Technology and Changing Power

In Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution writer, Simon Schama asserts that the first hot air balloon may have initiated the French Revolution. In 1783 at Annonay, France the Montgolfier brothers sent up the first balloon, and later the Aeorstat Revellion at Versailles with crew of sheep, duck, and rooster, and later a manned flight. It captured the public imagination.

Schama believes it allowed French subjects to imagine themselves as Montgolfier, lofted above the earth and freed in some way from worldly bounds.

Every revolution is precipitated by some new invention.

The Renaissance brought perspective in painting and then the printing press. Marshall McLuhan said this:

Print technology transformed the medieval zero into the Renaissance infinity, not only by convergence - perspective and vanishing point - but by bringing into play for the first time in human history the factor of exact repeatability. Print gave to men the concept of indefinite repetition so necessary to the mathematical concept of infinity. 1


The uniformity and repeatability of print permeated the Renaissance with the idea of time and space as continuous measurable quantities. The immediate effect of this idea was to desacralize the world of nature and the world of power alike. The new technique of control of physical processes by segmentation and fragmentation separated God and Nature as much as Man and Nature, or man and man. 2


The discovery of the New World later in the Renaissance opened up new physical territory and exploded the myth of a flat world. A cognate was found in Renaissance perspective which removed the mystical, godlike space in art the church fed the masses. Renaissance people now wanted rational art and narratives. that ended the unified, all-encompassing space of Medievalism and ushered in the measurable, logical world of Man, in which Man was the center of this world, and God was confined to Heaven.

Turning points in history come in with changes in the political and social sphere, but they are founded on new technological inventions, devices that change the way people look at the world. The old ways of command and control can't work any more, and the power structures in place are shaken to their core.

Take the photograph. Daguerre created the first silver negative in 1839. Photography's reliable reproduction of reality made citizens no longer dependent on accounts of reality fed to them by the press and its government in the way With a new reliance on themselves to observe naturalistic reality in all its starkness, Europeans created the revolutions of the 1840s.

With the end of the 1848 climax of the revolution the Second Industrial Revolution began, in which mass consumption, made possible with advanced industry, was in bloom. People were not only free to revolt but to consume. McLuhan mentions the transience of the photograph.3 An analogy to it is the limited-use commodity, such as the raft of souvenirs created in the mid-19th century. The early Renaissance, prior to printing press and perspective nevertheless brought in a degree of human nature into the art of Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, and others. From this "invention" came the workshops and guilds, which created a mass market for art for wealthy patrons.

Now we have the very mass media of the Internet and social networking. They have their down sides, as they isolate some of us into an unreal world. And Facebook friends are not your real friends. They do, in fairness though, remove the unilateral nature of earlier mass media. We are not dependent on what NBC has to tell us. We can search the Net for hundreds of news sources. And without social networking we would have no 2009 Iranian uprising, no Arab Spring. The Internet and social networking do not have a command structure as the networks do. Every point (person, that is) is equivalent to every other. As others have said, the dissemination of knowledge is limitless, like Renaissance infinity and the printing press, but much more so. With it power of the elites is weakening into more democratic expression.

The last technology for this essay is the conversion of analog to digital.


NYU Professor, James Carse, once told his class that he opened up his country house and found a leak in the well. So he put his hand over it. But the water shot out at another hole, so he put his hand over that to plug it up. But water came out of two new holes. He said he couldn't figure out the source of the leak until he realized the water was coming from everywhere. And that's the case here. The information revolution is unleashing a wellspring of knowledge in a democratic way. It can't be stopped. It's what we do with information that's the test.

A more abstract development in technology is the conversion of transmissions from analog to digital. Analog technology is structural in its processes. It depends on a hierarchy of steps A - B - C on variable waves. It's frequencies have a theoretically endless number of values. It's cognate would be social organization of the past with kings at the top, then bishops, ministers, knights, merchants, commoners; or president, prime minister, cabinet, and down to voters. Analog depends on a chain of command along a linear path. Its, well, analog in the social and political field is hierarchical power. That is until now.

