Urban Studies

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“The C5 Had An Almost Instant Image Problem”

December 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

AI can kill all of you humans, and Sir Clive Sinclair will not give a fig. But until that fine day when we’re eminated by machines even more unfeeling than ourselves, let us meditate for a moment on a product the entrepreneur thrust upon the world in 1985, the Sinclair C5. It was a battery-powered EV tricycle, and it was a gigantic flop, the Edsel of pedal transport, a DeLorean dreamed up without the aid of cocaine courage. Was the vehicle wrong or just the time? From Jack Stewart’s BBC piece “Was the Sinclair C5 30 Years Too Early?“:

The C5 had an almost instant image problem. The press and public saw the C5 less as a new mode of transport, and more as a toy – and an expensive one at that. Yours for only £399 (£1,120), and if you wanted to go uphill, you would have to pedal. But the C5 went from drawing board to prototype without any market research, according to Andrew Marks, who wrote an investigation into the vehicle’s failure for the European Journal of Marketing four years after the C5 was released. Sir Clive believed he could create a market where none had existed before, using changes in legislation that allowed electric pedal vehicles and improving battery technology. But, as Marks argues, the C5 programme seemed to be dictated by the company’s conviction, rather than by public demand.

The C5 was also immediately criticised for its safety, or lack thereof. ‘I don’t like the ideas of driving it in traffic, frankly,’ says [BBC reporter Dick] Oliver in [his] report. The driving position was extremely low, making it effectively invisible to other vehicles. It could also be operated by anyone over 14 years old in the UK, without a license or helmet. Famed racing driver Stirling Moss expressed his concerns too.

‘If people get into it and in any way think that they’re in a car because they’re sitting down, then they’re in trouble.’

Media reviews were also harsh about the range – the battery did not live up to expectations – and there was too much exposure to the elements. In retrospect a January launch in London may not have been the most enticing demonstration to carry out. The poor reception meant orders were minimal, and production ceased around eight months later.•

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“Imagine a vehicle that can drive you five miles for a penny”:

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“If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them”

December 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I put up a post last month about taxi commissions needing to compete with Uber at its own game, creating an app that will allow medallion owners and their drivers to offer customers the best of ridesharing (smartphone hailing, digital payments) without the negative (surge pricing, unethical business and labor practices), and it seems that NYC and Chicago were already thinking along those lines. Now it will come down to properly executing the system. From Mike Isaac at the New York Times:

“If you can’t beat them, join them.

Regulators in Chicago have approved a plan to create one or more applications that would allow users to hail taxis from any operators in the city, using a smartphone. In New York, a City Council member proposed a similar app on Monday that would let residents ‘e-hail’ any of the 20,000 cabs that circulate in the city on a daily basis.

It is a new tack for officials in the two cities, a reaction to the surging use of hail-a-ride apps like Uber and Lyft.

Regulators in New York have not yet voted on the bill on the e-hail app, which was first proposed by Benjamin Kallos, a councilman who represents the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island.

In Chicago, the plan to create such apps is part of the so-called Taxi Driver Fairness Reforms package, a plan backed by a taxi union and City Council members that would update regulations around taxi cab lease rates and violations like traffic tickets, among others. The city is expected to solicit third-party application developers to build the official app or set of apps. The City Council gave no further details on its selection criteria, nor did it give information on how the initiative would be financed.

‘These reforms represent what is necessary to further modernize this growing industry,’ Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, said in a statement.”

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A Brief Note From 1933 About A Salesman

December 12, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the November 14, 1933 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Miss Patricia Royer of Cleveland, Ohio, who for nine years made her living fighting men of her own weight in the boxing ring, has entered Fenn College to study salesmanship. She was born in England.”

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“Zara Built 14 Automated Factories In Its Home Country Spain, Where Robots Work 24/7”

December 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Outsourcing has meant sending work beyond borders, but in the next wave the word will mean sending work beyond humanity. It’s happening already, of course, and the fashion retailer Zara is just one example. From Amit Bagaria at India Times:

“At the other end of the spectrum is Zara, which has built its strategy around consumer trends, embracing the fast-changing tastes of its customers. Zara has developed a highly responsive supply chain that enables delivery of new fashions as soon as a trend emerges.

