Earlier this month, science fiction author Bruce Sterling announced the creation of Viridian, a new technocultural art movement. Sterling's goal? Nothing less than saving the world from environmental Armageddon. Sterling says he won't actually launch Viridian until Jan. 3, 2000. The new millennium, he believes, will be eagerly receptive to new ideas. (Why Jan. 3? Well, on Jan. 1, everyone will be hung over, and on Jan. 2, nobody's computer will work.) In the meantime, Sterling is working out the basic principles of the movement, and has set up a moderated mailing list for the "Viridian Greens" to hash out the details. What's it all about? Greenhouse warming, says Sterling, is undeniable to all save fools and fat cats, but previous "green" environmental attempts to change the world have failed. Sterling's answer is to concoct a new esthetic -- one that values healthy design, eschews 20th century-style waste and flourishes through distributed, collective, networked development. Sterling has dubbed himself the movement's "mad Pope-Emperor." The whole scheme sounds suspiciously similar to the plot of a Sterling novel -- but like Sterling's works, it's audacious, funny and eloquent. Interested mailing list subscribers can e-mail the man himself, at bruces@well.com. -- Andrew Leonard SALON | Oct. 27, 1998

From bruces@well.com Mon Oct 26 12:42:15 1998 Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 12:42:15 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00005 X-UIDL: 1e200ae03c3852d34df65709e47a5514 Key concepts: Viridian aesthetic; distributed networks; mobiles; Alexander Calder (1898-1976) Attention Conservation Notice: This is art criticism. There are over 900 words of it. Sources: an original composition Links: www.sfmoma.org/EXHIB/calder.index.html www.nga.gov/exhibitions/caldwel.htm There are two approaches to the problem of establishing a Viridian aesthetic: the top-down approach, and the bottom-up. The top-down method consists of issuing historical analogies, broad statements of principle, sweeping aphorisms, and so forth, and trawling these verbal devices over the landscape in the hope that they will net something useful. The bottom-up approach relies on assembling specific examples, whose aggregate might suggest an emergent future sensibility. Since we Viridians have an expiration date looming, we will try both approaches at once. Our first candidate for specific analysis, the first tree in our Viridian forest as it were, is the "mobile," invented by twentieth- century artist Alexander Calder. Following our "underside-first" principle, we will start by listing the aspects of Calder's mobiles which are NOT of a Viridian sensibility. Only then will we relate the aspects which seem to have promise for the early 21st century. NON-VIRIDIAN ASPECTS OF CALDER'S MOBILES Alexander Calder is by no means a contemporary artist. He was born a full one hundred years ago and died in the 1970s. Mobiles have two basic elements: colored cut-out shapes, and the jointed network of stiff wires that attach them. Calder's shapes are flat and metallic, and generally painted in Mondrian-like, industrial, primary colors. Calder sometimes employed gimmicky, dated shapes reminiscent of bad Space Age coffee-tables. Calder sometimes attached mobile elements to representational objects, such as wire-framed fish and performing seals. Compared to the eerie majesty of the best abstract mobiles, this overly cute, toylike practice gives one a cloying sensation. Desktop and floor-mounted "stabiles" are much less visually effective than air-swarming, ceiling-hung mobiles. Unless that is, the stabiles are built on a monumental scale, so that they can loom astoundingly over the viewer. The movements of mobiles are determined by laws of gravity and local air currents, rather than some more sophisticated interchange among the moving elements. As art objects, mobiles are somewhat difficult to assess, because they are both sculpture and performance. They present different visual experiences under different environmental circumstances. VIRIDIAN ASPECTS OF CALDER MOBILES They were invented and built by a world-class avant-garde artist with a degree in mechanical engineering. Calder mobiles are strongly biomorphic in both shape and motion. They are thriftily built of cheap, recycled materials. Mobiles move silently and tirelessly through the use of ambient, renewable energy. Mobiles are sensitive indicators of local environmental conditions. Mobiles scale up well, although the truly colossal mobiles require some modest aid from electric motors. The term "mobile" was coined by Marcel Duchamp, a rather sphinxlike, timeless figure. Thanks to Calder's iterative balancing technique, a mobile's simple network contains a great deal of subtle embedded judgement. Thanks to this, the movement of a mobile is not mechanically repetitive, but pleasantly lifelike and unpredictable. Calder mobiles are distributed, collaborative networks in action. Although mobiles can be quite large in volume, even monumental, they are very sparing in their use of materials. They are dependent on open space, voids, and transparency; less mass, more data. Mobiles have a life-affirming sense of humor. It's hard to imagine a grim, fanatical mobile. CONCLUSION. There has been little formal innovation in Calder mobiles in recent decades. They remain well-known as one of the few art forms invented by an American artist (though he had to go to Paris to do it). Mobiles have always enjoyed a cult following, but in terms of technique they have become a Modernist backwater. However, there exists the possibility of profound advancement in the design and construction of mobiles. Calder himself built his mobiles with string and tinsnips, snipping a bit here and there and shortening the wire until he felt he had the balance right. It would not seem difficult to automate this hands-on process through computer-based balancing algorithms. This offers the attractive prospect of monumental CAD-CAM mobiles containing hundreds or thousands of perfectly balanced, interacting elements. Mobiles could become vastly more sensitive and responsive if they abandoned the wire and sheet-iron of the 1930s. Thermosensitive wire and polymer might change color and movement with temperature. Humidity-sensitive plastics might be useful. Ultralight mobiles of foam and cellulose might be colorful and sturdy, yet almost float in air. In near-term cultural conditions, mobiles could profoundly change their meaning. Our society is obsessed with networks and their internal balances and struggles, while Calder's era was analog, mechanical and pre- cybernetic. Mobiles make far more sense today than they did in the 1930s. The "network aesthetic" of mobiles suggests a Viridian equivalent for the Modernist "machine aesthetic." A Viridian mobile made of silicon circuit-plates and data wiring would be an objective-correlative for the Net. Such a device could be built to any scale, and could display any number of sophisticated responses to various aspects of its environment == it might, for instance, move in response to passing network traffic, rather than air currents. A 21st-century silicon mobile might compute its own changing internal states of balance while simultaneously absorbing and deploying solar power. There are a host of possibilities here, for this art-device would have all the protean capacities of a digital network. Such a mobile could be programmed to behave in sophisticated, unprecedented ways, simply impossible during the twentieth century. Calder's mobile would no longer be a Modernist art object, but rather a new medium. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) Topic 189 [mirrorshades]: Viridian List Archive #12 of 12: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed Oct 28 '98 (15:08) 144 lines From bruces@well.com Wed Oct 28 16:57:42 1998 Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 16:57:42 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00006 X-UIDL: 24772537af0b8584ee996a5b914f04b2 Key concepts: Floods; unnatural disasters; safety checklists; recovery procedures; literary criticism Attention Conservation Notice: Grimly accurate; contains tedious, gritty minutiae about one of life's worst experiences; comes in two parts Source: University of Minnesota Extension Service Home Page Links: http://www.extension.umn.edu/Documents/K/A/afterflood.html The University of Minnesota's Extension Service has been kind enough to publish a very extensive web document about the situation one faces after a flood. Global warming does not mean merely that the globe gets warmer. Climatic patterns also become more erratic. This means anomalous rainfall and more floods. This summer there was an area the size of Europe underwater in Asia. As I type this, a Category 5 hurricane, the fourth- largest every recorded, approaches much-suffering Mexico, bearing storm surge and flood. My own home town was copiously flooded just last week. Floods are one of the consequences of global warming that are most likely to directly affect your home, your business, your possessions, your loved ones, your city, your nation, your economy. Those of you who have never experienced or seen a flood are increasingly likely to do so. Floods are very exciting to watch (which is why young children often die in them). They are also very disorienting (which is why old people often die in them). People who safely resist the exhilirating drama of a flood will survive, to find themselves dealing with its many tedious and dispiriting consequences. This is where the Viridian sensibility comes in. We're not particularly interested in the brief spectacular period of the flood proper. But we're very interested in what a 21st century society will feel like, and act like, as it experiences repeated, widespread episodes of "flood recovery." The Minnesota "After the Flood" document suggests useful tool kits, and gives all manner of handy hints on drying, ventilation, personal safety, insurance documentation, home repair -- everything from mildewed wallpaper to portable toilets: 10,253 words. I will briefly excerpt this document in two Viridian Notes, and subject it to literary criticism. My comments are in triple parentheses. (((The opening table of contents conveys the long- lingering aroma of the flood-recovery experience.))) After the Flood Safety Rules and Recovery Procedures After a Natural Disaster Restoring Electrical Service After a Flood (((The very first order of business is to renew CO2 consumption.))) Disposing of Sewage and Garbage (((Floods are unexcelled at transforming your possessions into "sewage" and "garbage." That which does not wash away is often ruined.))) Priorities for Clean-Up and Repair (((Flood recovery is a very big job. It is a major life trial. Make a list first. Make *several* lists.))) Supplies and Equipment for Home Clean-Up (((We learn that these are rubber gloves, boots, buckets, crowbars, hammers, screwdrivers, sponges, scrub brushes, garbage bags, brooms, shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows, washtubs == and so on.))) Cleaners and Disinfectants (((In traditional societies, floods were commonly followed by plagues. This time-honored principle will still hold true in global areas short of cheap disinfectant.))) Mildew-Removing Procedures (((Various damp-happy microorganisms will attack both your health and your possessions.))) Checking Damaged Buildings (((You might wade free of rising water, but having a flood-wrecked house fall on you is quite a different matter. Electrocutions and gas explosions are also lively possibilities.))) Cleaning and Repairing Flooded Basements Finding and Repairing Leaks in Roofs Getting Rid of Flood Odor (((Lingering stenches are the very signature of the Greenhouse Effect.))) Opening Flooded Windows Replacing Broken Window Panes Cleaning Flooded Floors And Woodwork Treating Warped And De-Laminated Floors Drying Walls Cleaning Interior Walls Repairing Exterior Siding Patching Plaster Installing Wallboard Installing Paneling Wallpapering (((You can struggle free of destitution and chaos in a matter of days -- but those last eleven items show that it's a long, long march back to conventional, G-7 style domestic reality.))) Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)))

From bruces@well.com Fri Oct 30 13:29:22 1998 Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 13:29:22 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00007 X-UIDL: 8bce68de3a736cc31614e2890cb127ed Key concepts: Floods; unnatural disasters; safety checklists; recovery procedures; literary criticism Attention Conservation Notice: A continuation of Note 00006; grimly accurate; bureaucratically thorough; contains tedious, gritty minutiae about one of life's worst experiences Sources: University of Minnesota Extension Service Home Page Links: http://www.extension.umn.edu/Documents/K/A/afterflood.html (((My comments are in triple parentheses == bruces))) Safety Rules and Recovery Procedures After a Natural Disaster 1. See that your family is safe from flood crests, fire, or falling buildings. 2. Cooperate fully with local authorities, rescue squads, and local Red Cross chapters. 3. Help locate shelter, food, clothing, transportation, medical supplies, and medical help for victims. 4. Obey health regulations for personal and community protection against disease epidemics. Report any violations. (((The problem of looters rarely receives mention, even though looters are omnipresent in post-disaster situations. (The most eager and immediate looters are children.) It is simply *assumed* that all citizens are cooperative, fully socialized, responsible Samaritans. Until #4 that is, when they are suddenly urged to become vigilant informants against health violators. Such is life when authority breaks down == full of upbeat pretense.))) 5. If premises have been flooded, flush plumbing fixtures with buckets of water to be sure they are open. Have health authorities inspect sanitary disposal systems. Water may have backed up into the septic tank, which in turn backs up into the plumbing system. This could be a health hazard. (((The gush of one's own sewage is one of many small humiliations; but fail to deal with this, and you risk dysentery or worse.))) 6. Do not use water from private supply until health authorities have tested it. Boil drinking water 10 minutes or chlorinate by adding 1 teaspoon chlorine bleach per gallon of water. 7. Do not use food that has come in to contact with flood waters. Some foods can be salvaged if properly packaged. Consult local health officials if in doubt. (((Good advice. Now imagine yourself in a situation where these "health authorities" and "local health officials" are corrupt, absent, drowned, or simply nonexistent. Though CO2 is mostly an industrial G7 emanation, the effects are worst in areas where the world remains most nearly natural.))) 8. Sanitize dishes, cooking utensils, and food preparation areas before using them. (((A Belle Epoque sees no difficulty in *finding* food after a disaster.))) 9. When entering damaged buildings, use flashlights only, not matches, torches, or any open flame. Watch for nails, splinters, holes in walls or floors, wet or falling plaster, undermined foundations, and gas leaks. 10. Do not use electrical system until it has been checked by an electrician. (((Presumably electricians are thick on the ground in your area.))) 11. Wait until any flood waters are below basement level before trying to drain or pump the basement. (((Health hazards, bad water and personal ruination don't make people any brighter.))) 12. Start clean-up as soon as possible. Thoroughly dry and clean house before trying to live in it. Delay permanent repairs until buildings are thoroughly dry. ((("Demand the Impossible" == Situationist International))) 13. Control rodents and insects. (((Before they control you.))) 14. Remove sediment from heaters, flues, and motors before using them. To speed drying, start stoves and furnaces as soon as they have been checked for safety. (((Removing sediment from a motor must be an interesting process, especially in a design world where more and more big- ticket items are impossible to open or service.))) 15. Take all furniture and rugs outdoors to dry. ((( A handy practice for those nonexistent looters.))) 16. Dry and air bedding, clothing, and rugs as soon as possible to prevent mildew. 17. Set priorities. Accomplish most important tasks first, and avoid physical over-exertion. (((It's very human to "set priorities" as task number 17, when you're already worn out from labor.))) 18. Be sure children are safe and are being cared for at all times. Never leave young children alone or allow than to play in damaged buildings or areas that might be unsafe. (((The rain falls on young and old alike, but surely the author of this superior injunction has never taken charge of young children. A wrecked house is the very definition of attractive nuisance, and there's no better time to escape your parents than when they're losing everything they own.))) 19. Give special attention to cleaning children's toys, cribs, playpens, and play equipment. Boil any items, for 10 minutes, that a toddler or baby might put in his mouth. Discard stuffed toys, plastic toys, waterlogged toys, and non-cleanable toys. (((A plethora of Freudian trauma here as parents ritually destroy the child's most prized possessions.))) 20. Keep chemicals used for disinfecting, and poisons used for insect and rodent control, out of the reach of children. (((You may be in a major disaster, but that doesn't make you bulletproof to life's many other smaller hazards. In fact, you are worse off now, because you have no attention to spare.))) 21. Wear protective clothing on legs, arms, feet, and hands while cleaning up debris. Wear rubber gloves while scrubbing flood-damaged interiors and furniture. (((And since we'll be spending weeks on end in garb like this, it's time for the Viridian couturier to make post-disaster clothing that *looks and feels better.*))) Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) from jonl: Amaze your friends! Point them to the Viridian archive, extracted to http://www.well.com/~jonl/viridian.txt, also linked to http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/

Topic 189 [mirrorshades]: Viridian List Archive #17 of 17: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed Nov 4 '98 (09:18) 329 lines From bruces@well.com Wed Nov 4 10:48:45 1998 Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 10:48:45 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Note 00010 X-UIDL: 586e4db759e130de0dc8554824217fc4 Key concepts: Viridian Commentary: Viridian cuisine; Viridian domain name; propaganda tactics; Viridian Principles of Design; flood recovery; PEM fuel cells; Viridian ranking Attention Conservation Notice: Comments to the Viridian moderator are ruthlessly edited. I question whether you should read these comments from your fellow Viridians. Can these sources be trusted? Who knows their real agenda? These people could be anybody, even you. From: jon@lasser.org (J. Lasser) I was just picking up another computer book (*The Perl Cookbook* from O'Reilly and Associates, written by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington). Imagine my surprise when I read Larry Wall's introduction: "Cooking is also one of the oldest of the arts. Some modern artists would have you believe that so-called ephemeral art is a recent invention, but cooking has always been an ephemeral art. We can try to preserve our art, make it last a little longer, but even the food we bury with our pharoahs gets dug up eventually." (p. xxi) This fulfills (literally!) the "Eat What You Kill" dictum, the "embrace of decay" (what else would blue cheese be?), "Planned Evanescence", and "Viridian Inactivism." Depending on tastes, cooking can also be compatible with the following Viridian principles: "The Future Is History," "History Accumulates," "Look at the Underside First" (look at the growth of organic foods for a cautionary tale), "Design for the Old," "Superstition Isn't Inspiration," "Do Less With Less," "There's No One So Green as the Dead," "Make the Invisible Visible," "Less Mass, More Data" (try nouvelle cuisine), "Seek the Biomorphic and the Transorganic," and "Datamine Nature." Cooking is not clearly incompatible with any thus-far stated Viridian principle. Of course, it's not hard to imagine an anti-Viridian meal == for example, a steak raised in a burned-over rainforest. From: weasel@gothic.net (Darren Mckeeman) If you're going to have a movement, it's not going to do to have your URL on someone else's server. We need our own domain name to go with the Viridian image. Based on my own experiences, I'll go so far as to suggest a 'presence' package: 1) A domain name (www.viridian.org) 2) An image package (I can't help you there -- I'm all thumbs) 3) a propaganda campaign to get 'Viridian' into the public eye 4) a document storage method (otherwise known as designing a useful website). The first two items are easy. First, find a graphic designer. You can trip over them in doorways here in San Francisco. Then you get someone to donate web space. This, too, is easy here in San Francisco. The second half of my list will take some work and a small investment -- maybe $20 per flunkey. Yes, it takes volunteers to properly lead a propaganda campaign. The Viridian Movement needs some memetic form of propaganda, such as peel-off stickers. I suggest brilliant neon-green stickers with our web address. We can send a roll to each person on this list for them to start plastering bus stops, cars, bathroom stalls, garbage cans, personal computers, street signs, etc. Human beings love to deface property -- let's give in to our own inner nature! Of course, this might appeal more to kids than to old people. From: richardd@reeseco.com (Richard Dorsett) Viridian Publishing: I believe one of the most important things we should strive to change is the nature of publishing. Whole forests die so the lumpenproletariat can read about Rosie O'Donnell's new diet. The notion of chopping down trees to produce romance novels, wrestling magazines and tabloid newspapers is especially repugnant. This idea is, of course, openly elitist. I propose a ban on the use of physical paper to produce any document that does not meet the strict aesthetic standards of the Viridian Council. Of course, I realize that our sublime edicts will have no authority whatsoever in the "real" world, but by issuing press releases (on-line, of course), and calling into play "reputation economics," we can focus painful attention on publications that are absolute wastes of paper. As the Viridian Greens gain respect for our many fresh ideas and futurist design scenarios, people will heed our edicts. "Books" will once again become precious art objects, designed to appeal to the eye, the hand, and the mind. Magazines, perhaps printed on pure hemp rag paper, will once again become things of beauty, following the lead of the artists and designers of the Belle Epoque. We can start by creating an award to give to publishers outstanding in their greed and bad taste. I suggest a fine parchment with a photograph of the Tunguska blast site or Mount St. Helens, showing disaster areas with trees laid flat for miles, with a legend such as "For Outstanding Achievement In The Area Of Deforestation." We could also reward publishers who design and print lovely, worthwhile publications on a stock of older, preferably hand-made paper. Soon, our awards will be either feared or highly coveted. From: rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk (Richard Sewell) There's a common idea in these principles : "Eat What You Kill" "Avoid the Timeless, Embrace Decay" "Planned Evanescence" "Look at the Underside First" "Design For Evil" "Design for the Old" They're all facets of designing for the whole effect of a thing on the world, over all its users and all its lifespan. This suggests a host of similar questions. What better but late-developing design might be stillborn if this one is successful? What developments will this design inspire in a few years? Will this design encourage monopoly or competition? How will it change once it has become successful and moved downmarket? How do Viridian principles rub along with the economic imperatives that seem to give industrial design its lack of foresight? Are we just trying to shame them into doing it better ? Thinking about the artifacts I use and love the best, many of them (my favourite coat, my sewing machine, my bed, my lathe, my chair) are decades old. They work well and last a long time, far beyond original market requirements. They are Viridian exemplars in that they've generated a lot of utility from a little bit of resource. They've avoided leaving useless components behind by not becoming irreparable or obsolete (yet). They are all targeted at long-term needs. From: LangiG@parl.gc.ca (Greg Langille) Hi Bruce. Fab list of principles. As far as requests for candidates, a few obvious ones occur in the power-generating industry. Perhaps a scale could be used, eg.: 0 - 10 where 0 is the perfect Viridian object. 1 - wooden water turbines 5 - solar panels ( what do you do with the hardware when it breaks?) 10 - nuclear power Perhaps a formula could be used: Viridian Quotient = (time in use) / ((time to create) + (time until 100% decomposition)) This would give a "working life" figure. A broom made of sticks would have a higher figure than the Nuclear Plant, but lower than a song performed live by a band. From: rinesi@espacio.com.ar (Marcelo Rinesi) Concerning the handling of flood disasters, by a member of a flood-ridden society (Argentina). I live in a city in the shore of the Paran'a River, in South America, which is a zone frequently flooded. Based on what I've seen, I believe that society simply gets used to floods. After a time, floods become part of the landscape, like corrupt politicians. Long term solutions aren't pressed for. Humans just adapt. I infer that natural disasters alone won't generate much political pressure to change policy. We will have to factor something else. Societies long-exposed to certain disaster tend to be aware of its signals. In my city's case, the river's level makes headlines often. We should speed the creation of the awareness for those disasters, to make society more efficient on dealing with them. Education on climatology and individual access to large, global, disaster- prediction systems should be made available. This might be a necessary step toward finding the will to prevent or solve disasters. A BBS-like system to post notices of natural disasters could be implemented almost overnight. Warnings would be issued by research scientists, and the post-fact assessment and help could be issued directly from field experts, especially those in other countries. That system would be "very Viridian," as it would work almost biologically, like a nervous system for the planet. A nervous system seems to be very needed now, as so far we only have some sort of "brain" (the Net). Widespread, low-level, sensory, global nervous systems aren't available or working yet, and maybe one of the goals or means of the Viridian movement should be to implement them. Our material possessions can't be moved from the path of disaster overnight (I sadly learned this by my own experience), so they are particularly disaster-exposed. A less materially-based culture, which the Viridian movement wants, will paradoxically ease some of the effects of natural disasters, making them less fearful and urgent. A highly data-based culture might be ideal for an environmentally stricken planet. It should be part of our contingency plans in case of failure. (We are going to have contingency plans, aren't we?) From: jim@smallworks.com (Jim Thompson) You should do something on 'fuel cells'. The (fairly new) Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) cells hold huge promise for cheap, clean, safe energy (and lots of it) from renewable sources. Basically, a fuel cell is like a battery where you put in some low-grade hydrocarbon (ethanol, methanol, kerosene, LP Gas, Natural Gas, diesel, methane). You get DC power out, with pure water and heat as the by-products. The huge advantage to the PEM-based cells is that they run cool (50C-120C, .versus up to 1800C for other types) and they don't need hard-to-handle catalysts inside. Several companies are getting commercial-grade PEM- based fuel cells ready for deployment around 2000. Personally, as soon as they're available, I'm taking my home off the grid. PEM technology is very Viridian, since it is cute, sexy and glamorous. There are photos at: http://www.gate.net/~h2_ep/10kw_pem.htm A 10 kilowatt stack of cells with a volume of 37 liters (less than 2 cubic feet) weighs 65kg (about 140lbs). Get 5-6 of those going, and you can replace the 220V/200amp service to your home. Practice a little conservation, and you can get by with far less. Plug Power (http://www.plugpower.com/) is one of the companies attempting to make a product for the consumer market. ******************************************************* Bruce Sterling remarks: Thank you for your generous help, both in this public posting and behind the Viridian scenes. It is much appreciated. I will now formally distribute chevrons and stars in a glorious flurry of Viridian reputation capital. jim@smallworks.com^^^^^^* rinesi@espacio.com.ar^^* weasel@gothic.net^* richardd@reeseco.com* Ian.Griffin@Corp.Sun.COM^^^ jonl@well.com^^^ geert@xs4all.nl^^ pacoid@fringeware.com^^ rdm@test.legislate.com^^ robot@ultimax.com^^ tbyfield@panix.com^^ TuckerV@frogdesign.com^^ ASKornheiser@prodigy.net^ Cooper409@aol.com^ dave@va.com.au^ dhlight@mcs.net^ gail@well.com^ gordy@nytimes.com^ infinite@beaming.com^ jon@lasser.org^ jrc@well.com^ kaiser@acm.org^ LangiG@parl.gc.ca^ merlan@visa.com^ nehrlich@sfis.com^ philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu^ quest@inetarena.com^ SeJ@aol.com^ steven@iisl.co.uk^ sdhurley@ican.net^ thack@design-inst.nl^ whiz@ricochet.net^

most interesting. I came back to Texas expecting my house to be flooded away. It wasn't so I am now following a different path than the one I anticipated. I have decided to set priorities now. Belongings stay in storage, trade in floodable house for a travel-type trailer that has a better chance of aver. I like the fuel cell idea. Alot. I need to live more simply. If I accumulate less, I have less to lose. Always carry Lysol, bleach and detergent. It's a start?

What's your favorite bleach?

From bruces@well.com Fri Nov 6 17:56:19 1998 Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 17:56:19 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00011 X-UIDL: 2d652495059a63eb444b7afaa26758b8 Key concepts: Viridian mascot; design contest Attention Conservation Notice: A Viridian design contest is proposed. If you choose to take part, it may soak up considerable attention and even physical labor. Viridian Notes 1-10 have established our basic Viridian interests. We will remain preoccupied with general design principles, near-term trend-spotting, and specific critical assessment of artifacts in the arts/technology/sciences. We want to collate our findings in some coherent statement for January 3, 2000. But mere words in a row can't be the be-all and end- all of a design movement. We also need to design. Mailing lists are well-designed for zapping sermons. But the net's wiring lacks tensile strength. It's hard to tug the net so deftly that people will stand up in response, leave their monitors, and do something creative. Especially when they're not being paid. This is an interesting challenge in net-culture. It is no doubt fraught with all manner of unseen potholes and troubling downsides. But we must start somewhere. So, we will start small. Very small. Microscopic, even. The first Viridian design project is a graphic logo, the first official portrait of our own lovable Viridian mascot: "Big Mike, the Viridian Bug." Big Mike is a micro-organism, probably a decay and recycling agent of some kind, who has the word "viridian" written across his back. "Big Mike" is meant to feature on Viridian coffee- cups, mouse-pads, websites, aristo-digital jewelled cuff- links, teenage cyber-vandal adhesive stickers, and so on. While we don't plan to go directly into multinational manufacturing, we Viridians can manage some modest, nonprofit, hobbyist efforts along this line. It's not for nothing that the Viridian list emanates from fringeware.com, a retail outlet for cyber-slacker gizmos and tchatchkes. REASONS WHY "BIG MIKE" IS NOT VIRIDIAN A designed logo is a piece of intellectual property, meant for purposes of corporate identity. There is something inherently troublesome and contradictory in using a logo in a not-for-profit, non-incorporated, private context. Especially when you have no intention of making a profit through use of the logo, and *no intention whatsoever of ever paying its creator any royalties for the use of the image,* no matter how many times it gets used or what weird places it ends up in. Ever since the human race first discovered micro-organisms through improved scientific sensors, we have been carefully trained to regard them as dangerous, unglamorous and icky. Though they are very responsive and do a lot of highly sophisticated "processing," microbes aren't real big on thought processes of any kind. Given the chance, certain species of microbes have repeatedly wreaked unparalleled genocidal havoc. Microbes sadly lack a dashing Pope-Emperor figure. REASONS WHY "BIG MIKE" IS VIRIDIAN Cloned sheep may grab all the headlines, but the real workhorses of the coming biorevolution will probably be genetically warped microbes. A microbe is an invisible entity made visible through sensor technology. Microbes do most of the heavy lifting in the ecosystem. Microbes are the world's most senior form of life, but they don't get old. They just keep refreshing themselves by splitting in half. Microbes seem to enjoy swapping packets of genetic information among themselves, rarely bothering to undergo any of the tiresome organizational formalities of actual sex. When times are right, microbes seethe forth suddenly in untold numbers and transform everything they touch. When that's over, they dry up and go to sleep, practicing "Viridian inactivism" for centuries on end. Microbes don't require budgets. Microbes travel freely on dust specks and patches of damp, and are notoriously indifferent to national borders, religion, ethnic background, language barriers and other annoyances. As for gender, microbes don't have any. Human beings are seething with large, variegated microbe populations inside and out, and they strongly effect our metabolism and our daily lives whether we realize it or not. Microbes "Eat What They Kill" and are largely responsible for the fact that "There Is No One So Green As the Dead." Microbes spin out a lot of variants, make repeated iterative mistakes, and evolve rapidly in response to environmental challenges. Genetically engineered microbes are transorganic, biomorphic and their industrial use requires one to datamine nature. Germs are the glamorous coming thing in the way-new, gooey, squishy, seething, wriggling, wetware revolution. ******************************* "Big Mike's" Design Parameters ******************************* Big Mike has a flat black and white 2-D version, suitable for ink and paper, and a color 3-D version suitable for websites and video. You can design either or both. Big Mike's transorganic body is shaped like a 2-D Piet Hein "superellipse," or, alternately, a 3-D Piet Hein "superegg." Piet Hein (1905-1996) was a Danish poet, mathematician, urban planner and furniture designer. One of these days I will get around to explaining why this dead Danish guy is such an inspiring 21st-century figure, but in the meantime, just take it on faith. If you've never seen a "superellipse," look at these web addresses. They have some lovely photos of Piet Hein's Danish-Viridian "superellipse" designs. www.unique-gaver.dk/side42.html www.moebler.dk/moebelhuset/images/Fritz_set_m.jpg www.moebler.dk/moebelhuset/images/brdra_1.jpg www.svenssons.se/klasssiker/27.htm Here for good measure is some of Hein's aphoristic guru- style poetry, a source of light in the dark times of the Nazi occupation: home4.inet.tele.dk/tuborg/grooks.htm Big Mike's mathematically egg-shaped body is surrounded by cilia. Cilia are those little waving oars and tendrils that stick out of certain protozoa. There may be a certain graphic influence here from the Belle Epoque Art Nouveau whiplash-line. Big Mike's body is spotted all over with little bumps or vacuoles. These bumps are the same size and shape as the three dots on the dotted i's in the lower-case word "viridian," which Big Mike bears lengthwise on his/her/its back. The word "viridian" starts near Big Mike's nonexistent "head," and since he is a "movement" logo, Big Mike is depicted in motion, apparently to the viewer's left. Big Mike has a cheerful, cartoonish, bouncy, animated quality. In his nonexistent heart, Big Mike probably has some of the European joie de vivre of the similarly monstrous, yet somehow cute and appealing, Michelin Man. ************************* The Graphic Requirements ************************* You can create an image of Big Mike the Viridian Bug by any means, digital or analog, that you consider necessary. To enter the contest, you must place your image of Big Mike on some web server that the rest of us can access. Then tell me where you have put it, and I will announce its location to the list. Do not email me a graphic enclosure. I don't want them. The list moderator is not going to be archiving graphic images. The Pope Emperor has got his papal hands full with the Notes, the texts, the correspondence, the interviews, the semi-functional Viridian ranking system, and the sign-ups and bounces. To enter, you have to put Big Mike up onto the Web yourself, and you must see to it that the image remains accessible to everyone on the list, at least until the contest ends. If you want to place Big Mike with your other graphic work on your website, commercial or otherwise, that's fine with us. We don't mind a bit if you explain something to us about your other work. If you create an image of Big Mike and display it for the attention of other Viridians, you will receive a star >*<. If you create the most innately Viridian version of Big Mike, you will receive the contest's award. Your award will be one copy of the highly Viridian-relevant book DESIGNING MODERNITY: THE ARTS OF REFORM AND PERSUASION 1885-1945, selections from the Wolfsonian design museum, edited by Wendy Kaplan, Thames and Hudson Press, 1995. This 352-page, lavishly illustrated, glossy coffee-table book will look swell on your Danish Piet Hein superelliptical coffee-table. (Being an impulsive volunteer-type, you will probably buy a Piet Hein table once you have seen what they look like). This book will be mailed to you, at the moderator's expense, to any site on the planet reachable by a snailmail postal service. In the case of a tie, I will send two books. We are particularly eager to see graphic work by Viridians whose first language is not English. Here is your chance to shatter the language barrier, and make your true talents known to your many fellow Viridians (shocking numbers of whom are influential journalists). Yes, I am talking to you, Russians. Don't worry; if a Russian artist somehow wins this bug-designing contest, I will get you this DESIGNING MODERNITY book, even if I have to fetch it over there in a string bag. The final deadline for Big Mike submissions is one month from today. I look forward to hearing from you and seeing your efforts. Good luck! Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

Mitchell Porter has created an html Viridian index at http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html

From bruces@well.com Mon Nov 9 21:20:25 1998 Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:20:25 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00012 X-UIDL: 68fa937c1b6526302ac433955cf07628 Key concepts: Web links, Viridian ranking Attention Conservation Notice: There is very little content in this Note. It consists of a long list of links that may or may not be of interest, plus the second Viridian Ranking. Links: it's mostly links Someday it may be useful and constructive to have a list of official Viridian-approved links. Or will it? People on the Internet link with such carefree abandon that it makes one wonder. Links are perceived somehow as an unalloyed good. This is a sign of danger in any technological development. A link unaccompanied by critical assessment is a little attention-bomb. For our successors, the novelty of links may fade; the kudzu-like mess of links may seem stale or even poisonous. Giving someone a list of hotlinks might be seen as vaguely passive-aggressive, as if you had crammed his doors and windows with endless stacks of free encyclopedias and giveaway floppy disks. Thanks to the kindness of alert correspondents, we have accumulated many Viridian-associated links. But what do they all mean? And how do they feel? And what is their real context? Are they really worth our while? What do they promise for the future? Who will tell us about all this? Investigate these links, if you will. Think about these questions. Write us a careful and heartfelt assessment. Be frank! If your criticism makes the list, you will earn a star >* at the OK prompt and you'll get those links in hypertext. It's at http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/links.html

I emailed bruces about adding this url to the list.