With digital technology, everything is reduced to binary code...ones and zeros. It is dependent on sampling. Marcos Novak says:

In a world of fields, the distinction between what is and what is not is one
of degree. There can be as many sampling points where something is not as
there are where something is. Sampling involves an intermediate sense of
reality, something between real and integer numbers, a fractal notion of
qualified truth, truth-to-a-point. An object's boundary is simply the
reconstructed contour of an arbitrarily chosen value.4.

While binary leaves itself open to an either/or outlook and can be used to continue a bipolar world view, inviting class conflict, racism, social Darwinism, sampling takes the ones and zeros of binary along a bandwidth of qualified truth, as Novak says. It is not structured the way analog is.

Humanity is becoming more networked, more egalitarian like this digital bandwidth. We are evolving more into one community, certainly not in the short term, but as an impetus for centuries to come.

Stuart Kurtz
November 12, 2011

1. McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media, (M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1964, 1994, Ninth edition 2001)pg. 116.
2. Ibid, pg. 176.

3. Ibid, pg. 196.

4. Novak, Marcos, Transmitting Architecture: The Transphysical City, Edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker,ctheory.net/text_file?pick=76 (published 11/29/1996)

Don't Underestimate the Power of Agression

Don't Underestimate the Power of Agression
Submitted by Stuart Kurtz on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 5:39pm.
When we ask people all over the globe for their highest values we will always find two at the top. The first is God, or a higher power. That makes sense; humans have held up under extreme adversity, violence, and degradation with the belief that God (or a higher power) will see them through, but, if not, that they will be rewarded with everlasting life in a higher state of being. But let us look at a strange point to the contrary.

In ancient Egypt the pharoahs were not considered to be the gods' representatives on Earth, but gods themselves. You did what the god told you to do; his (or her in a few cases) word was absolute. That is one reason Egypt was so stable for around two thousand years.

Consider though the various plots against pharoahs. According to the Egyptologist, Manetho, bodyguard of King Teti of the 6th Dynasty murdered him. King Amenemhat I of Dynasty 12 probably met his end to murder. Rameses III of Dynasty 20 had a conspiracy against him known as "The Harem Plot," that might have succeeded. King Seqenenre Tao of Dynasty 17 has mortal wounds to his skull. Hatshepsut, the first female pharoah, ruled as regent for Thutmose III until she arrogated the role of Pharoah - unheard of until then - to herself. Some historians believed Thutmose may have murdered her out of a long standing grudge and then took the throne. Some believe Akhenaten, the monotheist, who incurred the wrath of his ministers for his firebrand ways, may have incited them to kill him. And then there was Tut. King Tuthankamen, son of Akenaten, may have been assasinated by those who wanted to remove any vestiges of the reign of his seditious father. Some now say he died of an infected broken leg, but the point remains that there was intrigue at court, and probably the plots or actual assasinations.

How could a subject possibly consider killing the Pharoah, a god on Earth? The gods were the highest value of all; they were the reason the sun rose and set, the Nile flowed, and the crops grew in abundance. So what was this higher value?

The second value people all over the world will claim as most important is probably more important than God, as many do not believe in God or a higher power. That subaltern value, or course, is their children. People will do anything for their children. They will move Heaven and Earth for their children. In fact, that is a bilogical imperative. Mammals will put themselves in harm's way to protect their offspring. For humans, who have the power of abstract thought and so a conception of the future, children are a continuation of us. They are our immortality. Indeed, there is something selfish in that. Be that as it may, we must consider some other strange cases.

We have all heard cases of parents cutting grown offspring out of their wills for marrying out of the faith, or being gay, or engaging in acts the parents believe have shamed the family, such as crimes or scandals.

There are parents who cut children out of their lives for the same perceived infractions or for lesser ones. Parents have stopped talking to their children for the friends they keep or for some terrible insult. This is not only true; it is fairly common.

