[-empyre-] Wired sustainability and Ambient Media

[John Hopkins]

sorry, late posting, but, I still want to post it, at least in view 
of all the back-slapping affirmations that what we are doing is on 
the right track, got to inject some shred of realism into the picture 
;-)

>The point I would make here is that to discount any form for its residual
>traces is to ultimately dehistoricize it and depoliticize it.  What is
>interesting from a historians point of view (what I do in my "day job" )
>are the new vectors and social/political/technological contexts that
>create and generate different possibilities and different meanings.  It's
>the change that is important, not the object or its approach.

this is why sustainability in this discussion is quite problematic. 
If the global techno-social system is sustainable, then we would see 
that already.  If it is not, then we would be seeing that as well.  I 
believe that we are seeing that it is not.  Participation in the 
global network that we are doing right here (or composing ambient 
media) is not a sustainable practice IMHO -- as it is built upon, and 
indeed, requires the entire extended reach of that techno-social 
system -- from every extractive industry to massive transport 
networks to hydrocarbon production and consumption system and so on. 
We have to change, fundamentally, the way we live, in order to become 
sustainable, else the planetary system change conditions to more than 
remind us of the fact that imbalance causes compensatory oscillation.

We are the 'masters,' and we are carry a bunch of tools around doing 
things to the system we are a part of.  We are not passive bystanders 
when we are standing around holding the tools.  We've got to drop the 
tools (read: change) because it is in the fabrication of those tools 
that the 'masters' are wreaking havoc on the entire system.  The 
protocols and standards of the 'masters,' set up to support the 
techno-social system, define deadly pathways that allow for 
completely imbalanced rarefaction and concentration of things 
(energies and energized matter) which are destroying the life-support 
capacity of the entire system...

jh