Written by KEVIN KELLY. Published in The Technium.
I remember the smoke the most. That pungent smell permeating the camps of tribal people. Everything they touch is infused with the lingering perfume of smoke — their food, shelter, tools, and art. Everything. Even the skin of the youngest tribal child emits smokiness when they pass by. I can hold a memento from my visits decades later and still get a whiff of that primeval scent. Anywhere in the world, no matter the tribe, steady wafts of smoke drift in from the central fire. If things are done properly, the flame never goes out. It smolders to roast bits of meat, and its embers warm bodies at night. The fire’s ever-billowing clouds of smoke dry out sleeping mats overhead, preserve hanging strips of meat, and drive away bugs at night. Fire is a universal tool, good for so many things, and it leaves an indelible mark of smoke on a society with scant other technology.
Besides the smoke I remember the immediacy of experience that opens up when the mediation of technology is removed in a rough camp. Living close to the land as hunter-gatherers do, I got colder often, hotter more frequently, soaking wet a lot, bitten by insects faster, more synchronized to rhythm of the day and seasons. Time seemed abundant. I was shocked at how quickly I could dump the cloud of technology in my modern life for a cloud of smoke.
But I was only visiting. Living in a world without technology was a refreshing vacation, but the idea of spending my whole life there was, and is, unappealing. Like you, or almost anyone else with a job today, I could sell my car this morning and with the sale proceeds instantly buy a plane ticket to a remote point on earth in the afternoon. A string of very bumpy bus rides from the airport would take me to a drop-off where within a day or two of hiking I could settle in with a technologically simple tribe. I could choose a hundred sanctuaries of hunter-gatherer tribes that still quietly thrive all around the world. At first a visitor would be completely useless, but within three months even a novice could at least pull their own weight and survive. No electricity, no woven clothes, no money, no farm crops, no media of any type — only a handful of hand-made tools. Every adult living on earth today has the resources to relocate to such a world in less than 48 hours. But no one does.
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These peculiar illustrations are part of a sixteen-page pamphlet produced to put inside the postage-paid, business-reply envelopes that come with junk mail offers. Every envelope collected is stuffed with the pamphlet and mailed back to its original company: A manual to get a life.
Source: centennialsociety.com | via boingboing.net | Related: Join the Neolithic Revolution | Caravan Garden | Is it a bird? | Brain needs Nature
Every medium was new oneday. This point is beautifully illustrated in the movie Quest for fire (La Guerre de feu by Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1981), a must-see for Next Nature explorers.
This fascinating movie is set in paleolithic Europe, 80,000 years ago, its plot surrounding the struggle for control of fire by early humans. Interestingly, the story is situated at the moment in time man was able to control fire, however, he was not able to make it. Fire was more or less ‘born’. How far away this seems from our times when the majority of things we make, are out of control.
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As technology evolves, people are more and more depending on it to function properly. But the nature of technology is that it needs networks, sources, software, batteries and signal. Once these conditions fail, horror scenarios unfold for those who depend…
Supercut video by fourfour.typepad.com | Related: Cellphone Minutes, the Next Currency, Crackberry Addicts, Handset gets taken to the grave.
Today’s technology advances so rapidly that people are often unable to update their media schemas in time and as a result are left cluelessly in awe of it all. Mike Thompson’s Wifi dowsing rod aims to work against this: By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on ancient technology, the user should immediately feel at home with the device.
Although perhaps impractical and anecdotal, the Wifi dowsing rod is an intriguing attempt of using ‘magic’ as a construct to cope with the technological complexity accumulating around us. A great gift for your grand-grand-parents.
Related: Magical interaction, Your grand-grand-grand-parents new media, Dandella shows you the way, Voodoo communication device.
The human environmental impact on our planet is hardly underestimated nowadays. Scientist agree humans are to blame for Global Warming – some are already dreaming up scenario’s of geo-engineering to undo the damage. Untouched old nature is almost nowhere to be found anymore besides perhaps some small areas on the South pole, in the deep sea or if one looks up at the stars – although the brighter ones may well be satellites. “We were here”, is written all over. So when did the writing begin? Much earlier than thought.
According to the common perception the human impact on the environment is fairly recent and thought to have started in concert with the 19th centuries industrial revolution. Presumably, in earlier times humans lived in harmony with their environment. That popular romantic view however, is increasingly being challenged.
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DNA related tools, once expensive and restricted to research and crime labs, are rapidly becoming affordable. Like GPS – once a high-tech wonder now turned into a everyday gadget – simple DNA sequencing may soon be available to almost everyone.
Undoubtedly DNA related applications will transform society as we know it: Synthetic pets, Amateur food testing, Faked DNA evidence, Genetic mapping, Genetic social networks, DNA as information storage, HumanDNA trees, Hyper Fruit… the applications are mind bubbling and seemingly infinite.
Designer Niko Vegt, master student at the Next Nature theme, has been working on an imaginary map of the DNA world. Unlike a regular map, which represents a physical territory, the DNA World map represents a conceptual territory of DNA related applications and developments. Its main continents are Science, Medical, Heath, Personal, Social, Justice and Environment – all surrounded by an ocean of Ethics.
Browse a demo version of the map and let us know what you think. Read the rest of this entry »
Rock 2007. Peculiar image of the week by Hans Wilschut. Made in Shanghai. If you know more about the orgins of the building: let us know.
Thanks to Vivid Gallery, Rotterdam, NL.
This video shows the first beta version of TwittARound – an augmented reality Twitter viewer on the iPhone 3Gs. It shows live tweets around your location on the horizon. Because of the video see-through effect you see where the tweet comes from and how far away it is.
The app does something similar as layar(.com) — launched in Amsterdam (NL) June 17th –, a phone interface that puts a content layer over the phone camera’s videoscreen to locate the nearest toilet, bar, supermarket, bank and other search categories.
Though we still trust our natural eyes and ears; with tools like these, we have but to reach in our pockets to look ahead and see what is coming. The apps are not predicting the future yet, but I am pretty sure we will have to get back on that soon.
via: i.document.m05.de (thanks @droombos) | Related: On the Road | Avatar Machine
Nice collages on city life by the artist Peter Funch.
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