2 0 1 5
S TO R I E S EDITING
co-editors Arturo Di Corinto, Federico Guerrini, e Martino Galliolo ( founder). In this issue: Cover story by Adolfo Arranz, and stories by J.M Ledgard, Piotr Czerski, Rocky McCorkle, Pat Kinsella. Contributions: Chiara Zaratin e Sergio Caruso, illustration on top by Elisa Ferro (All authors of Expost magazine) * Expost magazine by freelance, based in Europe. Made in Venice, Italy The Umbrella Revolution, issue zero, december 2014, free publication, licensed in Creative commons 3.0. For copyright reasons, images and illustrations are all rights reserved.
INDEX
5
MILLENNIALS MANIFESTO We, The Web Kids by Piotr Czerski
21
THE UMBRELLA REVOLUTION Hong Kong Occupy Central by Adolfo Arranz
50
THE FUTURE A day in the future Graphic novel by Pat Kinsella
11
B U I LT C A R G O DRONES AND GET RICH World’s first commercial cargo drone route in Africa by 2016 by J.M Ledgard 49
SUNNY DAY “You
and Me on a Sunny Day” A silent film by Rocky McCorkle
20
F U T U R A 4 2 Dont’ Panic! Samantha Cristoforetti’s Guide to the Galaxy
INDEX
MILLENNIALS MANIFESTO
di Pioter Czeski
by Piotr Czerski (translated by Marta Szreder)
Read in 8’
W
e grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view,
difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to
on mobile online
reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it.
If we were to tell our novel of formation to you, the analog,
we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of.
WE GREW UP WITH THE INTERNET AND ON THE INTERNET
The Web is a process, happening continuously and
continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind. Brought up on the Web we think differently. The ability to find information is to us something as basic, as the ability to find a railway station or a post office in an unknown city is to you. When we want to know something - the first symptoms of chickenpox, the reasons behind the sinking of ‘Estonia’, or whether the water bill is not suspiciously high - we take measures with the certainty
of a driver in a SatNav-equipped car.
We know that we are going to find the information we need
in a lot of places, we know how to get to those places, we know how to assess their credibility. We have learned to accept that instead of one answer we find many different ones, and out of these we can abstract the most likely version, disregarding the ones which do not seem credible. We select, we filter, we remember, and we are ready to swap the learned information for a new, better one, when it comes along. To us, the Web is a sort of shared external memory. We do not have to remember unnecessary details: dates, sums, formulas, clauses, street names, detailed definitions. It is enough for us to have an abstract, the essence that is needed to process the information and relate it to others. Should we need the details, we can look them up within
GLOBAL CULTURE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF OUR IDENTITY
seconds. Similarly, we do not have to be experts in everything, because we know where to find people who specialise in what we ourselves do not know, and whom we can trust. People who will share their expertise with us not for profit, but because of our shared belief that information exists in motion, that it wants to be free, that we all benefit from the exchange of information. Every day: studying, working, solving everyday issues, pursuing interests. We know how to compete and we like to do it, but our competition, our desire to be different, is built on knowledge, on the ability to interpret and process information, and not on monopolising it.
PARTECIPATING IN CULTURAL LIFE is not something out of
ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of our identity, more important for defining ourselves than traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even
the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch together with colleagues or with friends from around the world; our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and individual. This is why we need free access to it. This does not mean that we demand that all products of culture be available to us without charge, although when we create something, we usually just give it back for circulation. We understand that, despite the increasing accessibility of technologies which make
THE INTERTNET TO US IS NOT SOMETHING EXTERNAL TO REALITY BUT A PART OF IT
the quality of movie or sound files so far reserved for professionals available to everyone, creativity requires effort and investment.
