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London Zoo: WIRED UK Column 04

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    I note my fourth WIRED UK column has been pushed to the web for your free reading "enjoyment." Here it is:



    I speak to you now as a man who survived the bird flu. I acquired the lethal, human-transmissible H5N1 from looking at a turkey at a farmer’s market in north Essex. For weeks, I battled the deadly disease, bedridden, close to perishing entirely. I could hear the Grim Reaper using the toilet and everything...

    • CommentAuthor/
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2009
     (6310.2)
    <blockquote> Understand that you live in a future quite literally beyond imagining even at the beginning of modern times. See the stage for how big and weird it really is, and let a little dramatic lighting into your life.</blockquote>Thanks for reminding me it's all one thing.

    I don't feel like I fully understand what you've said here...but, fuck it. I'll post this anyway.

    - Shane
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      CommentAuthorbjacques
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2009 edited
     (6310.3)
    Haha, I liked the bit that HM government will simply expect those with the Hiney Flu to die cleanly and with little fuss, as long as they're told how. The US government, at least the previous administration, only wanted cared about the bird flu panic as a way to grab whatever extraordinary powers they might have overlooked after September 11.

    It's already the future; just maybe not entirely the one you wanted. For me, having cut my teeth on Astounding and other sci-fi anthologies in grade school, the future is any year after 1980. I'm happy we didn't get the '70s dystopia of everybody having numbers instead of names and living in mile-high global condo complexes that cover whole continents, and having to report for disintegration when you turn 60 (or 30).

    We ignore great (and terrible) variety that appears every single day because we spend so much time mooning over high-concept goodies that don't really belong here anyway.

    "It's the future and shit still doesn't work!" - Spaceballs

    [edited for style, not necessarily for clarity.]
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    Wow. Who said the great miracles of our age have to be blared on speakers cranked up to 12 or draped in the rarest of silks? This column oddly made me feel good about the world today.

    But I'd still like to wish for practical preferably non-polluting space exploration and travel, though.
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    How To Die Cleanly And Not Bother Us In Case Of A Swine Flu Pandemic

    HAHAHAHA

    My last boss was obsessed with the Swine Flu Pandemic. To the point where he asked everyone to "make sure your emergency contact information is up to date" in case the plague came suddenly, in the night, and killed us all. And the phones.

    Well-intentioned bureaucrats are going to kill more people during a pandemic than plague rats.
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    Interesting that you're approaching this from the "we're already living in it" standpoint as opposed to the "where's my jet pack?!" attitude in Dok Sleepless.
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    Dogma's no fucking good to anyone. See everything from as many angles as possible.
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      CommentAuthorrickiep00h
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2009
     (6310.8)
    I think both are part of the same thought process. "Okay, here were are in the future. I don't have my jetpack, so now what do I do?" Moving past bitching and into constructive critical thinking.

    Incidentally, I think the crux of the whole thing is this:
    People try to make an ordinary thing of that. There’s a strong tendency to cast the present day, whenever that may be, as essentially banal and not what was promised. Stop looking for the loud giant stuff. The small marvels surround us.
    I don't really have coherent thoughts on this yet, more a bunch of disconnected strands, but that's the passage, in particular, that struck me.

    Oh, and "enjoyment" may be subjective, but I definitely "enjoyed" this installment.
    • CommentAuthoroga
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2009
     (6310.9)
    Swine flu is a bioweapon. This is a summary of the case for it.
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    The notion that the future is "bubbling up through the floorboards" makes more sense when you look at history. The mass of small changes, inventions and discoveries create groundswells far more often than some single huge MOMENT.

    In historiography, the history of history, you get advocates of the "great man" theory. Only Thomas Jefferson could make America happen, only Mussolini could lead Italy to fascism. Advocates see it as the triumph of the individual (surprising number of Randian libertarian historians out there) but it ignores the currents of history. The little wonderful, strange and world-shattering events are happening all around us. I like that idea very much more than waiting on a messiah or genius to save us all.
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      CommentAuthorLokiZero
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2009
     (6310.11)
    This made my head all swimmy. Good read to start the day with.
    • CommentAuthorBoga_
    • CommentTimeJul 6th 2009
     (6310.12)
    In historiography, the history of history, you get advocates of the "great man" theory.

    The "great man" reasoning is usually easier to implement, seeing as it dispenses with the overral context of the times which, if you're analysing history is often impossible to glean except for a basic impression of how things were (just look at our knwoledge of the Roman Empire for instance). Historiographically, it makes sense, even if it's extremely reductive.
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    Dogma's no fucking good to anyone. See everything from as many angles as possible."

    It used to anger me that so many people didn't understand the above mentioned truth.

    In my arrogant youth, I used to think those who embraced Dogma where plainly idiots.

    Nowadays, it has been my observation that those who embrace Dogma have an ulterior motive. ie: use it to gain money and/or power.

    Ironically, these same people are also very good at seeing all the angles.

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