My Black Notebook
On the bus this morning, I was writing in my black Moleskine notebook when some guy sat down next to me.
Public buses have their own special geometry. I would like to sit facing forward, and have enough legroom. There are about five seats like this on a bus. If I want some quiet time to think, I avoid the crowds - sometimes that’s the front, sometimes the back. That doesn’t leave much.
A note to policy makers: If you want people to ride public transportation, think about the inside of your limo, and work from there. It doesn’t have to be luxurious, but it’s in your best interest to allow the actual workers in a society to get some work done - or alternatively get some rest on their way to do the work. I understand why a bus ride can’t be smooth, but it would help me out a lot if the bus didn’t try to bounce me out of my seat every half block along the route.
So I’m trying to compose a thought in my notebook. The back corner faces forward, but doesn’t allow me enough leg room. It’s one of those buses with the access panel to the engine instead of a center seat. That’s an ideal seat, should you get a bus that has one - it not only gives my legs enough room, but they don’t get in anybody else’s way either. I’m happy (relatively speaking) with the seat I’m in when this guy wants to sit in the corner seat next to mine - I have to break my concentration to let him sit down, but usually if you prefer that corner seat, you’re an introvert and won’t bug me. But then, another guy sat down in the sideways facing seat right in front of us. They must have known each other - it wasn’t really a conversation, but they did occasionally mutter something disinterested to each other.
The guy in the corner said something incomprehensible, and when I darted a quick glance over at him, he muttered more as an apology - I could tell from the tone of it. “What are you writing, there? Porn?”… Huh? What? Is my brain that tired? I can’t tell what he’s saying, or why that would be his first guess. I’ve just about latched on for a full analysis when I get “You know - Porn - Rhymes?”… (Oh, you’re saying “Poems”!?!? Why did I… Nevermind.)
“No, it’s just stuff that comes to mind. No big deal.” It’s not strange in the city to imagine that everybody is a budding rapper-poet. By a strange coincidence, I was thinking about poetry while waiting for the bus. When I don’t have a whole thought, I will latch on to little atoms of meaning - a turn of phrase that works well with an visual image. But in fact, I’m having trouble being anything other than literal these days. I write the truth of what I see, and I use my camera in the same way, so I’m mostly about documenting reality. It’s tough for me to commit to a fantasy, even when those fantasies percolate through my conscious mind.
If I was having trouble concentrating before, now I’m shattered. All I can do is daydream and wait for the ride to be over… I’ve got some gibberish written down about digital images, and the snapshots people deem worth taking and keeping - I was working up to two different ideas when I got sidetracked and could have benefited from some concentration:
First, Who gets to claim photos as art? And, should I be paying more attention to Marcel Duchamp?
Second, What is the nature of the casual photography on cheap digital cameras? How does it relate to the snapshots the Replicants cherish in the movie “Blade Runner”? How are we to think about these photographs as artifacts?
But I can’t think about one thing without immediately feeling the push of a thought at right angles: I’m already on to the film’s prophesy of photographs on the same Kodak style paper… Not everything in the future is going to be futuristic (books come to mind) - but the prediction is not so easy: The desire to retain old forms and the desire to use the newest innovation are both subject to the will of producers. Having your photos on a stack of photo paper or in flash memory LCD screens will depend on unforeseen changes. And, it’s not hard to imagine that technology as a class boundary: Nice photo paper could be the luxury item if the digital version remains cheap. Or, the opposite could turn out to be true. You can imagine the reversal, the conventional wisdom probably already has it: Paper for the poor people, clutching their ‘precious photos’, on the run from disaster, or toward dubious opportunity.
I’m still trying to imagine what happens after the breakdown - partial or total. The partial breakdowns are more interesting for the sake of variation. If we run out of some crucial ingredient for the status quo of this world, and we can’t find a reasonable substitute, then what happens? Cheap energy is a linchpin: With it, we make whatever industrial-scale transformation we desire. But without it, we have to be very creative, and that still won’t be cheap. If you follow the ‘Peak Oil’ crowd, then you know that all our flexibility in crafting new solutions depends on both innovation and cheap energy. All the innovation in the world won’t help if the pantry is bare. I listen to the voices of optimism: “We’ll find a solution because we always have in the past”, and I can’t help thinking they’re right… until the battery runs out. We haven’t been thinking about how to recharge that battery, and we don’t know how much is left, or how expensive the future transformations will be in practice.
Add a Link: Kevin Kelly’s “Where the Linear Crosses the Exponential”.
And, be careful how you choose that discount rate…
Posted by Evan Bittner Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:54:00 GMT
