Excerpts

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“I Think We Can Get To The Point Where We Can Actually Communicate Back And Forth In Basic Animal Languages”

June 5, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If I could communicate with monkeys, I might point out to them that throwing feces is rude. Understandable, but rude. Or I would at least encourage them to throw feces over there, because here is not such a great spot right now. Here is currently inconvenient for me. From Megan Garber’s Yahoo! interview with animal behaviorist Con Slobodchikoff, who believes we can build gadgets which allow us to talk to the animals:

“Con Slobodchikoff

I think we have the technology now to be able to develop the devices that are, say, the size of a cellphone, that would allow us to talk to our dogs and cats. So the dog says ‘bark!’ and the device analyzes it and says, ‘I want to eat chicken tonight.’ Or the cat can say ‘meow,’ and it can say, ‘You haven’t cleaned my litterbox recently.’

But if we’re going to get to that technology, it’s going to take some research. And it’s probably five to 10 years out. But I think we can get to the point where we can actually communicate back and forth in basic animal languages to dogs, cats, maybe farm animals — and, who knows, maybe lions and tigers.

Megan Garber:

It’s fascinating, thought-experiment-wise, to consider what that might mean for the whole relationship between humans and animals. Paradigms would be shifted, for sure.

Con Slobodchikoff:

 Yeah. It would be world-changing. Consider that, for example, 40 percent of all households in America have dogs, 33 percent have cats — at least one cat, at least one dog. And consider that something like 4 million dogs are euthanized every year because of behavioral problems. Well, most problems are because of the lack of communication between animal and human. The human can’t get across to the animal what the human expects, and the animal can’t get across to the human what it’s experiencing. And if we had a chance to talk back and forth, the dog could say, ‘You’re scaring me.’ And you could say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that I was scaring you. I’ll give you more space.’

What I’m hoping, actually, is that down the road, we will be forming partnerships with animals, rather than exploiting animals. A lot of people either exploit animals, or they’re afraid of animals, or they have nothing to do with animals because they don’t think that animals have anything to contribute to their lives. And once people get to the point where they can start talking to animals, I think they’ll realize that animals are living, breathing, thinking beings, and that they have a lot to contribute to people’s lives.”

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“So Far, No Scientist Has Studied Binge Watching Per Se”

June 5, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor,” observed Leonard Cohen once upon a time, but there was no video streaming back then nor such a complex understanding of the workings of compulsive behavior. Today’s serialized TV, regardless of what size screen you’re watching it on, isn’t interested in diverting you but on hooking you, on making you, not just the video, go viral. You are the receiver of the content, but you’re also the messenger. And while that’s always been true, it’s never been more true. It’s a science–it’s a narcotic. We’re not talking about CBS trying to get viewers to tune into the Mary Tyler Moore Show once a week at an appointed time. We’re talking about narratives that have to defeat time shifting, the long tail of zillions of other options and the game-changing effect of a decentralized media.

Of course, these creations are an inexact science and the idea of a “scheme” being used to push our buttons and make us consume in bulk can be overstated, but the seemingly endless access we have to content is something new and worth analyzing. I guess this is the most interesting question for me: If the programs are really good, does it mitigate somewhat attempts to program us? From an Andrew Romano article in Newsweek about the age of binge viewing:

“So far, no scientist has studied binge watching per se, or the Hyperserial generation of television programming that has inspired so much of it. But the groundbreaking work of a Princeton University psychologist named Uri Hasson may hint at why the current trend toward narrative precision may also be triggering an increase in viewer engagement.

Hasson, a bald, bespectacled professor with a thick Israeli accent, doesn’t binge watch any television shows himself. ‘That is for people without work the next morning—or children,’ he quips. But Hasson may understand better than anyone else why the rest of us can’t help ourselves. In 2008 he coined the term ‘neurocinematics’—the neurobiological study of how films interact with the brain—to describe his work. A study published that year in Projections (subtitle:The Journal for Movies and Mind) was particularly revelatory. Employing fMRI technology, Hasson and his neuroscience colleagues screened four film clips—from Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Bang! You’re Dead,’ Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and an unedited, single-camera shot of New York’s Washington Square Park—and then watched as viewers’ brains reacted. Their goal? To measure the degree to which different people would respond the same way to what they were seeing. 

The results varied widely, depending on which film was shown. The unstructured, ‘realistic’ video from Washington Square Park, for instance, elicited the same neurological reaction in only about 5 percent of viewers. Responses to Curb Your Enthusiasm were slightly more correlated, at roughly 18 percent; and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ranked even higher, 45 percent. But ultimately, Hitchcock was the runaway ‘favorite’: a full 65 percent of the study’s cerebral cortices lit up the same way in response to the clip from ‘Bang! You’re Dead.’

Hasson’s conclusion was fascinating: the more ‘controlling’ the director—the more structured the film—the more attentive the audience. ‘In real life, you’re watching in the park, a concert on Sunday morning,’ Hasson tells me. ‘But in a movie, a director is controlling where you are looking. Hitchcock is the master of this. He will control everything: what you think, what you expect, where you are looking, what you are feeling. And you can see this in the brain. For the director who is controlling nothing, the level of variability is very clear because each person is looking at something different. For Hitchcock, the opposite is true: viewers tend to be all tuned in together.’

Is it possible, then, that the recent trend toward more structured, page-turning narratives on television might be generating ever-higher levels of cerebral correlation—and viewer engagement—in living rooms across the country?

