[Edwinna beginning her warm-up on stair-walker, when energetic man leaps onto the stair-walker beside her.]
Edwinna: whoom.....................whoom.......................whoom
Man: whoom..whoom..whoom..... Hey, these machines are really good for you, eh?
E: [beginning to sweat, daintily, of course] Uh, yes. whoom ............... whoom..............whoom
Man: whoom..whoom..whoom Guess what... I used to weigh 250 lbs. E: [manages to turn her head in his direction and keep stepping at the same time -- he is quite trim] Really [one small gasp as the speed picks up] You must have great self control. whoom ............... whoom..............whoom
Man: No, not really. [He is now in hyper gear -- the whooms are uncountable] I just drink three pots of coffee every morning. Hey, what level are you on? Gee, it's great to chat. Makes the time go faster -- don't you think? I'm on level 11.
E: [now turning a really unbecoming shade of puce and beginning to drip in a ladylike manner, of course] gasp....gasp...gasp... Uh....
Man: I mean I do about 10 minutes on this then go to the machines and then swim. Hey, this is great, I think I'll come back again tonight. What level did you say you're on? Gee, I think I'll crank this up another level.
E: [if she had the strength at this point, she'd jam her towel down his throat, however, she manages an agonized smile and begins to cling to the support bars -- she also lies] Uh...gasp...I'm only on level 8, gasp...gasp..gasp... I have a stress fracture on my left foot gasp ....gasp..drip..drip..gasp and I don't drip...drip...drip...drip..gasp....gasp ...gasp want to stress it any further [she happily notes he cannot see the level readout on her machine]....
Man: Gee, well, that's ok. [his legs are pumping so fast E fears that at some point he will fly off the machine] Gosh, my time's almost up. Oh, this was great. I feel great. Oh, I'd love a piece of chocolate, but I had a root canal last week and can't have candy anymore. Gee, got to go. Nice talking to you. [he slows to a stop and bounces off to punish another part of his body]
E: Uh....
Hacking the Future: Stories for the Flesh-Eating `90s, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, New World Perspectives/Steart House, 143 pp. $22.95. CD-ROM included.
reviewed by Edwinna von Baeyer
published in Ottawa Citizen, February 1996
There we were, speeding down the Information Highway, sending some e-mail, doing the World Wide Web, all without a care in the world. Until we met Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Montreal-based media critics, whose voices are commanding respect throughout cyberspace in their effort to rip the scales of electronic innocence from our eyes. The Krokers are saying, hey, cybernauts, stop, look, think about what's happening to you and to global culture as this new technology, the Internet, insinuates itself deeper into our lives.
To illustrate their warning, the Krokers lead us through some pretty strange pieces of fiction, poetry and essays using a high-energy prose composed of a lot of electro-techno jargon seemingly accompanied by a syncopated bongo beat. The pieces are written as warning signs for a culture wired to the extreme, a culture where there are "sudden breakdowns of personalities and bodies and feelings and relationships," where our flesh is being "eaten" by our technology, and where overdoses of conformity and commercialization are numbing us.
Symptoms: Look at the arcade cowboys mindlessly playing computer games, merging with the computer code. Listen to the eerie, inhuman music created by scanner music composers. Check out the numbing, dumbing-down Las Vegas theme park life. Watch people seduced into an online life -- bunkered down in their rooms, only a computer for a companion, living virtually, digitally on the Internet. See the bizarre ways some people are using to break through the numbness and feel again: body mutilations (branding flesh is big on the American West Coast), the coldness of cybersex, the high-religion of shopping.
You might think -- been there, done that anti-materialism, technology-sucking-us-dry, our-souls-are-dead routines in the 1960s. But the Krokers are warning us against a new form of materialism -- one where we're in danger of turning into the machines we crave.
In mid-book, they turn off the techno-babble and present a cold, hard essay, written in accessible prose, on what's really happening to our lives, our perceptions, our feelings, political life, ethics. Although they sometimes overstate the case and over-dramatize for effect, the Krokers present some serious issues to mull over. Are we becoming the victims of our technology? Are we losing our humanity? Has high tech left "its charismatic state of innocent grace"? Are we really at a momentous decision point choosing whether or not to let our flesh become digital flesh?
The Krokers feel that our technology, beginning with television, has allowed us to become indifferent to the suffering of others, has allowed the domination, once again, of the have-cultures over the have-not cultures which is creating "surplus flesh". A technological elite is directing our lives for their own agendas and profit, and allowing a "despotic capitalism" to warp our human feelings, to encourage fascism, racism, rage, and a return to right-wing intolerance. The Krokers think we are selling our human souls for an electronic high.
Their solution: the creation of an Internet-savvy group who can see through the agendas of what they characterize as the "virtual elite," in order to design and direct technology to "serve ethical human ends of solidarity, creativity, and democracy." They want us to fight the fate they see already in the making: our bodies and minds being reduced to data bases for imaging systems -- being "hacked" by our technology. However, the Krokers' utopian vision sounds suspiciously like another elite.
Certainly the Krokers' message, presented in words, music and photographs, is a dark one, but they don't present the up side of the Internet -- giving the physically challenged easy access to the outside world, providing an amazing array of information, breaking down barriers to world communication, supporting the advances in medical and other life-enhancing technologies. They don't factor in the human need to reach out, and they overstate the presence of the `Net in the world's life. Will the Internet find wood for the family hearth in Somalia, or dig a well in an Indian village?
