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2 0 1 5

S T O R I E S

E D I T I N G

co-editors Arturo Di Corinto, Federico Guerrini, e Martino Galliolo ( founder).

In this issue: Cover story by Adolfo Arranz, and stories by J.M Ledgard,

Piotr Czerski, Rocky McCorkle, Pat Kinsella.

Contributions: Chiara Zaratin e Sergio Caruso,

illustration on top by Elisa Ferro

(All authors of Expost magazine)

*

Expost magazine by freelance, based in Europe. Made in Venice, Italy

The Umbrella Revolution, issue zero, december 2014, free publication, licensed in Creative

commons 3.0. For copyright reasons, images and illustrations are all rights reserved.

I N D E X

5

M I L L E N N I A L S M A N I F E S T O

We, The Web Kids

by Piotr Czerski

21 T H E U M B R E L L A

R E V O L U T I O N Hong Kong Occupy Central

by Adolfo Arranz

50

T H E F U T U R EA day in the future

Graphic novel

by Pat Kinsella

11

B U I L T C A R G O D R O N E S

A N D G E T R I C H World’s first commercial cargo drone

route in Africa by 2016

by J.M Ledgard

49

S U N N Y D A Y“You and Me on a Sunny Day”

A silent film

by Rocky McCorkle

20 F U T U R A 4 2

Dont’ Panic!

Samantha Cristoforetti’s

Guide to the Galaxy

I N D E X

di Pioter Czeski

MILLENNIALS MANIFESTO

W e grew up with the Internet and on the

Internet. This is what makes us different;

this is what makes the crucial, although

surprising from your point of view,

difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’

or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to

reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer

intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the

Internet, we live on the Internet and along it.

If we were to tell our novel of formation to you, the analog,

we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single

experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies

online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and

studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The

Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which

we managed to get a grip of.

The Web is a process, happening continuously and

continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through

us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries,

websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web

continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one

another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and

more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.

Brought up on the Web we think differently. The ability to find

information is to us something as basic, as the ability to find a

railway station or a post office in an unknown city is to you. When

we want to know something - the first symptoms of chickenpox,

the reasons behind the sinking of ‘Estonia’, or whether the water

bill is not suspiciously high - we take measures with the certainty

WE GREW UP WITH THE INTERNET

AND ON THE INTERNET

by Piotr Czerski

(translated by Marta Szreder)

on mobile online

Read in 8’

of a driver in a SatNav-equipped car.

We know that we are going to find the information we need

in a lot of places, we know how to get to those places, we know

how to assess their credibility. We have learned to accept that

instead of one answer we find many different ones, and out of

these we can abstract the most likely version, disregarding the

ones which do not seem credible. We select, we filter, we

remember, and we are ready to swap the learned information for

a new, better one, when it comes along. To us, the Web is a sort of

shared external memory. We do not have to remember

unnecessary details: dates, sums, formulas, clauses, street names,

detailed definitions. It is enough for us to have an abstract, the

essence that is needed to process the information and relate it to

others. Should we need the details, we can look them up within

seconds. Similarly, we do not have to be experts in everything,

because we know where to find people who specialise in what we

ourselves do not know, and whom we can trust. People who will

share their expertise with us not for profit, but because of our

shared belief that information exists in motion, that it wants to be

free, that we all benefit from the exchange of information. Every

day: studying, working, solving everyday issues, pursuing

interests. We know how to compete and we like to do it, but our

competition, our desire to be different, is built on knowledge, on

the ability to interpret and process information, and not on

monopolising it.

PARTECIPATING IN CULTURAL LIFE is not something out of

ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of

our identity, more important for defining ourselves than

traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even

GLOBAL CULTURE IS THE

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING

BLOCK OF OUR IDENTITY

the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we

pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we

review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that

purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or

games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch

together with colleagues or with friends from around the world;

our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of

people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why

we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and

individual. This is why we need free access to it. This does not

mean that we demand that all products of culture be available to

us without charge, although when we create something, we

usually just give it back for circulation. We understand that,

despite the increasing accessibility of technologies which make

the quality of movie or sound files so far reserved for

professionals available to everyone, creativity requires effort and

investment.

We are prepared to pay, but the giant commission that

distributors ask for seems to us to be obviously overestimated.

