OLPC and the Optimistic Impulse
Now, I’m not normally the first to sing the praises of capitalism as a motor for progress-with-a-capital-p, but Grant McCracken’s piece on the OLPC seem to have affected me at some deep, gut level -
“Here’s the thing in a nut shell: Negroponte’s One Computer Per Child project looked like a brilliant, necessary idea in 2005. Now it’s a project in shambles.
Right? Wrong. We could argue that Intel and Microsoft are rushing this market precisely because they were terrified that the first one in could own it. And this is a way of saying that Negroponte almost certainly moved up the Intel and Microsoft participation by, what?, a couple of years. Now we have a robust market, with real choices, competitors with deep pockets, momentum, urgency; not philanthropy, but that beast called capitalism.
And what’s that worth? To move everything up by a couple of years? Naturally, this is one of those calculations that don’t calculate very well. But at a minimum we would want to factor in
Kids who:
get on line
get knowledge
make knowledge
distribute knowledge
make friends
join networks
build networks
teach themselves to read
master math
become more cosmopolitan
learn to think clearly
learn to solve problems
learn to teach
learn to lead
learn to enterprise
learn to spot zealotry and jingoism
learn to refuse prejudice and violence
create value for their families, communities, country, the human communityx some millions
x ~2 years
Damn. Who called the computer a difference engine? Negroponte has created a lot of difference.
Does he get thanked? No, he gets dissed and displaced. He pays yet another penalty of taking the lead. He is paying for making a market where once there was none. Someday we’ll come to our senses. Negroponte will get his Nobel Peace Prize. In the meantime, this must really suck.”
What can I say? I’m a total sucker for the whole “another world is possible” shtick, and – as McCracken argues – the project’s success (or that of something similar) seems all but inevitable, now that the business model has been co-opted by capital. Selling out? Possibly, but – as long as the kids get their computers – does it really matter who’s in control, and their motivations?
I don’t know. Can’t help but feel sorry for Negroponte, though.
(Image courtesy of Laughing Squid)
F3: ‘Creeping Doubts’
Another Nano extract. It’s going very slowly – at this point, I’ve written just under 14,000 words. I’m supposed to be well past 25,000. I think I may have inadvertently sabotaged myself by getting slightly too attached to the story – taking it a little too seriously. Not a healthy mindset, particularly for Nano. And the lingering presence of university assignments really isn’t helping.
Stupid writer’s block.
CREEPING DOUBTS
BAM! A world of adrenaline and nerve endings comes up to meet her; a wide beam of light leaving nowhere to hide. The penetrating gaze of the predator dissolving into nothingness. Here, she is body alone. And her body aches; a purgatory of pain which smothers the endless now – a thick red rope stretching off into the horizon. Nina grits her teeth, wiping the dried crud from her face, and trying to get some sense of her location. From somewhere above, the irregular patter of raindrops on metal. Clutching desperately at the last remnants of memory – there’s a brief rush of intense nostalgia, cast in sepia tones. But after a moment it too fades, leaving a taste of vomit in the lower reaches of her skull.
Chiram. She needs to find him, before someone else – someone entirely less friendly – finds her. Cognitive dissonance, as she realises that her knowledge of him, as an individual rather than an alias, extends only to that which she’s learned in the last-
She pauses. Time is tricky, here – little more than an illusion, altered on a whim by forces beyond her comprehension, outside of herself. After all, who knows how much of it has passed since-
Another hesitation, as she searches for some kind of mental landmark – for now, conspicuous only in its absence. Did she shoot the leopard, or Sun-wei? The ghost of a memory, stirring somewhere in the limbic depths.
Pulling herself up from the worn mattress, she searches the room for some kind of context. Information about the room’s intended purpose, signs of inhabitation, anything. The room is long and narrow, skylight open to the mountain air, and empty but for Nina’s bedding. The nest of fabric and padding in which she woke, but minutes previous. The only other defining feature is a similar pile of debris on the other side of the room, one of the sheets stained with the dark crimson of blood. Nina suppresses a shudder. Sweeping her hair behind her shoulders and rolls up her sleeve. Slowly tiptoeing over to the door, she pulls it open, and steps – straight into Chiram.
