CONVERSION OF GLOBAL HOT AIR EMISSIONS TO MUSIC

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 17 Oct 2009

Anthony Judge

Aesthetic Transformation and Instrumentalization of Vaporware

Introduction

In the period of last minute preparations for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (Copenhagen, 2009), the focus worldwide is on the challenge of curtailing carbon emissions. At this stage there is concern that this event, held by many to be one of the most vital for the future of humanity and the planet, will not reach the appropriate conclusions to meet that challenge.

From a more general systemic perspective it could however be argued that humanity is faced with a three-fold "emissions problem", each to some extent serving as a metaphor for the other. However it is the emissions on which the UN Conference is focused which effectively disguise and distract from the other two (Climate Change as a Metaphor of Social Change: systemic implications of emissions, ozone, sunlight, greenhouse and overheating, 2008).

The three-fold emissions problem might then be presented as

·    carbon emissions and the concern that they will result in a dangerous level of global warming — "hot air"

·    verbal emissions, whether in text or speech, notably in the worldwide preparation and processes of commentary on challenges of society, often described as "hot air", especially when fruitless — resulting in an increasingly dangerous level of information overload and information underuse

·    sexual emissions, carbon emissions with their own inherent multiplicative propensities — engendering an every increasing population on a dangerously resource-constrained planet

It is increasingly clear, despite the volume of verbal emissions and the number of resolutions at every level of society, that these are unlikely to ensure adequate constraint of carbon omissions. Such emissions, and other promises of effective change, may therefore be appropriately named as "vaporware". Both forms of hot air will continue to increase. More challenging is the extent to which, irrespective of both, the third form will itself continue to increase and, in so doing, will most probably further increase the first two. Characteristically, there is a large volume of verbal emissions denying this.

The three forms of emission might be usefully recognized as "cognitively entangled", with one entraining the other (David Biello, More hot air on climate change from world leaders? Scientific American, 22 September 2009; UN climate change conference: more hot air?, Ethical Corporation, September 2009; Alex Morales and Kim Chipman, Hot Air Emitted by Climate Summit Equals 20,000 Cars, Bloomberg.com, 6 December 2007; Chris Lang, G8’s hot air on climate and REDD, REDD-Monitor, 13 July 2009).

Although the volume of verbal emissions is evident in the preparation of the UN Climate Change Conference, and although it constitutes a high degree of information overload for all sensitive to the challenge, the generation of these emissions is no more challenged than the quantity of carbon emissions associated with travel to such events. This denial is also evident in relation to the challenge associated with the third form of emissions. To the extent that population is mentioned, it is taken as self-evident that no form of constraint is appropriate and that any form of constraint is itself problematic — as with verbal emissions. To that extent the UN Climate Change Conference has been appropriately discussed elsewhere as the United Nations Overpopulation Denial Conference: exploring the underside of climate change (2009).

The focus in what follows, however, is on the challenge of verbal emissions, whether generated in relation to the prospects of climate change or to other potential crises. At the time of writing the draft agreement under discussion for Copenhagen is recognized as being long, confusing and contradictory (David Adams, Copenhagen negotiating text: 200 pages to save the world? The Guardian, 28 September 2009). Of wider and more fundamental concern, in the light of the misleading "hot air" progressively developing and sustaining the financial bubble of 2008, is the question of how "hot air" is misused to sustain global strategies (Globallooning — Strategic Inflation of Expectations and Inconsequential Drift, 2009).

The question is whether the linear approach to processing exploding quantities of information can be circumvented using other modes. The possibility has of course be well-recognized in justifying the many developments of multi-media facilities not entirely dependent on text or speech. Whilst welcome, such facilities constitute a potentially problematic break from the content articulated in text or speech. The primary constraint is in the cognitive capacity to process such linearly presented information. One of the scarcest resources is time — attention time and learning time — if people are prepared to allocate it to such challenges.

The exploration here is therefore concerned with how linearly presented information can be "compressed" to facilitate whatever comprehension a person (or a group) considers appropriate. The concern is however primarily with how this might alleviate the current challenges of processing information of relevance to governance. It notably follows from an earlier exploration (Coherent Policy-making Beyond the Information Barrier: circumventing dependence on access, classification, penetration, dissemination, property, surveillance, interpretation, disinformation, and credibility, 1999).

This was itself framed by speculative consideration of the role of aesthetics in processing such knowledge (Aesthetics of Governance in the Year 2490, 1990). Other papers (indicated below) reflect various efforts to exploring the appropriateness and feasibility of such an approach. The original stimulus for these investigations was the project, directed by Johan Galtung, on Forms of Presentation of the Goals, Processes and Indicators of Development project of the United Nations University (cf Forms of Presentation and the Future of Comprehension, 1984).

Challenge of information overload and information underuse

This challenge has been variously explored in detail in earlier papers (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory: a critique of the Club of Rome Report: No Limits to Learning, 1980; Coherent Policy-making Beyond the Information Barrier: circumventing dependence on access, classification, penetration, dissemination, property, surveillance, interpretation, disinformation, and credibility, 1999). A project of the Global Learning Division of the United Nations University in the 1980s was specifically focused on Information Overload and Information Underuse (IOIU) and resulted in a variety of studies.

