Junctures - The Journal for Thematic Dialogue

Paringatai, Karyn

English

"Poia atu taku poi" : Unearthing the Knowledge of the Past

Schmidt, Leoni

Migrant Drawing: Disrupted Spaces & Dispersive Notations

Gaesser, Glenn A

 15
GLENN A. GAESSER
Is Weight Loss the Answer?*
Weight loss is generally recommended for overweight persons primarily because weight
loss intervention is frequently associated with improvements in health status.  Theoretically,
weight loss in overweight individuals should reduce death rates.   However, there is a dearth
of evidence available to support this scenario.1   To the contrary, most relevant epidemiological
studies indicate that weight loss is associated with increased mortality rates.2 ,3 ,4 ,5 ,6
A major limitation of many of the epidemiological studies on weight loss and mortality,
however, is that they do not distinguish between intentional and unintentional weight loss.7
Because unintentional weight loss may be associated with illness, interpretation of the
results of any study that does not distinguish between intentional and unintentional weight
loss is problematic at best.
Even the studies with data on intentional weight loss fail to provide compelling evidence for
a positive impact of weight loss on mortality rates.8 ,9 ,10   In the American Cancer Society’s
Cancer Prevention Study I, involving 43,457 never-smoking overweight (Body Mass Index,
BMI > 27) U.S. white women, ages 40-64, the impact of intentional weight loss on mortality
rates depended upon health status.11
Among the 28,388 women with no pre-existing illness, intentional weight loss generally
was not associated with reduced mortality rates.  In some instances intentional weight loss
was associated with statistically significantly higher mortality rates.
By comparison, for the 15,069 women with one or more obesity-related health conditions,
intentional weight loss was associated with an approximately 20% lower rate of all-cause
mortality over a 12-yr follow-up.  It is noteworthy that the reduction in death rate was
independent of the amount of weight lost: women who lost 1-19 pounds experienced the
same reduction in all-cause mortality rate as did women who lost 20 or more pounds.  This
suggests that specific weight loss goals for overweight women with obesity-related health
conditions may not be necessary.
Gaesser – Is Weight Loss the Answer? – Junctures, 1, Dec 2003
16
Two 1999 reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology support these findings, again
undermining the  “lose weight-live longer” paradigm.12 ,13   In one, on men with BMI over 27,
intentional weight loss had no positive effect on overall mortality, regardless of current
health status.14   Although intentional weight loss among overweight men with health
problems was associated with a lower mortality rate for diabetes, the reduction in mortality
rate was independent of the amount of weight loss, again suggesting that specific weight
loss goals may be unnecessary.
The Iowa Women’s Health Study provides perhaps the most compelling evidence to refute
the hypothesis that losing weight lengthens life.15   In this study of 25,764 women, ages 55-
69, three different statistical models were used to evaluate the impact of weight loss on
total and cardiovascular disease mortality among women categorized by weight status,
health status, and amount and intentionality of weight loss.  Among overweight women
(BMI>27.3),in no instance was weight loss – whether intentional or unintentional – associated
with significantly reduced mortality rates.  In fact, intentional weight loss in almost all cases
was associated with elevated death rates.
Taken together, these epidemiological findings strongly suggest that categorical
recommendations for all overweight persons to lose weight, regardless of current health
status, are not justified.
WEIGHT LOSS PARADOX
