About two weeks ago (October 27th) while up in Seattle I was invited to participate in a podcastable discussion about the current overlap of technology and the Occupy Movement.
The inaugural episode of the BrainMeats podcast is devoted to the Occupy movement and what hackers and makers can do to support the protesters on the ground. Willow spoke over Skype to Ari, Ella, Matt, Ruben, and Smári about the history of OWS, the meaning of illegibility within the movement, software tools for protesters, and more.
I was a little groggy through most of it and wish I had more fruitful things to say other than being the devil's advocate that I normally am. Anyhow it was a good discussion and if you're interested I recommend listening in on it. If you're curious about any of the sites/services/things talked about, please check out Willow's post for more details.
So tonight at some point in time I went to the front door of my flat, to find this...
2lb and 9oz of political spam, 53 piece in total, ranging from supporting runners for offices and propositions to bad mouthing individuals and groups. For the most part I consider much of this fiction and not worth my damn time. It's weight is approximately 10 times what my household normally gets a week in paper snail mail spam. All of it went into the recycling bin at the top of my stairs under our little mail slots for each housemate. I could sit here and do the carbon footprint math, but just by looking at the pile of junk it's pretty apparent that there's a bunch of money and resources wasted that go into these paper campaigns.
It boggles my mind on how we don't have a system to opt out of this trash.
Next to the recycling bin we have a bench, where this was sitting on top of...
9oz of fact. I would like to see political parties throw their money into making this booklet easier to read and not as daunting, more recyclable, more apparent that it's available online.
I don't care how much politicians want to toot the truth or name bash the other runners, but please stop doing it in print, stop filling up my mail box with this garbage, it makes me not want to vote for any of you, or maybe that's just the point?
The universe at its core is extremely binary. Without the attention to detail and the ability to look closely we perceive it as analog and rather confusing or possibly chaotic and random. Computers are an attempt to recreate a binary systems on top of the analog layer we have such a hard time seeing beyond, pushing for some sort of sane black and white order. Video games, social networking, online communication, the attempt at providing an over all seamless web experience, transparent inside that little device sitting in your pocket, purse or bag, are us pushing for an artificial analog experience within this digital binary world we created, on top of the analog universe that's just an overly complicated binary system.
I've kept a bit of distance away from Twitter for the past couple of weeks, it's been good, though I'm sure this post will auto update my feed. Disconnection has lead to a bit of wondering where and when things happen for a given night, but the return value of hearing about stories, events, interesting things from people directly through passing has been worth it. I've gone from compulsively refreshing Twitter to my lone RSS feeds, Slashdot and Latitude.
My trip to Europe happening in a day or so already feels like escape, really don't want it to feel like that. I'll inevitable come back and it's no longer escape. Keep track of me on the Locate page. I'll have access to phone, email, IM, etc for most of it. Looking forward to Camp.
New job has been great, rather enjoy working out of a castle. It's also been challenging to the level that works well for me.
Distance and pain lasts forever, a closed feeling. I busy myself with new projects trying to keep my mind off of the past, present and what could have been the future. Multiple futures. I wake up each morning early wondering, making my bed, having a tiny bit of breakfast, picking out what to wear. Mannerism I didn't have before, they're not mine. Now I'm not really sure who's they are.
Last things last. At the point now where I need to for myself to understand that this really isn't the last thing.
One of the things I've been aiming for recent is to live completely without expectations. As a result it seems like I haven't gotten as exited about something as I did months ago. I think this is starting to become a negative aspect of my life, to not actually be extremely exited (pony peeing rainbows) about much of anything. Maybe this is turning me into a boring person? To my friends and within myself.
Today I had a series of communications to varied wildly on the emotional scale, I surprised myself by eventually feeling overwhelmed by it all. My time to myself tonight went to waste from a lack of focus. Wishing that all this were easier.
There are things missing from my life right now, some I know about, others are a mystery in themselves. The need to focus on figuring out what these missing things are is rather hard, the feeling replaced with a want to dig a hole and live in it.