We are prepared to pay, but the giant commission that
distributors ask for seems to us to be obviously overestimated. Why should we pay for the distribution of information that can be easily and perfectly copied without any loss of the original quality? If we are only getting the information alone, we want the price to be proportional to it. We are willing to pay more, but then we expect to receive some added value: an interesting packaging, a gadget, a higher quality, the option of watching here and now, without waiting for the file to download. We are capable of showing appreciation and we do want to reward the artist (since money stopped being paper notes and became a string of numbers on the screen, paying has become a somewhat symbolic
act of exchange that is supposed to benefit both parties), but the sales goals of corporations are of no interest to us whatsoever. It is not our fault that their business has ceased to make sense in its traditional form, and that instead of accepting the challenge and trying to reach us with something more than we can get for free they have decided to defend their obsolete ways. One more thing: we do not want to pay for our memories. The films that remind us of our childhood, the music that accompanied us ten years ago: in the external memory network these are simply memories. Remembering them, exchanging them, and developing them is to us something as natural as the memory of ‘Casablanca’ is to you. We find online the films that we watched as children and we show them to our children, just as you told us the story about the Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks. Can you imagine that someone could accuse you of breaking the law in this way? We cannot, either.
SOCIETY IS A NETWORK
WE ARE USED TO OUR BILLS BEING PAID AUTOMATICALLY, as
long as our account balance allows for it; we know that starting a bank account or changing the mobile network is just the question of filling in a single form online and signing an agreement delivered by a courier; that even a trip to the other side of Europe with a short sightseeing of another city on the way can be organised in two hours. Consequently, being the users of the state, we are increasingly annoyed by its archaic interface. We do not understand why tax act takes several forms to complete, the main of which has more than a hundred questions. We do not understand why we are required to formally confirm moving out of one permanent address to move in to another, as if councils could not communicate with each other without our intervention
(not to mention that the necessity to have a permanent address is itself absurd enough.) There is not a trace in us of that humble acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that administrative issues were of utmost importance and who considered interaction with the state as something to be celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance PIOTR CZERSKI Writer and poet, photographer and anthropologist, from Poland, born in 1981.
between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any special qualifications related to social status. The success of the interaction depends solely on whether the content of our message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a serious dialogue with the government? We do not feel a religious respect for ‘institutions of democracy’ in their current form, we do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see ‘institutions of democracy’ as a monument for and by themselves. We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.
What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech,
freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our TRANSLATIONS
duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment. Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.
Built Cargo Drones And get rich
by J.M. Ledgard
M
y goal is to help set up the world’s first commercial cargo drone route in Africa by 2016. It will be about 80 kilometres long and will connect several towns and
villages. The first cargo drones will carry small payloads of blood to keep alive children who would otherwise perish. But they will evolve into larger and heavier craft until they can lift 20 kilos or more over distances of several hundred kilometres. The purpose of the first route will be to save lives, show the value of cargo
Read in 12’
drones in Africa— and to raise money to build other routes. To me, this first route is a spectral version of the Liverpool and Manchester railway. I am a novelist, but I am also director of a future Africa initiative at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and
on mobile online
for the last decade I travelled Africa as a foreign correspondent for The Economist newspaper.
the world’s First commercial cargo drone route in Africa will connect several towns and villages
1
THE FUTURE WILL BE RADICAL
The first point to make is that, even if we deride change, even if we stand still, shielding our eyes, covering our ears, the future will
be radical. I spent my time as a foreign correspondent reporting on politics, economics and war, but I came to see that the most important stories in Africa were not news stories at all. On the one hand, rapid human population growth and extermination of other species. On the other, introduction of advanced technologies capable of reordering time and space.The mobile phone is one such technology. It has contributed more to anti-poverty efforts than any single development intervention. (…) So when I think of what cargo drones can be and should be, I think of the Nokia 1100 mobile phone. Over 50 million Nokia 1100s were sold in Africa. Smart, rugged and cheap the handset was known as the Kalashnikov of communication, but where the machine gun tore at the fabric of society the handset created new possibilities.I keep a picture of the Nokia 1100 pinned up by my desk as proof of the paradox which undergirds cargo drones — the paradox of advanced technologies which I believe will come to define the early 21st century: a community will have access to a flying robot even though it will not have access to clean water, or security, or be able to keep its girls in school. What is technically scaleable will be scaled, what is not scaleable will have to be fought for, household by household. Another way of saying this is, what will improve lives in Africa most easily will be a technology intervention that is massively scaleable.