The high mortality rates associated with weight loss, particularly for cardiovascular disease,
are paradoxical in view of the conventional wisdom on weight loss.  More often than not
weight loss is associated with improvements in established cardiovascular risk factors.  This,
theoretically, should translate into reduced mortality.  Not only does the bulk of
epidemiological evidence fail to support the “lose weight-live longer” paradigm, it suggests
that weight loss in some instances may do more harm than good, particularly for persons
with no pre-existing health conditions.  There are several potential explanations for this
weight loss paradox.
Intentional weight loss is not always associated with an improved health profile.  Low-
carbohydrate diets, for example, increase serum total cholesterol16  and low-density
lipoprotein cholesterol, and reduce serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, particularly
in women.17   These unfavorable lipoprotein changes occurred even in the face of weight
loss.  This may have particular relevance to the U.S. population because low-carbohydrate
diets have been the most popular weight-reducing diets in the United States since the early
1960s.
Major weight loss has been reported to reduce adipose tissue and serum concentration of
0-linolenic acid,18 ,19  a reduction that cannot be prevented even with dietary
supplementation.20  Low levels of α-linolenic acid may increase the risk of atherosclerosis.21
Tang et al. cautioned that “a subtle but chronic risk state could be established if recurrent
dieting depletes w3 reserves and intake during maintenance or weight gain does not allow
Gaesser – Is Weight Loss the Answer? – Junctures, 1, Dec 2003
 17
effective repletion.”22
WEIGHT LOSS AS A MARKER FOR WEIGHT CYCLING
It is possible that the increased mortality rates associated with weight loss are due to
weight cycling, and not necessarily weight loss itself.  Several epidemiological studies
revealed higher all-cause (primarily from cardiovascular disease) death rates among men
and women who had experienced considerable weight fluctuation (for review see
Gaesser23 ,24 ).
The increased morbidity and mortality associated with weight cycling in humans is supported
by a number of animal models (for review, see Gaesser25 ,26 ).  Weight cycling has also been
reported to significantly modify whole body fatty acid composition in rats (i.e., decreases in
linoleate and α-linolenate) which may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.  Chen et
al. demonstrated that carcass and adipose tissue fatty acid compositional changes were
similar whether weight cycling (two cycles) was induced by caloric intake reductions of
36%, 60% or 100% of daily caloric intake, thus suggesting that a relatively moderate caloric
restriction is potentially as hazardous as complete fasting.27
Weight fluctuation may also increase the risk for certain cancers. Tagliaferro et al. 28  reported
that cyclic food restriction increased mammary tumor incidence in rats.  Also, Uhley et al. 29
reported that weight cycling increased oxidative DNA damage levels in mammary glands of
rats.  Four or five weight cycles of either 20% above or below baseline weight increased
oxidative damage in the DNA of mammary gland cells.  The kind of DNA damage observed
in these animals may be a potentially useful marker for breast cancer in humans.30   Whether
the high breast cancer rates in the United States are related to weight cycling is entirely
speculative, but the animal data are certainly cause for concern given the prevalence of
weight loss attempts by U. S. women.31 ,32   The authors emphasised that “cyclic dieting
attempts at weight loss should not be viewed as a benign behaviour in women and may be
an important risk factor for breast cancer.”33   In a study of Swedish women, Lindblad et al.
