Blueprints in Motion

The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and UFO, “the three great popular mysteries of our time,” according to folklorist Sam G. Riley’s 1976 account, have all shown vital signs of life this year. Nessie exhibited stealth blobsquatchery this past May via optically errant means.

Just last month the Bigfoot offered a memetically engineered appearance, riding on the trails of attention generated by the Patterson-Gimlin filmstrip anniversary gatherings. Bears with bad cases of mange were not available for comments.

“We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms,” proclaimed former Arizona governor Fife Symington last week. He and other ex-military types have called for a renewed pursuit of unidentified flying objects–in the name of national security. The UFOs have always been more culturally labyrinthine than their cryptid peers, this pre-emptive hype suggests an impressive spectacle just around the corner! One wonders if this antennae-equipped populace isn’t somehow involved with the FCC’s termination of analog television broadcasts in 2009. Perhaps this plug is being pulled to make airspace for cosmic televisionaries. A sustained outage echoing the late-summer suspension of broadcasts (and disbelief) of August 1924, “when Mars passed unusually close to the earth.” As technocultural historian Erik Davis describes in his essay Recording Angels, “civilian and military transmitters voluntarily shut down in order to leave the airwaves open for the Martians.” Plans for the future. Blueprints in motion.

A Message From the Fish

“Fish don’t know water exists [until] beached,” warned McLuhan in one of his memorable metaphoric quips in 1968’s War and Peace in the Global Village. Invisible ideologies and submerged sensibilities are redolent of an omnipresent media environment, one that imperceptibly conditions its denizens to particular worldviews and prescribed modes of interaction. McLuhan advised the pursuit of “counter,” or “anti” environments as a salve. These figurative other-worlds were necessitated to develop alterna-analyses of virtual spaces opened up by new technologies.

An enduring metaphor for the immaterial activities of the information age, but incomplete without consideration of the hard wear inflicted by hardware. In villages like Guiyu, north of Hong Kong, acres of e-waste (nonbiodegradable materials from high-tech electronics—including leaded CRTs and circuit-boards) are hazardously dismantled and burned up to retrieve precious metals within. Noxious dust and fumes are an immediate pollutant, toxins from circuitry seeping into Guiyu’s groundwater soon follow. “In the mid-1990s, not long after e-waste began arriving, the groundwater became undrinkable,” describes journalist Elizabeth Grossman in her recent book High Tech Trash.

Grossman continues, “The entire village must now have its drinking water trucked in because local supplies have been fouled up by high-tech trash. But given the expense of buying potable water, residents still wash dishes in contaminated groundwater. Children still play and swim in the toxic river water. River fish supply food for the local community.” (p.185)

A Message From the Fish: Invisible ideologies surrounding the production of obsolescence and elevated expectations of immaterial information space drown out truly anti-environmental effects of media on physical places (and the inhabitants therein)