I spent the weekend in New York, mostly at workshops for my yoga teacher training, but I did take these pictures. Urban photography is so different from landscape, with an almost totally different set of challenges. I’m still not all that comfortable taking pictures of people, but I did get a few.
Soho street
in the West Village
my teacher’s loft windows
See more photos on my flickr page.
I spent the day taking pictures and wandering in and out of the FCC’s hearing on Comcast filtering BitTorrent, hosted by Berkman in Ames Courtroom at HLS. It was a heady day, full of debate and argument, and a pleasantly surprising amount of openness from the commissioners. They asked pointed questions of the panelists and gave time for responses, even asked follow-up questions.
With respect to my work with ONI, I was asked the question by a commissioner’s staffer of whether we look to FCC guidelines when we are assessing other governments’ filtering policies around the world. And honestly, I hadn’t thought of it that way before. We so often just look at the rest of the world and try to deduce a government’s actions, without looking at our own government as an example, or a starting point for an argument.
The candidness and deep sense of commitment I discerned from the commissioners and those who work on these issues every day might make me change my mind.
Tim Wu brought up the question of foreign policy at the hearing, that the decisions made about broadband traffic preference here at home could be used as an example overseas, and possibly misused. He cautioned the FCC to consider this when creating policy. So if we are to create policy that is not just exportable, but desirable as an example, what would it be?
Then came up the argument of abundance, that in this case traditional market regimes that are based upon scarcity are not necessary. The argument goes that telecoms (and other Internet services) create false scarcity in order to build value for their services, when in fact they could build a business model around abundance, which would serve the public better. If we simply had enough bandwidth, we would not be arguing about Comcast filtering BitTorrent traffic because they say torrents slow the network down.
Now comes the open question. If we are to create desirable exportable policy and consider a model of abundance, that better serves us here at home, what do we say to countries dealing with bandwidth issues across the board, where it is not an issue of false scarcity but true scarcity? Must they have a different policy? Is there ever a case in which we might adopt a sub-utopian policy at home in order to benefit those overseas?
When CA Congressman Tom Lantos passed away last week, he left an empty seat. Those of us who have been watching Larry Lessig’s bold take-on of the flawed system of funding members of Congress were excited to see some rumblings towards encouraging him to run. The rumblings have been growing, and they’re having an effect. Larry Lessig posted a video describing his reaction to the DraftLessig (dare I say) movement. It’s fun when the person you’re trying to convince doesn’t have to be convinced to buy into the medium (blog posts and Facebook group), as well as the message.
The first thing that a lot of photographers learn is that a photograph should tell a story. It should convey some feeling, sentiment, emotion. I’m beginning to think, though, that it’s not possible to have it any other way. Is this really an element to worry about, that an image captured will be storyless or devoid of meaning?
It was a bluebird morning today so I took my camera on my walk to work. I started photographing shadows — the ultimate negative space. Fleeting, silhouettes of nothing, of the movements of objects blocking the sun. And yet that is its own story, whether real, make believe or imaginitive. Par example:
So lonely, yet so present… and
some abandoned garbage that cast a shadow I thought looked like a pig. sweet.
This poem is was written in prose, and is actually part of a much longer piece. These lines hang near my desk at home, though. They were recited to me on the John Muir Trail, by a grandfatherly pastor whose worldview was not mine but his manner was an inspiration. It was written by Rene Daumel.
You cannot stay on the summit forever, so why bother to climb in the first place? Just this: What is above, knows what is below. But what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer.
But one has seen. There is an art of conducting one’s self in the Lower regions by the memory of what one has seen higher up. And when one can no longer see, one can at least know.
Of course, those of us who love the mountains know that there is something special about standing on the top of something. But I don’t think that’s really what he’s talking about. He’s talking about the unique challenge of attaining, and retaining, wisdom — from those fleeting moments of clarity that show the world as what it is. That’s what looking from above feels like, wherever it’s found.
This picture is from the top of Glen Pass on the JMT, looking north.
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