‘Absolutely,’ Hasson says.”

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“It’s like daylight already. How did that happen?”

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“I See It As An Important Element Of Culture And Itself A Culture”

June 4, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

I was recently gifted with a copy of the latest issue of the excellent Fashion Projects, which is edited by the beautiful (and pregnant) Francesca Granata. The presumed father of the child, Jay Ruttenberg, editor of the Lowbrow Reader Reader and a favorite of hoboes everywhere, is a contributor.

This issue focuses exclusively on fashion criticism and has interviews with Guy Trebay, Suzy Menkes, Judith Thurman and others. You can sample and purchase it here. An excerpt from Granata’s conversation with New Yorker writer Thurman:

“Fashion Projects: 

I was wondering how you came to your current post writing about fashion at the New Yorker?

Judith Thurman: 

It was sort of happenstance. I followed fashion, but not professionally. I had worked at The New Yorker before I left to write the biography of Colette. David Remnick, who had just taken up the editorship of the magazine in 1999 said, ‘Why don’t you come back and work for us? I know you can write about books and art, but what else can you do? Is there something else you really want to do?’ To which I replied ‘Actually I would love to write about fashion. I think I would always be an outsider; I am not going to write about it as an insider, like my great friend Holly Brubach a wonderful fashion critic who covered the collections. I said I don’t want to do that and you don’t want me to do it.’  He said, ‘You are right.’ So that’s how I started.

Fashion Projects:

So you started writing about fashion, somewhat recently, in the last decade or so. What drew you to the subject?

Judith Thurman:

I see it as an important element of culture and itself a culture. That really interests me. It is a form of expression, a kind of language dealing with identities. And the aesthetic of it also drew me to it. I love clothes and couture and its history is very interesting to me. For instance, I have always gone to museums and studied the clothing in the paintings. However, I don’t particularly like the fashion world and I try not to write about the business side of it.

Fashion Projects:

So you see yourself more as a cultural critic writing about fashion as opposed to a more traditional fashion critic covering the collections?

Judith Thurman:

Yes, although I have written about the collections. I used to go once a year to do one collection, whether it was menswear or couture or Paris or New York. I kind of stopped doing that. They were very hard pieces to write, since I wasn’t actually critiquing the clothes, I was trying to find some sort of zeitgeist that was coming out of the collections.”•

Jay Ruttenberg: Stole wardrobe from scarecrow.

Jay Ruttenberg: Dresses like scarecrow.

I find that insulting.

Edgar Allan Crow: “I resent that comparison.”

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“The Maternity Package – A Gift From The Government – Is Available To All Expectant Mothers”

June 4, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Many of the Americans who are most staunchly anti-abortion seem to lose focus on infants once the cord is cut. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Dubya without the likability, is currently waging war on the Affordable Health Care Act, legislation that could help a state that’s abysmal in providing medical insurance for children. He’s not alone, of course, which helps explain why such a wealthy nation has such an agonizingly high infant mortality rate. Finland, which has one of the lowest death rates for newborns, has a simple measure to keep hope alive: a box of baby supplies the state gives each expectant mother. The opening of “Why Finnish Babies Sleep in Cardboard Boxes,” by Helena Lee at BBC News:

“It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it’s designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they’re from, an equal start in life.

The maternity package – a gift from the government – is available to all expectant mothers.

It contains bodysuits, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products for the baby, as well as nappies, bedding and a small mattress.

With the mattress in the bottom, the box becomes a baby’s first bed. Many children, from all social backgrounds, have their first naps within the safety of the box’s four cardboard walls.

Mothers have a choice between taking the box, or a cash grant, currently set at 140 euros, but 95% opt for the box as it’s worth much more.

The tradition dates back to 1938.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“They Have Updated And Seamlessly Implemented George Orwell’s Prophecy”

June 3, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Julian Assange makes a raft of good points in his New York Times Op-Ed piece about the globalizing effect of the Googleplex and its arrogant brand of technocracy. But because he’s the kind of exasperating person who sees the world only in extremes, Assange goes too far in painting the company as unmitigated autocratic evil. If you think we’re going to become the United States of Google, let’s recall that Microsoft was not too long similarly feared, and even without government intervention, it would have collapsed beneath its own weight because that’s usually what corporate behemoths do. And Google is nowhere near the tool of American governmental policy that Bell Labs was. You remember Bell Labs, right? It used to be a thing. An excerpt from Assange’s article, which is inspired by the book, The New Digital Age:

“The writing is on the wall, but the authors cannot see it. They borrow from William Dobson the idea that the media, in an autocracy, ‘allows for an opposition press as long as regime opponents understand where the unspoken limits are.’ But these trends are beginning to emerge in the United States. No one doubts the chilling effects of the investigations into The Associated Press and Fox’s James Rosen. But there has been little analysis of Google’s role in complying with the Rosen subpoena. I have personal experience of these trends.

The Department of Justice admitted in March that it was in its third year of a continuing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks. Court testimony states that its targets include ‘the founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks.’ One alleged source, Bradley Manning, faces a 12-week trial beginning tomorrow, with 24 prosecution witnesses expected to testify in secret.

