Brighton Diversity map

Think I'm going to need smaller icons...


View Clone Brighton in a larger map

Any I've missed? It's been a while since I've updated it, but had to add the new Starbucks on St James' Street.

Turning Pictures into Words in Other Places

Recently, I've fallen into the dangerous trap of writing words that don't actually control any kind of machinery. Instead, they're like I've entrapped thoughts about photography and forced them to perform in a traveling circus.

My first article for HolgaBlog, your premiere source for everything plastic-camera, is now up and readable. It was originally called "The Holga 120 WPC and me", but now reflects the idea of a review more. I enjoyed writing it, re-writing it, and writing it again, and can't wait to write more.

...including, at some point, an introduction to my world of photography. In the meantime, however, I wrote a version for a competition over at Four Corners Dark. For those who missed it, here's my why-lomo story.

But I've been here all along...

Link: The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies at Reality Sandwich

By: Charles Eisenstein

Quote: "We have all the technology and all the knowledge we need to live in beautiful harmony with each other and the planet. What we need is different collective choices. Choices arise from perceptions, perceptions arise from interpretations or stories, and stories are built of words, of symbols. Today, words have lost their power and our society's stories have seemingly taken on a life of their own..."

Thoughts: The link between language and action is a very good one - we live in a time when politics is ruled by soundbites and headlines, but nobody feels that any real decision are being made, or at least not in any meaningful way. A single vote is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of a collective-choice symbol - one vote to symbolise all that you believe. One vote to symbolise your hopes, fears and dreams about the future.

We have more information at our fingertips than ever before. But is this just more symbols, more noise? If so, are these symbols detached from "reality" because this noise replaces "reality" as the landscape against which things are judged? If the landscape is noise, then the evolution must be towards attention, towards difference, towards novelty. And then, where is "real"?

I have been thinking recently that while some power comes from being Loud, ultimately more power comes from Silence. Loudness, attention, novelty - these all work, so long as nobody else is louder than you. But silence... Silence re-connects us with the "real" maybe. Without words, there is no persuasion, only observation. There is truth, and beauty, and strangeness.

Perhaps that's why this blog has been so quiet recently.

"And they all lived happily for the rest of the weekend..."

Are you sitting comfortably? Ryan Gilbery raises the issue of frightening children in the Guardian today - that is, frightening as something to do, not being frightened of the little kinder. He refers to new film Coraline (which I'm very much looking forward to seeing), as well as older - and still much-loved, I hope - haunts such as the Brothers Grimm and Roald Dahl.

I think there are actually two issues going on here, although it's easy to confuse them.

First, there's the issue of scaring kids - or, at least, introducing gore to our kids. Let's get one thing straight - I was/am a fanatical Dahl fan, as well as of any work that uses the macabre and disturbing to make us flinch as we read or watch. There is something comforting in such creations, the thought of something challenging us to run away and be sick with the thought of it, but our bravado in coming face to face with our beating heart, and sticking with it.

These dark tales are not, as some would have, inspiration to repeat the violence/terror/splurge guns, but a warning, cold-hearted and shrill, against the evil that lurks out there in the world and, more sinisterly, within all of us. They are healthy fear. They are therapy. They are looking glasses clearer than any newspaper article.

Second though, is what "lessons" we are left with at the end of the day. Gilbey delves into this in several paragraphs - the idea of changing the ending, whether it is away from a pair of aunts being squashed by a giant peach, from a boy stuck in a mouse's body, or from a wolf being beheaded and gutted by a testosterone-crazed woodcutter.

The Happy Ending, it must be said, is a curse on a modern society full of those who think the world can be improved by simply changing the stories we tell. Do Happy Endings give us hope? Do they put us at ease? Or do they make us happy to indulge in more brainless sequels?

No. I claim dramatically that the Happy Ending is nothing but a false lure, a mirror world in which we come to expect good things to be the End of All. Yes, I was freaked out a little by the ending of the Witches (the book, not the film) - but only because I was expecting everything to return - to normal.

But the Witches, along with another favourite, 1984, deals the death blow to utopia. And in doing so, both of these force us to confront the thing we truly fear - Consequences. A Happy Ending so often simply ignores all the action that has made the tale so exciting. A dream, a game, a loophole in time. "Happily ever after" is sneaky code for "and they never learned".

Stories contain a series of events. Events change us. We are not who we were at the beginning of story, and nor we can never go back to the beginning. Things happen. People die. Anger rages.

People survive. People get married. Animals get chopped up.

We deal with it.

Rushkoff on Decentralised Money

Over at Reality Sandwich, Douglas Rushkoff has a piece on new/alt money in the networked age. I'm still waiting for that RFC'd, open-source, cypherpunk-fueled cryptocash to come along to make electro-money trustable and usable, but in the meantime it's great to see the idea of alt econony, such as the Southampton Pound idea floating around.

Here's a small selection of quotes from Rushkoff's article that really intrigue me:

...a waning monarchy was looking for ways to preserve its power in the face of a rising merchant class. ...

They began to write laws that favored their chartered companies, such as those preventing inhabitants of colonies from creating any value for themselves; colonists had to ship raw resources back to the mother country, where they were processed into clothes or other finished goods. ...

Local currencies were earned -- not borrowed -- into existence. They reflected the abundance of the season's grain, and did not depend on artificial scarcity for their value.

Two things intrigue me about the future of alt-ec, which I have probably mentioned before:

1. The idea that I can actually remotely hold local currency, i.e. in the same way that people hold baskets of Sterling, Euros, Dollars, etc, could I take payment in Lewes Pounds and then (assuming the LP was de-pegged from the GB pound), convert that into Euros bypassing Sterling, at a later date? Could I be paid in Tesco vouchers? How about completed or semi-completed loyalty cards for coffee shops?

2. The idea of money backed by personal reputation, just as we have buyer and seller ratings and reputations on ebay, et al. Is money worth more if the two parties involved in a transaction trust each other more?

Alas, I'm not sure the social and educational mechanisms are in place for this to happen on a wider scale just yet. My hope is that more networking will lead to a re-skilling of the populace, a re-discovery of local value and hence local economies, and then we might see efforts to combine and amalgamate these micro-economies. But I guess I have every reason to be optimistic about it...