Zara comes up with 36,000 new designs every year, and it delivers new products as many as 2-6 times each week to its 1900+ stores around the world.  Store orders are delivered in 24-48 hours. It takes the company only 10-15 days to go from the design stage to the sales floor. How is Zara able to do this? By being fast and flexible.

Rather than subcontracting manufacturing to China, India or Bangladesh, Zara built 14 automated factories in its home country Spain, where robots work 24/7 cutting and dyeing fabrics and creating semi-finished products, which are then finished to suits, shirts, dresses and the like by about 350 finishing shops in Northwestern Spain and Portugal. 

Imagine the foresight robots don’t (yet) form a labour union and also don’t take the weekend off. Some American apparel companies are now partly following the Zara model, getting their longer-lead-time goods manufactured (semi-finished) in Asia and doing the finishing work in the US.”

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“Employers Have Had More And More Job Openings, But Have Been Sorely Reluctant To Accept That It’s Not 2009 Anymore”

December 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Neil Irwin of the “Upshot” blog at the New York Times suggests that American wage stagnation and the lag in hiring are being driven not by market conditions but by a mentality. An excerpt: 

“So any employer with a job opening should have no problem hiring. If anything, the ratio of openings to hiring should be lower than it was in the mid-2000s, not higher.

Here’s a theory to try to make sense of the disconnect: During the recession, employers got spoiled. When unemployment was near 10 percent, talented workers were lined up outside their door. The workers they did have were terrified of losing their jobs. If you put out word that you had an opening, you could fill the job almost instantly. That’s why the ratio of job openings to hires fell so low in 2009.

As the economy has gotten better the last five years, employers have had more and more job openings, but have been sorely reluctant to accept that it’s not 2009 anymore in terms of what workers they can hire and at what wage.

Yes, unemployment is still elevated, but workers aren’t in nearly as desperate a position as they were then. So to get the kind of talented people they want, employers are going to have to pay more (or offer better benefits or working conditions) than they would have not that long ago.”

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“Built Into This ‘Futurism’ Is The Victorian Discovery That Societies And Their Technologies Evolve Together”

December 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Long before Silicon Valley, Victorians gave the future a name, recognizing electricity and, more broadly, technology, as transformative, disruptive and decentralizing. We’re still borrowing from their lexicon and ideas, though we need to be writing the next tomorrow’s narratives today. From “Future Perfect,” Iwan Rhys Morus’ excellent Aeon essay:

“For the Victorians, the future, as terra incognita, was ripe for exploration (and colonisation). For someone like me – who grew up reading the science fiction of Robert Heinlein and watching Star Trek – this makes looking at how the Victorians imagined us today just as interesting as looking at the way our imagined futures work now. Just as they invented the future, the Victorians also invented the way we continue to talk about the future. Their prophets created stories about the world to come that blended technoscientific fact with fiction. When we listen to Elon Musk describing his hyperloop high-speed transportation system, or his plans to colonise Mars, we’re listening to a view of the future put together according to a Victorian rulebook. Built into this ‘futurism’ is the Victorian discovery that societies and their technologies evolve together: from this perspective, technology just is social progress.

The assumption was plainly shared by everyone around the table when, in November 1889, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, stood up at the Institution of Electrical Engineers’ annual dinner to deliver a speech. He set out a blueprint for an electrical future that pictured technological and social transformation hand in hand. He reminded his fellow banqueteers how the telegraph had already changed the world by working on ‘the moral and intellectual nature and action of mankind’. By making global communication immediate, the telegraph had made everyone part of the global power game. It had ‘assembled all mankind upon one great plane, where they can see everything that is done, and hear everything that is said, and judge of every policy that is pursued at the very moment those events take place’. Styling the telegraph as the great leveller was quite common among the Victorians, though it’s particularly interesting to see it echoed by a Tory prime minister.

Salisbury’s electrical future went further than that, though. He argued that the spread of electrical power systems would profoundly transform the way people lived and worked, just as massive urbanisation was the result of steam technology.”

