Your orders have come in. You are tasked with building five thousand libraries. This is an idea that sounds reasonable to you. You get to work. You’re going to need some coffee, and about three days of ground-network time. In your head, you begin to analyze the potential mirror list. You need trusted hosting, not just volunteers. Bit Torrent and a few targeted tweets would get the job done, but not well enough. These libraries have to stay up. It may just be a single compressed file. But as they found out in Portland last week, even digital libraries can be burned to the ground.

* * * * *

You receive your orders backward, coming up to your position of responsibility from the units you command. You open the video feed, and you can see them running through traffic, the wrong way up a one way street, dark jackets dodging amid stalled cars and trucks, stopped in gridlock from the units’ action in the traffic lanes. You don’t need to read the text, because you know what’s next. There’s a term for this: Simultaneous, Epi-Navigation Street Occupation Response. You could call it SENSOR, but you don’t. Only New York Times reporters call it that. Ahead, in the limits of the jerking video feed, you see the orange glow of vapor-lamps glistening on a rising cloud of tear gas.

* * * * *

You have broken it down and set it up countless times, and this will not be the last. You plug in the extruder. You make sure the broken cable plug is fully set into its socket. You attach the heating element to the battery to let it start warming. As the bioplastic cable feeds forward, you can see the camera housing already, as you have seen over four hundred fully finished pieces emerge in the last three days, since the beginning of the Battle of the West Side. It unfolds up from the base of the printer, as the plastic builds up, cooling, slowing inhabiting the outline of the idea. In the brief pause when the extruder head comes back to rest position before starting its next run, you pluck the webcam out of the 3D printer, insert the sensor chip, attach the battery, and put in the waiting hands of one of your newer recruits. “You have a SIM card?” “Yeah.” “Well, that’s it then. Good luck.”

* * * * *

“Shoot him. SHOOT HIM.” The order urges in your ear. You push the inevitable emotional response backward, and you raise your weapon to your shoulder. Through the eye-piece you gaze, infrared light illuminating the target. As the police officer’s baton falls once more, you squeeze the trigger. A blaze of strobe-lighting staccatos thirty times a second from the pair of drones hovering above you, setting the officer and the protester he is beating on visual fire in the night street. Shadow is vaporized. Somewhere within your video gun, an HD light sensor writes to disk. When the shot is uploaded, the editing van will be able to see not only the QR code of the officer’s badge underneath the black marker he has used to obscure it, but a single drop of blood, frozen in the air, Matrix-style, as they used to say, ejected from the wound on the forehead of the protester.

* * * * *

The kid kicks the battery again, sending the van into darkness. Everyone groans, as the screens auto-adjust their brightness to their battery settings. “Sorry!” The lights come back on, and knowing his duty by this time, the kid slides open the door and reaches up to the roof to power-cycle the modem. While you and your fellows wait for the signal to be re-established, you stretch, and make small talk. The sound of helicopters returns, though you cannot see them from inside the parking garage. “Did you hear that DC is distributing a new distributed communication app? All the GA nets can now connect, and it runs off of satellite servers, so it can’t be DNS blocked.” “DC is distributing it? They don’t have any good developers there. None that work with consensus development, anyway. Did you check who’s on the project? It’s probably a Google co-opt play, if not a straight-up honeypot.” There’s debate, but soon the network is back up, and the voices fade, and the streams of information begin to flow again. Like water through a weir.

* * * * *

I would call these scenarios fiction, but fiction is such a dirty word. Fiction is a thing that has no possibility of actually existing, because it is created with that specific fantastical aim in mind. Fiction is a beautiful thing of freedom–the freedom to imagine what will never be. It is the domain of American dreams, in which wanting badly is somehow enough. It is the core instinct of democratic idealism, in which we are actors born on our feet in the public square, rather than as workers in rented quarters walled by constant surveillance. It is the notion that national narratives of fear and war always end eventually, so that we can close the book and go back to whatever it was we were doing before. Fiction is modernism–it is the only place where things make sense, because “reasonable” is its only construction spec. Reality, on the other hand, is no such simple circus.

These scenarios are built from facts. They are not things that have happened–not yet, anyway. But they are things that are possible. For these things to occur only requires that the elements of things that have happened come together in particular ways. These are distributed nodes of fact: libraries of digital information as mirrored political capital, distributed leadership with oscillating order giving/receiving, flash mob-like protest tactics, 3D printers, open-sourced communications equipment manufacturing, video evidence as a weapon, QR codes, crowd-piloted drones, mobile internet hubs, open-source secure communications software, DNS blocking, and so forth. They already exist, but are distributed–and have not been unevenly consolidated yet. Google search any of these, if you want to adapt these patterns into your daily life. It won’t be too long before most of your friends are using at least some of these on a daily basis.

As the arc of innovation becomes a branching, radical network rather than a cutting edge, we don’t need to look to the future anymore, but to our unfolding interfaces for things that already exist. We need not wonder if someone will invent drone flash photography–we instead speculate on when someone will get flash photography and drone technology talking to each other in a usable way. And then, possibly donate to their Kickstarter.

The downside in the ongoing human-Powerpoint slide deck that is the always-insufficient attempt to speculate on the future is that we also lose the comfort of that fiction, and gain the cold uncertainty that comes with facts. When flying cars were to be invented, it was clear that those would make our lives better–or at least, faster. What will SENSOR protests (color me a patronizing NYT reporter, needing a coined word to understand the kids these days) do for our lives? Will this be a more effective form of protest? Will this aid the fight for public free speech? Or will this evolution in protest tactics, as a response to police attacking the media and blocking whole swaths of city, merely engender a new, more brutal response from the police? Where does all of this end? Will it be better or worse? Will it prevent a worse catastrophe, or stall a better outcome? No one knows. No one even knows when it would be possible to say whether or not this technology or that tactic worked out as well as we hoped, or worse. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There are too many facts.

We might call this “the uncertain ethical implications of atemporality.” In only a few years, the span of history and the calm, orderly narratives it wove were effectively collapsed into a multi-dimensional space most closely modeled by Google Instant results after typing a single character in to the search bar. The moral futures market will never recover. In that vacuum, atemporal ethical behavior becomes consensus-based media protest tactics. The livestream of Occupy Wall Street videographer Tim Poole arguing with anarchists about whether or not to film them while filming them is not just our allegory or fable; it is the practice of ethics while attempting to determine what those ethics are, as you talk about it out loud, as the whole world watches. There is no time for symposiums. If you blink, that might have been the opportunity for ethical action that you missed.

Media seems to be the new ethical public arena. Even though it is less a public square than a multi-dimensional space, blocked in some areas and hollowed out in others. It is riven by an virtual and actual architecture of fences, smart phones, paywalls, trending topics, human mics, press passes, and politicians. In the absence of a static history, we simply press the record button. If we get it wrong, at least we got it transparent. Share the notes online, take the minutes. If you can’t be there, watch the livestream. We don’t know what democracy is anymore, since the rule of law comes to us only in subpoenas, in SOPA, in the end of a baton. But we do know, that whatever it is that this is, it’s going to be digital. Even if it takes some doing to search out where it’s still available online. In a year or two, it might take a shadow network, or a SSL tunnel. More nodes, coming together.

That our consistent drive, despite it all, to be ethical people now appears fully entrenched in media doesn’t come as a surprise. Why, for instance, are we so concerned about whether or not the revolution might be inscribed to some sort of cinematic process, and by which technology said media will be distributed? Perhaps it is because in a world where we decreasingly have any idea about what to do about the future, the best we can manage is to at least tell other people about our quandary. Expression is one of the most important of human actions. If the public square cannot be occupied for the purpose of democracy, at least the conversations of such a space have media-space in which to proliferate.

And even though it may be fully entrenched in the world of facts, it is uncanny that expression is not simply a secondary fruit of democracy, but precisely one of the most political acts we are still comfortable making. Democracy does not produce speech, but vice versa. Art, especially art that traffics in the interface of technology and media, finds it more difficult to divorce itself from politics than ever before, creating political space in the act of being art. How can a drone be a toy, if it is equipped with a camera? How can a QR code be only an advertisement, if it can conceal information? How can performance art be apolitical, if it must occupy public space in order to be performed?

And what of the parallel by opposite questions: can a videographer only be protesting, when he or she allows the camera to pause in its pan to capture an aesthetically-appealing unfurling cloud of tear gas? Where is beauty, when protesters in Tahrir are suffering from PTSD? Does it exist? And what if we are forced to go beyond expression, for the sake of politics? What lies beyond the camera? The gun? What does that mean for art? For history? For our daily lives?

Too many questions to pose, as the facts of media complicate the former, fictional “freedoms” of art and politics, that might have thought they could act alone sometime in the recent past. The innovation arc has too many potential interfaces and its surface is too fractally diluted to say that it is capable of pointing in any one direction. Mere hypotheticals no longer have a square to stand in. There is no place in the hyper-urbanization of our technocratic environment left for us to pitch such a solitary tent. There are only more scenarios, stretching on as far as the mental search engine can spin. And with them, the possible ethical imperatives spread outward. The age of atemporal, open-sourced ethics is now.

It began, as it often does, with a series of tweets:

@serial_consign: While I detest biomimicry, I have to say I am floored by representation of/thought behind “Growth Assembly” bit.ly/zmjLNU

@debcha: @serial_consign I don’t detest biomimcry. But I do hate any design fiction that is more or less completely uninformed by the science.

@serial_consign: @debcha I think taking cues from natural processes is interesting, but making objects/arch look like organic forms for sake of it is trite!

@debcha: @serial_consign Exactly. I despise ‘biomimicry as superficial aesthetic’ rather than ‘biomimicry as deep influence’.

At which point, I butted in with some questions, but I won’t repeat it all because I think we mostly got confused about terminology. However, @debcha did mention an important difference that I will repeat. She distinguishes “between ‘biomimicry’ and ‘bioinspired’ or ‘organic’ as an aesthetic description. [...] ‘biomimicry’ doesn’t mean it looks like something biological.”

And this is true. As Wikipedia will tell you (as it told me, because I know very little about the subject):

Biomimicry or biomimetics is the examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems.

In other words, biomimicry is all about the functional aspects replicating natural patterns, not about the aesthetics: the “looks like”.

Now, I may not know much about this, but I have been thinking about it. For whatever reason, the cross-overs between nature and technology have been running think and fast of late. I was just reading this article this morning, which I actually believe I stumbled across within the same Bruce Sterling blogpost in which @serial_consign discovered the image he originally tweeted. Bruce calls it a meme, and if I was going to trust anyone on this, it would be him.

My question, that I posed a number of ill-designed ways, is this: what are we doing, in the differentiation between “works like” nature, and “looks like” nature? This is a judgement call, but an important one, because it is so specifically apparent. It isn’t just @debcha and @serial_consign’s personal tastes that makes buildings that look like seeds (for example) seem to be overblown sci-fi. Buildings that grew from seeds: I think we’d all agree that is pretty excellent. But buildings that just look like seeds: meh. Contrived? Weak? A little too Futurama? There is a defined difference there, and it is something that is easy to see.

Of course, there is a long history of futuristic architecture out there, and futurist design of all kinds. Whether it’s Googie, Modernism, or Brutalism, all of these aesthetics are meant to invoke a particular generic idea of a positive, future program. Even if the form is derived from a functional theory of that object’s mechanics (like the aerodynamics of Googie, the ergonomics of Modernism, or the efficiency of Brutalism), that aesthetic ends up taking on its own life apart from the function. We know this, because something can “affect” like one of these aesthetics, without actually being one of these aesthetics.

And if the word Skeuomorph just came to the tip of your tongue, you are quite the atemporal aesthete, aren’t you? Because, therein, is exactly the phenomenon we are talking about. “Works like” can produce a certain “looks like”, but then, even after the “works like” evolves in another direction, we keep the “looks like” our of habit or custom.

Bio-inspired, therefore, is perhaps the atemporal reverse of a skeuomorph. Because the “works like” is not technologically feasible as yet, it settles for the “looks like”. This is Bruce Sterling’s famous “astronaut luggage” example. (Can’t remember the keynote exactly, but I believe it was the well-known “Atemporality for Creatives” talk.) It works like this: you want to be a recreational astronaut, but aren’t the head of a global corporation? Well, just design yourself some astronaut luggage, and start using it. Sure, you might look a little weird carrying astronaut luggage on a boring old jumbo jet. But really, how exactly to our design signifiers work? What other way is there to show people that you’ve been to space? Are you going to whip out a moon rock to show off to everyone you pass in the street? And really, how weird is it to carry astronaut luggage? Is it weirder than the fact that the CEO of Cirque de Soliel has been into space because he came up with way to take a date to a pole dancing event for $100 a ticket?

So we have “anachronic” skeuomorphs, and we have “neochronic” skeuomorphs. The former lingers, and the latter presages. Even though, neither really “does” anything: it just “looks like” it does something.

Or do they?

The reason a doubt first entered my mind, and the reason I began asking such ill-designed questions of @debcha and @serial_consign, is that I’m not quite sure that “looks like” can ever really be apart from “works like”. And it’s not just an inspirational effect of the aesthetic. Sure, building a structure that looks like a seed might serve to somehow inspire a genetic engineer to figure out how to make a structure that grows from a seed, but the causality is specious at best. You would be much better off making sure children get a good math education if you would like to go to the moon, than simply building apartments that look like rocket ships.

And yet, everything must “look like” something, right? Just as much as it must “works like”. Think of an object: say, a lamp. Even if the lamp doesn’t look like a jellyfish, it has to look like something. Ought it to look like a platonic solid? A hat? A space ship? There is an aspect of aesthetic preference involved. If you really like icosahedrons, then you might make yourself a lamp that looks precisely like that. Or, if you really don’t care, you can just get the easiest lamp to find that seems to produce as much light as you want. Or if you don’t have much money, you might make do with a lamp you picked up on the street corner, which looks the best, because “free” is a pretty acceptable aesthetic decision maker.

And yet, the lamp will continue to look like something, even if you pick it out in the dark. You will be sitting in the room with that lamp, day in and day out, using it as a light source, and will be forced to look at it every time you turn it on our off. There is no such thing as “doesn’t look like”.

In which case, what is opposite of a bio-inspired lamp? A non-bio-inspired lamp? Okay. But it is still a lamp.

A lamp, as a light source, is always “inspired” by illumination. This is its “works like”. It’s function mimics incandescence, or florescence, by actually doing just that. It mimics the sun, and fire, and also the hearth. A lamp ought not to produce too much heat, or produce smoke (the benefit of electric over oil or gas), or be so bright that we can’t look anywhere near it, like the sun. In its functional design, it mimics certain functional characteristics which avoiding as many downsides as possible. And hence, every lamp will have a certain aesthetic. It will “look like” a lamp.

It may seem that I’m going around in circles, but I think that is the point. Even a modernist lamp, completely not bio-inspired, by being a physical object following physical laws in order to maintain its functional definition, will in a sense, be using biomimicry. “Works like” always informs a “looks like”. Aesthetics, then, are merely an effort to add additional “mimicry” inflections onto a functional element. A lamp will always function, to a certain extent, like a bioflorescent jellyfish. Whether, beyond this function, is further designed to look like a jellyfish even more than it already does, is beside the point.

Yes, I’m quibbling. Saying any lamp that illuminates automatically “looks like” a creature that fluoresces isn’t really accurate. Because a lamp could quite easily “look like” a rocket ship much more than a jellyfish, even if it “works like” a jelly fish much more. Unless we start using Titan rockets as mood lighting. (Aren’t philosophers a pain in the ass?) But figuring out what we actually mean by our genres identifications and functional chains of causality is all about quibbling. If we just go with our gut, we haven’t defined anything.

And yet, lamps still look like lamps, and lamps that look like sea creatures are still potentially cheesy. We define things as different, regardless of obscure similarities, because these noted aesthetic differences (also subjective differences, or semantic differences) in themselves become functional. Differentiating between a lamp that simply looks like a jelly fish, and a light source that actively bio-floresces is important, because one is a matter of style, and the other would be a scientific breakthrough. They are clearly not the same thing.

But here is the question I will end with: the distinction between biomimicry and bio-inspired aesthetics are easy to differentiate. But does the ease of distinction between form and function follow for other genres of design? For example: at what point is a Brutalist building not merely efficient, but simply Brutalist? At what point are aerodynamic fins not actually aerodynamic, but just look as if they were? Must we measure a building and complete engineering equations to decide if it is a skeuomorph or not? Must we use a wind tunnel to aesthetically judge cars?

Perhaps, it is not that bio-inspired design is cheesy. Perhaps we haven’t discovered what real bio-inspired design looks like yet. Because, once we do, perhaps only an expert could tell the difference.

This story was submitted to the Machine of Death 2 submission call, and wasn’t accepted, for reasons not least of which are because it is just over 10,000 words long. However, I really like the story, even reading it again more than half a year after I wrote it. I wanted to explore some of the surreal concepts behind the Machine of Death idea, and needed a bit more space for this world to inhabit. There is something so bizarrely unsettling about the idea of a mortality contained within a short phrase.

Without further ado, here it is. In the standard form, the title of the story is the words on the card that comes from the Machine of Death. It’s called “Moose Moose”.

And in case you are unfamiliar with the Machine of Death concept, you should read this first.

It was a steel and glass spiral extending upwards and forwards, before pulling back in rollercoaster-loop as it rose, twisting out of the view of any person standing in front of it within the enclave of high steel fence. The architecture left the individual isolated in the bright sun while the building and its inhabitants swooped backward in what might be a loop of impossible height, or, perhaps simply ending after twenty or so floors, once the whorl of the architect’s magnanimous project was out of view.

And so Maddie stood there for a moment, as the space seemed to intend that she ought to, absorbing on her face the glare from the glass above, twitching the edge of the cloth of her formal cotton jacket between her fingers, balancing expertly in her tall heels. Then forward, into the air-conditioned lobby.

The click of her heels on the marble were metronomic over the brush-cymbal HVAC tones. A sound system played the corporate theme at barely a decibel over a whisper, more suggestion of ambient electric tones than the familiar melody. Maddie approached the desk, where the stunningly beautiful security guard/receptionist raised herself on her platform behind her unused writing surface, and leaned forward in her formal cotton jacket to set the tone, and imply the answer to certain unspoken questions. The corporate logo helix in black-on-yellow shone on a button on her lapel.