Why should we pay for the distribution of information that can be

easily and perfectly copied without any loss of the original

quality? If we are only getting the information alone, we want the

price to be proportional to it. We are willing to pay more, but

then we expect to receive some added value: an interesting

packaging, a gadget, a higher quality, the option of watching here

and now, without waiting for the file to download. We are capable

of showing appreciation and we do want to reward the artist

(since money stopped being paper notes and became a string of

numbers on the screen, paying has become a somewhat symbolic

THE INTERTNET TO US IS NOT SOMETHING

EXTERNAL TO REALITY BUT A PART OF IT

act of exchange that is supposed to benefit both parties), but the

sales goals of corporations are of no interest to us whatsoever. It

is not our fault that their business has ceased to make sense in its

traditional form, and that instead of accepting the challenge and

trying to reach us with something more than we can get for free

they have decided to defend their obsolete ways. One more thing:

we do not want to pay for our memories. The films that remind us

of our childhood, the music that accompanied us ten years ago: in

the external memory network these are simply memories.

Remembering them, exchanging them, and developing them is to

us something as natural as the memory of ‘Casablanca’ is to you.

We find online the films that we watched as children and we show

them to our children, just as you told us the story about the Little

Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks. Can you imagine that someone

could accuse you of breaking the law in this way? We cannot,

either.

WE ARE USED TO OUR BILLS BEING PAID AUTOMATICALLY, as

long as our account balance allows for it; we know that starting a

bank account or changing the mobile network is just the question

of filling in a single form online and signing an agreement

delivered by a courier; that even a trip to the other side of Europe

with a short sightseeing of another city on the way can be

organised in two hours. Consequently, being the users of the

state, we are increasingly annoyed by its archaic interface. We do

not understand why tax act takes several forms to complete, the

main of which has more than a hundred questions. We do not

understand why we are required to formally confirm moving out

of one permanent address to move in to another, as if councils

could not communicate with each other without our intervention

SOCIETY IS A NETWORK

TRANSLATIONS

P I O T R C Z E R S K I

Writer and poet, photographer and anthropologist, from Poland, born

in 1981.

(not to mention that the necessity to have a permanent address is

itself absurd enough.) There is not a trace in us of that humble

acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that

administrative issues were of utmost importance and who

considered interaction with the state as something to be

celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance

between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the

ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of

the social structure is different from yours: society is a network,

not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with

anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any

special qualifications related to social status. The success of the

interaction depends solely on whether the content of our

message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And

if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our

arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on

many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a

serious dialogue with the government? We do not feel a religious

respect for ‘institutions of democracy’ in their current form, we

do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see

‘institutions of democracy’ as a monument for and by themselves.

We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to

our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And

we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable

system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is

more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more

opportunities.

What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech,

freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is

thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our

duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations,

just as much as we owe to protect the environment. Perhaps we

have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of

it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy.

Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your

journalism.

Built Cargo Drones

And get rich

by

J.M. Ledgard

My goal is to help set up the world’s first

commercial cargo drone route in Africa

by 2016. It will be about 80 kilometres

long and will connect several towns and

villages. The first cargo drones will carry small payloads of blood

to keep alive children who would otherwise perish. But they will

evolve into larger and heavier craft until they can lift 20 kilos or

more over distances of several hundred kilometres. The purpose

of the first route will be to save lives, show the value of cargo

drones in Africa— and to raise money to build other routes. To

me, this first route is a spectral version of the Liverpool and Man-

chester railway. I am a novelist, but I am also director of a future

Africa initiative at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and

for the last decade I travelled Africa as a foreign correspondent

for The Economist newspaper.

on mobile

online

Read in 12’

1 T H E F U T U R E W I L L B E R A D I C A L

The first point to make is that, even if we de-

ride change, even if we stand still, shielding

our eyes, covering our ears, the future will

be radical. I spent my time as a foreign correspondent reporting

on politics, economics and war, but I came to see that the most

important stories in Africa were not news stories at all. On the

one hand, rapid human population growth and extermination of

other species. On the other, introduction of advanced technol-

ogies capable of reordering time and space.The mobile phone

is one such technology. It has contributed more to anti-poverty

efforts than any single development intervention. (…) So when I

think of what cargo drones can be and should be, I think of the

Nokia 1100 mobile phone. Over 50 million Nokia 1100s were sold

in Africa. Smart, rugged and cheap the handset was known as the

Kalashnikov of communication, but where the machine gun tore

at the fabric of society the handset created new possibilities.I

keep a picture of the Nokia 1100 pinned up by my desk as proof

of the paradox which undergirds cargo drones — the paradox of

advanced technologies which I believe will come to define the

early 21st century: a community will have access to a flying robot

even though it will not have access to clean water, or security, or

be able to keep its girls in school. What is technically scaleable

will be scaled, what is not scaleable will have to be fought for,

household by household. Another way of saying this is, what will

improve lives in Africa most easily will be a technology interven-

tion that is massively scaleable.

the world’s First commercial cargo drone route in Africa

will connect several towns and villages

2 A CARGO DRONE IS A DONKEY

For many people, drone is an ugly word. It

evokes a whining sound, something insectile.

