The Breaking Time

Building a phyle

Though, let's face it, the Neo-Victorians wouldn't cut it.

This blog (when I can post) frequently focuses on social organization and the ways people are trying to adapt to changing times, especially as the nation-state and other traditional institutions lose their old sway. 

So I'm overdue to delve into one that's stuck with me for some time: the phyles from Neil Stephenson's fascinating (though massively flawed on several levels) novel The Diamond Age. Phyles are cultural groupings powerful enough to largely replace nation-states. Despite being in an ostensibly post-national era, the Phyles largely break down on old lines (China, India, Japan), with some throwbacks like Maoists or Stephenson's BFFs, the Neo-Victorians.

Naturally enough, the actual workings of the phyles are largely in the background (this is a novel, after all, not a social treatise, and is usually awful when it stumbles in that direction), but as shorthand for "socioeconomic group that could supplant aspects of nations" it's useful for the following thought exercise.

How would a phyle actually work?

The drones will wait until the stars are right

Photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth, Associated Press

So this is real:

Yes, the Argus is the world's highest resolution camera, and the system is capable of monitoring and coordinating the information it receives more effectively than ever before. If this trajectory continues, one day you'll be standing at a street corner, texting a friend, and someone in a facility will be able to read your message from orbit.

Notice the ending discussion about UAVs that will stay aloft for years at a time, paired with blithe acceptance that people will be constantly monitored. Coincidentally, I saw this video a year to the day after Tim Maly coined "argus" as the collective noun for a group of drones.

As if the skies weren't already turning into something out of an early '80s sci-fi novel, DARPA is also proposing military robots in the ocean, using the seas as a "vast area for concealment and storage" until the stars time is right.

Together, this puts some strange tools in the arsenal of an established government, any established government. Imagine a crumbling regime's leaders stockpiling hundreds of machines, sleeping in the air or the ocean, ready to avenge their masters if someone ever ousts them.

Oh well. We can always hide in our drone-proof cities.

Scientology hits schism time

Disorder in the House of Hubbard.

Fascinating piece from Alex Klein on the looming schism in Scientology, specifically over a real-estate scam involving the construction of its "Ideal Org" local headquarters:

But inside the church, the Ideal Orgs are sparking insurrection. Across the country, donors and high-ranking executives say that the aggressive fundraising and construction scheme is used to enrich the central church at the expense of the rank and file, helping to grow the Scientology war chest to over a billion dollars. Two former members, Mike Rinder and Mark Elliott, went so far as to call the project a "real estate scam." To some of these defectors, the structures are metaphors for the religion itself: garish on the outside, empty on the inside. The irony is that the very expansion that Scientology lauds as its renaissance is actually a symbol of internal dissent and decline.

One of the most interesting parts of the article is the dissidents' repeated references to L. Ron Hubbard's intent or original teachings. While some who've split from Scientology have ditched the whole thing, others have set up their own splinter groups.

That's a natural reaction. If people are attracted to a set of ideals and then the institution that supposedly represents them becomes corrupt or goes in a different direction, it's psychologically easier to find that the original goals were betrayed by the current leadership rather than abandon the whole structure.

The process of schism has happened in every creed from Christianity to Marxism, but this is a fascinating up-close glimpse at how it plays out. Hubbard's still within living memory, and people are already sharply disagreeing over what his intent really was. It's easy to see "Scientologists" in a century encompassing all swaths of ideologies.

This also highlights that arguing over whether a given creed, especially a large and old one, is good or evil somewhat misses the point. On a long enough timeline, multiplying sects will use the same founding mythology to justify every position.

Someday this will all be yours

by Damien Williams, a follow-up to Life in the so-called space age

The Last Judgment, Heironymous Bosch

Come close and I'll tell you a secret.

The Breaking Time is really just the continual state of the post-Lapsarian condition. Everything we are and everything we do is a result of the Fall of Man, and that Fall makes itself evident in everything we ourselves create. All decay, all rot, all moral failures and lawlessness, all attempts by mad to trespass into God's domain with works like artificial intelligence, artificial life, and genetic manipulation are just the side-effects of humanity's experience and expression of evil; today is God's Judgment.