From bruces@well.com Tue Nov 10 18:45:34 1998 Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 18:45:34 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List mailto://viridian@fringeware.com From: Bruce Sterling mailto://bruces@well.com Key concepts: Web links, link criticism, automoderating groupware Attention Conservation Notice: Although it is rather long, this Note may save some of your attention if you were bravely preparing to examine the long list of links in yesterday's Note 00012. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/links.html http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/cultures/18 Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif From: steffen@eskimo.com^* (Alex Steffen) Re: Viridian Note 00012 Bruce-- I took a quick stroll through the links you sent, and while many of them are of potential interest, I would personally find it much more useful if links were used to provide material to fuel conversations directly. For instance: "Check out this OECD site. They're doing amazing things with taxes and resource pricing. Is there a way in which Viridian design could influence the way people think about taxes (on the principle of 'Make the Invisible Visible')?" Then I could know better how (or if) I wanted to absorb this link into my info flow, which is already eating away at the thin levees of organization I've built to contain it. "No Info-Dumping" should be a Viridian principle. Let's have less information, elegant information, useful information, passionate information... not just more of it. I'd rather get a haiku than a dissertation any day. (((bruces remarks: I couldn't agree with you more, Alex, but who exactly is supposed to be "mining the haikus" out of all those info-dumps? Meaning and passion are not invisible goods. Your info-levees merely export your flood of data downstream to the rest of us.))) From: SeJ@aol.com^^* (Stefan Jones) It might be of benefit to give links various Viridian ratings: Import (5 - Astounding, of immense interest; 0 - Not worthless, but certainly not a priority). For instance, a RealTime archive of Rush Limbaugh, shaken by news of Honduran disaster, losing it and turning into a Green on-air, would rate a 5. Technical reports on a fuel cell, when other more accessible articles have already been listed, might rate a 1 or 0. Timeliness (5 - Ephemeral, read IMMEDIATELY, 0 - Will be there forever) For instance, http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/global/global.h tml is a series of daily entries about the Buenos Aires global warming conference. It's rated a 4 because it will be around only a week or so. Aproposity (5 - Dead-on related to Viridian interests, 2 - Tangentially related, 0 - No direct relation to Viridianism) For instance http://slashdot.org rates a 0; it's a great site, but not apropos. On the other hand, if slashdot.org ran an article on mailing list "automoderating groupware," you might mention it in a Viridian post. Commercial intent (5 - It's an unabashed plug, and perhaps suspect; 4 - It's got a good description of the product, plus a way to buy it; 0 - It's a fair and unbiased review.) Realgood.org might rate 4; old-time Whole Earth Reviews a 2. (((bruces remarks: this puts a cheering facade of mathematical rigor onto our problem, but we still require invisible munchkins to do our critical assessment work and supply us with passion and meaning. Viridians can expect to hear a great deal more in future about the concept of "automoderating groupware." If "automoderating groupware" worked, the Pope-Emperor could put his feet up and save the world by remote control.))) From: jon@lasser.org^^^** (J Lasser) Re Note 00012: "Someday it may be useful and constructive to have a list of official Viridian-approved links. Or will it?" Of course it won't. Rather than Viridian-approved links, we need an annotated Viridian bibliography. Consider my friend Ed's site. http://homepage.usr.com/c/critconst/ "The Critical Constant" is a weekly net-based science publication different from most others. While most of its articles are summaries from _Science_News_ and _Science_, they're written for an intelligent audience which understands scientific concepts and methods, but has no time for the inner workings of the scientific community. Short, well-written, and with humorous headlines, "The Critical Constant" tells readers what they should know about the world of science. A sample, from issue 12 (archived at http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/4942/i ssue12.html): "Scars on the sky may burn us alive! "Jet airplanes leave contrails, those fluffy mini-clouds of unspeakable smoke and oxidized filth. These hang in the sky, either until they unite with water droplets and fall, or until they spark the formation of cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds, for their part, warm the Earth. A preliminary estimate suggests that 0.1C to 0.3C of the last 30-odd years' warming might be due to these cirrus excesses." To turn to an assessment from your list in Note 00012: http://www.slashdot.com/ Slashdot is about as far from a Viridian website as is possible. Youth-oriented and focused almost exclusively on the near-term, Slashdot thinks not of the environment, nor of the ultimate consequences of technology run amok. Despite this, it's a model example of virtual community's effectiveness as an organizing tool. (This despite the Slashdot community's notorious all-talk no-code nature.) From: whiz@ricochet.net^* (Michael Treece) Review of www.carfree.com Your Pope-Emperorship: I found the Carfree Times at www.carfree.com to be well- researched and well-thought-out. It deals with the problems of transportation and city living from both a macro (urban planning, use of space) and a micro level (bus scheduling, whether or not to fence in backyards). It uses European cities as its inspiration, in the main; a bit too much Venice here, though. Long on solutions, and very light on blame for the current US situation (i.e., it does not take Firestone, General Motors, et al. to task for the takeover and destruction of mass transit in the 1940s). Many "solutions" do depend on the building of new cities, though adaptation of existing cities is addressed. Website graphics are clean, spare, and adequate; nothing moves, and no cool effects are noted. Arrangement facilitates rapid utilization of the site, as the reader is quickly moved from one page to the next. The bulk of the site, with its attendant information load, can be viewed in under one hour. From: rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk^^^** (Richard Sewell) I agree with your comment in Note 00012 - a link serves a useful purpose only if backed up with some substantial content. I see no value in a mere list of links (especially after wading though this lot). In random order, then: http://www.va.com.au/photobots/PhotoBots.htm Freeware artificial-life app. Neat, but I see no Viridian connection. http://environment.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa110198.htm Fairly detailed overview of the COP-4 climate-change talks in Buenos Aires, November 1988, with plenty of links to official sites. http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/demo/start.htm Art and art theory, including some sculpture made of salvage and some theorising about electricity. If the Futurists were Viridian, this guy is too, but not so much, and he's not as interesting. http://www.loe.org/html/headlines/coffins.html News report about biodegradable coffins. Aren't they all made from wood anyhow? Perhaps this illustrates the banality of environmental bandwagoning. www.realgoods.com Online catalogue of stuff in the New Age/Save The Planet camp - hemp scarves, water filters, worm farms, personal sundials. Gimmicky, might contain some worthwhile stuff. http://www.scientificsales.com/balloons.htm Meteorological balloons for sale. http://www.fooledya.com/balloon/ An introduction to the large and complex world of decorative balloons and balloon-twisting. http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad26oct98_1.htm NASA news story about experimental aerogel manufacture on the US Space Shuttle. Apparently, aerogels made under gravity are not completely transparent, whereas aerogels made in free fall can be. If transparent aerogels could be made on Earth, they could be used to make insulating windows. Viridian? Well, it's a neat tech which could be used for energy-saving ends, but it looks like a bit of a boondoggle to me. The world already has Scandinavian triple-glazing, and mostly doesn't bother to use it. http://www.ad.ic.ac.uk/estates/projects/chp/descrip.htm Imperial College in Britain is installing a multi-megawatt CHP (Combined Heat and Power) system. Some technical detail. http://www.carfree.com At last, some relevance. This is an organisation campaigning for, and planning for, cities without cars. Seems like thoughtful and sensible stuff. If we don't get fusion and electric cars, we'll need something like this on CO2 grounds alone, and we may well need it just to escape gridlock anyhow. (((bruces remarks: the heroic intellectual labor of mailto://rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk speaks for itself!)))

From bruces@well.com Wed Nov 11 17:45:37 1998 Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 17:45:37 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00014 X-UIDL: 9f257fe7e8ce0551ad5cc12117ed79ff Key concepts: MIT Media Lab, Remembrance Agents, just-in- time information; context-aware applications; history-rich digital objects; link criticism Attention Conservation Notice: it's a way-cool, thought- provoking rap about some digital vaporware that doesn't actually exist in the marketplace Links: http://www.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/RA http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/links.html Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html From: wex@media.mit.edu^* (Alan Wexelblat) X-NSA: radar terrorist supercomputer Qaddafi SEAL Team 6 Regarding Note 00012 and the link to: http://www.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/RA I figure I should comment on this one, since Brad Rhodes works in the office next to me. RA is the Remembrance Agent, an implementation of a class of software agents with interesting ideas/properties. The Remembrance Agent works as a form of computerized associative memory, a non-conventional information retrieval agent. The Remembrance Agent is long-lived, background-operating, and watches your current context. One of our Media Lab sponsors, British Telecom, has adapted it to work on PCs with Microsoft Word. In the version on the Web, it's an Emacs editor buffer in which you might be reading email, writing a paper, or whatever. The principle is the same. As you work, the Remembrace Agent watches your context and uses keywords extracted from that context (the current paragraph, the last page you read, etc.) to make queries against a database of information you've given it. This database could be your personal email files, the Science Citation Index, the CIA World Fact Book, etc. If there are any interesting hits from these queries, a small summary of them (usually 1 line) is shown in a separate window. You can ignore this window and keep working, or if something catches your eye, you can click on it to get the full text of the Remembrance hit. Another Remembrance Agent (not yet publicly released) is called Margin Notes. It operates as a Web proxy server. It annotates Web pages for you on the fly with potentially appropriate hits from your databases. These annotations are contained in small boxes placed on the right of the Web page, simulating the effect of "notes in the margin" of a paper-based book. Key phrases to remember for this work and other work in our group (including my own Footprints tools) are: just-in-time information; context-aware applications; history-rich digital objects. My own work on digital interaction history relates to the "Avoid the Timeless, Embrace Decay" idea. In a digital context, I believe it's erroneous to state that "History Accumulates." Draw your own connections. (((bruces remarks: thank you, I will. In the next century it will be a self-evident truism that cyberspace rots. Software decays in an unconventional, nonphysical way, but it definitely decays and the social, commercial and technical consequences will become more and more painful and obvious with each passing year. Tools that emphasize software decay and digital historicality are of intense Viridian interest. A software agent that partially automates human historical awareness would be a particular Viridian darling == if it were ever out of beta.))) Alan Wexelblat MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/

man, that is an impossible amount to scroll through while telnetting. (I mean physically imposible)

have you read read | more ?

Or r | more That will pause every screen.

From bruces@well.com Thu Nov 12 08:12:29 1998 Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 08:12:29 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00015 X-UIDL: 4e34d4cc61a1d77f6bc2483a49033e88 Key concepts: Weather Violence, permanent corporate brands, air conditioned clothes, genetic bamboo, reflective algae, orbiting solar mirrors, floating aircraft hubs Attention Conservation Notice: This is highly imaginative, wacky sci-fi speculation. It serenely ignores real-world problems in technical development, such as start-up costs, return on investment, technological lock-in, lawsuits, labor unions, and corporate dominance of the political process. It offers no hard evidence to back its wild claims; there's not so much as a single cocktail-napkin calculation here. Maybe it's irresponsible, but I dote on this kind of thinking, I find it spiritually refreshing. Links: http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/ Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html From: mgoldh@well.com* (Michael Goldhaber) Dear Viridian CEO Bruce, The whole thing is a terrific idea, I certainly hope it keeps going. A few points. The term "Global Warming" needs improvement. "Global warming" sounds much too comfortable. The core demographic of Viridian old people might imagine themselves spared the need to move to Florida. It's not mere "warming." It would be better described as "Global Storming" or perhaps "Violent Weather Crime." In this vein, explicit examples of "Criminal Weather Violence" might help. One small item from the 11/03/98 New York Times: the dense atmospheric smoke from burning rain forests causes more powerful, positively charged lightning, instead of the usual negatively charged variety. This violent lightning can result in more forest fires, hence more smoke. This might create a chain reaction of accelerating Weather Violence. Why get all excited about phantoms like the failure of Social Security in 2030, when all us 30-60 year olds have the exciting prospect of genuine calamity? Why favor evanescent design instead of Permanent Good Things? Corporations believe their brands to be eternal, and like nothing better than the idea of having their brand-name in the landscape forever. Permanent Good Things would definitely have cachet. A diamond is forever, as is a Coach bag, and a Brand X something-or- other. You could count on leaving this brand-named gizmo to your grandchildren because it will keep working so well and use such a tiny amount of energy! Evanescent things require energy to make, and then are gone. Not so cool! Banning the production of dumb books, as an earlier comment suggested, has zero appeal. Converting forest biomass to books is a damn sight better than burning the forest, because it sequesters CO2. Burning books, even ones you don't like, would be very bad. Likewise, plastics are a better use of fossil hydrocarbons than fuel. Here are some suitably far-out Viridian tech suggestions. Genetically engineer bamboo and grow it on-site as walls and supports. Fast-growing vines for roofs. Bioluminescent leaves for light at night. Direct photosynthetic conversion of sunlight into usable energy Sunlight is converted into infrared that is then trapped on our overheating planet. Increasing the earth's reflectance can diminish that problem. Engineer a fast-growing floating alga that would produce white foam over large sections of ocean, for instance. This alga would likely block life-giving light from the ocean depths and starve many surface seabirds, but those might be the least of our problems. You might filter the sun's rays somewhere between earth and sun. A number of sun-shields, each a mere hundred miles in circumference, placed in solar orbit might do the trick. The eventual goal is human ability to control global climate deliberately. Climate control may seen absurd, but climate control is also of course the implicit goal of the Kyoto Accord and Rio treaties. It's probably easier to award government contracts for giant orbital mirrorshades than it is to get everyone to burn less. The most fecund Viridian approaches find ways to gratify our desires with less fuel use. As we are now delighted to carry phones with us, walkman gadgets, portable computers and all the rest, let us go one simple step further and air-condition our clothes. This obviates the need for fuel to heat and cool large volumes of space. Furthermore, everyone can enjoy their favorite temperature without conflict. That leaves lighting and especially transportation as our fuel hogs. The former principle of "Just-in-time production" must be augmented by the proposed Viridian principle of "Where-You-Are production." Make what you want, on the fly, from cheap materials at hand, using general-purpose tools powered by imported recipes and software. We want efficient, elegant means of travel. Aircraft burn most of their fuel during take-off and landing procedures. One way to finesse this is to accelerate and decelerate planes through electromagnetic methods that allow energy recovery upon landing. Or, today's land-based aircraft hub system could be replaced with giant high-altitude (hub) balloons. High- altitude transport craft would dock at these balloons, passengers then moving to specialized departing planes for descent. Giant floating hubs would be far more entertaining than today's mundane airports, especially if they themselves moved, perhaps in a circular route above the landscape. The high-altitude hub crew would of course absorb many x-rays and gamma rays from cosmic radiation. A good reason to cut back on travel. Thanks for your attention, more later. Michael H. Goldhaber (mgoldh@well.com)

From bruces@well.com Tue Nov 17 21:49:29 1998 Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 21:49:29 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00016: Bio-Refineries X-UIDL: 4d65d811e93d7dd67d981dca5310f761 Key concepts: bio-refineries, ethanol fuel, genetic technology, microorganisms, cellulose, garbage, CO2 Attention Conservation Notice: it's somewhat technical; there are speculative elements added; it's hard to prettify a report about big rusty factories eating garbage Links: none Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike From: dhlight@mcs.net^^^* (David Light) David Light remarks: I thought a reminder of cheerful biotech trends was in order. The interesting thing about this recent New York Times ethanol article (as opposed to the 100 others I've skimmed over the last 20 years) is that serious things are being financed with (mostly) private capital at a time when oil prices are in the basement. "Plant Will Make Fuel Oil From Agricultural Garbage" By MATTHEW L. WALD (((bruces remarks: I have cut the living daylights out of Mr Wald's fine article and added a number of comments of my own.))) "ENNINGS, Louisiana. The plant was opened in 1977 to refine crude oil into gasoline, but when that proved unprofitable, it was converted in 1981 to run on molasses, and then in 1987, on grain. Bankruptcy followed." (((The bankruptcy of *all* oil refineries is on the 21st century's agenda. We might replace them through clever design, or we might simply run out of oil, but oil refineries are goners either way. It's wise to consider alternative uses for all this refinery hardware.))) "Now, with rust on its tanks and pipes and grass growing through the gravel on its paths, construction workers are converting it yet again, to make fuel alcohol from agricultural garbage. (...) The new owners of the plant here, BC International Corp., with a subsidy from the U.S. Energy Department and help from a genetically engineered, patented bacterium, hope they are on the cusp of a new era." (((Staggering back from the brink of the grave, a rust-eaten, Gothic, Cajun oil refinery becomes home of gene-spliced voodoo gumbo. It's a new era all right -- the Dawn of the Dead.))) "'It is a bio-refinery,' said Stephen Gatto, president and chief executive of the company. (...) "'The input costs are close to zero,' said Dan Reicher, assistant secretary of energy. 'In some cases they are less than zero, because people are paying to get rid of these materials.'" (((The economics of "less than zero" costs have a nice Internet IPO feel to them == "We're selling dollars for ninety cents each, and making it up on market share!"))) "And if it works, he said, the technology could also reduce the accumulation of gases in the atmosphere that are thought to cause climate change, and could lower smog. (((It'll be a sign of intellectual life in American journalism when this "thought to cause" phraseology finally vanishes. Yes, the climate is changing, and yes, gases are doing it. Cigarettes cause cancer. Politicians have sex. Let's move on.))) "The plant here in this south-central Louisiana town will run on bagasse, a part of the sugar cane plant usually considered useless, as well as on rice hulls, a currently useless part of the rice plant. Later, it may digest sawdust as well." (((The American sugar industry is notorious for its price supports. Rice hulls and sawdust, however... as feedstock for a value-adding process, those are hard to beat. There are few nations on earth untroubled by rice hulls or sawdust. Or both.))) "Around the country, energy experts have their eyes on clippings from suburban lawns, prairie grasses and other woody materials, as fuel for the new process. (...) In the current generation of ethanol plants, the fuel is the corn kernel; plants using the new technology could digest the cob and the stalk as well. (...)" (((We should definitely keep a wary eye out for any entity that digests corn, plus its cobs, plus its stalks.))) "These materials are made of cellulose, which contains large amounts of sugar, the basic ingredient required for alcohol production. But the sugar in cellulose is in a chemical form that traditional fermentation processes, which use yeast, cannot digest. (...) BC's plant uses a bacterium, KO11, also used in the pharmaceutical industry, to break down the sugars. "The natural bacterium on which KO11 is based likes to eat sugars and produces a chemical called acetic acid. But then came gene splicing. Dr. Lonnie Ingram, a microbiologist at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, borrowed four genes from another organism, Zymomonas mobilis, to make the bacterium produce alcohol instead. "Around the country, researchers are working with Z. mobilis to find other approaches, but BC International's will be the first commercial plant to make ethanol from woody material. The plant will take about 18 months to build and will cost $90 million, including $11 million from the Energy Department. "Existing ethanol plants do little to save energy or reduce carbon build-up in the atmosphere. They can use up to seven gallons of oil or its energy equivalent to produce eight gallons of ethanol, experts say. The energy is used by the coal in power plants and diesel fuel in tractors that plant, fertilize and harvest the corn, and in petroleum-based fertilizer. But using waste for fuel == especially waste that might otherwise be burned and in the process dump carbon dioxide back into the air == could allow production of seven gallons of ethanol from one gallon of oil." (((Biomass is an attractive technology, especially for continental superpowers with plenty of spare real estate, but these hidden carbon subsidies are troubling. Cheap oil can make fake "alternatives" look better than they are, lowering costs but spewing CO2. Smart germs are no panacea. There are probably many ways to use cheap commercial bacteria profitably, while creating CO2 pollution even worse than cheap crude oil.))) "And whatever the feedstock, whether trees or grasses, using it makes room for new growth, which will draw carbon back out of the atmosphere. This would be true, backers point out, wherever ethanol from cellulose might catch on, in this country or abroad, especially the Third World, where demand for motor fuel is rising." (...) (((Third Worlders have a healthy skepticism for clever technologies that are said to be a bonanza for poor people, even though they never quite work out in the daily life of rich people.))) "The plant here, on the banks of the Mermentau River, is designed to produce 20 million gallons a year (...) Several others using cellulose are planned around the country. One company, Masada Resource, of Birmingham, Ala., says it will break ground next year on a plant in Middletown, N.Y., that will use the cellulose in household garbage. In that case, sales of ethanol will not turn a profit but will help offset the cost of garbage disposal, in a region where a large landfill is scheduled to close soon. It will not use KO11, but a different proprietary process for rendering the cellulose into digestible form." (...) (((This article has many fine specifics, but contains one mysterious oversight. The subject under study here is a bug that makes booze out of sawdust. This is a troubling prospect. Once Cajun bootleggers swipe a few thimblefulls of stray K011 out of the plant, we can expect a swamplands moonshine bonanza the likes of which the world has never seen.))) Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ******************************************************* WHY GENETICALLY RETROFITTED REFINERIES ARE NOT VIRIDIAN ******************************************************* They cost 90 million dollars each. American sugar cane is a boondoggle. Ethanol projects are not new and have a bad track record. It's hard to make agricultural waste and rotting organic garbage seem sexy. Ethanol in fuel is a piecemeal improvement in the existent refinery/gas station/ internal combustion complex. Has K011 been properly "designed for evil"? How are we supposed to police new germs? Through patent and copyright law? That's not much help in the thriving black markets for illegal drugs or pirate software. The abuse potential for illegal stills that eat sawdust and lawn clippings would seem to be pretty extreme. Brewer's yeasts turn up in the heart of federal prisons; even prisoner-of-war camps have illegal stills. Prohibition wars leave police forces reeling and riddled with corruption. This is a brand-new drug technology, and a potential security nightmare. *************************************************** WHY GENETICALLY RETROFITTED REFINERIES ARE VIRIDIAN *************************************************** They might realistically improve the CO2 situation. They embrace decay. They eat what they kill: it's thrifty to re-use abandoned oil refinery stock, especially since we'll eventually be stuck with all that hardware anyway. Incremental improvements may not be glamorous, but they are by no means to be despised. If ethanol works without requiring glamour, we can save our time and attention for promoting something else. A working, profit-making genetic bio-refinery would open the door to *custom-designed* genetic bio-refineries. These could be highly novel and unusual structures with a revolutionary impact on the chemical and refining industries generally. To see daylight, though, they need a money-making app in the contemporary world. FORMATTING NOTE: Peter Denning (pjd@cne.gmu.edu^^) has pointed out that it would be easier to ignore Viridian Notes if they came with titles. We will be titling the Notes henceforth, and will probably go back and retrospectively title the earlier ones. Bruce S

arrggh! stop posting the huge ones Paul! just gimme the URL! (Thanks for the info though!)

Since when can't you handle a huge one?

From bruces@well.com Wed Nov 18 15:32:29 1998 Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 15:32:29 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00017: Viridian Aphorisms X-UIDL: e267adef767aa80bbc2df207633fec85 Key concepts: aphorisms, slogans; Viridian Ranking Attention Conservation Notice: Though aphorisms are laudably small in bandwidth, they can occupy shocking amounts of attention, perhaps haunting you for life. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ (See Note 00011 for details on the"Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest. See Note 00002 for details on the Viridian Ranking System.) Source: Most of these aphorisms come from THE VIKING BOOK OF APHORISMS by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, first assembled in 1962. Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ ****************** VIRIDIAN APHORISMS ****************** (((bruces remarks: we Viridians won't have time to accumulate our own wisdom of the ages, but we can certainly take the wisdom already to hand and put our own vivifying spin on it. "An epoch doesn't so much reinvent itself as reimagine its heritage" -- STERLING))) It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes. FONTENELLE A historian is a prophet in reverse. SCHEGEL Persistent prophesy is a familiar way of assuring the event. GISSING Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age. FLAUBERT Historical textbooks always seem to make three claims about the era they are dealing with: it was a period of change; it was essentially a transitional epoch; and the middle classes went on rising. EAGLETON Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parents. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open. WHITEHEAD The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. FORSTER Progress is the mother of problems. CHESTERTON The obscurest epoch is today. STEVENSON >From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. KANT Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in the world. PAVESE Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh. VALERY To know oneself is to foresee oneself; to foresee oneself amounts to playing a part. VALERY How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there any danger of their coming true. LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH Among all human constructions the only ones that avoid the dissolving hands of time are castles in the air. DE ROBERTO (((More to come. People who send us a good Viridian aphorism will earn a chevron. bruces))) **************** VIRIDIAN RANKING **************** The Viridian Ranking System has been hand-created with a vintage fountain pen and fine art paper. Scars, flaws, and imperfections add character and are an inherent part of the product. jon@lasser.org^^^** rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk^^^** jim@smallworks.com^^^^^^^^* dhlight@mcs.net^^^^^* rinesi@espacio.com.ar^^* SeJ@aol.com^^* steffen@eskimo.com^^* wex@media.mit.edu^^* whiz@ricochet.net^^* LangiG@parl.gc.ca^* weasel@gothic.net^* hinne@spaceways.de* jzero@onramp.net* mgoldh@well.com* pinknoiz@pinknoiz.com* r1ddl3r@bp13.u.washington.edu* richardd@reeseco.com* tux@powerbase-alpha.com* jonl@well.com^^^^^ Ian.Griffin@Corp.Sun.COM^^^^ Cooper409@aol.com^^^ cthomas@10fold.com^^^ tor@araneum.dk^^^ bobmorris@mediaone.net^^ bperry@shore.net^^ geert@xs4all.nl^^ pacoid@fringeware.com^^ pjd@cne.gmu.edu^^ rdm@test.legislate.com^^ robot@ultimax.com^^ tbyfield@panix.com^^ thack@design-inst.nl^^ TuckerV@frogdesign.com^^ ASKornheiser@prodigy.net^ Basilisk@mcione.com^ ccraig@ucsd.edu^ c.ted.ballou@intel.com^ dave@va.com.au^ dc@technomedia.com^ dlandry@rohan.sdsu.edu^ gagin@inter.net.ru^ gail@well.com^ ggg@well.com^ gordy@nytimes.com^ infinite@beaming.com^ jrc@well.com^ kallen@physics.ucsd.edu^ kaiser@acm.org^ katie@wtp.net^ kirk@mcelhearn.com^ klilly@neog.com^ Matt@MediaServ.com^ mann@cse.unsw.edu.au^ melcher@unix.nets.com^ merlan@visa.com^ mwiik@brysonweb.com^ nehrlich@sfis.com^ philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu^ quest@inetarena.com^ roger@bayarea.net^ rthieme@thiemeworks.com^ sblack@library.berkeley.edu^ shassinger@dev.tivoli.com^ steven@iisl.co.uk^ sdhurley@ican.net^ StJude@aol.com^ tdav@wam.umd.edu^ tenev@digbody.dux.ru^ udhay@pobox.com^ viridian@access.spring.net^ WarrenE@aol.com^ whh@uclink4.berkeley.edu^

I think that you ought to open a new conference for this viridian list stuff. It's taking this one over.

