Russell Davies

Notes for a talk - Growing Up Fast On Planet Earth

I'm doing a talk in a few weeks. The kind I haven't done for ages. In front of people. And it requires some ideas. New ideas. Ideas that aren't about how to divide your presentation into three.

As per usual I have a title, a vague idea of territory and a bunch of notes and links. But no idea how they all go together. If, indeed, they do.

So I thought I'd start by sticking them no here, see if that helps. It often does.

There are these bits from Cory Doctorow's interview with Kim Stanley Robinson in Fatherly magazine:

Cory Doctorow: Both The High Sierra and The Ministry for the Future are about the climate emergency and nature. What would you say to kids about nature and the emergency?

Kim Stanley Robinson: You can tell kids, “50% of the DNA inside your body is not human DNA.” You yourself are a forest. You are an amazing collaboration between literally millions of individuals and thousands of species. That’s so strange that it might take some getting used to, but it's good to know the truth, and it is true.

If you can understand all that, you might think, “Well, that’s that swamp, that there aren’t very many swamps left. That hill that is wild at the edge of town, that’s part of my body. If we tear it apart, we're tearing apart, like my foot, and then I’m harmed.”

The sense of connection between our bodies and our world needs to be enhanced — especially for modern kids who are very often Internet-ed, looking at their screens. Screens are all very well, that urge to communicate. But the planet around you, the landscape, is part of your body that needs to stay healthy. I would start with that and go on from there.

CD: I’m thinking of my own kid. She’s 14 now. She's been locked indoors because of the pandemic, and it’s become a habit. She wants to be on screens with her friends in her bedroom with the door closed. The great outdoors are a little scary and uncomfortable for her. How can a parent approach the High Sierras or other wild places?

KSR: Scale the trip to the strength of the person you’re taking so that they don’t experience it as suffering and renunciation — allow them to be comfortable. At that age, they’ll actually be quite strong. Even if they sit all day, every day, they will have native strengths that will come into play.

I started taking my kids up into the Sierra when they were 2 and carried them a lot of the way. If you have kids that young, carry them and let them trip around the campsites but not have to get into a mode of suffering, because then they won’t like it the rest of their lives.

CD: The High Sierra is a book about how the Sierras changed your life, how you went up and never came down. How did it change your life?

KSR: It’s not straightforward. I keep a garden. I grow vegetables and, therefore, I live in fear because I know that we’re not even in control of our food supplies.

I began working outdoors. I put up a tarp, so I had shade on my laptop. The first time it rained, the tarp kept the rain off. All of my novels in the last 16 years have been written 100% outside.

The heat is hard, but the cold is not, and you can work in the rain too, and it’s quite glorious. For three or four novels in a row, my last day of work coincided with bizarre storms, and I was thinking that it was nature’s way of going out with a flourish.

I came home and I realized that it’s best to spend more time outdoors than we do. There’s a lot of people who know it’s fun to be outdoors because they’re carpenters and they’re outdoors all the time, and they like it. Farmers too. But writers, not so much. So a garden, working outdoors and then being an activist for environmentalist causes, greening everything in my life and my political aspirations of looking for what would be best for the biosphere.

Aldo Leopold said, “What's good is what’s good for the land.” It’s a deep moral orientation — like a compass north — but the land, the biosphere, goes from the bottom of the ocean as high in the air as living things. Think about the land not as just dead mineral sand but as soil. It’s alive. So “what's good is what’s good for the land” becomes a rubric you can follow all over the place.

 

 

Get em while they're short

Anne's latest collection of tiny, tiny fiction is available in the shop. 

The heads of the Harwich Redoubt

Devolution

This post is self-care. I am helping myself come to terms with the fact that 'evolve' has devolved. Most of the time, in regular language, it just means change. It's just fancy talk for change.

I used to be cross about this. I have to let that go. It's what happens. Language evolves.

