Spheres

[Dave Monroe]

"Will our new Edge, our new Deathkingdom, be the Moon? I dream of a
great glass sphere, hollow and very high and far away . . . the
colonists have learned to do without air, it's vacuum inside and out
..." (GR, Pt. IV, p. 729)

https://books.google.com/books?id=GGPm4I3BbxAC&pg=PT539#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bubbles

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/globes

The Trilogy Spheres of Peter Sloterdijk

"Another, and more significant, example used by Sloterdijk is the
spatial [sic] station, which is useful to philosophers in developing a
new enlightened theory of human condition. Putting aside the
romanticism of space conquest, the spacecraft reality and manned
spatial station stands for three indispensable categories of a
possible condition of human existence in the space (Weltraum):
immanence, artificiality and upward drive (Auftrieb)....

[...]

"... Sloterdijk pauses and describes in the next topics the emergence
and cultivation of artificial greenhouses like the Cristal [sic]
Palace in London (1851), Laeken Park near Brussels, built in 1875 or
the Botanical Gardens in Hamburg, Hannover, Munich, Berlin and other
greenhouses directed to plantation of tropical species like Victoria
Regia in the European cold winter (cf. vol. III).

"Other atmospheric Islands analyzed by Sloterdijk are the experiences
with bio-sphere performed in the USA, like the mega project Arizona
“Biosphere 2” in 1991 ..."

http://www.iop.or.jp/Documents/1121/Journal21_Rouanet.pdf

"Spheres is a wildly eclectic work; the third part, on foam (Schäume),
is full of reflections on such topics as the vitreous dreamland of the
Great Exhibition, the Victorian invention of the concept of
environment, the deployment of poison gas during the first world war
and the geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller. Modernity, Sloterdijk
contends, has long been a matter of control and liberation through a
sort of air conditioning. And we live now, of course, with the
constant knowledge that we have turned the system up too far.

[...]

"If Sloterdijk's reflections sound obvious or fanciful, consider again
the long and vexed history of enclosed but transparent volumes as
images alike of freedom and security, futurism and consolation. From
the paradise of commodities corralled at the Crystal Palace – the only
building, so the catalogue had it in 1851, in which the very
atmosphere was visible – through the Millennium Dome and Eden Project
to metaphors attached today to national security or cloud computing,
we seem addicted to spaces that promise immunity and drift at the same
time."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/10/bubbles-peter-sloterdijk-review
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l