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Old Print Article: “Mark Twain Dies Of Broken Heart,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1910)

December 11, 2014 in Books, Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Mark Twain, America’s second greatest comic ever in my estimation (after George Carlin), died of a heart attack 104 years ago. He lived a life writ large, won fame and lost fortunes, and, most importantly, reminded us what we could be if we chose to live as one, traveling as he did from Confederate sympathizer to a place of enlightenment. I think of Twain what I thought of Pete Seeger and Odetta when they died: You can’t really replace such people because they have the history and promise of the nation coursing through their veins. He was eulogized in the April 22. 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle; the opening sections excerpted below follow him from birth to his emergence as a “stand-up” and his shift to author of books.

“Instead Of Packing Him Off To Jail, They Send Him In For Brain Surgery”

December 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The future usually arrives wearing the clothes of the past, but occasionally we truly and seriously experience the shock of the new. On that topic: The 1965 Life magazine piece “Will Man Direct His Own Evolution?” is a fun but extremely overwrought essay by Albert Rosenfeld about the nature of identity in a time when humans would be made by design, comprised of temporary parts. Like a lot of things written in the ’60s about science and society, it’s informed by an undercurrent of anxiety about the changes beginning to affect the nuclear family. An excerpt:

Even you and I–in 1965, already here and beyond the reach of potential modification–could live to face curious and unfamiliar problems in identity as a result of man’s increasing ability to control his own mortality after birth. As organ transplants and artificial body parts become even more available it is not totally absurd to envision any one of us walking around one day with, say, a plastic cornea, a few metal bones and Dacron arteries, with donated glands, kidney and liver from some other person, from an animal, from an organ bank, or even an assembly line, with an artificial heart, and computerized electronic devices to substitute for muscular, neural or metabolic functions that may have gone wrong. It has been suggested–though it will almost certainly not happen in our lifetime–that brains, too, might be replaceable, either by a brain transplanted from someone else, by a new one grown in tissue culture, or an electronic or mechanical one of some sort. ‘What,’ asks Dr. Lederberg, “is the moral, legal or psychiatric identity of an artificial chimera?”

Dr. Seymour Kety, an outstanding psychiatric authority now with the National Institute of Health, points out that fairly radical personality changes already have been wrought by existing techniques like brainwashing, electroshock therapy and prefrontal lobotomy, without raising serious questions of identity. But would it be the same if alien parts and substances were substituted for the person’s own, resulting in a new biochemistry and a new personality with new tastes, new talents, new political views–-perhaps even a different memory of different experiences? Might such a man’s wife decide she no longer recognized him as her husband and that he was, in fact, not? Or might he decide that his old home, job and family situation were not to his liking and feel free to chuck the whole setup that have been quite congenial to the old person?

Not that acute problems of identity need await the day when wholesale replacement of vital organs is a reality. Very small changes in the brain could result in astounding metamorphoses. Scientists who specialize in the electrical probing of the human brain have, in the past few years, been exploring a small segment of the brain’s limbic system called the amygdala–and discovering that it is the seat of many of our basic passions and drives, including the drives that lead to uncontrollable sexual extremes such as satyriasis and nymphomania. 

Suppose, at a time that may be surprisingly near at hand, the police were to trap Mr. X, a vicious rapist whose crimes had terrorized the women of a neighborhood for months. Instead of packing him off to jail, they send him in for brain surgery. The surgeon delicately readjusts the distorted amygdala, and the patient turns into a gentle soul with a sweet, loving disposition. He is clearly a stranger to the man who was wheeled into the operating room. Is he the same man, really? Is he responsible for the crimes that he–or that other person–committed? Can he be punished? Should he go free?

As time goes on, it may be necessary to declare, without the occurrence of death, that Mr. X has ceased to exist and that Mr. Y has begun to be. This would be a metaphorical kind of death and rebirth, but quite real psychologically–and thus, perhaps, legally.•

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 10, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Secret Addiction — Beer & Benzos

Every night drink several beers or shots and during the day chew benzo type medications- clonozepam & alphazolam (generics of Klonopin & Xanax)… I lose count how much I am taking or drinking.. also on several anti depressants — Lexapro, Wellbrutin & gabapentin… my credit card debt is frighteningly high, maybe went into manic state and spent like that but no longer have $6,000 a month to spend on just necessities.. I am in my late 30’s and nothing to show for it… No one really knows about this twin tolerance or addiction I have either.

