JULY 2016
New Works
Politics & Culture
The Saga
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NEW WORKS
NOTE: Click or tap to enlarge images.
photographs
No Stops
Back River
Five Islands
Beach (Reid Park)
The Boys
Cape Cod (Cotuit)
Stata Center (MIT)
digital/graphic art
Self/Other Box
BACK RIVER
FIVE ISLANDS
BEACH (Reid Park)
THE BOYS
CAPE COD (Cotuit)
THREE POEMS
NO LAMENT
We vanish soon to lie forgotten and unaccounted
our remains deceits of myth and memory
Such are the progress of mortality
and the persistence of souls
AM I THE WAVES
As many as the waves am I
and the waves within the waves
But am I the waves
all the waves
BEFORE DAWN
This morning
before dawn I heard
through my open window
a creature crying soft
warbles that faded
into the darkness
The cries came
every few seconds
pausing only for breath
Was it a bird there or maybe
a cat and was it crying only to
itself or calling out to others
suffering perhaps or lost
Not happy surely for
I could hear no joy
I got out of bed went
to the window and for
several minutes stood
listening letting the
cries press into me
But I could learn
no more about them
Were they summoning me
Should I go outside and
see if I might help
THE SAGA
Tiny drones turning our lives inside out? Could that really happen? Something like it may be inevitable. Note the development and spread of cellphone video these days, and of surveillance cameras, body and dashboard cams, GPS, miniature sensors and recorders, smart objects, mobile robots, spyware, data mining, AI, advanced networking, hacking and (Wiki, etc.) leaking, ever smaller and more capable drones, etc.
With dramatically increased transparency in our lives, what may become of us as individuals and societies, and as a civilization? Whither the self, the family, the community, and our species? What is our nature, and our potential?
From PRELUDE‘s Chapter One:
(The tiny drone’s) effects will range from innocuous to helpful to traumatic. . . . (P)eople everywhere will use it to observe anything they want. Our spouses, children, parents, friends, relatives, neighbors, and colleagues will watch and listen to us through it at any time, without our knowledge or consent. So will businesses, governments, police, researchers, marketers, salespeople, spies, voyeurs, curiosity seekers, and other strangers. And we will use it to watch and listen to them.
Because its network will gird the globe, and because anyone who wants to will be able to tune in, it will serve as a panopticon, exposing everyone and everything to ‘the censorial inspection of the public eye’ (Edmund Burke’s phrase). It will put every visible and audible aspect of our lives on public display: work, family, friendship, romance, sex, solitude. Our selves, experiences, relationships, institutions—all will turn inside out, revealed as never before. Distinctions between public and private will vanish. Privacy, secrecy, and intimacy as we have known them will end. So may our sense of security. So may our sanity.
Some intriguing and challenging possibilities—and profound changes—coming our way?
TOP⬆︎
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