Then there are the honor killings in some Asian countries. Family members, including fathers, immolate daughters (nieces, sisters, etc.) for dressing inappropriately, refusing arranged marriages, homosexuality, performing trysts, or even for non-sexual relationships that might lead to sexual relations. It is true that these perpetrators believe they do this for a higher calling, God's law; it nevertheless violates the second principle of this article, that people will do anything for their children.

The case of the South Carolina mother who suffocated her own small children because she "wanted to be free" [of parental responsibility] or the other South Carolina woman who drowned her two toddlers in her car for fear that her boyfriend would leave her due to the kids getting in the way.

What was going on here? In one case it was the desire for "freedom" and in the other the fear of lost support.

In both cases there was no higher power, and no insults on the children's parts. Thus, on the dark side of the human behaviour spectrum there must be a higher value than God or the imperative to bring one's offspring into adulthood that they may procreate themselves.

What's higher than God? What's higher than children? For some, those who give in to their deeper, darker impulses, this value is power. And behind power is agression. Many of us do not give in to these impulses, but the cases cited show that many do. That is why hatred and agression seem to be more powerful forces than love in this world. Please prove me wrong.



Stuart Kurtz

February 25, 2011

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Travel Piece: Summer Lodging Maine Style. Book Now.

Many of the day trippers from Portland disembark from the Casco Bay Line ferry on Peaks Island, Maine and make a bee line for one of the "happening" restaurants there. The first is a whopping 20 yards from the gangplank. They lose their inhibitions and sobriety downing margaritas to the tunes of (who else) Jimmy Buffett. Some will rent bikes and peddle the charming lanes for a few lazy hours. But there is another Peaks that is not so "happening," where you may have a hard time sifting out the past from the present.

Just past Long Point is the Eighth Maine Regiment Memorial, a lodge and Civil War museum. Come for a stay or for the tour alone. Either way you will have the treat of Mr. Dick Adams bending your ear on island lore. And he should know it too. He first came to the lodge as a baby in 1928, and he's been here ever since, save for a few years spent where Mainers call, "from away."

Mr. Adams started approached me for the tour in his friendly way. He wore a purple, green, and navy nylon slicker, faded black jeans, and a cap with a harness racer on it. He has a ruddy complexion and skin that draws around the cheeks, gill-like, when he smiles. His nose is as red as any drunkard's in a Peter Paul Rubens tavern picture. His days of being the manager of the lodge are behind him; his son took the mantle some years back.

Every so often Adams will tighten his neck muscles, purse his lips, and strain out a punch line. Sometimes it's not even a punch line, but some term he thinks might need a little emphasis: "pup tent," or "ping pong."

Before you get into the fun stuff, Mr. Adams will show you to the old double schoolmaster's desk that supports the guest register. You might think it's a relic for you to ogle at. It's actually a work in progress. You sign into the lodge just the way guests have since 1924. Somehow the past doesn't seem so distant.

It's a noble pedigree. The Eighth Regiment Maine Association started in 1872 for its soldiers to get together to commemorate their trials during the Civil War. Colonel William Macarthur led the men in the war's last year. He won $75,000 in the Louisiana lottery. When the wife of Captain Smith, provost of the regiment, told Macarthur the wives were tired of living in pup tents during reunions and that he should build a place, Macarthur built the lodge.

Some things have stayed pretty constant since those days. Each family still gets a little gas burner assigned for cooking their own meals. And they have this status system, being whoever sits closer to the window in the basement dining room, has the most status. One fellow made a reservation and said, "Put me by the window." Mr. Adams told him, "If you come for 40 years or 60 years, you may get there."

The window side table aside, every guest here has no problems with getting his share of the intangibles. You can see Whitehead, a prominence named after Chief Whitehead, and Graham Island Light from one of the many window banks. You can also see "The Witch's Cauldron," a little shoal off shore where Mr. Adams' father once slipped on the slime while fishing and had to be rescued by the fire boats. The only real danger now is to the kayakers who shoot its miniature rapid for a few seconds of thrill.

