So Pyne tells a story of politics and economics, poetry and painting. A kind of extraordinary twinning goes along as we become more part of cyberspace, a sort of controlled global village. This central electronic space, with all the best graphics in the world, is peculiarly barren of textured location, of organic process. As computer-controlled space becomes more of a relentless master of all our lives, a craving for natural human cultural needs seems to me to be more intense and more important. I mean, I can barely face looking at the morning paper.
Every day there is a story which rings environmental alarm bells.
There's one about this bill going through the Utah legislature , a threat to reduce the wilderness areas which aren't parks or standard tourist places, like Bryce and Zion National Park to simply declare them no longer officially protected areas, which is in effect to open them up to intensive and extensive mining and shale oil drilling over the next 20 years. It's a catastrophe in the offing, really. I guess you read about Disney 's intention to open a wildlife park in Florida. I mean, in the past, Disney has presented nature without tooth or claw. Safari rides in the Magic Kingdom, which I was forced to take when my children were very young.