Microcosm Societies

Before I had ever lived in a camp, I read Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. The title is far more clever than I ever gave it credit for while reading it. It is a play on Microsoft, on feudal social structures, and general computer nerd-dom, which, I suppose, is as far as I took it while reading the book. Living in camps though, the idea of microserfs, the peasants of the smallest microcosms of a society, becomes fascinating, far from the confines of computerized LEGO programming in Silicon Valley.

Like Coupland's imaginary startup, a camp has its visionaries, its leaders, its middle class and its serfs. The social structure is a rigid caste, and the only thing that keeps the society functioning is that there is the promise of life after camp. People come to a camp to pay for what they do when they go home. To pay for lives that do not include the people they spend most of their time with. It is a weird dynamic. Imagine a water cooler conversation where no one will ever know anything about anyone else, where no one did anything over the weekend, and where there are not plans for the coming weekend. One functions in this environment because they have to.

In all camps, there is a hierarchy. It is essential that people have a leader, as anarchism simply does not get a job done. These duchesses and feudal lords can be brutal or kind, just as any others. They may plan for the winter, or their fiefdoms may starve. It is impossible to know before one has been in the camp what the leadership is like. Leadership though, is strange. In the Medieval period, these microcosms worked because an army backed the leader, and the leader backed the army. A symbiosis occurred at all levels of the chain, where the over- and underlying social strata agreed where everyone was. In a camp there is no army, instead, there is the upcoming Visa bill.

We are all Visa's indentured servants in these microcosms. Maybe a person has no debt, maybe a person always pays cash, but in the end, we owe now or in the future, and we know that we must fill our role in order to make that payment. It is the army of creditors that keeps a camp in check, there is no symbiosis.

This, makes something of a leadership vacuum. The camp leaders lead only by directing the work, yet s/he who directs the work does have power. If the leader is a fan of a football team, days when that team plays may end early, the basketball enthusiasts lose out. If the leader likes to run in the mornings, the morning meeting will be later. If they like an early dinner, workers will be early to their jobs, but back at the mess when the food is served. The power comes from the little things.

Who gets the power? How do they keep it? Like in any political struggle, the key players start to show their hand, and the knights, rooks, and pawns move into position. The power positions in a camp are the same as chess, and society. The king is all powerful, but crippled by the burdens of leadership. Their second, the queen is more powerful, s/he faces the conundrum of Lady Galadriel, to be pure and good, a champion of the pawns, or to become all powerful dark sorceresses. In either case, the queen may, intentionally or not, seek to usurp the king. Lastly, are the bishops. These are the hidden players, they control the conscience of the serfs, and thus, wield power that the king and queen can only demand. Pawns are the first to choose sides.

In minerals exploration, the pawns are usually the locals. They are infinitely replaceable, yet impossible to control. They see the whole camp establishment as outsiders. Often, race or ethnicity complicate relations between the monarchy and the serfs. They have nothing to lose in their meager existence, and so they are eager to choose sides with the person who gives the most present, and often petty rewards. If the bishop offers a workday that is 10 minutes shorter, the bishop will win the pawns. Yet, the pawns are the downfall of s/he who controls them. For the locals want things that are often contrary to the desires of the more loyal, more skilled knights, who will triumph against the pawns every time.

Knights in the camp society get the work done. They have a platoon of serfs behind them, but they get samples submitted, they log core, they run the computers, they collect the data, and deliver the goods. In the camp power struggle, the knights will win the battle. Yet, an exploration campaign, like a war, is not about a battle, but the compound effect of many battles. In order for one to win the war, a strong position must be held through many skirmishes. For these, one looks to the rooks.

Rooks, in the camp society are consultants and technical experts. The knights can win the battles fought today, but the rooks win the battles that will be fought tomorrow. The rooks are motivated by entirely different things. Rooks are motivated by professional reputation, by what happens outside of camp, more than within. From the top of their battlements, a rook can see what tomorrow will bring beyond the confines of the short field campaign.