“Getting Music For Free Meant Taping A Penny To A Paper Card And Mailing It Off For 12 Free Records”

December 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Like much of the pre-Internet recording-industry infrastructure, the Columbia House Music Club, an erstwhile popular method of bulk-purchasing songs through snail mail, no longer exists, having departed this world before iTunes’ unfeeling gaze, as blank and pitiless as the sun. Your penny or paper dollar will no longer secure you a dozen records or tapes, nor do you have to experience the buyer’s remorse of one who reflexively purchases media without heeding the fine print which reveals that the relationship, as the Carpenters would say, had only just begun.

Of course, music pilfering didn’t start in our digital times with Napster, and Columbia was a prime target for those who loved systems capable of gaming. Via the excellent Longreads, here’s the opening of “The Rise and Fall of the Columbia House Record Club — and How We Learned to Steal Music,” a 2011 Phoenix article by Daniel Brockman and Jason W. Smith:

On June 29, 2011, the last remnant of what was once Columbia House — the mightiest mail-order record club company that ever existed — quietly shuttered for good. Other defunct facets of the 20th-century music business have been properly eulogized, but it seems that nary a tear was shed for the record club. Perhaps no one noticed its demise. After all, by the end, Columbia House was no longer Columbia House; it had folded into its main competitor and become an online-only entity years before.

A more likely explanation, though, is that a new generation of music fans who had never known a world without the Internet couldn’t grasp the marvel that was the record club in its heyday. From roughly 1955 until 2000, getting music for free meant taping a penny to a paper card and mailing it off for 12 free records — along with membership and the promise of future purchasing.

The allure of the record club was simple: you put almost nothing down, signed a simple piece of paper, picked out some records, and voila! — a stack of vinyl arrived at your doorstep. By 1963, Columbia House was the flagship of the record-club armada, with 24 million records shipped. By 1994, they had shipped more than a billion records, accounted for 15 percent of all CD sales, and had become a $500-million-a-year behemoth that employed thousands at its Terre Haute, Indiana, manufacturing and shipping facility.

Of course, most of the record clubs’ two million customers failed to read the fine print, obligating them to purchase a certain number of monthly selections at exorbitant prices and even more exorbitant shipping costs. At the same time, consumers plotted to sign up multiple accounts under assumed names, in order to keep getting those 12-for-a-penny deals as often as possible. Record clubs may have introduced several generations of America’s youth to the concept of collection agencies — and the concept of stealing music, decades before the advent of the Internet.•

 

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“In The Private Motorport, The Family Car Is Automatically Washed, Dried And Refueled”

December 10, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In 1958, Disney played large-scale urban planner, imagining the world as interconnected mototopia. Cantilevered skyways and transcontinental motorways and highway escalators, anyone? Nothing so fantastical was necessary, but we should have retrofitted highways and roads to be smarter, cleaner and safer long before driverless cars were even in the conversation, but we never had the ingenuity or political will to do so.

“TNR Might Have Been Helped By Having More—Or Merely Any—Black People On Its Staff”

December 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

The reason why white people, no matter how noble, can’t speak for people of other races is that human experiences vary based on color, class, gender and other categorizations. It’s just a fact. So while all manner of well-heeled New York and Beltway journalists (almost all white) decried what’s happened recently at the New Republic–and there’s certainly been something important lost in the tumult–Ta-Nehesi Coates of the Atlantic saw things somewhat differently. He recognized a publication staffed almost exclusively by caucasians which has been horribly racist toward African-Americans, pointing fingers at them and blaming them, especially during the often-odious Marty Peretz reign, marred as it was by bigotry and warmongering. And while many scoffed that the venerable periodical might now become Buzzfeed or Gawker, Coates points out that such online publications are more enlightened about race than TNR has been. An excerpt:

“TNR made a habit of ‘reflecting briefly’ on matters that were life and death to black people but were mostly abstract thought experiments to the magazine’s editors. Before, during, and after Sullivan’s tenure, the magazine seemed to believe that the kind of racism that mattered most was best evidenced in the evils of Afrocentrism, the excesses of multiculturalism, and the machinations of Jesse Jackson. It’s true that TNR’s staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine’s coverage of America’s ancient dilemma.

