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Spaceship Earth

Review of Neuromancer by William Gibson

I finished the book in 4 days, reading it page by page, glued to it when I wasn’t taking care of the rest of my life. I did something that I have done a few times prior, which entailed listening to the audiobook when not reading the book after getting about 100 pages in. So, I was reading ahead while listening to the same pages I had just read in the time when I was unable to have the book in hand. Essentially, the effect of hearing it from a narrator’s perspective allows for more intake of the concepts as well as a nice backtracking on the plot and pick up of the details that were missed while was absorbed in reading.

This book’s major accomplishment is its understanding of a future that felt prescient in a way I haven’t experienced. I still can’t comprehend how Gibson was able to imagine what AI’s impact would become while at the same time create a world in which nothing felt out of the realm of possible. Truly a work of a mind that can postulate on ideas that had not yet been poured over so much in the 40 years between my reading and its creation. AI is not a new concept, but in 1983 during the book’s creation, AI was essentially philosophical in a way that required filling in the blanks around its implications that are more fleshed out today.

The duelling concept of two types of AI and what AI could come to represent will frame my understanding further as we enter the AI-age. I need to dig more into it, but so many things Gibson proposes are totally inspiring.

The plot itself pulls you along with it at a great speed that many novels fail to achieve. There’s never a point where you feel you’ve skipped details that are necessary to understand where you are. I loved this aspect of it. I could see the scenes without much effort and his ability to jump into cyberspace and out without giving the reader a hint of where you are before the scene begins felt fresh and special as I was reading it.

Highly recommend everyone to read it. And read it again if you already have, it resonates today as if he were predicting the future instead of entertaining with a a story. 

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Empathy is the solution. Full stop. The way forward is to show care and understanding of our neighbours that make up this society that we occupy together. Success is not a zero-sum game. There is a way for you to achieve what you are hoping to achieve where I am also able to achieve what I have set out to achieve. Stop acting like your failure is the result of other’s success and stop building societal systems on such concepts. We do not have to live as adversaries.

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Árið án Sumars | A Year Without Summer

I always enjoy photographing theatre pieces a little bit more than anything else that I do. This one involved some of my favourite artists from many different mediums of theatre, costumes, stage design, acting, dancing, and lighting design. The real star of this photograph is probably Óli Stefánsson, the lighting designer. He was the one who came up with the idea to flood the stage with sodium vapour flood lights. The effect is such that the only visible light on the spectrum is the yellow/orange wavelength. and the resulting photograph has almost no post work done to it — I added a +5,+10 -10 -5 contrast S-curve and that’s about it. Of course every photo is the result of a lot of people’s work and in this one, we see a lot of brilliant people coming together to make something stunning.

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One of the great paradoxes contained in the scale of a lifetime is that as you get older, gain wisdom, and generally master skill after skill, you’re simultaneously losing the freedom of conscience that comes with ignorance and unbridled joy.

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BTS

Turns out this might be the last BTS I am able to post for a while, the business is slowing here and it feels like doom is surrounding the entire business. LA is burning, AI is rapidly developing, and greed is being exposed all over.

How does greed factor in it? Well, the business minds here are very good at sifting their piece from the pie without providing much more than a good time all the while scraping the bottom of the barrel wherever possible from the labor that actually puts the product on the carousel. Now, it’s not that bad, I mean, the opportunities are fantastic and the fun of the production is always exciting, but the reality is the equity is dependent directly on how well you are able to ignore the negatives. The long hours, the poisonous materials inhaled, the inability to affect the artistry when those in charge are making uninspired choices…

I really sound ungrateful, don’t I? Well I will tell you that it is not that at all. I am throughly grateful right up until the point the money is no longer there. The problem that I can discern is that these companies promise big things and then use whatever means necessary to exploit budgets to be as top-heavy as possible. And who is really doing the work?

My last project was a failure from the top down. The people at the top promised this and that and delivered nothing of the sort. Now, a majority of the workers were putting in 110% to make sure that the train stayed on the tracks and we made it to our destination. But, the amount of bloat between the dirty hands and the hand-wringing was spectacular. I will walk into battle with that shooting crew again any day, but when the production team doesn’t do what they set out to do and seemingly think that we are all meant to be on 24/7, things end up quite lame.

But this is all a microcosm of how the industry works and it is in dire need of fixing. Poor management is the death knell of any business, it is a symptom of poor ownership (ownership of problems, ownership of quality control, etc.) and when it reaches the managerial level, that is when you know things are not going to improve. Because if the production team can’t fix things without throwing money at the problem, then there is no fixing the problems that are being swept under the rug.

Will this business change? Who knows. All I can hope for is to work with the good people I encounter, the ones who stick up for the rights of those on the front lines and the ones who know how to plan these major projects accordingly. Until then, I am excited to use my camera in other spaces.

For those who I worked with on the above project, know that it wasn’t you who I am talking about here, so much as the lack of a cohesive unit that I am skewering. The people, the ones who I know in and out, they are my family and I appreciate everything they did for me.