At a time when there is increasing concern about a possible technological singularity, it is appropriate to argue that this may be intimately associated with some form of cognitive or memetic singularity (Emergence of a cognitive singularity, 2008); Emerging Memetic Singularity in the Global Knowledge Society, 2009). There it is argued that the focus of Jared M. Diamond (Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 2005) on material resources, and that on energy by Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal of civilization, 2006), could be usefully reframed in terms of information and knowledge — perhaps even memes. For it is likely that, just as globalization was undermined by loss of confidence in the financial system, global civilization may implode into a black hole of meaninglessness.

Widespread concern has been variously expressed regarding the ability to achieve any measure of viable and sustainable coherence in response to the emerging "crisis of crises" — despite the plethora of insights generated in a global knowledge society. The Copenhagen event is therefore an interesting test case, given the claims for its critical importance. There is every likelihood that in addition to the huge volume hot air it will engender, whether in reality or metaphorically, its outcome will itself constitute what is well-recognized in the information world as vaporware.

To be reinterpreted as a relevant metaphor, the introduction to the entry in Wikipedia reads:

Vaporware is a term used to describe a product, usually software, that has been announced by a developer during or before its development and, therefore, may never actually be released.The term is usually applied to products which fail to emerge after having well-exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product. The term implies unwarranted optimism, an as yet unannounced abandonment of a project, or sometimes even deception; that is, it may imply that the announcer knows that product development is in too early a stage to support responsible statements about its completion date, feature set, or even feasibility. However, most vaporware would not be considered a hoax since the makers have a genuine intention to create their product, even if it ultimately never materializes. Products with unspecified release dates or long development times that outwardly demonstrate regular, verifiable progress in production are not normally labelled vaporware.

A relevant extension of this metaphor derives from the fact that, as computer software, vaporware is typically subject to a complex network of legally enforceable patents constraining its use — whether or not it becomes a viable product. With respect to verbal and textual emissions, this may take the form of intellectual copyright, constituting a fundamental constaint on the re-use of that emission however insightful — namely the capacity to "recycle" it? With respect to the challenge of constraining carbon emissions, such constraints on "hot air" production — however "hot" the insight — might be understood as highly problematic "cold air" in that they constrain the very human ingenuity through which it is hoped to avoid future crises (Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap, 2000).

Of relevance, ironically, is that the most legally binding constraints to emerge from Copenhagen may well be those relating to wider use of any documents presented to it to clarify the issue — and, perhaps most significantly, that governing the copyright of the symbol of the Copenhagen event. In contrast to other such UN symbols, this is a valuable effort to embody the global challenge as discussed elsewhere (Metaphorical Geometry in Quest of Globality — in response to global governance challenges, 2009). Such copyright policies are in marked contrast to the open source philosophy appropriate to an open society.

At the time of writing the legal implications of the metaphor are significantly illustrated by its use in relation to the "chill wind" of censorship of embarrassing information (an "inconvenient truth"), as described by Ian Hislop (A Chill Wind for the Press, The Guardian, 14 October 2009) with regard to reporting of the "alleged" dumping of toxic waste in Africa by the multinational corporation Trafigura:

The injunction against The Guardian publishing questions to ministers tabled by the Labour MP Paul Farrelly is an example of a chill wind blowing more widely through the press. In increasing numbers, aggressive lawyers, who used to use libel law to protect their clients, are now using injunctions to secure privacy and confidentiality. They have found it is a legal technique which shuts stories down very quickly so that now it is not a question of publish and be damned, as it used to be: we are now finding that we can’t even publish at all.

Beyond the legal instruments use to prevent media from reporting in ways that may prejudice a trial, is the emergence of "super-injunctions" as described by James Robinson (How super-injunctions are used to gag investigative reporting, The Guardian, 14 October 2009) with regard to the 12 notices of injunctions that The Guardian had been served in the previous year concerning stories that could not be legally reported. These "super-injunctions" — of which there are currently some 200 in nthe UK — prevent news organizations from revealing the identities of those involved in legal disputes, or even reporting the fact that reporting restrictions have been imposed — namely of the existence of a super-injunction. This is a form of institutionalized omerta. The issue goes to the root of the Right to Know as it relates to parliamentary debate.

The application to toxic waste dumping suggests that such legal instruments will be increasingly used as a form of "chill wind" to constrain any future "hot air" reporting of environmental issues, notably including "hot air" associated with carbon emissions — perhaps as the simplest way of maintaining the pretence that such issues are of no significance. It might well be asked whether "super-injunctions", or their analogues, are not already in operation with regard to other significant issues — such as that of overpopulation (Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge: incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth, 2008). How would it be possible to know whether or not this was the case?

Curiously the term "cap" is used in describing remedies to all three forms of emission noted above: cap-and-trade, putting a cap on it, and contraceptive cap. In each case use of such a cap then enables a form of trade. The financial crisis might be seen as the consequence of putting a cap on information regarding the toxicity of assets that could then be successfully traded. Super-injunctions are even more effective in that they specifically ensure that the cap is invisible — reminiscent of the tale of emperor’s clothes (Entangled Tales of Memetic Disaster: mutual implication of the Emperor and the Little Boy, 2009).

More familiar, but equally curious as the other face of the "reputation management" giving rise to super-injunctions, is the increasing extent of news management. This is widely named as "spin" but for which other metaphors are also used implying the need for new skills (Viable Global Governance through Bullfighting: challenge of transcendence, 2009).

CONTINUE READING IN THE ORIGINAL – LAETUS IN PRASENS

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 17 Oct 2009.

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