How Satellites Are Structuring Our Songlines
The story of mankind is about walking from one place to another. It has been a long march so that it is not surprising we feel that restlessness, which is bred in our bones. Walking has four dimensions, three of which are about space, while the fourth is about time. With the advent of satellites, welcome to fifth dimension.
We have not always been travelers bristling like armored beetles with antennas and pseudopod-like tentacles reaching into web space. Now with Twitter and global positioning system we are tracked in the intimacy of restrooms. But there has been a time of great migrations of the body and the soul, like wave upon wave of human expansion, something Scott Crossfield would have defined as Always Another Dawn.
Civilizations have been built like pyramids of stone, lest the wind came and soon stone became sand again. Perhaps this is why we hate the sea so much. How many sailors and courageous captains have disappeared from charts, while seeking Golden Cipango and Avalon? And there is nothing left of this human energy, but the sound of the sea, and the solitude of green waves.
When the first Man cried “I am” in a not so long a past compared to the family tree of Nature, he began to chart his way out of the first valley, which saw him reach understanding and analysis of his surrounding. So that inevitably thinking about future would mean thinking about walking and discovering.
Moving to a friendly place soon
As Man left the comfort of that valley of Africa to take on the world, he did not leave empty-handed. He would consult stars in Heaven, and instinctively begin to measure distance in terms of walking pace. Much has been said about Art, and scripture, but not about tools. Perhaps the walking stick became the first measuring tool and Royalty spawned from it? The portrait of early hominids is but a plunge in the abyss, and yet I feel that fraternal urge for walking and discovering.
Freemasonry pictures the compass, and a compass it is which is used in Royal Academy of Sandhurst to measure the perfect parade pace of Her Majesty’s soldiers. Even children use compass like a toy to mimic the walking. The compass is truly the very tool with which Man has begun to explore Universe in a cognitive way.
It is amusing to note that Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro begins with Figaro measuring his nuptial bed. The American husband has kept the tradition to carry his newly wed wife to the bed, and if legs were compass, we could imagine the variation in amplitude from the first manly step to the faltering hasty finish before the great Fall.
Shepherds of France did not know how to count, but they knew that for every sheep there had to be a little stone. So that if a sheep was missing, there would be a stone left. Easy, ecologic and simple accounting, so much like a compass and board to build walls extending to the horizon.
Beyond the measuring there is the intellectual process of analysis. Basically all science is about reducing a problem into a sequence of little stones. Since some of us cannot feel contented with traveling two dimensionally, they take on mountains. And mountaineering is nothing else than a sequence of little victories against gravity and cold stone. Like modern Sisyphus, we take on challenges Nature is throwing at us, like so many mountains of stone, like so many Schrei aus Stein (Scream of Stone).
Global positioning system is an extrapolation of the Internet search engines. The traveler of foreign lands shared the approach of the detective and librarian researcher. The journey is about little islands of knowledge charted and registered in those vast maps of oceans and libraries. Many scientific discoveries occurred unintentionally, and many islands and countries have been charted and put on maps for the sake of future travelers.
The traveler and the librarian share that dimensional understanding of space and time. Looking for information is like having the Eye of the Needle. Or the digger’s approach to uncovering treasuries. Exponential development of World Wide Web and satellites monitoring Nomads of Namibia, all this contributes to a Copernican revolution in our dimensional understanding.
Scientific research is like a delicate dance, or if you prefer dueling with the shortest sword. One tentative push forward, and three steps backward. And again, and again, but every time the step forward is like the balancing act of someone about to take the fall. With new technologies we have the temptation to follow the footsteps of others, something of our modern Song Lines.
This is not to say that we are living in a world where everything has been discovered. Of course it can be disappointing for a modern Jacques Cartier to sail home abandoning a part of his crew with the hope of gold to bring back to the King of France, whereas it was only copper. Most of what we see has been modified by the hand of man. So it is a little amusing to see so many SUVs about would-be explorers congregate in places where about every tree and shrub is there by the courtesy of Man.
As I landed in Paris with my battered Range Rover I was armed to the teeth with modern technology. At least seven satellites were tracking me from Heaven, without counting the hundreds of radars, cell phone contacts, and various tentacles, which constitute the invisible tail of Homo Furens.
Soviet battle commanders always emphasised on the need for a short tail. A long tail is but an invitation to get stuck and leaving you with hands cupped on your balls, like Germans at Stalingrad. That tail of logistics, from food to oil, ammunition, headquarters, communication, prostitutes, lawyers is extended today to biblical length, with some U.S. soldiers in direct contact with their wives while fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. “Hold on a second, I am flanking!” “Darling, don’t forget about birthday present! Are you there?”
