JB MacKinnon Speaks On His Book "The Day The World Stops Shopping"

Wednesday night my daughter and I went to Bainbridge High School to hear author J.B MacKinnon.  He was interviewed on stage by local Bainbridge resident Becky Rockefeller whose a founder of the Buy Nothing movement.  She was a knowledgeable and perceptive interviewer.  

The discussion was exciting.  Mackinnon's ideas about changing consumerism were realistic - "if we cut back shopping by 25% one day, the economy would collapse" - and there were lots of examples of people who have chosen non-consumer life-styles.  

A key concept for me was the idea of one-world living.  Not sure what your first thought was when you hear that term, but mine was not what he was talking about.

He was talking about how many planet earths were required to sustain a country's level of consumption.  He said the US needed about five or six planet earths to supply the resources for all that we consume of the long haul. (He said he didn't remember the exact number.)  When he was writing the book he looked for countries that were one-world or less.  The most attractive life at the level, at the time, was Ecuador.  

But he also said that 1977 in the US fit that standard too.  I was alive and aware at that time and it wasn't a burdensome life.  

I realize that one reason I'm blogging less frequently is that trying to do it right takes more time than I seem to have.  So I'm going to use a shortcut and offer this YouTube with MacKinnon so you can get a sense of his ideas yourself. 

 

Venice Beach Sunset - But Which Picture Would You Prefer?

I didn't get on the bike until late this afternoon.  The downside is I have to ride back at dusk when, even with blinking bike lights, I'm not as visible to the cars.  The upside is a great sunset.

So, this picture looked pretty good right off the disk.

Directly from the camera

There's the bright pink clouds, a bit of ocean at the bottom, framed by the palm trees.

But could I make it better with a little tweaking?  Nothing fancy.  No photoshop.  Just playing with the contrast.

Contrast bumped a little

Which would you prefer to see?
Does it matter if it's digitally enhanced?
Would you know it was enhanced if I didn't say so and the other picture wasn't there?
Would you know the other one wasn't enhanced?

And, does it even mean anything, since the camera doesn't capture a true image anyway?

Do you even care?
Would you like enhanced images to be marked somehow so that you know?
Does cropping count as enhancing?
Does increasing the contrast matter?
Where is the line?  Adding in the palm trees?  (I didn't, they were there)  Changing the color radically?

For pictures like these, my questions are more aesthetic.  But when wrinkles are removed (or added) to people's faces larger ethical issues arise.  And what people are doing is manipulated (a gun is put in someone's hand, or removed) there are more questions. (I removed a cigarette once from someone's hand because he wanted to share the post with family, but they thought he'd stopped smoking.)

Will people just become sheep and accept what they see if it supports their world view?  Or will they not believe anything?  Both situations become debilitating for a civil society.  

These aren't new issues.  Jerry Lodriguss goes into more detail on this issue in The Ethics of Digital Manipulation.  He even says there are times when it would be unethical to NOT manipulate the picture.  I couldn't find the date of the post.

Another post, on what sounds like a promising website - Ethics in Photo Editing - offers some examples starting with an Abraham Lincoln photo.  The problem is that the posts I could find were all 2009, so either this blogger moved stuff elsewhere, or just gave up.

Another problem is that the post is dated April 1, 2009.  I always have to wonder about things posted on April 1.  But whether the examples are real or not . . .

[Writing that caused me to google one of the pictures (Oprah Winfrey's head on Ann Margaret's body on TV Guide, with neither of their permission) which got me to a 2012 Atlantic article with some of the same examples, which linked to Izitru (say that out loud) which has a large collection of such doctored photos.  It also has a service where you can send your jpg pictures and they will officially verify that it's not been manipulated.

There are some pretty egregious ethics lapses - there's one where anti-John Kerry folks added him to a picture of Jane Fonda talking to a crowd making it look like they had appeared together.]

I guess, since I posted about The Cloudspotter's Guide, I should be saying something about the clouds.  I still haven't read that much more of the book so I'm not too sure.  My guess would be cumulus medics radiatus but that's because it's one of the few I've read about.  And cloud experts out there can you confirm or correct?

Put Your Life On Pause

I've been looking for videos for a post I'm preparing and one had an American Airlines ad.  Two people are scuba diving among spectacularly colored coral and fish and they swim past a Departure/Arrival monitor.


A few seconds later he checks his iPhone.   And then they are rushing through the airport to the plane and the voice says, "Fly without putting your life on pause."

I'm here to say, you're supposed to put your life on pause when you go on vacation.  This is part of our massive marketing brainwashing that we always have to be connected electronically with every possible device.  And each one needs to be discarded in a couple of years (less if you're really hip)  and you have to buy a new one. 

You don't have to.  That was part of Penny Arcade's message - don't be the person others tell you to be, discover who you really are.  Now, some people really need to be the first to have any new gadget.  Let them be.  Let them pay premium prices to work the bugs out.  But the rest of us don't need to.

So I saw this ad and considered it as a possible posting topic, but dismissed it.  Until an hour or so later when a friend skyped me  from a function he's at with his wife.

I was able to watch that Youtube on my cell ph         7:59 PM
Kinda exciting here                                                    7:59 PM
Not

I skyped back that a summer school Spanish teacher once told me "An intelligent person is never bored."  And I've made sure I was never bored since.  There is always something to observe and learn.  Wherever you are.

I suggested he track how many people there were, what colors they were wearing.  What food was served.  To write down the most interesting sentence anyone says.  The world is full of data, you just have to see it, track it, and make sense of it. 

So, ignore American Airlines.  Put Your Life on Pause. Often.  Enjoy the time on the plane to unplug. Enjoy moments, hours, every day, to connect to nature,  to connect to yourself.

I'm hoping that part of what the Occupy people are about is this sort of 'pause,' escape from the kind of life corporate America wants us to live.