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CANOPY

Most of my writing starts with something real.

A policy. A system. A technology. A way of talking about “progress” that sounds reasonable on the surface until you sit with it for a while. My blog has been where I work through those things in nonfiction.

But there’s a limit to that approach.

Nonfiction has to stay tethered to what can be verified. Fiction doesn’t. Fiction lets you follow a line of thinking to where it might lead without stopping to prove every step along the way. That difference is why this book exists, from watching the world closely and wanting a format that allowed me to ask: where could this lead?

CANOPY is a short collection of four interconnected speculative stories set in a near future that isn’t dramatic or apocalyptic, just recognizable. Systems function, decisions are made, and people adjust, consciously or not.

If you’ve read my nonfiction, you’ll recognize the concerns. Fiction simply gave me room to push them further.

I’ll be donating copies to local libraries and sharing a few with people who’ve influenced my thinking over the years.

CANOPY is now available for preorder through independent bookstores including Powell’s and Magers & Quinn, and through other retailers nationwide.

Official release: March 15th. 

ISBN: 9798218933623

[Powell’s Books]

[Magers & Quinn]

© 2026 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

Posted on by The Rumination Compilation

When Trees Bear Witness

Give it some time, the trees will start listening to you. A device once used only to track growth rates is now the seed of something else, a quiet grafting of the forest into the cloud. 

Dendrometers (used to measure the growth of trees and other plants by monitoring changes in diameter) have gotten a recent boost in applicability for more than just forest management teams. Thus far, they’ve allowed forest managers to cut down site visits needed to gather data on tree growth and carbon capture rates, but because of a recent innovation, much more is possible and I want to paint a picture for you. 

As per usual, what begins as a gesture to efficiency, a nod to preservation, may warp into something far more insidious.

The company Treemetrics, working alongside the European Space Agency, created sensors that link through wide-area networks and satellites, feeding streams of data into a platform called Forest HQ. If your tree is growing, Forest HQ knows. The forest becomes an extension of the cloud, feeding numbers related to diameter growth, height, location—change of all sorts. So, the forest is no longer a place. It is a feed. The company calls this project the Internet of Trees.

The logic is seductive: better measurement equals better care. Carbon accounting strengthens climate response. Carbon credits for the cap-and-trade markets gain more authenticity. But inside that necessity lies a governance architecture: every tree, instrumented; every growth curve, visible; every beat of the forest, rearranged as data. A swarm of data waiting to be further monetized or weaponized—unfortunately, humans do one or the other. Often both. 

I know what I will soon describe may seem altogether far fetched, but it does not take much imagination to see the scope widen in the way I expect given the right amount of time.

The slope is not hard to imagine. Already, forests are wired with listening devices meant to detect chainsaws, trucks and any other prohibited criteria. Artificial intelligence runs on-site, flagging the sounds of illegal logging before they reach the cloud. It is admittedly clever, even noble. But anything involving criminalization soon collapses into categories: nuance is stripped, anomalies are flagged, people are reduced to signals. 

We’ve seen this arc before. The Global Positioning System was once sold as a gift for navigation: finding your way home, never getting lost. Now it’s the backbone of precision strikes and geofencing. Closed-circuit television cameras were rolled out for “public safety.” Now they’re stitched together in networks that can track a face across an entire city and can even recognize your gait amongst a crowd. Social media began as a way to connect with friends and now it’s a sprawling apparatus of profiling, targeted persuasion and behavioral nudging.

Each began as benevolent. Each hardened into control.

For a good number of technologies, the arc of applicability tends to bend toward something darker. Monetized until meaningless or weaponized against anyone not in control of the weapon. 

What begins as protection of ecology can just as easily become the monitoring of people. A hiker’s footsteps, a group of protestor’s chants; any human activity can be parsed as anomaly, pinged to headquarters. With the right contracts, the forest becomes surveillance infrastructure, camouflaged in green.

What if Forest HQ evolves from tracking growth to performing guard duty? What if the forest ceases to be wild and becomes a grid, mapping bodies as much as making bark? 

Conveniently, this year a viral post showcased a new service from XFinity that uses WiFi signals to detect motion in your home, “without relying on sensors or cameras.” The technology has existed for years, but only now is it being pitched as household convenience. Tracking once reserved for homes and offices will soon extend to the wilderness.

You can opt into this service, which routers and WiFi connected objects around you don’t give the option to opt out?

This shift matters not only technologically but culturally. What happens when forests are no longer trusted as wild refuges, but feared as watchtowers? What happens to the human imagination when trees are not symbols of mystery or sanctuary, but extensions of a monitoring state? Jokes about birds not being real will lose their humor. Children will hesitate or outright refuse to climb a tree.

Surveillance always arrives dressed as care. It comes with drones, dashboards and dragnet data streams in the name of stewardship and security. But benevolence, left unexamined, can harden into coercion. The trees will stop watching silently; they start reflecting, transmitting, bearing witness.

And so the question lingers: at what point does monitoring, however noble its pitch, become policing? 

Throughout our history, the wild was once where we went to disappear. Now it has the potential to be where we are found most easily. 

For more reading on how technological advancement affects our interaction with nature and cultivated products, see The Products of a New Environment.

© 2025 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

Posted on by The Rumination Compilation

The Human Appetite for Metals and the Cost Incurred

Metals are more than just commodities, they exist as the scaffolding of corporate and societal appetite itself. Central banks hoard gold, nations fight over lithium and entire industries rise or fall depending on nickel supply chains. Upon their discovery and recognition as more than something in the earth, they had been survival tools, currencies, monuments, weapons, talismans et cetera; now they have become “green” lifelines. To follow metals through history is to trace how human desire, how our appetites, change shape but never lessen in weight and how we’ve entwined ourselves with them eternally.

The Hunger that Shapes Worlds

From the first hammered copper tool to the record bulk purchases of gold by central banks these last two years, human history has been driven by a desire involving metal.
While the metals we’ve wrought don’t hold intrinsic power, they ultimately reflect what societies hunger for: security, wealth, prestige, immortality. Each era and advancement of our metal use fulfilled this multifaceted appetite in a new way, yet each fulfillment left depletion, waste or disillusionment in its wake. While we improved our craftsmanship, mining and smelting, our satiation of the appetites didn’t improve, only the appetite itself. This pattern repeats across millennia with limited deviation: desire drives extraction from the earth, extraction feeds consumption and all that’s left is something that might shine for a while; altogether, only certainly can we say a hole in the ground is what remains. Trace this thread and you trace humanity itself: the mines we’ve riddled the earth with are the greatest testament to our appetite for more.

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” — Epictetus

Copper, Bronze and the Weight of Survival

Copper and bronze emerged from necessity: sharper tools, stronger weapons, more productive farms, each proper meals to satiate the hunger our ancestors had for change and growth. Iron scaled our early appetite of secured growth, making war easier to wage and ultimately creating the first empires that stretched across continents. Empires rose on metal ripped from the very grounds they claimed; the lands our ancestors desired enough to kill for were in like kind stripped of resources as quickly as they were gazed upon. This hunger for dominance and security demanded such action and accompanied an unfounded belief that the two metals guaranteed the fulfillment of these desires as they unlocked new weapons and tools of agriculture.
Thus was the advent of a simple truth: the more we consume to secure ourselves, the faster the world erodes around us. From Bronze Age city-states to Roman legions, metals carried both civilization and destruction, a paradox that echoes in every era of human ambition.

