Connecting Traffic in Los Angeles, EWaste in Agbogbloshie

There are two really good things about Twitter.  The First One is the "search" box on the top right.  It allows you to research an obscure topic (like "Why is Taney County Missouri named after the Dred Scott Case Supreme Court justice Roger B. Taney, and why are they pronounced differently?") and meet someone across the globe who is also tweeting about the subject.  You might have found the same article through a Google search, but it is very hard for a recent article to move up Google's ranking, and virtually impossible to pass Wikipedia etc.  But enter "Roger Taney County Missouri" in Twitter search, and you'll get some very recent and current insight and thinking on the matter.

The second good thing about Twitter is it forces you to be brief.  It rewards "pithy"

(Blogger does not, evidently).

So most of the "facts" about African e-waste and Agbogbloshie that you find on Twitter are just retweeted BS.  But add some other key words, like "Dagbani", and you can meet someone through the smoke and fog who also sees what you know about the place.

Most of the photos on the web of traffic in Los Angeles are actors in colorful wardrobe, dancing on the tops of their cars in @LaLaLand.

"Freemium High": Psychological Reward On Fury Road

Comment Field Social Media Adversaries, Check Your Buzz

This year, I have made a concerted effort to referee the internet.  Crack your fingers, place them on the keyboard, and enter the Fury Road of Comment Field Politics.

It was late. I'd had two glasses of Shiraz. And thought I'd check out Tucker Carlson, Bill O'Reilly's timeslot replacement on Fox News.

Had been listening to MSNBC and NPR side of the "Trump vs. Comey" story, and needed to clear my head of bias confirmation. It's our civic duty to understand both sides of the story. In high school, our debate coaches and senior team members would say "hey, the X high school seniors have a really excellent Negative Debate rebuttal vs. Solar Power, you should go listen, they meet Y team at 3PM"

I've known and somewhat respected Tucker Carlson from his bow-tie days, when he was the anti-populist alternative to Pat Buchanon.  He seemed to be aiming for the vacancy of Ivy League conservative William F. Buckley Jr.  His track record seems libertarian - Turned anti Iraq War (after the 1st year), supported Rand Paul, said gay marriage is a "civilizing force".

Now the abrupt cancelling of O'Reilly Factor put Tucker into the 8PM time slot, with the job of keeping O'Reilly's conservative viewers.  But those are a different age, and a different economic bent than traditional William F. Buckley, Heritage Foundation viewers.

So I was perturbed by Tucker's interview of an advocate for legal Haitian refugees, when Tucker brought up the topic of rounding them up and expelling them.

How to Use Twitter in E-Waste Research (Fatty Fatty Boom Boom style)

I was a huge skeptic of Twitter when microblogging first came out.  Reading page after page of what people I was "following" were "doing" at that minute?  Writing back what I'm "doing"?   Seemed like a South Park episode waiting to happen (and it was).

Within about 6 months, however, I found out how to use Twitter.   Simple.

Twitter is about its SEARCH BOX.

In the search box, you use keywords, and it greatly multiplies the number of experts and opinions and views that you are exposed to.  And increasingly, you can find the words of African TEchs talking about their own view of the "E-Waste Poster Child From Disney" debates.

Just this week alone:   "The Gaze On Agbogbloshie, Misrepresentation At Ghana's E-Waste Dumpsite" by Heather Agyepong.   Heather is also covered here at Carbon Creative Arts.

“My initial intention was to understand how waste could still be illegally dumped in Ghana and understand the conditions about how people felt. However when I arrived it was nothing of what I had read about the place. It was just super organised and not as dystopic as I thought. From the month I spent with the boys who live and work in Agbogbloshie, I wanted the images to represent that distortion. The images have that cross process look which leaves the images looking apocalyptic. I wanted this to exemplify how the western gaze effects our understanding, not just in Africa but how we can see other issues.”

Through Twitter, you find what Interpol is doing ("Project Eden" seems de-emphasized in this months Interpol Africa newsletter, in favor of wildlife crime... a welcome turn if it's sustained).   More emphasis on putting Elephant Poachers in jail, rather than Nigerian TV repairmen.

Four Elephant Fixers Films: IFIXIT.org, WR3A

THE TWEET:  "4 films on E-Waste Recycling: IFIXIT, WR3A, Fedele, PBS. See all and you begin to see the Elephant in Africa's room"

Kyle Wiens group, IFIXIT.org, and his professional blogger (I'm green with envy) Elizabeth Chamberlin presented on this Fixers film at Ismael's Electronics Recycling conference in Vegas.   The documentary is being produced with filmmakers at The Atlantic.