What else to make of the article that made Stephen Glass’s career possible, ‘Taxi Cabs and the Meaning of Work’? The piece asserted that black people in D.C. were distinctly lacking in the work ethic best evidenced by immigrant cab drivers. A surrealist comedy, Glass’s piece revels in the alleged exploits of a mythical Asian-American avenger—Kae Bang—who wreaks havoc on black criminals who’d rather rob taxi drivers than work. The article concludes with Glass, in the cab, while its driver is robbed by a black man. It was all lies.

What else to make of TNR sending Ruth Shalit to evaluate affirmative action atThe Washington Post in 1995? ‘She cast Post writer Kevin Merida as some kind of poster boy for affirmative action when in fact he had risen in the business for reasons far more legitimate than her own,’ David Carr wrote in 1999. Shalit’s piece wasn’t all lies. But it wasn’t all true either. Shortly after the article was published, she was revealed to be a serial plagiarist.

TNR might have been helped by having more—or merely any—black people on its staff.”

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A Brief Note From 1925 About A Broken Heart

December 10, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 8, 1925 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Mrs. Mary Hannigan of 83 Division Ave. today mourned the death of her daughter, Julia, the little girl who wanted to be a boy. And she is filled with bitterness because, she said, her daughter died of a broken heart, not the pneumonia listed on the death certificate at St. Catherine’s Hospital.

Too much notoriety killed the little girl, the mother says. The notoriety was gained by what the mother describes as an ‘innocent prank.’ Julia, who was buried on Saturday, decided last October that she wanted to be a boy. She disappeared from her home. A week later she was found. She had cut her hair, donned boy’s clothing and earned her living caddying.

But the little girl brooded over what she thought was the disgrace she had brought on her family. Her resistance was weakened. She caught a cold a short time ago which developed into pneumonia.”

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“I Predict Neither Extreme Will Be True”

December 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

That last 5% of perfecting autonomous vehicles may be more difficult than the first 95%, and driverless options will likely continue to be introduced incrementally rather than all at once, but if such a system is 100% realized, there will be all manner of ramifications. In a post on his blog, Google driverless sector consultant Brad Templeton looks at the possible outcomes in such a brave new world. An excerpt:

“When I talk about robocars, I often get quite opposite reactions:

  • Americans, in particular, will never give up car ownership! You can pry the bent steering wheel from my cold, dead hands.
  • I can’t see why anybody would own a car if there were fast robotaxi service!
  • Surely human drivers will be banned from the roads before too long.

I predict neither extreme will be true. I predict the market will offer all options to the public, and several options will be very popular. I am not even sure which will be the most popular.

  1. Many people will stick to buying and driving classic, manually driven cars. The newer versions of these cars will have fancy ADAS systems that make them much harder to crash, and their accident levels will be lower.
  2. Many will buy a robocar for their near-exclusive use. It will park near where it drops them off and always be ready. It will keep their stuff in the trunk.
  3. People who live and work in an area with robotaxi service will give up car ownership, and hire for all their needs, using a wide variety of vehicles.
  4. Some people will purchase a robocar mostly for their use, but will hire it out when they know they are not likely to use it, allowing them to own a better car. They will make rarer use of robotaxi services to cover specialty trips or those times when they hired it out and ended up needing it. Their stuff will stay in a special locker in the car.”

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“One Amazon Executive Referred To The Workers As Like ‘Robots In Human Form'”

December 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

An impediment to automation may be “robotic” humans willing to work for wages so low that it’s not cost efficient to replace them. From a peek inside a sprawling distribution center by Matt King of the Atlantic:

“Susan and her co-workers appeared in good spirits as the manager introduced them by name and told us how long they had been working at the company. About half of the workers had a mental or physical disability, a result of the company’s ‘inclusion’ program which mirrored similar efforts at other major retailers. In a news segment about a DC in South Carolina, one disabled worker said hers was ‘the coolest job in the world.’