Well we could unlink it from cultures, where it now lives.

From bruces@well.com Sat Nov 21 17:27:19 1998 Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 17:27:19 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00018: the Viridian Model Family X-UIDL: 3ffe4a80ccfc9ea6f689e63e3b526b0f Key concepts: propaganda, self-referentiality, model family Attention Conservation Notice: Propaganda theory, and pretty good theory, too. Lacks specifics. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm From: steffen@eskimo.com^^^** (Alex Steffen) Bruce: Big Mike is cool. I'm personally eager to have a microbe mascot gracing the many consumer products of which I have need. However, to be serious about propaganda, we need an Everyman-Hero figure, and, especially, a Model Family. I once did a college paper analyzing common propaganda motifs regarding lifestyle and culture. The "model family" is a major propaganda motif because it works. People are absolutely dying to be told what their lives ought to be like. This comment is not meant to asset my own moral or intellectual superiority. It's human nature. We learn by modeling the behavior of others, not just in childhood, but throughout our lives. In the absence of strong models in our direct experience, media supplies them. There's an interesting intensification of this process going on in contemporary culture, for three reasons. First, we have many more fundamental choices than our recent ancestors, in the cultural, career and consumer worlds. It's harder to make up our minds. Second, our systems of aesthetic judgement and moral instruction have broken down. Who sets the standards for artistic beauty? In 1900 you probably could have named ten people in charge of the job. Third, there is intense propaganda competition between companies providing lifestyle accoutrements. They compete so intensely to advertise their way into our worldview that the concept of a noncommercialized human life has disappeared completely. In short, people are starved for a vision of the good life. Viridianism could give this to them, flat out. However, we live in an age of irony. A frontal, 20th- century-style propaganda assault (like those used by the Nazis, Stalin and Henry Ford) won't work. We can't simply proclaim products to be cool. People have to be let in on the joke, allowed to realize that they are participating in a social mores change movement. What's cool about Viridian luxury is not just that it's more beautiful, fun and classy than the way that mere proles live. Not is it about the heady rush of self-love you get by being a good eco-citizen Earthling. Viridianism about understanding sustainable design, fashion trends, and propaganda as a participant as well as a consumer. You become both subject and observer, in a healthily ironic and self-referential way. So the Viridian Model Family, unlike the model family of the New Deal agricultural agitprop films, is not merely the symbolic vanguard of a better way of life. They understand how odd and amusing this concept must be. They crack jokes to the camera as we learn how to live our self-aware, hedonistic eco-lifestyle. We respond in real time and craft the script as we go. Alex Steffen (steffen@eskimo.com) (((bruces remarks: Point taken. So who are these people, and what do they look like? How do they feel, and what do they mean?)))

From bruces@well.com Tue Nov 24 11:55:28 1998 Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 11:55:28 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00019: Viridian Domains of X-UIDL: fb4db095c088336c75e3174e33235b90 Interest Key concepts: Viridian categories, Viridian internal politics, automoderating groupware, anarchy, symbols, Burning Man, Los Alamos National Laboratory Urban Security Project, disaster response, art projects Attention Conservation Notice: Mark Beam, who was the host for the first Viridian speech at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, is getting a few various matters off his chest here. Some knowledge of the San Francisco art scene might aid reader comprehension. >From infinite@beaming.com^* (Mark Beam) Links: http:www.burningman.com http://geont1.langov/urbansecurity.htm http://www.wired.com/news/technology/story/16077.html http://www.beaming.com Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm Mark Beam writes: ((and bruces comments in triple parentheses))): As the proud host for the formal physical launch of the Viridian Movement and the eloquent proclamation documented in Note 00001, I offer these first observations. Viridian postings should be categorized for future reference. Viridians with certain disciplinary expertise should gather items of wisdom within a particular domain. A disciple of economics, of energy, of networks, a minister of propaganda, etc., could supplement the ideas arising from the list by adding a more comprehensive approach.. Here design becomes crucial, political and dangerous. (((Absolutely, brother.))) Key junctures that link Viridians together could grow future self-organizing limbs. To do so without some form of human delegation may be possible, but would seem to require initial filtering, sophisticated object oriented databases and search engines. (((Even more absolutely! Bring on the all-wise automoderating robot! While you're at it, let's run it for public office.))) Disciples or ministers, recorders etc. would not entitled to any political capital within the movement, other than true Viridian currency == Viridian reputation capital. This top down approach would be balanced by having Viridians assigning emphasis/aesthetic guidance in the particular areas both in the formation of categories and in discovery by example (bottom-up). (((It sounds so plausible, poetic, and beautiful, doesn't it? ))) Regarding visually effective design principles criticized in Note 00005, I am reminded of Larry Harvey's two basic principles of spontaneous human organizationm established over years of experiments in the Nevada desert. 1) Distribute people randomly, and they will spontaneously generate some order, first by forming circles...not squares or triangles... but circles around a point of interest. 2) Points of interest (attention) are created by a) Movement of axis in space- i.e. hold something up high, (a mobile?), or b) Movement of space around axis- (i.e. a mobile?). What Viridian icon do we hold up high or put in motion? (((How about Larry Harvey himself? But wait a minute == I've actually met this "self-organizing anarchist" Larry Harvey, and as the Pope-Emperor of the Burning Man festival, Larry works harder at organization than anybody I've ever met.))) What does it mean to hold something up high, or to put something in motion in Viridian terms? What does this mean in other less networked, but high CO2 emitting countries? Our visual icon should have global appeal. Existing infrastructure to leverage: The Los Alamos National Laboratory has created the Urban Security Project, using centralized computer systems to help cities respond to earthquakes, chemical or biological attacks, and other unforeseen disasters. (((Now you're talking! We need to rent one of those Urban Security babies and put it in charge of the mailing list.))) The researchers are currently looking at what happens in these emergency situations to transportation, energy distribution, weather, infrastructure, water distribution, ecosystems, economy, geology and demographics. (((See, it's got the problem all broken-down into convenient Viridian categories already!))) The program is designed to help cities anticipate problems in their emergency response systems and make changes to improve their overall readiness. (((Security systems like this are of intense Viridian interest. What are "cities," if not the people in the cities? Systems of this sort should be promulgated worldwide and made publicly available as a matter of course. Every environmental hazard in one's own environment should be made visible to you at the click of a web button. Not only that, but you should be allowed an honest and immediate look at how they handle these problems in *other* cities.))) Finally, this reminds me of a concept for an art project I've developed. It consists of a Dow Jones-style tickertape machine, which scrolls genuine corporate symbols, followed by a different sort of symbolic tally...for instance,. down three trees (symbol for certain quantity of dead trees), up two solar powers (sun symbol). This scheme symbolizes the true economic measure of "growth" in terms of environmental destruction. Perhaps this could be Viridianized to reflect CO2 emissions/remissions. Mark Beam (infinite@beaming.com^*) "Where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon == a phenomenon of vision." J. CARSE

Are all the people on the list at fringeware here as well ?

No, Uday, I think they are spread around the country. Thanks for checking in, hope you check back!

From bruces@well.com Mon Nov 30 21:35:30 1998 Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:35:30 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00021: The World Is Becoming X-UIDL: 644167522b02ca5741290a1ca28b0c2f Uninsurable, Part 1 Key concepts: Weather violence, insurance costs Attention Conservation Notice: Grimly accurate, can cause feelings of despair; comes in multiple parts; is mostly about insurance, one of the world's dullest topics Links: http://www.munichre.com/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/warnings/waterworld Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm http://www.pcnet.com/~thallad/mike.htm The "Big Mike" contest will end in one week. Source: Associated Press wire service, Austin American Statesman page A7. Saturday, November 28, 1998 "World's Weather Losses Will Set Record This Year" "Much damage is human-inflicted, report says, citing deforestation as key factor" by Donna Abu-Nasr, Associated Press "WASHINGTON == Violent weather has cost the world a record $89 billion this year, more money than was lost from weather-related disasters in all of the 1980s, and researchers in a study released Friday blame human meddling for much of it. "Preliminary estimates put losses from storms, floods, droughts and fires for the first 11 months of the year 48 percent higher than the previous one-year record of more than $60 billion in 1996. "This year's damage was also far ahead of the $55 billion in losses for the entire decade of the 1980s. Even when adjusted for inflation, that decade's losses, at $82.7 billion, still fall short of the first 11 months of this year. "In addition to the material losses, the report said, the disasters have killed an estimated 32,000 people and displaced 300 million == more than the population of the United States. "The study is based on estimates from the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research group, and Munich Re, a reinsurer based in Frankfurt, Germany, that writes policies to protect insurance companies from the risk of massive claims that might put them out of business. "The report says a combination of deforestation and climate change has caused this year's most severe disasters, among them Hurricane Mitch, the flooding of China's Yangtze River and Bangladesh's most extensive flood of the century. (...) The most severe 1998 disasters listed in the report include Hurricane Mitch, the deadliest Atlantic storm in 200 years, which has caused more than 10,000 deaths in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, and caused damage estimated at $4 billion in Honduras and $1 billion in Nicaragua. (...) Central American nations have experienced some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, losing from 2 percent to 4 percent of their remaining forest cover each year, said the study. "The costliest disaster of 1998, according to the report, was the flooding of the Yangtze River in the summer. It killed more than 3,000 people, dislocated about 230 million people, and incurred $30 billion in losses. (...) "Figures include infrastructure losses and crops but not long-term effects such as increased health costs and environmental damage. Prices in 1998 dollars." Bruce Sterling remarks: This is, needless to say, a remarkably grim report. The year is not yet over, but the evil weather of 1998 has already caused more global havoc than was created in the entire 1980s. Worse yet, it's a fifty percent jump from a mere two years ago. The trend for two years hence, and ten years hence, is anything but reassuring. Still, it's pleasant to have some stark facts and figures on the subject of just how badly off we are. "A decade's worth of weather damage in a single year" -- that is a useful and provocative soundbite. This is not armageddon. We will not be suddenly rendered extinct because of our misdeeds with C02. Thirty- two thousand dead people are a remarkably modest number of dead, considering that the planet boasts about 6 billion people now. Even a country with the limited organizational resources of China lost a mere 3,000 lives when floods displaced a full 230,000,000. Even $89 billion dollars is a modest sum compared to the wealth destruction entailed in the Asian financial crisis. But flooding is expensive. Hence the concentrated interest of Munich Re, the German insurance group. Munich Re were first brought to my attention by David Light (dhlight@mcs.net^^^^^*). Munich Re, also known as Munchener Ruck, would seem to be a remarkably interesting enterprise, for an insurance firm. In the next Viridian Note, we will examine some of Munich Re's analytical tools, and the company's expert conclusions on the subject of global warming. Then we will speculate on what this means and how it feels. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

From bruces@well.com Wed Dec 2 21:39:25 1998 Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 21:39:25 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00022: The World Is Becoming X-UIDL: 74334706074459f5132b0d56c78f5e99 Uninsurable, Part 2 Key concepts: Weather violence, insurance costs Attention Conservation Notice: Highly speculative; is over 1,600 words long; is still about insurance, which is still one of the dullest topics in the world Links: http://www.munichre.com/ Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/viridian/logos.html http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm http://www.pcnet.com/~thallad/mike.htm As we were stating earlier in Viridian Note 00021, the German insurance company "Munich Re" is in the business of assessing weather violence. I'll let The Times of London address some of MunichRe's financial conclusions: Source: The Times of London, November 9, 1998 "Climate disaster map pinpoints 'no-go' areas for insurers By Nick Nuttall, Environment Correspondent in Buenos Aires "Vast areas of the world are becoming uninsurable as global warming triggers devastating and costly rises in sea levels, as well as droughts, floods and increasingly violent storms. "Experts fear that some nations, especially those in the Caribbean, parts of Asia and the Pacific, face greater economic hardship. They believe insurance cover, vital for attracting inward investment to develop tourist resorts and protect homes and businesses, will become prohibitively high. In some areas it may disappear entirely as insurers protect themselves from multibillion- pound claims. "The increasing concern (...) has been heightened by the first map to pinpoint regions where natural and man- made climate change will hit hardest. "The climate disaster map, which is circulating among the world's major insurance firms, has been compiled by scientists and researchers at Munich Re, one of the world's largest re-insurance companies. "Dr Anselm Smolka, of Munich Re, said the map, which couples the impacts of climatic events caused by El Nino with those predicted to result from more atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, was plotted using information from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and centres such as the Max Planck Institute. "Dr Julian Salt, a disaster assessment expert with the Loss Prevention Council, which advises the Association of British Insurers, said yesterday that the new research was 'concentrating the minds' of insurers worldwide. "'It shows where there is increased risk on top of all the natural hazards. We are fast approaching the situation where some parts of the world are becoming uninsurable,' he said. The map shows where rising sea levels and more frequent storms may swamp islands in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific and where reductions in rainfall, such as over the grain-growing areas of the US, can be expected. (...) "Dr Salt said that publicly insurers will reject suggestions that insurance may be removed or premiums will rise. Privately, however, these 'politically charged' options are being considered, he said. "He said that in countries such as the Maldives, vulnerable to increased storms and rising sea levels, global warming could affect tourism, the primary industry. "Andrew Dlugolecki, a key member of a UN Environment Programmes insurers' initiative, said there was an urgent need for new, imaginative ways of covering vulnerable regions and nations. "'I am quite certain that there are some areas which will be unprotectable and may disappear. A major problem is brewing,' he said." ********** Bruce Sterling remarks: I hope the august Times will forgive me for quoting their remarkable article at some length. We Viridians need not be overly concerned as to exactly how many billions of dollars are "lost." Financial projections are very soft and elastic, basically irrelevant to our interests. Furthermore, we don't know how quickly the seas will rise. Nobody does. Viridian central interests are different: what does this mean, and how will it feel? How will this experience change the twentieth century's outdated vision of human life on Earth? It would presumably help to have a good long look at the disaster maps. Since they are designed for insurance agents, they are almost certain to be ugly graphic disasters, but I've ordered one anyway. I'm eager for a personal view. For those who would like to join me, here is a Teutonically thorough price list, direct from Munich Re. "If you are interested in our publication 'World Map of Natural Hazards' we can provide you several products: "Special publication with catastrophe catalogue and folding map, Price DM 20 "Wall map (122 cm x 86 cm) with special publication, Price DM 50 "Globe of Natural Hazards (diameter 33 cm), plexiglass stand Price DM 250" Munich Reinsurance Company Geoscience Research Group (REF/Geo) 107 Koeniginstrasse, Munich, Germany D-80791 Munich Tel.: +49-89-3891-5292 Fax 1: +49-89-3891-75292 Fax 2: +49-89-3891-5696 (central) URL: http://www.MunichRe.com This plexiglass globe sounds like an especial Viridian darling. Imagine being the first on your block to impress your friends with your very own Unnatural Hazards Sphere! Let's try to understand how citizens of the 21st century will regard their situation, once they have been disabused of the 20th century's shibboleths. First, unlike us, they will fully and bluntly recognize that large areas of the planet are, in fact, uninsurable. They're either flooding incessantly from weather violence, or gently slipping underwater due to rising seas. Once this phenomenon is well under way, it will become a classic King Canute situation: a stark fact utterly impossible to disguise or talk away, no matter how many courtiers and spin doctors may stand behind the throne. Similarly, no amount of UN-mandated "new, imaginative ways of covering vulnerable regions and nations" is going to conjure away rising seawater. We might somehow jury- rig the insurance system to camouflage the depredations of the Greenhouse Effect. This is "perverse subsidy," and can only intensify losses in the long run. This is by no means a solution; it's akin to powdering over the little red veins of alcoholism so you can cruise the bars. Basically, the free market is telling us something very interesting in this MunichRe report. The free market is informing us that certain parts of the planet will no longer support free market activities. This planet is becoming unfit for investment. The market is too good for this world. Let's examine one scenario in some detail. Long before the waters seep in, the imperilled lands will be left to a subtle form of economic wreckage. It will no longer be financially possible for legitimate industries and governments to set up business there. But this doesn't mean these damp, dodgy areas will lack people. A good modern-day analog might be tidal- water Bangladesh. Flooding in Bangladesh in the 1970s produced a huge compassionate response; far worse flooding in 1998 produced a page-three status well behind the plight of China and Central America. They don't get much insurance in Bangladesh. No one will give them any. Nor do they get G-7 style development investment. They're there anyway. They are staying there. In this Bangladesh scenario, vast, swampy slums spread worldwide. They are monster ghettos and favelas, unspeakably septic, high-crime, squatter metropolises, created off-the-books. Some are old, abandoned seaside areas newly occupied by the poor and the disaffected; others are new, built from castoffs and driftwood. Since these marginal areas have no insurance and are periodically drenched, they lack street signs, plumbing, zoning, quarantines, health services, properly financed fire and police forces, and all the other blessings of proper urban organization. Interestingly, they are by no means restricted to the Third World. They can spring up on any continental margin where insurance has fled. Offshore barrier islands for instance; or half-wrecked seaside retirement communities; or the mildewed mansions of Martha's Vineyard. Many island governments become governments-in-exile. The people of Mauritius, Maldives and so on all stumble, as a climatic diaspora, through the 21st century. Without any false hope of a return to their drowned Jerusalem, they remain "nations" because no one wants to officially assimilate their refugee populations. So, in a nightmare of the Twilight of Sovereignty, they still clutch their ludicrous currencies, and their hand-me-down seat at the U.N. They still possess citizens, and constitutions, and flags, and their many solemn treaties and multilateral security arrangements, maybe even their national airline. They have bank accounts, maybe some Kyoto-style conscience money. But they have no homeland. They live in camps and on damp pilings. They have become The Uninsurable. I have my doubts about this scenario == not because it's implausible to me, but because it's *too* plausible. In many ways, this damp, cobbled-together, outlaw slum is the gold standard of the postmodern urban vision. It's perversely attractive to us, it gratifies a fin-de-siecle sensibility. It has a driftwood-Gothic charm, an I-told- you-so quality; it's a penance regime, full of nemesis and comeuppance. Postmodernity loves to dwell in the dishonored bones of the dead Modernist project. We prefer almost any humiliation to the severe mental challenge of building a new and original order all our own. In some strange sense, wrecked cities made of washed-up scrap are clearly what we *want.* The Burning Man festival looks rather like this; a dense, enthusiastic cluster of termite anarchists, drifting someplace, patching together their own little world, for an orgiastic three-day weekend. This scenario borrows the highly popular set design from Blade Runner and Mad Max. We twentieth-century types would all know how to behave there; we'd be trading our black leather jackets for black-market gasoline without ever missing a beat. People who were native-born in that situation would have very different feelings about it. Our next Note will try to envision the situation anew. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

From bruces@well.com Mon Dec 7 19:48:57 1998 Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 19:48:57 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00025 X-UIDL: 7e2174b69e51c1e8e6c74577abcb39fc Key concepts: energy policy, German Greens, Munich futurism, Soviet nuclear plants Attention Conservation Notice: It's about German politics. It might use terms such as "Forschungsgruppe Zukunftsfragen." Links: http://www.gruene.de/ Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/viridian/logos.html http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm http://www.pcnet.com/~thallad/mike.htm http://www.golden.net/~eli/viridian/ http://ucsub.colorado.edu/~smcginni/big-mike/big-mike.html and http://www.karmanaut.com/viridian/big.mike/ Attention warning: 3D "Big Mike" animation may confuse some browsers. From: hoechst.forum@lrz.uni-muenchen.de* (Doug Merrill) Doug Merrill remarks: How Viridian are the German Greens? The short answer is, unfortunately, not very. The German Greens, while certainly enjoying a taste of power, and providing Europe with its only interesting foreign minister, are coming face to face with real power, as your remarks on the non-phaseout of Swedish nuclear plants point out (Note 00020). So far, real power is winning. Real power is winning in some cases because it represents responsibility, common sense and the will of the people. Example: keeping Germany in NATO. Real power also wins where it merely represents common sense and the will of the people. Example: not making gasoline in Germany cost three times as much as any other country in Europe. And in some cases, real power is winning from the will of the people alone. Example: no speed limits on the autobahn. One of the reasons that the Greens are not very Viridian is that large chunks of them are still quite technophobic. At the grass roots level, many German Greens believe that technology is inherently dehumanizing, and they pretend that they can just say 'nein danke' to the whole thing. Greens are good at picket signs, and they're getting better at parliaments, but they're not going to invent anything that changes the world. Furthermore, after so many years in opposition, they're much better at stopping things than advancing them. A Viridian era needs more. There are, however, some good signs. The Greens are showing more discipline than their industrial-era coalition partners. The Greens are willing to take on sacred cows. And the Greens are showing more signs of learning than the other parties. All of these traits give them Viridian potential. At the level of specific policies, however, expect progress to be slow. Changing a third of Germany's energy sources in eight years is ambitious, headline-grabbing, and almost certainly impossible. This is a country that took the better part of ten years to extend permissible shopping hours by ninety minutes. Germany has just significantly modified its citizenship laws for the first time since a Kaiser ruled in Berlin. Besides, the only thing Germany would replace nuclear power with right now is more carbon-based fuel. (It's one thing for the Swedes to buy wind power from the Danes; it's quite another trying to run the world's third largest economy on windmills.) Another test of Green strength would be phasing out subsidies to coal miners. German taxpayers support a tidy living for German miners, paying lots of marks to keep up an industry that's both loss-making and polluting. But miners are heroes to social democrats, so the Greens probably lose this one as well. Germany will probably introduce some form of 'eco- tax' this coming year, probably a consumption tax on fuels somewhat like the BTU tax that died such a painful death in the US. An eco-tax has become fashionable in the very German duty- and guilt-ridden sense. It's not attractive, it's simply understood in the orthodoxy that this is something you have to do. This may be politically effective, but I find it unappealing. (I'm also already paying 45% taxes on a researcher's salary, so the notion of any further taxation offends me terribly.) Guilt doesn't strike me as very Viridian. Those are the key points. I'll see if I can get a digital picture of Munich Re for you, to go along with those sexy articles on insurance. best, Doug Merrill Research Group on the Global Future Center for Applied Policy Research University of Munich hoechst.forum@lrz.uni-muenchen.de Bruce Sterling remarks: How very useful and interesting. Thank you very much. Now, for further insight on the European energy policy scene, we quote a recent installment of the column "Europe This Week" by veteran British journalist Martin Walker. Source: Manchester Guardian Weekly. November 29, 1998, page 6. "To begin with the horror stories: the $900 million earmarked by the EU for repairing and making safe the nuclear power plants of the old Soviet Bloc has been either wasted, lost, defrauded or left unspent. 'It is particularly worrying that, at the end of 1997, it was not possible to judge whether there had been any actual progress in terms of nuclear safety,' Bernhard Friedmann, president of the Court of Auditors, told the European Parliament. "The nuclear scandal was simply the most chilling of a series of accounting disasters and bungles afflicting every aspect of Europe's finances. It was also the most shaming, because the EU sought and won the agreement of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations to manage the international community's rescue efforts for the 65 sick and dangerous Soviet nuclear power plants. Trusted by its allies and Russians alike, the EU bungled the job."

From bruces@well.com Sat Dec 12 12:17:16 1998 Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 12:17:16 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00028: Viridian Gardening X-UIDL: ca936c2890a92a1b6459f50ec175df9f Key concepts: Gardens; aging populations; Viridian Inactivism; horticulture; allotment movement; urban decay; xeriscaping Attention Conservation Notice: The term "Gardening" may be too dull to engage anyone's interests. Presumptuous and patronising assumptions regarding the tastes of the elderly. Elements of fiddling while Rome burns. Links: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/xpz05/ http://www.the-hastings.demon.co.uk/herenow/here20/5.html http://www.slug-sf.org/ http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/sp'96/newsp.htm#G15.7.96 Danny O'Brien remarks: Gardening is an obvious Viridian pursuit. It's ephemeral; it is a labour-intensive act that somehow manages to convince its practicers that they are relaxing; and anyone who has lovingly tended a compost heap has truly grasped the principle of "Embrace Decay." For sundry reasons, gardening is also a massive attention sink for retirees. Could gardening be tuned even further to comply with Viridian principles? The ALLOTMENT MOVEMENT in the UK is a political tradition dating back to the enclosure acts of the 19th century. After protests by the suffering working class, concerned politicians allocated small patches of land that could be rented cheaply by dispossessed commoners. These smallholdings still exist today == they're generally hidden away in urban areas, are around 30- 300 square yards per plot, and are supplied with water and supplies for growing foodstuffs. They've recently enjoyed a boom that tracks the ageing of the British population. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/close/xpz05/ http://www.the-hastings.demon.co.uk/herenow/here20/5.html (good Viridian URL, that) Encouraging gardening to spill out from the private gardens of the gated aged, and into small micro-plots scattered across urban environments, would provide a number of advantages: * Conspicuous conservation * Personal stewardship of public space, which looks to be a Viridian meme * Prevents the isolation of the affluent, powerful older age groups * Useful as a reinforcer of climate indicators: a sparse network of small plots, provided with enough amateur sensors (human eyes and ears, even), would provide a useful set of local pollution sensors as well as re-enforcing climate change indicators to its patrons. As it is, both the allotment movement and the nearest equivalent I can discover in the US, the Urban Gardening movement (http://www.slug-sf.org/), suffer from one major limitation. They're both, currently, chokingly dull. The whole topic stinks of granola. May I suggest an investigation into the possibilities of a mutated Allotment movement: namely, Guerrilla Gardening (alternate titles: Biosquatting, Random Acts of Forestation). This would involve small groups of Viridian non-activists selecting a disused location, and targetting it as their "allotment." The organisation of the gardeners would be as a paramilitary cell: individual members of the cell would not necessarily know the identities of other members, nor how many plots were in existence. Tasks would be minimal: work would be shared between enough inactivists for it to demand little, and degrade gracefully if apathy killed off a chunk of the participants. All they would see is that, for minimal involvement, an area of the public landscape would go from a barren lot to blooming greenery. And, of course, with some suitable appearance of "Big Mike," the area would also become an advertisement for the Viridian movement. The unofficial tending of a public space may well lend itself to decentralised management, with limited involvement by the forces of law-enforcement, while nonetheless carrying the cachet of an illicit prank. ********************************* Why "Guerrilla Gardening" is Not Viridian ********************************* The gardening instinct among senior citizens is already super-served by their own fine gardens. "Guerrilla" element unashamedly stolen from youth movements (http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/sp'96/newsp.htm#G15.7.96). The tacit encouragement of unrestricted bioengineering may be contrary to Viridian precepts. Recreational fiddling with fringes of urban ecology may be poor use of time and attention. The revitalisation of the urban center is a "problem" that may have already bottomed-out in developed countries. Developing countries may lack the necessary affluent, aged, middle class. It might be better to explore other potential horticultural extensions. (((Bruce Sterling remarks: I concur that gardening sounds mighty dull, but trying to jazz it up by making gardening illegal merely attracts the kind of sad yahoo who is reflexively fascinated by anything illegal. If anyone is going to form militarized cells and throw weed seeds around, it ought to be *cops and soldiers.* Cops in particular frequently find themselves tagging shooting victims in vacant urban lots. If they had a packet of mixed local wildflower seeds on their utility belt along with the baton and pepper-gas, they could do a lot of good over a multi-year period. (((There is a deeper Viridian aesthetic issue here. In America in particular, most people have no idea what the native vegetation of their area looks like. Instead, they try desperately to re-create the rolled lawns of Britain on the soil of an alien continent, despite the grim fact that this involves huge energy-consuming subsidies of fertilizer, water, notoriously polluting lawnmower engines, and so forth. This highly counterproductive activity really should be made illegal. (((Of course, if you simply abandon your American lawn through complete inactivism, you will find it taken over by alien invader weed species, most of which are of Asian and European origin. These species may be even more noxious than the original monocultured lawn. But xeriscape groups are flourishing among the wealthy-aged demographic, and it is in fact still possible to restore whatever small landscape you possess to a tamer mimicry of the original pre-Colombian landscape (minus the many wild species that sting, scratch and stink). A pocket of biodiversity soon sets in. You find the place swarming with butterflies, beetles, small birds and so forth. Replacing fuel-supported, bland monoculture with colorful, insect-rich, inactivist biodiversity is an intrinsically laudable act. We certainly must declare this activity 'very Viridian.' Weirdly, in many urban areas, natural xeriscaping is, in fact, illegal. Imagine the cachet and the illicit thrill! (((Unfortunately, given trends in climate change, natural xeriscaping may become impossible. Colorful, exquisitely adapted, original native plants will no longer be able to thrive in their original biomes, because they'll die from the Greenhouse heat. Once can then imagine a future gardening movement, probably government-mandated, that methodically replants all urban areas with natural species that had formerly existed *many hundreds of miles to the south.* Farfetched? People are harvesting bananas in Austin this winter.))) Danny O'Brien (danny@spesh.com*)

