Links

Framing collapse

ranprieur.com

September 30

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When it comes to climate change and collapse, I think it’s just that hard crashes (for Americans) will happen in poor states and far-flung places. For example, whole communities in Louisiana are still recovering from hurricanes in the past few years and it’s not big news. Homes are being abandoned or lived in despite not passing inspection. I think that sort of thing will become more frequent, and for the people in those places it will be a hard crash. They’ll have to pick up and move.

I predict that if we don’t radically reorganize in the US then a day will come when FEMA is largely incapable of responding to, say, a Fort Myers/Hurricane Ian event. I say that based on the fact that billion-dollar disasters have been on the rise. At some point, we won’t be able cover a new one because we’re still responding to the last one. The fallout will always be unequal, with rich people fleeing ahead and poor people being managed in (eventually) UN Disaster Camps.

This is my new way of framing collapse: 1) Dumb history will blame it on the biggest most obvious thing, just like the fall of Rome is blamed on barbarians. 2) Smart history will understand that a robust system could have dealt with that thing, but that the system was already declining for many complex reasons. 3) The propaganda of collapsing systems will continue to insist that they’re strong, while basing that statement on a decreasing range of regions and people.

Hypercard in the World

dynamicland.org

A key point here is that there is no longer code in a “filesystem”, no Finder windows, no directories to “ls”. All code and data is attached to spatially-located objects, which you can read casually by walking by and looking, and edit by laser-pointing while in the Inspector.

I was able to create this program by thinking about it as code attached to a physical object, operating on a physical object, instead of virtual files in a virtual filesystem drawing to a virtual window.

This is the sort of research that I’d like to see more of. Who else is working in this space?