“Wh-?”
A hand claps over Nina’s mouth, and she yelps.
“Shh.” he hisses, “Stay quiet.”
Released, and with fear in her eyes, Nina looks up at Chiram. He gives her an empty grin, clearly intended as a gesture of solidarity. But, unable to sustain the illusion, he flounders, shedding the smile for an anxious grimace.
“Why? What’s going on? Where are we?”
Another smile, enigmatic but equally inappropriate.
“After the fire … did Sun-wei say anything about the fire to you?”
She nods.
“Hmm,” – Chiram raises an eyebrow – “That’s interesting. He must have taken a shine to you.”
“Oh?” asks Nina, the landscape falling away from under her. And what if he hadn’t? Before, she’d taken it on faith that the future would have her in it. Now, all she can sense is a creeping uncertainty.
__________
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
On Pirates and Assassins
Implausible as it may sound, I’m currently researching an essay on offshore finance, sovereignty, and data piracy. I’m talking HavenCo, Pirate Bay, and the RBN. And while trawling through some essays and pamphlets, I came across the following nuggets in Hakim Bey’s pamphlet on The Temporary Autonomous Zone:
‘The sea-rovers and corsairs of the 18th century created an “information network” that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably.’ (link)
‘The medieval Assasains founded a “State” which consisted of a network of remote mountain valleys and castle, separated by thousands of mile, strategically invulnerable to invasion, connected by the information flow of secret agents, at war with all governments, and devoted only to knowledge.’ (ibid)
I love it when people draw unexpected links between historical entities and contemporary theory. As another example, see William Gibson’s musings on the medieval Church.
F3: ‘Paper Boats in the Blue Hour’
Another NaNo extract. I’m still woefully behind in terms of word-count, but the plot seems to be progressing; if not consistently, then with erratic ebullience – something that I wasn’t even aware was part of my vocabulary.
Wow. You can really see how this is changing the way in which I write …
PAPER BOATS IN THE BLUE HOUR
The room is cramped, but curiously endearing. Sprawled on the bed, Anna flicks idly through one of those vapid, content-free magazines – glossy, with improbably posed fashion models, and pseudo-articles claiming some special insight about lifestyle perfume. Too tired to read, but not yet buzzing enough to bother moving from the bed, Anna instead stares at letters – a matter of shape, colour and typography – with words continuing to elude her slowly melting brainspace.
There is a knock at the door. She moans half-heartedly in response.
“Anna? Are you okay?”
The voice is Sam’s – tentative and amused. She can’t really be bothered to let him in. The energy expended wouldn’t really be worth the ensuing benefits of his company. Heck, he’d probably demand more of her energy – opinions, ideas, conversation – once he wormed his way in. Best to take a pre-emptive strike, nip it in the bud.
Then the caffeine hits.
Looking back from that which is yet to come, the rest of that night sees Anna and Sam as but crudely folded paper boats, freed from the solid certainties of land. Here, time mimics the weather, forming eddies and channels, and settling in pools. They talk about the first book, and Sam’s script. He has a sketchpad, and she clutches his script to her chest – annotations in red. He tells stories; bawdy, and heavy with tangents, and Anna titters – politely at first, but then with genuine humour, a laughter originating from deep in her belly. With coffee as lubricant, they volley ideas in an evolving game of wits and one-upmanship. The priest dies fifty, a hundred deaths – fragments of glass shattering on flagstones. Murder witnessed from every conceivable vantage point. A plane crashes in slow motion; a sheet of watercolour paper is crumpled into a ball; a leopard leaps. And you’re there, watching as they grease the spokes with a never-ending supply of silty liquid, scalded tongues, and a bloodstream of sugar and caffeine – pumping energy to every forgotten corner of the body. Energy borrowed from their future selves. Steam rises, lazily, from coats draped on radiators and half-full polystyrene cups. They keep powering onwards, afraid of stopping, thinking, in case they lose momentum. Finally, the blue hour arrives, an unwelcome herald of approaching daylight. They try to lock it out, but light begins to seep under the door and through the curtains, forcing the remaining shards of reality into retreat. As the shadows fade, the narrative artisans fall into their own peculiar darkness, into rapid eye movement and muscle spasms. A theatre of dreams, with audition speeches from a never-ending conveyor belt of unemployed actors. Then, a tide of overpowering boredom, as the landscape melts away; their orbit degrading into free-fall where recursive visions of mechanical debris and skeletal cathedrals bloom; a nauseating panorama of noise as they plummet into the void …
_____
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
F3: ‘Traitor!’
