It occurred to me that this was actually a Good Thing and that perhaps a campaign should be started to make every day a day when jokes can be played before midday, thus reducing the gullibility quotient of the population in one fell swoop.

Talking of swoops, my favourite prank today has to be the BBC’s flying penguins advert for their iPlayer. I hope they leave it up beyond the next six days.

What she wanted, though, was to tell some stories about the adventures of Monster Potatohead — or “Bob” as he’s been officially named. Here he is with Izzy and a puppy on a farm in West Bengal, India:

I look forward to the further adventures – perhaps he’ll meet Mighty Mouse in another animated spectacular sometime. Roll on another wet weekend…

On a recent trip to Peru, I thought it somewhat alarming that every hotel we stayed in had signs just like the one above — but now I know that they were deadly serious. I’d never heard of them until I stumbled upon this BBC report, but kudos to Telecoms Sans Frontieres who do a job that’s often overlooked in the news media’s obsession with more grisly details.

Here’s an animation that my girlfriend’s nine-year-old daughter, Izzy, filmed one rainy Friday afternoon. She made Mighty Mouse from scratch, then directed his adventure through our living room in search of whatever a mighty mouse might be after.

Bristol Wireless have completed their 5.8 GHz backbone infrastructure – it’s fully tested, legal and now – most importantly – live. It gives them a network coverage of approximately 15 sq. km, which they think makes it the largest community wireless network in the UK. Unless, of course, anyone knows otherwise, in which case you’re asked to get in touch with them and let them know.

time and space
may have their place
in space–time pace

but I’m convinced
that ever since
the time begins
no space, no time
nor space–time rhyme
has ever stood
the test of time

Stanislaw Wach, Xmas 1979

I can only guess that this local mechanic wanted to out-do his fellow mechanics by illustrating his premises with the poshest car he could think of. The trouble begins when one considers where the engine is on a 911…

My friend Rob photographed this at a bus stop in London and thought I’d like it.

I do.

[UPDATE]

I guess I ought to mention that this has now been folded into the eminently sensible podPress plugin and I’d advise using that instead now.

This weekend saw Bristol, er, “hosting” the latest Temporary Autonomous Art exhibition in a squatted warehouse on the banks of the Malago river in Bedminster. Although I ended up being there through a convergence of people I know in London and Bristol, I would have looked in on it anyway, since the title so obviously made reference to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone, a text I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I suppose it’s another way of judging a book by the proverbial cover.

Detail from the exhibition poster

Whilst speaking to B——, who had apparently “prodded people” to get stuff together for the exhibition, I mentioned the TAZ connection. B—— told me a story that seemed to echo it in an unusual way: the above detail from the poster was photographed a week before the exhibition on the street in Bristol. B—— said that apparently the graffiti had been done by Banky, and that it had since been painted over. I haven’t confirmed who made it – but it doesn’t really matter in this context – what I liked was the way that the poster and flyer for a deliberately temporary art exhibition made an artefact less temporary by accident.

This story was prompted by my visit to New York to see Christo’s Gates and the subsequent discussions that took place during a most entertaining and enlightening evening at my friends Bob and Ashton’s apartment the night after their party.

The party itself had been an epic affair; it started at 2am in a nightclub, moved on to the southern end of Central Park at dawn (where a coffee truck had been organised to dispense much needed refreshment to us party-goers), carried on as we wandered through Christo’s installation in the park, and concluded back at Ashton’s apartment for a truly sumptuous breakfast and other assorted food for thought.

So then, the night after the party, the few of us who remained gathered in the living room to while away the evening in reminiscences and reflection on what had been. As seems so often to be the case after party marathons, people seemed deflated and downbeat, and the prevailing mood became – how shall I put it? – morose. I chose to play Devil’s advocate and started to put forward a relentlessly optimistic slant on any topic that arose. [Aside: how odd to describe being positive as Devil's advocate, but no matter!]

