Montrealers are familiar no doubt with Gerald Tremblay and Benoit Labonté’s campaign to clean up Montreal. Another mayor, in Sao Paulo, has also launched his own cleanliness campaign: he passed a “Clean City Law” so comprehensive that it deals not only with air, water and waste, but also with visual pollution. It also bans outdoor advertising. Since the law was passed, billboards all over the city have stood blank, or covered with white paper. Pictures in magazines show Sao Paolo transformed into a giant art project. A priori, the city seems almost lifelike, still and intemporal. The blank billboards recall campains for free speach. Closer observation reveals daily human patterns: curtains open or drawn, laundry drying, flowerpots. And amid this subtle activity, buildings and architecture line public spaces.

There has been surprisingly little coverage of this law – a story on npr, and the adbusters article. I can only speculate whether this is to stem claims that there may be too much advertising in our own cities, thereby openning the media’s revenue sources to criticism.

But it does seem far less wasteful: just think of how much greater things would be if we spent half of products’ advertising budgets on better product design.

I realize that i have thought about many things i should commit to press, but published very few.

A number of the following posts may therefore be temporally disjointed, as their drafts date back to late spring.

I haven’t written in a while.

I feel that is subject to change.

In a land dominated by crocodiles, gated communities, where “affordable housing”means “trailer park”, I am pleased to report that being part of a strip mall has not dispossessed this Fort-Lauterdale café, the Vienna coffee house, of its character or homeyness.

In fact I am quite enjoying its authenticity – relievingly more honest than this morning’s wanderings around Miami. Among the brilliant art-deco hotels of South-Beach I found myself wanting to speak Spanish – the secret language everyone was speaking among themselves. They meticulously reverted to English to speak to the customers.

I am always astounded at the way everyone seems to deny that Spanish is so frequently spoken in the States. In the same way no one admits Nevada is a desert.

Oddly parallel to the article I read today on the CBC website about some over-night vandals who “censored” the nude statues in an Oslo park with black paper. The black paper’s implication is in fact more obscene, implying that the human body is necessarily X-rated.

In Berlin, it seems like they want to be more authentic than they can in reality – google is giving them their second chance to make their reality seem as idealistic as possible.

But I am also thinking about SUV’s versus transit, the joy of interstates as make-work projects, access to the workplace, the need for public / informal meeting spaces. So rest assured that my comments on the upcoming Quebec elections will be forthcoming.

I sit here watching the Oscars, giggling to myself because someone thanked the NFB, because Leo is a democrat, and because Catherine Deneuve is disdainful about the uncultured Americans.

And I am reminded of Peter Hall’s book Cities in Civilization, of the chapter on Los Angeles more specifically. Hollywood, an icon because it is the seat of the cinematic industry.

Tonight I am thinking about how what makes culture is that it is made. It is not what we preserve in glass cases, what we isolate from change, it is the new ideas we have and the discussions they create. It is our way of living, not the way we used to live.

Culture is its own great enemy: if we are too busy trying to protect it, afraid to see it change, it will inevitably die. It will no longer be relevant. Somewhere, that may be where many of our artistic institutions have stumbled. It their efforts to preserve the great classics, they have made it a challenge for us to use their language, even to borrow it. Fear that quality will be lost has made these institutions nostalgic reminders for the white-haired crowd, and irrelevant to those of us who have instead reverted to other more accessible, and more open forms of cultural communication.

This is why cultural education and protection is not served by reductionist views of identity that are based on idealised histories, even if they so frequently comes to the forefront in nationalistic projects.  Our cultural baggage is only useful if it allows us to maintain tools to create different, diverse, and current ideas.

I have decided to get informed before this year’s election, and will be posting my notes and impressions of the platforms our provincial parties have made public on their sites. I will try to reserve my comparisons and final conclusions until I have read all the platforms. So no conclusions today.

The first platform I am reading is the Parti Quebecois‘.

In predictable adversarial style, the first point the PQ makes is that Charest broke his unspecified promises in 2003, and bill 101 is their first example of a great accomplishment.

The PQ tries to inspire us by rallying us to the prospect of freedom to choose our own positions, and defend them at an international level, but there is little precision about what those positions actually are, only perhaps what we will get from the platform.

The word “referendum” has become “consultation populaire”, but the idea is still at the forefront, and an exciting segue to culture as priority. Most others measures cited prepare for the transition of Quebec to independent country.

Beyond sovereignty, the platform is built around 7 pillars:

Education – includes the preservation of 7$ day-care, and maintains the tuition freeze, but favors “technological reorientation” in rural regions.

Environment – centered around a reduction in our dependance on petroleum, grants tax credits for transit passes and eliminates PST for hybrid or electrical cars, and indicates willingness to develop a comprehensive ” green” transportation plan. Shows little commitment to transit over personal cars (which use more land and energy any way you slice it), and absolutely no understanding of the interplay between transportation and urban form.

