Transistor Radios
Globalization brings strange changes to the world, changes which appear sudden, but which have actually been happening under our noses for all of human history. The rapidity of these changes is greater as a result of the content and media of delivery to some extent, but they are no different now in kind than when Marco Polo followed the Silk Road to China or when American frontier explorers sought a Northwest Passage. The conflicts that arise from this process also hasn’t changed, but it has perhaps in some measure become more desperate. Whereas in the past the drivers of globalization wielded overwhelming force and the populations they affected could only bow before them, over the years the ability to impose or resist change has equalized. This is, in fact, the design principle behind the Kalishnikov automatic rifle, the weapon designed by the Soviet Union for their own use and as a central catalog item in its overseas arms sales, that it should be simple to manufacture, simple to maintain, simple to distribute, simple to use. Highly successful, wasn’t it? But one turn of events evidently unanticipated in the equalization of power insofar as weaponry is concerned is that even the forces arrayed against globalization, against modernity itself, are also capable and willing to wield these weapons in their struggle. Even as they resist, they embrace the technology of change. The internet, satellite telephony, radiological devices are all part, or desired as part, of the arsenal. Remember the Taliban? How did they get jets, or the pilots to fly them? They didn’t have many, but they had some. We all recognize now that Osama bin Laden turned the tools of globalization on their heads: videos, cell phones, internet banking, and most diabolically: airplanes. We should also recognize that Saddam Hussein has for 20 years sought to do the same with biological and chemical weapons, pursuing nuclear technology with great seriousness, and not for generating electricity. It’s an amazing time to be alive, unquestionably, even if it isn’t very peaceful. Only decades ago, we had Japanese radios that were a joke, but they were the product of the reconstruction of that country following World War II, and they soon outstripped anything else being made, as did many of the other products Japan brought to the market. Intent upon relinquishing the past in favor of a future of more generally distributed well-being, Japan flew into the modern world to become one of the world’s great nations. They weren’t the first, won’t be the last. The populations of the earth are struggling to determine their fates, individually and collectively, and some of them are looking backwards, even as they march relentlessly forward. The countries of the Middle East have continued feudal traditions long beyond their use-by date, but they cannot continue this way for long. Meanwhile, the United States seems to be embarking on a backwards journey of its own, retreating into Europe’s imperial past. Is this what we have become, what we truly seek? The right motivations for military action in that troubled region are plain, but don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t about the oil. If it wasn’t, Bush’s government would be able to tell you that control of Iraq’s oil fields is a tool toward effecting change in the region on the whole, a long-range method of allowing the people there to grasp the future on their own behalf. We can hope, however, that this is what comes to pass.

Epping
For the past three months I’ve been working at the Sydney Olympic Park, which is a very strange place to keep an office. The Games facilities are all still in place – Telstra Stadium is home to the Bulldogs – but there is very little activity here. The suburb (Homebush) very nearly didn’t exist prior to the 2000 Olympics, and it very nearly doesn’t now. The vast plazas surrounding the buildings here stretch into the distance, dotted with small bunches of Asian tourists, dwarfed by the imposing structures. I have to remember to bring a camera with me over the next two days, because the Park presents some remarkable views and some amusing disparities (chief among them the rather attractive and terrifically modern train station, to which, every ten minutes, the most dilapidated trains in all of NSW travel), but also because the project moves to a new suburb on the other side of the Homebush stretch of Sydney Harbour: Epping. I look forward to the move because it will be an easier commute, if a few minutes longer, and because there will finally be somewhere to get lunch! The pub, however, isn’t much, and it’s on the wrong side of the tracks.