This is what I would tell you if I were a fundamentalist Christian-- that we are all sinful in some basic fashion (because of some basic action), and that nature has infected everything we do. But I'm not a fundamentalist Christian, so let's try something else.

The Breaking Time is just the precursor to the coming of the Messiah, and the fulfilling of YHVH's ultimate covenant with Man. We must strive through, as best we can but also spur on progress toward the time when this Messiah will make itself known. As such, we tolerate lawlessness, immorality, and decay, as we know that it will bring us closer to the time of Messianic Fruition.

 No? Okay, how about this:

That which we call "evil" is really just the effect of the workings of evolutionary biological processes, selfishness, procreative need, tribalism, and the insular nature of the preferred size of human social groups. The only thing that exists which can rightly be called "evil" are those forces of ignorance which lead us away from inquiry and scientific understanding, and those forces must, indeed, be stamped out and shown as false, broken, harmful, and dangerous, at all costs. Only then will the true nature of the universe be able to be known, free of antiquated moralising and repression.

What about this: The return of Maitreya has meant that there will be a world-wide awakening of consciousness, and His work must be helped along by those willing to make the world over in fire, and who are willing to do whatever it takes to survive these end times.

If you don't see your particular flavor of armageddon above I could go on, if you'd like.

Life in the so-called space age

by Damien Williams

A shot from Felix Baumgartner's epic jump.

The government sees space as a possible warzone.

At about 39 minutes into the Oct. 22 debate, the president says that we need to be looking toward cyber-security and space as the military concerns of the future. Now, the budget of NASA has been partially under the remit of the Air Force since its inception and the borders between the two groups (three if you count the Jet Propulsion Laboratories) are very, very porous. NASA shuttle capabilities have been used for defense satellite placement, and defense scientists lent a hand to civilian projects and research (e.g. NEAT).

Now, ever since the Reagan administration — when some clever idiot decided to reference a series of then-popular movies — the public has known that military interests have had a very clear presence in space and satellite creation. This all started even further back than then, actually, as the entire reason humans went to space in the first place was the Cold War Era pissing contest which found its pinnacle in Mutually Assured Destruction.

It was this MADness that spread out and infected everyone born or raised under its auspices, and so we get a space race and Star Wars. So it isn't really news that "Future US Military Concerns Will Have To Look At Space," or whatever it was the President said. What's surprising is that we have the first President in nearly 24 years who's gone about saying as much, whose specifically stated military agenda have included space.

But is it really that surprising, when we think about it?

Open Notes: Rural cyberpunk

2011 fire in the Great Dismal Swamp, seen from space. The fire was caused by drought, making the swamp's peat especially flammable. Image from NASA.

Awhile back, I made an off-the-cuff comment on Twitter about "rural cyberpunk." Visiting where I grew up this week (map above), I think there's a lot more there than initially met the eye, and it's time for some open, if haphazard, notes on this particular theme, mixing past, present, and twenty-minutes-from-now future:

• Landscapes full of abandoned buildings from variety of eras. Half-built bedroom communities, unfinished suburbs down the road from generational family homes.

• Relentless salvaging of old machinery to feed or mix with newer. Creative rigging of second-hand or "outdated" technology into rough but extremely reliable forms. Abandoned industrial equipment as resource. Constant repair/re-use.

• Blackwater. The world's most infamous private mercenary army, founded and originally based in Moyock, NC. Original training grounds on 3,000 acres of the Dismal Swamp.

• Farms as ground zero for backyard/grey market gene splicing. After all, it's not that different from what farmers have done for centuries: adapt technology and natural processes to alter forms of life. Use to find workarounds on killer seeds, etc. (farmers are also adept at slipping around central authority that gets in their way).

• Pervasive personal weaponry and a higher-than-average number of ex-soldiers from a variety of wars.

• Backroads dotted with towns largely ignored by larger governments. Weak or non-existent official social safety networks.

• Same lack of bigger institutions or gov, along with lack of attention from larger cities/culture providing appealing haven for people that want to be ignored — plenty of opportunity where no one's looking. Widespread surveillance is nigh-impossible in rural areas.

• Historical role of Northeastern NC (and many similar rural areas) as refuge for fleeing slaves, indentured servants, remaining natives during country's early history. Pockets of deep anti-Confederate/government sentiment during Civil War. 