“If you would conquer the world, first conquer yourself.” — Seneca

Coins and the Illusion of Security

When appetite shifted from survival to wealth, metals became symbols, not tools. Gold and silver promised stability, denoted status, solidified lines between beggar and chooser and consolidated power. Primarily power, that for the first time, that could be exerted without force yet had the capacity to create force by way of financing military might.
But power built on trust must always outrun the hunger it feeds, otherwise the hunger leads to cannibalism. Coins became less about the weight of their metal and more about the faith they carried. Once rulers discovered that stamped images and state decree could anchor belief as firmly as silver itself, debasement was inevitable. Rome did not hollow its coins and diminish the purity of them because it lacked imagination, but because its appetite for expansion exceeded its mines and temporarily staved off their people from eating the nation from the inside. Soldiers had to be paid, wars had to be financed and marble cities had to rise, so silver content shrank as promises swelled. Swelled until the money men figured out the greatest trick of all time, printing paper called money. Fiat currency was less of an invention than it was a confession: the earth could no longer yield enough metal to sustain the ambitions placed upon it. By detaching paper from gold and silver, states learned to mint appetite itself. Debt became the hidden ore of civilization, mined not from the ground but from tomorrow’s labor. Fractional reserve banking enshrined the process, multiplying desire by lending what did not yet exist.
Modern economies are thus propped up on this cycle: appetite creating credit, credit enabling appetite, each pretending to be backed by something more tangible than belief. Each coin, each bill, each ledger entry is a mirror of our urge to claim security and our long winded attempt at quantifying the appetite that drives it all. Metals, once tangible bastions of strength, became metaphors for ambition. Even in the process of detaching mass finance from metals, states opted to use nickel, which resembles silver to the untrained eye, instead of silver in monetary supply to convince the masses the metals were still around, that their appetite for more would still be met.
Rome’s problem was never the weight of its silver, but the weight of its hunger. The more it acquired, the more it needed; the more it consumed, the less it could restrain itself. Coins lost their substance because restraint lost its place; this Roman problem still exists and we inherited it.

“The things we love tell us what we are.” — Thomas Aquinas

Monuments of Desire and Ambition

Identity and legacy find their most visible expression in monuments, statues and icons. Gold leaf in Notre-Dame, copper on the Statue of Liberty, the iron of the Eiffel Tower: these are metals forged not to plow fields or mint coins, not for security or domination. Our use of metal had already addressed these things to a sufficient degree and the appetite we share shifted again: awe, impress and endure. The innumerable golden crosses, icons, and talismans scattered across the globe likewise functioned as declarations: this land is consecrated, this people belong to this god, this ruler has favor beyond the mortal, this symbol is synonymous with truth. Monuments are depictions of our craving to be remembered, to assert permanence in a world that refuses to grant it.
Yet permanence is the grandest illusion. Cathedrals burn, towers rust, statues are toppled and smelted into new emblems of power and declaration. The appetite then is less about survival or wealth than it is the craving for recognition, identity and symbolic immortality. We spend metal as though it could buy eternity and ignore the debt it exacts from the earth and ourselves, for the unrestrained appetite is truly a debt cycle in essence, potentially the worst there is. That our appetite allows us to stomach the price for any level of satiation, great or small, reveals its magnitude more than any monument ever could. Nothing can compare.

“All the works of mortals are destined to perish; only desire itself is endless.” — Seneca

Steel, Aluminum and the Facade of Progress

Industrialization morphed the appetite endurance and inspiration into speed, mass production and convenience. Steel carved railroads and skyscrapers; aluminum and nickel flowed into aircraft, appliances and war machines. Metals no longer just secured empires, they manufactured an entirely new pace of life. Admittedly, the first time we as a species realized copper and bronze availed sedentary societies and seasonal repetition, this was too the case but the comparison is pale and dismisses the state of leisure. Convenience became its own form of conquest, and with it, our appetite found a new dimension: the craving for effortlessness and essentially endless rest.
The machines we built did not merely serve us; they reshaped us. Factories and assembly lines gave rise to gadgets that promised ease but also ensnared attention. The circuits of modernity (televisions, smartphones, computers) are only the latest refinements of the same metallic hunger. Appetite, once satisfied by empire or monument, now found sustenance in the pocket and the screen. Even to the point of mental impact, the hunger for expedited content, contentment and contact has become so pervasive it is nearing levels of cannibalism at it obviously eats away at society in many ways today.
So, the gleam of progress is still two-sided as an ancient coin. On the obverse, we depict advancement, connectedness unparalleled and growth. On the reverse, beneath the polished facades lay pollution, gutted mines, battlefields littered with steel and aluminum and economies mortgaged and over-leveraged to feed the machinery our appetites demand. Thus, the hunger persists.

“Men have become the tools of their tools.” — Henry David Thoreau

Lithium Dreams and the Morality of Metals

The modern appetite, having already tasted of security, self-expression, leisure and longevity, now drapes itself in morality. Lithium, cobalt and silver (among other metals) are cast as instruments of redemption, promising a “green” future both for ourselves and for the planet. For the first time in history, our appetite presents itself not as selfish consumption but as virtuous stewardship. Yet what does stewardship mean when it is measured in gigafactories, strip mines and subsidies? What does it mean when mass adoptions of green tech demands mining at levels exceeding the norm?
Beneath this moral cloak lies the familiar cycle, only more globalized and more disguised. Child labor in cobalt mines, rivers poisoned in lithium basins, profits absorbed by the very manufacturers and kickback-enriched policymakers who prescribe these “solutions” are the overlooked and ignored foundation of our new ethics. We consume now not only for comfort or survival but for the absolution of guilt. The battery, the solar panel, the wind turbine all carry a subtext: I am not to blame.
But appetite, even moralized, does not change its nature. The so-called green revolution risks repeating history at high speed with a twist: appetite creating carbon credits to excuse pollution, carbon credits enabling appetite, over and over. So still, the hunger intensifies. Stewardship itself becomes a performance, one whose costs are obscured by urgency, by moral pressure and by our own willingness to believe that appetite can finally be reconciled with virtue and carbon credit scores. That the appetite won’t eventually envelop the planets and stars we’ve looked to throughout the ages. But it will. There’s only so much metal on this earth and only so many lands to rip apart.

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” — Epictetus

The Tarnish of Tomorrow

Metals endure. They rust, they corrode, they are melted down and reshaped, but they do not vanish. So too with our appetite. Truly, are you full? Copper, bronze, silver, steel, lithium—each metal has been refashioned by successive generations and each time it has carried the same urge: to secure, to impress, to progress. This appetite has never rested; it has only found new vessels, new tastes, new forms of fulfillment.
Tomorrow, our mining may stretch beyond the Earth itself. Whether it be asteroids, moons, or distant planets, our appetite will follow the ore, carrying the same patterns we have engraved into metal for millennia: desire fueling extraction, extraction sustaining consumption, the consequences deferred or displaced. The residues of our ambition (scrap, debt, pollution, human toil and environmental destruction) will travel with us, folded into the architecture of other worlds.
If we cannot imagine restraint now, the cycle will repeat, not just on Earth but wherever we take our hunger. Metals will endure. Appetite will endure. Surely, the record of our desires, written in ore and dust alike, will be the first legacy we leave among the stars.

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” — Seneca

Understanding the human appetite for metals echoes the points in An Ounce of Silver and More than an Ounce of Delusion. 

© 2025 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

Posted on by The Rumination Compilation

Something to share

Last year, I spoke at a city council meeting in Vista, California where the focus was on the “General Plan”. This “General Plan” is Vista’s version of California state’s “Climate Action Plan”. Since 2011, California law has mandated that every city have a General Plan, but only recently have cities started hosting meetings and workshops to involve community members in discussing what citizens want in the plan and marginally clarifying what citizens should expect the plan’s fruition to really look like.

For context, prior to the meeting, I prepared 3 questions to ask the city officials regarding the General Plan & provided each a copy of the questions to follow along as I spoke. Admittedly, I didn’t expect anything other than outright dismissal of my questions but I was extremely wrong. I got a response I need to share with you.