From my tower, for I fancy myself a rook, I can watch the battles ebb, and the tides turn. I see racial and ethnic tensions flare, and the knights rally around their banner. I have time to sit, and ponder, in this microcosm society, who are the allies I want to maintain when I leave this camp? Who will bring me the most benefit when I deliver my fealty? It will never be the bishop, s/he lacks the wherewithal in my networks. It may be the king or queen, or with enough ambition, I can usurp even these leaders. So I, and the other fortresses watch, listen, and wait.

All of this, requires that outside force. The creditors, whether they be from the Bank of America, or the Society of Economic Geologists, we all seek the value placed on us by those outside camp. In this way alone, we are truly a microcosm of society. The technicians are microserfs, not only because we are a microcosm, but because they are more insignificant than the feudal serf. They are nameless, and ephemeral, they are but leaves on a tree, inconsequential today, and forgotten by fall. The brave knights, who fight for the banner of their fancy, they are no more influential in society. They are not minuscule because this is a camp of 50, but because this is a country of 300,000,000. This microcosm functions not independent of society, but dependent upon society.

While I wile away hours with an iPod, and an endless cylinder of rock, I contemplate why people work. Why people live in these camps the way they do. I watch the power struggles, and I come back to the same idea again and again, they do this because they will leave here. I wonder then, what would a truly micro-society look like? What will be the dynamics of the Mars One team, when they land with no intention of returning? What will keep them going? There is no creditor, there is no army, there is no future, just today, for the rest of their lives. In this strange world, I wonder, will there be microserfs?

Living in Elbonia with DRMs

Readers of Dilbert will recognize Elbonia as the fictional mud-filled country, and its totalitarian neighbor to the north, where Dilbert's company outsources work.  Nonreaders of Dilbert now probably know enough to gather that one would not want to live in Elbonia.  Like the characters of Dilbert, I have no desire to ever visit Elbonia, let alone live there.  However, like the profit driven corporation, I send myself to deal with whatever evil stands in for the mud in whatever place stands in for Elbonia.

My current Elbonia is Tok, AK, but most of the places I have lived in the last year or so remind me of Elbonia in some way.  I dream of escape, yet My beard is getting thicker, and I am starting to fear that I will never get all this mud off.  The only hope I have in these camps are the reminders of civilization I bring with me.  Unfortunately, all of my chocolate has melted in my 90 degree tent, and DRMs are preventing me from escaping with multimedia.

Apple, for various reasons, has been frustrating me for a long time now, so one day I decided that I should cut my final tie with the company, and move on from iTunes.  Still wanting to pay for my music, I tried Google Play, and discovered that in places with limited and slow internet, it really isn't a good medium.  I then tried Amazon, which is as convenient as iTunes, perhaps more, because you can buy music, rent movies, and ship garden tools to Florida if the mood takes you.  Amazon even has less restrictive DRMs than Apple, provided you are using a Windows or Android operating systems.  Playing iTunes files outside of iTunes proved too difficult to bother with, and thus, like a Dilbertian corporate slave, I went back to the most restrictive product to have the easiest access to the products I legally own.

Then, I bought a laptop with Windows 8.  Windows 8 was buggy, difficult to use, and credited with slowing down the sale of new PCs because of its general horribleness.  When it crashed, I switched to Ubuntu.  On an open source operating system one should be able to access their music, but not their iTunes music, nor download their Amazon music (though Ubuntu is installing with a link to Amazon on the dock).  Thus, while stuck in Elbonia, I am confronted with the realization that the things that remind me of a better place, are actually just reminding me of Northern Elbonia, where instead of a totalitarian state, it is a totalitarian corporation supported by the state.  Or, it all just came full circle, and I am in the cubicle maze with Wally and Alice.

In the end, only a few things are inaccessible to me here, while I choose if I want an operating system that doesn't work (Windows 8), or one that doesn't do what I want (owing to DRMs).  While I consider this, I have often considered that if I had stolen the media I cannot access, rather than paying for it, I wouldn't have any of these problems.