• Juxtaposition of international ports and nearby complete wilderness. Revival of old smuggling routes along canals, inlets, and sounds. A lot of homes in this area have a small dock by a waterway. Evolution of decentralized black market distribution network for areas increasingly left out of "the future."

• Infrastructure neglect and the brunt end of climate change.

• Interesting things emerging from the area's "everyone" is ignoring or dismissing.

• Last, but not least, 'ol William Gibson's Twitter handle is, coincidentally, GreatDismal. The Dixie Flatline lives. ;-)

Feel free to add your own contributions or thoughts on this theme in the comments.

Zombies, Mutants, Cyborgs and Aliens: Fight for the Future

Welcome back Damien Williams for a riveting rant on, well, the aforementioned bogeymen, and what kind of future our culture is choosing.

Please pick another apocalypse. Image by Quidditch.

I don't like zombies. I don't mean I'm afraid of them, or that they skeeve me out. I mean that I don't like the current use of them as trope, or a modern cultural cipher. I told you this the last time we spoke, and I told you that I'd tell you why.

You see, back in the day, when Romero was using zombies to talk about consumer culture and the death of individual preference in the face of mass markets, a zombie horde was a potent symbol. It was crushing, endless, homogenizing death. Why do you think Dawn of the Dead takes place in a mall? It was a terrifying indictment of what Romero believed was happening to our society.

Later, when the zombie symbol came to be applied out to Western society as a whole, and not just its consumerist leanings, the fast zombie became the stand-in for the hyper-connectivity and infectious nature of concept, idea, and emotion. Unthinking Rage just spreads and spreads.

That was all well and good. The problem is, zombies don't represent that anymore. Honestly, so far as I see it? Zombies don't represent anything anymore. The modern zombie is an empty symbol, representing only itself. The fight against zombies is now only the pure expression of futility, of never giving up in the face of odds which will defeat us. Zombies are just about Fear. They are collapse and terror and, yes, also the changes that survival of terror wreaks on people. But, in the final offing, I think that's boring.

I'm what some might call a pop culture junkie. I'm interested in all aspects of the popular media (even if, as I say, I don't exactly enjoy every single one of them), because I believe that our pop culture is reflexively connected to the wider culture. It tells us what we're thinking, it tells us how we're feeling, and in turn it influences those thoughts and emotions.

Pop culture amplifies and exaggerates our existing beliefs, distilling them down and reflecting them back to us in a glittering panoply of spectacle and story. What this means for you and me is that, as long as I'm here at The Breaking Time, I'll very often talk to you about the nature of our society — and our perception of its imminent and immanent collapse — through the lens of our pop culture and what it is doing for and to us. If the ascension of “Reality” television is Jean Baudrillard's nightmare scenario, then the rise of zombie apocalypse narrative is mine.

Who's left in the space race?

So, Russia's decided to ditch human space travel:

Moscow no longer sees manned spaceflight as its top priority but remains committed to its International Space Station obligations, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Wednesday.

Russia holds a monopoly on flights to and from the 16-nation station. Soyuz launches from its Baikonur cosmodrome are now the only way to space since the United States retired its 30-year shuttle programme in July.

NASA pays it more than $50 million per flight to send its astronauts to the space outpost.

Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said Russia was spending almost half of its space budget on manned flights and needed to shift focus to more technology-oriented projects. He added however it would stand by its station commitments.

"Unfortunately manned spaceflight accounts for an unjustifiably large part of the budget: It makes up 48 percent," he told reporters at Russia's flagship MAKS airshow near Moscow.

No, it doesn't mean the end of manned spaceflight entirely, but combined with the end of NASA's shuttle program, it's yet another move in the wrong direction.

So, NASA's bowed out of major human space travel for the foreseeable future, Russia's followed suit. Who does that leave? China? Europe? Weyland-Yutani?

For all the talk that private industry might take over the space race, it doesn't look feasible in the near future. The whole enterprise lacks, so far, the huge returns shareholders generally crave. Long-term planning is not corporate culture's strong suit.

