Spheres

[Dave Monroe]

https://books.google.com/books?id=UL-_BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA54

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 10:31 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> "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