dis-utopia

i always enjoy seeing the future world in film and books. as i think about different interpretations of the future world, i notice that most of them are dis-utopias. i think that this is because we have this hope that the future will be perfect and even a future world that has usual societal problem is disappointing. the post-apocalyptic worlds are obviously grim (mad max, planet of the apes), or even if its seemingly perfect it was built in response to some catastrophe (aeon flux). future worlds without catastrophe that still have traffic, or slow moving bureaucracy (the fifth element, judge dredd) leave me feeling the same was as dystopias because you want to think the future us would have figured those things out by then.

soylent green

the road

1984

fahrenheit 451

v for vendetta

bladerunner

2001 space odyssey

waterworld

the matrix

A.I.

minority report

star trek

i am legend

the city

they say that new york city goes down into the ground as far as it goes up. imagine everything that is underneath you at any given time.

i am a little bit in awe about how well this city actually holds together. there are so many people doing so many things to make sure the infrastructure doesn't crumble. i was told that london's tube has to shut down every night in london for , because its the oldest in the world. i wonder if new york will have to shut the entire system down at any point? the city that never sleeps, will sleep from 3 to 6am.

song: t rex, new york city

oil

oil is one of those love hate things. i worry about the person that says they love oil, but it would be easeir to say you love many of the things facilitated by oil. cheap travel, readily available goods, plastics, energy... the negatives are more apparent.

from a perspective devoid of politics oil is equally contradictory. it comes from deep in the earth, a place that humans naturally fear, and it creates an ominous black void on the surface. it coats everything it touches and can not be easily removed. it is essentially very old dead things in a liquid form that when mishandled burns like crazy. And for those exact reasons it is amazing how we have turned it into something functional. we light it on fire inside a complex machine to harness its energy. we make outstandingly complex chemical and plastics from this relatively simple and common resource. its crude in its raw state but its byproducts are awkwardly advanced and sterile.

i read about this guy in florida who found oil underneath his suburban home. despite anger from his neighbors he was able to construct a tiny rig that took the place of his pool in the back yard. what would they do if they found oil under a treasured building or ancient ruin. clearly we will dig where there are natural phenomenon, but man made structures seem to carry move weight in these debates. what if oil was found just under the pantheon, or under the empire state building?

airplane eater

this person is consuming an airplane. it has hairy legs and the plane cuts a neon streak into the sky. the gold on the inside of the mouth shows that its not as bad as you think in there. a single breast is the only thing that indicates gender. it is maternal.

upward or inward

i once heard that eastern religions look inwards and western religions look upwards. one says god is within while the other says god is above us.

i went to a 'lecture' the other day at a bar where a leading molecular biologist, gregory hannon, was speaking about his research with RNAi. i had no idea what he was talking about but it was a great way to spend a night at the bar. got me thinking about how science examines what already exists while liberal arts create new things. This can't be applied as any sort of absolute because discovering a new way to treat cancer is surely something new, and arts are certainly based on existing trends, but as a general philosophy i think its true. maybe that was a thought that should have stayed at the bar.

big city

i am not crazy about unions, but if i were i think i would join the teamsters. pretty good name for a union.

song: yatch, psychic city

information missing

human history is a delightfully vague thing. i enjoy thinking about when eras and situational titles start and end. for example, what is an immigrant in america. white people are all imported from elsewhere, but we have been here long enough to be called native. native americans might not agree, but then again, they had to come from somewhere. a burden of our generation, that no previous generation has had to deal with, is the incredible pace of change and amount of information available on an instance. it used to be that history was something studied in hindsight, but not anymore. maybe that's not entirely true. maybe there is a new area of history that's been created. current history, where all the information on hand is studied and analyzed and conclusion drawn. then there is actual history, where the consequences of actions and decisions have had time to play out.