This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing. ‘What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,’ they tell us, ‘technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.’ Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. Zealots of the cult of consumer technology will find little to inspire them here, not that they ever seem to need it. But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy.“

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“Most Physicists Are Platonists”

June 3, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Physicists are as adorable as poodles, what with their Theory of Everything and their Multiverse and such. As some grow more desperate to tie everything together and prove they have the answers, you realize that not everything can be correct and some of it is poetry rather than science. From a new Aeon article on the topic by Margaret Wertheim:

“Most physicists are Platonists. They believe that the mathematical relationships they discover in the world about us represent some kind of transcendent truth existing independently from, and perhaps a priori to, the physical world. In this way of seeing, the universe came into being according to a mathematical plan, what the British physicist Paul Davies has called ‘a cosmic blueprint’. Discovering this ‘plan’ is a goal for many theoretical physicists and the schism in the foundation of their framework is thus intensely frustrating. It’s as if the cosmic architect has designed a fiendish puzzle in which two apparently incompatible parts must be fitted together. Both are necessary, for both theories make predictions that have been verified to a dozen or so decimal places, and it is on the basis of these theories that we have built such marvels as microchips, lasers, and GPS satellites.

Quite apart from the physical tensions that exist between them, relativity and quantum theory each pose philosophical problems. Are space and time fundamental qualities of the universe, as general relativity suggests, or are they byproducts of something even more basic, something that might arise from a quantum process? Looking at quantum mechanics, huge debates swirl around the simplest situations. Does the universe split into multiple copies of itself every time an electron changes orbit in an atom, or every time a photon of light passes through a slit? Some say yes, others say absolutely not.

Theoretical physicists can’t even agree on what the celebrated waves of quantum theory mean. What is doing the ‘waving’? Are the waves physically real, or are they just mathematical representations of probability distributions? Are the ‘particles’ guided by the ‘waves’? And, if so, how? The dilemma posed by wave-particle duality is the tip of an epistemological iceberg on which many ships have been broken and wrecked.”

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“Suddenly, Warner Is Being Mentioned Near The Top Of Every List Of Candidates Vying For The Nomination In 2008”

June 2, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Remember at last year’s Republican Convention when Texas Congressman Ted Cruz was all but christened as a future President by lazy pundits simply because he was in the GOP and had an Hispanic name? None of these well-paid shoutbots actually stopped to notice that Cruz was a paranoid wackjob un-electable in a national contest even in the sovereign country of Upper Nixonia. 

Mark Warner, former Virginia Governor, was once that guy for the other party. A Southern liberal technocrat made left-leaning politicos salivate before they became aware that shifting demographics were jumbling the electoral map. In 2006, the very talented political reporter Matt Bai wrote a cover story for the New York Times Magazine about Warner as the apparent anti-Hillary. You heard rumors by 2008 about why Warner ultimately passed on a campaign, but who knows why he didn’t run? We should all pause the next time someone is “nominated” because they fit into certain categories. Barack Obama, who most certainly did not fit into any of them, is mentioned almost as an afterthought in Bai’s piece. The opening of the article, which is now largely remembered for the altered colors of the eccentric cover art:

“If you harbor serious thoughts of running for the presidency, the first thing you do — long before you commission any polls or make any ads, years before you charter planes to take you back and forth between Iowa and New Hampshire — is to sit down with guys like Chris Korge. A real-estate developer in Coral Gables, outside Miami, Korge is one of the Democratic Party’s most proficient “bundlers.” That is, in the last two presidential elections, he bundled together more than $7 million in campaign checks for Al Gore and John Kerry from his friends and contacts.

For Korge, the 2008 presidential campaign began a few days after Kerry lost, when, he says, one prospective candidate — he won’t say who — called to enlist his help. Having raised money for both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, which earned him an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, Korge already knew he would support Hillary Clinton if she ran; he considers her the most impressive politician he has ever met, including her husband. But that didn’t stop her potential rivals — John Edwards, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, Wesley Clark — from dropping by, nor did it stop Korge, a guy who rightly prides himself on knowing just about everybody in Democratic politics, from taking the meetings. ‘In the last six months, I’ve pretty much seen or talked with all of them, or they’ve tried to meet with me,’ Korge told me during a conversation in late January.

A few weeks before we spoke, Korge had lunch at the Capital Grille in Miami with Mark Warner, who was then in his final weeks as Virginia’s governor. Though little known nationally, Warner has emerged in recent months as the bright new star in the constellation of would-be candidates, a source of curiosity among Democrats searching for a charismatic outsider to lead the party. Pundits credit Warner’s popularity in Republican-dominated Virginia — his 80 percent approval rating when he left office made him one of the most adored governors in the state’s history — with enabling his Democratic lieutenant governor, Tim Kaine, to win the election to succeed him last November. Suddenly, Warner is being mentioned near the top of every list of candidates vying for the nomination in 2008.”

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“This Is Such A Charming Concept!”

June 2, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Graphic User Interface and sleek product design turned cold computers into must-have accessories, and MIT roboticist and artist Alexander Reben realizes that aesthetics can do the same for ‘bots. And that’s true for better or worse: That thing that is taking my job and trying to murder me is as cute as a kitten–and it talks!

The creator of Boxie the Cute Robot describes his work thusly: “These robots use their cuteness to get people to answer questions that are then made into a documentary filmed by the robot’s internal camera.” Reben just started doing an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges and a video follow.

_____________________

Question:

This is such a charming concept! Do you feel that this kind of exterior design is key in human-robot relations, rather than trying to make robots that look just like us? Some inventors feel that we identify with things the more they are like us, yet you have been able to get people to confess their deepest secrets to a cardboard box with eyes and a smile. What would you say to those who believe the only way to produce human-robot relations is through something like this?

