the Internet’s information? Hmm! I wonder if the models look at the energy costs of transporting waste to China or India, the health problems associated with the recovery and the environmental degration caused by this toxic soup! I desperately want to believe green broadband but …

The Globe has a great article about e-waste in China today.

The air smells acrid from the squat gas burners that sit outside homes, melting wires to recover copper and cooking computer motherboards to release gold. Migrant workers in filthy clothes smash picture tubes by hand to recover glass and electronic parts, releasing as much as 6.5 pounds of lead dust.

China now produces more than 1 million tons of e-waste each year, said Jamie Choi, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace China in Beijing. That adds up to roughly 5 million television sets, 4 million fridges, 5 million washing machines, 10 million mobile phones and 5 million personal computers, according to Choi.

“Most e-waste in China comes from overseas, but the amount of domestic e-waste is on the rise,” he said.

This ugly business is driven by pure economics. For the West, where safety rules drive up the cost of disposal, it’s as much as 10 times cheaper to export the waste to developing countries.

Upwards of 90 per cent ends up in dumps that observe no environmental standards, where shredders, open fires, acid baths and broilers are used to recover gold, silver, copper and other valuable metals while spewing toxic fumes and runoff into the nation’s skies and rivers.

Accurate figures about the shady and unregulated trade are hard to come by. However, experts agree that it is overwhelmingly a problem of the developing world. They estimate about 70 per cent of the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and poor African nations.

I do not see myself jumping on any green broadband bandwagon any time soon and worry about false rhetoric leading us to create worse problems or displacing the problems into someone else’s back yard. 

More Resources:

• GRID News Brief
  
• UN Seeks to Save Developing Countries from e-waste
• ‘E-Waste’ From Western Hand-Me-Downs Threatens Poor Countries: UN