Wednesday 28 February 2018

London - A City in Flight (Updated)


A guest post by Loondon Calling....

Science Fiction writers and Futurists have long conjured with the possibilities surrounding Cities in Flight. An early version of the theme, later to be taken up by science-fiction writers, dates back to 1928, the year of Stalin’s first 5-year plan. Georgii Kruticov, a Russian student of architecture  envisaged a city-sized nuclear powered apparatus such as his illustration: 


The idea was seized upon by the generation of mid-century Futurist Dreamers including writer James Blish, who explored the theme during the 1970s in his Cities in Flight series. Here, with the help of anti-matter, complete cities were able to cut themselves free and blast off in order to go it alone in the universe, leaving behind the encumbrance of a dystopian world. At roughly the same time the great American visionary architect engineer and philosopher Richard Buckminster Fuller was proving that these machinations of cities floating above the earth were technically possible by a combination of hermetically sealed tensegrity structures and temperature control. His project  Cloud Nine envisaged huge spherical assemblies tethered to the ground: 


With advances in technology, these early schemes have their recent manifestations, such as an airborne city visualisation from the architect Tiago Barros - Passing Clouds: 


There is a strong similarity of this image with that of high-rise London buildings poking through the clouds: 


What could be easier? A flight into London City Airport, a short hop, an elevator up to the top floor of No. I, Canada Square, and you’ve arrived! Should you stay there, or should you move on to another location above Paris, Rome or New York - or, of course, Brussels?

One of the most recent and vivid iterations of this concept is described in a book by Philip Reeve, Mortal Engine. Here, an idea that London has become acquisitive and uses its new-found capacity for flight to plunder other cities and strip them of their material assets, in a world where, as Buckminster Fuller insisted, resources were finite. The main theory of Municipal Darwinism as described by Reeve, is a predator and prey cycle; if the bigger town is faster than the smaller, the smaller town will be eaten. it's a … game which refers to the fact that the society that engages of Municipal Darwinism is not actually a sustainable means of living.

Mortal Engine is taken from Shakespeare’s Othello: ‘The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove’s dead clamors counterfeit, Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone’.

Reeve was required to dumb down his first drafts. From Wikipedia:
… The original drafts were intended to be an adult novel, but after several rejections Scholastic said they might be interested in Mortal Engines as a children's story. In the refactoring the story was simplified, removing several characters and much content Reeve thought would not be interesting to children (city politics)…
In fact, it is the ‘city politics’ aspect of the above that has the most relevance to this post - hence the title: London - A City in Flight. The idea that the BBC promote to overseas listeners that ‘London is the UK, and the UK is London’ is becoming more evident as time passes.

What better metaphor is there than  A City in Flight to represent the BBC and London? Set aside the physicality of the above fictional floating worlds, and we see that this Cloud Nine sphere already exists and is here with us. 

Blish’s anti-matter, which in his factional account allows a city to break loose from the clutches of their host nation, has an equivalence in fake-news post-truth routinely biased reporting - chiselling away at our reliable anchor of democracy. What goes on within this hermetically sealed environment cannot be seen by outsiders, whose opinions are routinely disregarded - it floats unaccounted for above the reality of our traditional existence.

The metaphor can be broadened to include the whole privileged group of the London political elite, these beautiful multiethnic cool people who are welcomed onto Cloud Nine. Their voices are the only ones heard. They live amongst friends in harmony with like-minded folk - secure in the knowledge that they are safe from physical danger and are insulated from unwelcome intrusions. 

Should there be an attack in any form which questions the tribal narrative of their brave new world, then they have overwhelming firepower at their disposal to fight off any challenge. Even the well resourced outsider can expect to succumb to comprehensive obstruction. As a publicly funded organisation, they are stronger than any political party, able to make or break reputations, and adjust or even rewrite history by distorting facts - by use of a supreme control over what information is released.

Again, the physicality of warfare has become out-dated, and is replaced by the launch should it be necessary of an unmatched awesome communications onslaught which leaves no chance of retort. Complaints are pointless as they become blunted and forgotten about by specialist information shufflers. From within the cloud, an elite group of interviewers deliver propaganda messages, carefully scripted for them by an army of role-play modellers. In cases where their chosen Leaders can’t be trusted to carry the message successfully, a video is produced which will deny viewers any possibility of reply or further questioning.

Away from the science fiction to the here and now. In the UK, we are ominously close to the fulfilment of this aforementioned nightmare. The occupants of Cloud Nine are being gathered together, tested and approved of by the BBC and their Government of choice - a Corbyn McDonnell led hard-left Labour one. We have seen over the last week or two how they plan to protect their man by refusal to investigate Corbyn’s past allegiances, which might have sent shock-waves through a well-informed electorate. The BBC are in charge of admission to the cloud and will only allow like-minded politicians. public service heads, fellow broadcasters and journalists, charity chiefs, lobbyists of the right hue, left-wing actors and comedians etc through their gates.

There’s an intriguing and enduring ambiguity to all this. As far as I know, it’s not clear as to whether Georgii Kruticov’s 1928 vision of a City in Flight was intended as a means of escape from the tyranny on the ground below, or whether he saw the same vision as a potentially menacing instrument of hard-line state control.