The funny little detail is that this wonderful tail of Alcibiades is so long that it does require extra package in terms of batteries. We used to have soldiers marching happily, or so we thought, to the sound of battle, now we have soldiers walking in circles to recharge their batteries on the kinetic energy of their legs. From mechanized infantry to mobile battery?
As a French writer said about dueling with a cell phone: “The more modern Man becomes, the softer his attributes.” At least good old compass and board could be used as weapons to keep women with silicon breasts at bay. Now Man is but a victim of electronics and soft antennas. Death is raining from Heaven with pinpoint accuracy, like so much bird shit. Dead men are now trademarked by Motorola, Nokia, or Sony Ericsson. There was the Unabomber manifesto, now there is the Nokia-bomber, a deadly combination of Kamikaze and wireless balls.
Let us please comment on the similarity between searching and walking. I for instance do walk a lot. In bedroom, while trying to find out the right way to wee-wee. Three dimensionally speaking and on the scale of seven GPS satellites, I am not moving much. I have the concentric approach of a drunk for his bottle, or Sarkozy running for a second term. Most of the running does lead to nowhere as I am stretching ridicule on a treadmill. Nonetheless the kinetic energy of pumping legs does contribute to irrigating my grey cells, while shaking testicles is necessary to keep on hoping.
With the introduction of GPS the military were delighted. The French Marechal de Saxe had the nasty surprise to lose an army, and spent days looking for it desperately, something so funny that the King of France almost wet his pants when he learned the story. So in real time the U.S. commander knows where the shit happens. The problem is that the Taliban is relying on another geography altogether as if they had another source of information in Heaven, but for seven satellites. So that the U.S. commander is scratching his balding head, and wondering: “Where are the bastards?”
With the introduction of GPS and cell phone, the modern entrepreneur is delighted. Now he can track his personnel in five dimensions, including the web. The promised gain of productivity has been negligible as personnel is now using guerrilla techniques to evade the questing eye of the boss. As a French humorist joked: “Now is time to design apparatus for new Apparatchiks with a fake restroom wallpaper and seat, so that your boss thinks you are doing little business (petite commission) while you are in fact in the local pub enjoying a beer.”
GPS and cell phone should have contributed to making architecture more adequate and safe, but unfortunately most houses are being built with millimeter accuracy on the very spot of floods and old cemeteries. No surprise there that most thrillers have at least one dead for every cellar.
So with all this arsenal I sailed to Paris with the delicious feeling of being spoilt with information, as if all the panels and roadsigns were for lesser beings, now that I was part of technological aristocracy. I knew how fast I traveled and when I would arrive, something no commercial aircraft could promise between strikes and losing a wing over Atlantic. I also knew where to stop, and what to do then. With new TomTom going to wee-wee is but a stroll in the woods, as dangerous toilets and gay meetings are monitored in real time.
The beauty of GPS in a car is that you feel like Jim Carrey smiling and having a stirring in the loins. You feel again in charge, like the explorer of the 21st century you are. Points of interest are displayed. Restaurants have bright beacons. Prostitutes weaving arms as if drowning. Paris is not a maze of buildings and unhappy people, but a maze of arrows and sonar pinging for radars. Even when you are howling in agony for missing that precious exit from a Paris ring road, the GPS is there like a patient friend to tell you where to go.
So is the GPS comparable to having your wife tell you directions? Yes and no, because the GPS is not preparing food and caring for children, and definitely more sensitive to mishandling. Family cars with GPS are truly Haven of Peace, the man is toying his GPS, the wife is chatting on the web, and two children watch movies about car accidents, and giggle hysterically.
Even GPS voice is customizable from throaty female voice recorded in the dark alleys of Bois de Boulogne, while the male has the telltale virility of Alain Delon in his best silent role. If it does not suffice, language is available too. There is the nonchalant American drawl. The German consonance in dying throes. The new French of Sarkozy about to blurt a Casse-toi, pauvre con! (Fuck off, you dumb ass).
Fukuyama famously wrote in 1989 that: “History had ended.” This is the kind of excellent titles to attract attention in a blog, and since Japanese don’t have to commit Sepuku (suicide) for talking nonsense anymore, they feel free to do whatever crosses their mind, including rubbish. I will not say that: “With GPS travel is dead.” Let me explain why.
As I was pedaling back from river, with the slow rhythm of a Californian dog handler on Malibu beach front, the thought of GPS telling where you are, and where to go, let my mind wander in a future where GPS would associate with matrimonial and dating database, so that from early childhood it would tell you: “You are there. And your match is there.” The biggest mystery of life would be unveiled. No need to travel the world and buy expensive & fashionable clothing. No need to daily run on a treadmill for those extra pounds. Because you would know where and when the meeting would take place. We are here talking about billions of gallons of gasoline saved.
Stretching fantasy further, Heinlein would have invented a GPS with your final appointment. So you could save a lot of transportation hassle to your family.
