escritoria

Imaginary futures

August 21, 2010 2

Between yesterday and today I discovered two things that I really liked, which actually relate to each other without being particularly related. So I figured I could mash them up together into a post, to share them and make little reflection about it all. Also, to get this poor blog out of abandonment.

The first discovery came yesterday, although it’s something that has been around the intertubez for quite a while, but thanks to a tweet from Boing Boing, I just stumbled upon it. I’m talking about an incredible series of illustration that NASA commissioned to a group of artists, with the premise of imagining space colonies capable of holding about 10 thousand people. Their seventies sci-fi vibe caught me immediately, and when you see them in full size there are a lot of awesome little details (though no, there’s no Waldo to be found in the colonies of the future).

Here are three that I liked most (click to view larger), you can see the rest here and download them in original size (and perhaps use as wallpaper, like this nerd has done).

The second discovery came just a few hours ago, and it immediately reminded me of the NASA colonies, because one could perfectly be a consequence of the other. It is also an artist imagining the future of humanity, or its absence, actually. This time through Pink Tentacle, came to the work of Japanese artist TokioGenso who illustrated Tokio as it would be once the human race is gone. The images depict the city pretty battered, and overrun by nature. Again: three favorites (click to enlarge), and the rest here .

I said there would be some kind of reflection by the end. I can’t help thinking what “mad scientist” Stephen Hawking said a few weeks ago, about how if we don’t start thinking soon about an escape plan from this planet, we are doomed. This idea’s been in the mind of man for a long time, NASA commissioned these illustrations back in the 70s after all. On the other hand, the notion of a deserted Earth has been in science fiction forever. And the strange thing is, these images of Tokyo without people are chillingly peaceful.

Certainly neither I nor those of you reading will get to live in seventies vibe sci-fi colonies, and if Tokyo ends up covered in plants, I hope it’s because people found a way to prolong the race out of this planet, and not because of extinction. But if we keep going the way we’re going, it remains to be seen if the human race deserves a fresh start, if Hawking is right, is humanity itself that is causing the need to go somewhere else soon.

But I’m hopeful, because as sci-fi from the seventies (there goes my parallel) taught us, we can dream of a future where humans live in peace among ourselves, wandering through the cosmos and finding new life forms to start new relationships, and if we can dream it, let’s hope we can also achieve it.

Intellectual Tarot

June 29, 2010 5

Those of us who study communication have heard the name Marshall McLuhan many times. Somewhere between controversial thinker and pioneer, he has always been one of the communication theorists that most caught my attention. He said many things in his time, that we're just now seeing happen. And also, he is very entertaining to read.

But yesterday I heard of something of his that I didn't know existed, a deck of cards that he designed back in 1969, the Distant Early Warning or Dew-deck . The name refers to the radar line connecting Canada to the U.S. during the Cold War, which was used to detect and warn if there were any Soviet bombers in the Arctic area. McLuhan used the DEW Line as a metaphor for art on several occasions, He thought of art "as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it".

True to his style word play and cryptic messages ("The medium is the massage") each card has a phrase, joke, aphorism, or mcluhanism that in context can mean many things (and if we think they were designed over 40 years ago, many more). The purpose of this deck is to help us solve a problem. When we're stuck or clogged with so much information that we don't know where to go next, it's good to have something to get us out of there, shove us in another direction, or shed some light towards the right path. Su, just as we can consult the future with Tarot deck, we can ask this one hoping that it will throw us some wisdom to help us move forward. They don't seem so different now that I think about it …

So: 1. Think of a personal or business problem, 2. Pick a card from the deck 3. Read it and see what ideas pop in the head.

It would be ideal to have the deck, but as they are considered a collector's items that seems impossible to find, we'rr lucky to have this Flickr set with all the cards.

Although picking one at random is kinda complicated because we can see them, I the downloaded them to my computer, which makes it a little easier to blindly select one, viewing the files without thumbnails.

I thought of a problem, and I got this:

Ace of Hearts DEW deck

Interpreting it with what I had in mind makes a lot of sense. Done! I adopted this as a method of inspiration and for unlocking dilemmas, to see what the future has for me I already have Crowley .

Such is life

June 7, 2010 3

Yesterday, I saw in Facebook, randomly represented, something that struck me. In two consecutive updates: one of those great truths about the human being (so to speak). Check it:

(Note: both friends -whom I know from different backgrounds and stages of my life- are currently living in Barcelona, they don’t know each other, and they aren’t connected in Facebook). I interpreted this as the wonders of diversity, and how everything depends on the eye of the beholder, embodied in two simultaneous posts. It amused me, so I captured it and there it stayed.

But, just now, Yahoo throws me this:

Is it me, or this phrase with its button sum up acceptance itself? Sometimes, when something is not right…there’s no choice but to accept it (and how many hours of therapy/meditation/soul-searching are needed to fully understand such simple notion!)

Surely neither the Internet nor the universe are trying to leave me messages, or give me signs…but I see them anyways. Thinking it through, it’s not the first time this has happened to me, seeing some isolated phrase, or having a web “moment” that left me thinking “Hu, funny”.

I like it. Maybe this is the beginning of a new section for this blog, something like “Truths of life in the web” (I should come up with a better name, though). Let’s see if new ones show up.