The dislike of the drones themselves is under-

standable. It is a new technology, used mainly for killing or peep-

ing. However, this early negative feeling will begin to shift with

positive use cases for drones. Before 2020, drones will take over

search functions at sea. Never again will a coastguard helicopter

go blindly into the night in search of a sinking ship. Instead, it will

be guided by a drone sent ahead of them to locate those in peril.

Drones will monitor the wellbeing of crops and animals. They will

be used in mapping, counting, policing, and sports. And they will

also lift things. I spent a moonlit evening last year around a camp-

fire in a Samburu manyatta in northern Kenya. We were trying

to explain to a Samburu elder the concept of a robot programmed

to fly up into the air and deliver a load of whatever you want-

ed. The Samburu was straining to understand the term robot. A

mechanical creature, I said, not a beast, not a camel. It was slow

going. Then at last he leaned back and laughed. “I see! You want

to put my donkey in the sky!” He had many donkeys. The Sambu-

ru like to load them with water and firewood. They walk steadily

down dried up river beds, over mountains, through brush. My

colleague, Simon, and I knew instantly he was right: we really did

want to put his donkey in the sky.“You want to put my donkey in

the sky!”The qualities of a donkey are similar to what is required

for a cargo drone: surefooted, dependable, intelligent, able to deal

with dust and heat, cheap, uncomplaining. (...) A donkey is not a

Pegasus, associated only with speed. It does not bomb, does not

monitor. It flies stuff steadily between here and there – that is all.

“I see! You want to put my donkey in the sky!”.

3 W H A T I S T H E S K Y A N Y W A Y ?

As a species we have hardly begun to think

what is above our heads. (...) There are whole

continents up in the air for the right kind of

drones to traverse. The sky above Sudan is stacked with virtual

Sudans. How might a donkey route look? The easiest way to pic-

ture it is to take the Eiffel Tower and draw a line from the top of

the tower. Donkeys will fly roughly at that Eiffel height, in what I

call the lower sky. The routes will be geofenced: donkeys will only

be able to fly in an air corridor about 200 metres wide and 150

metres high. Busier routes will resemble a high-speed ski gondo-

la, without cables or supporting structures.Every small town will

have its own clean energy donkey station like the one below. The

traffic to and from it will mostly be on foot and bikes. The stations

will serve as the petrol station of the near future. They will incor-

porate postal and courier services.2024Repair shops will mix 3D

printing and other advanced technology with low tech. (...)

The stations will provide business opportunities for African start-

ups and for architects. In contrast to the concrete petrol stations

built around Africa in the colonial period, donkey stations could

nudge communities away from settlements strung out alongside

roads to something safer and quieter. Since donkeys will eventu-

ally operate on batteries, the renewable energy arrays needed for

clean recharging will also power surrounding homes and busi-

nesses.

The stations will provide business opportunities

for African startups

4 T H E T I M E I S N O W

The next decade will be among the most decisive

in Africa’s recorded history. Fertility rates in the

largest African countries are not falling as fast as

had been predicted. At the present rate Africa’s population will be

2.7 billion by 2050, against 228 million in 1950. To have a chance

of prosperity, African economies need to quickly turn growth into

manufacturing jobs. The problem is that they are growing, but not

transforming. Growth rates are much too low. (...)

In key economies like Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal manufactur-

ing is dominated by small, informal firms. The poorest countries

seem to be de-industrialising. New factories, such as in Ethiopia,

will not offset the dumping of cheap finished goods from Asia on

African markets. (...) The cities new Africans will inhabit have yet

to be built. On the contrary, Africa is rich. It harbours treasures

of food, water and minerals. It has more genetic diversity of our

own and other species than anywhere else on the planet. It is

the mother continent. (...) 2060 is the year for the Project Icarus

group plan to launch the first interstellar spacecraft — probably

from a launchpad in Africa. If we recalibrate donkeys according to

the ambitions of Icarus, they look to be modest and self-explan-

atory. Conventional development narratives, written as a litany,

but lacking much sense of urgency, will be outflanked by events

and innovations.