“I see! You want to put my donkey in the sky!”.
2
A CARGO DRONE IS A DONKEY
For many people, drone is an ugly word. It
evokes a whining sound, something insectile. The dislike of the drones themselves is under-
standable. It is a new technology, used mainly for killing or peeping. However, this early negative feeling will begin to shift with positive use cases for drones. Before 2020, drones will take over search functions at sea. Never again will a coastguard helicopter go blindly into the night in search of a sinking ship. Instead, it will be guided by a drone sent ahead of them to locate those in peril. Drones will monitor the wellbeing of crops and animals. They will be used in mapping, counting, policing, and sports. And they will also lift things. I spent a moonlit evening last year around a campfire in a Samburu manyatta in northern Kenya. We were trying to explain to a Samburu elder the concept of a robot programmed to fly up into the air and deliver a load of whatever you wanted. The Samburu was straining to understand the term robot. A mechanical creature, I said, not a beast, not a camel. It was slow going. Then at last he leaned back and laughed. “I see! You want to put my donkey in the sky!” He had many donkeys. The Samburu like to load them with water and firewood. They walk steadily down dried up river beds, over mountains, through brush. My colleague, Simon, and I knew instantly he was right: we really did want to put his donkey in the sky.“You want to put my donkey in the sky!”The qualities of a donkey are similar to what is required for a cargo drone: surefooted, dependable, intelligent, able to deal with dust and heat, cheap, uncomplaining. (...) A donkey is not a Pegasus, associated only with speed. It does not bomb, does not monitor. It flies stuff steadily between here and there – that is all.
The stations will provide business opportunities for African startups
3
WHAT IS THE SKY ANYWAY?
As a species we have hardly begun to think
what is above our heads. (...) There are whole continents up in the air for the right kind of
drones to traverse. The sky above Sudan is stacked with virtual Sudans. How might a donkey route look? The easiest way to picture it is to take the Eiffel Tower and draw a line from the top of the tower. Donkeys will fly roughly at that Eiffel height, in what I call the lower sky. The routes will be geofenced: donkeys will only be able to fly in an air corridor about 200 metres wide and 150 metres high. Busier routes will resemble a high-speed ski gondola, without cables or supporting structures.Every small town will have its own clean energy donkey station like the one below. The traffic to and from it will mostly be on foot and bikes. The stations will serve as the petrol station of the near future. They will incorporate postal and courier services.2024Repair shops will mix 3D printing and other advanced technology with low tech. (...) The stations will provide business opportunities for African startups and for architects. In contrast to the concrete petrol stations built around Africa in the colonial period, donkey stations could nudge communities away from settlements strung out alongside roads to something safer and quieter. Since donkeys will eventually operate on batteries, the renewable energy arrays needed for clean recharging will also power surrounding homes and businesses.
4
T H E T I M E I S N O W
The next decade will be among the most decisive in Africa’s recorded history. Fertility rates in the largest African countries are not falling as fast as
had been predicted. At the present rate Africa’s population will be 2.7 billion by 2050, against 228 million in 1950. To have a chance of prosperity, African economies need to quickly turn growth into manufacturing jobs. The problem is that they are growing, but not transforming. Growth rates are much too low. (...) In key economies like Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal manufacturing is dominated by small, informal firms. The poorest countries seem to be de-industrialising. New factories, such as in Ethiopia, will not offset the dumping of cheap finished goods from Asia on African markets. (...) The cities new Africans will inhabit have yet to be built. On the contrary, Africa is rich. It harbours treasures of food, water and minerals. It has more genetic diversity of our own and other species than anywhere else on the planet. It is the mother continent. (...) 2060 is the year for the Project Icarus group plan to launch the first interstellar spacecraft — probably from a launchpad in Africa. If we recalibrate donkeys according to the ambitions of Icarus, they look to be modest and self-explanatory. Conventional development narratives, written as a litany, but lacking much sense of urgency, will be outflanked by events and innovations.
5
UA FUTURE WITHOUT ROADS
A further reason for going to the lower sky is the certainty that there isn’t going to be enough cash for Africa to build out its roads.