These programs are viewed as leading examples of combined corporate and social success, but that success may be short-sighted. Pickers and low-skill jobs of the sort represent a pain point for DCs and the e-commerce executives who are managing their evolution. The jobs appear simple (one Amazon executive referred to the workers as like ‘robots in human form’), but the tasks are difficult to automate at scale: ‘Because products vary so much in size and shape and because of the way they sit on shelves, robotic manipulators still can’t beat real arms and hands,’ explains Erico Guizo on Spectrum, the blog for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Unlike Susan and her co-workers, who were salaried and long-time employees of the company, a growing number of ‘pickers’ at DCs across the country are hired through staffing agencies and classified as ‘non-permanent’ or ‘temporary.’ This means no health care coverage or benefits, pay that’s usually barely above the minimum wage, and employment that can be voided at a whim when the workers are no longer needed.

This tenuous labor arrangement is partly the result of an honest fluctuation in the demand for these jobs: The biggest influx of DC workers occurs just before the holiday season, when online retailers conduct a majority of their annual business. But like retail jobs, the arrangement is also an acknowledgement of the underlying economic reality: The jobs are utterly low-skill, and there exists a large supply of unemployed Americans willing to do the work.

‘In a way, because low-wage jobs are so cheap, we haven’t seen as much automation as you could,’ Joseph Foudy, a professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, told me.”

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“A Text Message Can Be Sent To Appropriate Sales Staff To Ensure They Provide Personal Attention”

December 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We’ve been able to feed millions of images into social networks for “free,” armies of servers our seeming supplicants, but with facial-recognition software coming of age, the bill is nearly due. Will the surprising acceptance of surveillance online translate to the physical world? From Paul Rubens at the BBC:

“Imagine walking into a shop you’ve never been in before, to be greeted by name by a sales assistant you don’t know.

If you’re David Beckham or Lily Allen you may be used to this type of VIP treatment, but if your fame is more limited, or even non-existent then you might find this attention rather disconcerting.

Despite this, thanks to facial recognition software you don’t need to be a celebrity for sales assistants to know your name the moment you enter a shop.

That’s because companies such as Japanese technology giant NEC and FaceFirst, a California-based company, offer systems that use cameras placed at the entrances to shops to identify people as they come in.

If your face fits

When important existing or potential customers are spotted, a text message can be sent to appropriate sales staff to ensure they provide personal attention.

‘Someone could approach you and give you a cappuccino when you arrive, and then show you the things they think you will be interested in buying,’ says Joel Rosenkrantz, FaceFirst’s chief executive.

Before a system such as FaceFirst’s can be put into operation, it has to be loaded up with photos. So an obvious question to ask is where would they come from?”

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Old Print Article: “The Teleview,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1922)

December 8, 2014 in Film, Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It wasn’t a commercial triumph like the organ named for him, but Laurens Hammond’s “Teleview” projection system was a critical triumph in early 3D films. The set-up was installed in Manhattan’s Selwyn Theater in the early 1920s, and moviegoers were treated to screenings of The Man From Mars, a stereoscopic film made especially for Teleview, which was shown on a large screen and on individual viewing devices attached at each seat. It apparently looked pretty great. Alas, the equipment and installation was costly, and no other cinemas adopted the technology. An article follows about the apparatus from the December 17, 1922 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

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“Do You Agree Or Disagree With The Decision Not To Indict?”

December 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ll use the graph below, from a post by Andrew Sullivan at the Dish, as possible proof of my contention that although police body-cameras may not instantly bring about a higher degree of justice, the images will effect public consciousness, which may in turn be brought to bear on race and policing.

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“The Planet As A Whole Is Fast Becoming Suburban”

December 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The whole world is a city, or becoming one, we’ve been told repeatedly, but a new Economist report pushes back at the idea, arguing that China, India and Brazil, three ascendant powers, are embracing the sprawl. Measures must be taken to ensure that the environmental costs of non-density are minimized. The opening:

“IN THE West, suburbs could hardly be less fashionable. Singers and film-makers lampoon them as the haunts of bored teenagers and desperate housewives. Ferguson, Missouri, torched by its residents following the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager, epitomises the failure of many American suburbs. Mayors like boasting about their downtown trams or metrosexual loft dwellers not their suburbs.