From bruces@well.com Mon Dec 14 22:59:27 1998 Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 22:59:27 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00029: The Interfund X-UIDL: f29b7f334149a7b5bbd38b60a646d8fe Key concepts: art movements, Internet, reputation economics, arts grants, Europe, Interfund Attention Conservation Notice: It's not about Viridians. It's about a group of European digital artists with a strange entrepreneurial scheme. Writers' original language not English. Written in postmodernese. Of interest mostly to net.organizational specialists. There's a manifesto tacked on at the end. Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ (((Parenthetical comments by bruces@well.com))) Source: Syndicate list; Xchange list; nettime list; Rasa Smite Diana McCarty Eric Kluitenberg [Interfund] - Create Your Own Solutions Interfund meeting @ Xchange Unlimited, Riga November 29, 1998. During the Xchange Unlimited Baltic New Media Culture Festival in Riga, a meeting was held to discuss the creation of the Interfund. The participants were Diana McCarty, Rasa Smite, Manu Luksch, Pit Schultz, Eric Kluitenberg, and others. * What is the Interfund? The Interfund does not actually exist yet. (((Beta pre-release! I love it already!))) The Interfund should be many things at the same time, a self funding project, a tool to create open spaces for sovereign experimentation in the digital networks. Neither a network nor a community, it should be a means for collaboration and exchange. (((Fabulous! It sounds divine!))) The Interfund was envisioned in Riga as a co-operative, decentralised, non-located, virtual but real, self-support structure for small and independent initiatives in the field of culture and digital media. (((Sheer poetry! I couldn't have said this better myself!))) What follows is a summary of the ideas that were discussed and the problems raised in connection with the possible shape of the Interfund. (((Uh-oh...))) First of all, the Interfund is an idea to create better ways to access funding and create funding possibilities of itself. The Interfund can also act as a redistributor of financial resources from the affluent enclaves to the impecunious. Funding and financing, however, is only one of the tools the Interfund will employ to achieve its aims. (((Wait a minute -- you're giving away *free money* in your movement, and you expect this to be just *one* of your problems?))) The Interfund should rather act as a "Resource Pool", shared by each of its members. These resources encompass a wide range of tools: * knowledge & know-how * skills (a.o. translations in local languages) * software * open source development * access to servers, especially for streaming media in the net * reserving bandwidth and protocols (for example the registration for web multicasting, domain names, etc.) * support in dealing with official structures; = finding appropriate funding for projects = visa requirements = official letters of support, both in English and the local language = official invitations = official endorsements; * access to surveys and information sources about activities in the field of culture and digital media. One practical way in which actual funding might work is that the Interfund creates its own capital to give micro-funding to individual projects. The organiser can then claim that the project in question is supported financially by the Interfund (complete with a letter of acceptance by the "board" of the fund). Funding may be as little as US$ 10 for a project, but can help to create interest from official institutions and structures. (((A really clever idea here. They want to game the international art world by using a tiny amount of actual capital to create impressive, net-based, Interfund-conveyed, reputation capital. "Hi, I'm from Riga and I was sent here by Interfund! Look at this gold-plated, 256-color *Letter of Acceptance!*" "Really?! Wow! Let me see what the conference can do for you in the way of picking up that hotel tab!"))) Moreover the actual amount of funding by the Interfund need not be specified in all cases. (((The tactic's even more effective when you boldly lie about it!))) The possibilities for acquiring donations (not sponsorship) to extend the financial basis of the Interfund will be an area of attention. (((Boy, I bet it will! Attention galore! We call that stuff "accounting" here in the USA.... So, are you bold pirates taking Yankee funds? The Pope-Emperor is totally down with your daring scheme! I got one of our goofy new 20- dollar bills for you, right here!))) (...) (((considerable pious Euro arts/culture jabber deleted))) * Form: Though the Interfund will not have a fixed physical location, it should become a real virtual organisation (it is not a simulation). For this purpose a letterhead and design for the Interfund will be developed, as well as a web-site, e-mail address, a logo.... and... (a local Latvian speciality) an official Interfund stamp. (((Why not a *mascot?* We Viridians got a mascot! And our own typography! The *Latvian stamp,* though, we envy that more than we can say....))) All graphical elements will be made down-loadable from the Interfund site for its members (PDF files). The Interfund will be run as a strictly virtual office (a decentralised centre). Possible legal forms and their implications for establishing the Interfund as an international state-less entity are currently investigated. Should it become a registered society, a charity, a foundation, or yet something else? (...) By dealing with official structures, the Interfund is an attempt to prevent artists'-run and independent initiatives from becoming institutionalised themselves. It should act as an effective bureaucracy protection shield. The emphasis of the Interfund will lie on horizontal co- operation, which is anti-hierarchical and fundamentally decentralised. Nonetheless the question cannot be escaped who will take responsibility for making the structure work, co- ordinate activities, deal with requests, etc. (who is doing what?). (((I know the answer, I know! Try theocratic feudalism!))) This division of responsibilities should be worked out. The Interfund will have to be multi-nodal. (((A lovely phrase, and an obvious recipe for instant nightmare.))) To develop the Interfund as a democratic structure, a voting system will have to be considered, for instance when accepting individuals to the "board" of the Interfund. The membership of this board would then be temporary and rotating between members. (((That sure sounds like instant bureaucracy to me, but what do I know -- I'm just a lonely absolute dictator.))) The Interfund should always be open to new members. However, every new member has to commit him- or her-self to contributing to the shared pool of resources in some way, by donating skills, knowledge, non-propriety software, financial means if possible, and a willingness to multilateral co- operation. ((("From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" -- but what is the *medium of exchange* between all these skill sets? You're trying to set up a barter economy with no gold standard.))) These issues of membership, representation and expertise have to be clarified. (((Yes they do. Obviously. Good luck getting that done before 2075.))) * Actions: * Contacts will be established to other cultural activists in the new media scene, via networks such as Xchange, Syndicate, Rhizome, , etc. * In the local Nordic/Baltic context, where this initiative was discussed, connections will be established to existing and emerging cultural networks in the region (BIN, PCC, Nordic Arts Council, etc.), and other parties who share similar or related interests (a.o. the EFF). (((This might actually work if you got some kindly Scandinavian government to give you some start-up money. The Swedes, for instance == they're probably no better at closing arts councils than they are at closing nuclear power plants.))) * For the Next 5 Minutes conference, March 12-14, in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, a meeting will be prepared to lay the foundation for the Interfund. (((Another excellent reason to visit Holland before it vanishes underwater. I certainly hope to hear more about Interfund; despite my skepticism, I have the friendliest feelings about this idea, and would love to see it, somehow, against all odds, actually work.))) Contact: Rasa Smite Diana McCarty Eric Kluitenberg (((And now for a good-old-fashioned Interfund arts manifesto:))) The Interfund initiators finally wish to make the following claims: * Work of artists and independent cultural initiatives in the field of digital media, including innovative technical experimentation, should be considered as valuable in and of itself. This work should not be supported solely if it fits within an established policy framework (like social innovation, employment, etc..). (((Art pour l'art! You betcha! We Viridians want to see *science* and *engineering* work like that!))) * Technology should be seen as an integral part of contemporary culture. (((Couldn't agree with you more!))) * The Interfund demands less politicisation of culture. What independent new media culture needs is support, not political rhetorics or questionable historical narratives. (((Right on! Let's start a committee to make sure art's not politicized, and to weed out all the historical narratives that are questionable!))) * No competitions. (((Wimps!))) * Create your own solutions. (((We'll do our best, and do let us know if you find any of your own!))) Thank you very much for your attention. [*The Interfund*] (under construction)

From bruces@well.com Wed Dec 16 15:19:37 1998 Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 15:19:37 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00030: The View From Ecotopia X-UIDL: e5c06c0962b15a07fe19ed8e2abbca0a Key concepts: Weather violence, clean energy, industrial policy, Washington State, media coverage Attention Conservation Notice: It's about regional American politics and state-centered industrial policy. Grim assessment, can cause feelings of despair. Direct from Wonkville. Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ Sources: Seattle Times, Thursday, December 3, 1998; patmazza@teleport.com^^^* (Patrick Mazza) Patrick Mazza is senior writer-researcher for Atmosphere Alliance, an environmental/industrial policy group based in Olympia, Washington. The book NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, by journalist and urban theorist Joel Garreau, once described Mr. Mazza's area of the continent as "Ecotopia." Green political sentiment is powerful in the Pacific Northwest, and better yet, they have big, sophisticated, cybernetic industries that aren't tied at the wrists and ankles to smokestacks. Mr. Mazza has some interesting insights and approaches to offer us. (((Parenthetical comments by bruces@well.com.))) Patrick Mazza remarks: The European insurance companies have been out in front on climate change, while we have not heard much from U.S. companies. Reason? Federal flood insurance. Here, we socialize the losses, insure the uninsurable, so they can build again on their floodplains. ((("America: More Socialist Than Europe." Call the newspapers.))) Here, in the heart of the problem, the USA, the source of 1/4 of the world's greenhouse gases, our wealth masks the consequences. The feedback loop does not connect. It does in places such as Bangladesh and Central America, where the perception that this is a stable, safe world is long gone, if it ever was there in the first place. But it is not the perceptions of those people that count. It is the perceptions of the people here, in the insulated rich world. (((Well put, though it's not our "perceptions" that are emitting the carbon dioxide. Mostly, it's our wall-plugs and gas pedals.))) So what will break the spell? Perhaps an Andrew, Hugo, Mitch and Camille hitting the US mainland in one year. Perhaps a several year drought in the Midwest that, as it did in the late '80s, reduces US grain production below consumption. Grain reserves around 1995 were at a record low, and accelerating global population keeps pressuring them. (((Last time the carbon-dioxide spell was broken was during the Great Depression, when there was a sustained dip in CO2 emissions because everybody was broke and in the streets. If we are enduring biblical catastrophes and famines of the kind you are suggesting here, we're not going to be sustaining today's booming consumer economy. That will be over. We'll be living in a post-catastrophe emergency regime. Paradise for eco-regulators maybe, but no picnic for the rest of us.))) The new stats for the 97-98 El Nino are $33 billion in losses (something like 1.3 percent of Gross World Product), 20,000 deaths, 120,000 injuries and 5 million displaced. It caused apocalyptic fires in Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Florida, droughts and killer heat waves in Texas and Africa, monstrous flooding in Peru. Sometimes in the media reports the El Nino connection was made. Sometimes it wasn't. But only rarely was the possible connection between El Nino and global warming drawn. There is a crucial disconnect, a place the feedback loop is being broken. The media holds a critical responsibility for alerting the public to the connection between the weather disruptions it reports and the probable connection of the overall pattern to greenhouse gas emissions. It is failing. A movement of artists and communicators must fill that gap. (((This connection isn't hard to find in the media. It's all over the place (though I can't help but notice that the various media-cited 1998 catastrophe statistics vary by whole orders of magnitude). I suspect that the tactics of the GCC will shift soon, from their current bland denial of global warming, to the vigorous assertion that global warming is real and is *good for us.* Farfetched? Wait and see. (((Speaking as an "artist and communicator," I would like to take this moment to formally declare myself "the media." We've all got modems, there's a new century at hand, so let's put our cards on the table and all be "media" from now on. Every attack I've ever seen against "the media" involves people who are already "media" by any sane definition, and who are anxious to seize more attention and bandwidth at the expense of rival users of "media." Louche, irresponsible, scandal-hungry, trivial, stumbling blindly toward catastrophe, firmly in the pockets of corporate interests == that's not "the media", that's an honest portrait of global humanity.))) (((Mr. Mazza has also seen fit to favor us with a copy of his recent op-ed piece in the *Seattle Times,* which is a swell piece of rhetorical work, even though Mr. Mazza is himself, apparently, not "media." Some excerpts follow.))) Washington, D.C., is demonstrating it's not up to seriously addressing global warming. But states are beginning to fill the leadership vacuum by seizing the tremendous economic opportunities of the coming clean- energy revolution. The U.S. fossil fuel industry and its allies depict serious emissions reductions as economically disastrous. Precisely the opposite is true. Converting the energy system, now the major greenhouse gas source, to climate- friendly energy is one of the great economic opportunities of the 21st century. (((I can only agree. It's got to happen one way or the other == the only question is how gray and smelly the sky gets, first.))) Even now, solar and wind are the world's fastest- growing energy sources, each growing over 25 percent annually. Increased production is generating economies of scale that lower prices and enlarge the market, such as has occurred with computer chips. Shell researchers conservatively project clean sources could supply half the world's energy by 2050. The key issue is whether clean energy will ramp up fast enough to stave off global warming. (((Absolutely, man! Ramp up faster! Let's hear it for those righteous fellow-travellers at Shell (http://www.shell.com)!))) This is why public support is crucial. (((Huh? Why bring the public into this? You just admitted that the US government is utterly hopeless.))) Driven by national security concerns, onetime infant aerospace and computer industries were built into giants by military and space programs. Climatic disruption is as genuine a security threat as we've ever faced. Clean energy is our frontline defense, and should gain the same kind of boost. (((Rather than re-routing the Pentagon's Cold War money into the pockets of postindustrial Greens, wouldn't it be simpler for you to just *join the army?* After all, if we hit the wall with a genuine eco-catastrophe, you'll have plenty of company in uniform. We'll all be drafted, and heaving sandbags at the angry rising foam.))) The Europeans and Japanese are nurturing their clean- energy firms. (((Now this rhetorical tactic could *work.* "We must close the solar-panel gap with the Germans!" Cold War II, here we come! War is the health of the state, not to mention the health of Boeing and General Dynamics.))) California is spending one-half billion dollars on its clean-energy companies. Washington (((state))) also has the stuff to be a global contender. (((Don't feel badly, Europeans; we'll pick a fight with California, if we have to!))) The state is already a budding clean-energy Silicon Valley boasting hundreds of companies grossing nearly $1 billion annually. We are the world production center for the electronic systems that all solar panels need to feed electricity into homes and power grids. At its Vancouver, Wash., plant, Siemens, the world's top solar company, refines the silicon from which it makes all its solar cells. Applied Power Corporation of Lacey is a finalist to build the world's largest solar power plant. (((Why not cut the government entirely out of the feedback loop, and just buy stock in Siemens, Applied Power, and Shell? Let's make friends with their on-staff industrial designers. Let's ask them to design something sexier.))) Washington's substantial clean-energy industry has huge potential for cross-fertilization with its world- leading high-tech firms. Asia, our primary trade partner, represents the largest potential new clean-energy market. As the industry grows, solar energy equipment could easily join apples, airliners and software as signature Washington products. But to secure our position, we need five elements of public support: * A clean energy investment fund - to match California's - created by a surcharge on electricity shipped through power lines; * Economic-development priority given to clean-energy firms; * A clean-energy R&D initiative by the state's public and private institutions; * High-visibility clean-energy equipment purchases by government; * Direct cash assistance for private clean-energy equipment purchases. (((If it were up to me, I'd kick the props out from under the carbon industry's subsidies *before* I tried to build new subsidies for solar. This is where you find the missing element in this article: genuine market-demand for renewable energy. It may be politically easier to ask for a new little solar pork-barrel than it is to demolish a gigantic, time-honored carbon one. It badly needs to be done,though, and would save us a lot of money. But even German Greens fear the coal-miners.))) We must aggressively shift our public policies to favor clean energy. With so little leadership coming from Washington, D.C., it is time for this Washington to lead the clean-energy revolution that is the only hope for avoiding a disastrous disruption of the world's climate. (((The clean-energy revolution will never happen if it's "the only hope." It has to happen because it's *attractive.* It smells better. It tastes better. It's more romantic, it's sexier. It's gizmos are cooler and more sophisticated than big, crude, greasy gizmos. It doesn't kill you stone-dead if you turn it on and sit inside its garage for half-an-hour. It's *prettier.* It is an artifact of a more advanced, more beautiful world. Dare I say it? It's Progress.))) Patrick Mazza (patmazza@teleport.com^^^*)

From bruces@well.com Thu Dec 17 16:41:16 1998 Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:41:16 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00031: Self-destructive Jungles X-UIDL: 40cc4519cfe3966095137656592114f2 Key concepts: drought, dying forests, burning forests, El Nino, CO2 load in biosphere, Chiapas Smoke Plume Attention Conservation Notice: Confuses the issue. Oxymoronic. Paradoxical. Terrifying. Hopefully, rather farfetched. Links: http://www.goes.noaa.gov/mexicofires.html http://pooh.esrin.esa.it:8080/ew/mexico.htm Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html Sources: Hanqin Tian, NATURE magazine (http://www.nature.com); Article by Joseph B. Verrengia, Associated Press Austin American Statesman, Dec. 17, 1998 "Forests add greenhouse gases during El Nino, scientists say" By Joseph B. Verrengia "Instead of inhaling extra carbon dioxide, Brazil's rain forest does the opposite in an El Nino year, exhaling millions of tons of the heat-trapping gas and potentially adding to global warming, scientists say. "The rain forest, under normal conditions, acts as the 'lungs' of the planet. Its thousands of square miles of trees release oxygen and absorb as much as 700 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. "But when global climate conditions are scrambled by El Nino and the rain forest becomes parched, scientists from the Woods Hole Research Laboratory in Massachusetts determined, the Amazon Basin produces as much as 200 million tons of excess carbon dioxide a year. The calculation by Hanqin Tian and others are published in today's issue of the journal NATURE." (...) "In the Amazon, it (((El Nino))) causes severe droughts. Under such drought stress, the rain forest can't adequately photosynthesize and store carbon dioxide, Tian said." (((This grim discovery makes perfect sense, once you think about it. No water, no photosynthesis. No rain, no green. Simple as that. And what does the Amazon jungle do then? It coughs up a couple of hundred million tons. (((So much for the divine wisdom of Mother Nature. Could it be that Gaia is even more wacky and shortsighted than we are? Is she blindly willing to choke on her own spew just like the G-7 Advanced Industrial Nations? Well, why not? All the inhabitants of the biosphere have a perfect moral right to pitch right in and screw things up with us hominids. (((Upon digesting this appalling news, I suppose we could swiftly muster the Kevin Kelly Memorial Bulldozer Brigade (see Viridian Note 00024) and dash out there to saw the jungle down before it does us even more harm than Exxon-Mobil. But (a) we'll lose the benefit we get if we ever get another year that isn't an El Nino, (b) we probably need the oxygen even more urgently than we don't need the carbon dioxide, and (c) we needn't bother, because a parched rain forest will spontaneously *burn.* Combustion is when forests really spew the soot, and they do themselves a level of harm that lumberjacks can only envy. This blazing activity does not require any surprise discoveries by Woods Hole, and in fact it couldn't be more obvious, as the links in this Note suggest. (((These links, http://www.goes.noaa.gov/mexicofires.html http://pooh.esrin.esa.it:8080/ew/mexico.htm show writhing Mexican jungle smoke covering my home town, as revealed by both American and European satellite sensors. I am looking for the *prettiest* and *most graphically compelling* online picture of the 1998 Chiapas smoke plume. This is defininitely one of those core Viridian graphic documents that we Viridians need to be meditating upon, in our ivied, lingering, contemplative fashion. Please send me the address of the "most Viridian-looking" plume map or photo you can find on the web, and you will receive a chevron. (((What does this news mean? Well, perhaps nothing much; it may be news to us humans, but El Nino is not an entirely new phenomenon, and presumably Brazil has been belching up natural carbon for millennia. But not, perhaps, with today's unprecedented levels of psychotic enthusiasm, where vast swathes of dying jungle might conceivably auto-alter the planet climate, in a shrieking biofeedback, in a dysfunctional Gaian auto-da-fe'. Let's just bookmark this one as a small but distinct possibility: we could cease all human C02 emission tomorrow, and still find ourselves forced to spend the next thousand years trying to keep Mother Nature from ripping her hair out and immolating herself.)))

From bruces@well.com Sat Dec 19 10:37:36 1998 Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 10:37:36 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00032: The Viridian Refueling X-UIDL: 559e2642910641265bde1e194cecc5cd Project Key concepts: fuel cells, Proton Exchange Membranes, decentralized energy networks Attention Conservation Notice: Of interest mostly to technical specialists. Written in engineering jargon. Contains even more black humor than Note 00031. Links: http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V- Notes/ViridianNote00010.html http://www.plugpower.com/ http://www.gate.net/~h2_ep/10kw_pem.htm http://www.anl.gov:80/OPA/news95/news950808.html http://mhv.net/~hfcletter/letter/december98/feature.html Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html From: eric@sac.net* (Eric Hughes) In Viridian Note 00010, Jim Thompson wrote about fuel cells. Here's his two-sentence description: "Basically, a fuel cell is like a battery where you put in some low-grade hydrocarbon (ethanol, methanol, kerosene, LP Gas, Natural Gas, diesel, methane). You get DC power out, with pure water and heat as the by-products." So far, so good. But then I wondered. Carbon goes in, but no carbon seems to come out of the cell. Something's missing. Here are some results of my looking around for it. 1) The Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cell uses hydrogen (or hydrogen rich gas) as a primary fuel. There's no carbon in, so no carbon out. That's good, but there's no hydrogen fuel infrastructure today. 2) More practical fuel cell packages (Plug Power's for instance) generate hydrogen by converting it from a hydrocarbon fuel. These conversion devices are generally called "fuel reformers." Unfortunately, fuel reformers do pollute. They appear to pollute in a less noxious way than combustion pollutes, but they still make carbon dioxide. These points are not at all obvious on websites attempting to sell fuel cells. A cell with a fuel reformer is a combustion process after all. Combustion in the presence of a catalyst is cleaner than combustion inside an engine cylinder, but in terms of carbon loading of the atmosphere, it's identical. The eventual output is oxides of carbon. And what about possible nitrogen oxide emissions? And what about impurities in the fuel? You can bet that the CO -> CO2 converter is not 100% efficient; and carbon monoxide happens to be a potent greenhouse gas. Answers are by no means easy to find in a first-pass investigation of various fuel-cell websites. Here are some tentative conclusions. (1) Until we somehow build a hydrogen infrastructure, fuel cells will be a marginal improvement on internal combustion. However, fuel cells might finesse the system- bootstrap problem toward a true hydrogen economy, by creating an installed base of hydrogen demand, which also works on fossil hydrocarbons. Once the fossil fuels go, someone can figure out better sources of hydrogen supply. (2) Spreading out energy generation through use of fuel cells is a big systemic win. It greatly reduces energy distribution cost and lost efficiency. Fuel cells may have certain long-term problems, but they spread the network's power away from the center, and toward distributed endpoints. This is good. We can make the analogy: new power is to old power, as internet is to telephone. In my self-appointed capacity as pro tem. Viridian Minister of Science (duration: 1 message), I now suggest the possible development of a Viridian Fuel Reformer. This device would have the following characteristics. Like oxidizing fuel reformers, the Viridian Fuel Reformer will accept low grade hydrocarbon inputs, typically biomass. However, the VFR does not produce carbon dioxide gas. Catalytic oxidation reformers strip hydrogen ions (i.e. protons) off carbon by binding the carbon to oxygen. The Viridian Fuel Reformer will strip off hydrogen by binding carbon atoms *to each other.* Now this requires energy, so the fuel conversion ratio for Viridian converters will be lower. We admit this problem; but we have a higher aim. When you bind two hydrocarbon chains to each other, a hydrogen atom and a single longer hydrocarbon results. This is the reverse of the standard "cracking" reactions used in oil refineries. The Viridian Fuel Reformer is a relentless fuel *fossilizer.* The Stage One VFR outputs heavy hydrocarbons and leftover fuel impurities. In other words, it exudes a heavy, viscous black gunk that looks and acts very much like crude oil. The Stage Two VFR strips even more hydrogen from this goo, and leaves big dirty lumps of congealed carbon, in a solid form much like coal. In the fine tradition of satirical mimicry, the future Viridian Hydrogen Economy will dispose of its waste products by *dumping them back into the earth.* Waste "oil" will be carefully pumped into many convenient underground reservoirs, already formed by the pumping out of natural oil. Waste "coal" will be used as landfill for strip mines, and in the cautious shoring up of abandoned mine shafts. The end result of the Viridian Fuel Cell System is the restocking of the earth's fossil fuel supply. In this way, we not only save our atmosphere, but we wisely prepare our species for a possible complete breakdown of high-tech civilization. A store of carbon- rich re-fossilized fuel is a storehouse of wealth, that can be easily tapped to re-develop the knowledge and industrial bases of society, after some unfortunate collapse and a dark age. We may have already carried our short-sighted energy policies past the point of no return. Through the Viridian Refueling Project, however, we gracefully acknowledge our own impotence and incompetence in the face of Nemesis. The VRP is a serious and solemn enterprise. It is a funeral preparation for our collapsing industrial society, a sepulchral storehouse to accompany modern humanity into the bosom of the Earth, a tomb offering for distant generations. A constant memento mori for industrial hubris, it is a wellspring of enduring Viridian satisfaction. (((Ladies and gentlemen: the one, the only, Eric Hughes ))) Eric Hughes (eric@sac.net)

From bruces@well.com Mon Dec 21 21:04:38 1998 Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 21:04:38 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00033: Viridian Aesthetics: Andy X-UIDL: d5a3d83f35245e7ee7a966e8cf4ea931 Goldworthy Key concepts: Viridian aesthetics, Andy Goldsworthy Attention Conservation Notice: It's art criticism. Links: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/issues97/feb97/g olds.html http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Images/I/knotweed ..html http://cgee.hamline.edu/see/Goldsworthy/see_an_andy.html Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html (((See Note 00027 for instructions on this contest.))) Our newly-coined Viridian Motto: "Gimme Chevron" Bruce Sterling remarks: The difficult question of "what looks Viridian" is central to our interests. We now examine the work of British artist Andy Goldsworthy. Andy Goldworthy (1956 -- ) is a British artist resident in Scotland. His artwork occupies a rather ill- defined and unique area, uniting sculpture, performance art, gardening, nature studies, and photography. He has done installations in a museum context, large-scale landscape engineering, and sculptures. He also does posters and books. Most of his work, however, is site-specific. Goldsworthy wanders barehanded into some chosen site out- of-doors (including France, Australia, Japan, the USA and even the North Pole) and artfully rearranges whatever he finds at hand. Goldsworthy's "media" have included mud, sand, sticks, thorns, rocks, boulders, leaves, flowers, feathers, bones, reeds, bark, branches, snow, rain, ice, and his own spit. After assembling the temporary sculpture and waiting for proper lighting conditions, he carefully photographs the ensemble, and then leaves it to decay. ************************************* Why Andy Goldsworthy Is Not Viridian ************************************* He doesn't loudly and publicly complain about carbon dioxide. His work is not "transorganic;" it looks very pastoral and edenic, until you realize he's done something extremely remarkable to the landscape through rearranging stray flowers and twigs by using his hands and teeth. His art is biological rather than biomorphic (except for that memorable episode when he artfully stacked up those rusting steel plates in the deserted, weed-grown foundry). ******************************* Why Andy Goldsworth is Viridian ******************************* He has enormous artistic talent that commands awestruck attention. His feeling for coloration and graphic composition are especially impressive. Though his approach might sound odd or gimmicky in mere description, his work is always striking, often dramatic and sometimes majestic. His art doesn't appear "technological," but would be impossible without the mediation of cameras. Most of his work is temporary; the usual aim is photographic documentation of some crucial instant, not a permanent transformation of the landscape. His art embraces decay. He is particularly insistent about this. He datamines nature. He makes the invisible visible. He is very aware of historical process and refers to it repeatedly in his writings. He "walks through walls of knowledge guilds" by combining approaches of several art genres in a unique, historically rooted, but strangely timeless art practice. His work is biological, not logical. Through iterative actions, and an intuitive, interactive, hands-on approach, he creates a tableau that could not be pre-designed from a standing start. A Goldsworthy photograph displays human will, great persistence, great beauty, and intentionality, but not rational planning. The result does not resemble engineering, the imposition of human plans on raw materials. Instead, it resembles teleology: twigs and branches suddenly become dramatic actors, boulders find themselves clad in finery, pebbles somehow look the way that pebbles have "always wanted to look." Rational analysis can't follow him, but he is going to some very interesting and effective places: this is genuine and powerful art practice. His work is not confrontational, deconstructive or subversive. It is innovative and serene. In his books and writings, Goldworthy has many interesting things to say about his sensibility and approach. Andy Goldsworthy: "I am not playing the primitive. I use my hands because this is the best way to do most of my work. If I need tools then I will use them. Technology, travel and tools are part of my life and if needed should be part of my work also. A camera is used to document, an excavator to move earth, snowballs are carried cross country by articulated truck." Goldsworthy is not a decorative artist or nature sentimentalist: "It is easy to make a mess. I want my work to be taut and am not interested in making weak arrangements of nature in the pretence of being sensitive." He is interested in the interaction of human and nature, not in wildernesss per se: "Although I occasionally work in wildernesses, it is the areas where people live and work that draw me most. I do not need to be the first or only person in a place. That no-one has gone before me would be a reason for me not to go there and I usually feel such places are best left. I am drawn to wildness but do not have to be in a wilderness to find it." He makes the invisible visible: "I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue." He embraces decay: "Each work grows, stays, decays == integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an tensity about the work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit." This is an artist and an aesthetic of primary interest and importance to us. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

From bruces@well.com Sat Jan 23 19:20:22 1999 Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 19:20:22 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00043: the Viridian Electrical X-UIDL: c0cb991f59d314c94c2397ed9d50ea5a Meter Key concepts: imaginary products, electrical meters Attention Conservation Notice: It's another whimsical "product" that doesn't yet exist, but might end up in a Viridian catalog someday. Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/ http://www.empathy.com/viridian/ http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html http://way.nu/greens/typography.html http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/ http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html This contest embraces decay on January 31, 01999. For contest instructions see Note 00027. "The Viridian Electrical Meter" Concept: SeJ@aol.com^^^^** (Stefan Jones) Ad copy: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) "One of the most offensive artifacts of the twentieth century is the standard household energy meter. This ugly gizmo clings like a barnacle to the outside of your home, readable only by functionaries. Clumsily painted in battleship gray, this network spy device features creepy, illegible little clock-dials, under an ungainly glass dome. Look a bit closer, and this user- hostile interface deliberately insults you, with a hateful anti-theft warning, and a foul little lockbox. "This crass device is designed to leave you in stellar ignorance of your own energy usage. It publicly brands you as a helpless peon, a technically-illiterate source of cash for remote, uncaring utility lords. "But today, thanks to the Viridian Electrical Meter, the tables are turned. The Viridian Meter is not some utility spy device, but a user-owned art object! Based on the popular 'plasma globe,' this interactive meter/installation will grace any 21st-century living room. The attractively sizzling 'Magic Sphere' perches on a beautiful, visionary plant-stand, inspired by noted designers Hector Guimard and Albert Paley! "The Viridian Meter is pre-set with the standard demographic energy consumption of your biome and climatic area. Network brownouts and spikes produce visible, spitting anomolies, quickly warning you to protect your valuable household gizmos from the incompetent vagaries of the local utility. When your home's energy use grows excessive, the plasma-globe arcs up with a warning red crackle. Best of all, feeding energy from your home into the grid causes the Viridian Meter to reverse its polarity, displaying its internal aurora in a cool, lovely green! Guests in your home will soon see that your solar panels (and/or fuel cells and windmills) free our planet from the nasty burdens of fossil-fuel. When your child comes home from school, all long-faced about environmental decline and horrific weather anomalies, your conscience will be certifiably clear! 'See our Meter, honey? Look! It runs green!'" Stefan Jones (SeJ@aol.com) Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

I want one!