34   reported that weight cycling was a major predictor of renal cell cancer.
BODY COMPOSITION: DOES IT REALLY MATTER?
It has been suggested recently that it’s not weight loss per se that is unhealthy, but rather
loss of fat-free mass that is associated with increased mortality rates.  On the basis of two
cohort studies (Tecumseh; Framingham), Allison and colleagues35  reported that although
weight loss was associated with higher mortality rates, fat loss was associated with reduced
mortality rates.  On the face of it, this suggests that loss of fat-free mass is undesirable, and
that the loss of body fat is a good thing – at least in terms of mortality.  However, body
composition, or changes in body composition, may not be as important as this study suggests.
Data from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study suggest that aerobic fitness is considerably
more important as a predictor of mortality rate than either BMI, percent body fat, absolute
Gaesser – Is Weight Loss the Answer? – Junctures, 1, Dec 2003
18
amount of body fat or fat-free mass, or waist circumference.36   Furthermore, fat loss was
associated with only modestly reduced mortality rates in the report of Allison et al. (15 to
17% for each standard deviation of reduction in skinfold thickness), whereas modest changes
in aerobic fitness have been reported to be associated with reductions in mortality rate on
the order of 40 to 70%, independently of changes in BMI.37   Because it may be considerably
easier to change aerobic fitness level than it is to lose weight (and maintain it), emphasis
on physical activity rather than weight reduction is perhaps the best strategy.
CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the scientific evidence does not support the assertion
that weight loss will increase the longevity prospects of women and men classified as
overweight (i.e., by BMI criteria).  In fact, a good deal of data suggests that, as Kassirer and
Angel opined,38  “the cure for obesity may be worse than the condition.”  Thus urging naturally
heavy men and women to lose weight, without also considering lifestyle factors and current
health status, may be counterproductive.
Mortality issues aside, many weight-related comorbidities, such as high blood pressure,
abnormal blood lipids, hyperinsulinemia, and glucose intolerance, can be improved
independently of weight loss (for review, see Gaesser39 ,40 ).    Thus public health may be
better served by focusing more on increasing physical activity and fitness, and on improving
nutrition, than on weight reduction per se.  Due to the rather poor success rates for permanent
weight loss, this may be the only viable option for millions of U. S. adults stigmatised as ‘too
fat.’ Countless heavier-than-average women and men need to be reassured that the road to
a fitter and healthier body is wide enough for everyone.
* This article was previously published in the Healthy Weight Journal.
1 GA Gaesser, “Thinness and Weight Loss: Beneficial or Detrimental to Longevity?” Med Sci Sports
Exerc 31 (1999): 1118-1128.
2 Ibid.
3 GA Gaesser, Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health (New York: Fawcett
Columbine, 1996), 1-312.
4 DF Williamson, E Pamuk, M Thun, D Flanders, T Byers, C Heath, “Prospective Study of Intentional
Weight Loss and Mortality in Never-smoking Overweight US White Women Aged 40-64 Years,” Am
J Epidemiol 141 (1995): 1128-1141.
5 DF Williamson, E Pamuk, M Thun, D Flanders, T Byers, C Heath, “Prospective Study of Intentional
Weight Loss and Mortality in Overweight White Men Aged 40-64 Years,”  Am J Epidemiol 149
(1999): 491-503.
6 SA French, AR Folsom, RW Jeffrey, DF Williamson, “Prospective Study of Intentionality of Weight
Loss and Mortality in Older Women: The Iowa Women’s Health Study,” Am J Epidemiol 149 (1999):
504-514.
7 Gaesser, “Thinness and Weight Loss”.