By and by, the conversation turned to politics and the familiar refrains of woe at the current situation filled the air. Bush, Blair, the war in Iraq, environmental catastrophe… it’s so easy to become depressed by the straightjacket of the current political climate. I was having none of it, and what follows will hopefully illuminate my reasoning…

When Bush was re-elected for his second term, I was lying awake in bed listening to the radio as he made his acceptance speech. The coverage dipped in and out of what he was actually saying for comment and analysis and I became frustrated that I couldn’t hear through the commentators to make out what he was saying in its entirety. My strongest impression was of the usual hypnotic repetition of the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ as though I might actually believe him if he said those words enough times. Tried and tested rhetoric. Eventually, I went online and found a recording of the speech so I could listen uninterrupted. And after running through it a few times, one particular phrase stuck in my mind: that he was intending to “build an ownership society.”

Perhaps he was just reiterating the maxim that “property is freedom”, that oldest of capitalist dogmas. Perhaps. In a world where the human genome is in danger of becoming a corporate plaything, where an American company “owns” Basmati rice, where a news channel can claim to “own” the phrase “fair and balanced”, I suspect that Bush meant something greater than just the right to own a home or a car. I may be wrong about his intent, but with this one statement, Bush seemed to me to have declared war on what I shall, for want of a better term, call “the Commons”.

Bush appeared to be taunting those who value the Commons – the socialists, “The Left” of yesteryear – who seem to me to have been dealt an ideological knock-out blow by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The “workers and bosses” rhetoric of that set of ideas was forever tarnished by the toppling of the Berlin Wall. I know that many people would argue that this was not socialism, but it’s almost always perception that counts when it comes to politics. Capitalism now seems triumphant, forging ahead without any coherent opposition. This much, at least, seemed to be the consensus among those of us sitting around the table.

So what has become of the dreams of freedom, liberty and autonomy? In terms of land, it was the vision of wide-open spaces and previously-uninhabited land on which to found societies based on idealistic and untested principles that drove the early American settlers eastwards. Today, the entire world has been mapped and accounted for such that we no longer have the possibility of escape. There are no more undiscovered continents, no new territories to settle.

So, if we cannot venture into the physical unknown to experiment with new social forms, where do we look for something that we can call an adequate political alternative to the all-conquering capitalist paradigm? I suggested that Christo’s artwork showed us a possible framework for thinking about that elusive goal.

The installation consisted of 7552 orange-coloured gates which lined every single one of the walkways in Central Park. Each gate had a sort of curtain which hung from the crossbar which fluttered as the wind passed through it. To me, this suggested that they were open gates. Furthermore, the gates were placed at regular intervals throughout the park, unless there was the slightest possibility that a gate might interfere with or obstruct the branches of a tree.

So then, having been granted permission to construct the artwork (after 25 years of trying to persuade the authorities to let him do it) the only force that prevented a gate from being placed across a path was the artist’s deference to nature. This was reinforced by the way in which each gate was seated on a soft material base which ensured that the installation would leave no physical trace of its presence once it was removed.

The physicality of the installation (or lack of it) was reinforced in what I read about the way in which the project had come into being. The New York authorities had paid nothing for the installation – it was entirely financed from the sale of Christo’s drawings. Visitors weren’t required to pay to get in, nor could they (or anyone) buy a piece of the artwork – all the materials that were used have subsequently been recycled. Indeed, all the proceeds from the marketing devices (such as brochures, postcards, books and so on) have gone to a charity devoted to preserving and extending New York’s wildlife.

So then, it seems as though the city paid nothing, visitors paid nothing and even the artist gained nothing from the artwork. Financial transactions had effectively been removed from the equation. But to what end? What was Christo suggesting by the way in which the project had been configured? My first conclusion was based more on the hype surrounding the installation than the installation itself; that for two precious weeks The Gates had made the park more important than the city itself.

I was astounded by this remarkable achievement, particularly when I considered the recent history of the city. As I marvelled at the impact and ephemerality of the project, the thought occurred to me that Central Park is also as close to “common land” as it gets in New York. The installation was on that common land, suggesting to me that, in a sense, Christo’s open gates symbolised access – access to the commons.