“May I help you, miss?”
“Yes, I’m looking for the Complaints department?”
The formal jacket standing above her moved slightly.
“Do you have a complaint?”
“No. I mean, perhaps–I’m not quite sure. This was the only address on the website, you see.”
“So you do not have a complaint.”
“I have a question. PR said that Complaints takes all questions that relate to algorithm related inquiries.”
“You have read the FAQ?”
“On the website?”
“There is no other FAQ.”
“Yes.”
“And you still have a complaint?”
“A question. Which they said that Complaints would answer.”
“Complaints is quite a busy department, that being the nature of the department. Are you sure your question hasn’t already been answered elsewhere?”
“I… yes?”
“So you would like to Complain.”
“Well, no… I–”
“Complaints Department is through those double doors there. Please take this ticket and this form.”
“Okay.”
“Those doors, there.”
“Thank you.”

The woman sat and looked elsewhere. Maddie took the items from the surface of the desk and held them under her arm, while she quickly clicked across the floor towards the doors. They swung open at her proximity, and she walked onto the carpet beyond.

The edge of a moving walkway beckoned her, and she stepped on with a touch at the rubberized railing to maintain her balance under the acceleration. The belt pulled her near silently through the wide hallway: windowless, carpeted wall and ceiling, softly diminishing ranks of flat-screens. The many varieties of corporate commercial spots replayed themselves for her.

“Wish you knew more from your canonical reading? Wish that there was more in the cards?”
“…a Patented Algorithm, giving full-spectrum analysis in verb-form and tense…”
“…More Information; Your Information. You’ve heard the bottom line, now get it defined!”
“Take Another Chance, Dad! Take Another Chance Card, and know… more.”
“…my Doctor told me what I had to know, but then I had to know more. I Took Another Chance.”
“Patented Algorithm, with new contextual information derived direct from your canonical. Take Another Chance. Try Chance Networks, and start to know more!”

She looked down at the form, thinking to fill it out, but was stopped by a large bold-lettered message at the top of the form, reading “DO NOT FILL OUT THIS FORM!” And so she didn’t. The volume of the screens increased as she approached the end of the walkway.

She stepped off quickly, picking up her heels to avoid catching them in the grilled edge where the moving floor dropped away under the stationary carpet. Doors swung open quickly to reveal a room filled with chairs filled with people, talking loudly, holding up different colored pieces of paper in the air, changing the color and the height of their hands as directed by a static-tinged PA horn on the wall between three screens, all of them playing Chance Network ads. A line of people snaked the walls of the room, leading from a glass-booth-enclosed man in a formal jacket next to a door, all the way around to where Maddie stood. And so she stood for a moment, trying to determine where it was she ought to otherwise be standing. Behind her, on the closing door, was an advertisement poster image of a woman having an epiphany as she read a card. The card text clearly read the words, “purple shoe”.

Maddie didn’t like the thought of joining a queue without knowing if it was the right one to be waiting in, but the idea of simply finding a chair couldn’t be the correct decision. She looked at the materials she held. The form was blank, entries coded with combinations of number and letters, stern warnings of “FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY”. The tag had a punch-off tab, marked with a serial number, mated on the other half of the tag with a different serial number, a bar code, a proprietary data square, and in large red letters, “F1037”. She looked around the room for any sign, any indication of anything in the room matching these clues, finding nothing. Sighing, she felt her choice in footwear and formal jacket for the occasion, if nothing else, demanded quick action to match her visual impression. And so, Maddie purposefully made her way around the edge of the crowded room, trying not to catch her heels on protruding feet, snaring bag handles, and oscillating children. The heat of the room increased, as the HVAC system struggled with the heat of the living.

Maddie fanned the edges of her cotton jacket discreetly to cool the small of her back as she sidled up the the person at what seemed to be the rear of the line. A man in his fifties held his hat in his hand, moving air with it.

“Excuse me, is this a particular line?”

His voice blended with the monitors overhead, but his irritation broke through. “‘Patience’, it said! ‘Patience’! That isn’t information, that’s an insult!” He waved the Chance Card in her face.
“Personalized elaboration to clarify your life!” promised the monitor overhead.

“I understand the irony. We can all take a bit of irony. But this is abuse! This is sardonic, manipulative, exploitative, expulsionary, extra-propriary…”

Maddie decided to ask the next person.

“A Chance is more than information, it’s a technological step forward, a Chance to be proactive with your mortal future,” suggested the monitor overhead.

She tapped a woman standing hand in hand with her husband, holding an infant, two children leaning sleepy-eyed against the wall.

“Excuse me, is this a particular line?”

The family looked at her, saying nothing. She didn’t know if it was her question, or her, or something more dire to blame for creating this look of tortured ignorance on their faces. The woman looked confused, and apologized in another language, perhaps Italian, maybe Portugese? Maddie moved on.

“Integrity. Decision point. Neutron beam. Processed cheese food. Predatory insect. Information like this, contextual clues, to help you understand!” the screen suggested.

The next in line was a woman wearing the exact same brand of formal cotton jacket as Maddie, but without the heels and the skirt, with slacks and boots instead. She tried not the look at the jacket as she asked, “Is this a particular line?”

“A particular line? This is C particular line.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Look at your ticket, honey. See, here on mine. ‘C7491.’ C particular complaint, C particular line.”
“All of this line?”
“As far as they’ve told us. Here, let me see your ticket..” the woman plucked it from underneath the elbow of Maddie’s jacket. “No, no, no. You are F general. You can tell by the number. F, 10, and then number. You want a different line.”
“A different line?”
“F general. Sorry, honey. Don’t know where.”

The woman looked upwards as if to continue watching the monitor above, which intoned, “Each of us in an individual, and for each of us there is an individual death. And yet the canonical cards read all the same! Why not pick a card, algorithmically derrived, specifically for you? Take Another Chance!”

Maddie stood confused for a moment, and then slowly drifted towards the glass-enclosed booth, hoping that perhaps there was a sign, or maybe a chance to ask where it was that she should be. She wondered if perhaps she should have just kept waiting on the phone at home.

The people closer to the head of the line watched her suspiciously, as if they expected her to try and duck into line in front of them at any moment. Within ten feet of the booth, she was able to see a list printed on a sign riveted to the front of the booth, but there was a gaggle of strollers blocking her view. She bent down to peer through the people, and was almost knocked down as a pair of doors on the nearby wall flew open, and collided with her hip. Three maintenance men pushed in a new glass-enclosed booth, complete with formal-jacket-enclosed man enclosed-within. Theypositioned it next to the door in front of her. A Klaxon sounded, and everyone in the room jumped.

“F general! F general line! F general please step to the booth!”

There was a rush, and shouting, as people from all over the room attempted to join the line, stepped out of the old line allowing people to move up, stepped out of line before realizing they were already in the correct line and attempting to reclaim their spots, went after better seats vacated by people who joined lines or tried to improve their positions, either farther or closer to air conditioning vents, doors, other people, and the screens. Children took the opportunity to increase the level of chaos at hip-level and below.

By the time Maddie had securely reattained her posture on her heels, the line had formed behind her and snaked either through the center of the chairs, or along the wall, though this was disputed by proponents who stood to gain or lose by either eventuality.

“STEP UP please!”

It was the man in the booth. Maddie took a half-step forward and pointed her voice towards the slanted metal grill in the shape of the helix logo placed in the glass.

“Tag please.”

She slid it into the document slot.

“Form.”

That followed.

“Complaint?” His pen hovered over the form.

“I have a question.”
“Have you read the FAQ?”
“Yes, I–”
“And you would still like to complain?”
“I’d like to ask–”
“No questions here, miss. Through the doors, and head into the light.”
“The light?”
“The lights. Follow the lights.”

The doors buzzed, indicating they were unlocked. She took her form and tag, and stepped to the door, pressing on it gingerly. She just missed the unlock, and the doors didn’t move.

“Smartly, please! Press smartly!” The voice from the booth reminded her.

The buzz again, and she was through. It was a white hallway, with moisture damaged acoustical tiles that appeared to date back further in time than the building might have existed, extending above her in what appeared to be equal directions to the left and to the right. She stood still, looking for any sign to indicate direction. Then, from recessed LEDs in the wall, a red arrow illuminated and pointed towards the left. She followed, and as she clicked down the linoleum of the hall more arrows lit. She must be heading in the right direction, but should she slow down and let the arrows precede her? It wasn’t clear. Suddenly the arrows stopped, a buzzer sounded, and a door popped open. Maddie stopped, turned quickly, and stepped into the doorway as it closed behind her.

In front of her was a man in a formal jacket, bent low over a desk, thinning hair presented to her inquisitively, as if it were shrouded face peeking through the dark. There was a chair in front of the desk, but she decided to remain standing. A dusty terminal on the desk, dark, but fan humming. The tag on the desk read: “Milten”. Behind the desk, was a typical advertisement poster for the company, featuring one of their yellow cards with the watermarked helixed logo, marked with a Chance, reading “linguine”.

The man looked up from his writing, and was taken aback by the sight of her in that way that only a middle-aged man can, upon suddenly realizing that he was alone in a room with a younger woman. Maddie wasn’t sure if that meant that he thought she was attractive or only that he was awkward.

“Please be seated… Ms…?”
“Roubacheau. Madeline Roubacheau.”
“Oh–I’m sorry. Form please.”
She presented it.
“And name again.”

She repeated it. He transcribed it to a particular box on the form.

“A general complaint, is it?”
“A question.”

His pen paused in its scratching path. “I’m sorry, you must have followed the wrong lights.”
“No, I was told that my question could only be answered in the Complaints department.”
“You were.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve read the FAQ?”
“Yes.”
“And you still have a complaint?”
“A question, but yes.”
“Well Ms. Roubacheau, let’s call up your history and see what we can do about your complaint.”

She thought about it, but decided at this point to just let it go. He looked up and smiled politely, as if waiting for her.

“I’m sorry?”
“Your cards, miss? I assume you have brought them?”
“Oh yes, I’m sorry.”

From inside her jacket, she retrieved her case for her personal set, that she had received free on the occasion of getting her fifth. The slim glass-plastic clamshell would fit up to twenty cards, and had position locks to fit into a case storage shelf for her home catalog of excess cards sorted into separate twenty-cases, the shelf which she would receive as a free gift on the occasion of her two-hundredth. She wasn’t sure at what point she received a free laser name-engraving on her twenty-case, but her clamshell was still fresh, its unmarrable surface shining in the dull office florescents. She clicked it open, tapped out the cards, all five of them. She laid them in a stack on the desk. Politely averting his eyes from the printed words, the un-introduced Mr. Milten selected the top card in his small fingertips, and deftly slid it into the slot in the surface of the desk, pulled it out, and replaced it sideways on the small stack. Pen still over the form, he squinted at the terminal’s monitor, and began to write quickly in efficient strokes.

“Five cards then. Not so many…”
“Yes.”
“Have you had your canonical? We have no record of you receiving it through Chance Networks.”
“Oh, yes. I… I don’t carry it with me, though.”
“I see.” He wrote in small letters to fit a great deal of words in a particular box.
“Your file notes your canonical death prediction regardless of whether it has been given to you, of course. The algorithm cannot write new Chance cards without it.”
“I understand.”

He held the pen aloft, and wasted time enough to give her another small glance and smile.

“So what seems to be your complaint?”
“I have a question about the algorithm.”
“Our proprietary Chance algorithm is the key to the derivation of your specific Chance cards, yes.”
“Yes, but why are they so… obscure?”
“Obscure, miss?”
“Oblique.”
“Oblique?”
“Obtuse?”
“I’m not sure I understand, Ms. Roubacheau.”
“Well, look.”

She spread the top three cards out along the desk, turning them so they would face Mr. Milten. He did not look at the cards, but instead looked at his screen.

“I see nothing out of the ordinary.”
“This one says ‘anticipatory’.”
“Yes.”
“And this one is ‘coniferous’.”
“Yes.”
“And this one: ‘yellow’. What is that supposed to mean?”
“You have read the FAQ?”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand that Chance cards are often like this. They all refer to the contextual circumstances of your canonical death prediction. Interpreted through our proprietary algorithm, the Chance cards spread out in subject and circumstance from the singular cause of death.”
“No, I understand what they are. It’s just that–”
“It’s like a meadow of grass, Ms. Roubacheau.”
“I’m sorry?”

Mr. Milten leaned back in his chair, smiling to someone, but not to Maddie. “A meadow is made from many different blades of grass. Each is singular, a leaf unto itself. But without all of them, together, there would be no meadow. A leaf of grass on its own is nothing. A clipping. A dead thing. But together…” he gazed off above her head.

She said nothing. She imagined she would hear his spiel one way or another. And so allowed, he continued.

“Many people are unhappy with their canonical death predictions. They are so sparse, and so often ironic. The incontrovertible truth of them is no consolation for the additional mystery they create. What the technology of Chance Networks achieves, using our patented algorithm, is to calculate contextual synonyms, related terms, other useful adjectives to help describe the circumstances of the death prediction. Your fate is derived through the algorithm, one Chance at a time, sketched all the way from the canonical event, back through the fabric of time, to now. We don’t change the death, we add to it. Each new card generated from the algorithm is another Chance to understand. We help paint the entire picture. A picture–of a meadow. You see Ms. Roubacheau?”
“But these cards don’t make anything clearer.”
“Well, you do have only five. The algorithm is a fickle thing, Ms. Roubacheau. As advanced as it is, it can only do what it is capable of doing. Each is a Chance, but only a single Chance, if you catch my meaning.”
Mr. Milten withdrew a small box from a shelf underneath his surface, with an air of repressing a small amount of excitement.
“Ms. Roubacheau, because of your concern, I am able to offer you a complimentary Chance card. If you would be so kind as to insert your finger, we can let the algorithm continue its work…”
“No.” Maddie crossed her arms on her chest.
“You don’t want another Chance?”
“Someone must be able to tell me how I’m supposed to interpret these cards.”

Mr. Milten placed the box on the desk, and looked concerned.

“Now, we at Chance Networks are aware of the so-called cottage industries of ‘Chance Interpreters’ out there, doing a secondary business in… ahem… ‘reading’ our cards. But we take a firm stance that there is no way to conclusively add to the picture of what the algorithm reads from the canonical prediction, other than through the algorithm itself. We do not recommend or condone using these services, and there are several lawsuits pending regarding claims certain of these outside service entities make regarding our… intellectual property.”
“But certainly someone within the company could tell me what I’m supposed to do with these?”
Milten laughed. “I’m sorry miss, but I’m but a customer service operative. What those folks in engineering do, is–ahem–quite outside of my expertise. I could perhaps allow you to review one of our instructional videos…” he began opening drawers.
“No thank you. Perhaps there is someone in engineering I could speak to?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Ms. Roubacheau. In the meantime, let’s just mark that you have accepted the Chances surrounding your death…” he reached for his pen.
“I don’t accept these.”

He blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“I can’t accept these. How could I?”
“The algorithm is infallible, Ms. Roubacheau. Derived from the canonical Machine of Death design, the truth is unquestionable.”
“But if I don’t understand them, how can they mean anything to me?”
“Well, let me show you a few of mine.” He reached in his jacket pocket, and pulled out a custom metal case, inscribed with his name, just as on the sign on the desk. “See here?” He held the yellow card he extracted delicately by the edges. “ ‘Rotini’, reads this one. Pasta-related, not unlike the poster behind me, which is why I chose it to decorate my workspace,” he gestured behind him and grinned.
“I used to think that meant pasta salad, as if I would die of my canonical while on a picnic or at a barbecue. But then I got this one, which says ‘bi-plane’. Perhaps an airshow or county fair then? But then! This one: ‘labyrinthine’. Which relates, I believe, to a particular school trip I took in my college days. Making the pasta-related Chance readable in an entirely new light!”

Maddie did not share his enthusiasm. “Are pasta-related Chances supposed to mean something in particular that I don’t understand?”

Mr. Milten sighed, and rolled his eyes back, appearing to be thinking about a problem, but what sort of problem, it was difficult to say.

“Have you read any Zen philosophy, Ms. Roubacheau?”
“I have, and I find it abhorrent.”
“I see.”

Maddie placed her hands on her knee, and leaned forward in her formal jacket.

Milten twitched his pen back and forth on the desk. “Are you sure I cannot simply mark down that you accept these Chances–just in the effort to… push things along?”
“I do not accept them.”
“Well.” He glanced at his watch, and pushed what might have been a bead of sweat back into his hairline. “Well–perhaps there is someone I could refer you do on the engineering floor.”

Maddie smiled. “I would appreciate that very much.”

He hastily made a series of marks on her form, writing with much less precision.

“Please take this, and proceed down the hall to your right. Up the steps, around the corner, and to the elevator. You want the sixth floor, room 77, a Mrs. Dantez.”

She gathered her cards, replaced the case in her pocket. As she turned to leave, Milten stopped her.

“Oh, before you go–can you give me three adjectives to describe ‘panther’?”
“Panther? Like the predatory cat?”
“Yes, but not those adjectives. Like what you think of when you think of a panther.”
“Oh. Um, ‘feline’, ‘sharp’, ‘black’… ‘hungry’–”
“Three will do, thank you!” He jotted on a pad on the side of his desk. “Have a good day!”

In the elevator, the buttons were marked with letters, rather than with numbers. Maddie didn’t feel like going back to inquire, so she took a chance, and pressed the button with “F” on it. The corporate music was louder in the elevator, but the volume from the screens was lower.

She clicked down an oppressively warm hallway, holding her paperwork lightly in one hand to try and keep the moisture from her fingers from marking them. She knocked twice on the door marked 77, all alone on a particular stretch of hallway, and opened the door.

A rush of overly-cooled air met her. Opposite the door was a counter, where a bored-looking receptionist read a magazine, while he twisted back and forth in a low office chair. Behind him was a mirror, and two passages leading in either direction. On wall with the doorway were a line of three chairs to the left, one of which was occupied by a large man with a white cowboy hat, who sat next to a small table just large enough for the potted plant on top of it. The room was also a hallway, extending in either direction. She approached the desk.

Without looking up, the man said, “have a seat, she’ll call when she’s ready for you.”

Maddie took chair closest to the door.

“Good day, miss.” It was the man wearing the hat.
“Hello.” She began to play with the edges of her jacket, as if she was picking off lint.
“Could I… ask you a favor?”

Maddie looked at him for a moment, but he was looking at the receptionist, as if making sure the man was focused on his magazine.

