September 14, 2018

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Culture 🏛️ | Permanently Moved 🔊

Episode 23

For some reason this week i’m grumpy about the new Apple phones, Angry about action figures, call a man who drives a bulldozer a land artist and describe cut throat razor shaving as exhilarating and dangerous.

The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

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A Profligate Waste

 I tweeted the other day that the amount of human energy and attention given to consumerism and especially tech product cycles is quite frankly a profligate waste of physical and mental resources. In case you didn’t know, Apple have got some new phones out this week. Do you really care? No, I thought not.

Do you need a new phone? Probably not. Do you need an Apple Watch at all? Probably not. In the 10 years that they’ve been out, these items, these tools, have gone from new and amazing bits of technology To run of the mill consumer items. I don’t know about you, but I just really don’t see the point in a live blog to a product announcement.

I’m not sure if Russell and Hobbes do live blogs for their new toasters. You know, the consumerist tech industry is weird. That is, of course, to say that I haven’t done my time in front of the live blogs or watching live stream tech product announcements. But in 2018, I just no longer see the point, and the fact that there’s even a new phone at all on a yearly or 18 monthly upgrade cycle just makes me angry.

In 2015, the sci fi writer and journalist Tim Morn wrote a piece for the BBC. Called, The Dystopian Lake Filled by the World’s Tech Lust. I highly recommend you read it if you haven’t read it already, and it will be linked in the description. In that article, he has a line, quote, Once we made watches with minerals mined from the earth and treated them like precious heirlooms.

Now we use even rarer minerals, and we’ll want to upgrade them yearly. Technology companies continue to urge us to upgrade, to buy the newest tablet or phone. But I cannot forget that it all begins in a place like Baotou, and a terrible toxic lake that stretches to the horizon. I’ve also recently watched a documentary called The Toys That Made Us.

There’s two seasons on Netflix, and I highly recommend watching them if you have an account. But one of the things that came to me while I was watching it is that none of the people involved in the 80s toy industry show any remorse for filling our planet full of utter shit. And in fact, while watching it, I felt remorse for all the POTF Star Wars toys that I collected as a teenager.

Why, why, why? Plastic. Everywhere. I also recently watched a documentary about Britain’s rubbish dumps, and it was amazing. There’s a guy that pushes the rubbish around in a JCB bulldozer, all day, every day. He spreads and sculpts the rubbish to make sure that there aren’t buildups of methane on the surface that might explode during the operation of the site.

His longer term task, a task that he’s had for 20 years, is to sculpt the rubbish to look like the surrounding hills around the rubbish dump. I was thinking that he is quite possibly one of the most influential land artists there is living and working in Britain today. And as part of the show, they do an archaeological dig on a rubbish dump from the 80s.

It was on the BBC. I highly recommend you watch it if you can. For my part, As I’ve grown into a 30 something adult, I’ve tried to reduce my consumption of plastic crap, and to be honest, some of my clothes are quite shabby, but perfectly serviceable. I’ve saved up to buy things that are more expensive, but I know can be maintained, rather than going for the cheaper version that is disposable.

Shaving with a cut throat razor instead of a Mac 3 thing is one example. It’s exhilarating. Dangerous, but you get used to it after a while. Give up soap, shampoo, and body wash, and only use it for cleaning your hands for food preparation. After a while, your hair is less greasy and far more natural, and you don’t ever have to think about it again.

I haven’t done for eight years now. This has been Permanently Moved, a podcast in 301 seconds.