Alexander Reben:

Yes, the design of the exterior shell plays a huge part in the success of the project. Even designing the perfect “robot smile” was super important to make the robot appear non-judgmental. My design philosophy is that of an anamorphism of a living thing. These robots were designed to give the impression that they are a “baby robot”, not a person at all. While no such thing actually exists naturally, our brain interprets things such as a big head and wide set eyes as baby like. I think the robot you linked to is scary. I believe most applications for social robots will work best with robots who look like robots, cute robots included.

_____________________

Question:

What is the most interesting thing that came out of this project for you and the other people you worked on this with? Did you find any challenges with the Boxie/BlabDroid project that you didn’t expect when you started? What was the biggest challenge in making it a success?

Alexander Reben:

The most interesting thing is that everyone had a great experience with the robots. If you watch the videos you see some people get really deep with them, some even crying. However, nobody asked for the video to not be used (everyone knows the robots are filming them). It was almost the inverse, the more people told the robots, the better the interaction. Many described it as a “cathartic” experience.

_____________________

Question:

What are you planning to do with the little robots now? It seems like the pricing of the robots would be prohibitive to the average buyer, which might have been due to the quality of camera and connectivity of the robots. Are you looking at creating a version of these robots that are more expendable and cheaper for people to use?

Alexander Reben:

Right now, we plan to bring the robots around the world to meet new people and “learn more about the humans that inhabit earth.” They will be at the Doc/Fest festival in Sheffield England next week. We would love to get them other places like for a talk show segment or TV show.

Indeed, we are planning to bring the cost of the robots down to the price range of a premium Bluetooth accessory. Our plan is to allow the user to use their cellphone camera as the robot’s camera, thereby making them cheaper yet still getting high quality video. We also want to open source the protocols used to control the robot so people can hack them. We are still very optimistic because everyone who sees a BlabDroid in person wants one!

••••••••••

“If there was no money and no law, what would be the first thing you would do?”

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“There Are Simply More People Than Ever Before Who Qualify As Famous”

June 2, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Molly Knight, one of the excellent parts of that mixed blessing known as ESPN, has a new article in the New York Times Magazine about “Stalker Sarah,” a Los Angeles teen who’s found value of a kind in the detritus of modern celebrity. The girl chases down celebs at airports and restaurants not to snap pap photos to make a buck but to share cell-phone shots with those who are of the moment or on the cusp. Posting these images to the Internet affords her a different sort of wealth–notoriety by (fleeting) proximity. Although it’s ultimately sad as stories about fame almost always are, this piece is no Day of the Locust. It’s about a well-intentioned person with questionable priorities in an age of media anarchy, a time when focus is less important than click. An excerpt:

“In L.A., stalking celebrities may not be the most dignified job in the world, but it can pay the bills. A nonexclusive photograph of a celebrity can earn a few hundred dollars. The most prolific paparazzi can sell five or six sets of pictures a day and earn about $10,000 a month, but many operate under the premise that they are one groping photo away from a major payoff. A photo’s main value, after all, depends largely on what the star is doing. ‘You could get a photo of Brad Pitt just standing there, and you wouldn’t sell it,’ says Henry Flores, who co-owns the agency Buzz Foto. ‘I have taken photos of Angelina and Brad holding hands, and I couldn’t even sell it.’ But Flores earned $30,000 for a photograph he took five years ago of Britney Spears being loaded into an ambulance. The photographs last summer that showed Kristen Stewart kissing Rupert Sanders, her married Snow White and the Huntsman director, may have sold for up to $250,000, Melanie Bromley, the former West Coast bureau chief of US Weekly, told The Los Angeles Times.

In pursuit of these career-defining moments, the most successful paparazzi spend years cultivating relationships with not only managers and publicists, but also restaurant workers and trainers. ‘You can’t be covered in tattoos and dressed like a gangster if you want to be successful at what we do,’ Flores says. Many star handlers reward these less-threatening photographers with choreographed exclusives, but the business is still littered with less-polished free agents who chase stars in their cars or photograph their children on school grounds. Ninety-five percent of paparazzi, it seems, are men, many of whom go by the sort of nicknames — like the Fingerbreaker and Cheesecake — that you would expect to hear on a minor-league hockey team. Mostly, though, they stand around waiting for something to happen.

Sarah is very much a part of their circle, trading texts and tips with them. The paparazzi have accepted her for strategic reasons. In the era of YouTube and reality TV, there are simply more people than ever before who qualify as famous, and their every move is seemingly reported in a never-ending proliferation of gossip sites and blogs. Perhaps only a teenager could possess the energy and technical aptitude to serve as the global tracking device for it all. Sarah is incredibly adept at recognizing even the most minor celebrities and has a much better sense than her older colleagues about which seem ready to break huge. Scooter Braun, the 31-year-old talent manager of Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, Psy and the Wanted, considers it part of his job to follow Sarah’s whereabouts on social-networking sites. It also helps that she’s nice to his clients. ‘The thing is, she’s not overbearing,’ he told me. ‘She respects people’s space. She’ll say, ‘Do you mind if I get a picture?’ And if you’re like, ‘Not right now, Sarah,’ she’s like, ‘No problem.’ And she’s just a very sweet, sweet person.’

Most celebrity photographers yearn to catch a star at their most defenseless, but Sarah tends to think of them as friends.”