But GPS is also a wonderful way to rediscover your very surrounding. Intellectually it would be like telling you in those Nintendo WII games, you are acting like 87 in bed. With GPS in hand, I am sure I can go to Mongolia to look for my local retail store. This is a Matrix-like perspective. Looking for Hollywood? It is there. Everything is there. Everything is displayed in terms of distance, coordinates and numbers.
Does it make the world smaller? Even Hernan Cortès dreamt about Italian curves as he prepared to join a Spanish military expedition to the Italian war of Renaissance. His world at once became smaller, when he went through the ceiling of a room, while fleeing the wrath of a married man. GPS does not make your world smaller, just more intricate. Let me explain.
Entering Paris from the West is like taking a plunge in a recreational park. As if they had only waited for you, millions of drivers congregate on two narrow lanes, with that particular look of bloodsuckers. You begin to worry about satellite positioning as more that one driver is flashing you with an extended forefinger. Certainly this is the new Parisian technology to track cell phone. Or perhaps Nokia has changed its logo from shaking hands to extending forefinger?
Thanks to GPS you are now the paranoid driver observing speed limits while overtaken from the right and the left, and soon it is like a procession of extended arms with forefingers pointing at Heaven. So you begin to extend your arm too, and flash that forefinger to a young Mademoiselle with a cotton dress. So Parisian! So quick to learn, too!
Without GPS I would find my way by instinct, with the sniffing of all the Parisian scents, a melange of cheap aftershave and carbon monoxide. Perhaps the Parisian of the future will have olfactory sense at the end of the extended forefinger? But with GPS welcome to the true Paris, the one actively avoided by any French deputy and politician, including Sarkozy who sails through Paris with a whole motorized division, like a modern Rommel.
Entering Chatenay-Malabry I was in fact traveling through Arabia, between buildings of concrete I saw Muslims in veils, and fantastic breasts like two apples expecting to fall any day by way of gravity. Then 16th Arrondissement, another word for a district without supermarkets, hunger strike, and old breasts sagging to the ground. Auteuil and its horse races. Nice and empty but for a few joggers and lazy gardeners. Then back into the ring for Roissy airport.
According to Martin Cruz Smith, Sheremetiovo international airport used to have the Soviet attractiveness of a retail store with a queue when there is nothing for salel. Roissy Charles de Gaulle with GPS will let you land in the perfect formation with thousands of old Peugeot and Renault with their load of bearded Muslims, black Congolese or Pakistani entrepreneurs. Some fish markets are remarkable as fish is venting gas in the face of ravishing young women, while wary matrons are tracking you with the eyes of a woman knowing exactly how large your intimacy is, that is dispirited and sarcastic. Roissy is Paris fish market.
Roissy has the same matrons in line with the blue outfit of Paris Airports. They have the unwavering gaze of American waitresses at 4 AM. Their quiet hostility would freeze a GPS for a full second. Like Ripley in Aliens I was tracking a woman in that melee, one hand on cell/GPS, the other trying to avoid catching flu virus. So that to the beholder I would have appeared a soloist dancer with the look of a man drowning.
In the end all technology failed, and desperate travelers were looking with glazed eyes at their cell phone displays. To wee-wee, follow the flies. To eat, track dead flies. To catch a flight, follow human moles, and processions of luggage, as if France was to be invaded.
There is the soloist talking with earphone. Laughing to his own jokes. There is the British secret service agent, a Lady walking with staccato of high heels with cruise missile accuracy. The scene is unraveling with the quality of an orgasm, as sperm cells are racing wildly to find the Easter Egg.
Cell phones should be fitted with Soviet recommendation of a Zhil limousine. A chainsaw to cut through crowded places. A corkscrew for after-action. Perhaps a buccaneer sword for melee. All in all, everything like a modern version of British Gentlemen’s walking sticks, with reserve of Brandy and bayonet.
Perhaps the biggest failure of mobile technology is that it does not provide the traveler and explorer with the perfect serenity of the one who has lost his way. A phone ringing in Roissy is the signal for everyone standing still and Cowboy-like grasping for the Revolver/Cell. There is that look of the Hunted one. And the disappointment when you realise you are not the Chosen One.
The Germanic tribes buried their Noble Ones with horse and wives. Vittorio Gassman was buried with a microphone, so he could repeat. GPS and cell phone will soon join burial detail. So the wife can check if her husband is stirring or not. And call him to make sure he is done. Vagan’kovskoye cemetery in Moscow will soon display tombstones with stretched hands with Nokia cell.
Even the romantic soul I am trying to preserve from capitalistic assault on my sensuality is rejoicing in the Age of GPS and Cell Phones. With GPS I feel comforted with the uselessness of knowing I am going nowhere, while my cell phone has the ambiguity of a silent statue.
-Frederic W. Erk