Gaesser – Is Weight Loss the Answer? – Junctures, 1, Dec 2003
 19
8 Williamson et al., “Intentionality of Weight Loss and Mortality in Older Women”.
9 Williamson et al., “Intentional Weight Loss and Mortality in Overweight White Men”.
10 French et al. “Iowa Woman’s Study”
11 Williamson et al., “Intentionality of Weight Loss and Mortality in Older Women”.
12 Williamson et al., “Intentional Weight Loss and Mortality in Overweight White Men”.
13 French et al., “Iowa Woman’s Study”.
14 Williamson et al., “Intentional Weight Loss and Mortality in Overweight White Men”.
15 French et al., “Iowa Woman’s Study”.
16 F Rickman, N Mitchell, J Dingman, JE Dalen, “Changes in Serum Cholesterol During the Stillman
Diet,” J A M A 228 (1974): 54-58.
17 JC LaRosa, AG Fry, R Muesing, DR Rosing, “Effects of High-Protein, Low-Carbohydrate Dieting on
Plasma Lipoproteins and Body Weight,” J Am Diet Assoc 77 (1980): 264-270.
18 SD Phinney, AB Tang, SB Johnson, RT Holman, “Reduced Adipose Tissue 18:3w3 with Weight Loss
by Very Low Calorie Dieting,” Lipids 25 (1990): 798-806.
19 AB Tang, KY Nishimura, SD Phinney, “Preferential Reduction in Adipose Alpha-Linolenic Acid (18:3n-
3) During Very Low Caloric Dieting Despite Supplementation with 18:3n-3,” Lipids  28 (1993): 987-
93.
20 Ibid.
21 Phinney et al., “Reduced Adipose Tissue”.
22 Tang et al., “Preferential Reduction”.
23 Gaesser, “Thinness and Weight Loss”.
24 Gaesser, Big Fat Lies.
25 Gaesser, “Thinness and Weight Loss”.
26 Gaesser, Big Fat Lies.
27 Z-Y Chen, M-M Sea, K-Y Kwan, Y-H Leung, P-F Leung, “Depletion of Linoleate Induced by Weight
Cycling is Independent of Extent of Calorie Restriction,” Am J Physiol 272 (1997): 272 (Regulatory
Integrative Comp. Physiol. 41): R43-R50.
28 AR Tagliaferro, AM Ronan, LD Meeker, HJ Thompson, AL Scott, D Sinha, “Cyclic Food Restriction
Alters Substrate Utilization and Abolishes Protection From Mammary Carcinogenesis in Female
Rats,” J Nutr 126 (1996): 1398-1405.
29 VE Uhley, MA Pellizzon, AM Buison, F Guo, Z Djuric, K-LC Jen, “Chronic Weight Cycling Increases
Oxidative DNA Damage Levels in Mammary Gland of Female Rats Fed a High-Fat Diet,” Nutr Cancer
29 (1997): 55-59.
30 Z Djuric, LK Heilbrun, MS Simon, et al., “Levels of 5-Hydroxymethyl-2’-Deoxyuridine in DNA From
Blood as a Marker of Breast Cancer,” Cancer 77 (1996): 691-696.
31 Gaesser, “Thinness and Weight Loss”.
32 Gaesser, Big Fat Lies.
33 Uhley, “Chronic Weight Cycling”.
34 P Lindblad, A Wolk, R Bergstrom, I Persson, H-O Adami, “The Role of Obesity and Weight Fluctuations
in the Etiology of Renal Cell Cancer: A Population-Based Case-Control Study,” Cancer Epidemiol
Biomarkers Prev 3 (1994): 631-639.
35 DB Allison, R Zannolli, MS Faith, et al., “Weight Loss Increases and Fat Loss Decreases All-Cause
Mortality Rate: Results From Two Independent Cohort Studies,” Int J Obes & Related Met Dis 23
(1999): 603-611.
36 CD Lee, SN Blair, AS Jackson, “Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Body Composition, and All-Cause and
Gaesser – Is Weight Loss the Answer? – Junctures, 1, Dec 2003
20
Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in Men,” Am J Clin Nutr 69 (1999): 373-380.
37 SN Blair, HK Kohl III, CE Barlow, RS Paffenbarger, LW Gibbons, CA Macera, “Changes in Physical
Fitness and All-cause Mortality: A Prospective Study of Healthy and Unhealthy Men,” J A M A 273
(1995): 1093-1098.
38 JP Kassirer, M Angell, “Losing Weight – An Ill-Fated New Year’s Resolution,” New Eng J Med 338
(1998): 52-54.
39 Gaesser, “Thinness and Weight Loss”.
40 Gaesser, Big Fat Lies.
Glenn A. Gaesser is a professor of exercise physiology and director of the kinesiology
programme at the University of Virginia.  He is a fellow of the American College of
Sports Medicine, and the author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight and
your Health (2002).
Gaesser – Is Weight Loss the Answer? – Junctures, 1, Dec 2003