Before I do that, I want to separately address any potential readers based on geography:

⁃ Citizens of Vista, if possible, start going to the meetings for the General Plan & listen to what’s coming. I know it’s hard to carve out time with all that life sends our way but if you have any level of concern for future of the city (or your place in the city) show up to one of these specific meetings & listen to the plan they have in mind for the city, bearing fully in mind what Commissioner Looney says from 6:30-9:42 in the video below.

⁃ Citizens elsewhere, google whatever state you live in along with the words “climate action plan”. If your state has has one, check & see if a law was passed requiring the city you live in to adopt a climate action plan (CAP) or general plan as well. Since 33 states already have, I’d almost bet on it, so if it happens to be so, I suggest watching the clip below & asking yourself “is what Commissioner Looney says from 6:30-9:42 going on in my city too?”

Sorry this is a long video (by today’s standards) but I wanted to show every city member’s response unedited.

If anyone wants to watch the entirety of the meeting:

Thank you for your time, I value it tremendously.

© 2024 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

Posted on by The Rumination Compilation

Offspring Offsetting an Inherited Carbon Footprint

I can’t say for certain when, or even if, the things I will write about in this post will happen; admittedly I hope I’m dead wrong overall but deep-down, I see this becoming our future.

I don’t think it’s necessary to be reiterating the approaching global carbon footprint system but for those unaware: in due time, our consumer practices, all objects purchased & accounted for, will come with notations on the receipts of not just how much legal tender was used to procure the objects but how much carbon was released to create the objects & how much carbon is ultimately released to physically get them to you, the consumer. My favorite real-life example of this burgeoning system is the DO Black card from MasterCard that came out in 2019 but there’s a slew of others already available for public use & others on the way.

Though it seems to be a newfangled form of accounting & a tool for conscious conservation efforts on a personal scale, the question of “what are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint” is hardly a novel inquiry & a plastic card with a monthly carbon limit is not the sole solution we will be propositioned with.

Immediately following the advent of the climate movement & all rhetoric revolving around personal carbon emissions, a consensus was beginning to form in academia, politics, economics & in the bedroom: that children are the worst emitters of carbon.

In 2009, statisticians at Oregon State University published a paper titled, “Family planning: A major environmental emphasis” wherein the first paragraph suggests having one less child will combat climate change on a personal level. Saturated with negative sentiments of western lifestyles, lines like, “[u]nder current conditions in the U.S., for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible” are strung together & culminate in a passive-aggressive suggestion that the west forgo rearing children for the sake of…other children, I guess.

But it was well-received; faculty from other universities wrote their own papers with the same topics & arguments, non-government organizations reposted the article on their blogs & even comedians were referencing the paper itself, as seen in a bit done by Doug Stanhope a little over ten years ago now:

He cusses a good amount fyi.

The idea of restricting & reducing creation for the sake of conservation has slowly evolved from academic assertions, comedic input & political banter to just about an every day conversation for just about every single thing.

One of the articles I find most interesting & equally alarming comes from the online publication “Science Alert” where the concept of a digital carbon footprint is discussed & detailed as a remnant of corporate & civilian impact on the environment by way of data storage & use of memory space. The very last paragraph in the article says, “[y]ou can even make a start yourself by deciding which photos and videos you no longer need. Every file stored on the Apple iCloud or Google Photos adds to your digital carbon footprint,” which leads the ultra-cynic in me to believe they are slowly advocating for the self-induced destruction of self-documentation & digital relics of our families: “delete your family photos & family history for the environment or pay an inflated rate to compensate others for your narcissism” is really all I see that turning into, up to a point.

Though, here in California, like we always do, we took this idea a step further & started to run with it.

It was only a few months ago when a Smithsonian Magazine article came out with the title, “California Has Legalized Human Composting” & a subheading saying, “By 2027, Golden State residents will have the choice to turn their bodies into nutrient-rich compost”.

Though it seems conscientious & admirable to willingly forego a traditional form of burial or even cremation (which I’ve already seen ridiculed online as the “worst method” because of carbon release) I doubt this option has anything to do with ecological efforts & has everything to do with the next generation of children.

Imagine, a couple in America give birth to a child in 2030 & successfully provide the child the resources & nutrition they need until 18 years of age. Imagine, the parents die on the day after the 18th birthday, successfully leaving behind a small portion of liquid cash & a negative carbon footprint; surely, the IRS & any presiding authorities will tax the cash transferred from estate to beneficiary but how will the child offset the increased carbon footprint they inherited from their parent’s knowing the value of the footprint was exacerbated by the child’s existence?

Will little Sally, Sarah, Sue, Simon, whatever they may be called, have the option of cremating their parents to reduce the inherited carbon footprint? Will little Jack & Jill have the option of purging data centers & servers of their parents digital documents & photos of themselves as infants to reduce the inherited carbon footprint?

Today, the question of “what are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?” is almost entirely presented to adults & in scenarios wherein the adolescent members of society are queried the same way, the answers are predetermined & practiced in school settings ie recycling, reusing, excessive hand sanitizer use in lieu of washing hands with water & soap; today, the answers from adults vary between “being conscious of where my consumables come from”, “cutting back on using this/that resource”, or the big one, “not having kids”.

Examples from Reddit:

Another example:

In 20-30 years, the question of “what are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?” will be presented to kids that grew up in a world where they were told that they themselves are the problem; that their parents selfish decision to give them life is what will ruin the rest of ours & they will have evidence of this sentiment almost everywhere they look. From legislative & authoritative bodies like the UN & the WEF, all the way to regular people online, the children of today will have incontrovertible evidence that their existence was called into question by those who were never going to raise them or impact their lives in any positive way…and they will act in kind when asked, “do you think this life has value when considering how much carbon their lifestyle creates, or created?” Just in case anyone read it wrong, they will not act kindly – they will reciprocate these public calls for the extermination & restriction of specific life-forms; they will look to their predecessors & see a precedent that allows them to view life & death as parts of a financial equation that may or may not provide them financial gain. Maybe they’ll know there’s nothing to gain from this admittedly prematurely postulated position I’ve posed but maybe they’ll act accordingly just to spite the ones that started this game of hating the next generation, a sort of “treat others the way they treated me” mentality.

All I know is we are on a slippery slope of involving & equating the external adjudication of postmortem affairs with climate change narratives & finances in a way we have not thoroughly grasped or even imagined.

Do what you will in this life but remember: future generations will know what was done unless something is done to hide the truth. In 20-30 years, what will be the truth? That we’re doing all of this for the next generation? That we’re doing all of this for the environment? We’ll see.

Thanks for reading.

Works Cited:

Akristersson, A. (2019, April 30). Do black – the world’s first credit card with a carbon limit. Mastercard Newsroom. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.mastercard.com/news/europe/sv-se/nyhetsrum/pressmeddelanden/sv-se/2019/april/do-black-the-world-s-first-credit-card-with-a-carbon-limit/

Family planning: A major environmental emphasis. Life at OSU. (2017, October 5). Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2009/jul/family-planning-major-environmental-emphasis

YouTube. (2010). Voice of America – Abortion Is Green. YouTube. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgDhDa4HHo.

Jackson, T., & Hodgkinson , I. R. (2022, October 2). ‘dark data’ is leaving a huge carbon footprint, and we have to do something about it. ScienceAlert. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.sciencealert.com/dark-data-is-leaving-a-huge-carbon-footprint-and-we-have-to-do-something-about-it

Kuta, S. (2022, September 21). California has legalized human composting. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/california-has-legalized-human-composting-180980809/

© 2022 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

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Mamagotchis & Digital Dependents

As of late, the discussions of fertility rates, bodily autonomy/agency & general adolescent care increasingly center around philosophical assertions as to the pertinence of proposed legislation or outright purely economic statements pointing to losses & gains.