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“Chinese Protesters Succeeded In Delaying The I.P.O. Of A Company That Specializes In Extracting Bile From Captive Bears”

May 31, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

China is speeding into the future–or at least catching up to the present–by using methods of industrialization which created great wealth in the West but have compromised our ecology. Evan Osnos of the New Yorker has an excellent interview on the topic with Craig Simons, a journalist who spent most of the aughts reporting from China on that nation’s unbridled growth. An excerpt:

“Evan Osnos: 

The Times reported this month that Chinese protesters succeeded in delaying the I.P.O. of a company that specializes in extracting bile from captive bears for the production of folk remedies. What kinds of campaigns have impact, and what kinds don’t?

Craig Simons: 

N.G.O.s have had a limited ability to influence the decisions of average Chinese consumers. A group of advertisements by WildAid (including one where Yao Ming swears off shark-fin soup) have been successful and are important. But their benefits are offset by millions of Chinese just now becoming rich enough to buy exotic ingredients and medicines. The campaigns may ultimately prove more important by putting pressure on Beijing. The international community, for example, has successfully lobbied against Beijing legalizing the sale of bones from farmed tigers, a move many scientists argue would doom the world’s remaining wild tigers. In short, a government ban is more efficient than trying to get 1.3 billion people to change deep-rooted beliefs and traditions, but both are key in the long term.

Evan Osnos: 

You went to the four corners of the world for this. What was the moment that lingers most?

Craig Simons:

Strangely enough, the most vivid moment came when I was researching in Washington, D.C. I came across a request by environmental groups that Arkansas ban the collection of wild turtles, many of which were being shipped to China, as food. Their driving argument was that if officials didn’t stop the hunt, several species would be wiped out. The petition contained a few surprising figures: licensed collectors removed more than half a million turtles from Arkansas between 2004 and 2006; more than two hundred and fifty thousand ‘wild caught adult turtles’ were exported to Asia from a single airport over a span of four years. But it was the proximity that struck me. I’d expected to link Chinese demand to tiger poaching in India, logging in Papua New Guinea, and (renewed) mining in Colorado. But I’d never thought that decisions by Chinese diners could threaten Arkansas’s terrapins.”

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“Passengers Need Not Worry About Feeling Discomfort While Traveling At Such High Speeds”

May 31, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve posted before about the Evacuated Tube Transport, which, like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, is another potential way for faster and more efficient travel. In case some of you weren’t reading back the site back then, here’s a new piece from Melissa Knowles at Yahoo! about ET3’s proposed transporter of cargo (and, eventually, people):

“The tubes would be set up like freeways to prevent crowding and traffic congestion problems. Plus, ET3 claims that passengers need not worry about feeling discomfort while traveling at such high speeds. The high velocity at which the tubes move is equal to 1G of force at top speed, which is similar to the force felt by someone traveling in a car on the freeway.

Daryl Oster, the founder and CEO of ET3, says that he got the idea for the tube transport system when he visited China back in the 1980s.

When and if the tubes make their debut in the next decade, they will initially be used to transport cargo, not people.”

 

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“Postmortem Animal Tissues Are Simpler To Build And Faster To Market”

May 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Essential to seriously reducing greenhouse gases is one of these things: a voluntary diminution of meat in our diets or a lab-based version replacing the actual one. I’m a vegetarian for health reasons as well as ethical and environmental ones, so I won’t eat it anyway. But will carnivores accept a faux version it it looks and tastes pretty much like the real thing? Will it be as palatable to the mind as it is to the mouth? My guess is that epicureans will have a tough time with it, though fast-food junkies who don’t want to stretch their wallets will be amenable. (It’s a very expensive process right now but will likely eventually be cheap.) The opening of an article about futuristic farming from Jennifer Wang at Entrepreneur.com:

“Here’s a crazy idea: Combine 3-D printing and tissue engineering to ‘print’ animal products and tackle some of the planet’s biggest problems. Animal farming, after all, accounts for about half of all human-caused greenhouse gases, taking place on one-third of the available, non-frozen land on Earth. All to feed people’s appetites for 300 million tons of meat a year.

Enter Gabor and Andras Forgacs, father-and-son founders of Modern Meadow, a company they started in 2011 that may very well be the model for the farm of the future.

Five years earlier they helped start Organovo, a firm that makes human tissues for pharmaceutical research and other medical applications, and was a commercial spinoff of Gabor’s pioneering work at the University of Missouri in ‘bioprinting,’ which he describes as ‘extending biological structures in three dimensions.’ Modern Meadow’s output is based in part on this work. On a basic level, the process involves using 3-D printing to deposit clumps of cells into patterns of tissue. The particles fuse post-printing–similar to cell development in embryos. Unlike Organovo’s final products, which must be kept alive, Modern Meadow’s postmortem animal tissues are simpler to build and faster to market.”

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“Transaction Fees Eat Up A Mere 3 Cents Per Donated Dollar”

May 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Facebook cofounder and leading Obama technologist Chris Hughes made the surprising decision to shift to old media when he purchased the New Republic. It hasn’t all been smooth. For his premiere issue, Hughes elbowed aside Steve Brill’s epic health-insurance piece, which became a sensation for Time, in order to run a pedestrian cover-story interview with the President. But there’s also been lots of great stuff during his brief tenure.