They're right, we do need to tame this potentially marvelous tool. We do need to ensure that this new technology will not "harvest flesh." And we do need to guard against creating an age of the survival of the electronically fittest.
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Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory. Random House; 652 pp.; $45.
reviewed by Edwinna von Baeyer
published in the Ottawa Citizen, July 1995
The past may be a foreign country, but Simon Schama, a Columbia University historian and best-selling non-fiction author, has created a witty guide into part of this sometimes alien territory. He has described the signposts we can follow in order to journey through the myths, artistic interpretations, and writings about trees, water and rock -- the fundamental elements of the landscapes of the Western world. His object? To show that ancient myths, historical fact and artistic perceptions have all played a major role -- and, in fact, still do -- in how we perceive and react to our landscapes. He begins by stating that "the cults which we are told to seek in other native cultures -- of the primitive forest, of the river of life, of the sacred mountain -- are in fact alive and well and all about us if only we know where to look for them."
Schama then proceeds to lead us on a fantastic excursion through the light as well as the dark places of myth and history. We travel through sunny, flower-fill meadows, and also dark, dank, fetid places of bestiality and violence. During one forest excursion, he describes the British characterization of the forest as the seat of democracy and true values, and then contrasts it with a particularly horrifying description of how the Nazis twisted ancient German forest myths to their own nationalistic ends, and how they used the forest in some occupied territories as killing places.
By intertwining myth, history and culture in this wonderful tour de force, Schama proves over and over again that the way we look at landscape, the way artists, philosophers and writers portray it, have been conditioned by our myths and the accumulation of artistic interpretations over hundreds and hundreds of years.
These interpretations have been stimulated by our cravings, whether for religious experience, artistic expression or healing contact with nature. No matter who was describing the landscape -- religious philosophers, adventurers, poets, politicians, or environmentalists -- they have each built a particular frame around a picture of the natural world. And these frames, heavily laden with myth and history, shape the landscape we see.
A small example: when we toss off the phrase "cathedral grove" or write about the sacredness of old-growth forests, we often do not realize that these concepts reach far back into a wealth of associations that stem from the pagan grove where trees were worshiped, to Christian iconography illustrating the Tree of Life, to the commonplace use of trees in poetry and art to signify resurrection and the renewal of life.
Schama peels back these layers to "reveal the richness, antiquity and complexity of our landscape tradition to show how much we stand to lose" in the face of present day environmental crises. He notes that many 20th century environmentalists think they must separate landscape from culture in order to save it, because they characterize humankind as agents of destruction who have lost touch with nature. However, Schama counters this assumption through masses of detail, historical fact and numerous illustrations to prove that our culture is intricately intertwined with the natural world, and that we have often revered nature as sacred. Schama's belief is that it would be better to recognize this -- in all its good and bad aspects -- than to deny it.
His book is a call to arms -- a call to look where we've been, an urgent appeal to tap into this rich legacy. We do not have to reinvent our connections to nature, just find our way back onto well-worn trails.
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Candace Savage, Aurora: The Mysterious Northern Lights. Douglas & McIntyre/Greystone Books. 144 pp. $29.95.
reviewed by Edwinna von Baeyer
published in the Ottawa Citizen, May 1995
Saskatoon writer, Candace Savage has written a wonderful book on those mysterious celestial dancers -- the northern lights. She weaves science, myth, personal observations, stunning photographs and fascinating historic drawings into an enthralling tapestry.
Through Savage's lively prose, that shimmers and glows like the auroras she describes, we learn many curious facts and sometimes bizarre legends about the swirling lights. The Inuit thought of them as the manifestation of the dancing souls of deer, seals, salmon and beluga whales. For the Finns, they were magical fire foxes whose glistening fur emitted sparks. In Scandinavia, they were the busy spirits of unmarried women going about household tasks. We also learn the curious fact that today, "dozens of Japanese honeymooners visit northern Canada each year, persuaded that children conceived in the spell of the lights will be fortunate." Savage deftly draws together these and other common threads in the myths, legends and beliefs that people living in the auroral bands circling the upper northern and lower southern hemispheres used to explain the sometimes terrifying, and always awe-inspiring, phenomena.
As she leads us down the path of hard facts, Savage translates complicated science into graceful, lucid explanations. Equally, her tracing of the history of the aurora's discovery of the true science is riveting. The false trails and dead-end streets of scientific enquiry and testing are fascinatingly full of picturesque personalities and weird and wonderful testing devices -- the least of which combined a glass of cognac, a prism and a beam of light.
Savage takes us on an exciting journey that ends with the discovery, only made since the 1950s, that the aurora borealis is the result of a solar wind full of electrons that sweeps through the universe. Learning how the northern lights are created by the interaction of the sun-generated solar wind with the earth's magnetic field and our atmosphere is truly awe-inspiring. Or as Savage explains: "space age physics views the aurora as the offspring of an energetic and tempestuous coupling between the earth and the sun."
But there are still mysteries to be solved -- aurora science continues trying to understand what cause the faint, crackling hiss that accompanies the dance of the lights, and why this sound has never yet been successfully recorded.
In the best tradition of outstanding non-fiction, Savage teaches and delights throughout her book.
Edwinna von Baeyer, 1995
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