6 comments:

  1. The Great Wen is leading the whole country to self-destruction. It has become an engine of death.

    It has abandoned British culture in favour of world city status (or Tower of Babel status if you prefer). Not even New York has forgotten it is American.

    Its finance sector squats on the national economy like a malevolent toad.

    London is the chief promoter of PC multiculturalism because that is the ideology of globalism and the finance sector.

    It is above all an engine of mass immigration for the whole of the UK (still continuing at over half a million per annum). It needs a constant army of domestic and service workers to support their lifestyle, who are prepared to work for minimal reward: cleaners, coffee makers, airport workers, taxi drivers, pizza shirt ironers, launderers, dry cleaner staff, cooks and waiters.

    I think an anthropologist would find that it is the dinner party that is the essential cement of the Metropolitan political-media-finance elite, where opinions are formed and reinforced.

    What to do? Well get out of the EU is one step.

    We need a government that pursues an industrial policy that benefits the whole of the country and is prepared to see the finance sector shrink a little if necessary.

    We need an end to the mass immigration con trick.

    We need a replacement of PC multiculturalism by citizen-based integration into core common values. We need to reform the BBC out of existence.

    Most of all we need to become a referendum-based democracy so nothing like this tragedy will ever be repeated.

    I am not too optimistic about the chances of us taking a new path...but let's not delude ourselves we are on the right one.

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    1. There’s an intriguing and enduring ambiguity to all this. As far as I know, it’s not clear as to whether Georgii Kruticov’s 1928 vision of a City in Flight was intended as a means of escape from the tyranny on the ground below, or whether he saw the same vision as a potentially menacing instrument of hard-line state control.

      It was possibly both. That combination of hard-line state control of the UK population, together with a comfortable cosseted life on Cloud Nine for the privileged self-appointed few might well be the direction of travel.

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    2. We are seeing increased state controls, both formal and informal (via pressure on companies like Google-You Tube) e.g. over what is acceptable free speech.

      In some respects the situation is more complex now. Places like Google, You Tube and Twitter are in effect privately owned public places. It is as if companies owned our pavements and controlled how and where individuals may walk and were also policing conversations in pubs and clubs.

      If an internet bill of rights emerges from the Trump era that will have been one of the most significant developments in stopping the erosion of free speech in the democratic countries.

      The truth is that PC mulitculturalism requires the suppression of free speech and the creation of an art-fulfilment plan, similar to Soviet policies. So the link between art and truth has been completely broken. Plays, films, novels, children's literature, the visual arts and now even music are all about quota achievement and promoting PC ideology.

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    3. .... Plays, films, novels, children's literature, the visual arts and now even music are all about quota achievement and promoting PC ideology....

      The forced adherence of creativity into this narrow band of acceptability has all but destroyed the prospects for dissenting groups. Where are today's equivalent of the mid-century 'angry young men' of art and literature? The clue's in the question. Angry (young) LGBT person doesn't conjure up the right image for me.

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  2. The mid-century dreamers foresaw many of the technical innovations that we take for granted now, but their visions of dystopia invariably were predicted as being the result of post-apocalyptic events, and were set in our world after a disaster of some kind.

    They foresaw the fluidity of migration as a result of ease of transport, but they failed to predict the immiscibility of populations within environments of finitely limited space and resource.

    The reality of London is that the incoming populations, from nearly every country on earth are intent upon preserving not only their culture, but also the economic, legal, ethical and political models that they have been used to.

    MB notes above: ... [London] ... needs a constant army of domestic and service workers to support their lifestyle, who are prepared to work for minimal reward: cleaners, coffee makers, airport workers, taxi drivers, pizza shirt ironers, launderers, dry cleaner staff, cooks and waiters....

    As a result, a low wage economy is developing in London, based upon alien economic norms. We can understand the attraction of London for wealthy overseas money-men and women, but as population numbers increase, so too does a most unwelcome 'haves and have nots' hierarchy.

    In light of the current predictions of increases population of 100,000 per year for the next two decades, it is hard to see anything other than a dystopian future for London - but not as a result of apocalypse.

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    1. Loondon,

      It's very interesting how the dystopian predictions are playing out. I remember reading "1984" (before 1984!) and finding the idea of a TV in your house that could see and hear you as very creepy...several decades later and we find that we actually do have TVs that can listen into our conversations and can see us. In any case, any electronic conversation you have already goes straight to intelligence central.

      Even a few years ago the underhand algorithmic censorship being deployed by You Tube against its political enemies would have seemed outrageous.

      The irony is that London, supposedly the great economic example to the rest of the country has the worst poverty in the whole of the UK. The London economic model is extremely destructive of our material and our conscious well being. But the London elite see nothing wrong with it.

      Your quote from my post could have been better expressed...I meant of course London need to constantly refresh its supply of cheap labour to man the army of low skilled service staff. Migrants here soon come to rely on the state for housing provision and income support once they start having families and of course, quite rightly, the children of the migrants are ambitious for better paid jobs and less onerous work. Hence the need to refresh the supply, just so the finance sector workers don't have to pay £5 for a coffee or have to walk to the pizza house.

      I think it may be beginning to dawn on some middle class people that mass migration doesn't just affect the prospects of children from poor families but also their children. It must be impacting quite severely on medical and legal career routes - anything where knowledge is objectively tested (as opposed to those careers where unpaid internships are key).

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