5 U A F U T U R E W I T H O U T R O A D S

A further reason for going to the lower sky

is the certainty that there isn’t going to be

enough cash for Africa to build out its roads.

Africa’s road network is sparse , reflecting both the newness of

place and the utter failure of colonial and post-colonial rule,

which was conceived for export of the treasure to richer markets,

hardly taking into account the desire of a community to trade

over the next hill. The only conceivable strong future for Africa is

a sharing economy, where goods are used multiple times, in mul-

tiple ways. In order to share, you need to move around people,

exabytes of data, and cargo. Africa does a terrible job at all three.

Digital connectivity will be solved because it is affordable

and in the interests of big technology companies. Moving around

people and physical stuff will require massive upgrading of roads.

(...) The continent has 2% of the world’s motor vehicles, but ac-

counts for 16% of world road deaths. A study showed that 74% of

hospital admissions for traffic injuries in Uganda in 2011 were of

children under the age of 13, most of them hit by passing motor

vehicles.

6 T H E K I L L E R A P P I S R E P E T I T I O N

I have identified 80 kilometre routes in Tan-

zania, Uganda, and Rwanda. Other prospec-

tive countries for early routes are Angola,

Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia and South Africa.Routes can be

tacked together to extend range. By way of example, it is possible

in Rwanda to set up a donkey route from the town of Gitarama

over the Nyungwe forest to Lake Kivu and down to the Congo-

lese city of Bukavu. A country as compact and hilly as Rwanda

can quickly draw routes across its lower sky and intersect them

to most improve health and economic outcomes. (...) My future

Africa initiative at EPFL will get the first route up and running.

An associated fund based in Africa and Switzerland will push for

world-class research on the robotics, engineering, logistics, and

law related to donkeys. It will also push for the establishment of

an international agency for the lower sky, which will set global

norms for the use of donkeys and other civilian drones.I antici-

pate three phases to the technology.

In Phase 1, starting in 2016, drones will serve hospitals

and humanitarian emergencies — life air not prime air, starting

with the better distribution of blood from blood banks to clinics.

Other early adopters will use donkeys to deliver small payloads to

government offices, mines, oil and gas installations, ranches and

conservancies. In Phase 2, industrial sweetspots to cities such as

the spare parts industry in southeast Nigeria will be connected

to cities by donkey routes— just as the Liverpool and Manches-

ter railway connected the first city of the industrial age with the

Atlantic. These routes will serve the new solutions demanded by

a sharing economy, such as where customers opt for rental and

servicing of machinery rather than outright purchase. Companies

of building and mining equipment will stock their large invento-

ry of spare parts using donkeys carrying 10 kilo payloads. Phase 1

and 2 would be enough to make the donkeys a useful contributor.

But the real reason for the technology is Phase 3, where donkeys

will better connect businesses with customers right across Africa.

Donkeys will help small companies to grow through e-commerce.

Wherever you have impecunious young people ubiquitously con-

nected to the internet, e-commerce is desperate to happen. And

this is even more true in Africa where, for various reasons, the

retail high street will never be built out, and where existing sales

of electronics, appliances and most other imported goods are

dominated by supermarkets with limited stocks and high mar-

gins. Donkeys can extend the range of e-commerce outside big

cities.Wherever you have impecunious young people ubiquitously

connected to the internet, e-commerce is desperate to happen.

And this is even more true in Africa where, for various reasons,

the retail high street will never be built out, and where existing

sales of electronics, appliances and most other imported goods

are dominated by supermarkets with limited stocks and high

margins. Donkeys can extend the range of e-commerce outside

big cities. (...)

All of this is possible because the donkey has a killer app.

It is not going clear across the lower sky. The killer app is repeti-

tion. A donkey can make many journeys in a day and through the

night. The most populated bit of Africa is Equatorial. Every day is

the same length, and every night. Donkeys will fly in the 12 hours

of dark, hyena time, pothole time, where not many lorries ven-

ture out — gliding through the hot night, hushed, blinking green,

delivering fresh for the new day. With 9 billion humans soon to be

alive and divvying up our limited planetary resources, unmanned

flight is inevitable. Cargo drones will have application in rich

countries with dispersed populations such as Norway and Saudi

Arabia. But the biggest opportunity is in Africa. Many people are

going to save a lot of lives and make a lot of money by putting the

donkey in the lower sky there first.