Is Weight Loss the Answer?

Hokowhitu, Brendan

Race Tactics: The Racialised Athletic Body

Lonie, Bridie

Review: Nina Mariette, "Painting Myself In" (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1997)

Alterio, Maxine

 71
 MAXINE ALTERIO
 Timing is Everything
There is a time, between dying and death, when a few patients regain lucidity, occasionally
become energetic, and, in this space, reveal what they hold most dear.  Some people say a
name, others tell a complete story.  Often these stories are about love but they don’t always
involve people.  Sometimes they encapsulate a person’s passion, and dreams, fulfilled or
otherwise, are played out one last time.
Shelia’s time came just before dawn and ended shortly after fallen leaves on a patio had been
transformed by the sun until they resembled red and gold footlights on a stage.  The row of
poplar trees, from which they had dropped, surrounded her like an appreciative audience, and,
I, her night nurse, took on the role of dresser and witness.  Before that night she was Mrs. Gillies,
the colostomy in Room 48.  Afterwards — Shelia, dancer, dream-maker.
I was doing my final round when I heard a shuffle inside her room, then something being
dragged across the floor.  I pushed the door slightly, watched a dying woman climb on a chair and
reach to the back of her closet.  Not wanting to scare her, I waited until she climbed down with
a small case.
“Now what’s going on?” I said, easing the door wide open.  “Not running away, I hope?”
“Ah good, you’re here at last.”
“If you needed me earlier you should’ve rung the buzzer.”
“And wake the whole place?  Now, Glenda, my make-up.”
I was surprised she knew my name, we’d hardly talked.  She was usually asleep.  I walked over
thinking, a bit of make-up, where’s the harm?
She sat on a chair in front of her dresser, tucked a tissue around her neck.  Across her dresser
she spread some jars, pots, brushes and lipstick.  On the right she placed a photograph of a
young woman, hair like black silk gliding down an arched back.  A body, sleek and sensuous, in
a red dress that fell around her calves in frills and flounces.
“Me,” she said, “during my Franco phase.”
I picked up the photograph and, yes, it could have been her, same nose, cheek bones.
Alterio – Timing is Everything – Junctures, 3, Dec 2004
72
            “You danced?”
“Help me do it again.”
When I hesitated, she pulled a flamenco dress from her case and rustled it in front of me.
              “Olé!”
I followed her instructions; face, dress, shoes, in that order.  Then painted her nails, tied ribbons
through her hair and helped her put on a pair of gold Aztec earrings.
She floated towards the French doors, pulled back the curtains and stepped onto the patio.  The
sun, as though on command, rose and formed a magenta backdrop and I knew something
special was about to take place.
Shelia, surrounded by autumn leaves, danced a summer story.  She took me to Spain, introduced
me to Franco, showed me how love looks when it flames red, knelt me on earth so dry it
crackled, took me through the streets of Granada on a hot steamy night, sat me down in a
cantina and had me drink wine from my shoe.
She took me across sand and sea and sky.  I hardly remember carrying her back to bed, barely
knew that I had undressed her, washed her, taken a rose from a vase and tucked it in her white
hair; positioned her in a dead woman’s pose.  When asked later how she’d been when I did my
rounds, I said, “She had a good night.”
Even now I never experience dawn without hearing Shelia dance.  And each autumn I take
simple pleasure in disturbing the pattern of leaves.
Maxine Alterio is a principal lecturer and staff development coordinator at Otago
Polytechnic in New Zealand with an interest in narrative approaches to teaching and
learning. She is co-author of Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education: Using
Reflection and Experience to Improve  Learning, published in 2002 by Dunmore Press,
New Zealand, and in 2003 by Kogan Page, United Kingdom. Her first book of fiction, Live
News and Other Stories, will be released by Steele/Roberts, New Zealand, late in 2004.
Alterio – Timing is Everything – Junctures, 3, Dec 2004


Timing is Everything

McKinlay, Pam

Colophon: Junctures, Issue 4:movement

Colophon: Junctures, Issue 8:control

Hui, Yuk

The Computational Turn or a New "Weltbild"