From bruces@well.com Thu Jan 28 18:32:01 1999 Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 18:32:01 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00044: The Viridian Service X-UIDL: 06b7871e52d457994b7db7c37d004a9a Station Key concepts: imaginary products, electric cars, gas stations, electric vehicles, upscale consumption patterns Attention Conservation Notice: It's yet another whimsical "product" that doesn't exist. We may fill a catalog yet. Even though they're not real products, this is *still* going to end up being a lot of work for somebody. Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/ http://www.empathy.com/viridian/ http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html http://way.nu/greens/typography.html http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/ http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html This contest embraces decay on January 31, 01999. For contest instructions see Note 00027. Concept: SeJ@aol.com^^^^*** (Stefan Jones) Ad copy: SeJ@aol.com^^^^*** (Stefan Jones) Viridian Service Station: "Get Charged!" Starting at a single location in a former Blockbuster Video store, the "Get Charged!" chain of upscale electrical car charging stations have spread across the nation in the span of a few years. Besides providing fast, convenient charging and routine maintenance of electrical vehicles, "Get Charged!" locations feature lounge areas whose decor, cuisine and beverage offerings are aggressively targeted at an upscale consumer who is environmentally conscious, yet unwilling to accept a diminished quality of life. The first "Get Charged!" location in East Palo Alto, California was chosen to service both the local market of upscale consumers and environmentally hip Bay Area residents commuting between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Using clean electricity from a windmill farm in the Altamont Pass, and providing shuttle service to nearby major employers in its own fleet of electric minivans, the station quickly won good grades from the area's vocal environmentalist contingent. However, the location did not "come alive" until the opening of its signature Greenhouse Lounge(TM). Part indoor nursery, part art gallery, part cyber- espresso bar, the Greenhouse Lounge quickly attracted a regular clientele. Indeed, the bistro was soon overrun by people arriving at "Get Charged!" Franchise #1 in cheap, ugly, gasoline powered vehicles. Thereafter, patronage was strictly limited to the owners and passengers of electric cars. When a major venture capital firm made the location its preferred lunch spot, sales of electric vehicles in San Mateo county doubled in the space of a month.... (((Our story continues with a stirring sidebar concerning a legendary tech discovery taking place in the Greenhouse Lounge; Stamford geeks show off solar energy / biomass hack; VCs at next table immediately buy into it)))) (((Readings, signings by authors take place at Lounges))) ((((Lounge as multimedia showplace for video display, imaging hacks)))) ((((Showrooms become upscale version of Greek diners that sell "starving artist" paintings right off the wall.... At other "Get Charged!" franchises: Solar, biomass, hydrocarbon fuel cells.... I'd like to write more about this, but I'm getting into a creepy, enthusiastic, MBA student sort of mood... I'll just have to stop now... You'll have to spin it for yourselves.))) Stefan Jones (SeJ@aol.com)

From bruces@well.com Fri Feb 5 19:12:04 1999 Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 19:12:04 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00047: Viridian Imaginary X-UIDL: 0492c31693795a40d8d304a6d9cbf4c3 Products Exhibition Key concepts: Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibition, Viridian Teakettle Contest Attention Conservation Notice: This proposed scheme is particularly ambitious and time-consuming. Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest: http://members.aol.com/stjude/ http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/ http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/ http://www.empathy.com/viridian/ http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html http://way.nu/greens/typography.html http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian2dot1.html http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/ http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/nancy.html http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana/fungus.html http://www.golden.net/~eli/viridian/ http://ucsub.Colorado.EDU/~smcginni/viridian/vfont.html The winner of the Viridian Fungal Typography Contest is: Hinne Burmeister (hinne@spaceways.de^^^^*) AKA: DJB, Django Blades, Denon Kleo, THE Sound! Inhabitant of Projekt Kochstrasse Member of Comite de Musique Deluxe (CMD) Co-founder of SPACEWAYS Management & Production On mature consideration, Hinne Burmeister's entry at: http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html was judged "Most Fungal." Hinne Burmeister has been sent a well-deserved copy of the contest prize book, *Hot Designers Make Cool Fonts.* And now, for the details of our third Viridian design contest, which is our most ambitious yet. As we all know, the Viridian Design Movement does not in fact exist. The long torrent of rhetoric consuming your attention to date is a mere *beta pre-release* of a *possible* 21st century design movement. Real design movements ship. They create actual designed products. A real-world Viridian product design company would be a very fine thing. I even understand how one goes about founding and running such an enterprise. It has a lot to do with tedious minutiae such as "prototyping," "licensing," "sourcing," "pricing," "distribution," and "advertising," not to mention employee relations, taxes, incorporation, trademarks, patents, and return-on-investment. Running a commercial manufacturing firm is an attention-vampire of the first order. Becoming the CEO of a design firm is just not within the Pope-Emperor's realm of possible activity. However. Real designers also throw public exhibits where they gallantly show off their wares. Here we perceive some interesting Viridian potential. While we can't manufacture and sell commercial products, creating fake *mockups* of *imaginary Viridian products* might well be within our grasp. Sometime in the year 02000 (assuming we make our ideological deliverables on January 3), we might conceivably create and throw a public Viridian exhibit, a futurist conceptual-art parody of a real design show. This "Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibit" would be open to the public. It might be rather similar in spirit to the "Art of Star Wars" show, where everyone knows that the rayguns and blast-shields aren't real or functional, but they all go anyway, just because everything looks so cool. Finding a friendly gallerist and a suitable display space is not beyond our ability. This effort would be time-consuming; it would require funding, budgeting, coordination and a lot of organizational overhead; but not crushing amounts. Best of all, the project would be swiftly over with. The central challenge here is finding Viridian product designers, and, especially, some hands-on Viridian model- makers. People, in other words, who can dream this stuff up, and successfully fake it for us, so that physical Viridian objets d'conceptual art can be shipped to some central locale for public display. To manage this proposed event, we would have to assemble a core "Star Chamber" of inner-circle Viridian volunteers. This means investing large amounts of creative effort and attention. We would endeavour to supply some glory and prestige to volunteers. Your name would prominently pasted on the vitrine, you'd receive some groovy citation in the accompanying glossy catalog.... And, who knows, there might be weird and the designer/builder team could sell the model afterwards for a hefty sum to some crazed sci-fi collector. There might be some modest sums of expense money involved in throwing this event, but I can almost guarantee you that the money would not make it worth your while. Is such an event in fact possible for us? Well, we'll never find out without experimenting. The third Viridian Contest is meant to winkle out public-spirited people who might have what it takes to put such an effort together. Hence, the Viridian Teakettle Contest. Teakettles are, of course, highly cliched designer objects. Everybody in the world has done the teakettle, the chair, and the CD-rack. I've heard it said by designers I respect that anyone who does another teakettle should be immediately shot. But! Teakettles have the advantage of being well understood and something of a This contest is not about designing a real teakettle. We don't need a teakettle that works. *None* of the Imaginary Viridian Products are going to work. What we want at this point in time is a website *picture* of a teakettle, a schematic diagram of sorts, a graphic guide for a teakettle model-maker. In this contest, we want you to *set-design* a fake teakettle. This 21st-century Viridian teakettle has to look *like no teakettle has ever looked before.* We don't want clip-art, a pastiche, or a cut-and-paste postmodern object. No. Our noble purpose here to publicly exhibit a *previously unimaginable Viridian design aesthetic.* Here is the design philosophy behind the teakettle; your character motivation, as it were. To quote our Viridian principles (see Note 00003): "Seek the Biomorphic and the Transorganic." "Datamine Nature." "The Biological Isn't Logical." Like the century-old designs of Art Nouveau, the Viridian Teakettle seeks aesthetic novelty through the exploitation and adaption of forms found in nature. We then must ask: what forms of nature have never before been used as design elements? And where in nature is there anything remotely like a teakettle? The answer to both questions is: abyssal vents. I refer to hot volcanic crevices at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by previously unknown, chemosynthetic life forms. These unique and extremely weird biomes were not even discovered by the human race until 1979. I can absolutely guarantee you that Belle Epoque designers had never heard of these particular forms in nature. These are artistically unexploited natural forms. The unique creatures in abyssal vents exist in crushing pressure, in total darkness (except for the sinister glow of hot lava), and sure enough, just like teakettles, the vents sit there piping out boiling water through long stone spouts, in a cheerful, complex chemical stew. Life thrives there, devouring microbial sulfur, and bathing round-the-clock in clean geothermal energy. Here are a pair of websites where you can acquaint yourself with such inspirational abyssal anomalies as: clams full of hemoglobin, giant tubeworms that have no mouths or guts, dandelion jellyfish, "black smoker" volvanic vents, and big blind prawns. http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/exploring.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/abyss/life/extremes.html One might further note that arcane sulfur-gobbling chemosynthesis is quite the inspiration for a high-tech 21st century "teakettle." In the future, crude, vegetal, semi-toxic tea leaves will be forced to undergo unheard-of osmotic, catalytic and filtration processes inside our chemically sophisticated, fully-monitored, 21st-century, teakettle brewing-chambers. Please don't worry about stark Modernist efficiency here. "The Biological Isn't Logical." Go wild. We want a show-stopper with this teakettle, an item of stunning astonishment. Push the technonatural envelope. Your only design constraint is that your design can't be a mere cyberspatial fantasy. We require a product design that can plausibly exist in 3 dimensions and fit inside a glass case. If this contest works out, we will follow it with a new and unprecedented Viridian Construction Contest, where we try to persuade people to *build a physical model* of your design. Now for the valuable winner's prize. It is: ART NOUVEAU by Gabriele Fahr-Becker. This Teutonically thorough and richly illustrated 425-page tome is the best single book I've ever seen on the Art Nouveau movement. It covers the whole Belle Epoque crowd and their fellow travellers: Charles Rennie Macintosh, Hector Guimard, Rene Lalique, Alfonse Mucha, Emile Galle', Louis Majorelle, Victor Horta, the rather little-known but seriously incredible Carlo Bugatti, Antoni Gaudi, Peter Behrens, Henry van de Velde, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Otto Wagner, etc etc... Plus a bibliography,a glossary, and set of brief artist's bios that pretty much beats the band. We're getting into deep hot water now, so this is our finest contest prize to date. Why, I can scarcely lift this great, whopping, expensive, glossy book, and better yet, it's out of print. Put your teakettle design up on the web where we can all see it and marvel. The creator of the most biomorphic, transorganic, visually unprecedented, geothermal-abyssal teakettle will take this book away. All other contest contributors will, as usual, receive a handsome star >*< for their log-in name. If you have no idea what these Art Nouveau guys were up to, or just how odd and refreshing artifacts can look when they take organic forms seriously, then I suggest running those above artists' names through a search engine. (Especially Gaudi and Guimard.) Or you can start here: http://www.ragnarokpress.com/scriptorium/ This contest embraces decay on March 6, 01999. I look forward to seeing your effort. Good luck! Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

hey, Terry, how do I get on this list?

Email bruces@well.com and ask him to put you on the list.

From bruces@well.com Sat Feb 6 21:27:37 1999 Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 21:27:37 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00048: Viridian Aphorisms X-UIDL: 11ac57c85ba2fb5a007870f552af9006 Key concepts: Viridian Aphorisms, Viridian Ranking System Attention Conservation Notice: it's mostly the moderator's housekeeping, except for the customary attention-grabbing wit and wisdom that we swiped from famous people. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian The proudly Danish website adding new functionality and rumbling toward a digital-art launch http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/V-Notes/ViridianIndex.html Mitchell Porter's Australian archive kept impressively up- to-date http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades Antediluvian Sterling homepage undergoing dusting and cleaning. Now in the automated business of selling various books. Increasingly infested with Viridian graphics, takes forever to load. Massive Improvements Real Soon Now. MODERATOR'S NOTE. My travel schedule is very heavy this month and through early March. Expect Viridian traffic to slow drastically. This is not a malfunction; do not adjust your set. I am in possession of some excellent Viridian material, and will likely set a blistering pace of editing and distribution, when and if I return. Viridian Aphorisms Contribute a useful Viridian aphorism, and you will receive an attractive chevron >< for your log-in name. "Even the voice of conscience undergoes mutation." Stanislaus Lec "That which we call sin in others is experiment for us." Ralph Waldo Emerson "Think. It ain't illegal yet." George Clinton "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent." E. F. Schumacher "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." Bertrand Russell "Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room." Blaise Pascal "The natural environment is doctored up continuously and warped by the acts of the human brain." Richard Neutra "Those who will not labor mightily on their own behalf shall be given other masters." Xenophon "If you can talk brilliantly enough about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered." Stanley Kubrick "It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." Winston Churchill "Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not of our side." Lord Halifax "If we were not all so excessively interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it." Schopenhauer "Man does not live long enough to profit from his faults." Jean de La Bruyere (((Since I have often been asked, allow me to reiterate the difference between a "star" and a "chevron." You receive a star when some personal work of your own is published before the entire Viridian list. You are on public display and courting a public reaction; therefore, you "star." A chevron acknowledges some helpful Viridian act which does not appear publicly.))) VIRIDIAN RANKING SYSTEM The Viridian Ranking System has been hand-created with a vintage fountain pen and fine art paper. Scars, flaws, and imperfections add character and are an inherent part of the product. SeJ@aol.com steffen@ems.org jon@lasser.org whiz@ricochet.net ljaurbach@erols.com rsewell@cix.compulink.co.uk eli@golden.net jzero@onramp.net morgana@netaxs.com sethmc@turcotte.colorado.edu tor@araneum.dk dhlight@mcs.net jim@smallworks.com patmazza@teleport.com wex@media.mit.edu tbyfield@panix.com WarrenE@aol.com hinne@spaceways.de lstinson@empathy.com rinesi@espacio.com.ar cisler@pobox.com mgoldh@well.com pinknoiz@pinknoiz.com dlandry@rohan.sdsu.edu danny@spesh.com hoechst.forum@lrz.uni-muenchen.de infinite@beaming.com jonny@way.nu me@karmanaut.com tux@powerbase-alpha.com abeb@erols.com eric@sac.net LangiG@parl.gc.ca r1ddl3r@bp13.u.washington.edu StJude@aol.com weasel@gothic.net acotter@nonsensical.com jeffk@well.com jtlin@saunalahti.fi MICHAEL.HARTLEY@one2one.co.uk redbird@jump.net reid@well.com richardd@reeseco.com scoville@hooked.net stewarts@stewarts.org thallad@pcnet.com jonl@well.com Ian.Griffin@Corp.Sun.COM pjd@cne.gmu.edu rdm@test.legislate.com shassinger@dev.tivoli.com TuckerV@frogdesign.com xiane@entech.com bobmorris@mediaone.net Cooper409@aol.com mitch@thehub.com.au shalizi@santafe.edu bperry@shore.net bsiano@cceb.med.upenn.edu cthomas@10fold.com jrc@well.com kallen@physics.ucsd.edu kirk@mcelhearn.com mheat@mha-net.org rnedal@olimpo.com.br richyoung@hotbot.com robot@ultimax.com sbweintraub@lbl.gov yzl@ucdavis.edu ab006@chebucto.ns.ca alexander_schuth@yahoo.com ASKornheiser@prodigy.net AtKisson@aol.com bonkydog@sirius.com dave@va.com.au dsenft@bcj.com geert@xs4all.nl gordy@nytimes.com kamenr@river.org katie@wtp.net Matt@MediaServ.com nehrlich@sfis.com pacoid@fringeware.com roger@bayarea.net rthieme@thiemeworks.com SpitzleyD@state.mi.us thack@design-inst.nl tick@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Adam@e-gad.com AdrianC@frogdesign.com alex@orionsystems.com ankcorn@earthlink.net anubis@deming.com architext@cable.a2000.nl barlow@eff.org Basilisk@mcione.com bgm@well.com bigbrain@visi.com bini@ioc.net blong@geo.ruc.dk Bprips@aol.com brett@earthlight.co.nz cascio@well.com ccraig@ucsd.edu Chris.Carroll@turner.com churchr@hurrah.com craymond@northweb.com c.gerritsen@auckland.ac.nz c.ted.ballou@intel.com cybercop@sprynet.com Dan@DanTaylor.com dc@ispchannel.com dc@technomedia.com dlowe@smtp.law.ua.edu dwh@berlin.snafu.de ejorr@wam.umd.edu emhunt@willapabay.org figment@sirius.com fisaza@xinetix.com gagin@inter.net.ru gail@well.com garreau@well.com genecav2@flash.net gfrost@sensaphone.com ggg@well.com jczemek@ouray.cudenver.edu jet@well.com Jim_Hurst@kyrus.com jlyon@apple.com jonwil@primenet.com jreffell@obscure.org jspragens@igc.apc.org kaiser@acm.org klilly@neog.com kosofsky@soback.kornet.nm.kr laudanum@entech.com louise@hotbot.com mann@cse.unsw.edu.au melcher@unix.nets.com merlan@visa.com micky.shirley@sfsierra.sierraclub.org mlbishop@juno.com mwiik@brysonweb.com nao23@earthlink.net nbodley@tiac.net patrice@xs4all.nl paula_nibride@hotmail.com Pbsustain@aol.com pdo@metamajik.com philable@bayou.com philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu pinhead@ozcot.com PLowitt@compuserve.com pnh@panix.com quest@inetarena.com rafael@master.prossiga.br rafeco@rc3.org raze@zip.com.au rberger@ibd.com rkoster@origin.ea.com sblack@library.berkeley.edu shalmanaeser@hotmail.com steven@iisl.co.uk strecker@sirius.com sdhurley@ican.net tdav@wam.umd.edu tenev@digbody.dux.ru udhay@pobox.com vvanhorn@cats.ucsc.edu viridian@access.spring.net WEBrawer@greenmap.com whh@uclink4.berkeley.edu zooko@wildgoose.tandu.com

Anyone seen the listing of the Viridian Greens in the 'Wired' column of Wired Magazine's latest issue's Tired/Wired list ?

Nope, I assume it's "wired" and what is it's "tired" counterpart?

Tired? That would be the Luddite Greens. Technology is the only thing that can extract us from our current predicament and still allow something resembling our current leisure-rich lifestyle.

Long Live Technocracy!

Huh, thanks fer the invitation to this here place, Terry - where's the fridge? Or, in other words: Haven't heard anything from the fearless viridian leader. Is he still in front? Or wherever, as front is 20thCent-think, right? Or rather, not (as right is a political concept, which is very much 20thCent in flave)? Uh, all this makes me dizzy. May I have some more of it?

spin the other way now Alexander... it'll get you dizzy in the other direction too!

Bruce? He's traveling for a while. Expect a flurry of updates soon though.

yee-haw! and welcome, Alexander!

Thanks for the friendly welcome, here, too. Hey, Stacey, hey, Kitchen - how come you're whereever I go in this here Spring? Uh, Stacey, the award goes straight to you - first person here to figure I'm dizzy in more than one direction. Terry, Does The Fearless Leader hafta tour for his book (again), or is he having fun? ;=}

*grin* WER and I (and I speak for him allthe time so don't fret!) are unshakable forces within the Spring... ummm... or maybe we're the shakiest forces within the Spring... how 'bout we're forceful within the Spring and like to shake... ...like shakes taken by force? Alas... perhaps there is no answer to the question "why are WER and Stacey everywhere" perhaps there is only the fact of our large base of existance.

They're ubiquitous. Book Tour? Would hafta write a book first. But keep the rumor circulating anyway. Glad you're checking out the Viridian list, what do you think of the content and concepts so far? Can you explain it to us all?

think Alexander and you have currently got you and Bruce Sterling confused... (whereas Stacey and I are always confused everywhere...)

Stacey is Bruce Sterling.

ah ha!!!

Well, seems not only this here reader got the dizzies... Sorry to confuse you, Terry, but with Fearless Leader I meant Stacey Sterling. and with book I was referring to Distraction. Or Bruce Vura. Or else. Also read below: * Glad you're checking out the Viridian list, Well, how could I refuse your invitation? I'm on the mailing list, too, so I wouldn't want to miss the fun on this one. *what do you think of the content and concepts so far? Hmh, you really care about what I think? It takes long to load. Newest stuff should load topmost first, maybe. Somehow, there should be a distinction between the papal transmissions and our completely irrelevant mumblings. *Can you explain it to us all? Listen, buster - any time I feel like making a complete idiot of myself, I'm gonna do it. But I don't let anyone push me on that one. ;=} Honest, what or who do you think I am? It's very kind of you to ask me, as this somehow indicates that from whatever facts you collected from my rumblings on the Spring, you dedicated I would have something to say. Maybe even something meaningful. Well, I don't. Sorry.

and, I have nothing to post and I'm going to post it just once.

Aaaaaaaa- men!

Catch the party invite at the end! Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon Mar 8 '99 (15:29) 210 lines From bruces@well.com Mon Mar 8 17:08:46 1999 Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1999 17:08:46 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00051: Viridian Commentary X-UIDL: 9f17f04fd746fcf64311a06b7a3c1672 Key concepts: pedal-powered buses, hurricane names, wind- up browsers, table-of-contents Viridian Notes 00025-00050, party invitation to Bruce Sterling's house Attention Conservation Notice: It rambles a lot, but you get invited to a nice party with free beer. Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest: http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/teakettl.html http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/ This contest ends March 20, 01999. From: tor@araneum.dk^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^* Subject: Pedal-powered bus Subj: All ABOARD THE PEDALBUS -WORLDWIDE COLLABORATION Date: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 10:26:49 AM Bagelhole1 (http://bagelhole.hypermart.net/), under construction, calls for collaborators, globally, to share ideas as to the best ways (design, mediums, etc) we can think of to build a bus for about 50 people, that is a hybrid, run both by pedal power and electrical (generated by the pedal power and the turbine on top), equipped with sail. There would be a driver who steers, changes gears, and brakes. Music, perhaps, to inspire the pedal/passengers, maybe made from bamboo partially. All passengers ride/pedal for free, of course. Electric kicks in, when there are not enough pedal/riders. Every city could have such a bus to bring attention to people to aid in soliciting low-tech, homemade style ideas for self-sustainability, thinking in terms of small neighborhoods, in mutual co-operation with each other, as a way to really kick off community contingency preparation, globally. This needs to be done very quickly. So please heed, if you hear the call. bagelhole1@aol.com (((bruces remarks: I rather like this nutty, innocent scheme, as long as we can make sure that these giant urban rickshaws are restricted to highly-developed countries, and powered exclusively by rich, well-educated, overweight people.))) From: cascio@well.com^^ (Jamais Cascio) Subject: Weather Violence Terminology >From the Rachel (rachel.org) newsletter #634: "We favor the idea, floated early last year, to stop naming hurricanes after individual humans and start naming them after oil companies. In place of Hurricane Alice or Hurricane Hugo, we would have Hurricane Mobil and Hurricane Exxon. A headline like 'Exxon Kills 10,000, Leaves 50,000 Homeless' would have a certain salutary ring of truth to it." (((bruces remarks: Yes, of course, but.... "Shell" would get off lightly due to the alphabetical listings, while the new "Amoco/British Petroleum" hybrid would catch more than its fair share of abuse.))) >From wex@media.mit.edu^^^^^^^^^** (Dr. Alan Wexelblat) Subject: Wind-Up Browsers for Ten Dollars These people don't know it, but they are Viridian... To: mas-students@media.mit.edu From: Joe Jacobson Subject: Windup Browsers Seminar Seminar - MAS 968 (H level) Fridays 10-12, E15-468H Design of Information Appliances for the Third World: Windup Browsers The WIND-UP Browser seminar will be geared towards designing and building an information appliance for developing nations. The sole constraints are that 1] It must change the world 2] It must have a manufacturing cost of $10. Week 1: Introduction to the Problem Assignment: Map of literacy and access to information around the globe Week 2: Introduction to low cost information technologies Full survey of everything in existence from displays to radio receivers to hand-crank generators that could be cobbled together to make a $10 device. Week 3: In class design session of self contained reader Week 4: presentation of self contained reader. Week 5: Economic models - how can third world peoples supplement their income: Contract programming, inventing etc. over the web. Week 6: In class design and presentation of an economic model for supplemental income. Brainstorm on how to build 1 Billion wind-up browsers. Week 7: In class design of linked information device Week 8: Presentation of linked information device Week 9: Final project. (((bruces remarks: Here's another stirring step-forward for the philosophy that wants every Saharan Tuareg to carry his own solar-powered satdish and boombox. A ten- dollar browser will change the world, all right == it'll change the world to a place that will gladly pay ten *million* dollars for any device that will *eliminate* web browsers, in say, a five-mile radius.))) From: pdo@metamajik.com^* (Paul D. Ouderkirk) Subject: Re: Correction to Viridian Note 00045 Bruce Sterling wrote: " The US Armed Forces can no longer fully command their own dedicated industrial base == they're forced to use common off-the-shelf stuff now, the poor wretches even have to run battleships on Windows 95...." If you're referring to that Navy ship that "crashed" during testing several months ago, it was running a mix of Unix and NT systems. NT at least pretends (and pretends is the operative word here) to be a mission-critical OS, where Windows 95 certainly has no place anywhere that lives are on the line. Later, Paul. (((bruces remarks: I should cure myself of this freewheeling poetic license when I know that there are programmers reading this list. Okay, I formally retract that sad blunder: "the poor wretches even have to run their various weapons platforms on a mission-critical OS mix of UNIX and Windows NT"....))) *********************** Table of Contents 25-50 *********************** Viridian Notes 00026: Viridian Aphorisms 00027: Viridian Graphics 00028: Viridian Gardening 00029: The Interfund 00030: The View From Ecotopia 00031: Self-destructive Jungles 00032: The Viridian Refueling Project 00033: Viridian Aesthetics: Andy Goldsworthy 00034: Researching Andy Goldsworthy 00035: Viridian Aesthetics: Landscape Transformation 00036: Offshore Wind Power 00037: Viridian Commentary 00038: Viridian Aphorisms 00039: Starck's New Catalog 00040: German Politics 00041: The Viridian Product Catalog 00042: the Viridian Alcohol Cellphone 00043: the Viridian Electrical Meter 00044: The Viridian Service Station 00045: Twentieth-century Thinking 00046: German Bankers Love German Greens 00047: Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibition 00048: Viridian Aphorisms 00049: Submerging Carbon 00050: Wired Urban Forests ***************** PARTY INVITATION. ***************** In totally informal conjunction with the annual South By SouthWest Multimedia Festival, my wife Nancy and I are throwing another Open House Party on the evening of March 16th, Tuesday, starting, say, 7:30 pm or so. If you're on the Viridian List, please consider this your formal invitation to attend. Bring anybody you trust. There will be cold beer. And (even more astonishing and provocative) there will be cigarettes. If you've never been to my house before (once memorably described by TIME magazine as "the leafy tranquillity of Sterling's well-appointed Austin, Texas home"), send email and I'll ship you the directions and a phone number. Mind you, the SXSW Multimedia Party we threw last time was not half shabby. These digital-arts people are definitely a self-starting crowd. No Charades or Twister was required to break the ice, and a good time was had by all. Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) It's at 3410 Cedar Street, near Guadalupe and 33rd.

Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 20:22:40 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Add to Address Book Reply-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00052: Human-Assisted Wildlife Migration Key Concepts: Emergency global heat strategy; multinational ecostructures; Post-Pleistocene landscape designs; totemic ambassadors; distributive intellect; decentralized aesthetic appreciation Attention Conservation Notice: Peter Warshall, editor of Whole Earth Review, wrote us this Note. You're not likely to find a Viridian screed more "whole-earthy" than this one. Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest: http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/teakettl.html http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/ This contest ends March 20, 01999. From: pwturtle@well.com* (Peter Warshall) Sources: Among others, Whole Earth magazine's issue on modern landscape ecology (Number 93). Many net sites for groups (see issue) that monitor greenhouse changes and impacts on our extended selves == the animal kingdom. Email becomes ecological. Ecostructures equal infrastructures. Prophesy includes Monarch butterflies, jaguars, unlimited ducks, and a sub-movement == the Cerulean Movement. Beauty and paying attention lead to conservation. Citizen science is already happening. Kids and oldsters are tracking the great heating of the planet by tracking NAFTA zoology. Monarch butterflies that move from Canada to Michoacan are tracked by kids and volunteers who tell who's arrived or departed on the web. They spot the hottest spots where the milkweeds (Monarch fueling stations) have gone extinct and fragmented the tri- national corridor. They monitor the results of the World Trade Organization (without saying it). So when the US stops genetically engineered soybeans from being labelled as such, and GE soybeans spread through the soy/corn belt, and milkweed in the fields or along the roadways is herbicided with RoundUp, they know, and the news surges over the net. The same for ducks that travel from Canada to Mejico. And wood warblers. But, global warming is sending the subtropical critters north. Armadillos in Texas, jaguars in New Mexico/Arizona, elegant trogans, coatimundis...all heading north with the heat. Ecostructure is to nature, what infrastructure is to humans. It's the corridors and composition of the corridors that help trees or animals move with the heat. Jaguars used to be as far north as the Grand Canyon. That mom and cubs are stuffed in New York, in the American Museum of Natural History (1905). Jaguars used to be in Louisiana. Now, with the heat and forest fires and clearcutting, they're heading north and need corridors. So old fart ranchers and hunters and multiple-aged maniacal naturalists have tracked the ecostructure needed and are preparing for 2012 and beyond. Supplying a space to move that is Viridian, since jaguars and coatis have a hard time in sand dunes. Add to this, the Cerulean Movement which knows that the greenhouse effect will raise the seas and mudflats and lagoons will drown. So, the NAFTA effect on shorebirds who will find few places to land and fuel up by pick, jab, and stab at spineless inverts. No ecostructure. Either they will become albatrosses or perish. The NAFTA critters include greywhales and sea turtles. They used to include steelhead and sea otters. In short, the webbing of the Earth (ecostructure) parallels the webbing of the human invention (roads, wires). No college scientist nor the NSF can track these changes in grounded and oceanic ecostructure and movements. It's beyond the scope of satellites. Yet the non-humans carry the news. They are allies of the prophets. By believing in their intelligence, the future can be known. To do all this requires a distributive intellect and integrated decentralized observation network. Its only citizens in love with looking and feeding their love (an aesthetic if there is one) into the net that is cheap and joyful. A new viridian science that will allow focused finances to see the landscape breaks and gaps and heal them. This movement too has an automatic end. Stop global warming, connect the dots, and end the movement. Peter Warshall, Whole Earth Quarterly 1408 Mission Avenue San Rafael, CA 94901 USA Phone 415-256-2800, ext. 224 Fax 415-256-2808

interesting little piece there...hmmm...

Someones thinking about ecostructure. Registrant: Matrix Group, inc. (ECOSTRUCTURE-DOM) 4701 Keswick Road Baltimore, MD 21210 Domain Name: ECOSTRUCTURE.COM

From bruces@well.com Sat Mar 13 23:32:14 1999 Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 23:32:14 -0600 (CST) To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note OOO53: The Ecosystem Game X-UIDL: af47508cf91b9df9d6fd34d440d9b49b Key concepts: imaginary products, computer games, ecosystem design Attention Conservation Notice: This imaginary product does not exist, but this long, fake product-pitch is worked out in such scary, meticulous detail that the whole screed seems quite convincing. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian Tor Kristensen remarks: I've added searching functionality to the Viridian archive! An easier way to find that kernel of wisdom from 12 messages back. Entries in the Viridian Teakettle Design Contest: http://www.xensei.com/users/stewarts/teakettle.html http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/teapots.htm http://www.interlog.com/~shamann/ http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/teakettle.html We have a Russian entry on the way... This contest ends March 20, 01999. The EcoSystem Game by Alex Steffen (steffen@ems.org^^^^^^^^^^^***) Okanogan County, WA The hottest computer game of the year isn't about blowing apart zombies with a shotgun, or trying to land a virtual lunar shuttle on the deck of an aircraft carrier in pitching seas. No, the latest sensation in the gaming world comes down to a 26 year-old biology PhD candidate standing up to her hips in a mountain stream, skimming bugs of the surface with a mesh net. "I'm doing an aquatic insect count," the biologist, Sarah Greene, explains. "This will give us a rough estimation of how healthy this habitat is, whether or not it's providing sufficient food for wild salmon." By itself, counting bugs is not very exciting. It's what happens to the count that has made this odd game a hit. You see, in this game, "EcoSystem" the "board" is a real place == a three-hundred-fifty-thousand acre system of valleys here in rural Washington, in a county larger than the state of Connecticut. The actions of the "players" == tens of thousands of paying customers from around the planet == control all the management decisions for this vast tract of land. It's a real-world, real-time, high-tech videogame, where things are actually born and eaten, flourish or dwindle, based on the players' mouse-clicks == and often in front of their very eyes. After identifying and counting the insect population, Greene feeds the information into a computer, which tabulates the data and puts it up on the game's website. There, it is added to and cross-referenced with literally millions of other pieces of information to present a picture of how the EcoSystem is doing. Some of the information is arcane, like Youst's bug count. Some is more personal, like another grad student's daily observations and video about the habits and behavior of the valley's only spotted owl brood. Members post thousands of queries about this data, make notes on GIS maps, make and debate motions about how to manage the land, even plot coups and counter-coups in the management regime. Debates often become quite heated, such as a recent quarrel over whether to introduce a pack of wolves into the valley (the wolf-fans won). In exchange, the EcoSystem team is able to meet three of its goals: the preservation of a vast tract of land (ranging from logged-over scabland to a few isolated patches of ancient forest) at a time when public money for wilderness preservation has all but dried up; the restoration of portions of the ecosystem using experimental techniques; and the chance to study the workings of an entire ecosystem in a level of detail never before attempted. This last is due largely to the availability of large numbers of grants through the company for graduate work in the area, but EcoSystem president Jack Muir says none of the project would be possible without recent advances in computer and telecommunications technology. "Not only do we have hundreds of employees and thousands of customers, all connected via networks," Muir says, "but we also have thousands of remote sensing devices of all different kinds, all going 24-7, measuring a wealth of data which has never been practical to consider before." But technology has made the game possible in a more direct sense as well. Part of the $30,000 entry fee to play includes the interface screen and equipment, a large flat-display screen which receives a direct feed from the valley, allowing players to show off pictures from any number of robot cameras (the camera on the owls is particularly popular), as well as track any number of information streams. The EcoSystem, many players say, is a part of their daily lives. To some this might sound boring, but most of the players this writer spoke with claimed it was quite the opposite: some say they experience a deep connection to the EcoSystem which they feel for no other land. Others recount powerful on-line experiences, such as the time cameras captured the wolf pack bringing down an elk and thousands across the world stopped their lives for hours to watch as the wolves fed. Still others recount personal visits to the valleys, great parties with fellow players, growing knowledge of environmental science, etc. There have even been some insurgencies to make it interesting, like the small group of players lead by a disgruntled former timber executive who received the game from his daughter. He decided to advocate clearcutting the EcoSystem. The rebels called their plan "Fresh Start." The effort was eventually contained within a small patch of experimental sustainable forestry on the area's fringes. Another effort, to allow limited hunting, was successful. But it is the exclusivity of the EcoSystem (only researchers and players may visit, and then only under strict controls) which has helped make memberships in theGame a hot status item. Though a few players have "scholarships" based in large part on some past service to the EcoSystem, the vast majority are well-heeled, environmentally-aware professionals for whom membership is a badge of distinction. As word has spread and membership grown, the EcoSystem has been able to increase the intensity of study and add more parcels of land, growing 250,000 acres in four years. Now the game is planning to branch out into surrounding more settled areas. New projects will work with the EcoSystem, such as the purchase of a ranch and several farms, which (it is hoped) will be experiments in rural sustainability. Players will engage in a participatory design process to create a series of completely sustainable visitor centers to accommodate the growing membership. A nearby hydropower dam will be purchased and removed from the surrounding land. There is even development of a "green" retirement community for EcoSystem players, planned for a nearby town. Copyright 1999 Alex Steffen, all commercial rights reserved. Permission for non-commercial free distribution granted.

And now for something a bit different but relevant in an oblique way, from Justin Hall's diary: we wandered over somehow to bruce sterling's house - he'd invited the near-whole of south by southwest to his 1912/frank lloyd writey custom designed/build admirable family pad. respected but unread pat cadigan science fiction author i should know better, bruce sterling holding court in his office, showing off computer crime books, ru serius and his wonderful welcome-matt-flinging ladyfriend eve, demi-stars and the 13 year old dj, who may have put on eminem more than once, though it may have been carl. adam powell told me about fugazi with the most incredible fervent look in his eyes, as he is want to do describing a trip to eat a burrito. paul with recent videos of me gathered persistenly at http://www.spring.net/ threw out occasional questions, still in his rather large but not laden vest-of-many pockets. jon lebkowsky i've felt somehow has been most host-behind-the-scenes all along and he was there looking quite impish in eyebrows and friendly in his belly, smiled much and suggested i think seriously about repurposing my web ramblings into a sellable book. his tome on netpolitics should be rescued from academic press in time for a presidential-era publishing this november if possible i suggested. joey anuff of suck did the usual rib-tickling rundown of myself or whoever availed. the woman from the ACTlab here described the collaboratively written opera she'd organized and had just seen performed. never having done opera before she was prompted by sandy stone to do something new first and therein find the necessary knomwledge. bruce sterling's youngest daughter of maybe 3 was eating candy necklace beads that had been already separated from the string. i sat near her on the wooden stairs and tried mimicry to initiate play - she had none of it and steadily rolled away from my ovations of friendship, beginning a slow moan that threatened to become a cry. a guy who's name slips me and i'm too tired to find his card had long red hair and a longer attention span than i for the subject at hand between us - managing web site collections of links. another fellow, jeff? can't recall; he mentioned wanting to auction me off on ebay. joey said a famous VC had auctioned off an hour of his time there and i should try that too. of my party carl david and ariana were leaving after 10 minutes. they invited my departure as well but i could not stand to leave a nice group gathered here under a writerly umbrella for casual chatting in pleasant audible surroundings so i abandoned any party hopping for 90 minutes wandering happy at the sterlings. his office was lined with books, many his, many cyber, much eclectica. sterling has a quite old mac (fewer wiz bang - maybe more work), while his daughter of 3 has a powerful PC that he is sure to be kicked off of if she catches him on it when she has work to do. over his desk, much like howard, strikingly like howard, sterling had a large ganesha. at first he dodged acknowledging the significance, but he came to share a dream of a visitation by a three foot high rat in some clothes the day he cleaned and installed the large painted statue (rat being the messenger of ganesh and the title of a story by a fellow i did not note and do not recall). later i paused in the kitchen a moment to say thanks yous ands goods byes to him my host. i introduced myself and sterling mentioned my hair change. somehow origin came up and he mentioned that garriot was an astronaut's sun who had famous halloween parties every few years. there was a large hammock outside between the house and my ride. i jumped in, it was a broad sweep, many feet between the anchors. amidst my late-evening breeze riding sterling ran by and snatched up an attached rope to pull me to exciting heights cackling something resembling "appropriate use"

Huh, see, Wer, that's what I call something to say. Wished I'd been there, though, and could have watched people. Well, I got treated to a Granfaloon Bus concert on Monday, so I did have some life, too.

Definitely a good party. I dropped in for a couple of hours, talked Telcomm with a couple of guys formerly of Motorola, chatted with Paul, then got in an involved coversation with a chap from Australia comparing/contrasting Amerind/Aborigine treatment by the US and Australia, and media portrayals of the same relations over the years. I've decided to sell my soul if that's what it takes to be as good at throwing parties as the inimitable Mr. Sterling.

Ooops - also forgot a brief discussion with our host re: debating Viridian Manifestos. I'm getting in on the ground floor of a virtual community based in the UK, and I'm mining every interesting topic I can for ideas for a debate forum. Any Viridian concepts that you guys consider especially arguable? I'm looking for ones that are controversial and mind-grabbing.

you ought to talk to Mike since he's our "resident" Englishman...

OK. Mike? Any ideas as to provocative concepts for discussion on the other side of the pond? I like the idea of a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" for polluters, a la South Africa.

explain, please...

Sterling suggested something along these lines in one of his first Viridian mailings. Basically, like Mandela's government, a commission would be set up to hold hearings, getting all the information possible on major polluters. Cooperation with the commission would reflect favorably on those who did so, according to the amount of information they were willing to give. In some cases, immunity from prosecution would be granted, but not automatically. This would serve to bring into the open all the dirty little secrets of all of the corporate polluters, in a framework that encourages openness and some sort of reconciliation without simply delving into the realm of bloodthirsty vengeance. It *seems* to be working so far in South Africa, but time will tell....

kinda partial to bloodthirsty vengeance myself...thanks for the details!

Don't get me wrong - vengeance is good, and I'm sure enough polluters will refuse to cooperate to satisfy our bloodlust... But this way, we can at least get more information. Information that will help prosecute other polluters....

hey, I understand! more of the transparent society kinda stuff...

Subject: Viridian Note 00060: Viridian Strategy Key concepts: catalogs, design shows, imaginary products, fundraising, money and organizational problems Attention Conservation Notice: If you read these notes because they're funny and they have weird news clippings, then you'd better skip this one. Links: http://www.arts-cape.com/softearth/ A woman who makes pottery out of deep-sea abyssal mud. Teakettles anyone? After the Viridian Teakettle Contest, I have had some time to ponder Viridian imaginary products and possible Viridian events. I believe we Viridians have hit a nerve with this imaginary products theme. The response is strong. Viridian Notes with "imaginary products" provoke a lot of list feedback. They also stir up media interest. Grim reportage of melting Antarctic ice packs is all well and good, but we're preaching to the converted as we track the climate news. These made-up gizmos of ours, by contrast, really seem to suit the contemporary temperament. It's an age which is profoundly weary of ideology and hates to face the facts, but it's still touchingly eager for a technical fix, especially if it's personal, intimate, and can be FedExed in with a single website click. So I'd like to see the Viridian Movement invest some serious effort in this promising direction. Expressing one's desire for righteous knicknacks is an effective political tactic, much less shopworn than protest signs, peptalks, or dire prognostications. I believe our tactics here should echo those of the Canadian publication ADBUSTERS. ADBUSTERS violently loathes the advertising industry and all its works. A typical ADBUSTERS fake ad is "Joe Chemo," a chainsmoking camel undergoing chemotherapy. The uniform subtext of all ADBUSTERS fake ads is that you, the viewer, are a victim of mental pollution and corporate false-consciousness. ADBUSTERS tries to hammer you into a more socially- advanced awareness by revealing the machineries of consumer manipulation. This is doubtless a virtuous and useful message, but there's already a group energetically doing this, ie. ADBUSTERS. Given our limited resources and innate Viridian Inactivism, we lazy Viridians could never out-do ADBUSTERS. However, I think we could detourne advertising in another way. Our Viridian version of fake ads should strongly suggest to the viewer that he lives in an *entire culture* which is so crass, so crude, so filthy, and so lacking in refinement, that he or she is being *cruelly denied* these very valuable and attractive consumer items. Viridian Imaginary Products should look as luscious, guilt-free and enticing as possible. They're utterly wonderful -- cheap, too! So, we Viridians do NOT want to urge the pampered consumer to behave in a more adult, reponsible fashion, consuming less, consuming correctly, and spending more time in (for instance) sprout-eating and transcendental meditation. No, our basic intent here is to provoke a trance-rupturing *consumer tantrum.* Our intent with these fake ads is to *push the contradictions* -- to exacerbate an atmosphere of *consumer hysteria.* We Viridians want consumers to be instantly afflicted with a terrible, tantalized greed for these marvelous items that they *simply cannot possess.* This is because Viridian imaginary products are, by their very nature, products inherent to a *superior and more advanced 21st century civilization.* Stupid 20th-century cultures vilely smothering in their own CO2 trash cannot manufacture items this cool. Desire that item, therefore, and you find yourself, will-nilly, desiring some better culture. As an important corollary, we want actual, contemporary product manufacturers to suffer severe pangs of future-shock and competitive anxiety when they see our imaginary ads. That's because our imaginary ads make all their actual, real-life, coal-powered products *look really bad and ugly.* Now, if we had a sufficient number of these imaginary ads in production, we could assemble an entire Viridian Imaginary Products Catalog. I surmise that this publication would look and act rather like a SHARPER IMAGE catalog, only, well, very Viridian. This catalog would be a visionary work of science fiction (without of course, identifying itself as "science fiction" in any way). In order to get it into as many hands as possible, we would sell it commercially. It would probably be retailed in alternative bookstores, fanzine outlets, by mail-order, and so forth. If this publication created useful interest and did not bankrupt our so-called organization, then a Viridian Exhibit would be in order. We would create mock-ups and models of our Imaginary Products, and take the show on the road. Like the magazine, this would be a commercial effort. Entry fees would be charged in host galleries, and, to cover our costs, it is quite likely that the fake products would be auctioned off to eager sci-fi collectors at the end of the event. Should we reach this exalted, ambitious stage, many further opportunities beckon. Personally, I would probably write a Viridian book. Other Viridian spinoffs by other Viridians seem plausible. At this point, the term "Viridian" would probably go into public domain. There would be press coverage, and bandwagon hopping, and many derivative rip-offs, and perhaps some actual real-life working artifacts, and basically, we would be witnessing an authentic little 21st century design movement, leaping up from deep obscurity to wreak whatever temporary havoc these things can. To get there from here requires cumulative steps. Given our narrow resource base, any misstep can do us serious harm, and the first and most important misstep, I believe, would be muddying the waters between the Internet gift economy and for-profit activity. It is fatally easy to cause great ill-will by mishandling this issue. For instance, this is likely to happen when Grandma gives you a bicycle out of the loving goodness of her kindly heart, and she spots you flogging her bike for cash in a flea market, one week later. At that point, even the kindliest of Grandmas is likely to whip out her umbrella and lay into you. And justly so. Much can be done outside the money economy. I'm a great believer in distributed systems and gift economies. But magazines, and especially, gallery shows, just don't work without funding. A natural dividing line suggests itself, however. Inside cyberspace: outside cyberspace. This will be our operating principle. Inside the Net, we will continue the Viridian List just as it has gone to date: it will be done entirely with noncommercial cajoling, ideological exhortations, prestigious dingbats for your log-in name, and occasional cool art-books as door prizes. However, when it comes to moving atoms rather than bits: say, layout, shipping, publishing, and making Viridian rayguns out of Fimo, we need to be on a firm commercial basis. In other words, I plan to pay contributors. Not very much, I hasten to add. Just barely enough to convince you that you are not being baldly ripped-off. If "Viridianism" ever somehow becomes truly "fashionable," then somebody somewhere, very likely including me, is going to get a lot of money. In the culture industry, if you make any perceptible cultural difference, you will definitely be burdened with a lot of money, whether you want it or not. I have witnessed this happening hundreds of times to hundreds of people. They always seem surprised about it, but that's because they're artists, and nobody ever trained them to think ahead. This is the stark operational reality of recuperative, co-optational capitalism. We Viridians have just got to get used to that dynamic and its consequences, because if we buckle under such an elementary gambit, we don't deserve to live. If, in future, you somehow make a lot of money because you got famous in the "Viridian Movement," I would suggest that you blow it on better software, strange artwork and cool designer crap. Then you'll be broke again, and just as lean, mean, and virtuous as you were before, except your apartment will be full of cool weird furniture. Somebody's gotta keep Philippe Starck in business, you know. Now: we will have some time to ponder and debate these matters. This spring, I'm very busy completing a novel. But once summer is here in Texas, I expect to be working on Viridian issues with much intensity. Because I expect to endure an extremely, lethally hot Texan summer this year. I'll be spending a lot of time hunched over my computer in the laboring air conditioning, grimly waiting for big swathes of Mexico to catch fire. I welcome your feedback on this matter of imaginary products. Specifically, I would like to create four lists of Viridian volunteers. A. People who want to work on these advertisements and the catalog, with the firm understanding that this is a for-hire, piecework-style, design job. Because we need these fake ads to look *good.* We want them to intrigue and alarm normal people who read real, no-kidding magazines. A billboard or two likely wouldn't kill us, either. B. You're not a copywriter, designer or graphics type, but you'd like to take on some of the organizational work, such as shipping stuff around and bugging total strangers to meet deadlines. It's awful, unglamorous drudgery. We'll pick up your postage costs and probably give you, I dunno, a Big Mike sweatshirt or something. C. People who are too damn lazy do any work for us, but who have lots of money, and want to give some to us so we can create mischief with it. If one of you software moguls on this list wants to pony up ten grand, for instance, I can guarantee you some entertaining fireworks by the end of summer. D. Modelmakers, gallerists and other fellow-travellers. Send email if you think you are up to tackling this. The next Viridian Note will have a new design contest, for a very nifty new prize. Bruce Sterling

Now this sounds like fun. You gonna run any of the ads in SUPERSTAR, Alexander?

Haha, somebody just mailed me and wrote ------------------------------------- To: alexander_schuth@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Viridian Note 00060: Viridian Strategy / superstar I definitely like the idea of these "ads" being translated into German and printed in Superstar. It's a great notion. -------------------------------------

see!!!

Well, I volunteered that... Somebody liked it... Pretty much the idea behind the whole thing...

--- Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com wrote: Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 15:16:54 -0500 From: Bruce Sterling bruces@well.com Subject: Viridian Note 00062: What I Did for Earth Day Key concepts: Earth Day, solar power, politics, Austin, Texas, carbon dioxide ascii symbolism, Earth Day 2000 Attention Conservation Notice: It's political. There's a lot of it. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian The Viridian Products listing at bespoke.org has recently doubled in size. Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fossil.gif http://www.subterrane.com and http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana (note dino animation at bottom of page) This contest expires May 31, 01999 Today was Earth Day 1999. My home town, Austin Texas, opened a new solar facility, its third and largest. This is the biggest solar generating unit I've ever personally seen. Black tilted wings of glassy silicon cover maybe a quarter-acre at our new airport, and they can generate a hearty 111 kilowatts in the blistering Texas sun. I attended the formal opening. It was a windy, clouded day. There was a crowd of about forty there to help snip the ribbon, most of them city functionaries. The mayor gave a brief speech extolling Austin's high-tech, quality of life, competitive advantages. He's an okay mayor. I've seen quite of few of them in my 27 years here. We Austinites have done a lot worse than this guy. Austin has a city-owned electrical utility. If you volunteer to pay extra each month on your city electrical bills, you can buy 50-watt "blocks" of solar power. Therefore I do -- I splurged and bought 200 watts, or somewhat less than 4 light-bulb's worth. About one thousand other earnest volunteers also pay extra for solar. Thanks to these and other laudable fringe initiatives, the City of Austin now has 450 peak kilowatts of green, renewable power. That's about one percent of our local capacity. It may not sound like much, but the national American average is two-tenths of one percent, so (if you are another Yankee) that probably makes us at least five times more virtuous than you. And gaining. The chief of our local utility, also there, shouted into an ironically power-dead microphone that his outfit is moving forward "aggressively." This city is spending a full million dollars a year on renewable, sustainable power. By 2005, therefore, we'll possess a full *five percent* renewable! What does this mean? Well, imagine that this piece of electrical email (Viridian Note 00062, direct from green, high-tech Austin Texas) had truth-in-labelling about its sources of power. As whiz@ricochet.net^^^^^^*** artfully suggests: "All emails sent using a server not specifically known to use a renewable energy source ought to have a border of CO2 molecules following the message, thus: 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 "And perhaps a short written statement above, like: 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 THIS SERVER USES POLLUTING POWER, CONTRIBUTING TO GLOBAL WARMING. 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 or a simpler: 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 BEWARE! SMOGGY SERVER! 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0" Whiz has a fine idea, so let's extend his suggestion further. If one of his vile CO2 molecule ascii symbols represented one percent of the electricity I used to compose this heartening piece of Earth Day news, the result would look like this: Subject: Viridian Note 00062 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 * 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 While five years and five million dollars from now, it will radically improve to *this!* Subject: Viridian Note 28765 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 * * * * * 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 Still, it's surely better to light even one solar candle than to merely curse that black, oily darkness. Meanwhile, in national Earth Day news, the CO2 issue stumbles front and center in the gerontocratic green contingent: 04/18/99 1st leader to head 'Earth Day 2000' By Patrick McMahon, USA TODAY SEATTLE - It's an environmental back-to-the-future. The earnest student activist who was the national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 is back for more. His project at age 54: "Earth Day 2000: New Energy for A New Era." "In 1990, we had on the order of 70 million people participating in Earth Day activities, and some 200 million worldwide," says Denis Hayes, now a foundation executive here. "We are confident that Earth Day 2000 is going to be bigger still." It is drawing support. "I think we can get people excited again," says environmental pioneer David Brower, 86. (((Yes people, that's right: Earth Day hippies are now million-year-old geezers. Hope the renewed excitement doesn't stop this fine old gentleman's heart.))) Earth Day campus organizer Ian Burke, 22, thinks "there are strong stirrings on college campuses" and predicts that college students will help "revitalize this movement that's gotten a little crusty after all these years." (((A *little* crusty? That guy is four times your age!))) Mitch Friedman, 35, a forest conservation leader in the Northwest, recalls being at the Earth Day 1990 celebration. (...) "You come to realize that while 'Earth Day everyday' is a nice idea, every decade or so it's powerful to get 10 million people in the street," Friedman says. (((Okay, I can only concur == in the Year 2000, any excuse to get 10 million people in the street is pretty much bound to be useful.))) The 2000 campaign - to be launched this week as part of 1999 Earth Day events - will focus on energy use and its connection to global warming. With a "clean energy agenda," organizers envision a month of lectures, rallies and concerts next April, culminating in what they hope will be the largest demonstration in history on Earth Day on Saturday, April 22, 2000. Clean, renewable energy use is "an issue with sweeping implications" in almost every area, Hayes says. "It's tough to find a better issue to rally around." ((('Largest demonstration in history?' Well, why not? It's 2000! Count me in!))) Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)

Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:37:43 -0500 To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00063: Real-World Projects Key concepts: imaginary products, ad campaigns, Viridian Curia, solar power banners, Viridian commentary, organizational problems Attention Conservation Notice: It's mostly about products that don't exist. Lots of rambling. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian http://www.solarsolar.com Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fo ssil.gif http://www.subterrane.com http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana (note dino animation at bottom of page) http://www.phuq.com/viridian http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/index.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/banner.html This contest expires May 31, 01999 On the subject of solar banners, Cor Van de Water (deleau@freemail.nl*) remarks: "I have my own web pages, although not my own server. I also do generate my own power. The Solar system that I am powering my home with is on display on my web pages. Last 40 days I (my solar system) generated 250 kWh while I (my appliances at home) used only 200. The rest is surplus, back into the grid. Theoretically this could be used by the server that my web pages are on, resulting in a green- powered site. Although in practice I think it is just my PC, where I make my web pages, which is powered 100% green AND the neighbour's dish-washer (or something like that). Anyway, I did make a banner (actually for Linkexchange) where I feature some solar cells and the address of my page, supported by the slogan: "No time to waste PV". If you want to look at the banner: http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif My solar pages are located at: http://start.at/solar Kind regards, Cor van de Water the Netherlands" (((bruces remarks: This is yet another fine example of the Viridian practice known as "predicting the present."))) Roger Weeks (roger@bayarea.net^^^?) offers a new idea for a Viridian Imaginary Product: "I'm working on another idea for the Imaginary Products catalog == the Viridian Home. Not all of the ideas are conceptualized yet, but it features the following: "Rain-collection system that serves as the primary irrigation and water source. "Septic tank is fitted with microbes that eat waste and output pure H2O. "The house is a single-story set into a hill, with indigenous flora planted on the roof. This keeps the house cool in summer and blends into the landscape. "Wind-up washer and dryer. "Power is supplied either from solar, wind, or fuel cells. "Construction is from entirely recycled cellulose or other fibers. "Walls are extremely thick, at least 18-24 inches, again for insulation. "Skylights provide all daytime light. "Nighttime lights are provided by bacteria or fungi that give off natural light. Ideally, these would be the same microbes that eat waste. Perhaps their other byproduct would be light. "No cathode ray tubes. All displays in the model Viridian house are smart ink displays. "Wireless or satellite data connections to the world net. No copper cable or telco lines in the future. "We should get someone with 3D design skills to mock up a demo. This would make a great Viridian gallery piece. Visitors could walk marvelling through a 3D full-size house that *they can't purchase.*" Bruce Sterling remarks: I am eager for more suggestions along this line. We have now assembled a group of Viridian Volunteers, known as "the Viridian Curia," who want to work on Viridian imaginary ad campaigns. Members of the Curia are the highest-ranking Viridians, and have their elite status denominated by a Viridian "bishop's crook" by their log-in name. If you would like to join the Curia and engage in the rough-and-tumble of undertaking ad projects, send me your snailmail address, and a 100-word biography indicating your areas of creative interest. Note that there are about thirty Curia members already. Manpower is not our problem. Here is a summary list of Viridian Imaginary Products suggested to date. I've not yet decided which project will be first, how to divvy up authority within the Curia, how to coordinate volunteers, what to do with the "ad" when we have it, or how to pay for any of this. This is why Viridian life is rich and full. Perhaps we will divide the Curia into rival design teams, depending on popular response to potential products. Attention please, Curia members: if you find any of these notions particularly attractive, let me know and I will make careful note of it. The Viridian EcoSystem Game (Note 00053) The Viridian Alcohol Cellphone (Note 00042) The Viridian Electrical Meter (Note 00043) The Viridian Service Station (Note 00044) The Viridian Teakettle (we have our design; this is a model-building project) The Viridian Model Home (Note 00063) The Viridian Model Family (Note 00018) The Viridian Genetically Reconstituted Mammoth-Fur Sweater Viridian "Fungal Brew" Relaxant De-Stressing Beverage Viridian Swag: temporary tattoos, giveaway pencils, T- shirts, foul-weather gear, Big Mike logo'd decontamination Tyvek jumpsuits, bumper stickers, etc. 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 CAUTION! CO2! SMOGGY SERVER! 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0 0=o=0

Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 22:33:59 -0500 From: Bruce Sterling Subject: Viridian Note 00068: Household Localizers Key concepts: housekeeping, ubiquitous computing, tangible cyberspace, digital localizers, anti-theft tags, ACM SIGCHI 99 Attention Conservation Notice: It's not a custom-written Viridian note, but a brief speech recently delivered to 2,500 computer-human interface designers. Links: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/ The Viridian Library: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/ Entries in the Viridian Power Banner Contest: http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/warn.fossil.gif http://www.subterrane.com http://www.netaxs.com/~morgana (note dino animation at bottom of page) http://www.phuq.com/viridian http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/vandewater/banner.gif http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/index.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/banner.html http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/sunservr.html http://www.dux.ru/digbody/viridian/vir.htm http://members.aol.com/stjude/viridian http://www.id.iit.edu/~chad/viridian/viridian_banner.htm http://www.dnai.com/~catnhat/viridianbanners.htm and http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/Banners.htm This contest expires May 31, 01999 Presentation at SIGCHI 99 Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA May 18, 01999 by Bruce Sterling For my mercifully brief presentation today, I'd like to talk in a rather unromantic, practical way about the interface between humanity and its stuff. My humble topic is that ancient curse, humanity's most basic task: housekeeping. First, let's try to get the technological big picture, and then we'll get into some practical, everyday implications. I'll use myself and my own life as a cogent example here. I think I'm rather typical of most SIGCHI attendees in that I now have two classes of possessions: actual possessions, and virtual possessions. Over the last twenty years, I've gotten my hot little hands on much more of both classes, but mostly, an explosive increase in the second class, virtual stuff. I own a hell of a lot of virtual stuff now. A Guatemalan family of four could live an upwardly mobile life on the revenue I spend on data flows. Especially if you count my cable TV, phone bills, Internet hookup, software, modems, PCs and the household security system. So, if there's a difference between my two classes of possessions, it isn't the money involved. No, the truly remarkable thing about my virtual stuff is its anomalous relationship to property law. Is it my property, or isn't it my property? Who knows? I sure don't know. I've got virtual stuff that is freeware, it's shareware, it's cut- and-pasted from heaven knows where. It's personal, it's public, I made some of it myself, and every flavor of so on. Even the stuff I bought direct from Steve Jobs and Bill Gates doesn't actually belong to me. It came almost mummified in complicated shrinkwrap declarations, so even though I paid real money, carried the box home, and installed the contents myself, I don't actually own this stuff. I kind of license it, or rent it, apparently. The Software Publishers Association says that I'm to regard this purchased virtual property as something like a chair. I'm supposed to believe that software is a physical, sacred property that will stay in one place and under one legal identity, forever. Or until release 2.0, whichever comes first. Even though, for instance, I used Netscape for years, when it was college freeware, and then a booming corporation, and then open-source code, and then a division of AOL, and then, probably, nothing at all but a memory, except that I'll still be using Netscape, because I'm really lazy. Here's my pitch in a nutshell: I can't imagine virtual property becoming anything much like a chair. Butt I can easily imagine chairs becoming much, much more like virtual property. This idea is probably best filed under the grand conceptual heading of "tangible cyberspace," i.e., the process in which the products, programs, and innate nature of virtuality spill out of the computer screen and infect the physical world. People used to talk about "wiring the home." This is old-fashioned rhetoric now. Turn the term inside out, and it becomes "sheltering your network." It all becomes clear if you postulate that the net always comes first. My physical possessions are an aspect of the net. Today, right now, if you objectively compare my virtual possessions to my actual possessions, it rapidly becomes obvious that my actual possessions are violently out of control. I have all kinds of searching and cataloging devices and services for my desktop machine, and for the Internet. But I've been known to hunt for my socks or my car keys for almost an hour. My house is an awful mess, because my actual possessions are very stupid. They don't know what they are, they don't know where they are, and they don't know where they belong. All this could change with a small, cheap, network peripheral which is, I believe, just barely over the technical horizon. The device I imagine is very similar to a common antitheft device, but much smarter. We could call it a "tab," or a "localizer," or a "locator ID tag." I imagine this locator ID tag having about a hundred k of memory and costing about ten cents. It probably runs on household temperature fluctuations. Its primary activity is to emit a unique radio chirp every two seconds or so. This chirp is triangulated by a network of receivers in my house and my lawn. Basically, the chip says, "I'm what I am, and here's where I am," in other words, "I am Bruce Sterling's left cowboy boot, and here I am under the couch where the cat dragged me." Fine, you think: you're tagging everything you own, how anal and geeky of you. No, that's not how this works. I'm way too lazy to work that hard. Instead, I pay a professional interior designer to come in and tag everything for me. I pay this guy (most likely she's a very smart woman actually), to catalog and tag everything I own, and put it where it sensibly belongs == and record that data, and embed it in my system for me. Now I know nothing, but my house knows where all my stuff is. My possessions know what they are, and where they belong. Unskilled labor can enter my home, and restore everything to perfect order in maybe an hour. And of course no one can steal any of it, because it's all security tagged, automatically. Everything I own is a police sting. These tags are really small, you see? The size of a fingernail paring, and tougher than a tenpenny nail. Cops always say to put an ID on your bicycle, but everything I own has a very smart, active ID. You might think that I find it kind of distasteful to have strangers going through all my stuff. Sure, there are some things I worry about, like my bong, my vibrator, and my ball-gag, but most of this nervous anxiety about the safety of my possessions is just ingrained habit. If I always know where it is, and I can never lose it, and it answers whenever I call for it, then it just surrounds me in an undistinguished haze of cyberstuff. I don't worry about it any more than I worry about the exact location of the segments on my hard drive. I never have to remember where I put anything again. "Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind," as Ralph Waldo Emerson used to say, but in this case, I am triumphantly clearing the processing space in my own head of literally thousands of unconscious catalogs. How many scissors do I have, how many staplers do I have? I never really use more than one at a time. My materialist obsession becomes a de-materialist obsession. There's just as much money around as there ever was, I accomplish everything I did before, but there's a lot less junk underfoot. Less mass == more data! It sounds like heaven, doesn't it? O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O THIS EMAIL MOVED STICKY BLACK FILTH FROM THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH, AND SET IT ON FIRE IN YOUR AIR O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Subject: Viridian Note 00073: Viridian Commentary Key concepts: household localizers, the coal-burning net, energy consumption practices Attention Conservation Notice: Who are these people? Viridian commentary is ruthlessly edited for reader convenience. Entries in the Viridian Couture Contest: none This contest expires July 21, 01999. Links: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/ From: Pete Kaiser (kaiser@acm.org) Subject: Re: Viridian Note 00068: Household Localizers "Bruce: "Your household localizers actually have existed for years, even though they're rather large and they cost more than ten cents. I have experience with one variety, the ones called 'active badges,' developed by Olivetti at its Cambridge (UK) research lab and elaborated by Olivetti and Digital Equipment. "The classic active badge has about the area of a credit card and is about 8mm thick, in a housing of black plastic. It has a single button on the front, plus an almost unnoticeable little infrared emitter and a similar little receiver. Inside is a battery and a tiny circuit consisting mostly of a unique identity number in ROM. The badge responds with that number when it gets a signal, or when the button is pressed. "Every second or so a ceiling-mounted box emits a low- powered infrared pulse, and every active badge in range responds with its identity. The box then emits a message that says "I'm box A, and I have these badge identities in range: x, y, z, ...". A computer collects that information and, on request, can tell you "Bruce Sterling [wearer of badge x] is in his living room [near detector box A]." "People can be tracked all over a campus or factory; and since the computer knows where you are, it can see to it that your incoming phone calls ring where you *are.* Suppose you don't *want* people to know where you are? Simple: you hide your badge in your pocket, and you become invisible to the system. "You can also glue active badges to valuable pieces of equipment, or better yet, build badges into their housings. "This technology is quite old. When last I was in contact with it, they were trying to make the devices smarter and smaller. "So much for the Oh-Wow! factor. Active badges haven't been a market success because, it turns out, people don't *want* to be locatable all the time. People want to be able to be unlocatable without explicitly signalling that they're unlocatable, for reasons that may range from the mundane (using the toilet) to the clandestine (eating at restaurants instead of the company cafeteria). "We have to think seriously about whether we really want to know where all our stuff is. Suppose one's spouse discovers the existence of certain small, prized objects you've kept hidden since you bought them out of the petty cash. "What would be the real repercussions of knowing where everything is? There must be any number of second and third-order social problems that we would never discover without performing the experiment. "Finally: real Viridian localizers would be intrinsically part of the objects localized, and would have more than one function. In many cases, like the Viridian teapot, the tags would grow along with the object, or form within it like the crystalline interior of a geode. They might cover the exterior like tiny buds. The same for locator detectors. After all, biology is much better at producing emitters and detectors than we are at designing them from scratch." (((bruces remarks: No wonder these clunky "active badges" were a market failure: why the heck should I pay one thin dime to let *Olivetti* know where *I* am? Furthermore, if some political regime dares to put an Orwellian locator dog-tag on me, then it's obviously time to raise the black flag and start shooting. This "market problem" is a straightforward power question of who owns the means of information. Power may be subtler nowadays, but beware any digital consumer-marketing company that blithely offers to cheaply catalog everything you possess.))) (((Viridian Note 00070: The Coal-Burning Net, on the subject of how much CO2 is produced by the Net, aroused much response.))) From: Peter Denning (pjd@cne.gmu.edu) "In Viridian Note 00070, you quoted a Forbes piece quantifying the electrical consumption of computers. I've seen one or two other papers recently of the same ilk. Many years ago, when people proposed founding paper journals about the coming age of paperless offices, I said 'The only difference between a computer and a book is the age of the trees.' Others heard that as a quip, but now they are measuring it. From: Charles Raymond (craymond@northweb.com) "I've never read Forbes magazine, but after this Viridian Note, I don't think I ever will. *My* power is generated solely by moving water. Sixteen concrete- enclosed turbines, half of the project. The other half serves Ontario. "I have to wonder how many cubic tons of poison gas, liquid and solid pollutants are produced each month for the production of Forbes magazine. Not to mention the co- author's personal web page, which wastes all that electricity. And what happens to their publication after use? Is every issue is recycled from the previous issue? When incinerated, do the inks burn clean? Ha!" From: Matthew Rubenstein (Matt@MediaServ.com) "The supposed scientific basis for that Forbes article is the 10/16/1998 *Science* paper titled "A Large Terrestrial Carbon Sink in North America Implied by Atmospheric and Oceanic Carbon Dioxide Data and Models." But as even James Watt noted, trees (and the rest of nature) are a leading source of greenhouse gases. Forest that sink carbon can also produce carbon (just as I live and breathe). "Nutty amelioration schemes that teach a fish to bicycle seem to be the rising message of polluters. A two-page glossy Chevron ad in a recent issue of *Harpers* magazine suggests that we should colonize undersea deserts with carbon-sucking lifeforms. This is clearly the way to follow up our success with rabbits in Australia and lampreys in the Great Lakes." From: Raul Miller (rdm@test.legislate.com) "I noticed that this Forbes article assumes that there are several routers and such for each personal computer. So why are PCs cheap commodity items while routers aren't?" From: "Laura Stinson" (lstinson@empathy.com) "You know, I tire of this computer bashing, and I deem the stats quoted at Forbes to be of dubious credibility. Try these stats instead: "'...a heated water bed can consume more electricity than an efficient refrigerator. Altogether, the nation's water beds consume the electricity produced by two large power plants.' "'Aquariums can be huge energy guzzlers == a 180-gallon coral reef tank can use more energy than a residential central electric heating system and refrigerator combined.' "'We project that consumer electronics and halogen torchiere lamps together will account for 70 percent of the forecasted miscellaneous growth,' says Jonathan Koomey, leader of the Energy End-Use Forecasting Group.... (http://www.ucsf.edu/daybreak/1998/08/25_elec.html) "'The following ten product types (listed in priority order based on absolute projected growth==the first product listed having the highest forecasted energy growth) are projected to account for 60% of forecasted miscellaneous growth from 1996 to 2010: Torchiere lamp Color television Dehumidifier Security system Compact audio system Microwave oven Projection television Satellite television Pool pump Home computer ..." (http://enduse.lbl.gov/Info/LBNL-40295.pdf) (Note the absence of waterbeds and aquaria on the above list.) "Seems to me that even if the dismal Forbes statistics were remotely close, we could still easily pay for our digital vice by giving up a few torchieres and televisions. (Don't even talk to me about heated swimming pools.)" From: Jeremy Porter (jerry@freeside.fc.net) "This Note hits close to home, so I will admit to a bias here. I worked at a Fortune 500 computer company not too long ago, and I worked with the EPA 'Energy Star/Green PC program' at that company. "This Forbes chart you cited declares that non- Internet computer usage remains constant, while Internet computer usage grows. How could that be? Also, Internet use directly competes with other energy-using activities, such as automobiles and television. If leisure time is constant, then Forbes fails to show that total CO2 levels are increased by Internet use. "Forbes also declares: 'Under the PC's hood, demand for horsepower doubles every couple of years.' This fails under the most simplistic examination. PC's in 1994 before Energy Star mandates: average power used by operational system, 50-100 watts. Average power used by operational PCs today: 50-100 watts. "At 17 watts, integrated chips give off so much waste heat that their ceramic carriers can crack from thermal expansion. There are real limits to the amount of energy that cheap, lightweight, mostly plastic personal computers can use and burn off safely. Power utilization has not increased in computers. As for special purpose micro-controllers (which Forbes also decries). these chips tend to dramatically increase energy efficiency in any machine they are installed in. Forbes says 'Your typical PC and its peripherals require about 1,000 watts of power.(...) That kind of usage implies about 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electrical consumption in a year.' "A normal PC power supply is rated at a maximum capacity of about 200 watts, and a large monitor (17in- 19in) is about 100 watts maximum. Typical utilization is about 25% when active, and power consumption can drop by 50% or more when idle. Expected power utilization of a PC based on the (Forbes-estimated) 12 hour week (at 100 watts active) is 4,320,000 joules. I work this out to 1.2 kilowatt hours /week, or 62.4 kilowatt/hours/year. "In other words, Forbes is off by a factor of 16. We should throw out their figures at this point. "But there's better news yet. Since most modern computers are Energy Star rated, idle power MUST drop to less than 50 watts for the chassis, 50 watts for the monitor and 25 watts for the printer, when idle. I've seen designs that easily drop to 5 watts for the monitor, 2 for the printer, and about 10 for the PC. Not only that, unlike a light bulb, the PC knows when it's idle and turns itself off. You want to save energy? Turn off your computer's energy-gobbling screen-saver, and when you surf, turn off a light bulb and surf in the dark! "If we had clean, smart Viridian power, Internet sites wouldn't need today's huge, uninterruptible power supplies. They wouldn't need distant generators with tremendous conversion losses (10-20% or more). Putting smart power into the electric grid would mean big savings in coal and oil. "The old-fashioned electric utility grid has the same problems competing with the Internet that phone companies do. Big centralized control networks cannot be upgraded in a piecemeal fashion. The control theory used for congestion avoidance and control is fundamentally incompatible with decentralized control. "We need a Viridian Windows desktop theme with the trash can as a coal bucket." O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O SURF IN THE DARK O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

From bruces@well.com Thu Jul 1 15:24:56 1999 Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 16:30:34 -0500 To: Viridian List From: Bruce Sterling Reply-To: Errors-To: Subject: Viridian Note 00075: Kyoto Politics X-UIDL: ab75fafc2d1e207a2094d0ae29b9b219 Key concepts: inadequate government, Kyoto Protocol, US Senate Attention Conservation Notice: it's entirely and utterly political. There are 1,300 words of it. Links: Alliance to Save Energy http://www.ase.org/ Senator Thad Cochran, Republican from Mississippi http://www.senate.gov/~cochran/ United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (includes full text of Kyoto Protocol): http://www.unfccc.de Republican Senators Resent Clinton's Temerity on Kyoto: http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/Gwupdate-mw.htm Kirk Fordice, Governor of Mississippi, on Kyoto Protocol: http://www.govoff.state.ms.us/pr051998.htm Horrific EPA graph of growing climate temperature anomalies: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/news/j-dlo_pg.gif Entries in the Viridian Couture Contest: None. Greenhouse heat wave in effect, Viridians reduced to shabby sombreros and gym shorts. This contest expires July 21, 01999. In Viridian Note 00074: "Browning the US Govt," we described how Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi tried to stop the President of the United States from mandating less CO2 use in the federal government. On the face of it, the Senator's act seems incredibly stupid, vindictive and pointless, and was promptly denounced as "unbelievable." While politics are of tangential interest to the Viridian movement, it's important to understand why the US government has become so dysfunctional in climate issues. Why have even simple, "no-brainer" reform efforts that actually *save taxpayers money* become areas of partisan confrontation? Why did Thad Cochran do this apparently ludicrous thing? Let's speculate, shall we? It would be too simple to denounce Senator Cochran as a corrupt puppet of the carbon-mining industries. This kind of polarizing demogoguery is boring and counterproductive. It's been done to death. Obviously the carbon industries are major players in the energy process. It could scarcely be otherwise. For instance, the recent Interior Appropriations Bill (which Senator Cochran deliberately amended in order to frustrate the President), contains about 300 million dollars in Energy Department federal subsidies for oil and coal. But the carbon industries don't own Thad Cochran. Mississippi isn't Kuwait. He's never been an out-and-out oil man, unlike, for instance, George Bush. There's some oil and a whole lot of foul, soft-lignite coal in Mississippi, with mining representing maybe 2 percent of the state's economy, but Senator Cochran's main legislative interest is catfish farming. Maybe the guy is just incomprehensibly mean-spirited. Perhaps he hates Bill Clinton so much that, like many Republican zealots, he's willing to slash his own wrists to bleed on Clinton's shoes. But no. Thad Cochran is a former Eagle Scout, a white-haired Baptist lawyer from Mississippi whose demeanour is commonly described as "courtly." Cochran is the senior Senator from Mississippi, a career pol who wins his re-elections by large, cozy margins. Cochran pre-dates the savage trench- warfare epoch of his junior Senator, Trent Lott, and the politically extinguished Newt Gingrich. The Senator has been in power a long time. He is not childish, and he doesn't make trouble merely for trouble's sake. The Alliance to Save Energy artfully suggests that Senator Cochran is attempting to fleece the American taxpayer while stuffing fat back into the government. If mere pork was the goal, Senator Cochran would be doing what he specializes in doing, i.e., rural Mississippi water projects. No, Thad Cochran has two basic reasons to do what he did. Defending the Senate's privileges, and ideological pressure. First, the jealous Senate. In introducing his amendment, the Senator irately declared that the President's action was a "thinly disguised effort to implement the Kyoto Agreement." Why does he consider this a bad thing? Because it makes the Senate into a potted plant, that's why. The Senate believes it has already successfully dealt with Kyoto. The Senate, in the bipartisan persons of Senators Byrd and Hagel, carried out a maneuver, back in 1997, called "putting the treaty in the parking lot." The Senate didn't want a straight-up, confrontational vote on the Kyoto treaty, because this might cause political stress. So, they simply stuck the treaty into permanent limbo, by passing the "Byrd-Hagel Resolution." This resolution states, more or less, that the US Senate is not going to consider the Kyoto Protocol unless it's firmly established from the get-go that the United States comes out on top in the UN negotiations no matter what. Byrd-Hagel is a silly resolution, but the text of the resolution isn't really important. The resolution's formal text is just vapid rhetorical dogfood for various economic and military American interest groups. The point of the Byrd-Hagel resolution is to exploit the Senate's privilege to "advise and consent" on foreign treaties. In practice, "advising and consenting" has become a procedural brake. The Senate can quietly pocket treaties, and do basically nothing, forever, while avoiding any serious political costs. The legislative woods are full of vital yet uncertified international treaties stuck permanently in the US Senate, such as nuclear arms accords. US Administrations and their State Departments, in despair, have come to act as if the treaties were in force anyway. It is demeaning for the Senate to have their bluff called in this way. It's highly irritating to have Bill Clinton do what little he can to behave as if the Kyoto treaty were in force. Therefore, Cochran threw a procedural spanner into the works, by shifting the ground to a different area, where the Senate controls the purse strings. Cochran's been made to look bad == after all, it's true that he is wasting money unnecessarily, and surprise amendments are always a cheap shot, and when you come right down to it, Senator Cochran is not a very bright man == but he can afford it, and he probably considers the humiliation worth it. His point was to make Clinton pay a price for encroaching on the balance of powers. Then there's the second matter: rabid anti-Kyoto ideology. I frankly doubt that Senator Cochran himself cares much about the substance of the Kyoto Accords one way or the other. He's never made a major issue of global warming, and the Senate has pretty well set it up so that he'll never have to take a public stand. But back home in Mississippi, the Republican Governor, Kirk Fordice, regards Kyoto as tantamount to foreign invasion and economic catastrophe. And the Governor has said so, loudly, and brought pressure on his state's Senators. As we have stated in previous Notes (see Note 00009) we Viridians aren't big fans of the Kyoto Protocol. Assuming the treaty is ratified (it won't be), even assuming it's efficiently enforced worldwide (it can't be), Kyoto is basically the industrial status quo of 1988, forever. That is way, way too much carbon dioxide. Kyoto's proposed scheme appears better than exploding growth rates in carbon dioxide, but Kyoto's bogus solution is nowhere near enough to get the planet off the hook. Carbon use has to crash drastically, fast. It has to wiped out by the same process that created it, industrial revolution. Kyoto is a bland assertion, by 173 separate national governments, that rickety confederations can control global industry. Kyoto is all about ration-tickets, caste systems, and national-boundary bailiwicks. The Kyoto Protocol looks like a document from a vanished epoch. Governments can't even control their own currencies any more, much less offshore maquilladorasx and carbon moguls like Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Even the well-organized and financed American government has blundered drastically with its state-sponsored emissions standards == America's best smog-control efforts gave rise to ghastly mutants like the Sport Utility Vehicle. Kyoto represents alien political control of the untrammeled pioneer spirit of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and John D. Rockefeller, legendary American heroes who are, without question, the three sinister godfathers of the Greenhouse Effect. The implications of Kyoto are just too much for certain people to take, and Kyoto is especially too much for particularly unpleasant, paranoid people. In further Notes, we will examine some of Kyoto's most virulent enemies. O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O I'M DIGGING COAL WITH MY RETURN KEY O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Comments?

Key concepts: lobbying groups, political power structure in USA, Viridian Notes Table of Contents 00001-00075 Attention Conservation Notice: It's political. It goes on quite a while. Entries in the Viridian Couture Contest: http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/computercasual.html http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/Fashion0110.html Prada's Fall 99 "EcoWarrior" get-up, pirate-scanned out of July 01999 issue of VOGUE: http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/contest5.ht ml (((Thanks for showing us how the pros do it, Miuccia! Everybody go click the banner ads in gratitude at http://www.vogue.com!))) Links: http://www.wholeearthmag.com Summer 1999 issue of Whole Earth magazine has lead article on "Viridian Manifesto" http://www.bespoke.org/viridian Tor Kristensen remarks: "The links in the bespoke.org Viridian Notes are now active (clickable). Please notify the Viridian public that I need an Archive Administrator to update the Viridian archive while I'm in Alaska. It's dead simple. Copy, Paste, Click 'submit.'" Tor Kristensen tor@araneum.dk^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^***? Sources: FORTUNE magazine December 01997 When you're baking in inhuman heat beneath an angry sky, just as, for instance, millions of inhabitants of the East Coast of the United States are doing as I write this, the carbon dioxide problem can seem monstrous and unstoppable. After all, the planet's entire atmosphere has been soiled. There's no place left for anyone to hide. It's easy to feel helpless and to become very paranoid. No entity anywhere seems to be helping climate matters much. Especially in politics. The National Wildlife Federation's *Conservation Directory* (44th edition) lists no fewer than 3,000 government and private environmental groups, in the USA and Canada alone. Many of them have been beavering along in the halls of power for decades now. Yet we're still roasting in our own exhaust spew, just like the turkeys we are. But in fact, to date, CO2 has never become a central political issue. The Kyoto treaty is buried under the US Senate's carpet. Even the political anti-Kyoto forces, (and there are plenty of them with plenty of funds) are very much fringe amateur small-fry, power-politically speaking. Before I tear into the anti-Kyoto groups as if they were causing the end of the world (as in point of fact they may be), it's useful to put CO2 politics into a broader political perspective. We'll stick to an American political perspective for the time being, because I haven't found good data yet for other juridictions, and the Americans clearly play a major, starring role in the planet's CO2 crisis. Who actually runs the American political system? Could it be CIA/NSA/FBI? The Military-Industrial Complex? Freemasons? The ultra-rich? The Skull and Bones Society? The 4,312 guys on the grassy knoll who shot Jack Kennedy? Alas no! In December 01997, FORTUNE magazine took the trouble to conduct a formal poll of members of Congress, Congressional staffers, and White House officials. The magazine, aided by two professional pollsters, asked 2,200 politicians to rank American interest groups in terms of their political clout. These were America's top politicians, talking about the people who tell them what to do. Who can get their way from the US government? Who do American politicians fear to cross? Who really compels their political attention? Interest groups have their ups and downs, just like all other aspects of industrial democracy. It's only a year and a half since the FORTUNE poll though, and we're still in the same Administration. So this is a viable snapshot of the American political landscape, seen from the top of the system. FORTUNE did the ranking, but I'm doing my own helpful commentary. I hope that non-Americans may find this list of particular use. 1. American Association of Retired Persons Old people who vote faithfully and have plenty to gain and lose by government subsidy. 2. American Israel Public Affairs Committee Wealthy, discreet alien sympathizers with a focussed agenda. 3. AFL-CIO Largest labor union. Historically dominates Democratic Party. 4. National Federation of Independent Business The small-business lobby. 5. Association of Trial Lawyers of America The privileged legal caste. They know how legislators think and act because many of them are future, current or former legislators. 6. National Rifle Association of America Notoriously zealous American armed-populace freaks and the industries that supply their ammo. The classic single- issue pressure group. 7. Christian Coalition TV-satellite evangelical empire. Good at grass-roots attacks on Republican party structure. 8. American Medical Association The privileged medical caste. 9. National Education Association Huge numbers of government-employed teachers. 10. National Right to Life Committee Abortion zealots. 11. National Association of Realtors Huge real-estate industry is highly vulnerable to changes in federal tax structure. 12. American Bankers Association The privileged financial caste. 13. National Association of Manufacturers Classic iron-bending industrial lobby. 14. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Government workers who have everything to gain and lose by activities and budgets of governments. 15. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. Broad-scale business lobby. 16. Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States Caste of military veterans. Formerly in government uniform, receive many formal privileges, have own Cabinet officer. 17. American Farm Bureau Federation Agro-business. 18. Motion Picture Association of America American global entertainment complex: movie, video, DVD and ancillary rights subdivision. 19. National Association of Home Builders of the U.S. Home construction industry. 20. National Association of Broadcasters Traditional broadcast television lobby. 21. American Hospital Association Lower and industrial ranks of medical caste 22. National Governors' Association Fifty state executives below federal level, common source of Presidential candidates. 23. American Legion Military caste. 24. National Restaurant Association Food/entertainment industry. 25. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Large,scary labor union notorious for organized-crime ties. *26 United Auto Workers Labor union, and the very first group in the listing that might have any direct interest in CO2 issues. 27 Independent Insurance Agents of America Insurance industry. 28 National Retail Federation Retailing industry. *29 American Trucking Associations Inc. Transportation lobby, another group of CO2 interest. 30 Health Insurance Association of America USA is unique in having no government health policy, creating anomolous boom situation among medical lobbyists. *31 American Automobile Manufacturers Assn. Auto lobby. Major CO2 greenhouse interests. 32 Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association Yet more medical lobbyists. 33 Business Roundtable Ultra-wealthy business caste. 34 National Beer Wholesalers Association Drug industry, heavily regulated, still remembers America's "noble experiment" with alcohol prohibition. 35 Natl. Com. to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Elderly demographic group protecting cross-generational subsidies. *36 National Automobile Dealers Association Car salespeople. They sell large devices that spew CO2. *37 Sierra Club First environmental group on the list, finally in at number 37. Old, wealthy, well-organized. But you could fill a banquet hall with powerful Washington lobbyists before the first environmentalist got a Birkenstocked foot in the door. 38 American Federation of Teachers Another teacher's lobby. 39 Pharm. Research & Manufacturers of America Pharmaceutical lobby. 40 Children's Defense Fund Social-welfare lobby beloved of Hillary Clinton and others. *41 American Petroleum Institute The first Washington lobby that can be unhesitatingly classified as a Viridian class-enemy, with direct responsibility for climate damage, and compelling, unavoidable reasons to damage more and more. 42 American Insurance Association Yet another insurance lobby. 43 NARAL Reproductive rights zealots. 44 American Council of Life Insurance More insurance. 45 Recording Industry Association American global music entertainment complex. 46 American Bar Association Legal caste. 47 Securities Industry Association Financial caste. 48 National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors Business distributor lobby 49 National Assn. of Letter Carriers of the U.S. Postal employee lobby. 50 Tobacco Institute Nicotine drug industry. So much for the top fifty power players. As you can see, climate scarcely ranks at all. This is not without its benefits, as, if things work out the way we Viridians hope they will, climate will quickly cease to matter politically. We don't *want* a permanent political interest in CO2 issues. That might be fatal. If climate spins so drastically out of control that climate becomes a long-term, central political crisis, it probably means catastrophe for civilization. Just for fun, here's a swarm of the following fifty minor players, where the situation remains very the same. 51 National Cable Television Association 52 National Council of Senior Citizens 53 Communications Workers of America 54 Service Employees International Union 55 Independent Bankers Association of America *56 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Labor union including electric utilities. 57 United Steelworkers of America 58 Associated General Contractors of America *59 National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Electric utilities, possible solar, wind 60 Mortgage Bankers Association of America 61 American Cancer Society *62 Citizens for a Sound Economy Anti-environmental group 63 Intl. Assoc. of Machinists & Aerospace Workers 64 Grocery Manufacturers of America 65 Planned Parenthood Federation of America 66 Americans for Tax Reform 67 National Association of Life Underwriters 68 Handgun Control Inc. 69 Beer Institute 70 Credit Union National Association *71 League of Conservation Voters Environmental group 72 United States Conference of Mayors 73 National League of Cities *74 Chemical Manufacturers Association CO2 *75 Independent Petroleum Assn. of America Oil drillers, carbon miners *76 National Cattlemen's Beef Association Methane problems, highly energy-intensive industry. 77 National Association of Independent Insurers 78 American Nurses Association 79 Natural Resources Defense Council 80 United States Telephone Association 81 Food Marketing Institute *82 United Mine Workers of America Carbon mining a major sub-industry. 83 National Association of Securities Dealers 84 Bond Market Association 85 Hotel Empl. and Restaurant Empl. Intl. Union *86 Environmental Defense Fund Legal arm, carries out class-action lawsuits. *87 American Forest and Paper Association Cuts trees and plants them. *88 National Wildlife Federation Biodiversity. *89 American Lung Association Anti-soot group. *90 Edison Electric Institute Electrical power lobby. 91 Common Cause 92 American Heart Association 93 League of Women Voters 94 Federation of American Health Systems 95 Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. 96 National Association of Counties 97 Newspaper Association of America 98 Air Line Pilots Association International 99 Union of Needletrades, Ind., and Tex. Empl. 100 Electronic Industries Association You'll notice that the "Viridian Design Movement" is nowhere listed. But on the other hand, neither is the "Global Climate Coalition," with their vile assertions that CO2 is just great for Mom and apple pie. It's still hand-to-hand battle among small clusters of savages, out on the CO2 frontier. And with luck, it will stay that way until no one has to worry about it any more. O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O Table of Contents 1-75 O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O Viridian Notes 1-75 (complete with titles, some retroactively bestowed): 00001: Viridian Design Speech 00002: Viridian List Mechanics 00003: Viridian Design Principles 00004: Historical Awareness 00005: Viridian Aesthetics 00006: Floods 1 00007: Floods 2 00008: The Science Press on Global Warming 00009: The Science Press on Global Warming, Rewritten 00010: Comments from Viridians 00011: Viridian Mascot Contest 00012: Web Links 00013: Link Criticism 00014: Remembrance Agents 00015: Weather Violence 00016: Bio-Refineries 00017: Viridian Aphorisms 00018: The Viridian Model Family 00019: Viridian Domains of Interest 00020: Energy Reform, the Swedish "Solution" 00021: The World Is Becoming Uninsurable, Part 1 00022: The World Is Becoming Uninsurable, Part 2 00023: The World is Becoming Uninsurable, Part 3 00024: Kelly's Koan 00025: German Greens 00026: Viridian Aphorisms 00027: Viridian Graphics 00028: Viridian Gardening 00029: The Interfund 00030: The View From Ecotopia 00031: Self-destructive Jungles 00032: The Viridian Refueling Project 00033: Viridian Aesthetics: Andy Goldsworthy 00034: Researching Andy Goldsworthy 00035: Viridian Aesthetics: Landscape Transformation 00036: Offshore Wind Power 00037: Viridian Commentary 00038: Viridian Aphorisms 00039: Starck's New Catalog 00040: German Politics 00041: The Viridian Product Catalog 00042: the Viridian Alcohol Cellphone 00043: the Viridian Electrical Meter 00044: The Viridian Service Station 00045: Twentieth-century Thinking 00046: German Bankers Love German Greens 00047: Viridian Imaginary Products Exhibition 00048: Viridian Aphorisms 00049: Submerging Carbon 00050: Wired Urban Forests 00051: Viridian Commentary 00052: Human-Assisted Wildlife Migration OOO53: The Ecosystem Game OOO54: The Festo Stingray OOO55: Biodiversity Maps OOO56: Viridian Commentary 00057: Extinct Megafauna 00058: Grass Gas 00059: Viridian Aphorisms 00060: Viridian Strategy 00061: Web-site Power Banner Contest 00062: What I Did for Earth Day 00063: Real-World Projects 00064: Viridian Finances 00065: Burning Man Festival 00066: Freeplay's Wind-Up Power 00067: Eco-Disaster Tourism 00068: Household Localizers 00069: Viridian Aphorisms 00070: The Coal-Burning Net 00071: Greening the US Govt. 00072: Viridian Couture Contest 00073: Viridian Commentary 00074: Browning the US Govt. 00075: Kyoto Politics 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 thick black icky death beneath electric wings of light 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0 0=c=0