J . M L E D G A R D

J.M.Ledgard is director of a future Africa initiative at EPFL and a longtime Africa correspondent of The Economist. His novel Submergence was a New York Times Book of 2013.

READ FULL VERSION

ONLINE

FUTURA 42“The answer to the “fundamental question of Life, the Universe and

Everything” is 42, as revealed by the super computer ‘Deep Thought’

after thinking about it for seven and a half million years. As fans of the

humorous science-fiction novel by Douglas Adams “The Hitchhiker’s Guide

to the Galaxy” will know, it is not clear what the question is.But this is

of little importance: when I heard I was a member of Expedition 42 on the

International Space Station, besides being overjoyed for the assignment I

found it I was complacent about this funny coincidence.

These two worlds meet on Outpost 42. Our aim is to inform our public,

with rigor, certainly, but always with humor and an amused look on

things. It is much simpler than it looks. In the words of the Guide to the

Galaxy: Do not Panic!”

Samantha Cristoforetti

hoNg kong September 28, 2014

September 28, 2014, 3pm. It was a few hours before tear gas was fired on the crowds, unleashing what

would be known around the world as

the Umbrella Movement

Hong Kong Occupy Central

by adolfo Arranz

I was in the lobby of Admiralty Centre and captured this gathering of protesters who would soon decide whether or not to take over the highway separating them from the Central Government Complex at Tamar, across the street.

That afternoon, not only the crowds but also members of the police force seemed

calm and poised, despite what would happen mere hours

later.

When I drew this sketch, I was standing in the middle of the crowds that had just poured onto the highway. People helped each other across the concrete barriers. It was maybe 5pm. Within the hour, the first canisters of tear gas were fired. I left just before this happened, sensing that the police were going to act soon

In the late hours of

September 28, the occupation

movement spread to other

districts of Hong Kong. On

the next morning in the commercial neighbourhood of Causeway Bay, where

protesters had just started a sit-in on its main thoroughfare.

september 28, 2014

Students gathered in Causeway Bay, the morning after tear gas

was fired on protesters, hong kong, SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

a drawing that I made a few days later as the protest started to settle in, with tents now being

september 29, 2014

October 2, 2014. During the first

week of the Umbrella Movement, citizens took turns on megaphones to voice their views.

standing from the footbridge between Admiralty Centre and Tamar, looking west towards Central.

It was the fifth evening, a Thursday, when crowds congregated to await Chief Executive CY Leung’s response

to a call from students to resign.

october 2, 2014

BarricaDeS! The barricades in Mong Kok on Nathan Road,

at the corner of Shantung Street,

October 12, 2014

at the barricades at Tamar where an old man started loudly berating the police

with anti-Beijing insults.

The policeman just turned

the other way to avoid what the senior protester had to say

to them that day

a bizarre scene...

In the beginning, students at the Admiralty site did their homework any way they could find...

...Volunteers at the Admiralty site helped build desks for students.

Students at the study area

Students at the study area in Admiralty, October 19, 2014

take a nap...

The Eastern barricade at the Admiralty site, October 19, 2014

n the days BEFORE

footage was released showing

a protester allegedly being

beaten by police offIcers. ->

on the signs mean „upright“,

a term that the police chief repeated to describe the police force

charging stationAdmiralty MTR, October 11, 2014

Staying powered up is serious business for protesters. Serial numbers are marked in a register and users of the service are given

tickets they use to reclaim their mobile devices.

supply station A supply station at the interesection of

Tamar Street and Harcourt Road, Admiralty, October 10, 2014.

What was normally the side of a busy highway is now completely devoid of

motorised traffic for a few hundred metres around

October 18, 2014

On the highway now closed to traffic outside Tamar, passerbys are writing messages in chalk,

Origami

A young man is teaching people how to fold origami umbrellas outside the Central

October 11, 2014

FREE!

Illustrator Tiffanycheetah

draws portraits for

free

while young activists paint signs at the entrance to the MTR in Admiralty,

October 18, 2014,

Tents between the Legislative Council Complex and Citic Tower at the barricade on Lung Wui Road

October 25, 2014

Adolfo Arranz Infographic artist and

illustrator, from Spain, based in Hong Kong. Creative director of

Media Corp.

you AND me On A

sunny day - silent film -

by rocky mcCorkle

Pat Kinsella illustratore di New York City

http://expost-news.com