Stealing this title, sorry John Durham Peters

One of my favorite (yet scary) childhood films is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a movie that thanks to Disney Plus has recently re-entered my life.

The scene I would like to show I can’t find, but it’s when the harpooner Ned Land (played by Kirk Douglas) prepares a number of messages in a bottle giving the position of the Nautilus away. The ending of the movie is of course, the U.S. Navy showing up and blasting the submarine to bits. Of course, I could write a lot here about how the militaries of the world united against Nemo and his campaign to end the production of weapons by sinking ships that were transporting the materiel of war just so they could conduct more war, but that’s a different topic.

Instead, I think this idea of Ned Land tossing all these messages into bottles in the sea is a better vision of what I’m doing on the internet these days than the much more admirable and academic treatment of “speaking into the air” as special and magical as that act can be. Speaking into the sea doesn’t really cut it, and speaking into the air makes sense if there are some interlocutors out there that you are aware of and can see. No point shouting AHOY at the waves.

We’ll see if any of these Ned Land bottles reach anyone. Hopefully you are not going to be persuaded to come send my Nautilus to the bottom of the sea.