But the planet as a whole is fast becoming suburban. In the emerging world almost every metropolis is growing in size faster than in population. Having bought their Gucci handbags and Volkswagens, the new Asian middle class is buying living space, resulting in colossal sprawl. Many of the new suburbs are high-rise, though still car-oriented; others are straight clones of American suburbs (take a look at Orange County, outside Beijing). What should governments do about it?

The space race

Until a decade or two ago, the centres of many Western cities were emptying while their edges were spreading. This was not for the reasons normally cited. Neither the car nor the motorway caused suburban sprawl, although they sped it up: cities were spreading before either came along. Nor was the flight to the suburbs caused by racism. Whites fled inner-city neighbourhoods that were becoming black, but they also fled ones that were not. Planning and zoning rules encouraged sprawl, as did tax breaks for home ownership—but cities spread regardless of these. The real cause was mass affluence. As people grew richer, they demanded more privacy and space. Only a few could afford that in city centres; the rest moved out.

The same process is now occurring in the developing world, but much more quickly.”

“The Maze-Like Series Of Angled And Tapered Frames Create An Infinite Number Of Leaning Spots”

December 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The standing desk, a truly bad idea, is not likely to be the furniture of tomorrow’s office. The Dutch firm, RAAAF, has come up with an alternative proposal that’s even battier. It’s ergonomics run amok. From “The Weirdest Proposal Yet for the ‘Office of the Future,'” a Wired piece by Margaret Rhodes:

“The designers are especially interested in supported standing, which standing desks don’t offer. Supported standing, like upright leaning, can engage the muscles—hopefully enough to prevent the drop in fat-burning enzymes that occurs during long periods of sitting—without tiring out the employee’s legs and lower back quite so much. The maze-like series of angled and tapered frames create an infinite number of leaning spots, for workers of any height. There are no fixed desks, so employees might find it natural to roam around and be active.

That feature is also one of the obvious impracticalities of ‘The End of Sitting.’ Without desks, how do staffers keep track of supplies, notes, or work documents? Without offices or conference rooms, how can people have meetings that don’t disrupt everyone else’s concentration? ‘The End of Sitting’ is both an art installation and an experiment, so it’s not actually concerned with answering those questions. Instead, Rietveld says this is “about showing a different way of thinking.'”

______________________________

“Sitting kills”:

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“Lowe’s Innovation Labs Ask Published Science-Fiction Writers To Produce Stories Predicting Futuristic Scenarios For The Store”

December 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Kit Buchan at Guardian, a little more about the Lowe’s robotic shopping assistant, OSHbot, one realized idea from the chain store’s Innovation Labs, and one which won’t be replacing human workers, not yet at least:

“According to [Innovation Lab’s Executive Director Kyle] Nel, OSHbot is the product of an extraordinary innovation scheme in which Lowe’s Innovation Labs ask published science-fiction writers to produce stories predicting futuristic scenarios for the store. Lowe’s then seek out what Nel calls ‘uncommon partners’ to help make the stories reality; in OSHbot’s case, the trendy Silicon Valley learning hub Singularity University and the startup robotics firm Fellow Robots.

OSHbot is a 4ft-something, pear-shaped character; limbless, with nothing but a vague green glow for a face, and a screen slanted in front like a starched pinny. ‘It’s basically a roving kiosk; we definitely didn’t want it to have arms or anything like that,’ says Nel. ‘But there’s still lots to figure out, for instance: what voice should the robot have? Should it be male, should it be female? There are so many things we can’t know until we try it.’

Nel is quick to clarify that OSHbot is not a replacement for human beings – rather it is there to ‘augment [the] store associates.'”