Why is this so important? In what way does this offer an alternative to capitalism? Well, think about where you live… do you want to own the bus that drives down your street? Or do you merely want access to it when you want to go somewhere? Would you rather own a swimming pool (with all the attendant responsibilities that your ownership entails) or have access to one when you want to have a swim? Perhaps these are truisms, perhaps you would rather own your own swimming pool… let me put it another way through an anecdote:

A few weeks ago I was helping some friends out with their home computer system. Phil and Sophie have two Macintosh computers, one of which was Sophie’s primary working machine, but which has since been relegated to a secondary role when she bought a snazzy new one. She still wanted to use the old one for checking her graphic designs out on a cathode ray tube monitor because her new machine has a flat screen display (don’t ask – it’s a designer thing!) but also wanted to give Phil the ability to use the machine for his own purposes. I suggested something that she had not explored: multiple user accounts.

Prior to my tinkering, Sophie’s computer had always booted straight to the desktop, so that as soon as she switched it on, it would be ready for her to start work. As soon I had implemented the multiple user feature, it became apparent to both of them that this was exactly what they were looking for and moreover what a fine idea user accounts were. Both of them could use the machine as if it were theirs’ alone.

However, now that Sophie needed to log in to the machine in order to use it, she became somewhat agitated and uneasy. She gave the matter some thought and explained to me that she felt as though the computer was no longer hers. I could see her point – in reconfiguring it so that both of them could use it, she had apparently traded “ownership” for “access”.

[Aside: I have repeatedly found that this insight is crucial to understanding the way in which Mac OS X differs from previous systems. It is also the way in which Linux works - each person has a user directory within the system and, except in certain special circumstances, spends most of their computing life within that directory. Put simply, each user's access to the machine is both restricted on that particular machine and yet liberated from the constraints of that specific machine. It is a trivial task to transfer your home directory to another machine, whereupon that computer automagically appears to become one with which you are already familiar. In the coming years, sit back and watch as your entire computing experience begins to transcend the particular box that you happen to be using at the time...]

My point is that computing is rapidly converging on a paradigm that gives access precedence over ownership. This is happening in many different ways: from open source software and community networks such as consume.net or bristolwireless.net to the internet itself – owned by no-one yet immensely useful to everyone who has access. Think of a networked bazaar rather than a centralised and hierarchical cathedral.

This focus on access is perhaps not new (I’m sure someone can find precedents – I myself would point to Bakunin’s assertion that “property is theft”) but it does not figure in “old-school” socialism as far as I can tell – that paradigm held that all property was property of the state. This effectively amounted to property being held in common, but only if the state was truly an organisation belonging to the people… something that was clearly not the case in practice.

I suggested that these technologies are, in the absence of a commonly-held physical space, our new “Commons”. Even when the entire surface of the Earth has been registered, mapped, bought, sold and defended, these virtual spaces will still remain common to us all – as long as we have the equipment to access them. They may even correspond to a third definition of property (derived from the Sufis amongst others) which holds that “property is impossible” and that one only truly “owns” the things that one cannot lose in a shipwreck. Think skills, knowledge, experience rather than iPods, cars and houses.

In this respect, I think Christo has done something quite remarkable. The Gates cannot be owned, cannot therefore be “property” in the conventional sense. This art could only be accessed, experienced and thought about. He placed a coded non-capitalist statement [Aside: I have not written 'anti-capitalist' because I sense that what is sought is the transcendence of capitalism rather than its defeat] slap-bang in the middle of the city which, for many people, embodies the capitalist spirit.

Moreover, he sought not to erect something of permanence, but made the installation time-bound and temporary, signaling that autonomy may be achieved, but only for a short while before it disperses and recombines to appear elsewhere in another form. This is the principle of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) which Hakim Bey describes so eloquently. I won’t try to paraphrase or restate the theory, you can read it for yourself, but consider the reaction of the people to Christo’s work: New Yorkers promenaded through the park, looking around, chatting to people and, in my experience, for the most part smiling. Let’s not forget these are New Yorkers I’m talking about here… this is distinctly unusual behaviour. For a brief, beautiful moment in time, people transcended their differences and found their common humanity.

