[Rumori] idea to port over to audio domain?

[Steev Hise]

on Tue, 5 Jul 2005 Bob Boster told me:

->bb> I'm less concerned about the yellow garbage issues for  the following
->reasons:
->
->1) If someone can invent a bio-degradable plastic garbage bag (I'm using
->them now), then certainly a bio-degradable post-it note is simple...

ah, now we're veering back into topic, excellent.  heh.

I recently read a book called "Rubbish," by anthropologists that
excavate landfills to learn about how people live.  They
discovered that even supposedly biodegradable stuff doesn't
degrade, in landfills. they found banana peels 50 years old, for
example.  in fact, things only biodegrade under very
certain circumstances.  so those garbage bags might make you feel
better but they and everything in them will be intact long after
we are wormfood, probably.

on the other hand another of the many myths about garbage
revealed to be myth in that book is that we are not actually
running out of room to put our garbage. there's plenty of space
for landfills.  there's just not plenty of will, thanx to
NIMBYism.

plus, are these stickers supposed to be biodegradable? i didnt
see that in the article.

->2) The idea of a spectator using some additional object (a yellow arrow) to
->litter the world minutely towards creating more artwork seems fairly
->benign.  Given that I'm actually pro-tagging, this is a very minor
->consideration given how low the impact is.

it's hard to say how low the impact would be, i think. if i, as a
wandering, traveller, or whatever, see a yellow arrow sticker at
every site of note, say in downtown Paris, i would be pretty
annoyed. i'm already irritated when i travel and see armies of
other travellers toting the same Lonely Planet guidebook.

it's an aesthetic thing, then, i guess. by tagging i guess you
mean grafitti tagging? i like creative and beautiful grafitti,
but i'm against gang tags and ugly tags.

but perhaps the comparison is not that apt, because on one hand
we have poor street kids with spray paint and on the other we
have rich privileged owners of gps/sms-capabable cellphones and
college degrees.  something about these yellow arrows bothers me
even more than the sprayed-on symbols announcing "this is my
gang's turf, members of other gangs, stay away or we'll knife
you."

->3) The object itself is then subject to further hacking (adoption,
->redirection, etc.) in ways that are also interesting and in ways that an
->"invisible" tag would not be.

true, good point. it will be interesting, perhaps, to see what
uses users put to the Yellow Arrow system that the creators
perhaps did not forsee.

chao,

smh

Steev Hise |  steev at detritus.net | http://detritus.net/steev
Donate to the Computers for Bolivia Project: http://villaingenio.org/computers/donate.html
blog: http://steev.hise.org | gpg public key: http://steev.hise.org/gpgkey.txt
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