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A Note From 1925 About Delaware Whippings

December 8, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the November 10, 1925 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Making High Earners Feel Better In Just About Every Part Of Their Lives Will Be A Major Source Of Job Growth In The Future”

December 8, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a piece at the Los Angeles Review of Books about Tyler Cowen’s Average Is Over, a meditation on meritocracy run amok, Guy Patrick Cunningham compares tomorrow’s potentially technologically divided society, a sci-fi-ish dystopia few people would find acceptable, to life in the Middle Ages. An excerpt:

“Though Cowen doesn’t see it, the future he lays out seems rife with obvious, intrinsic structural inequalities that will make it very hard for anyone born outside the elite to actually show enough ‘merit’ to rise into it. And when he breezily asserts, ‘The more that the high earners pull in, the more people will compete to serve them, sometimes for high wages, and sometimes for low wages,’ and that, ‘making high earners feel better in just about every part of their lives will be a major source of job growth in the future […] Better about the world. Better about themselves. Better about what they have achieved,’ it becomes hard not to see this as a new form of aristocracy — one where people born with certain advantages are able to leverage them even further than today’s wealthy. Certainly, a smart, capable aristocracy, one theoretically open to talented outsiders, but an aristocracy all the same.

Cowen is careful to note that this system ‘is not necessarily a good and just way for an economy to run,’ but he certainly sees it as a given. Interestingly, he is also keen to emphasize the autonomy of the individual in the hyper-meritocracy. This isn’t itself surprising. But Cowen’s efforts to square the system he anticipates with humanistic ideas about individual agency fall flat. When he defends the possibility of building third-world style slums in the United States, he insists, ‘No one is being forced to live in these places […] I might prefer to live there if my income was low enough.’ Cowen essentially defines choice down to the absence of force. But this is meaningless — after all, no one chooses to live in a slum, unless the alternative is homelessness. Choice only matters when there are real alternatives to pick from. When Cowen compares a hyper-meritocratic society to the Middle Ages, he does so merely to point out that it is possible for a deeply unequal society to remain stable over a long period of time. But the comparison brings to mind another thought instead — that the values that underlie hyper-meritocracy are as un-humanist as those of the Medieval period.”

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“It’s As Good Or Bad As The People Harnessing It As A Technology”

December 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Virtual Reality software developer Tony Parisi discusses at Medium how the technology–like all technologies–can be a tool or a weapon, depending on who’s wielding it. An excerpt:

“Question:

What does the future of VR look like?

Tony Parisi:

Maybe we can help visualize climate change and figure out what to do about it. We can certainly teach better. And if we can teach better, then we can understand better. If we can simulate better, maybe we can understand other cultures, get a better sense of history, all those things are possible and going to be made better with VR if done well. Then, we can really help the world.

But it’s not going to solve everything; all of the problems we have as a planet or society. Not everything will be better in VR. I believe VR is like any of these other technological innovations. I believe it’s value neutral — it’s as good or bad as the people harnessing it as a technology, communications, and storytelling platform — and can ultimately be used for good or ill. I think we’re going to see abuses of it, surely. I think we’re going to see over-exuberance with what it can do. But that will all be tempered over time, and eventually the laws of the market and consumer attention will just shake it out and we will see VR wins in certain segments — for example, housing and real estate, retail, and travel all have phenomenal potential in VR.”

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“They Are Not Yet Innovative Enough To Send Us Many Fantastic New Products”

December 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a post for the “Upshot” section of the New York Times, economist Tyler Cowen suggests a variety of ways technology may begin to reverse the income inequality it has lately helped grow. Many of the ideas are modest and incremental, but there’s one giant one: The rising fortunes of emerging powers like China may eventually also help enrich Americans when such nations lose interest in making knockoff Apple products and create original companies as innovative as Apple. An excerpt:

“A final set of forces to reverse growing inequality stem from the emerging economies, most of all China. Perhaps we are living in a temporary intermediate period when America and many other developed nations bear a lot of the costs of Chinese economic development without yet getting many of the potential benefits. For instance, China and other emerging nations are already rich enough to bid up commodity prices and large enough to drive down the wages of a lot of American middle-class workers, especially in manufacturing. Yet while these emerging economies are keeping down the costs of manufactured goods for American consumers, they are not yet innovative enough to send us many fantastic new products, the way that the United States sends a stream of new products to British or French consumers, to their benefit. 

That state of affairs will probably end. Over the next few decades, we can expect China, India and other emerging nations to supply more innovations to the global economy, including to the United States. This shouldn’t be a cause for alarm. It will lead to many good things.

Since the emerging economies are relatively poor, many of these innovations may benefit relatively low-income Americans.”

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