Discovering Home on YouTube
"We live in exponential times...."
- Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod in Globalization & The Information Age.
Yesterday I was down to one apple in the house. So I went out to the shop, and bought 20, enough to last a couple of weeks. From one apple to twenty in one day...exponential times indeed. In 2006 I had no Apple platforms in my direct existence. By 2008, I owned 4 (2 iPods, iPhone and some Apple music software), doubling my rate of uptake. Google search, and now Bing search, Wolfram Alpha and countless others, even search platform options themselves are increasing. So with all these facts, figures and information which are surely too much for anybody to absorb in a single lifetime, it's great to see attempts that put it all into context for our consumption via modes that best suit our attentionnally-challenged age.
One of the best I've come across is from a presentation made in Rome (which, being dated from 2008 might as well be ancient history now considering the video's theme) by Karl Fisch, titled Did You Know? 3.0. It contains veritable nuggets of enlightenment such as 'It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century', before ending rather tantalisingly with the question 'So what does it all mean?'. Needless to say, the 5 minute clip of facts and figures is unable to answer the question, and I guess that's the point - does it mean anything? What is all this advancement if the Earth is going to heat up and dry up in 50 years, diminishing the very environment we have at once relied upon and abused in the name of civilisation?
These are questions examined in what is almost an accidental sequel to Did You Know? (at least it seems like that in my mind of fractured connections), in Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film Home, an exquisitely crafted project tracing the origins of human beings during the Earth's development, our substantial exploitation of the environment over the last century, and future directions required for conservation, and all through some of the most spectacular cinematography of natural landscapes and cityscapes you'll find (at least on YouTube - and for free at that!). Arthus-Bertrand, president of the GoodPlanet Foundation, is evidently a master of the environmental narrative, and unlike some other projects (Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth springs to mind) it balances the strong rhetoric of warning with an emphasis on hope and initiatives currently driving alternative methods of energy consumption.
The initial impact of the film is it gets one thinking about consumption, which for my immediate concern raised the question of why I bought 20 apples for myself when perhaps I could've done with about half that amount comfortably (the other 10 normally go bad before I get a crack at them anyway). I found myself in the same boat, or dwelling, as every greedy consumer of a megalopolis (not that Sydney is on par with Palm Springs or Las Vegas - 2 of the most resource intensive cities in the world) described by Arthus-Bertrand. This is something I intend to remedy, piece by inconsequential piece of daily living.
What links Home and Fisch's glorious tribute to technology and its uptake, is that the latter serves to show just what the impact of the former can achieve in terms of exposing critical issues to large audiences. Did You Know? mentions that to reach an audience of 50 million, radio took 38 years, TV managed it in 13 years, the Internet proved it could be done in 4 years, it took 3 years for the iPod to get there, and a quickfire 2 years for Facebook to register 50 million users. So imagine in the exponential times we live, a film on YouTube, with its millions of subscribers, the amount of exposure that can be gained for prominent issues affecting us all, and how many more could decide to go for 10 apples rather than 20.
More than 50% of the world's wealth sits in the hands of the richest 2% of our population, and 50% of the world's poor live in the most resource rich nations on Earth. Clearly there is something askew, and tipping the balance can begin with the minor thoughts of many, which can translate into the minor actions which in turn create major changes. This can be the strength of YouTube, and of our ever changing and expanding times. Home concludes with the narrator emphasising that it's 'too late to be a pessimist', and I would add that it's also too late to be a pacifist. Ultimately both point to the strength of a collaborative, online community - it's just difficult to find the most effective way to harness this community. Perhaps the answer to 'So what does it all mean?' lies somewhere within the large-scale action (hopefully positive rather than negative) that can result in these exponential times.
As the above rambling is unlikely to present anything that hasn't been mentioned before, and probably more eloquently, we'll move back into safer territory of humouring the minutiae of daily life at the next entry :). I would recommend sparing time to watch Yann Arthus-Bertrand's film, it was without doubt worth the 1.5 hours of my life it consumed, and for that the filmmakers cannot be blamed, as it is 'a carbon-offset movie'.