On June 17th, 2022, the World Economic Forum stated, “[f]or the last 70 years, fertility rates have decreased worldwide, with a total 50% decline.” This was only a few months after Elon Musk tweeted (in May of this year) a WSJ article about US birth rates declining; since then, as though everyone’s been putting their minds (and other things) to it, a flurry of seemingly reactionary events have taken place. On June 18th the CDC approved COVID-19 vaccination for children who are at least 6 months old, legislative action took place in the form of the Roe v Wade overturn scenario on June 24th & only a handful of days prior to writing this, scientists in Israel announced a breakthrough in medical research & experimentation: the “synthetic embryo” which “bypassed the need for sperm, eggs and fertilisation”. Even at the Oregon Health & Science University, artifical eggs devoid of genetic material are being manipulated:

"If successful, they plan to then fertilize those eggs with sperm and grow the resulting embryos in the lab for five or six days to see if they develop normally." If the technique proves to be safe, the creation of artificial human eggs could one day be used to treat infertility and even enable same-sex couples to have genetically related children.”

I won’t even get into the chimeric sperm part of that article – it makes me think of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” a bit more than I’d like to, even if it is a great film.

Further along the list of issues I don’t like to mentally tackle are those where I’d be expected to correctly ascertain “what it is to be human” or what sort of legislation a nation would need in place when technologies like the aforementioned are on the cusp of large-scale/common application.

Wesley J. Smith said in his article:

“If the “entity” — let’s call it — develops like a natural embryo and has nearly identical genetic properties, why would it be considered something other than bona fide human life? After all, a cloned human embryo doesn’t involve the use of sperm but is as fully human as its counterpart that comes into being through fertilization. Just because sperm and egg are not involved would not necessarily make the resulting entity less human. What should matter is the nature of the thing itself, however brought into existence. Just calling something “synthetic” doesn’t make it so. And the burden of proof in this regard should fall on the scientists to demonstrate that the process would not create an organism before they are given carte blanche.”

It eloquently encapsulates the gravity of the situation; hopefully, it also explains why, in this paper, I will not claim to know where to begin in these matters of adjudicating the rights & rewards of another entity.

What I’d rather do is discuss our technological dependence since the advent of agriculture & surmise as to what lengths we could go in this digital world to achieve the goals of procreation, stewardship & social longevity.

Back then…

It is no mystery to those fortunate in their education that agriculture was the first technological advancement of our species. While the use of tools is considered a benchmark of evolution, it was the shift from meek hunter-gatherers (kept in check with the games of chance & fate, always on the hunt with their breakable tools) to stewards of the earth (with a voracious appetite but a tolerance for sitting around) that set us on a path towards further discovery & social evolutions.

Chief amongst the agricultural innovations in 7000 BC was alcohol; everlasting in it’s application to societal affairs, micro & macro, alcohol is a testament to the human predisposition to be technologically dependent. This is not to say every human dead & alive has imbibed, nor contrarily, that there’s no such thing as an alcoholic since we’re fated to be dependent on this ancient technological advancement; this is to point to the fact that the discovery of fermentation has been utilized in our times of joy, reception of sacrament & stifling of sorrows. Most, if not, all of the emotions that humans have developed, deepened & attempted to describe to each other has involved alcohol in some way as we’ve been further socialized with one another.

After certain technologies, like fermentation & animal husbandry, become familiarized & fully integrated into the social fabrics we’ve knit over the millennia, it is near impossible to regulate or outright restrict their applications. Historically speaking, the US government’s 19th amendment is a perfect place in “recent” history to point to for an example of a glaring dependence on a technology familiarized & fully integrated into social order. After 13 years of prohibiting the production & consumption of alcohol during a Protestant movement in the 1920’s, the American people said “I need a drink.” Comparatively, in Islam, alcohol is scripturally prohibited but even though there’s around 50 majority-Muslim countries, only 14 enforce this rule in a theocratic manner.

Certain technological advancements have become so integrated that it seems they’ll be here to stay.

May 14th, 1932 in New York

Today…

Juvenile in the scope of all advancements made thus far, social media platforms are becoming the next dependency. Sure, one could lackadaisically point to the temper tantrum a child throws in response to an authority figure taking away a tablet & call that the sign of dependence but that more closely resembles anger attributed to loss of control. Up to a certain age, a child is simply viewing the tech as a toy & something interesting – half of the kids playing around on mom’s & dad’s phone have hardly any idea what they’re doing or what they’re seeing, they’re just having fun. It isn’t until one is around the teen years that the dependency begins to develop.

Teenagers & adults are better points to assess the progressive dependence on technology that sustains social networking; in the former, there are entire campaigns focused on bringing attention to the addictive nature of social media in a developing mind, studies on the correlation between social media use & teen suicide rates & lately there are proposals by governments to ban teen access to certain apps & limit most that fall under the label of “social media”. In the latter, social media is where most adults find their news, where most of the political rhetoric is being created & utilized & where an increasing number of adults are producing income or at least attempting to.

At this point, the activity on social media reminds me of various games like “The Sims”, numerous “Sid Meier’s Civilization” titles, BitLife & others in the sense that social media has become a false reality wherein the user attempts to affect other entities in a digital plane. Role playing games where one is able to customize their avatar to a high degree also come to mind whenever the idea of “curating” a profile & it’s content comes up in discussion; MMORPGs are comparable to social media in so many ways honestly but the concept of expressing the self in a digital fashion is the primary focus.

Tomorrow…

Social media, across the board, allows anything from anonymity to almost completely unfettered self-expression; some users create entire personas that solely exist online & a relatively fresh example is that of “Lil Miquela” – an avatar created by L.A. based company Brud. Lil Miquela has a few songs on Spotify, 3 million ardent fans & followers on Instagram & has spurred on a slow race between other companies to make their own versions of these advanced avatars.

Some want to create avatars of brand-new, never-before-seen “people”. Some want to create more advanced avatars of ourselves, much like the bitmoji stuff I find a bit creepy. I personally can’t wait to see the creation of the first “digital dependent”.

As a kid, one of my favorite shows was called “Digimon: Digital Monsters”; there’s a slew of games based on the series but the prevailing theme is that, there exists, in a digital world accessible by our modern day devices, digital monsters we can befriend, battle with & help evolve as we nurture it like a pet. Released right after the original Tamagatchi’s, Digimon simply took the “digital egg” concept a bit further which led to Pokémon introducing their own egg-aspect to the games & anime just a year later.

In most of these iterations, the player would simply walk with the egg or provide it care in some form. In Pokémon Go, the mobile app, players still do this walking but it is now tracked with GPS & motion sensors in our mobile devices. The same devices responsible for the rapid onset of targeted advertisement, rampant mass surveillance & public documentation of conspicuous consumption, aka flexing on social media.

In due time, thanks to the rampant & often unchecked state of data collection we exist in, the companies working on those digital avatars will proposition the people:

Provide us your consumer data & your health data & we’ll create an online representation of what your child would look & act like! For a yearly subscription, we’ll use our AI to evolve the level of interaction & appearance that mirrors actual human cognitive development. Available to couples, individuals, corporations & communities our digital denizens will be an extension of you!

Already so absorbed with cultivating & curating our own profiles, I can see a future wherein companies appeal to our nature to nurture & desire to create by offering to “assist us” in creating “offspring with an off-switch” & it going over extremely well. The idea of “digital resurrection”, holographic models of dead individuals, has already been introduced to the public through events like the Tupac hologram from 2012, Robert Kardashian “showing up” at Kim’s birthday party in 2020 & now Amazon’s working on it’s Alexa technology to “let people turn their dead loved ones’ voices into digital assistants”.