Hughes and other tech entrepreneurs are backing GiveDirectly, a system that removes the often expensive middleman from charitable giving. From Kerry A. Dolan in Forbes:

“Paul Niehaus, an assistant professor of economics at UC San Diego and a board member of GiveDirect, came up with the idea of transferring money to poor people’s cell phones back in 2008. He was working with the Indian government to limit corruption and saw how the government there transferred money to people’s phones. ‘I realized I could do that myself,’ Niehaus told me. He told the gathering in San Francisco that most of the money that’s donated to help poor people goes to international development organizations, not poor people directly.  GiveDirectly’s giving has had ‘big impacts on nutrition, education, land and livestock’ and ‘hasn’t been shown to increase how much people drink,’ Niehaus emphasized. ‘A typical poor person is poor not because he is irresponsible, but because he was born in Africa.’

GiveDirectly finds poor households – typically people who live in mud huts with thatched roofs – and uses a system called M-Pesa, run by Vodafone , to transfer money to their cell phones.  Transaction fees eat up a mere 3 cents per donated dollar. Niehaus says plenty of recipients use the money to upgrade their homes by adding a metal roof.”

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“The Hyperloop Would Be ‘A Cross Between A Concorde, A Rail Gun, And An Air Hockey Table'”

May 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s going to be an announcement of some sort in June regarding Elon Musk’s Hyperloop high-speed transportation system, my favorite thing which is not yet a thing. From the Verge:

“Following his announcement of Tesla’s dramatic Supercharger station expansion, CEO Elon Musk touched on another pet project: Hyperloop. The rapid transit system would connect downtown Los Angeles with San Francisco, 380 miles away. Musk told the crowd that more details for the project would be available on June 20th.

Musk denigrated California’s current high speed rail plans, pointing out that the bullet train currently under consideration will be both the slowest in the world and most expensive per mile — ‘not the superlatives you’re looking for.’ In contrast, the Hyperloop would be ‘a cross between a Concorde, a rail gun, and an air hockey table.’ Musk joked, ‘even if I’m wrong about the economic assumptions, it would be a really fun ride.'”

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“People Did Not Know The Question Existed”

May 30, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Andrei Linde, Stanford physicist by way of Russia, and his “chaotic expansion” theory of the universe, are featured in an early chapter of Jim Holt’s terrific 2012 book, Why Does the World Exist? In this clip, Linde relays how his central idea for explaining how it all came to be was rebuffed–somewhat–by Stephen Hawking in an unusual circumstance.

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“Some Are Calling It A ‘Bookless’ Library, But Paperless Is A More Accurate Description”

May 29, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I love reading, but libraries and bookstores (save one) depress me. They’re morgues and tombs that prematurely bury the living. The books aren’t dead–just the covers are. But the “new library” offers no books, just access. From Katie McDonough at Salon:

“Some are calling it a ‘bookless’ library, but paperless is a more accurate description of the all-digital public library branch set to open in Texas this fall.

The $1.5 million facility in Bexar County will not house a single printed book, but will offer 100 e-readers on loan, and 10,000 digital titles accessible to readers via their home computers and digital devices, with more being added regularly.

‘If you want to get an idea what it looks like, go into an Apple store,’ Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the man behind the digital overhaul, told San Antonio Express News when plans were first announced earlier this year.

Saying goodbye to the printed page may be tough for some to swallow, but remote access to digital files is key to bringing books to the low-income and unincorporated areas of Bexar County currently without library access, says ‘BiblioTech’ project coordinator Laura Cole.”

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“Check Out The Biospheres Amazon Has Proposed To Anchor Its New Seattle Headquarters”

May 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Biospheres have been built in the seemingly endless sands of deserts–and not necessarily successfully–but it speaks to the vast wealth and grand schemes of today’s Big Tech that Amazon is realizing such dreams in an urban center. From Marcus Wohlsen at Wired:

“In case you doubted that the 21st century as envisioned by past generations’ pulp futurists had arrived, check out the biospheres Amazon has proposed to anchor its new Seattle headquarters.

Architectural firm NBBJ unveiled the drawings this week to mixed reviews from a city design board, The Seattle Times reported. The three glass-and-steel bubbles would include five floors of work space and would be large enough to house ‘mature trees.’

The idea behind the domes seems to be to give Amazon employees a flexible, engaging place to gather, in keeping with the prevailing tech industry notion that creative spaces encourage creative thinking. Unlike Silicon Valley competitors Apple, Google and Facebook, however, which all have sprawling suburban campuses with plenty of room, Amazon’s planned headquarters will sit adjacent to downtown Seattle in the fast-growing South Lake Union area.”

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“Dorothy Stratten Was A Corporate Treasure”

May 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Posting an interview earlier with Peter Bogdanovich reminded me of “Death of a Playmate,” Teresa Carpenter’s searing, Pulitzer Prize-winning Village Voice article, which not only excoriated the estranged husband of Dorothy Stratten, who brutally murdered the Playboy centerfold and actress in 1980, but also pilloried Bogdanovich and Hugh Hefner for the objectification and commodification of the young woman. Of course, Carpenter, who later sold the rights to her article to Bob Fosse to serve as the basis of Star 80, could be accused of the latter herself. The piece’s opening:

It is shortly past four in the afternoon and Hugh Hefner glides wordlessly into the library of his Playboy Mansion West. He is wearing pajamas and looking somber in green silk. The incongruous spectacle of a sybarite in mourning. To date, his public profession of grief has been contained in a press release: “The death of Dorothy Stratten comes as a shock to us all. . . . As Playboy’s Playmate of the Year with a film and television career of increasing importance, her professional future was a bright one. But equally sad to us is the fact that her loss takes from us all a very special member of the Playboy family.”