WR3A had wanted to do something like this in 2007, when we had the grant from CEA which resulted in the 3 minute "Fair Trade Recycling" film (original version presented at CES Conference).  We had dozens of interviews filmed in different countries with hand-held flip cameras and amateur and below-amateur camera people.   Bad sound, no translation, poor lighting, rambling unedited footage can be seen at WR3A group, viddler.com.

My next goal is to do a one-day event in California, have the day's take divided by geeks (perhaps from IFIXIT or Tech Soup) into two equal piles.  Then we'll RFID tag or geo-tag the items and send one batch to a California, no-intact unit E-Steward.  The other will go to Retroworks de Mexico, the womens coop which was profiled by PBS in 2010, and which is the stepping stone for the Memorial University / USC / WR3A / Peru grant ($469K) to do in depth interviews, secondary research, and film of the repair and reuse market.  The idea is to do an actual mass balance, and compare the environmental results when a group of struggling poor people, with the right tools and training, competes against a California shredding machine.

I'm grateful to Basel Action Network for one thing.   I've got an immense passion for the value added by repair and reuse, the way poor people find money in the pockets of discarded clothing, the way they resew buttons on jeans.  I love the story (from an engineer at Umicore) of the teenage kid in Ghana who jailbreaked his IPhone when every Belgian tech had said it was impossible.   Because BAN.org made this trade between rich and poor "controversial", because they made it look horrific and toxic and exaggerated the relative risk of recycling compared to mining (the only other source of metals), now my passion is considered controversial enough to get university funding.

What if I loved something that everyone agreed was a no-brainer?  Would we ever have gotten funding?

Most of the world thinks repair and recycling is a no-brainer.  Thank goodness for the Orwellian, Joseph Conrad-ish portrayal of computer monitor refurbishing by our friends who invented the term "e-waste" to describe the purchase of less-than-flat display devices by Africans, Asians and Latinos.  I'm looking forward to seeing this Fixers Film in its entirety and comparing it to David Fedele's well meaning (but in my view, tunnel-visioned... simultaneously peeping and myopic) e-Wasteland.  That one is a very, very truthful account of a rather small percentage of the export business.  If you see it after watching Fixers, you'll be ready to see the 2009 Fair Trade Recycling Mexico PBS and Fair Trade Recycling videos to grasp the solution to the questions it poses.

Then you'll understand my rage at Basel Action Network, which has devoted all their energy to banning this solution, via unsuccessful rejected interpretations of Annex IX of the Basel Convention (which they blatantly lied about having been accepted when they are rejected by Basel, in writing) and with the promotion of USA legislation to ban Fair Trade Recycling.

Take time to enjoy the Fixers film first.   I will forward a FairTradeRecycling.org Factsheet on Mining and Repair Statistics if Elizabeth or Kyle is interested in any collective thought.  It's a three dimensional world, and if people are actually excited to visit Africa based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it doesn't make sense to be angry at the stereotypes it churns... so long as they actually DO finally visit and see the whole picture... trunk, tusks, blanket, and the wall.

Join the unedited discussions and see more videos and articles at Facebook's Fair Trade Recycling group - join today, it's free.

Editor Wanted: Because Less Is More

Las Vegas, 4/18/2012.   Weather will finally hit the 80s today - it has been hotter at home in Vermont so far this week than here in Nevada.  Groups and small talk.  Tweet talks.

Had a long after-dinner discussion with someone whom I deeply respect in our little computer refurbishing community last night.  I know something in the blog wasn't resonating with him, thought we'd have a drink and he'd give me some guidance.   He's 11 years older than me, started out as a hippy scavenging from his job on a garbage truck, amazed by what people throw away.

Benjamin Franklin at work on a printing press. Repro of a Charles Mills painting

While he said he could respect the long-bomb "Foreign Affairs" posts, that he simply didn't have time for them, and said more importantly that my denser posts, digressions, and obscure historical parallels were losing people he hoped would be my allies.  He says that groups in the refurbishing community, in particular, could become a groundswell of support for the "geeks of color", the counter- obsolescence planning, and other crusades I'm engaging.

Sounds like a case for less is more.

Now, this blog began (if you go back to the first years posts) as a journal I was convinced that no one at all was reading.   I was shocked by the first comment ever posted... "Not quite no one."

Well, my secret desire is that I'm going to have time one day to tear all 2000 pages (including a number of as-yet unpublished posts that I wasn't happy with) down into 249 pages that say something that hasn't been said in a way that more people would listen to.  I don't happen to care whether that's during my lifetime.  I'm acutely, or rather chronicaly aware I could die next year.

My evening mentor said that's fine, but he'd like to see me pay $14 per hour to some college student or professor just to edit each post as it comes out.  After listening to him, it seems ironically more arrogant not to pursue the idea.