tl; dr 2013
Between NSA relevations, the TPP making moves towards enclosing our right to use computers away from us on the legal front, and other asymetric nonstate actors we are threatened, often from places we are not expecting to be threatened from. The world is becoming a complex place but so too is it becoming more dangerous, as we cede more power of our lives over to unaccountable robots. The story of 2013 is one of giving critical amounts of our lives over to these robots, passing a threshold that we may not be able to recover from at all.
Around June I travelled from Regina, Saskatchewan to Thunder Bay, Ontario to live and work with Maureen Croissant-Prairie, where she has been something of a patron and mentor for the remainder of the year.
There's been a lot of obstacles since -- life has gotten in the way in many ways, of my becoming the musician I hoped to be with her help. But we have a band, and I've learned and grown since coming to stay with her. A lot of things fell through this year, but she was not one of them, and for that I am thankful.
Thanks to Edward Snowden, and the EFF, there has been a lot of discussion around the world about how the US government and the Five Eyes (including Canada & the UK) are spying on the whole world, and conducting industrial espionage on a global scale. There isn't a single business or individual that is not threatened by this, and as a trained computer scientist I would agree that people who have gone through the trouble of becoming professionals in the computer science world, and people who seek to be responsible programmers in general ought to speak out against this, to understand the full scope of what's happening, and to help build and deploy tools to subvert it.
The Harper Government has been a Problem. Negotiating away our rights in the TPP, and pressuring and delaying Elections Canada from being able to do its job in prosecuting members of the Conservative party who interfered with the last election here in Canada are but two of the many things I've been tracking throughout the past year that they have committed. We live in hard times to a large extent because of the ignorance, greed and institutional power involved in the PMO, and the decisions they have made. This isn't not something that happens in a far away land down in Ottawa and doesn't affect anything. Everywhere I've gone in the country I've seen the results, and everywhere I've gone I've encountered people who are getting screwed by their government. What it means to be Canadian has taken on a more sinister overtone, and by the end of the year I am sitting here, trying to figure out what possible actions would lead to stopping Stephen Harper and those around him from causing more damage to my future and anything I care about.
Finally, after traveling from place to place, and in particular going back to Saskatoon I've felt as though I really didn't have a 'home'. Saskatoon has changed -- even the parts of it which do resonate as something that I recognize, like the downtown bench by the mcdonalds, are being removed. The people who are involved with the parts I remember are either marginalized out of sight or lifted into a different life. The physical structures are slowly but surely being replaced and built around. I don't recognize it as what I would consider to be "Saskatoon". Regina, too. It always seemed like I was staying somewhere temporary, an outsider who could be removed, and who often was. Since I've left it's only gotten worse -- the curse of the traveler has grown on every step of the journey, and it's increasingly unclear, given the years passing by what isn't changing beyond my ability to recognize it, and to live with it.
But I realized one constant in my life, one place I can call home, consistently, beyond my stable point within an inertial reference frame, everything moving around it. It's the light at the end of the tunnel. The end is my home. I will make my way there, travels or not. That I can look forward to, more than anything else, 2014 or not.
Around June I travelled from Regina, Saskatchewan to Thunder Bay, Ontario to live and work with Maureen Croissant-Prairie, where she has been something of a patron and mentor for the remainder of the year.
There's been a lot of obstacles since -- life has gotten in the way in many ways, of my becoming the musician I hoped to be with her help. But we have a band, and I've learned and grown since coming to stay with her. A lot of things fell through this year, but she was not one of them, and for that I am thankful.
Thanks to Edward Snowden, and the EFF, there has been a lot of discussion around the world about how the US government and the Five Eyes (including Canada & the UK) are spying on the whole world, and conducting industrial espionage on a global scale. There isn't a single business or individual that is not threatened by this, and as a trained computer scientist I would agree that people who have gone through the trouble of becoming professionals in the computer science world, and people who seek to be responsible programmers in general ought to speak out against this, to understand the full scope of what's happening, and to help build and deploy tools to subvert it.
The Harper Government has been a Problem. Negotiating away our rights in the TPP, and pressuring and delaying Elections Canada from being able to do its job in prosecuting members of the Conservative party who interfered with the last election here in Canada are but two of the many things I've been tracking throughout the past year that they have committed. We live in hard times to a large extent because of the ignorance, greed and institutional power involved in the PMO, and the decisions they have made. This isn't not something that happens in a far away land down in Ottawa and doesn't affect anything. Everywhere I've gone in the country I've seen the results, and everywhere I've gone I've encountered people who are getting screwed by their government. What it means to be Canadian has taken on a more sinister overtone, and by the end of the year I am sitting here, trying to figure out what possible actions would lead to stopping Stephen Harper and those around him from causing more damage to my future and anything I care about.
Finally, after traveling from place to place, and in particular going back to Saskatoon I've felt as though I really didn't have a 'home'. Saskatoon has changed -- even the parts of it which do resonate as something that I recognize, like the downtown bench by the mcdonalds, are being removed. The people who are involved with the parts I remember are either marginalized out of sight or lifted into a different life. The physical structures are slowly but surely being replaced and built around. I don't recognize it as what I would consider to be "Saskatoon". Regina, too. It always seemed like I was staying somewhere temporary, an outsider who could be removed, and who often was. Since I've left it's only gotten worse -- the curse of the traveler has grown on every step of the journey, and it's increasingly unclear, given the years passing by what isn't changing beyond my ability to recognize it, and to live with it.
But I realized one constant in my life, one place I can call home, consistently, beyond my stable point within an inertial reference frame, everything moving around it. It's the light at the end of the tunnel. The end is my home. I will make my way there, travels or not. That I can look forward to, more than anything else, 2014 or not.