The Eighth is a hulking, brown structure with wraparound porch. Its weathered shingles cling to it like the scales of some fish that crawled onto land from the sea, some 40 yards from it, depending on the tides.

The summer breezes waft in and blow dappled sunlight around in swirling eddies. It’s hard to feel separate from the waves outside. Memories are arrayed on the walls. You can an etching of the Eighth at Hilton Head, South Carolina. The regiment took freed slaves to Jacksonville, so they could fight The South.

Mr. Adams' great-grandfather, George Cappers was in the regiment.
Adams can only show you the lithographs of Civil War days, but not so when it comes to another war. He is the living keeper of World War Two memories on the island.

He tells you how his grandmother, coming back for the summer on Peaks, couldn't accept that you couldn't drive around the island due to wartime restrictions. So she took a group of folks around on foot. She ignored the sign clearly saying, "military reservation. No trespassing," and got them all in a heap of trouble. A gal whose parents ran the lodge piped up, "Where are you going with my folks from the Eighth?" The officer said they were in serious trouble. This gal, Phoebe, said, "'Well so are you, 'cause if you don't take them back right now, you'll never have a date with me tonight or any other night,' " said Adams. He adds, "This fella she had in the afternoon. She might have had a different one at night."

Adams remembers how some boys his age found the charred bodies of three German U-boat sailors during the war. The cemetery board refused to bury them in the cemetery. There were also 3 live German sailors who made it in from Portland one blustery day in January. They were dressed like shipyard workers with coveralls they probably got from sympathizers, relates Adams. They bought food at the little store that's still there and made it out on a little rubber dingy to a waiting sub. Convoys of our ships used to assemble off the coast within sight of Peaks.

The blackout paper over the transom of one of the guest rooms is a reminder of those perilous days. The only danger around here now seems to be the treachery of "The Witch's Cauldron.

There is danger of another kind these days. Some island folks are losing their homes. Others help out. They want to stay due to a kind of love affair with the island only islanders can understand.

Adams shows you a painting on piece of the old pear tree that Col. Macarthur did not want to cut down when he bought the lot. Visitors used to get engaged under that tree. Love affair.

Adams also shows you a highchair his grandmother from up-country sat in as a kid. Now, all his grandkids and maybe a great grandchild will sit in it. It and that desk register keep the line between the past and present a little fuzzy.

Stuart Kurtz
July, 2009

Eighth Maine Regiment Memorial Association
13 Eighth Maine Ave.
Peaks Island, ME 04108
207-766-5086
www.eighthmaine.org


Tours of the lodge/Civil War museum are daily at noon and 3, closed Mondays. Suggested donation $5 per person. For large parties (over 6), please make a reservation, so we can accommodate you.

Casco Bay Lines
Commercial & Franklin Sts., Portland, Maine
207-774-7871
FAX 207-774-7875
www.cascobayline.com
Email: info@cascobaylines.com
The ride is 17 minutes to Peaks.

Give Peas a Chance

GIVE PEAS A CHANCE


Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Thiamin, niacin, metabolism, magnesium, potassium
This-ium, that-ium, ium ium ium
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance

(C'mon)
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Legumes, heirlooms, spring blooms, and crop booms
Snap peas, snow peas, wasabis, and Black-eyed, Bye bye, Bye byes
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance

(Let me tell you now)
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Can revolution, freezing solutions, innovation, scarification, soil rotation
oxidation, lipid creation, mite invasions, infestations
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance

Evr'ybody's talkin' 'bout
Split and sugar, minty marjoram, rosemary,
Little Marvel, Chef Emeril, Gregor Mendel
dominant-recessive, Bean Stalker, Betty Crocker
Ho ho ho Green Giant
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance



By Stuart Kurtz
Parody of Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon

Back to Feudalism?

Have you got your tunic on? Plow hitched to your ox? No?
Maybe you are lucky enough to be a baron or clergyman. Or maybe even luckier. Maybe your a lord.