That’s all. A dispassionate eulogy from which one might conclude that Miss Stratten died in her sleep of pneumonia. One, certainly, which masked the turmoil her death created within the Organization. During the morning hours after Stratten was found nude in a West Los Angeles apartment, her face blasted away by 12-gauge buckshot, editors scrambled to pull her photos from the upcoming October issue. It could not be done. The issues were already run. So they pulled her ethereal blond image from the cover of the 1981 Playmate Calendar and promptly scrapped a Christmas promotion featuring her posed in the buff with Hefner. Other playmates, of course, have expired violently. Wilhelmina Rietveld took a massive overdose of barbiturates in 1973. Claudia Jennings, known as “Queen of the B-Movies,” was crushed to death last fall in her Volkswagen convertible. Both caused grief and chagrin to the self-serious “family” of playmates whose aura does not admit the possibility of shaving nicks and bladder infections, let alone death.

But the loss of Dorothy Stratten sent Hefner and his family into seclusion, at least from the press. For one thing, Playboy has been earnestly trying to avoid any bad national publicity that might threaten its application for a casino license in Atlantic City. But beyond that, Dorothy Stratten was a corporate treasure. She was not just any playmate but the “Eighties’ first Playmate of the Year” who, as Playboy trumpeted in June, was on her way to becoming “one of the few emerging film goddesses of the new decade.”

She gave rise to extravagant comparisons with Marilyn Monroe, although unlike Monroe, she was no cripple. She was delighted with her success and wanted more of it. Far from being brutalized by Hollywood, she was coddled by it. . . . “Playboy has not really had a star,” says Stratten’s erstwhile agent David Wilder. “They thought she was going to be the biggest thing they ever had.”

No wonder Hefner grieves.

“The major reason that I’m . . . that we’re both sittin’ here,” says Hefner, “that I wanted to talk about it, is because there is still a great tendency . . . for this thing to fall into the classic cliche of ‘small-town girl comes to Playboy, comes to Hollywood, life in the fast lane, and that somehow was related to her death. And that is not what really happened. A very sick guy saw his meal ticket and his connection to power, whatever, etc. slipping away. And it was that that made him kill her.”

The “very sick guy” is Paul Snider, Dorothy Stratten’s husband, the man who became her mentor. He is the one who plucked her from a Dairy Queen in Vancouver, British Columbia, and pushed her into the path of Playboy during the Great Playmate Hunt in 1978. Later, as she moved out of his class, he became a millstone, and Stratten’s prickliest problem was not coping with celebrity but discarding a husband she had outgrown. When Paul Snider balked at being discarded, he became her nemesis. And on August 14 of this year he apparently took her life and his own with a 12-gauge shotgun.•

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Dorothy Stratten visits Johnny Carson in 1980, four months before her murder.

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“The Sewing Machine Was The Smartphone Of The Nineteenth Century”

May 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The defense of Big Tech’s dubious tax dodge over the past week by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google’s Eric Schmidt has been a maddening exercise in intellectual dishonesty. The premise of these two (and much of the tech world) is this: If you want us to pay our fair share than change your system so that we can’t exploit the loopholes. You know, don’t blame us for pursuing our self-interests; make it impossible for us to do so. Of course, what’s left unsaid is that Apple and Google and other behemoths have endless boatloads of cash to hire lobbyists who’ll make sure that any attempt at leveling the tax plane is as difficult as can be. That’s how the loopholes initially came into being.

The opening of “Future Shlock,” Evgeny Morozov’s powerful big-tech takedown in the New Republic, which draws parallels between the 19th-century advent of the sewing machine and today’s so-called world-flattening gadgets:

“The sewing machine was the smartphone of the nineteenth century. Just skim through the promotional materials of the leading sewing-machine manufacturers of that distant era and you will notice the many similarities with our own lofty, dizzy discourse. The catalog from Willcox & Gibbs, the Apple of its day, in 1864, includes glowing testimonials from a number of reverends thrilled by the civilizing powers of the new machine. One calls it a ‘Christian institution’; another celebrates its usefulness in his missionary efforts in Syria; a third, after praising it as an ‘honest machine,’ expresses his hope that ;every man and woman who owns one will take pattern from it, in principle and duty.’ The brochure from Singer in 1880—modestly titled ‘Genius Rewarded: or, the Story of the Sewing Machine’—takes such rhetoric even further, presenting the sewing machine as the ultimate platform for spreading American culture. The machine’s appeal is universal and its impact is revolutionary. Even its marketing is pure poetry:

On every sea are floating the Singer Machines; along every road pressed by the foot of civilized man this tireless ally of the world’s great sisterhood is going upon its errand of helpfulness. Its cheering tune is understood no less by the sturdy German matron than by the slender Japanese maiden; it sings as intelligibly to the flaxen-haired Russian peasant girl as to the dark-eyed Mexican Señorita. It needs no interpreter, whether it sings amidst the snows of Canada or upon the pampas of Paraguay; the Hindoo mother and the Chicago maiden are to-night making the self-same stitch; the untiring feet of Ireland’s fair-skinned Nora are driving the same treadle with the tiny understandings of China’s tawny daughter; and thus American machines, American brains, and American money are bringing the women of the whole world into one universal kinship and sisterhood.

