The Information Chase

Banksy Leake Street London, The_Magician, 2008

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. An object which would long ago have toppled to the ground, if it were not for all those counterbalanced lead weights and years of continual stabilisation work. When the Italian government requested help in saving the structure, it was seen to be more important to preserve the tilt for tourism than make it a naturally stable building as it was intended and like any other. The earth shifting beneath it put it on the cusp of collapse centuries ago. The tower is as much a symbol of man defying physics as it can be a metaphor for the copyright industries.

Quadrant 3

F-35 JSF Developmental Pilot Helmet, Image Editor, 2007

One of the more overdone tropes of Western cinema is the notion of the machine revolt. Most people are familiar with The Matrix and Terminator, but I highly recommend Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 as an early example of the genre. The final scene of Colossus is as poignant as John Connor's radio broadcast at the end of Terminator 3 (which was in all other respects a bad remake of T2).

In all these films the machine revolt is preceded by a common act - a computer is empowered by man to do what we are either unable or unwilling to do or think.

Babies Mother Hospital Scissors Creature Judgement Butcher Engineer

Genetic Engineering single cover art

The common misunderstanding of evolution is that it leads to us (anthropocentric). That is backwards. We are genetically similar to the other primates because we are primates. We are not more advanced than them because 1) we didn't evolve from them and 2) all the primates are occupying respective niches to which they are adapted.

The major difference is that humans are for the most part no longer subject to the environmental pressures which give rise to natural selection and are instead putting pressure on the environment for our own benefit.

Live Forever

Public Domain, 2006

Death is an absurdity to the living. Those who say they do not fear death, do not believe in it - rather they believe in an afterlife. We have explored our planet, the solar system, and seen beyond the galaxy. Yet death remains terminal, and the experience itself remains open to conjecture.

At the moment, a member of some online forum might be killed by some random event, and that'll be that. But in the coming years, well into the internet's lifespan, the web will become increasingly cluttered with the deceased. That is, their online life will be preserved - MySpace, Facebook, Bebo filled with dormant accounts as shrines. In twenty years we might visit YouTube and see Peter Oakley alive and well, talking, sharing his memories and experiences long after the organic matter that stored them has decayed. Part of him will be preserved electronically, essentially forever.