Priest, Julian

53Junctures 13, December 2010
JULIAN PRIEST
The Future Network*
THE FUTURE NETWORK
will stretch from the Sun
where hydrogen fuses
destroying mass in a pure blast of energy,
that escapes the solar corona and radiates
across 150 million kilometers
of frozen vacuum
to insolate the earth,
our fragile third planet
cloaked in biosphere,
a delicate shawl 
of gas and liquid and life
cast over the blue marble.
The energy falls as visible light.
Some is reflected
by the changing albedo 
of the Earth’s surface,
with its pale reflective
growing sands and shrinking ice caps.
Some is re-radiated
as lower frequency infra-red.
The energy balance is maintained – more or less.
Visible light input energy 
is equal to
Infra-red heat output energy.
The earth’s temperature stays within life-giving bounds,
at an average of 14.3 degrees centigrade,
allowing water to be liquid;
a remarkable balancing act of temperature between 
the minus 270 degree average 
of the frozen interstellar vacuum
and the 13.6 million degree heat 
of the seething solar core.
The gap in frequency between
incoming light and outgoing heat
exposes The Earth
as a net entropy exporter,
a net information destroyer.
Year on year we run 
a global information deficit
that allows us to create
the structure of life,
the structure of civilisation,
the structure of technology and culture
of our one small ape class.
54 Junctures 13, December 2010
The electromagnetic frequency gap
pushes life up the entropic slope
in a temporary reversal
of universal thermodynamic fortune
that seemingly refutes
physic’s gold-plated 
second law of thermodynamics that:
Entropy tends to increase.
Energy tends to disperse.
Information tends to be lost.
Life structures earth,
creates forests, fish shoals, libraries of information,
and exports entropy into the galactic gloaming.
A green leaf sways in the wind,
absorbs C02, sucks up water
and basks in sunlight,
creating regenerating structures,
information locked in cellulose capillaries
or starchy wheat kernels.
We harvest them 
and grind them down
to make flour and cake.
We eat.
We say that we use energy,
as if we could use up energy,
but energy is that which is conserved.
We only transform,
transform the starches structured in cake,
break them down,
to become simpler sugars 
and our internal fuel ATP,
that powers muscles to create
motion and eventually heat.
The cake’s energy is not destroyed,
only transformed, converted 
from dense energy forms 
to more dispersed ones.
Entropy increases.
Energy disperses.
Information is lost.
55Junctures 13, December 2010
We live in the interconnected networks of 
these myriad energy pathways,
these myriad information pathways,
and we choose.
The OLD NETWORK
stretches back in time
to punga and protozoans
that structured themselves
from the carboniferous sun,
and died and sank into sediment
and were compressed into 
dense information sources
that lay black under the sea bed
as oil and coal,
and were drilled and mined
in industrial times,
and were dug up by our ape class
and traded and revelled in
and fought over
and turned into
Chevrolets and washing machines
and birthday cards that sang 
tinny versions of Greensleeves
and ten thousand other useful things.
Dense information that drove structure.
The burning,
the burning,
the burning fuel
exploded in fantastic informational
forms all over the blue marble,
and tilted the atmosphere
into insulation, trapping a tiny fraction more
of the vast solar insolation than it needed.
The burning threatens to move the point of
thermal equilibrium of the
blue marble out of its improbable
and incredibly delicate
water-liquefying balance.
THE OLD NETWORK is breaking.
THE FUTURE NETWORK is not yet here.
How can we move on?
56 Junctures 13, December 2010
We can look back at
The Telecoms Revolution™ 
of the closing decades 
of the twentieth century,
the most recent  global infrastructural change,
and see the shift from
centralised distribution 
to distributed production;
from the PLAIN OLD TELEPHONE SERVICE
to the Internet.
The shift was enabled by the 
development of
new technologies;
first the digital switch,
second the fibre-optic cable,
third the personal computer,
and fourth the Internet protocol stack,
which made every information consumer a producer;
which made every node on the network equivalent;
protocols which allowed for 
end-to-end communication of peers;
that created a topology
that could support
the information web,
the social network,
the collaborative text,
and the instant message.
We can look back to the 
PLAIN OLD TELEPHONE SERVICE
and see it transformed,