Last week, I visited Christo’s latest artwork, The Gates, in New York’s Central Park, and went to a party some friends were throwing to celebrate the arrival of the installation.

The scrap of material was handed to me by one of the workers whom I approached after a discussion with my friends, where I asked, half-joking, whether it would be legitimate to restore any of the “curtains” to their original free-hanging state if they accidentally became wrapped around the crossbar by a gust of wind or a wild flap.

A view of Christo’s Gates at dawn
(courtesy James Bradburne)

It turned out that it was this (paid, as it turns out) worker’s job to do just that – answering my question conclusively. While we were talking to her, much to our surprise and delight, she reached into a pouch and brought out some swatches of the material for everyone in our group.

A view of Christo’s Gates billowing in the wind
(courtesy Patrick Burns)

I later learned that Christo had ordered a million of these samples for curious visitors, so they are hardly rare. But, as I found out trying to scan and colour-correct the one above, the fabric seems to contain a variety of colours as it shimmers in the light. It will remind me – more vividly than a photo ever could – of a glorious, epic weekend in the park.

[UPDATE]

If you have any thoughts about the Gates, visit the Gates Memory Project blog and contribute to The Gates: An Experiment in Collective Memory, which “will be online and constantly evolving according to the contributions, suggestions and innovations of participants”.

I have travelled extensively in countries which would usually be categorised under that term, and have always suffered from a dissonance between what I could see around me and the received wisdom of what these places “ought” to be like. True, many people live in great poverty and there are indeed slums in many cities. However, things are changing so fast that I feel that the term “Third” no longer reflects the nature of these places…

I was reminded recently by a former college lecturer of mine of a talk that I gave to students in which I described my experience of working in Bollywood in 1998. I showed some pictures of Mumbai to them and asked where in the world they thought the picture was taken. Noone said India – indeed it looked more like Manhattan than Mumbai. I warned them that this misconception was all too common, and that they would be surprised by what was happening in places like Mumbai.

And so, when I went to a conference in Oxford recently, I was heartened to find that other people were thinking along similar lines: my friends Bob and Ashton quietly told me that they had settled on using the phrase “Majority World” to describe these places. I instantly warmed to the phrase, recognised that it has none of the implicit hierarchy that “First”, “Second” and “Third” World imply.

So then, from now on I’ll use “Majority World” to describe those places formerly known as the Third World.

Update: Appropedia has an article stub about this term now — you can help describe it here

From where I’m sitting, the CLAN looks very much like the rock’n'roll of wifi. Richard, you’ve gone and done a wonderful thing… a DIY WIFI LAN that belongs to its contributors.

And yesterday, a significant step forward for the LAN: The Chelsea is now a node! Pints and surfing! Warchalking on the pavement outside! Bringalongalaptop! It’s going to be an exicting summer of free radio…

The implications of this project send me into conceptual tilt-a-whirls and loop-de-loops – Richard, nomadic soul that he is, prefers to live his thoughts, while I can only think them.

Click here for further information

I recommend checking out Piers’ new website (ok, ok – I admit it – partly because I wrote the XHTML and CGI code that drives it) to find out more about shamanistic stuff. He is steadily building a very useful resource with links and stories to relevant material.

He is someone with a unique perspective on these matters – thirty days alone in the jungle with nothing but an ingested insect (regurgitated by his shaman mentor) and a pile of ayahuasca for company are qualifications good enough for me.

What the hell were they thinking in Whiskas marketing?

After a discussion with a friend of mine who is planning travel tours of remote parts of Afghanistan, we got to wondering what might happen if, instead of protesting in our own streets against the proposed war on Iraq, we decided to do the same thing in Baghdad…

Would Bush and Blair drop bombs on Iraq in the knowledge that there were 10,000 tourists, many of them their own citizens, sightseeing around the country?

What if there were 20,000? Or more?