Africa’s road network is sparse , reflecting both the newness of place and the utter failure of colonial and post-colonial rule, which was conceived for export of the treasure to richer markets, hardly taking into account the desire of a community to trade over the next hill. The only conceivable strong future for Africa is a sharing economy, where goods are used multiple times, in multiple ways. In order to share, you need to move around people, exabytes of data, and cargo. Africa does a terrible job at all three.
Digital connectivity will be solved because it is affordable
and in the interests of big technology companies. Moving around people and physical stuff will require massive upgrading of roads. (...) The continent has 2% of the world’s motor vehicles, but accounts for 16% of world road deaths. A study showed that 74% of hospital admissions for traffic injuries in Uganda in 2011 were of children under the age of 13, most of them hit by passing motor vehicles.
6
THE KILLER APP IS REPETITION
I have identified 80 kilometre routes in Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. Other prospective countries for early routes are Angola,
Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia and South Africa.Routes can be tacked together to extend range. By way of example, it is possible
in Rwanda to set up a donkey route from the town of Gitarama over the Nyungwe forest to Lake Kivu and down to the Congolese city of Bukavu. A country as compact and hilly as Rwanda can quickly draw routes across its lower sky and intersect them to most improve health and economic outcomes. (...) My future Africa initiative at EPFL will get the first route up and running. An associated fund based in Africa and Switzerland will push for world-class research on the robotics, engineering, logistics, and law related to donkeys. It will also push for the establishment of an international agency for the lower sky, which will set global norms for the use of donkeys and other civilian drones.I anticipate three phases to the technology.
In Phase 1, starting in 2016, drones will serve hospitals
and humanitarian emergencies — life air not prime air, starting with the better distribution of blood from blood banks to clinics. Other early adopters will use donkeys to deliver small payloads to government offices, mines, oil and gas installations, ranches and conservancies. In Phase 2, industrial sweetspots to cities such as the spare parts industry in southeast Nigeria will be connected to cities by donkey routes— just as the Liverpool and Manchester railway connected the first city of the industrial age with the Atlantic. These routes will serve the new solutions demanded by a sharing economy, such as where customers opt for rental and servicing of machinery rather than outright purchase. Companies of building and mining equipment will stock their large inventory of spare parts using donkeys carrying 10 kilo payloads. Phase 1 and 2 would be enough to make the donkeys a useful contributor. But the real reason for the technology is Phase 3, where donkeys will better connect businesses with customers right across Africa.
Donkeys will help small companies to grow through e-commerce. Wherever you have impecunious young people ubiquitously connected to the internet, e-commerce is desperate to happen. And this is even more true in Africa where, for various reasons, the retail high street will never be built out, and where existing sales of electronics, appliances and most other imported goods are J.M LEDGARD J.M.Ledgard is director of a future Africa initiative at EPFL and a longtime Africa correspondent of The Economist. His novel Submergence was a New York Times Book of 2013.
dominated by supermarkets with limited stocks and high margins. Donkeys can extend the range of e-commerce outside big cities.Wherever you have impecunious young people ubiquitously connected to the internet, e-commerce is desperate to happen. And this is even more true in Africa where, for various reasons, the retail high street will never be built out, and where existing sales of electronics, appliances and most other imported goods are dominated by supermarkets with limited stocks and high margins. Donkeys can extend the range of e-commerce outside big cities. (...)
All of this is possible because the donkey has a killer app.
It is not going clear across the lower sky. The killer app is repetition. A donkey can make many journeys in a day and through the night. The most populated bit of Africa is Equatorial. Every day is the same length, and every night. Donkeys will fly in the 12 hours of dark, hyena time, pothole time, where not many lorries venture out — gliding through the hot night, hushed, blinking green, delivering fresh for the new day. With 9 billion humans soon to be alive and divvying up our limited planetary resources, unmanned flight is inevitable. Cargo drones will have application in rich countries with dispersed populations such as Norway and Saudi Arabia. But the biggest opportunity is in Africa. Many people are READ FULL VERSION ONLINE
going to save a lot of lives and make a lot of money by putting the donkey in the lower sky there first.