In feudal times, also called The Middle Ages, land management was in the control of lords, who divided their vast holdings into parcels, or fiefs, and put local barons in charge of them. Barons held local power but still held loyalty, or fealty, to the lords.

The church was the other great governing body, and it held and divided great plots of land.

Ten percent of the population were clergy, barons, or lords. Everyone else was condemnded to be the peasantry, working the land for the lords and barons in exchange for meager food and protection from invaders.

Feudalism still existed in weakened form in Europe and elsewhere for centuries after Medieval times in that an overwhelming peasantry supported a minute noble class (the King, Tsar, Emperor in China.) The French Revolution and the American Revolution put the ax (or the Guillotine in France) to the system and ushered in a large middle and upper-middle class. Soon the French Bourgeosie consolidated its power, and a new consumer class fueled the Industrial Revolution (which had started around 1770 in England).

Pundits say America is doing away with its middle class. This country has the largest one in history, and these events pose an enormous problem. We need a large middle class to purchase imports from China and services from our own country. If we shift the wealth to a larger, but still small upper class, and create a very large lower and working class, we will be, in some way, going back to a kind of Feudalism.

The other problem is that under true Feudalism the serfs were all completely uneducated. In America we have a huge amount of college-educated and skilled people who are being forced to settle for jobs beneath their skills and education, or, worse, to remain among the unemployed or underemployed. You can't maintain a large educated underclass without friction.

The Tyranny of Manners

Lots of smiling lately. What's going on with all the intense manners? I'm suspicious. In fairness, many people say we are becoming a ruder society of line-jumpers, road ragers, professional sports brawlers. True, yet, at the same time, I notice a politeness trend running concurrently. It is not appropriate to show anger or displeasure in this current. It is not good manners to go against the grain. Do your work. Enjoy all the consumer options. What have you got to complain about? Smile.


There is a scene in How Green was my Valley in which one of the sons of the Morgan family proclaims he will join the coal miners' union to fight injustice. His father chastens him for speaking when not spoken to; it's bad manners. The son, defiant, says good manners or not, he will support the union and move out if he has to. The father's breeding teaches no matter what the social circumstances are one should never defy authority with a show of impropriety.

The idea is that social codes are meant to keep us all civilized. Now what, you might ask, is my point? Is this man saying we should be rude to eachother? Reach over the table to retrieve the salt? I am not. There is a place for civility, and the reason for it is to show respect and kindness to others.

But aside from a necessary binder of respect, the enforcement of good personal manners is used for a far more incidious end. As papa Morgan showed in the movie, manners also keep us from speaking our minds, from speaking up against injustice, for taking on unjust authority. They are appropriated as a form of social control.

Two employees reflected the cowed among us. One has a professor who taught her that we should not complain about the lack of jobs in this economy, as "there are others less fortunate than you." In other words, shut up, and don't make trouble. The other was shocked to hear Michelle Obama wrote a college paper once condemning white America for its ways of keeping minorities in poverty. This employee thought that was wrong of her - in other words "manners before morals."

As antivirus software protects our computers from threats, threats to the extablished order are met with social "viruses," public disapproval, as the main trunk of society clamps down on anyone not with the program.

While manners are the ostensible target, I believe the real threat is those who dare to defy power. That means social and political power, but, in its basest form, it is economic power. That is the greatest threat to those in power.

Something far worse than lack of protest is going on. A loss of individualism is happening to us, the unsuspecting victims. We know what a repressed culture America created under The early Cold War, and its forms returned with the age of George W. Bush and Globalization. In favor of "good manners" many of us are forgoing creative, challenging, and, yes, confrontational thought. We are becoming a country of mesmerized consumers lulled into contentment by shopping networks rather than human networks.

I don't like what I see. It makes the Reagan era look radical. Afraid to speak up for fear of being impolite, most of us keep quiet, while our souls petrify to stone. I won't be intimidated. I won't take it lying down. And I'm not smiling.