“It’s a bit of a proposition.”

She froze, and prepared to stand if necessary.

“Nothing untoward, or out of the ordinary, I assure you. I simply offer that I might… buy your cards.”
“You want to buy my cards?”

He gestured with his hand, in a downward motion.

“Quietly now, quietly.” He laughed nervously. “But yes. Twice what a new Chance card reading costs at retail. Cash.”

Maddie was startled and confused. “But I don’t have that many, only…” she stopped herself from saying how many she had, though she wasn’t sure why.

“You can buy two new for what I’ll give you for one. Nothing wrong with having more cards, right? Take Another Chance, as they say in the literature.”
“I’m not sure it’s a good–”
“Oh, for research only, miss. I don’t want your canonical, nothing like that. I’m just a curious man, see. I’ve been studying their algorithm for years. Out of curiosity, nothing more than that. Every card is a new data point. No good to anyone but the people who bought ‘em. And to me. Data, you see. If you care to help, I’d make it worth your while.”
“Well, I need them for my complaint–I mean my question.”
“Of course you do. Well, after that, if you want to write down your words and sell me the cards, I’d still be interested. Here is my card. Business card, that is.” He palmed it in his hand, and held it over to her. She took it. It read “Chance Cards”, and then there was a number.
“I’d… you might want to put that away for now, miss. These folks, they don’t exactly take kindly to my research. Think I’m trying to hone in on their algorithm. Not possible though. I’m more curious in what it generates.”

Maddie tucked it away. She looked over at the desk, and caught the receptionist looking at her suspiciously, but then he quickly went back to his magazine. The man next to her was inauspiciously studying the wall, and began humming a tune that Maddie didn’t know. She pulled her jacket close against the cold of the air conditioning, and had a sudden desire to inspect her cards. Once more. For the hundredth. Thousandth. But she didn’t want the man with the hat to see them.

Then the voice came over an intercom, full of static, far too loud. “Madeline Roubacheau, I will see you now.”

Maddie stood, and looked towards the receptionist for direction, but he didn’t look up.

“To the left, down the hall.”

She moved past the man in the hat, clicking on the floor.

The intercom burst with static. “No, not that way. My left. MY left.”

Maddie stopped, confused as to which way that was, but it must be the other way. She passed the man in the hat again, who smiled, and tipped the brim, as if that was the only reason he wore such a hat. Down the hall, she reached for the door on the left side.

“Not that door. The third one,” the intercom corrected.

She kept going.
“No, the… from the… that door. THAT door. Yes. Come in.” Static, and then nothing.

The room was warm, but not to an uncomfortable extent. It was large enough to refer to as an office, with a large wooden desk, and several chairs. There was a blotter on the desk, and a phone, and behind it, an imposing looking woman who looked as if she was into-her-sixties-but-looking-in-her-fifties, wearing a full formal jacket and skirt, a long string of pearls, and a neatly assembled silk scarf with pin, bearing, of course, the corporate logo, black helix on yellow. Behind her were three framed posters. One, advertising a “Chance for Life” charity event. The other flanking poster a photo of a family with full decks of cards, and the slogan, “We Understand!” written in large, slanted, san-serif letters. The middle poster showed a hand of indeterminate race holding a yellow card, palm up. “Imagination”, it read.

“Please have a seat, Ms. Roubacheau. I am Mrs. Dantez. How can I help you?”
“I have a question.”
“Yes, I gather that, and that is why you are here. You have read the FAQ?”
“I have.”
“And you have no complaints?”
“Aside from my question, no.”
“And your question is?”
“How is it that these cards mean anything?”

Mrs. Dantez sighed, and crossed her fingers on one hand over the others on the blotter.

“Form please.”

Form on the desk.
“Tag as well, for formality’s sake.”

Tag.

“And your license to test, if you would.”

Maddie pulled her license out, and laid it on the desk. Mrs. Dantez picked it up with one hand, and put on a pair of reading glasses with the other. She studied it in the overhead light, and then produced a pen.

“One of your cards, as well.”

Maddie opened the case, and gave one up. The stoic woman in front her began marking items on the form while speaking aloud.

“Age to test: passed. Mental competency to test: approved. Medical consult: met. Drug test: no indicators… though that date was some time ago,” she looked over her glasses at Maddie, who was glad she’d worn the formal jacket. “Though it is within the mandated cycle. Preparedness for Mortality Training Course: attended, and standardized.”

She paused, and the pen hovered. “Religion is blank.” She looked at Maddie. “Is that Atheist, then?”

Maddie felt the familiar blush. “I haven’t really considered it. And I was told it isn’t mandatory to have it declared in any direction.”

“Oh, it’s not mandatory. But it is an anomaly.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, oh no. No problem. But it is irregular.”
“Would that affect my Chance card generation?”
“No, not assuredly. But it is something that we’ll take into consideration.”

She marked the form. Then she placed the pen on the edge of the blotter, and took up the card, and inserted it quickly in the slot in the desk. Then she pulled out a screen from the side of her desk, tilted downward so only she could see it. Shading the glare from the overhead lights, Mrs. Dantez read whatever was summoned to the screen.

“You have had your canonical, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve only had five cards.”
“I’m sorry. I know it isn’t very many, but I simply can’t have any more until I know what they are supposed to mean.”
“What they are is described in the FAQ, Ms. Roubacheau.”
“I know what they are, of course. Anyone knows that. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them. How to read them. How I’m supposed to understand any of this.”

Mrs. Dantez leaned over the desk, severely. “You haven’t been to an interpreter, have you Ms. Roubacheau?”
“No, of course not. I know that’s a scam. That’s why I came here, to the corporation.”

The older woman sighed, and began to look slightly closer to her actual age, but only for a moment. She opened a drawer and pulled out a disc.

“I have this video that I could show you…”
“I’ve seen the videos.”
“You haven’t seen this video. It’s not a promotional video. It’s an internal training video.”

She slipped it from its case, and inserted it somewhere on her side of the desk. The lights dimmed automatically, and from a spot in the corner light shone, projecting an image on top of the middle poster behind the desk. A screen descended from the ceiling and caught the film image. Mrs. Dantez didn’t turn to watch the film, appearing to only close her eyes. Maddie looked over her head as carefully as she could.

A man walked into the shot, wearing a formal jacket, complete with logo pin. “Good morning!” he said to the camera, though the time of day was no more visible in the scene than it was in the windowless office in which Maddie sat. “My name is Sam Augustine, and I’ll be your guide through the training procedure.”

The scene changed. Sam was in front of a bustling Change Networks franchise, walking past the line extending out the door, walking inside the lobby, walking behind the banks of machines and teller windows, and into the raised area that was unique to every franchise.

“Before we get into the step by step procedure by which you’ll tune the central algorithm hub, let’s take a minute to discuss the importance of this seemingly minor daily maintenance task.” Sam popped the lid of the central unit, audibly humming through the recording, and let the cover rise to his eye level. “It only take a minute, but it is importance cannot be overstressed. Sloppy tuning can result in misaligned results transmitted from the algorithm mainframe, and inappropriately delivered to the customer. The checksum safeguards make receiving incorrect results an impossibility. But result errors are possible, or franchise-wide Failure-to-Chance. Either can mean costly downtime for the entire franchise, and dissatisfied customers, who haven’t received the quick and accurate Chances they have come to expect. Without balancing the hub to the characteristic load of customers on a twice-a-day basis, Chance failures can increase by as much as twenty percent.”

The film stopped, the lights came back on, and the screen retreated into the ceiling. Mrs. Dantez opened her eyes.

“Are you saying that there might have been an error in my Chances?” Maddie was open-mouthed.

“No dear. I’m saying precisely the opposite.” She held up one of Maddie’s cards. The one marked ‘coniferous’. “You see this code strip here? This contains your unique user ID, linked to your stored canonical reading, verified in our central algorithm servers. Your canonical reading is what it is: the way that you’ll die. The algorithm develops your Chance here on the server from the canonical, and then transmits it to the Chance franchise, and prints it on the card. The server generates a checksum to make sure only algorithmically correct results are printed on your card. We don’t need a new blood test every time we Chance. The blood test is only to verify, for security, that only you will receive your Chances.”

She looked down at her screen. “The Chances are yours, no less than your canonical. Each of your five Chances are 100% checksum accurate. The checksum is recorded in each Chance code strip, for paper trail verification.”

Mrs. Dantez smiled across the desk.

“You see, dear, that is what Chances are. They are you. From your canonical cause of death, we derive the nano-fate Chances that surround how that death will occur. There is no possibility of them being wrong, or being for anyone else. Your Chances are you–and while I don’t mean it in a belittling way, if they don’t seem to make sense to you… well, there’s no one that can do anything about that but yourself.”
“But the canonical is a cause of death. These are just words. They don’t make any sense.”
“They will. Given enough Chances, given enough time, and enough personal reflection, the meaning comes clear. The meaning comes from you.”

Maddie shook her head.

“This just isn’t good enough. These are words with no meaning! Look at this.”

She held up a card from the bottom of the stack, so the woman across from her would have to read it. The immaculate composition of her face faded as she saw the word.

“I… I do apologize for that. Normally the words aren’t so… anatomical…”
“It’s not just a part of my body! It’s my… it called it a… I never have used that word in my life!”
“I understand why you’re upset. I don’t care for that word at all myself. But I must reiterate, Ms. Roubacheau, that the Chance Networks does not create these words themselves. Chance Networks and its algorithm do not attempt to… well as I said, these words come from you. They are your Chances, and nobody else’s.”

Maddie sat back in her chair, her emotion spent for a moment.

“I must ask you, dear: have you ever… considered using suicide as a means to hasten the resolution of your canonical results?”
“No, I have not. My canonical isn’t ‘suicide’.”
“Few are. But an educated woman like yourself knows that it doesn’t have to be.”

Mrs. Dantez removed her glasses.

“It’s okay if you have thought about it. Many people who seek Chances have considered it. In a mortal world as this, it is an option for all of us. Chances are another way out of the vicious, emotional cycle of having to deal with our mortality. If you have considered using suicide–”
“I have not.”
“I believe you. But even if you haven’t, seeking another Chance might give you some further insight into yourself. Taking a Chance might be the way out.” She pulled out a box, and set it on the desk. “I’d be happy to give you a complimentary Chance. It is often that when we’re at such an impasse in interpreting our Chances, just then a new Chance comes along to put everything in a different light.”

She pulled out a case from her jacket pocket, and clicked it open. It was inlaid with mother of pearl on the upper side, and black velvet on the bottom. There were only four cards in it, and she carefully lined then on the raised edge of the blotter, like a pathway of four yellow stones.

“When I was twenty-two, not too far from your own age, I received this Chance.”

‘Silence’.

“For a young woman, this is a fairly morose Chance. It troubled me, I don’t mind telling you. It wasn’t until I was thirty-seven that I got this additional Chance.”

‘Morning’, read the card.

Mrs. Dantez took a deep breath, as if she were actually recalling the emotion. “It changed everything for me! I had had visions of the worst things you can imagine: suffocation, becoming deaf later in life, being murdered as a witness to a crime, and so on. My canonical aside–for it to occur in the context of ‘silence’ seemed particularly gruesome. But, ‘morning’! A time of peaceful silence, of reflection, or meditation. I began to see that silence could be a beautiful Chance, and it was only my preconceptions and fears that I was seeing, reflecting in my Chances. My world was turned around completely! And then I received these other two: ‘apothecary’, and ‘wooden’. Well you see the first one was…” she looked at Maddie, who was looking off into space.

“Take another Chance, dear.”
“I don’t want one.”
“You don’t want one?”
“I don’t want another one, until I can figure out the ones I have.”
“But you must accept them, Ms. Roubacheau! They are your Chances.”
“I won’t accept them. Not until they mean something to me.”
“But if you accept them now, and wait, in time the meaning will become clear.”
“I refuse to accept them.”

Mrs. Dantez sighed, and sat back. Then she reached forward and gathered up her cards, putting them away in her case. She picked up her pen.

“There is one more thing we can do. We can examine you. There are certain physical signs–and I remind you, that they are very slight tells, nothing definite or assured–but they can act as diagnostic criteria for checking Chance causality.” She began to write. “If you want the exam, you must promise to take it to completion. For insurance purpose, once begun, the exam must be finished. It’s causal-liability, as the case law about the matter is not binding yet. I can give you an exam, and then with those results in mind, perhaps you will be willing to take another Chance.”

She wrote something on Maddie’s form.

“Okay?”

Maddie nodded her head.

Mrs. Dantez opened a drawer, and pulled out a file folder, which she spread on her desk, and began withdrawing forms. She assembled a packet as she checked off items, filled out passages, and inserted the complaint form Maddie had brought with her.

“Any history of heart conditions?”
“Any medical allergies?”
“Any fear of confined spaces?”
“Any history of epilepsy?”
“Any surgeries in the past five years?”
“Any metallic implants that are known to be reactive to magnetism?”
“Any recent skin reactions in the presence of radio waves?”
“Sensitivity to light?”
“Have you been in any environments with reactive chemicals over a safety level of 2?”
“Do you or do you not enjoy the taste of cilantro? Has your opinion on this changed in the past three years?”
“Okay, Ms. Roubacheau, sign here. Please go through this door, and speak to the nurse. His name is Virgil. He’ll take good care of you. And wear this badge for the rest of the time you’re here, please.”

She gestured at a door Maddie had not seen before. She signed, and gathered up the forms, affixed the badge, and stepped towards the door.

“Oh, Ms. Rouhbacheau?”
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me the first five words that come into your mind when you think of the phrase, ‘boiled egg’.”
“I’m sorry?”
“‘Boiled egg’. Five words. Any words. Go.”
“I–uh… shell, pan, cooking, quickly, salt.”
“No adverbs please.”
“No–”
“No adverbs. One more. Hurry now.”
“Yolk?”
“Thank you.” She wrote what might have been those words down on a pad on her desk. “Go ahead–Virgil will be waiting for you.”

Maddie stepped onto the tile of a brightly lit hallway, lined with glass windows that must have opened onto exam rooms. Each window had a curtain drawn in front of it, and shadows moved on the curtain, two, maybe three people per room. She wasn’t sure which way to go to find Virgil, or even what exactly she was doing, or whether she ought to leave. Standing still for a moment, the edge of her jacket in her free hand, the other filled with paperwork. Listening to the dry, HVAC air, Maddie tried to hear which direction the most noise might be coming from. She heard what sounded like distant shouting. No, it was most certainly shouting, coming from the right. It was shouting, getting louder. It was someone coming this way.

Wondering what she ought to do was what she was doing when the shouting rounded the corner. The young woman in a white medical gown had a familiar look, but before Maddie could return the look of disoriented derailment, the figure pushed past her and ran, slapping barefoot, down the hall and away. Maddie was sent backward, trying to keep from tottering off of her heels, flat against one of the glass windows.

“There she is!” A number of large orderlies rounded the corner, dressed in a manner in which only women titled orderlies would be dressed. Two were on either side of Maddie, and a slim, older man stood beside them.

“I… I think the person you want–”

But they had her by the arms, and her stack of papers fell to the floor. The man, whose logo-emblazoned name tag read “Virgil”, bent to pick them up.

“But Mrs. Dantez said that I–”
“Yes, I’m aware of what Mrs. Dantez said. Put her in room 846.”

He took her papers down the hall in the opposite direction from the way she was taken, both arms of the orderlies on her formal cotton jacket’s arms, raised in the air in a way that she could only barely manage to stumble along on her heels with them, clicking along to keep from falling down. After what must have been some seventy yards, a door was pushed open, a light came on, and she was inside.

“Remove your clothes.”
“I–”
“You’ve agreed to a series of tests.”
“Yes, but–”
“Remove your clothes, please.”

The orderlies were imposing figures, and they held out a familiar looking gown. She had agreed, but to what? Maddie sighed, and slid her sleeves out of her formal jacket. The badge was missing from the label where she had clipped it. She stepped out of the heels, and onto the floor. Blouse, skirt, hose.

“Your underthings too.”

And those. She put on the gown. One of the two women gathered up the discarded clothing and her shoes, into a white cloth bag. Before she put in the jacket, she fished out Maddie’s case.

“You’ll want these. There’s a pocket.”

And indeed there was, on the chest of the oddly fitting gown, generally over the left side. She put the case in the cloth opening that was just big enough, and the case weighted down the cloth against her breast. The metal was cold through the light fabric. Then the orderlies were gone, and the door was closed.

There was a poster on the back of the door. A Chance box, as if in a franchise booth, was visible in a close-up shot. A card was emerging from the slot. The first letters were visible, spelling ‘Wit–’, and the caption said beneath it, “This Chance Could Be the One.”

A different orderly returned. She had a tray. First it was blood. Then a swab of the inside of Maddie’s cheek. Then a tissue sample, a scratch beneath her upper arm. Then urine. The orderly disappeared with the tray.

A new orderly, with a cart. Many different devices, all for the measurement of various things. Heart rate. Mini-EEG. Reflex arc. Standardized pain threshold. Electro-conductivity. Cognitive ray. Radio stethoscope. Magentoscope. Positronic band. Physical exam. Flashing lights, sanitized probes: under, behind, in, and back out. She checked it–the area referred to in profane language on her card. Maddie looked at the wall, while the orderly seemed to make an audible noise, not quite approvingly or disapprovingly. Then she was gone.

Maddie stood flat-footed against the wall. She stared at the poster, wondering what sort of person it was that had stuck their finger in the slot of the Chance box, causing it to print that card, of which she could only read the first three letters. Did they take an actual picture with a Chance box in order to make that poster? Or was it a computer-generated graphic? Was it a false box, perhaps–used for such photographs? Or did someone actually generate that card… was that someone’s Chance, and they were waiting for the camera to finish its work before they removed it and read what it said?

The orderly who had previously carried the tray came back into the room, seemingly in a much better mood than she had been when she was wielding the needle. This time she carried a clipboard.

“Don’t look so glum, deary! We’ll have you out of exams in no time at all. They don’t take but a minute, you see. Like the boxes themselves, those test machines are. In the hole, and there it goes. Oh, but your stool! No wonder you look so tired.”

She reached outside and pulled in a light plastic stool that had been outside the door, handing it to Maddie, who held it to her chest, touching lightly against the case in her gown pocket. The orderly pulled in a chair on wheels, and sat on it.