FUTURA 42 “The answer to the “fundamental question of Life, the Universe and Everything” is 42, as revealed by the super computer ‘Deep Thought’ after thinking about it for seven and a half million years. As fans of the humorous science-fiction novel by Douglas Adams “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” will know, it is not clear what the question is.But this is of little importance: when I heard I was a member of Expedition 42 on the International Space Station, besides being overjoyed for the assignment I found it I was complacent about this funny coincidence. These two worlds meet on Outpost 42. Our aim is to inform our public, with rigor, certainly, but always with humor and an amused look on things. It is much simpler than it looks. In the words of the Guide to the Galaxy: Do not Panic!” Samantha Cristoforetti
Hong Kong Occupy Central by adolfo Arranz
hoNg kong September 28, 2014 September 28, 2014, 3pm. It was a few hours before tear gas was fired on the crowds, unleashing what would be known around the world as the Umbrella Movement
I was in the lobby of Admiralty Centre and captured this gathering of protesters who would soon decide whether or not to take over the highway separating them from the Central Government Complex at Tamar, across the street.
That afternoon, not only the crowds but also members of the police force seemed calm and poised, despite what would happen mere hours later.
When I drew this sketch, I was standing in the middle of the crowds that had just poured onto the highway. People helped each other across the concrete barriers. It was maybe 5pm. Within the hour, the first canisters of tear gas were fired. I left just before this happened, sensing that the police were going to act soon
september 28, 2014
In the late hours of September 28, the occupation movement spread to other districts of Hong Kong. On the next morning in the commercial neighbourhood of Causeway Bay, where protesters had just started a sit-in on its main thoroughfare.
Students gathered in Causeway Bay, the morning after tear gas was fired on protesters, hong kong, SEPTEMBER 29, 2014
september 29, 2014
a drawing that I made a few days later as the protest started to settle in, with tents now being
october 2, 2014
October 2, 2014. During the first week of the Umbrella Movement, citizens took turns on megaphones to voice their views.
standing from the footbridge between Admiralty Centre and Tamar, looking west towards Central. It was the fifth evening, a Thursday, when crowds congregated to await Chief Executive CY Leung’s response to a call from students to resign.
BarricaDeS! The barricades in Mong Kok on Nathan Road, at the corner of Shantung Street, October 12, 2014
a bizarre scene...
at the barricades at Tamar where an old man started loudly berating the police with anti-Beijing insults.
The policeman just turned the other way to avoid what the senior protester had to say to them that day
In the beginning, students at the Admiralty site did their homework any way they could find...
...Volunteers at the Admiralty site helped build desks for students.
Students at the study area
Students at the study area in Admiralty, October 19, 2014
take a nap...
The Eastern barricade at the Admiralty site, October 19, 2014
on the signs mean „upright“, a term that the police chief repeated to describe the police force
n the days BEFORE footage was released showing a protester allegedly being beaten by police offIcers. ->
charging station
Admiralty MTR, October 11, 2014
Staying powered up is serious business for protesters. Serial numbers are marked in a register and users of the service are given tickets they use to reclaim their mobile devices.
supply station
A supply station at the interesection of Tamar Street and Harcourt Road, Admiralty, October 10, 2014.
What was normally the side of a busy highway is now completely devoid of motorised traffic for a few hundred metres around
October 18, 2014 On the highway now closed to traffic outside Tamar, passerbys are writing messages in chalk,
October 11, 2014
Origami A young man is teaching people how to fold origami umbrellas outside the Central
October 18, 2014,
FREE!
Illustrator Tiffanycheetah draws portraits for free while young activists paint signs at the entrance to the MTR in Admiralty,
October 25, 2014 Tents between the Legislative Council Complex and Citic Tower at the barricade on Lung Wui Road
Adolfo Arranz
Infographic artist and illustrator, from Spain, based in Hong Kong. Creative director of Media Corp.
you AND me On A
sunny day - silent film by rocky mcCorkle
Pat Kinsella illustratore di New York City