There’s plenty of apps where you & another person can upload photos of yourselves & see an AI generated example of what your offspring would look like; there’s fertility clinics that offer couples the ability to predetermine the eye color of their coming child; in due time, companies will exist that provide all this & more, for the right price, of course.

Though what is the price for even further mixing the digital plane & the physical? For attempting to curate a persona in a space of manufactured members of society?

Remember that line Wesley wrote?

“Just because sperm and egg are not involved would not necessarily make the resulting entity less human. What should matter is the nature of the thing itself, however brought into existence. Just calling something “synthetic” doesn’t make it so.”

I believe we’re on the cusp of having to deal with these issues, whether we want to or not. The level of dependence on technology thus far has not peaked or begun to plateau & accordingly we must expect progressive integration of human activities involving creation, description & everything in between on the digital plane. We’re not going to be able to ban social media & the technologies of mass communication much like we weren’t able to ban the manufacture of alcohol, so will we see something play out that feels almost surreal as watching an obviously fake avatar take selfies in an obviously real place? Or will we simply accept the advanced integration of the human experience in the digital plane until that’s all there is?

Thanks for reading.

P.S. the digital dependents are already on the way:

https://www.kait8.com/2022/08/21/capitol-records-signs-first-ai-virtual-rapper-fn-meka/

Works Cited

Alvarez, P., 2022. What does the global decline of the fertility rate look like?. [online] World Economic Forum. Available at: <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/global-decline-of-fertility-rates-visualised/&gt; [Accessed 9 August 2022].

Sample, I., 2022. Scientists create world’s first ‘synthetic embryos’. [online] The Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/03/scientists-create-worlds-first-synthetic-embryos&gt; [Accessed 9 August 2022].

Bailey, R., 2022. Researchers create artificial eggs, chimeric sperm and synthetic embryos. [online] Reason.com. Available at: <https://reason.com/2022/08/05/researchers-create-artificial-eggs-chimeric-sperm-and-synthetic-embryos/&gt; [Accessed 9 August 2022].

Smith, W., 2022. About Those ‘Synthetic Embryos’ | National Review. [online] National Review. Available at: <https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/about-those-synthetic-embryos/&gt; [Accessed 9 August 2022].

Hern, A., 2022. Amazon’s Alexa could turn dead loved ones’ voices into digital assistant. [online] The Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/23/amazon-alexa-could-turn-dead-loved-ones-digital-assistant&gt; [Accessed 18 August 2022].

Photo credit:

https://unsplash.com/photos/unlm6Fxxvjw?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

Homage, 2022. [image] Available at: <https://www.homage.com/blogs/news/28550593-we-want-beer-the-parade-to-end-prohibition&gt; [Accessed 18 August 2022].

© 2022 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

Posted on by The Rumination Compilation · 2 Comments

Analyzing the City of San Diego Climate Action Plan

A friend of mine sent me a DM over the weekend, an Instagram post about bikes.

The City of Los Angeles on August 8th will regard the public repair, sale & distribution of bicycles as “chop shops”, legally defined as: three or more bicycles;— a bicycle frame with the gear cables or brake cables cut;— two or more bicycles with missing parts;— five or more bicycle parts.

On the surface & even from a distance this new ordinance seems fickle, overreaching, unnecessary or long overdue – the opinions vary as greatly as the personalities & cultures of California itself.

Unbeknownst to most, this new ordinance is a sign of the times to come. An indication of the veracity with which the governing bodies & authorities are willing to display in their endeavor to see predetermined plans finally implemented across the populous.

Just this past week, the neighboring City of San Diego enacted their own legislative frameworks regarding bikes too! Mayor Todd Gloria, members of SANDAG & affiliated organizations presented the 2022 edition of the Climate Action Plan, even though only weeks prior, what was reported to be over 4,000 citizens expressed discontent & preferences requesting the withdrawal of the plan altogether.

Without a doubt, a majority of the citizenry’s dissatisfaction with the proposed Climate Action Plan stems from public awareness of the plan’s origins itself; the goals of conscious stewardship & leveraging local abilities are not foreign to the citizenry of San Diego but the citizenry do not wish to yield agency & authority to international conglomerates & contractual agreements they are hardly party to. For clarification, as stated on pages 32 & 33 of the updated 2022 draft, “[t]he ICLEI Community-wide Protocol methodology was utilized for determining the City’s science-based fair share CAP goal for this program which is described in more detail in Appendix C.”

For those that have already read my post, “Environments & Requirements”, you may skip this video from a 2009 city council meeting in San Carlos, CA showing council members ignoring the words of the citizenry & implementing an ICLEI-derived plan. For those now coming across this site, I’d recommend watching & comparing the disregard of the San Carlos council members to the disregard of our politicians today as far climate legislation is concerned.

The folks seen in 2009 & the folks seen last week are of like mind: they simply wish to oversee their lands themselves; they uniformly wish to see the lands & its resources benefit the locals to the greatest degree. The politicians seen in 2009 & today are the same: they wish to see their plans fulfilled, no matter the cost as increased taxes will foot the bill.

Proposed taxes & suggested economic frameworks of San Diego’s 2022 version of CAP range from gallon per capita water limits, an increase in funding for tree rebate programs I covered a bit in “The Products of a New Environment” & transportation ordinances that all relate to a 2050 plan the City of San Diego has been pushing since at least 2010 involving…you guessed it: bikes. If you look to page 56 of the 2022 CAP, under Strategy 3: Mobility and Land Use, you see the City’s obsession with bikes & disdain for internal combustion engine vehicles at once:

“Shifting away from a car-centric transportation system starts with a loading priority for our roadways, prioritizing and protecting the most vulnerable modes such as walking and biking, and enhancing public transit for improved efficiency and performance. The loading priority concludes with shared, commercial, and personal electric vehicles, underscoring a commitment to the full transition of all vehicles from combustion engines and fossil fuels. The City will reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for trips through transportation infrastructure and technology improvements, transportation demand management (TDM) programs, and land use changes.”

It should be noted that this 2022 plan is simply a foundation for the 2050 plan titled “Riding to 2050: The San Diego Regional Bicycle Plan” but there are a number of proposed actions relating to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions & other climate issues that will be enacted along the way as 2035 is a mid-point target year from now to 2050. Among the myriad of proposals to curb GHG emissions, one of marked interest is found in the 2022 edition of the CAP on page 69:

1) Reduce GHG emissions and water use of total beef, pork, chicken, turkey and dairy purchases by 20%.
2) Increase local, healthy, and sustainable foods to 20% of total food purchases prioritizing locally sourced, valued workforce and animal welfare.

Interestingly enough, in the entire CAP document, only one page is devoted to “Measure 5.3: Local Water Supply” & simply discusses the aforementioned gallon per capita limit; in one week the Federal government is going to impose water restrictions on 40 million people due to the state of the Colorado River basin, yet the City of San Diego has apparently nothing to say on the matter.

At the moment, the City of San Diego is primarily focused on regulator technology & economic frameworks that will advance the 2050 plan. In all fairness, San Diego has been this way since it entertained ICLEI & other entities; in the 2010 version of “Riding to 2050: The San Diego Regional Bicycle Plan”, published while Jerry Sanders was Mayor, on page 49, “encouragement programs” are proposed as an economic method of enticing, to some perspectives coercing, citizens & businesses into participating in these programs where ride-sharing & biking are the preferred forms of transportation.