“Well, sit down then.”

Maddie did.

“Just a few questions. Now–you know your canonical, don’t you?”

Maddie sighed, and leaned forward to let her elbows fall to her knees.

“Yes.”
“Excellent, excellent. Have you ever considered suicide in order to hasten the results?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“No.”
“Well, okay. You know it would not be out of the ordinary if you had.”
“Okay.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No.”
“Okay. Three synonyms for ‘hungry’.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Synonyms please, three of them, for ‘hungry’. No adverbs.”
“Famished, starving, and… uh, malnourished?”
“Hmm… I’m not sure about that last one, but it will do. Would you be willing to take a Chance right now?”
“Now?”
“The box is in the hallway. I’ll go get it. Complimentary.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I won’t take one.”
“Okay, and… wait one moment. What is your name?”
“Madeline Roubacheau.”
“Roubacheau?”
“Yes.”
“My goodness, but I’ve got the wrong forms here! Where is your badge?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t on your formal jacket.”
“It must have been when…”
“But you have your cards, don’t you?”
“Yes, they’re right here–”
“Well thank goodness for that! Who only knows what might have happened… and then for you, my dear… how horrible to have lost one’s Chances!”
“No, I do have them…”
“Well thank goodness! Let me go get your forms, and get rid of these!” She shook them on the clipboard, as if they were wet, or had been particularly troublesome somehow. “Feel free to keep your stool.”

Maddie hadn’t made any motion to get up, or pull her arms from her knees.

“Would you like a Chance then?”
Maddie exhaled before speaking. “I…”
“Free of charge, of course. I only thought–these not being your forms–that perhaps you would indeed like one after all.”
“N–no, thank you.”
The orderly blinked her eyes, and tapped the clipboard against the side of her hip. “Well, okay…” she said, as if she blamed the form she held. “Pretty young lady like yourself, I never would have figured, but…”

She turned to leave the room, pushing the chair in front of her. Then she paused. “You know what my last Chance was?”

Maddie looked up.

“It was ‘Others’. What do you make of that?”

Maddie opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. The orderly was already gone, and she heard the wheels retreating down the hall.

In less than three minutes, she heard flat footsteps running, approaching. It was Virgil, completely out of breath, his name tag askew.

“Ms. Roubacheau! Thank goodness I’ve found you!”

As he leaned against the door frame to catch his breath, Maddie felt as if she was required to say something in response.

“Yes?”
“There’s been a terrible mistake!”

She raised her eyebrows and began to speak, but he continued.

“Not with your test results, no! Those were all fine. Normal, I might say, though I’m hardly qualified to give you any sort of assessment. No, there was a mistake, and I’m so very sorry to have mixed it all up in this way. It is my responsibility, and I understand if you are upset, and I can only apologize to you in the most sincerest of terms!”

Still leaning against the door frame, bent over with exertion, it almost appeared as if he was attempting to bow in way of apology.

“But there is time yet!” he blurted out. “Please, follow me now, and I’ll get you going in the right direction.” And then he was out of the room. “Come along, come along! And I’m terribly sorry!”

She had to pad quickly on the cool floor with her bare feet to keep up with the man’s tall strides.

“We’ll get everything straight, I assure you!”

Around three turns, down a straight away, and up a short flight of rubberized stairs. Virgil opened a door.

He whispered, holding his head close to the edge of the door, “Mr. Blake’s office! And once again, I’m sorry!” He closed the door behind her.

The office was immense, carpeted deeply from wall to wall. Maddie squinted against the natural light streaming in from the wide windows, showing nothing but a view of uninterrupted blue sky, the bright sun sending gleaming shadow lines down the large modern statuary that dotted the open expanses of carpet, and the couch, and the low tables, and the several chairs. It lit up a full, dark head of hair on a surprisingly young man behind the desk that presided over the space, as he looked down at a pad of paper, scribbling furiously. Maddie breathed in a bit suddenly, overwhelmed by the light after the low florescent lighting previously illuminating her.

“My goodness, Ms. Roubacheau!”

Her feet felt warm on the sun drenched carpet.

“Virgil didn’t give you your clothes back. What a silly man.” He pressed a button on his desk repeatedly. “It should only be a minute.”

The door behind her popped open, and Virgil’s arm stuck in holding the cloth bag. He waved it side to side, and, “I’m sorry!” came around the door. She took the bag, and the arm gratefully disappeared and the door closed again.

“I’ll just secure myself in the closet, and you can get dressed at your leisure. Not to worry, no one will come in that door unless I call for them.”

The man rose from his chair, and took several large, sporting leaps across the carpet, dodging around two statues, to what must have been the closet door on the wall. He flung it open, revealing, indeed, a number of hanging jackets, all dwarfing the small man. He plunged in between the garments, and with a flourish, pulled the door closed to a click.

“Please go ahead! Just let me know when you’re finished!” His voice was quite muffled by the door. It seemed thick and secure, from the sound of his elbows bumping against it as he no doubt fought for space among the coats. Seeing no other option, Maddie begun to dress. The sun was warm on her skin.

“My name is Mr. Blake, by the way!” He shouted from inside, to overcome the muffling. “And you must be Maddie Roubacheau! I’ve been dying to make your acquaintance for… well, it must have been almost forty-five minutes now!”

With her hose on, Maddie quickly pulled up her skirt, and tucked the blouse back into it.

“You see, I’m the boss around these parts! The Complaint Department, that is! Nothing much happens here without me finding out about it, at least within the hour! You might think that being in charge means I don’t have many responsibilities, other than overseeing things. But I assure you, that’s not the case! If someone isn’t satisfied, it’s my job to make sure that they are!”

She put on her formal cotton jacket, and held her heels in her hand, leaving the gown and bag on the floor. “Mr. Blake…” she raised her voice a bit to penetrate the closet.

It opened a crack. “All finished?” She assured him that she was. “Well then, I’ll come out of the closet, where it will be much easier to speak with Ms. Roubacheau–Maddie, that is–if the young lady doesn’t mind if I address her as such?”

“No, that’s okay.”

He leaped back across the carpet, and landed hard in his chair, swiveling around a complete turn. “Please sit down, please sit down! Pick any chair you like.”

There were no chairs near his desk, and so she picked the couch, which was a bit awkward because it faced the center of the room. But he sprang across the rug again, and chose a seat immediately next to the couch. “A wonderful choice, a wonderful choice! I say chair, and she picks the couch! Ms. Roubacheau–Maddie, that is–an excellent choice, if I may say so.”

The chair he sat in was low, and even his short legs came up quite high above his lap, pulling the cuffs of his casual suit up over his shoes, exposing the fact that he was not wearing socks. He was quite young, perhaps the same age as Maddie herself, or even younger. She did not put her heels back on, as she was seated, and they would have been nearly buried in the long carpet shag anyway. She set them next to her feet.

“But you’d like to get to the point of the matter, of course. Your tests were absolutely, positively normal. There was no reason to think that they would have been anything else. And there was a little mistake with the forms, but no harm done. You still have your Chance cards, correct?”

She nodded. They were back in her jacket pocket, as they always were.

“Only five cards, Maddie? Naturally, there is no reason to expect someone so young to have accumulated hundreds and hundreds. But still, only five?” He put his chin on his palm, and his elbow on his knee, and smiled at her.

“I won’t get any more.”
“So I hear. And though I think I know why, would you like to tell me?”

It seemed, at least to the disoriented and still slightly blinded Maddie, that he was almost earnestly excited to hear her tell him. “I’m not sure that I see the point, Mr. Blake.”

“Herman! Please call me Herman. And go on, please do.”
“I’ve read the FAQ…”
“Yes! The FAQ!”
“And I’ve seen the videos…”
“Some of the videos certainly are better than others.”
“I… yes. And I’ve thought about the Chances I’ve gotten over and over again.”
“Yes, assuredly! We must–I only imagine we all do.”
“But I don’t see to what end, Mr… Herman.”
“Say more.”
“The canonical. Its meaning is clear, though it may ‘delight in a certain irony’, as the saying goes.”
“Yes.”
“And the canonical is ever so brief, and always the same.”
“It is.”
“Whereas, the algorithmically decoded Chances are less ironic, and yet more obscure.”
“They are–though if I might interrupt you quickly to say that they are ‘derived’, not ‘decoded’. But, please continue.”
“And they are supposed to be more information. Not read in the same way as a canonical, but as a supplement to a canonical. Words to surround it, and augment it, slowly, with more and more Chances, giving you a better picture of what one’s end might be like.”

He smiled, and extended his hand, palm wide. “But…”
“But they are just words.”

He waited for her, hand still outstretched.

“They may be algorithmically verifiable, but they are just words. With no context, they might as well be chosen at random. Without some sort of story or order to assemble them in, they could relate to my canonical in any conceivable way. They’re simply no good.”

Herman closed his hand, and smiled. He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his legs out in front of him, crossing one bare ankle over the other. “But you’re here.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Even though the words are meaningless to you, you came here looking for someone to explain to you how you ought to find meaning in them. You wanted them to have meaning, and so you went looking for a way to find it.”

Maddie suddenly felt sad. But she could only smile, and let out a tiny laugh, that somewhere inside it, had the faintest thought of a cry.

“Yes.”
“You didn’t have a complaint. You had a question.”
“That’s what I told them.”
“You see? I know simply everything that happens in this place.”

She laughed. Herman stood up, and sat next to her on the couch. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’d like to show you something, if I could.”

He was almost attractive, in a strange way. Cute, maybe. Like an overly sincere young man, trying to act a part, and almost pulling it off. Was he really in charge here, or was he just masquerading, pretending to be important, playing executive in someone’s office? “Sure,” she said, giving him her best camaraderie smile.

Out of his casual jacket pocket he pulled what appeared to be two matchboxes, taped end to end. She had never noticed before that a Chance card was precisely double the size of a standard matchbox.

“I made this. When I was little. It has… sentimental value. You know.” He slid out the end, and there were a stack of perhaps ten cards inside it. He pulled the one from the bottom out, leaving the rest in place. With the soft hush of cardboard moving against itself, he pushed the box closed, and replaced it in his pocket.

“I love this one best. I used to think it was a really important one. The pivotal Chance, as it were. Then others came, and it didn’t seem so crucial. After a while, it almost seemed superficial and redundant, almost as if it was blocking the continuity of the rest of the cards. But I kept it. Maybe it was because it was so important at one time, I kept it in my personal set out of habit. Or because of its uselessness now, perhaps there’s a certain significance in that. I don’t know. But I keep it in my set, and I imagine I always will. Though who can say for sure.”

He handed it to her. This time she did laugh. She laughed, and laughed, holding her free hand up to her mouth. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes, and tried to compose herself.

“I’m sorry. You probably want to know why I’m laughing.”
“I imagine that I know.”
“I have the same card.”
“I know you do, Maddie.”

She reached for her case, and opened it. She took out her card, and held it next to Herman’s, though keeping his in her right and hers in her left, so she wouldn’t be confused as to which was which.

‘Moose Moose’, said the cards in her hands.

She gave his back to him, and put hers away.

“You’re not convinced,” said Herman. “And that’s good. You don’t have to be, and maybe you never will be. But,” he said, with a smile. “I think you are ready to take another Chance.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you will be ready. Maybe not now, maybe not for years. But before that canonical takes effect, you will want to have another Chance. You will step into a Chance Networks franchise, you will insert your beautiful finger to have a drop of blood drawn from it, you will be verified on our central algorithm servers, and your Chance will be printed on one of our yellow cards. And, for the entire extent of the brief amount of time it will take for you to reach down and pull out the card so you can read it: that Chance will not come soon enough.”

She thought about it.

“I have a special offer for you now. Because we’ve just completed a number of physiological tests on you, I can offer you a special Chance. This sort of Chance is not yet available commercially, not to the public. It will be soon, and it is even more precise, less ironic, and better helps each and every individual to better understand their specific Chances as regards their canonical. We call it a Gold Chance. And I have one waiting for you.”

He stood, and walked over to the desk. From beneath it he pulled a small box, shining in bright gold. As he brought it over, the sunlight was tossed in a thousand directions from its surfaces, lighting up the statues, the walls, the ceiling with shards of golden light. Herman sat back in the chair, and balanced the machine on his knee.

“It’s already had your data transmitted to it. All you need to do, if you wish to accept your Chances, is press the button there, right on top. You press the button, and it will print the card. If not, I’ll open the cover and hit the reset, and it will forget your Chance that is right there inside it even now, waiting to be printed.”

He put his eyes into hers. “It’s up to you, Maddie.”

She felt the carpet around her toes. He smiled.

She pressed the button, and with a buzz, the card printed and ejected. Maddie instantly looked at the ceiling, and reached forward to palm the card.

“I… I’d like to read it later, if that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Herman.”
“Your welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
“Oh–no, I don’t think so.”
“Well thank you for coming to see me, Maddie. I always appreciate visitors.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”

They sat silently for a full five seconds, and then Herman took the box back to his desk, and sat in his chair, replacing the box from wherever it had come from.

“I should go, then.”
“Alright, Maddie. Just out the door, and to the left is the elevator.” He stayed seated.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Maddie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget your shoes.”

She held the card in her palm, as she bent down to get the shoes.

She kept the card there as she clicked to the elevator, and all the way down, and out through a windowed causeway that looked out over the grounds, underneath the backside of the twisting helix of the building. And then down a set of stairs, and out a back gate, where the security guard gave her a salute that she didn’t feel was necessary, but that she appreciated anyway. And then she was back in the street, hot, full of traffic, dust rising everywhere in the sun. Maddie figured out which direction it was that she needed to go, and then pulled out her case. Quickly, she glanced at the Chance card in her palm before sliding it into the case and clicking it shut. It didn’t make a bit of sense.

I’ve been re-adjusting my life to unplugging from the network. This is not one of those techno-isolation trips, done in some latter-day Christian mystic Transcendentalist notion of re-establishing balance to one’s informational life by means of putting one’s devices in a plastic bag for a week and walking in the park. This is, instead, an unwanted divorce from the network for economic reasons. Having an iPhone has become too expensive for me, and so I have downgraded to a pay-per-month regular cell phone (it’s a RAZR, which is amusing for its last-generation cutting edgeness). With no internet at home (thanks, Century Link for having an unacceptable service level causing me to embargo your requests to pay the double-charged bill you will not adjust correctly), and temporarily being forestalled from getting a planned mobile broadband hotspot by T-Mobile’s insipid economic red-lining (i.e. a $400 deposit due to my credit), this means I only have a few hours a day online, when I’m at the coffee shop or other work space.

Which is a harsh adjustment, for a person who has already migrated to the cloud, and quite liked it. I’ve been using an iPhone for the past three and a half years. I use a Chromebook. The cloud made me portable, light-weight, and completely flexible. I was online near-constantly, writing, reporting, and managing various other Occupy Portland tasks, communicating with friends and colleagues all across the world in many time zones. This is the extent of the plug that has been pulled.

But I’m finding ways of adjusting. One does adapt to economic straits. The interesting thing is that it is doable. There are ways. Here’s how I’ve been doing it so far.

Apps that sync is the key. After ignoring ScratchPad, a little Chrome OS app that came with my ChromeBook, I’ve discovered that it now allows you to write a Google Doc fully offline, including a certain amount of formatting, and then sync this Doc when your computer re-connects to the internet.

Instapaper is, as always, truly one of the best iOS apps around. (I still have the iPhone, but no SIM card, so it is basically a fat iPod Touch.) When I am near a Wifi zone, I open up the app to let it sync its read/unread tallies and download fresh articles. Off network, it functions as normal.

Net News Wire does the same thing for my Google Reader feed. The trouble is being able to share articles back and forth between my RSS feed and Instapaper, and then from either of these to Twitter, all of which requires a live network connection. For these tasks, email is the key. Email–that most defunct of network activities! Emailing a link to my private Instapaper email address will sync that article as soon as I re-connect to the network, and my email Outbox sends all those messages that were composed while offline. I haven’t found a way to send an email that converts into a Tweet yet.

As far as email goes, handling it once a day is something that many efficiency tips recommend, and so far it is working for me. Email Time is the first 30 minutes after I re-connect with the network. Frankly, I’m kind of surprised I ever gave it much more time than that.

I do miss being able to be on Twitter at odd times of the night, when sitting at home with nothing to do. However, I’ve enabled the ability to send a message to Twitter via SMS, and so now I tweet blindly into the night, carefully tapping out 140 character messages on my RAZR. I don’t receive any tweets that way, as that would be disastrous for my SMS plan. It’s kind of fun this way, more like graffiti. I leave messages, and don’t get feedback until I re-connect to the network, sometimes twenty-four hours later. And if you want to talk about “Old Twitter”, well, this is how the service was originally designed to be used.

I’ve also hooked up Google Voice, though I’m not sure exactly how that benefits me off-network. There isn’t any way to receive chats or emails via SMS or phone yet. However, from a schematic point of view, it does serve to remind me that my regular old cell phone is a tiny funnel for communication when I am offline. When I’m back on the network, suddenly my phone becomes superfluous, as the computer is my phone; I call and text straight from the browser. The phone is merely a handset, and the network is the main channel of communication. I don’t know if, like the email efficiencies I’m forced to apply, this will end up being a benefit or not. But, at least it seems to be all part of the process, which I’m forced to accept whether I like it or not.

All of this seems to break down the networked communication I’ve come to expect into its basic components. I’ve been so used to App-For-That thinking, and user-friendly API integration, that I forgot what the basic components of networked communication is all about. It’s about the information: either short bits of communicative text, or a link that will take you to more information later. Emails and hyperlinks. I’m restoring the mental schematic of packets to my networked communication. Each email, link, and SMS is a packet. If I can work out how to make sure the packets arrive where they are supposed to, even if it is delayed, then the network continues to flow.

Having uploaded this stencil design to the internet, and having told you you can do whatever you want with it (you can), I couldn’t be responsible for your own autonomous deployment of this image, wherever you wish.

Here is a PDF of the stencil
Here is an EPS of the stencil
And here is an EPS of the logo, without stencil lines

Love and Drones,
Adam

The antimedial arsenal proves unlimited: short-circuiting telephone exchanges, bringing satellites off course, burning down cable boxes, sawing down electric pylons, not paying television and radio fees, sending out fake press releases, getting cameras to show up for nothing, pouring cement into dish antennas, cutting assorted cables, cleaving TV screens in two, painting over security cameras, altering data, installing magnetic fields, implanting and spreading viruses and worms – communicating with the hammer: »Talking back to the media.«

The quote comes from a book about the Netherlands squatters’ movement. This anti-media attitude was a pretty standard view for radical politics, up through the anti-globalization protests, and through writings like The Coming Insurrection. If you’ve been there, you’ve seen it before. The hassling of camerapersons, especially those who attempt to photograph people’s faces. Stickers, and vasoline stuck to lenses. And worse.

