{"id":4077,"date":"2009-12-15T08:10:43","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T15:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=4077"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:59:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:59:28","slug":"plastic-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/15\/plastic-happens\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic Happens"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Plastic<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPlastic slippers, found in Seoul, South Korea\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

To go along with the previous *blog all dog-eared pages* post<\/a>, an additional description of *what plastic is* \u2014 to include alongside of all the others chemical, political, economical, historical, technical, medical, fictional, &c \u2014 done in the story-told style, again from a dog-eared page in Richard Powers’ *Gain<\/a>\"\"* \u2014 a fictional industrial historical novel of a soap-making company alongside the memoir of those implicated in its adventures to make the world clean, we find this formula:<\/p>\n

\n

Plastic happens; that is all we need to know on earth. History heads steadily for a place where things need not be grasped to be used. At a shutter click, a bite-sized battery dispatches a blast through a quartz tube filled with halogens. Excited electrons, falling back down the staircase of available energy states, flash for a second, to dissipate the boost that lifted them briefly into rarefied orbitals. This waste energy bounces off the lines of a grieving face and back down the hole of the aperture, momentarily opened. Inside, reflected light ruffles the waiting film emulsion like a child’s hand impressing a birthday cake. Years from now, metal from the flash battery will leach into runoff and gather in the fat of fish, then the bigger fish that eat them.\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Why do I blog this?<\/strong> I like these adjunct descriptive-formulae for things that reframe things in contexts as suited-for and as relevant as what one might typically consider *the* description. Plastic may almost always be framed as in the context of its chemical properties, or chemical architecture. Perhaps also in its marketing terms \u2014 how it is sold, or how to frame it as a useful, beneficial part of one’s life. Which of its many varieties can be recycled, which is often never *just* an aspect of its chemical properties, but also a municipal decision or even a legal ordinance that dictates that it *must* be recycled if it is sold in a specific geography. An so on. These multivalent, multiple terms that *are* what make something what it is \u2014 their ontological furniture of all sorts, not just the habitual, common-place or “common knowledge”, but those valences of a thing that go alongside of it as well, that are as material and as relevant as the proto-typical and everyday. Perhaps even more relevant, as the Powers’ passage above suggests. More everyday and experienced rather than the rarefied industrial-chemical.<\/p>\n

Can these alternatives provide a more legible basis for telling a story about something, and do so in a way that is more meaningful and with deeper, thicker, world-changing impact?
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plastic slippers, found in Seoul, South Korea To go along with the previous *blog all dog-eared pages* post, an additional description of *what plastic is* \u2014 to include alongside of all the others chemical, political, economical, historical, technical, medical, fictional, &c \u2014 done in the story-told style, again from a dog-eared page in Richard Powers’ … Continue reading Plastic Happens<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,16,30,47,50,82,84,153,176,186],"tags":[227,238,305,310,314,1182,1188,541,846,923],"yoast_head":"\nPlastic Happens - Near Future Laboratory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/15\/plastic-happens\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plastic Happens - Near Future Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Plastic slippers, found in Seoul, South Korea To go along with the previous *blog all dog-eared pages* post, an additional description of *what plastic is* \u2014 to include alongside of all the others chemical, political, economical, historical, technical, medical, fictional, &c \u2014 done in the story-told style, again from a dog-eared page in Richard Powers’ … Continue reading Plastic Happens\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/15\/plastic-happens\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Near Future Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-15T15:10:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-08-18T17:59:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/24\/53912481_7c587ddcc8.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@nearfuturelab\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@nearfuturelab\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Near Future Laboratory\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/nearfuturelaboratory\/\",\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/near-future-laboratory\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nearfuturelab\"],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/NearFutureLaboratoryLogo-CS4.jpg\",\"width\":1049,\"height\":206,\"caption\":\"Near Future Laboratory\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/\",\"name\":\"Near Future Laboratory\",\"description\":\"Clarify Today, Design Tomorrow\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/15\/plastic-happens\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/24\/53912481_7c587ddcc8.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/15\/plastic-happens\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2009\/12\/15\/plastic-happens\/\",\"name\":\"Plastic Happens - 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