[-empyre-] Sean Cubitt: Resolution for Digital Futures

[sdv at krokodile.co.uk]

Krosrods and Sean

There is no shortage of energy even in the forms we know can work today 
- renewables - sun, sea, water, air and then there is  of course 
nuclear,  what is doubtful is that we will be able to translate the 
energy into the forms that will support this type of social system.

However I do think you are certainly right in thinking that the mass 
consumptive style of computing which we have all grown used to will have 
to end, along with all the other profligacy. I it find particularly 
depressing is that people still speak of 'open-source' as if it is 
something that can be detached from mass consumption...

On particularly dark days I imagine that liberal-capitalist-democracies 
will eventually be identified as the greatest killers of human beings in 
the history of the world, they only have ten years after all. Everything 
is political.

(Sean - always nice to hear names from the more distant past... hope you 
are well.)

sdv

Krosrods Moarquech wrote:
> Dear Sean,
>  
> How great is to read your words, once again.
> In 2005, I was critized because the curatorial process of Arte Nuevo 
> InteractivA was based in an imagined post technological future.
> Your words bring back a lot of the issues I was facing as a new media 
> artist and curator living in Latin America.
> Hope our imagination will expand enough to understand how close we are 
> to the zero energy level.
> Best,
> Raul
>
> --- El *mar 27-ene-09, Renate Ferro /<rtf9 at cornell.edu>/* escribió:
>
>     De:: Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
>     Asunto: [-empyre-] Sean Cubitt: Resolution for Digital Futures
>     A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>     Fecha: martes, 27 enero, 2009, 7:52 am
>
>     There are not enough rare earths on the planet to replicate for the
>     developing world the density of personal computers and wireless devices that
>     prevails in the West. Even the most efficient recycling cannot extract 100
>     per cent of the materials in defunct kit, and the recycling villages of West
>     Africa and Southern China are not only inefficient but fatal sumps of
>     carcinogenic pollution. The era of the personal computer, premised on the
>     individual as the prime consuming unit in contemporary capitalism, is
>     nearing its close.
>
>     Soon we will be unable to power the networks, such is our profligate use of
>     finite energy sources. Compression doesn't resolve this problem:
>     decompression has an energy cost, regardless of the degree of compression in
>     the network signal, it has to be decompressed elsewhere, so maintaining the
>     same cost. Information is energy hungry: that is the meaning of the second
>     law of thermodynamics. The laws of physics have us over a barrel. We will
>     have to get used to using less computer power in fewer machines.
>     Time-sharing may yet prove to be the fundamental social economy of
>     computing. It is time to demand better - and less!
>
>
>     Bio: Sean Cubitt (Australia)  is Director of the Program in Media and 
>     Communications
>     at the University of Melbourne.
>
>     -- 
>     Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
>     Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
>     Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
>     Cornell University
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