An excerpt on these programs:

Encouragement programs are generally characterized by their focus on encouraging people to bicycle more frequently, particularly for transportation. Encouragement programs increase the propensity for bicycle trips by providing incentives, recognition, or services that make bicycling a more convenient transportation mode. The following encouragement programs are recommended for implementation in the region and described in more detail in the remainder of the section:
⁃ Bike Sharing Program
⁃ Pilot Smart Trips Program
⁃ Employer Incentive Programs
⁃ Bicycle Friendly Community Designation
⁃ San Diego Region Bike Map
⁃ Identification and Way-finding Signage
⁃ University-base Bike Orientation

In the version published in 2011, the concept of ride-share programs is expanded & marginally defined a bite more with examples like the Guaranteed Ride Home Program (which I had no clue existed until today) & iCommute, a vanpool program with a subsidy of $400 per month per vanpool. By 2015, under the direction of then Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer, the ride-share programs expanded into a contract with DecoBike but ended in 2019 after the City of San Diego claimed a breach of contract occurred on the companies end – though this is disputed by DecoBike.

In terms of high occupancy transportation, all versions of the climate plans advocate for electric vehicle fleets; the most common form is tied to K-12 & collegiate school bus programs. This past July, a San Diego based company, Nuvve Holding Corp., announced a joint venture with San Diego Gas & Electric where eight electric school buses in the Cajon Valley Union School District will connect to the grid & serve as a pilot program for the next five years, not only for state-wide school transportation use but also for the federal Build Back Better plan as Nuvve Holding Corp. announced a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Department of Energy some time ago regarding V2G & V2X technology.

An often overlooked aspect of the V2X technology that appeals to governing bodies is the “connected vehicle” nexus & data mining capabilities thereof. In these evolving iterations of climate plans related to the years 2025, 2030 & 2050, digital details are a prerequisite of all vehicles that will be on the road for a consortium of reasons that summarily present as regulatory technology. In early plans, connected vehicles simply refers to vehicles capable of emitting wireless data vehicle-to-vehicle & vehicle-to-infrastructure so as to aid in the flow of traffic; as we’ve seen with newer plans & in European counterparts, intelligent speed limits, excessive tracking & the aforementioned prioritization of biking civilians are the culmination of these mandated advances in vehicle technology.

I have yet to address the cost of all these mandated applications of higher-end vehicle-to-everything technologies; I’ve considered making a whole post on the expected costs incurred for civilians in the wake of these subnational & national mandates stemming from international contractual agreements but I’ll simply point out that the average all-electric bus costs $400,000 & in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, eligible “clean” vans, SUVs & pickup trucks qualify for a rebate of $80,000 upon purchase & other vehicles for $55,000. I really can’t imagine how much these all vehicles will cost in total but if the rebates are already close to some people’s yearly income, I can imagine most will not be buying these vehicles, unless on an already strained credit line.

So, I guess we’ll all bike to work, right?

But what if your bike breaks down & you live in a city like Los Angeles where you can’t rely on your local handy-folk to lend a helping hand anymore because of a city ordinance? Guess you’ll pull out your card anyways & pay for a ride on an EV bus, rent a ride-share bike or pay for a ride on the rail transit system.

From what I can gather, the Guaranteed Ride Home Program only covers three rides per year; seems like baseball, three strikes & we’re left outside.

Amazingly, the word “homeless” shows up only one time in the entire 2022 San Diego Climate Action Plan, whereas the word “bike” shows up 49 times. I wonder, if one is left outside, what is the plan, what are the options & allowances afforded by a City that can’t even type the word “homeless” more than once in a 238 page document?

Thanks for reading.

San Diego’s approach can be better understood in the context of global economic pressures outlined in Market Forces: Foreign Factors and Domestic Actors.

Works Cited:

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pexels

Chou, E., 2022. Los Angeles City Council votes to ban bike repair entrepreneurs on public sidewalks – Daily News. [online] Dailynews.com. Available at: <https://www.dailynews.com/2022/06/21/los-angeles-city-council-votes-to-ban-bike-repair-entrepreneurs-on-public-sidewalks/&gt; [Accessed 7 August 2022].

Sandiego.gov. 2022. City of San Diego Climate Action Plan. [online] Available at: <https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/san_diegos_2022_climate_action_plan_0.pdf&gt; [Accessed 8 August 2022].

Sandag.org. 2010. Riding to 2050: The San Diego Regional Bicycle Plan. [online] Available at: <https://www.sandag.org/uploads/publicationid/publicationid_1674_14591.pdf&gt; [Accessed 8 August 2022].

(In case that link doesn’t work, try: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/san_diegos_2022_climate_action_plan_0.pdf )

Sandag.org. 2011. 2050 Regional Transportation Plan. [online] Available at: <https://www.sandag.org/uploads/2050RTP/F2050rtp_all.pdf&gt; [Accessed 8 August 2022].

(In case that link doesn’t work, try: https://www.sdforward.com/pdfs/Final_PDFs/AppendixU16.pdf )

Sdgenews.com. 2022. SDG&E and Cajon Valley Union School District Flip the Switch on Region’s First Vehicle-to-Grid Project Featuring Local Electric School Buses Capable of Sending Power to the Grid | SDGE | San Diego Gas & Electric – News Center. [online] Available at: <https://www.sdgenews.com/article/sdge-and-cajon-valley-union-school-district-flip-switch-regions-first-vehicle-grid-project&gt; [Accessed 8 August 2022].

Documentcloud.org. 2022. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22122281-inflation_reduction_act_of_2022&gt; [Accessed 8 August 2022].

© 2022 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

Posted on by The Rumination Compilation

Virtues in a Virtual Reality

I believe, we as modern humans, exist in a virtual reality based upon codes of rulers & the minds of a million writers, dead & alive. Through the use of the written word & other innovations, we have created a “scripted” reality where things begin in the mind & eventually become reality, if allowed by regulatory powers of an ancient, yet ever evolving code.

Academically speaking, a malleable collection of qualities set us apart from the other fauna of Earth:

⁃ abstract thinking

⁃ blade technology

⁃ creating & working with fire

⁃ dancing

⁃ making music

⁃ symbolic behaviors like art or ornamentation.

The malleability arises out of occasional dissenting opinions on theories like the Upper Paleolithic Revolution on either the basis that it is anthropocentric at the foundation & thereby flawed due to examples like the “Stone Age Chimps” or criticized as inherently dismissive of archeological sites across the Middle East & Africa & thereby flawed in relation to timeline construction.

Once one watches enough of those David Attenborough nature documentaries, it becomes clear a few species provide examples of conscious application of musicality, dancing during mating rituals & exhibiting traits of observable grief over death like seen in elephants. To a degree, I agree the consensus is flawed but primarily by simply overlooking the magick of that is the written word.

The first technological advancement that truly separated us from the rest of nature & reality itself was the written word. Though the vocalized form of communication we possess is impactful, for the nature of this post, consider the fact that even though I’m not aware of the exact structure of the language my two cats employ between each other – I am aware it exists solely by observation of their interactions. That said, they possess no ability to transcribe & place ideologies nor information outside of themselves in a physical form for other members of their species – this is where humans are distinctly different & where the focus of this piece lies.

Much like other animals that exist in systems wherein large populations of the species can coexist by self-determined structure (matriarchal bees & ants, lion pride hierarchy, etc) humans have had some form of communication available to them that allowed a level of societal structure. Flimsy as it was, it was/is there.

Summarily, prior to the advent of technologies that accelerate the means of communication, communication itself was solely a tool employed to determine the course of public affairs & sustain order.

The first level by which humans can surpass this simple function is through psychological time travel & plane-jumping – a true culmination of the powers of abstract thinking & language exemplified by the written word. Across the globe we see examples of cultures that in varying degrees live in ways that dismiss time as a concept or overall concern; regardless, they still have social order & essentially confirm the prior statement regarding communication as a function for public affairs. Where there is no consideration of time, a language will not exist around time & this is a necessary aspect of the first level.