from state-owned monopoly
to privatised oligopoly,
to lightly regulated, unbundled, structurally separated, semi-
competitive market place, 
and the scale-free mesh of
The Net.
We can see parallels with today’s
PLAIN OLD ENERGY SERVICE
of vertically integrated suppliers,
centralised provider networks
and limited information exchange.
Looking back at the broadband roll-out
we can see ADSL built on 
a legacy of installed copper, 
a hack that eked another few years’ revenue
57Junctures 13, December 2010
from a failing infrastructure.
We can see that infrastructures change incrementally,
that they evolve
from one form to another, 
until THE OLD NETWORK is subsumed or retired.
We can guess that our
future energy network
will develop from the existing grid, 
will combine with the 
current information network
to become more fine-grained.
We can see signs of the shift to THE FUTURE NETWORK
at the points where information and energy meet, 
in the smart grid,
in the emergence of protocols like 
IEEE 1901, G.hn and Homeplug Command and Control.
We can see fine-grained sub-metering 
information about energy 
transmitted around the home,
to spill data to the meter
and upstream to electricity providers;
information about consumption, production and storage
shared between devices,
between households,
between peers.
Digital information about physical information.
We can see political consequences
as energy politics shifts into information politics,
when the Dutch parliament debates
privacy issues in energy sub-metering.
We see the same technologies that enable
demand-side management also allow
real-time marketing of locally
generated electricity.
We can see the per-kilo price of 
polysilicon fall through the floor 
from five hundred dollars at its 2008 peak
to fifty bucks in its post-crash 2010 trough,
until the cost per photovoltaic peak watt
is just four dollars landed in New Zealand.
We can see the rapid development 
of new photovoltaic forms;
nano-technicians edging towards efficiencies of 30%
and labs dropping price-performance ratios with 
58 Junctures 13, December 2010
iron pyrite solutions, 
novel optical dyes,
cadmium telluride,
or the thin-film printing presses 
that crashed the cost of computing 
year on year for decades since.
We can calculate the average insolation on the roof of
a one-hundred-and-twenty-metre squared 
New Zealand suburban house
as 174,000 KWH per year 
and that with a typical annual load of 
8000 KWH for a house and 
10000 KWH for an electric vehicle, 
the energy needs of a typical family could be met 
with a roof of 11% efficient photovoltaic panels.
We can project that long-run PV roofing tin at $150 a sheet 
would generate surplus cash in just 5 years.
We can see car-makers beginning to ship
the first plug-in electric vehicles,
note their fine capabilities as night-time
battery banks and remember that New Zealand
is unique in being able to meet 60% of its
base-load electricity needs through
existing hydro-electric capacity.
We can model THE FUTURE NETWORK of energy peers.
Now as oil peaks into warfare
and black deepwater horizons
we seek THE FUTURE NETWORK,
and see our energy pathways
and information pathways
as ethical pathways.
We see our forest structures
as valuable information
instead of valueless entropic ash and tailings.
We will recognise that 
information comes from the sun
and that the fusion process
is best kept at arm’s length
of an astronomical unit or so
instead of being unleashed into the air
from the Castle Bravo H bomb 
on Bikini Atoll in 1954,
and we will recognise
that carbon is in the ground
for the good reason of 
planetary atmospheric balance 
59Junctures 13, December 2010
and we will remember
that technologies exist
that allow us 
to harvest energy
indirectly through turbines
from the wind and the rain
or directly from sunlight.
In THE OLD the problem,
In THE FUTURE the solution,
In THE PRESENT the choice to make
THE FUTURE NETWORK PRESENT
* The Future Network was first performed as part of Now Futures, Dialogues with Tomorrow, Downstage Theatre, Wellington, 
New Zealand, 3 June 2010, http://www.nowfuture.org.nz/dialogues/future-networks.
The canonical URL for the piece is http://greenbench.org/project/thefuturenetwork 
NASA, “Sun and earth images from NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, EIT 304.” http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.
gov/data/realtime-images.html [accessed 1 Nov 2010]. Reproduced under the general permission of NASA.
All other images author’s own.
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