1 in 1,000

---01.23.2000---

A few of John and Linda’s cows from the dairy have replaced the two bulls that used to be in the field opposite the our house. You might argue that I’ve been on the island too long but they’re real cuties. One of them is a particularly sweet: big doe eyes, little rope necklace. I can always pick her out of a crowd. They’re all so shy though and never react when I pass by, even though I always make a point to say hello.

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Phillip is wearing on me again. He’s such a zealous believer in the glory of high technology and its ability to come to the rescue of the island’s heavily tourist dependent economy. Dare to remain unconvinced and bear the onslaught of pedantry and paper arguments, delivered with a stern tongue, and a devil’s gaze. I feel like there are better ways to spend my evenings. What’s more, I can’t shake the similarity between his foreboding face and that of Bart Simpson’s nemesis, Sideshow Bob. His feet are huge and his toes are impossibly long. What more evidence do you need?

In all seriousness though, he is very intelligent; but intellect is a tool like any other. With it one can build ideas and systems that are elegant, appropriate, and useful, or one can build big piles of shite. Phillip, possessed of his big brain, has the capability, I fear, of building potentially larger piles of shite than anyone. If I saw wisdom there, I wouldn’t worry; if I saw sensitivity, or care, or camaraderie, I wouldn’t worry. But I don’t. All I see is ego, zeal, fervor, and will, and that worries me.

The project now on the table is a website for the St. Agnes community which the Inter-island Working Group (an organization he founded) will fund with money from the EU. At the initial meeting down at the pub a few of the curious and interested gathered. It seemed like a bit of a disorganized ramble, perhaps not uncommon for small-town meetings.

In the end a default decision was made. “Let’s move forward,” even though no one had a clear idea what the site would be for, who would use it, or what the implications of publishing for a worldwide audience might be. Perhaps I’m being too severe a critic and not enough of an “opportunist” but the whole thing tasted like Millennium Dome to me.*

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In other news, I spent the morning kneading bread dough and listening to hip-hop. The result of which was a loaf as big as a spare tire, huge, the king of breads. I took it under my arm to show Jon and Hans. There we sliced it up and had it, with homemade marmalade, for tea. The slices were beyond the capacity of mere ordinary plates. They overhung in both directions, like a grown man sleeping in a wheelbarrow.

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* The Millennium Dome, as I recall, was a dome built in London at the turn of the millennium as part of the celebration but whose purpose thereafter was seen as nebulous. ‌‌‌‌

‌---01.23.2023---

Re-reading these posts today, I see my younger self as pretty pessimistic about the potentially positive out comes of technology and innovation.

Maybe it has something to do with the idea that for every new thing that makes positive change in the world, so many others flop. But that seems to be the way of the world. For every seed a tree produces there must be thousands that come to nothing. And how many salmon must be born for one to come back and spawn? I think it’s 1,000.

And yet, for 999 “flops” the number of successes is not zero. And somehow nature makes this work. And, if we are to have a positive impact on the world, not being pessimistic, or attached to outcomes, would be helpful, it seems. For every one thing that works, the other 999 things must still be made.

It’s something I still struggle with sometimes. I wish us all well in making the 1,000 things so that the one beautiful, incredible thing will come into being.

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Thanks for reading,Nik

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