Below is of interest for gamers, game designers, and anybody residing in virtual communities or virtual community builders (= YOU!). ************************************************************ Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 18:36:01 -0500 Subject: Viridian Note 00090: Design Principles for Virtual Worlds Key concepts: virtual communities, computer gaming, virtual politics, virtual economics, violence, automation, virtual personae, entertainment industry Attention Conservation Notice: Almost 3,000 words. Of interest mostly to net.organizational specialists. Written in subcultural jargon of computer gaming industry. Unlike most tracts on virtual community, reflects actual, sustained, hard-won experience with its subject matter. Has little to do with CO2 emissions, except that 125,000 computer gamers whacking imaginary dragons with imaginary swords are emitting a lot of actual carbon dioxide. Entries in the Viridian Summer Health Warning Contest: http://www.earthlight.co.nz/~bretts/vs.html http://www.tux.org/~lasser/viridian/ http://www.subterrane.com/heat.htm http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/sun.bmp http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/HEAT.html http://members.tripod.com/~MSpong/viridian/heatdeath.html http://www.premierestedivolt.com/HEAT.HTML http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/heatkills.html http://www.provide.net/~herrell/heat.html http://www.gothic.net/~weasel/viridian/ http://home.earthlink.net/~keim9/heatwarning.htm http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/viridianhea t.html http://www.octa.net/heatposter.html http://www.boston.quik.com/kitsune/gfx/heatwarn.jpg http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~djb14/viridian/heatkills.htm http://www.artlung.com/viridian6/ http://www.well.com/~smendler/heat.html http://www.greenbuilder.com/viridian_heat_load@148K.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/heatkills.html http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pal/viridian.html http://www.potatoe.com/viridian/poster.html http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/3203/viridian_heat.h tml This contest expires on September 1, 01999. Links: http://www.ultimaonline.com http://mud.sig.net/raph/gaming/ (((Raphael Koster (rkoster@origin.ea.com*) was lead designer for Ultima Online, an interactive virtual world with over 125,000 subscribers. He and his colleagues have come up with a set of principles and rules of thumb for managing these complex interactive environments. == bruces))) The Laws of Online World Design by Raphael Koster These are taken from both experience and from the writings of others. Many who have done this sort of game design take some of these rules for granted, but other rules may be less intuitive. Many of the laws here were actually stated as such by others, and not by me. A Caveat Ola's Law About Laws: "Any general law about virtual worlds should be read as a challenge rather than as a guideline." You'll learn more from attacking it than from accepting it. Design Rules The secrets to a really long-lived, goal-oriented, online game of wide appeal: * Have multiple paths of advancement (individual features are nice, but making them ladders is better); * Make it easy to switch between paths of advancement (ideally, without having to start over) * Make sure the milestones in the path of advancement are clear, visible, and significant (having 600 meaningless milestones doesn't help); * Ideally, give your game a sense of limitless significant milestones (try to make your ladder feel infinite). Modes of expression You're trying to provide as many modes of expression as possible in your online world. "Character classes" are just modes of expression, after all. Persistence means it never goes away Once you open your online world, expect to keep your team on it indefinitely. Some of these games have never closed. And closing one prematurely may result in losing the faith of your customers, damaging the prospects for other games in the same genre. Macroing, botting, and automation No matter what you do, someone is going to automate the process of playing your world. Corollary: Looking at what parts of your game players tend to automate is a good way to determine which parts of the game are tedious and/or not fun. Game systems: No matter what you do, players will decode every formula, statistic, and algorithm in your world via experimentation. It is always more rewarding to kill other players than to kill whatever the game sets up as a target. A given player of level x can slay multiple creatures of level y. Therefore, killing a player of level x yields (n)y reward in purely in-game reward terms. Killing players will therefore always be more rewarding in game terms than killing monsters of comparable difficulty. However, there's also the fact that players will be more challenging and exciting to fight than monsters, no matter what you do. Never trust the client. Never put anything on the client machine. The client is in the hands of the enemy. Never, ever, ever forget this. J. C. Lawrence's "do it everywhere" law: "If you do it one place, you have to do it everywhere." Players like clever things and will search them out. Once they find a clever thing, they will search for other similar or related clever things that seem to be implied by what they found, and will get pissed off if they don't find them. Hyrup's "do it everywhere" Corollary: "The more detailed you make the world, the more players will want to break away from the classical mold." Dr Cat's Stamp Collecting Dilemma: "Lots of people might like stamp collecting in your virtual world. But those who like stamps will never play with those who like other features. Should you have stamp collecting in your world?" We know that there are a wide range of features that people find enjoyable in online worlds. We also know that some of these features are in conflict with one another. Given the above, we don't yet know if it is possible to have a successful world that incorporates all the features, or whether the design must choose to exclude some design elements in order to keep the players happy. "Koster's Law" (Mike Sellers was actually the one to dub it thus): "The quality of roleplaying is inversely proportional to the number of people playing." Hyrup's Counter-observation: "The higher the fee, the better the roleplayers." (And of course, the higher the fee, the smaller the playerbase.) Enforcing roleplaying A roleplay-mandated world is essentially a fascist state. Whether or not this accords with your goals in making such a world is a decision you yourself will have to make. Storytelling versus simulation If you write a static story (or indeed include any static element) in your game, everyone in the world will know how the story ends in a matter of days. Mathematically, it is not possible for a design team to create stories fast enough to supply everyone playing. This is the traditional approach to this sort of game nonetheless. You can try a sim-style game which doesn't supply stories but instead supplies freedom to make them. This is a lot harder and arguably has never been done successfully. Players have higher expectations of the virtual world The expectations are higher than of similar actions in the real world. For example: players will expect all labor to result in profit; they will expect life to be fair; they will expect to be protected from aggression before the fact, and not just to seek redress after the fact; they will expect problems to be resolved quickly; they will expect that their integrity will be assumed to be beyond reproach; in other words, they will expect too much, and you will not be able to supply it all. The trick is to manage the expectations. Online game economies are hard A faucet->drain economy is one where you spawn new stuff, let it pool in the "sink" that is the game, and then have a concomitant drain. Players will hate having this drain, but if you do not enforce ongoing expenditures, you will have "Monty Haul syndrome," infinite accumulation of wealth, overall rise in the "standard of living" and capabilities of the average player, and thus imbalance in the game design and poor game longevity. Ownership is key You have to give players a sense of ownership in the game. This is what will make them stay==it is a "barrier to departure." Social bonds are not enough, because good social bonds extend outside the game. Instead, it is context. If they can build their own buildings, build a character, own possessions, hold down a job, feel a sense of responsibility to something that cannot be removed from the game==then you have ownership. If your game is narrow, it will fail Your game design must be expansive. Even the coolest game mechanic becomes tiresome after a time. You have to supply alternate ways of playing, or alternate ways of experiencing the world. Otherwise, the players will go to another world where they can have new experiences. This means new additions, or better yet, completely different subgames embedded in the actual game. Lambert's Laws: "As a virtual world's 'realism' increases, the pool of possible character actions increases." The opportunities for exploitation and subversion are directly proportional to the pool size of possible character actions. A bored player is a potential and willing subversive. Players will eventually find the shortest path to the cheese. Featuritis No matter how many new features you have or add, the players will always want more. Pleasing your Players Despite your best intentions, any change will be looked upon as a bad change to a large percentage of your players. Even to those who forgot that they asked for the change themselves. Hyrup's Loophole Law: "If something can be abused, it will be." Murphy's Law: "Servers only crash and don't restart when you go out of town." Dr Cat's Theorem: "Attention is the currency of the future." Dr Cat's Theorem as expressed by J C Lawrence "The basic medium of multiplayer games is communication." Hanarra's Laws: "Over time, your playerbase will become the group of people who most enjoy the style of play that your world offers. The others will eventually move to another game." "It is very hard to attract players of different gaming styles after the playerbase has been established. Any changes to promote different styles of play almost always conflict with the established desires of the current playerbase." "The ultimate goal of a virtual world is to create a place where people of all styles of play can contribute to the world in a manner that makes the game more satisfying for everyone." "The new players who enter the world for the first time are the best critics of it." "The opinions of those who leave are the hardest to obtain, but give the best indication of what changes need to be made to reach that ultimate goal." Elmqvist's Law: "In an online game, players find it rewarding to save the world. They find it more rewarding to save the world together, with lots of other people." A corollary to Elmqvist's Law "In general, adding features to an online game that prevent people from playing together is a bad idea." A caveat to the corollary to Elmqvist's Law: "The exception would be features that enhance the sense of identity of groups of players, such as player languages." Baron's Design Dichotomy According to Jonathan Baron, there are two kinds of online games: "Achievement Oriented," and "Cumulative Character." In the "Achievement Oriented" game, the players who "win" do so because they they are the best at whatever the game offers. Their glory is achieved by shaming other players. In the "Cumulative Character" game, anyone can reach the pinnacle of achievement by mere persistence; the game is driven by sheer unadulterated capitalism. Online identity We spend a lot of time enabling people to have a very strong personal identity in our worlds (letting them define themselves in great detail, down to eye color). But identity is portable. How many of you have been playing the same character in RPGs for 15 years, like me? You cannot count on a sense of identity, of character building, to keep someone in your game. In-game calendars It's nice to have an in-game calendar. But emotional resonances will never accrue to in-game holidays. The only calendar that really matters is the real world one. Don't worry about breaking fiction==online games are about social interaction, not about fictional consistency. Social Laws Koster's Theorem: "Virtual social bonds evolve from the fictional towards real social bonds." If you have good community ties, they will be out-of- character ties, not in-character ties. In other words, friendships will migrate right out of your virtual world into email, real-life gatherings, etc. Baron's Theorem: "Hate is good." This is because conflict drives the formation of social bonds and thus of communities. Hate is an engine that brings players closer together. Baron's Law: "Glory is the reason why people play online; shame is what keeps them from playing online." Neither is possible without other people being present. Mike Sellers' Hypothesis: "The more persistence a game tries to have; the longer it is set up to last; the greater number (and broader variety) of people it tries to attract; and the more immersive it attempts to be--then the more breadth and depth of human experience it needs to support." If you try to create a deeply immersive, broadly appealing, long-lasting world that does not adequately provide for human tendencies such as violence, acquisition, justice, family, community, exploration, etc (and I would contend we are nowhere close to doing this), you will see two results. First, individuals in the population will begin to display a wide range of predictable socially pathological behaviors (including general malaise, complaining, excessive bullying and/or Player-Killing, harassment, territoriality, inappropriate aggression, and open rebellion against those who run the game). Second, people will eventually vote with their feet==but only after having passionately cast 'a pox on both your houses.' In essence, if you set people up for an experience they deeply crave (and mostly cannot find in real life) and then don't deliver, they will become like spurned lovers==some become sullen and aggressive or neurotic. Eventually almost all leave. Schubert's Law of Player Expectations: "A new player's expectations of a virtual world are driven by his expectations of single-player games." In particular, he expects a narrow, predictable plotline with well-defined quests and a carefully sculpted role for himself as the hero. He also expects no interference or disruption from other players. These are difficult, and sometimes impossible, expectations for a virtual world to actually meet. Violence is inevitable You're going to have violence done to people no matter what facilities exist in the game. Violence may be a combat system, theft, blocking entrances, trapping monsters, stealing kills to get experience, pestering, harassment, verbal violence, or just rudeness. Is it a game? A virtual world is a SERVICE. Not a game. It's a WORLD. Not a game. It's a COMMUNITY. Not a game. Anyone who says, "it's just a game" is missing the point. Player Identity You will NEVER have a solid unique identity for your problematic players. They essentially have complete anonymity because of the Internet. Even addresses, credit cards, and so on can be faked==and will be. Jeff Kesselman's Theorem: "A MUD universe is all about psychology." After all, there IS no physicality. It's all psych and group dynamics. Psychological disinhibition People act like jerks more easily online, because anonymity is intoxicating. It is easier to objectify other people and therefore to treat them badly. The only way to combat this is to get them to empathize more with other players. Mass market facts It's disturbing for those used to smaller environments, but: administrative problems increase EXPONENTIALLY instead of linearly, as your playerbase digs deeper into the mass market. Traditional approaches start to fail. Your playerbase probably isn't ready or willing to police itself. Anonymity and in-game administrators The in-game admin faces a bizarre problem. He is exercising power that the ordinary virtual citizen cannot. And he is looked to in many ways to provide a certain atmosphere and level of civility in the environment. Yet the fact remains that no matter how scrupulously honest he is, no matter how just he shows himself to be, no matter how committed to the welfare of the virtual space he may prove himself, people will hate his guts. They will mistrust him precisely because he has power, and they can never know him. There will be false accusations galore, many insinuations of nefarious motives, and former friends will turn against him. It may be that the old saying about power and absolute power is just too ingrained in the psyche of most people; whatever the reasons, there has never been an online game whose admins could say with a straight face that all their players really trusted them (and by the way, it gets worse once you take money!). Community size Ideal community size is no larger than 250. Past that, you really get subcommunities. Hans Henrik Staerfeldt's Law of Player/Admin Relations: "The amount of whining players do is positively proportional to how much you pamper them." Many players whine if they see any kind of bonus in it for them. It will simply be another way for them to achieve their goals. As an admin, you hold the key to many of the goals that they have concerning the virtual environment you control. If you do not pamper the players and let them know that whining will not help them, the whining will subside. Hal Black's Elaboration: "The more responsive an admin is to user feedback of a given type, the more of that type the admin will get." Specifically, as an admin implements features from user suggestions, the more ideas for features will be submitted. Likewise, the more an admin coddles whiners, the more whining will ensue. J C Lawrence's "stating the obvious" law "The more people you get, the more versions of 'what we're really doing' you're going to get." John Hanke's Law (cited by Mike Sellers): "In every aggregation of people online, there is an irreducible proportion of ... jerks" (he used a different word :-) Rewarding players It is not possible to run a scenario or award player actions without other players crying favoritism. Rewards The longer your game runs, the less often you get kudos for your efforts. J C Lawrence on Utopias; "Don't strive for perfection, strive for expressive fertility." You can't create utopia, and if you did, nobody would want to live there. Who contributed (purposely or inadvertently!), sorted alphabetically: Myself, of course. Richard Bartle: along with Roy Trubshaw, developed the first MUD. Jonathan Baron: producer & designer for Air Warrior. Hal Black: And another MUD-Dev member! Dr Cat: the man behind Dragonspires and Furcadia. Niklas Elmqvist: another active MUD-Dev member. Ola Frosheim Grostad: researcher into virtual spaces, MUD-Dev member. Marion Griffith: leads the !Overlord Project. Hanarra, aka Jason Wilson,: of Nightfall. Darrin Hyrup: designer and/or programmer for Gemstone, Dragon's Gate, Darkness Falls, and Magestorm. Jeff Kesselman: helped run Dark Sun Online, and is developing DSO2. Amy Jo Kim: consultant and web designer. Jon A. Lambert: active MUD-Dev member. J C Lawrence: moderator for the MUD-Dev mailing list. Damion Schubert: a key designer for Meridian 59, Might & Magic Online, and Ultima Online. Mike Sellers: a prime mover behind Meridian 59. Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt: one of the guys who wrote the original DikuMUD. And all the members of the MUD-Dev list as well. O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O TEXAS 1999: FLOODS, A HURRICANE, BROWNOUTS AND FEDERAL AIR QUALITY SANCTIONS. BUT COMPARED TO 1998, IT'S BEEN PARADISE! O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

1998 must have been an year to forget...or from which to learn. How miserable.

Yeah, but what about the ideas on how to motivate people in MUDs? That's the industry's experts, and they tell us what makes places like that - and the Spring, which is basically a bit like online roleplaying, too - work over a while (and in their cases, SPEND MONEY!)... Springfolks, comment!

ideas on how to motivate people in MUDs? Bring a Candle, Not a Sparkler

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 18:07:40 -0500 Subject: Viridian Note 00093: The Deep Hot Biosphere Key concepts: non-biological petroleum, chemosynthetic bacteria, deep hot biosphere, Thomas Gold Attention Conservation Notice: Geologists have somehow managed to ignore this heretic for thirty years, so why should we be listening to him now? Provokes cognitive dissonance of the first order. Paradigm-rupturing. Entries in the Viridian Summer Health Warning Contest: http://www.earthlight.co.nz/~bretts/vs.html http://www.tux.org/~lasser/viridian/ http://www.subterrane.com/heat.htm http://www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~rmharman/img/viridian/sun.bmp http://humlog.homestead.com/viridianart/HEAT.html http://members.tripod.com/~MSpong/viridian/heatdeath.html http://www.premierestedivolt.com/HEAT.HTML http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/heatkills.html http://www.provide.net/~herrell/heat.html http://www.gothic.net/~weasel/viridian/ http://home.earthlink.net/~keim9/heatwarning.htm http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/viridianheat.html http://www.octa.net/heatposter.html http://www.boston.quik.com/kitsune/gfx/heatwarn.jpg http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/~djb14/viridian/heatkills.htm http://www.artlung.com/viridian6/ http://www.well.com/~smendler/heat.html http://www.greenbuilder.com/viridian_heat_load@148K.html http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/heatkills.html http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pal/viridian.html http://www.potatoe.com/viridian/poster.html http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/3203/viridian_heat.html http://way.nu/greens/heat.html http://users.erols.com/ljaurbach/Kirkwood.htm This contest expires very soon: September 1, 01999. Viridian Individual Projects: http://www.radix.net/~kreinsch/viridian/themeproject.html http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/everydayobject.gif http://www.powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike/vrml http://www.spiritone.com/~terenced http://www.bomoco.com/Viridian/viridian.htm A new Viridian Individual Project by Will Munslow (anubis@deming.com^^**): http://www.nicotinetea.com (((Will Munslow remarks: "I was fiddling around with Perl and ripped off some nice scripts that I reworked. A small Viridian Version of slashdot.org. Dunno if anyone is interested, but if the amount of information headed to you is as big as I expect, people might enjoy having a different place to display it."))) *Viridian T-shirts for sale, $15 each http://www.bomoco.com/Viridian/curia/curia.htm http://www.bomoco.com/Viridian/curia/zebrabothsides.gif We're Shipping the First Ones Out the Door Right Now. ***************************************************** *The Deep Hot Biosphere:* "a renowned scientist's revolutionary theory of a vast subterranean habitat and its significance for life's origins on our planet and the possibility of live elsewhere in the universe" by Thomas Gold Copernicus, Springer-Verlag, 1999. ISBN 0-387-98546-8 http://www.copernicus-ny.com Well, this new book of Thomas Gold's is getting a lot of play. I just read it. All 208 pages of it. And I'll say this for it: if it's true, it's certainly is revolutionary. Here's the pitch. "Fossil fuels" aren't fossils. They don't come from squished dinosaurs or ancient buried vegetation. Hydrocarbons like methane and crude oil are inherent planetary substances. They're basically the same material as the "carbonaceous chondrites" seen in asteroids, or the methane and ethane seen in Jupiter and its moons. The earth is heavily loaded with various primeval oils and tarry goos, which have been slowly cooked out of its crust over the eons by radioactive heat from the core. Here's where it gets weirder. The substances we know as oil and natural gas have been streaming up toward the planet's surface since the planet first formed. When this hydrocarbon muck is still about ten kilometers down, it gets caught within pores of the stone by primeval archaic bacteria. These bugs live inside rock, they eat this primeval asteroid goo, and they turn it into the stuff we call "coal" and "crude oil." They are chemosynthetic organisms, and they thrive in extremely high, oxygen-free temperatures, in vast, impossible numbers. They're probably the original form of life on Earth. Primitive earthly life probably started inside the Earth, in these flowing high-energy streams of goo and muck, long before the surface was colonizable. Oil and gas looks like organic products to a biochemist, but that's not because they are fossilized. It's because they've been basically fermented by a previously unsuspected ecosystem of archaic bacteria. These ancient bugs basically saturate the entire rocky crust of the planet. By weight, they're probably eighty percent of all living things on Earth. And that's just the start of Gold's theory. These primeval bugs give off enough fizzy foul-smelling gas to break rocks and start earthquakes. Most metal deposits: gold, zinc, silver etc == are not caused by flowing water or lava, but by flowing hydrocarbons filtered and transformed by bugs. Even though coal sometimes has fossils in it, coal is not fossil material. Basically, coal is mats of peat that got into the way of an ongoing hydrocarbon flow, and have been fossilized with carbon the way a petrified tree is fossilized with silicon. Most planets in the solar system share Earth's origins, so if they have life, it is probably single- celled and subterranean. And they probably do have life. Whole gooey tons of life. We're never going to "run out of oil." It's not possible. Left to themselves long enough, most depleted oil patches will slowly fill back up. Because they're not buried deposits. They're lakes, backed up from streams originating far deeper down. The planet would have smothered in its own CO2 like Venus a long time ago, except that the surface biosphere has been laboring mightly to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and save it in massive fossil chalkbeds up on the surface. Even if we *did* run out of oil, there are enough methane hydrates oozing up in ocean sediments to make all known oil reserves on Earth seem minor. There's probably "oil" or "coal" under almost *everything*, any kind of non-porous rock that can catch the flow and hold it down for a while. It's just that mistaken geological assumptions have led us to drill for oil in a minor variety of places. Who is Thomas Gold? Well, he's not an insane crank. He's a physicist, and a very blue-sky thinker. Gold was the first guy to theorize that pulsars were rotating neutron stars. He theorized that the early Earth might have flipped its axis of rotation (which, apparently, it did). Gold has been saying for quite a long time that oil and gas are basic planetary substances, not fossils. But now he's put together his best arguments in book length, and his thesis is considerably embroidered with many sub- theories and bizarre implications. Here are some reasons not to dismiss the whole scheme immediately: 1. Plate tectonics is a weirder idea than this, and that wasn't accepted until the 1960s. 2. Geology's full of ancient dogma because geology's a very old science. We thought we understood the earth long before we caught on to the truth about the other planets. Planets and asteroids have plenty of goop that looks like coal, natural gas, and oil. 3. If oil is a fossil, then how come oil beds are so often full of helium? Helium is an astrophysics thing; there aren't any plants or animals that metabolize helium. 4. It took us until the 1970s to realize that the earth has chemosynthetic life forms. But these creatures live around the tectonic rifts that girdle the whole planet. That's the biggest habitat on earth. These vent creatures are totally dependent on weird, thermophile bacteria. And they're not just based on volcanic seeps either, because these biota have also been discovered around underwater oil seeps. 5. Once people started looking for subterranean bacteria, they've have been able to find living bacteria as far down as they've been able to drill. Extraordinary statements require extraordinary evidence. There's a lot less evidence than I'd like to see in this book. For one counter-argument, I couldn't help but notice that Gold's "pores" in the stony Earth have whatever qualities he needs, whenever he needs them to make his case. Sometimes they're fast, sometimes they're slow, sometimes they're chemical filters, sometimes they're high-speed conduits, sometimes they're tiny, sometimes they're oceanic, sometimes they're steady- state, sometimes they're catastrophic, and so on. Granted, the Earth has a lot of natural variety, but that's not for our rhetorical convenience. But if he's half-right about any of the stuff he says here, the human race knows nothing worth knowing about the biosphere and carbon dioxide. If he's right, we've been utterly ignorance throughout the twentieth century about the most basic facts of planetary life. O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O EVEN IF IT'S IN INFINITE SUPPLY, IT STILL STINKS AND IT'S STILL SCREWING UP THE WEATHER! O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

How very curious. Think I just might run some of this past a real Geeologist to see what he thinks of this theory. I hope this guy did a lot of footnoting, because it is easy to make statements. Backing them up is quite another thing.

Let us know what the geologist thinks. I guess the implications are that oil is forever?

If using this stuff is bad, and the supply of them is (nearly) infinite, doesn't that make even worse news? Marcia, have that rock-science-son of yours investigate the matter!

It is a good thing I telnet on occasion. It makes me go through all new posts includeing this one which I had forgotten. I willpaste him the article athis office tomorrow. (please excuse the poor typing...)

I asked son David (the Geologist) to comment on the review of Gold's book. Terse and to the point, he said: " I have heard of (the book) before and I think it is horse pucky."

Thanks for this funny quote, hehe... "Pucky" - is that Hawaiian or Geologistian ? The reviewer makes a point of showing that this author has been thought wrong often... Circumstances proved that not be be correct at times... I wish we could some opinion from a knowledgeable person who had actually read this - HEY TEXANS! Y'all have dem oil-science boys, right? How about it?

For what it's worth, David's main job is purging old gas station sites of residual oil and petroleum in the soil after the leaky tanks and other stuff was removed. He does know about oil and things related to it, but not these critters. "pucky" is a euphemism clean enought ot send to his Mother...self-invented, I think.

Mmm, viridian horse pucky revealed. Any details?