But this concept of anti-media doesn’t carry on through the Occupy protests. Sure, there are individuals who don’t like the constant camera presence. But in general, media coverage is viewed as a good thing, and not just for publicity purposes. Media is an all-seeing eye, and the panopticon is on our side. Each occupation with a significant amount of action has its own Livestream–a 24 hour news camera, embedded at eye-level inside the inner workings of the occupation. Photos are tweeted and re-tweeted, live blogs come up early and often. We are the media, and our media is thorough and deep.

I’m not sure when this transformation happened. But now, it seems like something we are occupying, in addition to physical parks and buildings, virtual web sites and Twitter feeds, is media-space. We occupy the media, the information, or consciousness, depending on what way you want to put it (I’ll leave the deep semiotic argument for another time).

Maybe it began in Egypt. I remember watching the Arab spring and thinking, “Thank goodness for Al Jazeera! If those cameras showing Tahrir Square shut off, they’re finished.” It wasn’t a sense that if they were removed from my eyes, they would disappear. It was that media, in terms of accessible record (not just spectacle) constituted the protest. It formed the safety of the people, in a searchable, coherent record of events. It was the history that was bring made. Without the cameras there, anything that the powers that be might say could be the truth. The government would again control the media-space, and define history. Al Jazeera made a point, over and over again, of showing their camera feed of Tahrir Square juxtaposed to the Government TV Station. The thousands and thousands of people in the square were the truth, compared to the shots of a few “pro-government supporters” milling about in front of a TV camera. Al Jazeera knew it, and we knew it. And the protesters in the square knew it. With this media channel, we could all say in our own minds, together: this is history. This is what’s happening. Al Jazeera is an international media organization, but the point was made. The media that shows us, ought to be our media. Al Jazeera, for that period, was our media. But they won’t always be around. So we have to step up ourselves.

And this isn’t just an awareness issue. Having control of the media-space is a tactic that literally saves lives. Take the case of Mona Eltahawy, a journalist who was arrested, assaulted, and tortured by the Egyptian police just this past week. The situation was difficult: publicizing her plight could have made the situation worse, rather than stimulate her release. However, in the end, it helped hurry her release.

Where this history goes is anyone’s guess. The role of our crowd-sourced media, and of popular protest’s new wide endorsement of publicizing itself as a way of enacting it’s own history has yet to fully play out. This history is still unfolding.

I’m taking a break from Occupation Notes, because I finally saw A RELATIVELY CURRENT FILM and I wanted to say a thing or two about it.

I saw The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (I think that’s what it’s called) on the plane. It was not a good film exactly, but it was still interesting for me, albeit it in redacted-for-airplane-viewing form.

In an alternate reality, I’m writing this essay about the uncanny film experience of watching a perfectly intact aircraft sublime into a pile of scrap metal in a single cut, when a plane crash is redacted from a film intended for showing on a commercial airline flight. As if there was some juxtapositional magic in air crash repression, or some common human trope where we lapse into scrap yard dream sequences while we are safety aloft. “I leaned back in my seat, and suddenly, I was transported to that familiar site of material detritus, the scraps of polypropylene and shredded aluminum waving gently in the breeze..”

But in this reality, I’m writing about humanity and violence. Perhaps I can’t get that far from the Occupation, even if I’m in a plane, watching a bad film.

So here are some notes.

The film’s main character is not a character, really. It’s a computer-animated chimpanzee. It is supposed to be characterized, of course, but the film is not really that good: so we are left with sort of a flat-character, a walking uncanny valley creation of a chimpanzee that is perhaps a bit bigger and more upright than it ought to be, with some facial expressions that are just a bit more human than our brain is expecting. However this, in a way, makes the main character much better. The plot of the film is that this chimpanzee was exposed to an Alzheimer fighting, brain-enhancing drug, that has given him above average intelligence, and powers of language. So the chimpanzee is humanized, but only to a degree–as protagonist of the film, he struggles with the problem of living life as an “animal”, though he thinks something like a “human”. And of course, the difficulty of distinguishing the exact line between the two is what the film is about.

And this is where the flaws of the film actually become features. Because the plot lines about the chimpanzee’s “awakening” as “a real boy” are kind of specious and trite, (one of the things that makes an animal into a human is a proclivity for staring off at cities over the tops of buildings and trees, apparently) it actually, by doing a poor job at anthropomorphizing the chimpanzee, increases the liminal territory that this character exists within. I’m confused, as I watch the film, as to whether or not I believe that this animal is really a person. He seems to, pardon the expression, “ape” certain human qualities and facial expressions. But are they sincere? Do I trust this image? Is it more comparable to the people I know, or the animals I know? As the film plays its merry course across the screen, I’m actually thinking about the issue at hand, and not the idiosyncrasies of the plot.

The issue at hand is of course, a post-human one. What defines a human being? Chimpanzees have 99.7% of the same genes that we do. In that .3% difference is a great deal of physiology and behavior. And yet, many of the things that we thought were uniquely human behaviors like language and tool use are now falling by the wayside as we learn to interpret the behaviors of other animals correctly.

If you follow the plot of the film, the issue is not so much a linguistic one, but one of violence. The biology takes a back seat, and we take up the politics of The Other. Several human characters in the film exhibit “inhumane” behavior, by beating the chimpanzee and other apes, or beating up other human beings. The film poses some basic questions about human life and death, and about the limits of consciousness, but the major issue is one of ethics and violence. At what point is it okay to threaten and beat an animal? If it is dangerous? If it is not human? What if it is only the non-human behaviors that it displays that make it seem dangerous?

The uncanny valley, which the animated chimpanzee certainly fits within, is a place that tends to stimulate violence for human beings. Zombies, ghosts, robots, doppelgangers–these all are viewed as as threat, in that our perception of them and their behaviors place them outside the typical realm of predictable, sociable human behavior, and in a place. Though, through the plot of the film, one begins to wonder what sort of person it is that reacts with violence against the merest indicator of Otherness. Does anyone really think it is okay to sadistically abuse an animal simply because they are not a human? And yet, perhaps one of the most meaningful scenes in the film was when the mounted police are chasing a crowd of apes across the Golden Gate Bridge, riot clubs cocked back, a grim expression on their faces as they swing for the animals’ heads. It was meaningful because I’ve seen the same scene replayed on the Internet, but it was riot cops swinging at the heads of college students during Occupation protests. Where was the uncanny valley there? What sort of Other were college students, so that beating them for non-violent protest was justified by those police officers’ sense of ethics?

So in the end, its not about our perception of “humanity” in another creature, whether imbued by ethical action, non-Otherness, speech, or other traces of behavior. It’s simply about violence. It’s not about whether or not the chimpanzee main character was able to “earn” his humanity by wanting it badly enough, or by being smart enough, or by finally learning to speak. It was that he at the other apes were smart enough to thwart the violence. They were able to ambush and defeat armed police officers, not that those officers laid down their weapons. How we perceive the apes really doesn’t matter. It’s just a movie, and no one earns anything by us being “won over” to either their political case, or themselves and personable characterizations. Of course it is a happy ending for them, even if the unmentioned fact is that their rise is going to be our species downfall. But what is different, is that they aren’t saved by their characters, by the defeat of Otherness, or the universality of humanity. They are saved by not getting shot.

Okay, a quick word. Alexis Madrigal, whose opinion I very much respect, wrote this piece not exactly defending the police officer who pepper sprayed a bunch of absolutely peaceful students at UC Davis. Not defending, but sort of giving him a bit of sympathy by way of drawing blame to the institution that allowed the event to take place, rather than the individual (though Alexis clarified that he does not consider the officer blameless).

I call bullshit. Absolutely. As an Occupier committed to non-violence, I cannot and will not excuse the actions of this police officer under any condition.

First, go find the video on Youtube if you haven’t seen it. (You’ll have no trouble finding it.)

It is brutality, plain and simple. This is brutal violence. Those people were sitting on the ground, and a person used a large amount of poisonous chemicals to cause them immense pain, to the point that they vomited, and a number were hospitalized. THEY WERE CHEMICALLY INDUCED TO VOMIT PAINFULLY, each and every one of them on purpose, by one person.

We MUST blame the individual. The system of policing in this country is broken, simply because we cannot blame the individuals. They are allowed to hide behind their badge, their authority, our respect for the hard job that they do, and the vast bureaucracy that goes into reinforcing these things. Policing is a tough job, with unimaginable stress. But in this job we allow sadists to serve, and it damages what authority such a dangerous job deserves.

I would make Arendt’s argument about little Eichmanns, but it’s been made it before. Instead, let me relay my own anecdote.

At Portland’s occupation, just a couple of weeks ago, I witnessed an ugly scene. The Safety Committee was stressed beyond anything you can imagine. There had been threats, fights, weapons in camp. The actual police force was doing very little to help remove the violent element that had come into the camp (they excuses varied, but mostly they circulated around the claim that they couldn’t arrest anyone without witnesses).

On this day, the Safety Committee called an emergency meeting in the center of camp. The meeting was started under the best intentions: to determine once and for all how we were going to deal with safety issues. We had to do something, and the Safety Committee, despite all their incredibly hard work and dedication, were not making headway.

There was a lot of emotion at that meeting. It started off angry. The Safety Committee said that they refused to let things go on as they were, without a plan for going forward. Others echoed this anger, as they were fed up with the troublemakers in camp, too. Things started to turn ugly fast. Someone suggested rounding all the troublemakers, the drug users, the people who weren’t helping out, and running them all out of camp. Some people, who represented a much more aggressive element at the camp (not on the Safety Committee officially), carried large sticks and poles. There was aggressive, sexist, homophobic language. Eventually, a fight did break out at the meeting, between these new, self-appointed “peace makers” and a random person who didn’t do anything.

I’m not going to spend time describing it in full, but let me just say: it got real. I’ve been in some sketchy situations in my life. I’ve been in riots, and in the middle of brawls, and it crowds of drunk, angry, bored, aggressive people. I’ve been threatened by people I believed were capable of following through. But I’ve never seen a situation like this. The danger was palpable. For a period of five minutes, I could have seen this angry crowd do just about anything. That’s not an exaggeration.

Afterwards, people said a great many things. They said that it wasn’t the Safety Committee that upped the aggression level at that meeting (and it’s true, it wasn’t). They said that people were angry, tired, and emotional (and it’s true, they were). But there is nothing that anyone could say to me that excuses what happened.

Being committed to non-violence means this to me:

I will not be part of a society that uses wild, uncontrolled aggression to manage its problems. I will not be part of a society that includes sexist and homophobic language in its vocabulary for engaging its community. I will not be part of a society that allows people who do these things to take the lead, and to define these behaviors as the norm, or even merely excusable in the worst of times. I will take a zero tolerance approach towards anyone or anything bringing these things into my society.

This is not just a moral pledge; this is an ethical promise. I was prepared, after seeing this meeting, to walk away from the occupation and not look back. If I couldn’t stay and make things better, then I would leave, and hope others would too.

Luckily, things calmed down greatly after that day. There were still safety problems, but the aggression level calmed down, and I personally did not witness anyone acting in that way again. Now, our camp has been cleared out by the police, and the issues we’re dealing with at Portland’s Occupation are entirely different.

The fact that we are willing to tolerate violent individuals in society is not the reason that we have violence. But it prevents us from getting a foothold in the fight to stop violence. As Occupiers, we are not just conscientious rejectors of a violent society; we must quash the violence of individuals in the new society we are trying to make, and we must do it with our own non-violent action.

This is how this works: The minute someone suggests violence against other people as a strategy of improving society, they are removed from the conversation. If we can engage them in argument, and bring them around to a better understanding of why violence is not considered, then excellent. But if we are to create a strategy to ethically reject violent behavior against other people, we cannot ethically consider violent behavior as part of that strategy. The moment that someone in our society takes a violent step towards another person, we make it clear that they are no longer part of your society. And again, and again, and again. We won’t accept it. If we hold firm in this ethical action, we will find we are on the side of the overwhelming majority. Given the option, most people will choose to be part of the side that is always peaceful. The reason why is obvious.

The police, just like the Safety Committee, do a hard job that few want to do. They often have to defend themselves. But the fact that they do a hard job is no excuse for any one of them to commit violence against another person. That they are part of an institution with little effective means for accountability is no reason to excuse a violent act. That they are wielded as weapons by certain powerful forces in society, is no excuse for any one person to be the person who commits a violent act against another person. Until an individual does such a thing, they are just like me, and they are part of my society. But the minute they decide to do that thing that I find inexcusable, they are on their own. I will welcome them back, as soon as they reject that violence, now and forever.

Once Lt. Pike has rejected violence, and made steps to convince our society that he is committed to this rejection, we’ll welcome him back. But until that time, there is no one else to blame for those students’ suffering other than Lt. Pike, and the other officers that pulled the trigger.

You might think it is easy for me to say this, but it’s not. It’s a supremely difficult thing to say, and to mean it. It means setting yourself against the majority of society that is willing to excuse such behavior, because they think it can be excusable. But this is the fight we’re fighting. All of us who have decided to non-violently occupy, are making this new non-violent society ourselves, only by our commitment to that non-violence, one day at a time. Mistakes will be made, and strategies will be improved. But not a single act of violence will be excused or justified.

And the number of us committed to this grows every day.

I’ve been busy at the occupation, and that’s prevented me from actually writing any more notes about the occupation. I know that’s the typical blogger excuse first-line, but in this case, I’m going to share with you exactly what I’ve been busy doing, so I feel that’s fair.

I’ve become the point-of-contact for The Portland Occupier, a project birthed out of the Media Committee, but operating unofficially and of its own autonomous accord. The way most occupations are running, and Portland’s being no exception, is that for any action or statement to be “official”, it must be approved by the GA. Open committees, on the other hand, are made of autonomous, self-organizing individuals, and they can work on their own as they see fit. So The Occupier is an unofficial, official news and content channel, if you get what I mean.

And here is where many of my notes have been going. I’ve put my WordPress management skills to use, and have been drumming up content from any contributors we can grab. As for myself, I started a column today, called “Kick Out the Anarchists“, which is surreptitiously titled. The goal is to demystify and explore anarchism, as this is one of the major bugaboos of people inside and outside the occupation, alike. I’m hoping this column can be a vehicle for many of the notes I would have about the occupation, anyway. Maybe in this way, putting all my blog-column philosophizing to some use.

All of this being the goal, of course. In the same way that the occupation strives to be a model for the organization it hopes to put into the world, I feel we ought to do the same with media. And just like the organization we’re enacting in the parks downtown, our media has a ways to go before we can say that is fully successful. But hey, we do what we can, in the face of the massive challenges.

The stated goal of much media is to be objective, regardless of whether or not it quite makes it there. I don’t agree with that idealism–and I like to think that the work we’re doing at The Occupier is a more realistic effort. We are, of course, for the occupation, and the writing and content that we publish is obviously from that perspective. In a way, I feel, that is more honest. We don’t have to respond to the niggling complaints and bullshit that the media drags up as the “counter-argument”. We don’t want to ignore legitimate complaints either. But there is no shortage of legitimate stories of all kinds that need telling regarding the occupation. If you want to know about the condition of the restrooms down at the park, you can go and look for yourself. Or, I can save you the trip: they are bad. There are hundreds of people using them daily, and precious few volunteers to clean them. That’s the story. Have you learned anything?

There is a certain positivism to our reporting, I think. I have complaints and gripes about the way things are going at the occupation. But this sort of personal, critical subjectivity, which I normally launch into wholeheartedly on my own blog, I smooth over when I write for The Occupier. This is, in a way, it’s own objectivity. It’s not about crafting a golden PR message, or rejecting criticism–it’s about focus. From the bathrooms, to peace and safety, to finance, to the GA–there are countless places to find things that are “wrong” with the occupation. And we should do these things. But what is the point of a laundry list of problems? Does the detailing and complaining of everything that is wrong translate into objectivity? These are not things that need to be “revealed” to the general public. We don’t need whistle-blowers, at least at this stage in the occupation. If something is wrong, believe me, people know about it. The whistle blown becomes noise, which distorts the picture. On the other hand, drawing the entire camp into focus, is the work that needs to be done. Problems in context reveal the shape and the motion of the occupation, whereas infinite zoom is dizzying.

I can’t believe, as the perennial curmudgeon, that I’m even making this argument that optimism is somehow more accurate than deep criticism. I guess what I feel is that at the occupation, criticism is something that is donated often, and in large quantities. What we don’t have is the context that makes criticism useful. When you see toilets that need cleaning, are those simply seen as gross? Or are they seen as the realistic effect of hundreds of people trying to live together in public space? When GA is frustrating, is it just frustrating? Or is that an emotional side effect of attempting to make a functional direct democracy? Are the challenges of the safety committee just “crime statistics”, or are they the problems of society, condensed in a microcosm? This is not just optimistic framing. It’s objectivity, defined through subjective contextualization of events.

And of course, this is hard to do well. It is all to easy to lapse into optimistic gloss, or fall the “other” direction (though dualism is hard here) into boring, content-less shill. It’s like walking a narrow fence between advertising propaganda and mindless drivel. It’s trying to tell deep stories, that interest people but can also problematize, without simply criticizing. But hey, if we weren’t experimenting, it wouldn’t be any fun.

So check us out. Even contribute, if you like. More notes will follow.

Occupy Portland continues to evolve, as the various committees find more “permanent” shelters and locations, and infrastructure acclimatizes itself to what endless street-siege really means.

There’s lots of thinks to discuss; far more than there is time to discuss them, as there are toilets to be cleaned, and over in Sanitation (where I seem to be finding my more regular home, except for today and tomorrow, which I am taking off) the compost is always piling up. But I want to devote a moment to a topic that keeps cropping up, about which I had a Twitter conversation this morning. That is: radical inclusivity facing off against exclusivity.

The conversation was prompted by this tale of a border-fascist group (the exact organization of which is disputed, but I feel comfortable calling what smells like it, it) showing up Occupy Phoenix, and how the confrontation went down.