As humans began to transcribe ideations from their psyche onto the walls of caves & mountainsides, we were scratching at the surface of the virtual reality. Through art & lexical lacerations in runic & hieroglyphic form, our ancestors were practicing how to properly transcend their personas & perspectives across time & space. Consensual determinations of symbolic choices over generations gave rise to inherited meaning & understanding that exists outside of the present moment – early on we were writing a code for our personas to exist in a fixed virtual plane where our sentiments & ideologies would be catalogued in ways that support maximum fungibility. Not only for self-expression but the continuous regimentation of social order throughout time.

The basis of this premise lies in the assertion that written language was a necessity for continuity of social order by way of coded law & epitomized by the discoveries of the Codes of Ur-Nammu & Hammurabi, two social contracts between masters, free folk & slaves all more or less based around “if, then” statements. These were the first examples of humanity using the written word to design the future & transcend time itself; over time itself, the codified laws would evolve to meet the needs of the preferred social order or limit specific actions in a social setting.

Thousands of years after the reign & coded structures of Sumerian & Mesopotamian design that still solely attempted to sustain order, further coding developed by the Roman counterparts in the gradual formation of the “res publica” (the republic) introduced a new concept that exists in a reimagined fashion today in countries across the globe: the virtue & virtual man.

In 509 BC, the last king of Rome lost power & out of this vacuum of control eventually came the “Conflict of the Orders” – a political bout between the upper class & the lower class in regards to political equality. One of the first lasting outcomes of this conflict was the creation of the “Laws of the Twelve Tables” in 449 BC which was essentially a formalized documentation of the rights & the duties of the citizens of Rome in the public & private spaces of life posted in the town centers for all to read. In the 60 years between the end of a kingdom & the creation of a republic, ideations of public good & the correlated self began to swirl amongst the populous giving birth to the Latin word “virtus”, the root of both virtue & virtual.

Virtus applies solely to one’s behavior in the public sphere as it relates to political action & the public good; private matters, in Roman society in the context of the republic, had no bearing on one’s social standing & was not a space where one could rise through the ranks of society with conscious efforts. Bearing in mind the basis of all social order thus far in society was economic in nature given all codes related to property rights related to land & slavery or varying allowances afforded by a master class, the concept of virtus was revolutionary & magical all at once. It implied that merit determines the value of an individual, not their heredity; their social standing would be a reflection of their public services or lack thereof & that with enough public conformity to the legalized standards of right, one could achieve a greater status in the public realm.

Ages ago, ideal individuals were imagined & described through engravings on varying mediums; following the proliferation of these virtues, such individuals began to exist in the physical realm. As I mentioned in a long-winded manner throughout “Ramparts & Revolution”, many of the qualities we inherit from our ancestors are remnants of coded determinations of what an amicable member of society is & what our roles/limitations are within the society. The original authors & philosophers that promulgated the concepts of public good & elevated social order may be dead & gone but they are immortalized by their success in time-traveling & plane-jumping as millions still adhere to their written words.

In this realm where ancient code dictates current & future actions & ultimately the nature of our social existence, the authors themselves are the original “avatars” in this virtual reality – they are the first “profiles”. From the base models they described in the manuscripts pertaining to the proper person in relation to politics, we find the framework for not only politicians but all common folk in the scripted reality known as political theater.

With the innovation of mass printing & the gradual expansion of conscious members of the virtuous framework called “the law”, a level even further separated from reality was established by transporting ideologies & codices outside of their original space & time; by removing the need for a centralized space of reception originally required by the likes of Ancient Rome, the “forum” of political discourse is equally tangible & intangible, ultimately blurring the lines between public & private.

Through this degradation of perceived parameters between private & political spaces, a variety of imaginary & borderline disingenuous avenues of political discourse are made available to both common folk & the presiding political parties.

The original, probably the most impactful yet least defined, is the form of doublespeak; by intentionally providing the possibility of misinterpretation on the listener’s end, fraudulent activity is excused & oftentimes conflated with near-successful or fully successful attempts at gaining or maintaining virtue through false honesty or shifting of blame. Though more often utilized by governing bodies or entities within, citizens can parrot talking points or expand upon them at will in their own areas of influence. Through this creation of near-truth, another layer of virtual existence is added to the coded world we already live in.

Another tactic often employed to maintain a public perception of obvious effort to positively impact the public good is the action of donation or charity. In US history, the first observable form of charity as a tactic to maintain social standing was in reaction to the public opinion in 1889-1892 regarding the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, comprised of over 50 wealthy steel, coal & railroad investors/owners like Andrew Carnegie (owner of Carnegie Steel). On May 31st of 1889, a pre-existing public dam that was purchased & hastily redesigned solely for the construction of a private lake resort for the South Fork Club broke & resulted in the deaths of over 2,200 people & property damage of about $17 million (today that’s over half a billion). The dam itself was built by members of the community as they were employed under the monopoly (or “vertically integrated” as the doublspeakers would say) Andrew Carnegie created through Carnegie Steel; to brush aside this obvious conflict of interest & evidence of guilt in legal proceedings that would happen in 1892 (you should research why it was postponed on your own), Andrew Carnegie visited Johnstown on November 28th, 1889 & donated $54,000. Following the donation, Carnegie created multiple foundations, spread philosophical concepts related to philanthropy through self-authored books in libraries he built across New England & sold his companies in 1901 to J.P. Morgan, the business mogul of hell who affects American lives to this day, even in death.

Following Carnegie’s efforts to shape public opinion in light of wrongdoing using an interplay of legal tender (written money) & the mass media news networks, variations of this tactic described with examples of “greenwashing”, charities outed as tax-havens, etc began to appear with increasing regularity. Today, the tactic is essentially overused as public opinion is now wary of this avenue due to the propensity of tax-free groups being tied to laundering operations or other morally questionable events.

Finally, the most recent, innovative & interactive tactic lies with virtue signaling; clearly defined as: “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue” virtue signaling, in my opinion, is the culmination of the written word, doublespeak & the attempt to create charity through commentary to elevate one’s social standing in our coded virtual reality. This is not to say that virtue signaling is the highest level of altered communication in a fabricated system, although some may have made or may eventually make this argument, I’m not aware of such stances nor do I share them.

Though as novel as the concept & action of virtue signaling is, I will admit that the veracity & overall impact of the tactic may evolve & progress either naturally or by design, especially considering it is built upon the framework of digital social media.

I often wonder, given the fact that humanity exists in this state of temporal haziness regarding predetermined valuations of the self & the group, if technology progresses to a point where digital reality is indistinguishable from physical reality, will there be a clashing of digital computer code, ancient legal code & the human lexicon?

Will there be a new level of falsifying & reshaping reality with the spoken & elaborately written word?

Will there be a transparency afforded to the masses for the first time in a situation where cognition & computation intersect & interact on a level we can’t even comprehend at the moment?

Will the concept of virtues, individuality & public good shift to more synthetic attributes as technology & humanity meld into one or will the concepts themselves be completely re-coded?

We all repetitively state that time doesn’t stand still, yet the written word, the essence of a writer, steps outside of this rule & imparts upon readers tales of old, potential futures, present guidelines & creates rules of its own. This act of writing with the intention of transcending space & time is what sets us apart from all other publicly observable beings – the magicks of time-travel & teleportation are available to those fortunate to be literate; those in control of the nature of political discourse are able to simply shape reality by “spelling it out” in coded law. Ultimately, the laws passed under the cover of the night by governing bodies & international committees without public input are the actual occult & dark magicks of the world, the statements & actions thereafter are the added illusions & extra spells to control & contort reality.

Truly, this is why the greatest obsession of any tyrant is the free person’s mind; if they can’t physically restrain or restrict, the next best & admittedly preferred option from the onset of any fear & terror campaign is mental subversion & control.