Backseat AI

James blogs a lovely thought about AI assistants for craft tasks. It reminded me of the story "Under the Northern Lights" by Charlotte M. Ray from this SolarPunk anthology. There are pocket-AIs in this world, they advise on things like how to build a craft and what materials and supplies you might need for a trip.

"We spent the next day following her AI’s directions in breaking apart the camper to dry it all out. It guided us in a childlike, cartoonish voice, which cracked me up every time I heard it. Krista looked a little embarrassed when I asked about it, but to me, it felt like we were breaking new ground. I knew something private about her now, something I got the feeling no one else knew. “I can change it into something more serious if you want,” she said, then continued before I had a chance to reply. “I figured being alone in a self-built blimp that I hadn’t tested for long flights yet was a little risky, so I wanted the AI to sound the opposite of serious. You know?”

James suggests using trackback for me to tell him about this. Does that still work? If it does I no longer know how to do it. If someone sees James will they tell him? But don't make a special trip.

Energy transition norms: charger feelings

When will those people leave so we can charge? Why are they just sitting in their car? They could at least just wonder around. How long have they been charging? Should we ask them how long they'll be? That's quite a big car, they might be here for hours. I wonder if we should just head to the next one. There might be a queue there too. Obvs. Bird in the hand. Bird in the hand is better. At least we know it works. They're using it so it must work. Unless they're using the last electricity. It doesn't work like that, I know it doesn't work like that. How long have we been waiting now? Maybe we can both plug in at the same time, there are two chargers after all. That never works though does it? But no one ever tells you about that. And it's not clear if that's just a sometimes thing or an always thing. It'd just be embarrassing to plug in if everyone knows it's not going to work. And what if it stopped them charging? That would also be embarrassing. And possibly worse. People do get angry about this stuff. Either angry or much to keen to talk about it. How long have we been waiting now?

 

 

Energy transition norms - window charging

Energy transition norms - fully charged

Went to Fully Charged Live the other weekend. There was much to notice. But the most immediate and obvious thing was that everything was green and blue. Dozens and dozens of exhibitors and stalls and they were overwhelmingly green and blue. One red one, one yellow one, one purple one. (Good job Ripple). But otherwise - green and blue. (Like an idiot I have very few photos)

This, to me, feels like a sign of how early in the development of these markets we are. Green and blue is everyone's first idea. They've all chosen their colours and built their brands without regard to anyone else. They've done the obvious first thing. Competition will change this.

Energy transition norms - electric forecourt

Back at the dawn of techno anthropology Jan Chipchase used to post loads of photos of 'norms'. It was great. He was documenting the emergence of all sorts of new behaviour.

And I think 'norms' a lot at the moment, especially when I see things to do with the energy transition. So I thought I'd try and document them. (And by 'document them' I mean 'stick them on the blog')

I visited Gridserve's electric forecourt at the weekend and charged the car. It was fine. Which is massive praise for something half-way between a utility and a service station. Clean, efficient, functional. It can't really be better than that.

You can tell we're at the beginning of something because everything is about 'electricity'. It's the central point, the thing all the language and puns and ideas are centred on. And, of course, that's a temporary thing. Very soon the electricity will not be the point.

Everything is blue and green. Of course. Grass walls. Fake grass walls.

We are going to have to understand kWs. Not necessarily literally but in the folk sense that we understand a gallon (not as a quantity but as a thing that you pay for) or like SMLXL.

Baby steps

I'm remembering the Interesting experience. I decide to do it. I get excited. I book the venue, I stick it on the blog. Then I get all anxious because I've got to organise a conference. (To the extent that sometimes I just cancel it, as old-timers might remember).

Then I remember that the way to do this is to take baby steps. Just do the next thing. So I've put some tickets on sale. And on the off-chance that they're popular I'm starting by just telling you lot: the RSS massive. Chances are, if you're reading this in a feedreader, you don't need me to tell you what Interesting is all about. So, if you'd like to come, please get yourself a ticket...