The subject of the conversation that proceeded was whether or not the writer of the account took more time to berate allies than condemning the fascists, and whether this was an alienating, divisive act or not, of a kind that might splinter or fracture the growing occupation movement.

Setting aside the fact that the written account seemed to be aimed at confronting the movement itself after the fact for it’s lackluster response to fascism, whereas the actual confrontation with the fascists occurred at the event; I think this is a good cautionary tale not only for dealing with fascists, but also for dealing with a certain passive dynamic of human groups.

Note I’m saying “human groups”, not liberals, sheeple, or any degradatory term for any particular sub-culture of leftists I don’t happen to agree with. Because all of us feel the impetus for general peacefulness and calm in the face of any aggression (I hope). But, it is also appropriate to set passivity aside and raise ones voice at times. That’s the whole point of protest, after all.

I myself have encountered this necessity in Portland, thankfully not in the presence of armed paramilitaries, but to counter the force of what I’d call “passive exclusivity”, as opposed to the active kind that carried assault rifles.

Several motions have been raised both in the GA and other assemblies, proposing some form of “exclusivity”. Mostly, in terms of kicking out “certain elements” from the occupation camp. The term “riff raff” has actually been used. I think we all know what is being referred to here. There are people at the occupation who, for whatever reason, are not comfortable with the look of some of their fellow occupiers. For the time being, we’ll just pretend this is an unfortunate, unconscious bias, and not read it as a symptom of any form of class or race antagonism, just because that’s not really the point of what I’m writing (though we should get into that at another time).

Often this exclusivity crops up in discussion of work. While working in the dish line the other night, a guy came up to us and thanked us for our hard work. Then, he preceded to tell us how we shouldn’t serve food to people who don’t volunteer. Regardless of the fact that I’ve never seen that individual doing anything around the camp, I am proud to say we working Sanitation at the time sent him away with an earful.

While it might seem, according to the sort of common sense logic that gives the 53% people a position of ego on which to stand, that “work ought to be a prerequisite for reward”, it is also the beginning of the capitalist exchange, the end point of which is class-based division of labor, and exuberant salaries based on the so-called “importance” of the work being done.

There is only one reason to work, in the Occupation camp, or elsewhere: that is because there are tasks to be done. And there are only tasks that support a single (though, admittedly loosely construed) goal: to make sure everyone is taken care of. The alternative is social Darwinism of a lethal kind. And as long as I work as part of the Occupation, it will be an occupation that includes everyone willing to take part, even if the way in which they take part is only showing up to be fed. When we say this is a leaderless movement, i hope we also mean this is a classless movement. There is no privileged working class above an unemployable class–there is only all of us, part of the same humanity.

To a lesser but no less real extent, I’m also seeing a similar exclusivity occurring between different committees, among individuals who haven’t fully grasped the radical class conception of the occupation. Last night a medic told me he didn’t have time to sort his committee’s garbage because “he had to get back to work.” I asked him what he thought we at Sanitation were busy doing, if it was not work? I obliged him with the favor of sorting his recycling, because he truly was in a hurry, but I think this language slip shows a sort of passive exclusivity, a division of thought that slips back in to our way of thinking, if we don’t unlearn what capitalism has taught us to believe as axiomatic truths, and take it upon ourselves to gently but vociferously correct our fellows when they slip up.

Another big way this exclusivity crops up at the Portland occupation is on the subject of “safety”. Last night a proposal was brought to the GA that would give the Safety Committee (a great, historically-aware name, no? It shouldn’t surprise that this committee is often mis-named as “Security Committee” in practice) the ability to escort people consuming drugs or alcohol out of camp. Safety is an issue at the Portland occupation; we’re fortunate enough to not have to deal with police on an hour-by-hour basis, but the flip side of this is that there have been aggressive incidents with individuals we’ve had to deal with ourselves.

However, the wording of the proposal makes it an easy way to roust undesired members of the community at the will of others. There are many people dealing with addiction that are enjoying the safe space of our camp. There are also those with disabilities who make look unpleasant to some, and speak as if intoxicated, but are productive members of the community. Any of these people might be kicked out of camp by this proposal at the whim of a more articulate person.

I offered an amendment to change the proposal to deal with the actual concern: violent, aggressive behavior by those who are intoxicated. I’m still uncomfortable that I had to offer this amendment. It seems obvious to me how a security procedure might be abused. And yet, the crafters of the proposal, as honest and concerned as their intentions may have been, were unconscious of the way this proposal might be used to segregate our community. (The GA ran out of time on this proposal, so it will be recrafted to accommodate my and others’ concerns, and offered to the GA anew.)

All of this is to make a point: sometimes it is easy to see those that would introduce oppression and exclusivity into a community, and other times it is not. But to keep a community inclusive, especially a community such as our that is building and rebuilding itself daily, it takes the radical step of confronting this exclusivity, regardless of the intention and the source. We need people to speak up and remind us of our privileges, and how they affect our self-governance. We need people to openly reject those who consider it “isn’t an important issue”, or pass it off as a potentially divisive issue. What is far more divisive than speaking to people displaying passive exclusivity openly and honestly, and defending our community against fascism is allowing it to sleep peacefully within our nascent movement.

We’ve made a start that is very inclusive. Part of our hard work will be keeping it so, as we grow.

There are many things that ought to be said about the Occupations that are not being said.

Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that there are many things about the Occupations that are being said; though, those I believe are most important are not being said within range of the human microphone. Neither the human microphone of the GA, nor the human microphone of the blogosphere, which sees generally agreeable sentiments by writers and thoughtful people echoed and rebounded off of this claimed, political public space, much like the one out there in the street.

If only it was so simple that what I mean is that I am the one with things to say that I’m not hearing said. Then I could compose an essay, yell it out to the world on my blog, and then wait to hear if there was any echo at all. But it is not just me, but many other people who are saying things under their breath, or only to their fellows in the dish washing line, or to a crowd of only fifteen or twenty half-interested people just waiting for their turn to speak. And I can’t speak for them. They can’t necessarily speak for themselves. They could speak at the GA, and many of them do–but the substance of what is said would necessarily change.

There is the sort of speaking one does when one is addressing a crowd, and there is the sort of speaking one does when one is cleaning a bathroom used by over 500 people. There is discussion, and there is consensus, and there are demands. And then there is work, and sweat, and fatigue. There is enabling of subaltern voices. And then there is un-thanked volunteerism.

There is no doubt in my mind that the latter is what makes a revolution. A protest is a raising of the voice, but a revolution is a made with the hands. And that is why Occupy Portland, the occupation in my hometown, is certainly a revolution. And this revolution is a revolution of problems.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about “direction”, both on the internet and off. It’s what I’ve pejoratively begun calling “directionalitarianism”. Everyone is “concerned” about the lack of direction in the “movement”. Well, yes. Lack of direction is all of our concern, and it is why we’re in the streets. We’re concerned about the lack of direction facing our generation, and people of the majority class. The direction we’ve proposed is occupation. You want to see coherent demands? Look at the occupation camp. That is the demand. The demand is to make something, by volunteerism alone, with only contributions: not loans, constituent-rights granting donations, share-holders, parties, or voting blocs. This is a revolution about problems. The problems are debt, corruption, exploitation, and so forth. As well as lazy hangers-on, co-opting political elements, the moralizing effect of “mainstream society” and its government and police force, personal addiction, mental health, the cold, the wet, and sheer fatigue from working so hard without tangible reward. The revolution is combating these problems ourselves, with nothing but what we have, and have together. This is the only direction we need, because it is what we are dealing with. And if you look at the people working, you can see this direction inside of each of their muscles. In each of these hard-working hands, is more phalanxes of bristling riot cops than any public budget could throw at us.

But enough of these words. Let me relate to you some of the things being said through hard work, and some of the problems being confronted by our revolution here in Portland. I won’t be able to speak these voices–you’ll have to go down to the camp yourself to see it. But I can at least show you a few pictures. And maybe, you can see the scope of the problem we’re facing, and how we might begin to tackle it.

Brief intro: the GA has empowered certain committees to work under their own guidance for certain goals. I’ll start my little tour with these committees, because they are the most obvious locations of work and progress at the camp, and also excellent starting points for anyone arriving at the camp, and wanting to know where to pitch in.

Kitchen

The kitchen is the biggest area of the camp. I estimate it serves at least one thousand meals a day, for free. Most of the contributions dropped off at the camp are food, and these are distributed, prepared, and served here. They kitchen staff are all registered Food Handlers in the state of Oregon (a requirement for any food service establishment) and they are following all best-practice regulations about serving, sterilization, and hand-washing, in the attempt to not attract the ire of authorities on the basis of a technicality. Dish washing is perhaps the easiest way to help at the occupation camp, as people are always jumping in and out of the line.

The kitchen is also probably the biggest area of interaction for the camp as well, because while there are many people who don’t go to the GA (more about that later), everyone shows up for food. I’ve heard some ire about this, and some grumbled suggestions of closing the kitchen to people not volunteering, but I’ve also heard this loudly rebuked. Right now, there is plenty of food, and I personally see no reason to not give food away for free.

Contributions needed: Food. Raw materials, sauces, and spices, especially.
Work needed: dishwashers, servers and cooks with valid food-handlers cards.

Sanitation

Sanitation is not sexy. But it is very important, and only recognized when it is not getting done. This is why I’m listing it second. Adjacent to the kitchen is the recycling sorting area, where recyclables and compost are sorted, and trash is bagged to be hauled out. Sanitation is also responsible for camp clean-up and bathrooms (there are public restrooms at either end of the park, and also two porta-potties, contributed from I don’t know where). They also seem to fill the water tanks at the fountain, when needed.

Last night, the one woman in charge of sanitation was very overwhelmed. She had just finished cleaning the bathroom at 11 PM, and then someone bitched at her about the state of the porta-potties. I could have yelled at that person complaining. I told the woman doing sanitation how I thought she was doing a great job, especially for doing an unwanted task that no one was volunteering for. She asked me if I wanted to help pick up trash, which I did :) I actually swept and sorted two bags of garbage yesterday, which felt really good, not least of which because as I bent down to pick up cigarette butts and soggy newspaper around the park, I got more “thanks” from other occupiers than even washing dishes during dinner time. In fact, right now I feel guilty that I’m sitting in a wifi cafe writing this essay, rather than being down there picking up trash. That is the first thing I’m going to do when I get down there is afternoon.

Contributions needed: trash bags, and large buckets. ALSO: help hauling out garbage, but I believe there is a separate transportation committee organizing volunteers for this.
Work needed: cleaning, gathering, sorting, hauling. Wear a pair of rubber gloves, and you’ll be fine. There is plenty of hand sanitizer around for you to use afterward.

Coffee

The coffeshop is called “Rumors and Miss-Information Cafe”. And of course there is one, because it is Portland. There is plenty of coffee, but the main commodity needed right now is hot water. They were relying on donations of hot water from nearby restaurants, but are trying to rig up a system to boil water off-site. They have plenty of propane, but they don’t want to run afoul of regulations against open flames in the park.

Contributions needed: hot water, if you’re nearby. Maybe cold-brewed coffee?
Work needed: I’m sure you could speak to someone about helping with the off-site boiling process.

Engineering

They have the coolest sign, are working on the most impressive projects, and are probably the sexiest committee, even though I did not see a single female working with them, and that should be fixed. These are the makers of the occupation. They’re working on solar panels, bicycle power generation (one is working, more on the way), and other energy needs. The kitchen is working all on electricity, I believe, and they’ve run generators and battery backups for media and info tents.

They’re also working on tarping the whole camp, and in places, organizing the tent city with “Burning Man like” spoke roads, to ease emergency access. This is actually a bigger challenge than power, because they aren’t laying out roads ahead of time, but trying to consensually organize a city already laid out, without telling anyone what to do. Also, it’s been raining heavily, so drainage is a problem. It’s been a mostly catch-up game so far, making sure tarps don’t collect water, and sweeping up flooded sidewalks as they occur.

I wanted to volunteer with Engineering initially, but I think what they really need, besides materials, is people with very strong technical know-how, perhaps already assembled into a small team. Plans are in the works for a common build-area, and a bike repair workshop (naturally).

Contributions needed: check the website for current needs regarding power generation, but they need gas, pallets, tarps, and rope. They also have an oxy torch, but no gas.
Work needed: strong technical knowledge, or strong technical will to see projects through despite challenges.

Library

Another sexy committee. They have a nice little hut/yurt, with a growing library, organized, as they will tell you, according to the Dewey Decimal System. (Sexy!) Check out is free, of course. They also organize the sign-ups for teach-ins and lectures.

One of the most impressive aspects of this committee is that they are archiving the occupation. All the minutes of the GAs, notes taken by committees, letters, statements, handouts, photos, and anything else that is donated is being scanned. The scans are being stored digitally, and also printed and sorted into folders, so anyone can come into the library and peruse them. They are not currently available online, but I’m hoping to personally talk to them about at least setting up a Dropbox or something, so this is not lost.

Contributions needed: books and magazines, non-fiction especially. Fiction is good, but they’d rather have a more usable research library, and not just a dumping ground for old paperbacks. ALSO: bookshelves, and watertight containers for storing papers and books, folders, and other office-supply type stuff.
Work needed: People to sort and organize, and if you can offer printing services.

Info

Info is the first stop for people looking to contribute and volunteer. They are also, apparently, where most complains are delivered. I think there’s obviously a good duality there. If you have a problem, you should probably volunteer.

Volunteering seems to be a little confused. There are several lists you can put your name on, and no indication that these really followed up. However, this is a good place to see what committees are needing, because they report daily on what they need to Info. Then, you can go to that individual committee’s members, and see about contributing directly (most have contact info on file at Info). For example, there is a dishwashing list and schedule at Info, that has some scattered email addresses, and lots of blank spaces. But, if you simply go over to the dishwashing station they will put you in line, or tell you they are good right now, but check back in ten minutes. Volunteering is more about initiative, than signing up.

Info also runs the Post service, which are basically runners going around and spreading info to the various committees, and bringing it back. They also seem to have a good supply of tarps, rope, and tape, which they are distributing.

Contributions needed: tarps, rope, tape. Especially duct tape. And markers, both permanent and whiteboard. They also take cash contributions here. (Not “donations” though. A tax thing.)
Work needed: If you want to work with them, ask. Or, tell them what you can do or contribute, and they’ll point you in the right direction.

Other Committees

I couldn’t get around to every committee yesterday, and things are evolving so fast I don’t feel comfortable detailing the status of every committee. But here is a list of other committees that exist, and you can probably guess what sort of stuff they need. Or, check the website, OccupyPdx.org, for latest requests. Or even better, go down and ask!

- Medical

First-aid, etc. Medical training would be a great thing to contribute, as well as supplies. I know they are working on getting mental health facilitation up and running.

- Wellness

A new committee, launched yesterday.

- Transportation

From what I can tell, it’s one coordinator organizing people who can drive vehicles for pickups and deliveries. THEY VERY MUCH NEED VEHICLES AND DRIVERS! See Info booth to learn how to help.

- Media

They update the website (such that they can) and also include the video collective. They don’t speak for the occupation, but release statements in solidarity with the occupation. I know they very much need Mobile Data hotspots and modems.

- Police Liaison

Just one person, who is empowered by the GA to communicate with the police, reporting back to the GA on what the police have to say, though not to negotiate, make statements, or reveal information without the explicit approval of the GA. I imagine she might want a break, now and then, though only she personally was approved by the GA.

- Safety

People who have volunteered to be on the front lines to observe and passively-resist (though I’m not sure that’s the properly approved terminology) in case of physical conflict with the police. Also, people trained to generally assist with in-camp safety. This means making sure no one is intoxicated or incapacitated, or suffering a health issue. I don’t believe they have any mandate to do anything though, other than offer advice, and notify medical if needed.

- Sexual Assault Working Group

Available for advice or consult. I know they need folks, especially those with training.

- Short Term Tactics

A brainstorming and proposal-crafting committee. All well and good, but I personally am of the opinion that Sanitation needs more volunteers. :)

- Long Term Goals

My comments are the same as above.

* * * * *

With so many people working so hard to craft this occupation from nothing, with almost no plan, frustration is inevitable. Many people have strong, differing opinions, of course. And when we’ve all been standing on our feet in the rain for three hours, trying to decide together whether or not we’ve been following the GA process that we’ve agreed upon, in order to make a serious decision that could decide the future direction of the occupation and could result in everyone’s arrest… well, you can imagine it’s a challenge to keep it civil. And then you get back into the center of camp from an only barely-satisfying GA, and see the same half-drunk guy banging on a bucket with sticks is still going, just as off-beat and un-syncopated as he was four hours ago, and suddenly you can feel that pounding inside your brain…

But this is what society is. This is what democracy looks like. What I’ve learned in the four and a half years since I left academia is that the democratic system, as advertised, is a sham. There is no honor or glamour in working for a minimum-wage, because there is no boot-strap to pull on in the vast majority of cases. The economic system treats all of us, the hard-workers and the layabouts, precisely the same. We’re expendable. We’re certainly not worth anything. And we’re all dumped in the streets together. So I say, let’s not reach for boot straps, but let’s reach for the lamp posts. Let’s rewire them, put in outlets and USB charge ports, and convert them to solar.

For my part, I’m going to contribute my hard-working efforts towards raising us all up, to build a new society from the street. There are enough of us to do it. And it doesn’t have to be the walled garden, the gated community that the so-called 53% strive to build. Because that is built from steel and cinder block. The architecture of safety and security is the architecture of a prison. I look around myself, and I am in the streets. So the streets will be the model for my home and society. And the streets are crowded with people.

So let the problems rain down, both literally, in terms of the weather and mud, and figuratively. As I tweeted earlier this week, I’m not intimidated by much. This generation watches Al Jazeera. This revolution will be a revolution of solving problems. And if that is a problem for anyone, then they can either take it to the GA, or it can become a problem for them.

The water fountain in Chapman Park. While some doubt the usefulness of the Portland Water Works’ constantly bubbling fountains, this one is now primary water source to a city of 1000 people.

The first priority near term goal of the Portland Occupation has been achieved. The police have said there will be no arrests or harassment as long as the occupation can share the space with the marathon to everyone’s satisfaction. As of 11 AM last night, it appeared there was consensus to do so, and the police have been true to their word, with no arrests at the encampment, although there was one incident off-site in which two people were arrested for graffiti. The first priority of any occupation–the defense of the space–has been achieved.