Be wary of the words you see on the screens & be critical of the means by which a party seeks to achieve your public appreciation. Write with intent & rest assured that even after you begin your eternal rest, an aspect of your self remains in the written world that exists outside of celestial space-time. As a member of the public, it is our duty to determine what are the true values & virtues needed for the public good, not the corporations or some currently prevailing party; should we forfeit the ability & the right to help shape the predetermined best qualities of a citizen of the earth & digital planes we create hereafter, we will be subject to coded terms set by rulers in a virtual reality forevermore.

Thanks for reading

Works cited:

Gibbons, A., 2022. The Chimpanzee Stone Age. [online] Science.org. Available at: <https://www.science.org/content/article/chimpanzee-stone-age&gt; [Accessed 31 July 2022].

Parker, L., 2022. Rare Video Shows Elephants ‘Mourning’ Matriarch’s Death. [online] Animals. Available at: <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/elephants-mourning-video-animal-grief&gt; [Accessed 31 July 2022].

Mantri, V., 2022. Cultures Without The Concept Of Time – Wanderlust. [online] Oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg. Available at: <https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/vishaka1/cultures-without-the-concept-of-time/&gt; [Accessed 31 July 2022].

Gormandy Wright, M., 2022. Examples of Doublespeak. [online] Examples.yourdictionary.com. Available at: <https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-doublespeak.html&gt; [Accessed 31 July 2022].

Photo cred: Photo by Markus Spiske: https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-and-white-line-illustration-225769/

© 2022 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.

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The Volumes on Vitality: Part Three

Platforms of Mobility

Even the Rain

Growing up, I’d heard that someday there would be water wars. Conflicts centered around physical domination of a resource that is already depleting or diminishing in value/utility. I’d heard this from immediate family members, those I’d randomly encounter over the course of a day & the a few forms of content available on the web like this NPR piece from a while back that’s always stuck in my mind.

Though I accept this unfortunate possibility of nations warring over waterways & dams, I often wonder to myself, “what’ll lead up to that? What will the economics of water look like over the course of my lifetime & further on?”

Along the way, going through life with these random thoughts, I’ve come across tidbits of innovation & determinations that I believe paint an abstract picture of what the economics of & around water could look like.

At the moment, the CME Group, the largest financial derivatives exchange in the world, has been offering futures contracts where the underlying asset is water since December of 2020 when California’s entire water market was valued at $1.1 billion. The speculated water spans “across the five largest and most actively traded regions in California. Water entitlement transactions from the surface water market and four adjudicated groundwater basins-the Central Basin, the Chino Basin, the Main San Gabriel Basin, and the Mojave Basin Alto Subarea are included in the index.”

As far as California goes, around 65%, give or take seasonal changes, of the surface water available is in Northern California, hence the mentioning of the basins in the NQH20 index. Most of that water is pumped from the north to south or transported by other means; the rest of the water needed in the south is pumped from groundwater basins regulated by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 & other legislative actions.

To do a bit more in depth research & also try my hand at trading the NQH20 contracts, I contacted the CME Group & one of their registered brokers to open an account but was told I do not possess the capital required to participate in the market. I guess I should cry a river & then trade futures on that supply of water.

In all seriousness, not just because my humor lacks refinement by any standard of the word, I bring this up to echo the sentiment Pedro Arrojo Agudo made when he said, “water is increasingly being treated as a mere commodity and even as a financial asset, undermining the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation and the sustainability of the environment.” at the UN General Assembly on October 20th, 2021. If I myself, a “middle-class” citizen, can’t access the potential profits from a water market, what sort of hope or outlook should I hold for my future financial status & the mobility of my money? Will it stretch worse in a world where water prices are speculated on by those who won’t even drink that exact water? Or will those gains “trickle down” too & it’ll all be okay?

About a week ago or so, my fiancé brought to my attention a startup company called FreeWater based in Austin, Texas that markets aluminum bottles & paper-based cartons of “free” water “paid for by ads that are printed directly onto eco-friendly cans and cartons. Ten cents per beverage is donated to charity.”

The 10¢ per beverage is donated to WellAware a non-profit based out of Austin, Texas as well that “fund[s] and implement[s] lasting clean water systems to drive development and empower communities in East Africa.” After a bout of equal parts boredom & being nosey, I perused their IRS audits from 2017 & 2020 & noticed the non-profit WellAware, pays a for-profit company called WellBeyond, which is owned by the same individual, also based in Austin, for “project consulting and execution services for the Organization’s program services in Kenya” to the tune of “$237,460 in paid expenditures and $124,823 of in-kind contributions and expenses,” in 2020.

Through pessimistic lenses critical of foreign conglomerates granted unilateral rights of a resource or location, I look at this “free water” scenario as a possible foundational step towards a future where the 1999-2000 water wars of Cochabamba, Bolivia are replayed with new characters. The protests over the wells & water costs inspired a film called (in English) “Even the Rain” that I saw some years ago now; as summer is upon & droughts continue, various scenes from the film cross my mind as of late, especially so when I think of the creeping normalization of water as a commodity.

FreeWater, in their FAQ section, says they’ll be launching “a new type of utility tokens called the FreeWater token.” Ignoring the application of a currency not scrutinized by external securities aspect (hello crypto), I’ve sat wondering how many energy resources will someday have respective “utility tokens” created by large conglomerates; I eventually wonder, will there be tokens or other company-based credit systems for electricity too? Mastercard already has a card in Sweden with a company based there that “not only helps users track and measure CO2 emissions associated with their purchases, but also puts a limit to the climate impact of their spending with a carbon footprint limit.”

Hear me out, I’m not saying blockchain currencies won’t be a part of the future with my jab earlier towards cryptocurrencies in a general way. Earlier this week, Shell Corp., American Express Global Business Travel & Accenture announced a joint partnership to create a company called Avelia Solutions, that facilitates a “blockchain powered book-and-claim solution that provides you with fully traceable environmental attributes of SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) to help decarbonise your air travel.” I see these continued applications of blockchain pay systems & corporate tokens to be indicative of the fact that they’ll be the norm at some point.

As far as innovation besides blockchain tokens & the like goes, technology related to water & other liquids necessitates further discussion on the levels of access & uses of water.

Over the last decade & change, the desalination industry has made improvements in technology & production costs to combat the decreasing level of access of freshwater, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a method using microbes to clean both organic contaminants and salts from hydraulic fracturing wastewater, while producing renewable energy & countless other examples can be given but my favorite comes from even further back in time: MagnetoHydrodynamics (MHD).

Popularized by a few Tom Clancy books, MHD systems can be found discussed & funded at length by parties like the US Dep of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, NASA & the HIT-SI lab, part of the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics at the University of Washington.

I’d wager, if this technology that utilizes water as a fuel component becomes widespread with multiple applications (as far vehicles go) water will become even more scarce but truly live up to its designation of “platform of mobility”. In a way, it’s like we might go from ancient, disconnected seafaring peoples that eventually learned flight to evolving into spacefaring peoples that will use water as much as our ancestors did before us, maybe even more.

In my mind there’s a war between all these thoughts; possibility versus possibility, only settled by time passed. Hopefully, we enter a future ultimately lacking in strife that is abundant with the needed resources for us all to equally enjoy the gift of life. I hope we all someday look at a glass completely full, instead of bicker about the determined or perceived volume.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. leave a comment! Tell me of your goals, expectations, concerns for 2022; I hope to create an area where it can all be hashed out.

P.P.S. are there water restrictions where you live too?

Links to ponder:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-water-wars-come-to-the-suburbs

Added on 8/16/22:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/16/colorado-river-bureau-of-reclamation/

© 2022 Zakariyas James. First shared here at theruminationcompilation.wordpress.com.