What I'd like to see is an alliance. Instead of looking at expenses and dwindling budgets and going "cut!" space agencies should take a cue the cooperation that's increased since the end of the Cold War. Throw together the reduced space agencies, a few more forward-looking private businesses and some coordinating non-profits with the overall goal of advancing space travel. Split the costs and the potential gains in research and resources. This might even allow rising powers like India, South Africa and Brazil to join in, as they could gain access to existing infrastructure and expertise for an investment, without the huge up-front cost of having to build their own programs. Cash-strapped but infrastructure-rich agencies like NASA and Roskosmos get much-needed funds. Business gets a safer investment, because the odds are better than going solo. The non-profits, especially the scientific ones, get to advance their own goals. Win-win, if it was done right.

Of course, as I observed after the end of the space shuttle program, that solution would require motivation: cultures that viewed space travel as a serious priority. Right now, that's seriously lacking.

When did we stop looking at the stars?

 

Last Friday, the space shuttle Atlantis broke Earth's gravity, headed for the international space station. It marked the last space shuttle launch.

While this is not the end of the space program, Atlantis' final journey marks a major point on a long, downward trajectory, not least for the 25,000 workers who will suffer directly from the program's end. These days, the government spends more on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than on NASA.

Appropriately, today is the 42nd anniversary of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," the classic lament of a doomed astronaut:

Let's not get too altruistic here, either. The space program's heyday came about in large part because Americans and their government viewed it as part of a greater war against the USSR.

Still, NASA's zenith proved something: we can go to space. We can send people to space. The resources exist. The technology is there. Hell, at this point the technology is old.

The only remaining question is: do we want to? When people look out at their society and think "what do I want us to do?" is "go to space, and keep going" on the list?

Not for a long time. People can talk efficiency all they wish, but governments have proven perfectly capable of spending larger sums on far more questionable things (remember all that air conditioning?). The program's death marked a deeper turn.

Partly, the shift came from space travel's birth, tied to the Cold War and '50s hubris. By the era's end, people were, rightly, tired of the damn struggle, and anything associated with it. "Space Oddity" was one early marker, the increasing skepticism of science fiction another.

"Fighting the commies" was never the whole reason, of course. Space exploration had real popular appeal for a long time, tapping into a primal grandeur, combined with humanity's explorational urge. But, forever tied to far-off dividends and the conflict that created it, the whole enterprise proved vulnerable to accusations that the only thing all that money created was "garbage floating in the sky," as Ursula LeGuin's infamously dismissed.

Defenders could even point to more immediate benefits, like the ridiculous amount of more down-to-earth devices spawned by space research. It didn't help. This is the kind of popular argument won in the heart, not the head.

The fact is, the populace at large decided space travel wasn't a priority. It lost its glamour, its war, its money and its support. There were other fears, other dangers. Everything that's followed, from the lack of cutting edge spacecraft to the shuttle's end, is all part of that downward spiral.

So here's the question: we decided to give up on space travel. What did we get instead?

Was it worth it?

Durable Infection

 

Earlier this month, Kevin Zero, of Grinding fame, wrote Your Jetpack (Cannibal Futures), an excellent rant on the old "Where's my fucking jetpack?" trope that called on people to stop sitting around and actually build their own future. There was also something about a latex gimp suit and strapping rockets to asses, which I quite appreciated.

It's dead-on, and provoked me to think about what exactly people want out of a future. For a long time my grousing reply to "Where's my fucking jetpack?" had been "I don't know, you were too busy whining to build the damn thing."

My ire is because when someone says the aforementioned words to me, they're immediately indicating two things.

1) They want their future handed to them. The indignant entitlement in WMFJ is impossible to miss.

2) They associate the future primarily with technology. Not just technology, but extremely fancy technology.

I mean, really, are you going to go to the bar in your jetpack? Pick up the kids? In some ways it's the ultimate in conspicuous futurotica: loud, explosive, resource-guzzling and not particularly useful.

Things that really change the type of world we live in, technological or otherwise, aren't usually big, complex or awe-inspiring. Instead, they're simple, reliable and easy to replicate, usually fulfilling a very basic niche. For that reason they prove extremely infectious and end up shaping countless lives.

What do I mean? It's worth looking at some recent examples that have drastically changed the world we live in, for millions, if not billions, of people. They offer a guide that anyone looking at creating something to survive tomorrow must take into account.

Let's start with one of the most successful, world-changing technologies of the past half century. It beats the jetpack all to shit.