Of course, this presents the next short-to-medium term problem: what’s next? This is an occupation without firm demands, but still, a community must have goals. Dealing with imminent issues of a threat towards it’s existence is a good rally point for a community, but after that’s been secured, what will continue to define the space and people?

The occupation swelled on friday night, and there is hardly room for more tents. The occupation needs room to grow, and proposals for off-shoot locations or new locations were being suggested in the GA. While long-term goals might not yet be on the table, this is an occupation that is going somewhere, or evolving into something. It would behoove us all to look ahead. Many detractors use the lack of forward plans as a criticism. I don’t think a roadmap to anything is necessary; but all the same, we should be sure our driving skills are up to the challenge.

In a tweet earlier today, Alexis Madrigal suggested (apologies for no link, but I’m blogging by phone again) that a leaderless, consensus movement would not look strange to anyone familiar with open-source tech. I think there is such a relationship. There is something of “Maker-dom” here, and perhaps that is the key.

It’s already there, of course, in the craftspersonship that anyone clever can display on a camping trip when the wind starts to blow the tarp away, or when your trying to cook dinner even though you forgot to buy several items. Both those examples are in fact occurring at the occupation. And for those who are taking part in the consensus groups, there is certainly a volunteer spirit in play.

But I think we need to dig deeper. The occupation needs projects. Something needs to be built. The crazy suggestion, “let’s build a giant airship!” keeps coming back to me. I think everyone could agree that a protest airship would be awesome, just as everyone would agree that it would be near impossible. Where would we get helium? We would would face opposition not just from the police, but from the FAA. There would be a serious risk of people getting hurt. And what if the Oregon Tea Party deploys anti-aircraft gun batteries?

I don’t like the idea because it is “just so crazy”, and because I think the occupation should “aim for the moon and hit the stars.”. I like it because people built airships a hundred years ago, and they did it without computers. People build their own drones now, and control them with their cell phones. People build amazing things, just for fun. We can and do amazing things all day long. The question is, how do these amazing things become not just amazing, but part of the occupation?

I hope that the occupation transforms into a Maker Fair, but one without a permit or venue, that never ends. I hope we build amazing shit. Protester in Iceland are rewriting their constitution. Clearly we can do something as big, or bigger. What if your hobby was not only fun, but built a city? This is what we have the opportunity to do now Occupy Portland has the initiative now, of all the occupations in this country. What are we going to do with it?

If you have any propellers, please email me.

Adam@poszu.com

Update: as of about 10:20 PM when I left, consensus had been reached to continue to occupy and hold at least one block of the park, despite the 9AM deadline to vacate. We’ll see what happens tomorrow morning.

I’m writing this on my phone from the park, where fifty yards away a consensus group is in process to decide whether or not the occupation will move tomorrow morning to let the marathon use the park. I think this represents the non-permanent, transitory nature of this whole process pretty well.

Until there is a decision or other hard information about what might happen tomorrow morning at the police deadline of 9 AM, let me share some of my other thoughts from the day.

Today was the largest protest event I’ve seen in Portland. Also the most diverse age range. A lot of “middle age” folks, not the typical 20-somethings and older folks you see at protests here. A lot of people in their thirties and forties. Now, at night, the more typical younger folks remain, but seeing this large range of ages really made me think something might be different about this protest.

However, some things are the same. The “organizers”, even though there aren’t supposed to be organizers, are college-aged activist sorts, the kind of people who are ready to speak up. Certain people will naturally “take the mic”, and these sorts are doing so. There is some effort to allow “anyone” to speak, but mostly it is the usual suspects.

And I think these usual suspects could use a major dose of “drink some water” type Burning Man lessening of intensity. No one is being tear gassed yet, so we can all take a breath and maybe say please and thank you.

The march was a major show of solidarity, but how this will evolve into an occupation remains to be seen. Although this is billed as a protest for everyone, it is and it isn’t. Many people are here, but they are mostly pursuing the same goals they would otherwise being pursuing, across a spectrum of issues and stances, with a wide range of tactics and strategies. I don’t think this occupation needs unity per se, but it needs a program. Whether goal oriented, wild and erratic, situationist, or all of these, programmatic tasks need to be proposed. We need to build something. Play a game. Otherwise, this is just the same drifting we were doing last month in different places, now just in the same place. We need to do something with the space that we’ve defined and occupied. We need to figure out what makes this public space public. Some sort of human architecture should be designed here. The consensus process shows some process–I’m pretty impressed and think it has potential. I hope that after we conquer the short term goal of tomorrow, we can get some more short and medium term goals going.

Let’s not just storm the castle. Let’s build one. That’s inside out, has baba yaga legs, and flies.

oh, and my experiment kind of worked. I met some people, one of whom I’d actually had prior Internet contact with. His name is Ben (hi Ben, if you’re reading this!) and he wore an excellent mask. Hopefully when I get my mobile Internet kinks worked out (major signal, battery, and data plan SNAFUs today) I’ll find some other virtual friends in physical space.

More as it comes.

Here’s my plan for the Occupy Portland protest, beginning tomorrow.

I have very little in the way of an affinity group, mostly because I don’t know many people in my local area that are interested in going to the protest. The point of an affinity group, of course, is to provide small groups of people who know and trust each other before hand with a “local” group, that can then decide to or not to take part in bigger actions at a protest. This is sort of an accepted format for protests (at least those I am familiar with), but it is limited by the obvious caveat: you must have this affinity group to take part in this strategy.

Part of the spirit of the “Occupies” protests, at least from what I’ve read of it in other cities, is that many people who are not usual to the protesting “scene” are coming in to see what it is all about, and getting drawn into the general assembly process, the consensus groups, and all the rest. (For a nice narrative of this sort of experience, I suggest this.)

I love that. For one thing, it breaks with the usual, super-serious protest-clique experience, which while not a uniform negative in organizing culture, is enough of a real thing that if you’ve been to a protest before you know what I mean. Second, it is more of a network-culture element, not unlike some of the network-culture online, which you and I both are probably familiar with.

Twitter is, in a sense, an occupation of virtual space. An occupation of virtual space is not the same thing as an occupation of physical space, but it is similar in that the occupation is only constituted by those who are there, in an always-on presence that defines the space. Twitter is “on” and existant 24 hours a day, but only in that I have a network that is checking in, taking part, and constituting the space 24 hours a day. We, that is, my loosely-affiliated follower/followee lists, are the Twitter occupation. Whatever the point of the Twitter-occupation is, that is how it exists. We are the affinity group that makes the virtual a reality, and while it may not be identical to the trust and solidarity of a physical-space affinity group, it does have a certain sort of solidarity to it, the full implications and extents of which we are still discovering.

I’m wondering to what degree a loosely-affiliated network might affect a similar occupation in physical space. And thus, I propose this plan for tomorrow:

I invite anyone reading this who is interested, who knows me from Twitter or elsewhere, to find me and introduce themselves tomorrow at Occupy Portland. I don’t have a large network, but my network is not nothing, so I hope that at least a few people can get to know each other in person tomorrow, in the context of the protest.

What happens next is up to us. I’ll be Tweeting from the protest, as well as posting pictures and other distributed-media sorts of things. If you and I meet up, chances are you will be as well. Perhaps we might work together on it. This could look like a specific hashtag, a joint Twitter list, a photo set, a live blog, or a Storify. Heck, with the online tools at our disposal, we are technically able to start a website chock full of live video and audio, tomorrow, from the occupation, using only our cell phones. Not that we need to, or should. But it could be done. With these sorts of tools, we should be able to do something interesting, and network-culture oriented, together. This will be the second experiment I’ve conducted to see how my own personal network connections might manifest in physical existence (this was the first, that went rather well). Maybe nothing will happen, or maybe something interesting will take shape.

But the most important thing, and the reason we are all attending Occupy Portland (amid all the OTHER reasons) is to meet each other, and to network physically to occupy a space. I’m hoping to make that a reality, if nothing else. So, hey! Let’s meet face to face, tomorrow, at Occupy Portland!

How to find me: I’ll be wearing a green hoodie, and I have dreadlocks. Because this is Portland, and there is a chance I won’t be the only person with this description, I’ll also have a sticker on my chest identifying me as “@interdome“, like it’s some sort of professional event or reunion. Because it kind of is, isn’t it? For those of us, spread out across the wires in our diverse and asynchronous networks, gently magnetized into action by the flows that stimulate our drives to do something. This is our event. Lastly, if all else fails, feel free to email adam@poszu.com, or message me on Twitter.

If you’re shy, I suggest wearing a tag with your own Twitter handle. Then I can introduce myself to you, and everyone who uses Twitter, and therefore is in our wider, open-ended network, can introduce themselves to everyone else.

See you tomorrow!

ps. If nothing else, I’ll be providing traffic on Twitter and here at POSZU about whatever happens tomorrow. So if you are in a different physical location, feel free to check this general virtual space for updates about how the experiment went.

For those who enjoy playing around with QR codes, here’s a little javascript bookmarklet I cobbled together from various FAQs.

What this does, as you will (hopefully) see if you try it, is open a prompt, allow you to enter text, and then convert that text to a QR code using the Google Chart API.

javascript:void(Qr=prompt('What do you want the code to say?','this code says nothing',location.href));if(Qr)location.href='http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chof=gif&chtt=QR Code&chs=350x500&chl='+Qr;

Easy enough. While we’re at it, here are a few more QR-related javascript applets I’ve used in the past.

This one simply converts the current URL to a QR code:

javascript: location.href='http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chof=gif&chtt=QR Code&chs=350x500&chl='+escape(location.href);

And this one prints the current screen. Which would be helpful if your current screen shows a newly-minted QR code.

javascript:window.print()

The goal of all of this (for me) is to try and develop a way to reduce the printing of a QR code to a “one-click” sort of procedure. I’ve been working with a heat-activation Polaroid Zink printer, but not having a lot of success. For one thing, the Zink printer is kind of a pain. It only accepts jpgs in a particular portrait size (you might note the constraining 350 x 500 pixel variables in my code above), and the Google API only generates gif and png (adjust the “chof=” variable in the code to get a png, if you like). And while the Bluetooth on the printer works pretty well, iPhones still can’t send pictures over Bluetooth, so that means I have to drag a computer around with the Zink printer. At least until I can get a non-iPhone, but with my current budget, that will probably not be for a while.

But, one step at a time. If you find a better mobile printer, or use any other fun QR tools or tricks, let me know.

As part of my Burning Man reflections, I did a bit of thinking about what “art is”. Or, perhaps said better, is how it might work.

I actually did not realize the significance of a couple of sentences that I had written on that subject, until they were quoted back to me (thanks, Matthews Battles!). Here they are:

The purpose of Burning Man is to entertain. The art is low on poignant meaning, high on effort converted into wow-factor. But through that expression of entertainment is channeled an incredible amount of material, human resource, and hard work.

With these words still in my head last week, I went to see some of the events and installations of the Time Based Arts festival (TBA) here in Portland. Now, I always talk a lot of shit about TBA. Mostly because it provides me, as an artist, with that every so delicious opportunity to complain about his/her own art scene. And additionally, as the artists receive compensation for their work at TBA, it gives this non-paid artist another vector for being bitter, along a more materialist critique.

But with playa dust still coming out of my hair, TBA seemed even more asinine this year than ever before. It is not about the scope of the artwork. That there were no forty-foot tall burning structures or flame-belching vehicles meant that the work at TBA is of course going to be judged according to a different venue. But it was the attention of the artists to their art, or the lack thereof, that really stood out to me.

This is something that as an artist, or a person who builds or makes anything, can immediately see. It is as inimical to the work as the material out of which it is made. Once upon a time, we might have called it “workmanship”. Today it might be abbreviated as “good design”. I might describe it as the part of the worker that is abstracted into the work; and even this is a bit too materialist-philosophically esoteric to use as a description.

Instead, I would merely call it “quality”. Quality is something that can immediately be apprehended in viewing an object. It is something difficult to fake. In talking about this on Twitter Ella Dymaxion, playing the devil’s advocate, suggested that quality might just be a measure of privilege, “quantified by the amount of time one has had to devote to past art.” I think this gets at the point of quality, but specifically differentiating it from “skill”. We might have seemingly innate skills, or skills learned through excellent training, either acquired by luck, by privilege, or by hard work. “Quality” is limited to the particular work in question, and is only used as a stand-in for “skill” when the word is used to refer to something more general, such as the oeuvre of an artist, or an entire venue or thematic category of work.

There may be a threshold of skill that makes quality much easier to achieve. Or, some of the privilege representative in skill might constrain the sorts of mediums in which quality might reasonably be achieved by a particular person. However, the true factor in quality is effort. Whether it is a small drawing that took a few minutes, or a life long work, was the effort put into that thing, in creating it, sufficient to make quality apparent? Subjectivity will determine the response, but each subject should be able to easily make this determination.

My point in arguing this out is not to establish a new aesthetic criteria. I believe notice of quality already exists in our apprehension of artwork, mostly in terms of the negative. It isn’t so much that we stand in front of artwork and say to ourselves, “yes, this has quality, and I notice by this-and-this-and-these features.” It is that we stand in front of it, and say, “boy, but was that a waste of materials and everyone’s time.” Work lacking in quality is missing something. We’re looking for something expressed to us that means this is why we have all taken the time.

The work at TBA is largely of the sort that seeks, either explicitly (by the artist’s statement) or implicitly (by “taking part” in a genre or medium, as it were), to transmit meaning. The artists’ statements are designed to imply that the art itself is a statement. The work at Burning Man is the sort that does not imply a meaning, or if so, with a very light touch. The focus, overall, is on the apprehension, and hence, there is more of an opportunity for quality to come through in the immediate viewing of the work, rather than having to read a statement in order to “get it”.

But in addition to this difference lending Burning Man art to have its quality more easily observed than the work at TBA, I think this framework provides a better venue for aligning the artists towards finding quality in their work. I had an endemic sense at TBA that the work itself was “written off”, so to speak, in favor of the artist statement. As if it didn’t matter what sort of shit was slapped together, if it could be justified as quality in the statement.

I’ve heard the statement before that “art doesn’t justify bad craft”: meaning that you cannot use art to justify mistakes you made. You know there are mistakes. The viewer knows. There are always mistakes in work. But saying “those mistakes are supposed to be there” insults not only our intelligence as people who make things, as well as demeaning our notions of quality that art is supposed to invoke. We know better. We know when materials have been wasted, and when something could have been done better. A lack of quality, quite simply, cannot be justified as artistic. And that is the difference between quality and a lack of it.

I think that statement extends to saying that “meaning identified as artistic doesn’t justify bad craft”. I often complain about “gimmicky” artwork, seeking a popular appeal by easy, spine-jerking vectors. But at least a gimmick, well-executed, doesn’t leave the viewer with a sense of being cheated somehow. It doesn’t leave a taste in the mouth of ruined materials. It doesn’t give one an overwhelming urge to go recycle something. It may be cheap, but at least it does what it says on the box. There are quality gimmicks, and then there are voids of quality. At TBA, I noticed the latter, in hordes.

I told myself on starting to write this little essay, that I wouldn’t target any particular works I thought were lacking quality. But there was one so egregious, one so paramount of what I’m trying to convey, that I can’t help myself. Let me just say this: if you do a piece of work that, through repetition, attempts to represent a particular amount of “otherwise uncounted numbers of war dead”, and then put your work on display WITHOUT FINISHING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF THE REPRESENTATION, you are telling me that either those hundreds of thousands of dead that you did not finish representing are meaningless, or that your entire concept is. This example was particularly awful, because through its poor quality it negated a purportedly ethical meaning. But the general point is illustrated: just because you say the work means something, you cannot expect that it will. And quality is the brick from which you are going to build anything, meaningful or otherwise. You can say a wall will keep out the mongol hordes. But unless that wall is built from brick, it’s not going to do shit. And once you have a built a wall so high and so long, you don’t need to say anything. Because a real wall will be a wall without anyone having to say a thing.

What is the point of all this?

The point is that it is incredibly easy to develop stand-ins for the worth we all implicitly know and respect in work of any kind. It is easy to excuse a lack of quality for sake of art, entertainment, political meaning, wow-factor, or money. There aren’t many absolute rationales for anything in the world anymore. Even quality, despite all my talk of its almost sui generis qualities (and no it’s not, but it might sound like it is) is nothing like an absolute force in the world. And so, why not make a little money? Why not take a political cheap shot, or go after a gimmick rather than put in the time?

Yeah, that’s a good question. But I think the thing about quality is, we already know the answer to that. We just need to remember to speak up and say so, rather than take the easier way out.

Just a quick post to tip off the RSS: I’ve posted an online version of my Border Town project here:

http://www.poszu.com/projects/speciation

So you should go and check that out, and read more about it.

A dis-jointed meditation on things learned at Burning Man

The night after we got back from Burning Man, I had a waking playa-dream.

I woke, dazed and disoriented, in the orange street light that filtered in around the curtains. The sound of the light rail going past was a non-potable water truck to my ears, spraying down the dust street outside of the enclosure of our apartment. I reached my heavy arm up from the bed, tossing covers off of me in the heat, and touched the drywall. “Odd,” I thought. “Drywall would be such a mess on the playa. But it does have a nice finish.” Who built this structure? It has a very regular cubic shape. Have they pre-made dry wall panels, and then hung them from the inside of a geodesic dome? How have they sealed the edges? There is very little dust in here. I want to meet the person who designed this structure and chat with him or her. I got off the mattress, sitting on the playa floor, and only when starting down the hallway towards the bathroom to look for a water tank did I realize I was back in our apartment in Portland, and was not in a city of 50,000 built for a week on an alkaline lake bed.

2011 was my first Burning Man, an event I’ve wanted to attend since I was about 15 and read about it in BoingBoing. 13 years later, it’s a completely different event, of course. And apparently, it is also many different events at the same time. The week of Burning Man is a tripartite collusion of drunk revelers, hardcore makers, and hippie consciousness-expansion. But outside of that week, it is something else again.

I was lucky enough, through a convoluted series of events that was never fully explained to me, to get an early access pass. These are handed out to volunteers, artists, and theme camp builders so they can get a jump start on construction before the event officially opens. The unofficial theme camp I was camping with managed to get a few of these, and having nothing else to do except drive rebar into the earth, I went along with our small build team to erect shade structures for 30 people from PVC, aluminum conduit, tarps, and silk parachute. Easy enough.