For this week’s Flash Fiction, I’m cheating. This is less a short story, and more a segment of metafiction lifted from the opening passages of this year’s contribution for National Novel Writing Month (30 days, 50,000 words, and one of the most entertainingly complicated plots in existence). Over the coming weeks, I’ll hopefully be posting a couple more extracts from the trenches of my ongoing campaign against laziness, procrastination, and writers block.
TRAITOR!
Nina wakes shortly before sunrise. The muffled tones of a heated argument between a woman and a man, as heard through a wall, gently permeating the onion padding of her subconscious. From the sound of it, the argument is in Russian; the exclamations are angular, guttural.
And as the layers peel away, leaving Nina being pulled up and into the light of the waking world, a flood of memories and impressions return. A gunshot in the darkness. A deep crimson seeping into the snow. The cold, uninterested stare of a Chinese official. And now what? A warehouse in the mountains; the sharp, metallic taste of blood; and – she opens her eyes – a man with a gun. Triggering some bestial fight-or-flight reflex buried deep in the far recesses of her skull, Nina winces, and dives into the shadows. Well, she tries to. Hands lashed to the pillar against which she was slumped, her movement is limited.
But at least she’s alive. Head throbbing, and with a clear majority of limbs long since fallen victim to a warm, dull pain, her mouth tastes of blood – sharp, metallic, and all-too-rapidly drying into a crust on her lips.
“She’s awake.”
Not so much an exclamation, as a statement of fact. This from the man with the gun – a call to a colleague; an accomplice, or perhaps an employer. There are others in the building, the argument confirmed that much. But, for now, the request falls on silence, absorbed by the empty recesses of the warehouse. Nina wants to speak, to cry for help, or ask questions. Her throat is dry, and there is something in gunman’s expression which suggests that this would not be a good idea. So she waits. After several minutes, gunman gets up, walks over the door, and repeats his call. Then he returns to his seat. This time, there are footsteps, and Chiram – the Jewish pilot who delivered her to this god-forsaken backwater – comes to the door. Her stomach tenses. She wants him to flee, to run. To take his plane, and leave this place – and all that it entails – as a memory in the dust. But then she sees something in his eyes. Something that, taken with a slight crumpling round the corners of his mouth, hints at a hidden truth. She inhales – a deep, breath of the dry, warehouse air.
“Ah, Nina. I see you’re back. You had us worried for a while, there.”
There’s something different about his voice. Shorn of its soft edges and humour, it’s as if Chiram has been bought into focus. And Nina isn’t entirely sure that she likes what she sees. While Nina starts to piece together the situation, he tilts his head thoughtfully, looks at gunman, and continues.
“Not that it would have mattered in the grand scheme of things, of course.”
“Chiram, what’s-”
Nina’s throat is drier than she’d thought, and her question stumbles briefly, before collapsing into a coughing fit. But it doesn’t matter, because she already knows the answers. He’s betrayed her; delivering them both into the jaws of the very beast that she’d been hunting. But while she’d be swallowed whole, he’d bought himself immunity.
“You turned me over? “
Given form, the question sounds somehow … hollow; faintly ridiculous.
“Girl,” says Chiram, tilting his head, “I was never on your side. Face it, doll, you’re out of your depth.”
“But Chiram-”
“I’m not Chiram,” – he stares down her desperate gaze, melting it to impotence – “Chiram is dead.”
_____
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.