Economy – after explaining that quebec’s future in the knowledge economy is served by their commitment to education, the platform calls for an abolition of capital gains taxes, push for the development of the manufacturing sector, and promises to reduce taxes when if their is a sharp economic increase, and when their is a surplus. So cut the taxes for the wealthy if they spend more?

Health – will increase the number of “groupe de medecine familiale” to 300. For a population of 6 million, that’s 20,000 patients per group. At 300 working days a year that’s roughly 66 patients a day at one visit per year. At 20 minutes per appointment, and a workday of 7 hours (plus a half hour for emergencies and drop-ins), that’s 3 doctors minimum per group, 1 drop-in patient per day. Hmm…

Regions – this part is vague, seems to encourage agriculture and the forestry industry, but I can get behind greater power for central-cities.

Solidarity – More than just a title, ” les quebecoises et l’action communautaire” equates women to “community groups” and “the social economy”. While it may be true that more women are active in the community sector, the implication that promoting the status of women goes through the promotion of community services. Next they’ll tell us that promoting gender equality means recognising a woman’s important place in the home. [I wonder whether they were planning a "gay men and AIDS" section in the health priorities.] Is the government going to increase pension support for nurses and teachers too, but not bankers or lawyers? Gender equality involves women in every sector of the economy. How about government, and a commitment to running female candidates?

Good government – I am increasingly skeptical about claims that publicly approved boards and directors are really more accountable, particularly when there is no commitment to transparency.

Mark recently posted a video on facebook about net neutrality. As I was watching it, two of my ideas seams to crystallize.

First, what we (perhaps most) appreciate about the internet, our ability to appropriate it, is what has made it the most dangerous for large corporations. Because we are able to contribute our own content and access a multitude of other contents at our leisure, we develop a sense of control, and the impression that we have staked our own little territory.

Second, when it comes to the internet, we are all in a relatively equal playing field. This assumes we have electricity, a computer and a connection, and elementary education (reading, writing, math and computer literacy) and sufficient leisure time to contribute. Once these conveniences are secured, it is our own motivation to learn and contribute that controls our presence on the internet. each and every one of us can say just about whatever we want.

There is already, I believe, a certain concentration of ownership on the internet. The degree to which gootube, wikepedia, myspace, and such sites get traffic has made them major networks. The difference between these networks and NBC, however, is that they allow each and every one of us to submit content. Some might say they allow the people to keep control of the means of production (the educated and technologically equipped plebs).

Is it the commitment to universality that attracts us to these sights? The way we could almost believe they serve some altruistic goal? That would be a little shortsighted: they have made a fortune selling advertisements, the little messages that appear in header bars and columns.

This reminds me of the recording industry, another media cousin, who see the uncontrolled internet as a bastion of thieves. These older media outlets have not managed to overcome the rapid changes in technology. Like silent theatres that figured the “talkies” would never work, and then were lapped by those who believed in a noisier future.

So the question remains: do we as a society find a way to limit the control of telecommunications companies until the internet goes entirely wireless, or do we let the government force us into a “cultural revolution” of totalitarian ideological oppression?

Can we stay one step ahead of those who would tie us down?

Is it a cleaning product?

Is it a premier division football club?

Or related to coffee at the wrong time of the day?

As was recently determined at a dinner with my father and brother, the meaning of the words we use is increasingly diffuse, even though we are technically speaking the same language. If you need IP advice, do you hire a lawyer, a computer geek, or maybe Steve Jobs? Thanks to the interweb, you can ask all three simultaneously, many different questions with one click of the mouse.

Amazed at my own ability to open more tabs than can fit the firefox screen, I must admit that my virtual interconnectedness is increasing exponentially, at a rate only equalled by the number of passwords I must now remember.

I am still a little bit of an internet agnostic though, unsure that I have found the best avenue to extract my ideas.

I am finally taking the time to start this blog rolling. After the many exciting conversations I have had about this public display of communication, you can expect that in the next little while we bring up topics including dystopias, utopias and objectives, representative democracy vs. participation, the urban-rural divide, spaces for social interaction (real and virtual), the sacred rituals of a profane population, immigration, naturalisation and getting lost in the wilderness.

Of course, we accept suggestions from readers, so please feel free to send them along. Please note that the plural is meant to be inclusive, rather than pretentious as other people will also be posting.

Welcome to the wild world of Anjali’s inner thoughts.
Oddly enough, I am watching a show where large white orbs are controlling prisoners.
Like inverse foetal reflex – these people are looking to be born into a world of independent decision.
Bear with me and this *might* get more interresting.
Be seeing you.