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" I sometimes suspect that we're seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It's really something new, it's a new kind of civilization."
- William Gibson
 |
| Kipple | ||
| The collection of useless bits of trash we wallow in; all the paper and junk that is not recycled. |
Kipple seems to be a combination of entropy and capitalism. I don't think past civilizations had the resources to produce so much packaging to hold our stuff until we buy it or consume it.
Don't forget the First Law: "There's the First Law of Kipple…'Kipple drives out nonkipple'."
| Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more. No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot. |
| From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Doubleday in 1968 Additional resources -
|
According to the philosopher of kipple in the novel, J.R. Isadore, "the entire universe is moving toward a state of total, absolute kippleization." Physicists will note the similarity to the concept of entropy, which is most usually taken to refer to the tendency of closed systems toward increasing disorder.
I like the definition taken from classical thermodynamics, that entropy is a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work. In the 21st century, we seem to be working as hard as we can to take available resources and transform them into objects that cannot be used for anything (kipple). We are doing this socially as well; by using welfare, we encourage our human resources not to do work, either. If we can recycle paper, we can recycle people, too.
Are you having a little problem with kipple where you live? Maybe you need the high tech trash can from Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling
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'...a 2045 convertible with a Hennis-Carleton positronic motor and an Armat chassis.'
'You can hook a Thorsen tube into a control circuit... and the tube will "remember" what was done and can direct the operation...'
Nature is a master of fabricating structured materials consisting of living and non-living components.
'The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another...'
Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out."
'Improving man by bringing him close to Nature, while they combine the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the country well...'
Um, how about that pension for the humans who serve as the models for robot behavior?
