Stewart Brand wrote in 1998: Thanks to the wild acceleration of technological change. Digital Infomation is being rendered irretrievable almost as soon as it is stored. Welcome to what could be the dawn of the digital dark age. … Digitized media do have some attributes of immortality. They possess great clarity, great universality, great reliability and great economy–digital storage is already so compact and cheap it is essentially free. Many people have found themselves surprised and embarrassed by the reemergence of perfectly preserved e-mail or online newsgroup comments they wrote nonchalantly years ago and forgot about. Yet those same people discover that they cannot revisit their own word-processor files or computerized financial records from ten years before. It turns out that what was so carefully stored was written with a now obsolete application, in a now-obsolete operating system, on a long-vanished make of computer, using a now antique storage medium (where do you find a drive for a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk?). Fixing digital discontinuity sounds like exactly the kind of problem that fast-moving computer technology should be able to solve. But fast-moving computer technology is the problem: By constantly accelerating its own capabilities (making faster, cheaper, sharper tools that make ever faster, cheaper, sharper tools), the technology is just as constantly self-obsolescing. The great creator becomes the great eraser. (04/12/02)
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Yogi Sri Aurobindo wrote: So long as war does not become psychologically impossible, it will remain or, if banished for a while, return. War itself, it is hoped, will end war; the expense, the horror, the butchery, the disturbance of tranquil life, the whole confused sanguinary madness of the thing has reached or will reach such colossal proportions that the human race will fling the monstrosity behind it in weariness and disgust. But weariness and disgust, horror and pity, even the opening of the eyes to reason by the practical facts of the waste of human life and energy and the harm and extravagance are not permanent factors; they last only while the lesson is fresh. Afterwards, there is forgetfulness; human nature recuperates itself and recovers the instincts that were temporarily dominated. A long peace, even a certain organisation of peace, may conceivably result, but so long as the heart of man remains what it is, the peace will come to an end; the organisation will break under the stress of human passions. War is no longer, perhaps a biological necessity, but it is still a psychological necessity; what is within us, must manifest itself outside. Meanwhile it is well that every false hope and confident prediction should be answered as soon as may well be by the irony of the gods; for only so can we be driven to the perception of the real remedy. Only when man has developed not merely a fellow-felling with all men, but a dominant sense of unity and commonalty, only when he is aware of them not merely as brothers —that is a fragile bond,— but as parts of himself, only when he has learned to live, not in his separate personal and communal ego-sense, but in a large universal consciousness, can the phenomenon of war, with whatever weapons, pass out of his life without the possibility of return. Meanwhile that he should struggle even by illusions towards that end, is an excellent sign; for it shows that the truth behind the illusion is pressing towards the hour when it may become manifest as reality. (04/12/02)
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Los Alamos National Laboratory–Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy are studying a simple, cost effective method for extracting carbon dioxide directly from the air. … The method would allow researchers to harvest carbon dioxide from the air, reducing buildup of the so-called “greenhouse gas” in the atmosphere and allowing it to be converted into fuel. … Using this method on a large enough scale, it may be possible to return atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to pre-Industrial-Age concentrations. … Cost of the entire process is equivalent to about 20 cents per gallon of gasoline — a nominal cost when one considers the recent price fluctuations at gasoline pumps across the nation, Dubey said. A typical extraction facility that could extract all current carbon dioxide emissions would require only an area of one square yard per person in the developed world. A facility of sufficient size could be located in arid regions, since discharged air that is deficient in carbon dioxide could have consequences on nearby plant life. Large expanses of desert would not be affected by the CO2 deficit however, and could provide the wide-open spaces necessary both for the facility and to allow the discharged air to become well mixed with the atmosphere again. (04/12/02)
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Moneda de Plata reports: It is essential to recognize that the U.S. trade deficit of $400 billion a year, is really a tax on the whole world, for the benefit of the United States. Imports are not really paid with dollars sent abroad. Imports are only actually paid with exports of goods and services. Since the U.S. has no intention of ever actually paying for present and past imports, with goods and services, and bringing back to the U.S. the immense amount of dollars sent abroad through its accumulated trade deficits, that yearly trade deficit amounts to a yearly tax on the rest of the world. The accumulated taxation extorted by the U.S., is huge. The measure of the taxation is the amount of Central Bank reserves – in dollars – which have built up enormously since 1971. That is what really killed Argentina: U.S. taxation through the monetary system which prevails, and which allows the U.S. to buy things without paying for them.  (04/12/02)
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Elisabet Sartouris writes: Everyone knows that humanity is in crisis, politically, economically, spiritually, ecologically, any way you look at it. Many see humanity as close to suicide by way of our own technology; many others see humans as deserving God’s or nature’s wrath in retribution for our sins. However we see it, we are deeply afraid that we may not survive much longer. Yet our urge to survival is the strongest urge we have, and we do not cease our search for solutions in the midst of crisis. The proposal made in this book is that we see ourselves in the context of our planet’s biological evolution, as a still new, experimental species with developmental stages that parallel the stages of our individual development. From this perspective, humanity is now in adolescent crisis and, just because of that, stands on the brink of maturity in a position to achieve true humanity in the full meaning of that word. Like an adolescent in trouble, we have tended to let our focus on the crisis itself or on our frantic search for particular political, economic, scientific, or spiritual solutions depress us and blind us to the larger picture, to avenues of real assistance. If we humbly seek help instead from the nature that spawned us, we will find biological clues to solving all our biggest problems at once. We will see how to make the healthy transition into maturity. Some of these biological clues are with us daily, all our lives, in our own bodies; others can be found in various ages and stages of the larger living entity of which we are part — our planet Earth. Once we see these clues, we will wonder how we could have failed to find them for so long. The reason we have missed them is that we have not understood ourselves as living beings within a larger being, in the same sense that our cells are part of each of us.  (04/12/02)
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Wendell Berry writes: We have never understood that the only appropriate human response to a diversified forest ecosystem is a diversified local forest economy. We have failed so far to imagine and put in place some sort of small-scale, locally owned logging and wood-products industries that would be the best guarantors of the long-term good use and good care of our forests. … A good forest economy, like any other good land-based economy, would aim to join the local human community and the local natural community or ecosystem together as conservingly and as healthfully as possible. A good forest economy would therefore be a local economy, and the forest economy of a state or region would therefore be a decentralized economy. The only reason to centralize such an economy is to concentrate its profits into the fewest hands. A good forest economy would be owned locally. It would afford a decent livelihood to local people. And it would propose to serve local needs and fill local demands first, before seeking markets elsewhere. A good forest economy would preserve the local forest in its native diversity, quality, health, abundance, and beauty. It would recognize no distinction between its own prosperity and the prosperity of the forest ecosystem. A good forest economy would function in part as a sort of lobby for the good use of the forest. A good forest economy would be properly scaled. Individual enterprises would be no bigger than necessary to ensure the best work and the best livelihood for workers. The ruling purpose would be to do the work with the least possible disturbance to the local ecosystem and the local human community. Keeping the scale reasonably small is good for the forest. Only a local, small-scale forest economy would permit, for example, the timely and selective logging of small woodlots.  (04/12/02)
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