The best part of this, which I never imagined in all my visions of the event, was being there for the week immediately prior to the actual week of Burning Man. Before all the “tourists” and party-goers get there, there is a hardcore contingent of people there with one goal. Build shit. Also, I suppose, drink beer and make sexual innuendo, but that kind of goes hammer-in-hand with build shit.

So you’ve been to a Maker Faire. You’ve read about the DIY revolution in countless publications. You have a network of enthusiastic artists you know who are all involved in crazy projects to put Arduinos on Roombas or something, and have a couple Kickstarter campaigns under their belt a piece. All of this is awesome, and I don’t mean to imply it is anything less than so. But none of this really compares to the building environment pre-Burning Man.

It’s possible that I was extraordinarily lucky to be with such a particularly awesome group of people on our own build team, and I have no doubt that I was. But the feeling extended beyond our group, to the entire community. It was an notion of collectivism and altruism that I’ve only dreamed about in my most blue-sky moments. There was an overall sense that everyone was there for a single purpose, and every project and camp was an extension of that process. Resources, tools, and hands were all part of the overall effort, and were lent and asked for freely. Every task was praised and supported with helpful suggestion with a single voice. Rivalries existed, but only insofar as it improved the overall experience. There was a sense of cooperative challenge that paled team-building activities in comparison, and completely flattened the lip-service of collectivity espoused by sports.

I have no doubt that the harsh conditions of the playa contributed to this. If we were in a meadow somewhere, near air-conditioned homes and bars, disputes would result in people “stepping out for a moment”, and divisions would result. However, in the desert there is no place to go. Furthermore, the daily effect of the desert on the body means that collectivity is a survival strategy. It is a saw on the playa, that if someone is getting pissy and annoyed, the proper thing to do is to tell them to “drink some water”. It’s irritating, because people say it all the time, but after you drink water you immediately feel better because you were actually dehydrated. A “fuck you, buddy” turns into a “drink some water”, and everyone is reminded that we are in the desert together, and we are nothing but evaporative meat sacks a few liters of water from death at all times.

This sort of hydration ethic is found in other forms. During the pre-week, there was a ubiquitous imperative to thank people for just about everything, and to be obsessively polite. Someone gives you a hand, you thank them by name. Someone gives you a piece of cheese, you look them in the eye and say thanks. If a tarp is about to be ripped away by a 50 mph gust of wind, you still take the time so say, “hey, would it be possible for you to give me a hand with this?” or “do you have a minute to help?” At first, I thought this was simply hippie sentiment, and I found it a bit obnoxious. But then I realized that the overall imperative to speak this way had the same effect as the emphasis on hydration. By reminding yourself to speak like this, it is a sub-conscious reminder that we’re all in this together, and the help you ask for is the help you will give five minutes from now. Yelling, “somebody help me now!” might be literally true, but it won’t get you the help any faster, and promotes division and aggression as opposed to collectivity. The tarp blowing away is not actually the most important thing. The fact that the tarp will continue to be an inch from blowing away for an entire week is the important thing, and that everyone works together to make it secure is the real goal.

As the event began, this sort of ethic was still present, but as the “tourists” showed up, it faded. Perhaps it was simply the number of people, or the heightened vocality of people just there to consume and not to build. But by the end of Burning Man, people in general had stopped saying thank you, and were much more interested in what they could get from people.

As the Man burned on Saturday night of the event, I remember in particular a couple of girls yelling at everyone in front of them to “sit down” so they could see. A number of people had heeded their call, and so they had the feeling that their request was valid, rather than questioning it. We did not want to sit; this was the Man burning, and a culmination of everything that we had built and lived for two weeks. But even though we were on the edge of the standing mass, and it was clear we were not going to sit, they continued to yell at us to sit down throughout the entirety of the burn. Not a single please was uttered, just a constant braying of the will they wanted to impart upon others. If there was ever an example of the “selling out” of Burning Man, this was it. It isn’t a selling out at all, actually–it is a socio-emotional mind state. It is the transferring from a state of mind of collectivity, in which each person is a functional component of the whole, to a state of mind of ego-actualization, in which each person must fight to harness others to their own particular vector. Would I ever have sat? Perhaps. But suddenly, facing this person who was negating the positive culture I had experienced up to this point, my own will turned to stone.

I tell this anecdote to impart the seriousness of the community, and the strength of collectivity when done right, and how quickly all of that can be negated by thoughtless violation of that network.

The point of Burning Man to me is the way in which the stark reality of the intersection between art and infrastructure is made apparent, and becomes lived experience for those who choose to take part in it. Okay, sure: dancing all night in the middle of the desert is fun too. But that was what I expected, whereas the lessons about building collectivity were a complete surprise. The purpose of Burning Man is to entertain. The art is low on poignant meaning, high on effort converted into wow-factor. But through that expression of entertainment is channeled an incredible amount of material, human resource, and hard work. The end effect is in itself a cause, because it stimulates the drive to make such an incredible human infrastructure come together. It isn’t profit, or a pay check, or even something as pedestrian and necessary as security, safety, sustainability or stability. In fact, it is mostly antithetical to all of that, and perhaps that is why what happens at Burning Man is able to ignore those everyday drives, and really step outside the standard channels work normally forms itself to, and all the petty problems therein. But as much as an outlier this experience might be, it is a hell of a model to aspire towards. Perhaps there is some sort of synthesis to be made.

Why is it that hexayurts and geodesic domes, two structures billed as fabulous advances to architecture in the real world, have taken off much more strongly at Burning Man than in the real world? Why is it that in a place practically devoid of Internet and networked devices, and stronger and more resilient social network has developed? Why is it that people spend a year’s worth of time developing projects that will last a single week? I don’t really know the answer to these questions in words, but I could kind of feel the answer happening at Burning Man. The answer itself wasn’t important. If someone had tried to answer this question, the answer might be, “I don’t know. Let’s drink some water, and then put together this hexayurt before lunch.” A pretty good answer, I guess.

“Radical self-reliance” is a term that is thrown around a lot in regard to Burning Man. I don’t know that it’s necessarily accurate, because Burning Man seems to be much more about relying on other people: the people in your build team, the people in your camp, the neighbors on your street, the Department of Public Works folks and the rest of the volunteer infrastructure, and everyone who attends the Burning Man even. I suppose though, the term kind of works if you factor in the fact that Burning Man is a radical deformation of your sense of “self”. Call it collectivity, call it an ecosystem, call it a team, or call it intentional anarchism. It is about a state of constant reminder that your self is actually pretty frail and insignificant, and if you try to do anything on your own or only for yourself, you will end up with a sloppy pile of bricks, working for forty years all alone, or simply be dead. The human is a resolutely social animal. And while we build things for all sorts of reasons, the thing we are really building at all times is our culture, with those other humans around us, whether we are close to them or not.

Some thoughts on the ongoing London riots, in no particular order. They kind of descend from open question, to class-war-screed, back to open question, but I think I’ll leave it just with the lack of form that it has. These sorts of thoughts shouldn’t be set in stone, because no one is really an expert on this. We’re all just trying to deal.

I’m following the Guardian’s live blogs, which are as usual, pleasantly diverse in their coverage. (Here’s the current one–they retire the url and start anew every 12 hours or so.) Also Twitter, of course.

- Geography – An on-going question of mine. I’m unfamiliar with London geography, and I wonder what relation the riot areas have with each other. I read an article recently (offline, sorry no link) about how public transit can dramatically decrease crime and increase civic-togetherness in quantifiable ways by connecting slum neighborhoods to the rest of the city. It seems these London neighborhoods are not slums or favelas by any means. I wonder how that thesis relates to this situation. Reading about the areas, it seems there is a large amount of gang activity based around post codes, or “ends” (Americanized as ‘hoods, perhaps), which is standard for places where people are unable to connect to the rest of the city. I wonder about the particulars of why these areas might have been cut off from the rest of London. One sense of London I have, though based on almost nothing, is that it is perfectly easy to be “lost” in the sprawl. When I lived in Harlem a couple of years ago, I noticed that one reason it was a perfectly excellent place to live was that it was very much ‘synced’ with the rest of Manhattan, and did not seem cut off by the park, as perhaps it had been at one time. Unlike the South Bronx, which although was only a few blocks and a subway stop from where I lived in Harlem, seemed miles away due to the river, and the overpass highway systems on the north side of the river. A similar thing is evident in South Central LA, where the highway loops and concentrates poorer neighborhoods, and the only public transit linking it to the rest of the city is a long, slow bus ride. And yet, perhaps because London doesn’t have the history of red-lining the way the US does, the riot areas are spread out, and all over. Maybe it has something to do with low-income areas that are near shopping areas? i.e. Potential rioters, with access to riot targets, but not much else? All speculation, because I don’t know.

- Riot vs. Protest – I hope, perhaps with a bit of guilty schadenfreude, that this puts the difference between riot and protest in perspective, and next time there are protests at least in the UK, the language used to describe the black bloc is different. The black bloc may to some degree made from “kids who just want to break stuff”, and yet they do not steal merchandise, burn down buildings, smash smaller businesses, or destroy private vehicles. On the other hand, we may see a new form of provacateuring on the part of the police, or, potential looters may try and join the bloc, now that they have a taste for how easy it can be.

- Anarchism – Relatedly, hoping for a language shift surrounding “anarchy”. But more than that, I’ve been waiting and hoping for an anarchist response to these riots. Solfed, a North London Anarchist Organization, released a statement, but I’m (still) hoping for more. Since this is the Internet, and posting utopian reality-design-fiction from half a world away is completely acceptable, let me draw you a pen-portrait of the anarchist response I’d like to see:

First and foremost, black shirts on the streets. Properly marked as anarchists, perhaps with circle-A insignia, if not something else. This is to make it apparent that any person with a mask and a hood is not necessarily an Anarchist, and to mark the difference. Now, the activity would depend on the numbers and the resources available. Taking as a pattern Common Ground rebuilding efforts, Black Cross street medics, organizing consensus groups of people in the community to defend their block or communicate anger towards the government, or simply Food Not Bombs if nothing else, an effort to build solidarity and community between people in the street, and an effort to break the categories of “Rioter”, “Police”, and “Vigilante”. The bloc pushes protests towards radical anger, but the riots are an opportunity for the other side of anarchism, organization, community, and building (which we all know and love) to show its face. Take that bravery in the streets that faces down cop riots, and show how it can help people. Show how a gang doesn’t just point aggression outwards, but works together for mutual benefit.

Anyway, or so I wish. I try to think how I would do this in my own city, were this to happen here. I have some ideas, but I don’t know if they would work or not until I try it. I have the feeling though, that we must begin to try things like this, because these won’t be the last riots, and things we not return to the status quo where anarchists just mobilize for protests and society runs on in an uneasy truce “as normal”. It’s time for those who believe in a self-determining society to step up. Easy for me to say, but I’m going to keep saying it.

- Racism/Bigotry – Race is certainly a factor here, from the original shooting to the often repeated anger about the police’s right to stop and search in the UK. And, we’re seeing it become a HUGE deal in the backlash to these riots. Race riots normally start as racial anger (justified or not), and then a backlash. It doesn’t matter who starts it, but what happens is people are getting killed in the streets because of their race. The reaction to these riots seems to be heavily pushing things in this direction. There’s news of nationalist groups getting together, drunken vigilantism, and many, many characterizations of who is rioting that are based on race. Furthermore, calling the rioters “thugs”, “yobs”, “criminals” or other things like this is in fact a bigoted statement. They may be committing crimes, but from the people put in court so far, I’ve seen school teachers, counselors, and children. You would not call these people criminals if you met them on the street. To assume to use such a term to refer to a large group of people is a categorical judgment, and worse, a sentence of social death. It is not in terms of innocence/guilt that they are called thugs, but in terms of being reduced to a stereotype that always leads back to race. This is much like the phrase “crackhead”, at least here in the United States. Calling someone a “crackhead” because they look weird or act oddly may in fact be an accurate statement. That person might smoke crack, or some other drug. However, one does not actually know this, and is using the epithet based on a characterization of how a person looks, and is a stand in for “n—–.” It doesn’t matter the person’s color: what is implied is that the speaker has judged this person on the basis of categorical appearance and decided they are a worthless undesirable. I saw a twitter comment (sorry no source, it got lost in the flood) saying, “you KNOW what people wearing masks on the streets are up to”. Actually, NO. Most definitively, you DO NOT KNOW what they are up to. You are judging them, based on what you assume they are up to; and what you assume is that from the way they look and the way that they are dressed (mask or not) that they are a worthless undesirable. Leaders at the highest levels, to the media, to the people on the street are reifying this categorical depiction of “thugs”, which is at heart the expression of a skin-deep, racial judgment. Listen to 911 calls here in the States: “he looked like a thug”, “they were a couple of gangsters”. It is clear what this means (and sometimes they use the actual word, because this is America). You better believe that when the vigilante groups form, they are going to go after people they KNOW are thugs. And you know whom those people are. This linguistic racism MUST BE STOPPED, and now. Not only is it wrong, it’s going to get innocent people killed.

- Class War & Fascism – Seguing from the above, we can see that under stress, the lower segments of Western society oscillate between two opposing urges. The first, to riot in anger, to take things, to burn and smash. The second, to hurt people, to shoot people, to put boots on faces in order to support a paradigm of “order”. And of course, these are not far apart at all, leading “violence” to be the category we use to describe them inclusively. But they are not the same thing. It is one thing to act destructively towards physical objects, an entirely different thing to act that way towards people. Between these two, we see what Class War actually looks like, and it isn’t pretty.

There are other forces at play here besides what we might point out as solely “class” issues. Race, police, geography, etc. But if we look at those in this rioting society, we see the uninsured, the un-secure, the unemployed, and the undersupported. They are the ones with the most to gain by rioting, and the most to lose in the fires and at the hands of the police who are supposed to be “protecting” society. For the first time in at least a couple decades, we are seeing what a major “first-world” city looks like without the supposed continual protection of the police. In other words, what many of the lower classes see every day. What is “violent”, “anarchy”, and “thuggish” is a lower class world, and now it is on the television and the Internet. The way people react in this situation is according to two models: they hit the streets in gangs to take what they want, or they hit the streets in mobs to blame whom they want. This is the purest, uncontrolled, undisciplined form of class war. When the authority that held the class in its position (“under control”, or “peaceful” is what it is typically called, even though it is normally nothing like “peace”) is released, the class agonism boils over in these directions. We might call it “uncontrolled” class war, but we certainly shouldn’t call it unexpected. Again, this will not be the last riot in the history of the world.

As one who has on occasion acted as a proponent for “class war” in a rhetorical sense, I think it’s my responsibility to identify this as what it is, and to try and identify strategies to prepare for this literal, street class war, that is far more brutal and horrifying than any proletarian uprising as proposed in words. To try and simply clean this up, and go back to “normal” is a fallacy. To “regain control” is only to bottle up this urge again, until the next time it boils over. The class controls that keep areas impoverished, and susceptible to the urge to destroy, to blame, and to mob and kill are always insufficient; and in fact, they are the cause of the build up of agonism. This sort of agonistic tension needs to be released, and not simply by sports matches, video games, and bar brawls. Rather than placating the lower classes, they need to be elevated. The infrastructure that needs to be set up must be akin to hydroelectric power. The floods of intensity can be harnessed to build, rather than destroy. But the upper classes have no interest in this, as if very clearly goes against their interest. It is in the interest of the upper classes that riots occur, so that stronger police forces can be built, so that racial tension explode, and so that the lower classes rise up and fight each other, and burn down their own neighborhoods. Look for new police budgets, new racial organizations, new gentrification after these riots.

Lastly, when I say “they” to refer to the lower classes, be aware this is an attempt at objectivity. Because, it is really “We”. If you are not one of the upper classes, you are in the lower classes. There is no bourgeois anymore: the shopkeepers and employees who will clean up this mess are from the same neighborhoods where the destruction originated. Rents will still be collected. The sneakers and TVs that were stolen are teardrops in an ocean of consumerism. Profits have never been higher, and you and I are not seeing any of it.

- The Future – To try and turn away from the preachy-anarchist angle, let’s look to the future. The future is undoubtedly uncertain. No one could have predicted this, and no one will predict the next one. However, what we can say is that there will be a next one. There is something incredibly zeitgeisty about these riots. It sends a shutter down the back, and makes one’s eye look to the bookshelf, to the SF paperbacks that have described similar things at “some time in the near future”. That near future is now, even if we don’t know why.

The key of it is, that there was indeed a time when our culture as a whole stopped worrying about “this”. There was a moment of comfort, sometime in the 80s and 90s. Not to say that there weren’t riots and conflicts and crashes and wars, but they were such that a perspective was enabled. It became possible to “look the other way”, whatever direction that was. Now things are back in view, which is probably for the best. It’s hard to say whether we’ll be able to make these things better by preparing for them, but we can’t say they’d get better if we ignored them.

But, I think it’s our duty to try. Besides “radical politics” things we can do, (see anarchist reality-design-fiction above) and standard liberal politics things (reinstate and build support structures), it behooves us to think like futurists about this. If we are feeling a pull towards science fiction, maybe we should consult science fiction. And not just by planning for utopia/dystopia, but by doing the grunt work of SF: look at the aspects of one particular technological element, and then imagine how things would be different if one-little-thing were different. Examples? Hmm, let’s see: well, what if rather than using Blackberry Messenger to coordinate riots, what if the youth used it for X? I don’t know for what. But what sort of payoff would there have to be to make people freely organize for X, rather than riot? What is the payoff of rioting, and how could that be supplanted by something positive? SMS and QR codes are used to advertise and sell products, and with arguable results. What is between a riot and a sales pitch? A flash mob? A meme? I don’t know, but these are questions we should be asking, because these are things we’ll likely be dealing with in the future. Think of Graffiti-Markup-Language. Graffiti used to be purely a nuisance, and a sign of urban blight. Now it is merged with programming language to make an art form. Who could have predicted that? Maybe no one. But somebody made it.

I think we all should probably be thinking about making things, as hard as we can. That might be the purest advice for dealing with destruction that I can think of.

Here at POSZU, when I’m not lecturing you, I like to think I keep you informed. And when I learn about the hot shit from Rupture, well, I think I ought to pass it on.

This. If you read the blog post from Mudd Up, apparently the pointy boots is a thing.