‘American Machines, American Brains, and American Money’ would make a fine subtitle for The New Digital Age, the breathless new book by Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, and Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, an institutional oddity known as a think/do-tank. Schmidt and Cohen are full of the same aspirations—globalism, humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism—that informed the Singer brochure. Alas, they are not as keen on poetry. The book’s language is a weird mixture of the deadpan optimism of Soviet propaganda (‘More Innovation, More Opportunity’ is the subtitle of a typical sub-chapter) and the faux cosmopolitanism of The Economist (are you familiar with shanzhai, sakoku, or gacaca?).

There is a thesis of sorts in Schmidt and Cohen’s book. It is that, while the ‘end of history’ is still imminent, we need first to get fully interconnected, preferably with smartphones. ‘The best thing anyone can do to improve the quality of life around the world is to drive connectivity and technological opportunity.’ Digitization is like a nicer, friendlier version of privatization: as the authors remind us, ‘when given the access, the people will do the rest.’ ‘The rest,’ presumably, means becoming secular, Westernized, and democratically minded. And, of course, more entrepreneurial: learning how to disrupt, to innovate, to strategize. (If you ever wondered what the gospel of modernization theory sounds like translated into Siliconese, this book is for you.) Connectivity, it seems, can cure all of modernity’s problems. Fearing neither globalization nor digitization, Schmidt and Cohen enthuse over the coming days when you ‘might retain a lawyer from one continent and use a Realtor from another.’ Those worried about lost jobs and lower wages are simply in denial about ‘true’ progress and innovation. ‘Globalization’s critics will decry this erosion of local monopolies,’ they write, ‘but it should be embraced, because this is how our societies will move forward and continue to innovate.’ Free trade has finally found two eloquent defenders.

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“What is the opposite of a Genius Bar?”:

 

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“Imagine Our World Later In This Century, When Machines Have Gotten Better”

May 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Jaron Lanier’s recent Quartz piece which argues that when it comes to information, cheap is expensive and free costs most of all:

“Imagine our world later in this century, when machines have gotten better. Cars and trucks drive themselves, and there’s hardly ever an accident. Robots root through the earth for raw materials, and miners are never trapped. Robotic surgeons rarely make errors. Clothes are always brand new designs that day, and always fit perfectly, because your home fabricator makes them out of recycled clothes from the previous day. There is no laundry. I can’t tell you which of these technologies will start to work in this century for sure, and which will be derailed by glitches, but at least some of these things will come about.

Who will earn wealth? If robotic surgeons get really good, will tomorrow’s surgeons be in the same boat as today’s musicians? Will they live gig to gig, with a token few of them winning a YouTube hit or Kickstarter success while most still have to live with their parents?

This question has to be asked. Something seems terribly askew about how technology is benefitting the world lately. How could it be that so far the network age seems to be a time of endless austerity, jobless recoveries, loss of social mobility, and intense wealth concentration in markets that are anemic overall? How could it be that ever since the incredible efficiencies of digital networking have finally reached vast numbers of people that we aren’t seeing a broad benefit?

The medicine of our time is purported to be open information. The medicine comes in many bottles: open software, free online education, European pirate parties, Wikileaks, social media, and endless variations of the above. The principle of making information free seems, at first glance, to spread the power of information out of elite bubbles to benefit everyone.

Unfortunately, although no one realized it beforehand, the medicine turns out to be poison.”

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“All Future Histories Of Modern Language Will Be Written From A Position Of Explicit And Overwhelming Information”

May 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I prefer too much information to too little, so I’m strongly in favor of our decentralized, interconnected world, even though I think most of the tools misused, much of the text a bore. Our thumbs often fail us in the same ways our voices did. From “I Type, Therefore I Am,” Tom Chatfield’s new Aeon essay:

“As a medium, electronic screens possess infinite capacities and instant interconnections, turning words into a new kind of active agent in the world. The 21st century is a truly hypertextual arena (hyper from ancient Greek meaning ‘over, beyond, overmuch, above measure’). Digital words are interconnected by active links, as they never have and never could be on the physical page. They are, however, also above measure in their supply, their distribution, and in the stories that they tell.

Just look at the ways in which most of us, every day, use computers, mobile phones, websites, email and social networks. Vast volumes of mixed media surround us, from music to games and videos. Yet almost all of our online actions still begin and end with writing: text messages, status updates, typed search queries, comments and responses, screens packed with verbal exchanges and, underpinning it all, countless billions of words.

This sheer quantity is in itself something new. All future histories of modern language will be written from a position of explicit and overwhelming information — a story not of darkness and silence but of data, and of the verbal outpourings of billions of lives. Where once words were written by the literate few on behalf of the many, now every phone and computer user is an author of some kind. And — separated from human voices — the tasks to which typed language, or visual language, is being put are steadily multiplying.“

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“All Sports Drafts Are Scams, More Or Less”

May 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

There are many things wrong with Major League Baseball’s amateur draft–limits on signing bonuses, the inability to trade picks, etc. Perhaps most galling is that the largely politically conservative owners, who espouse the power of free markets, cling to their anti-trust exemption and curbs on competition in their sport because it suits their wallets. I have a fantasy that a large group of college kids who are top picks will band together and sue the game the way Curt Flood did on the major-league level in 1970. Of course, there are too many incentives keeping young players from doing such a thing. 

The opening of Tim Marchman’s new Wall Street Journal piece, “Why Even Have Baseball’s Draft?“:

“All sports drafts are scams, more or less. No computer engineer right out of Carnegie Mellon has to go straight to a job at Comcast for a predetermined salary. Electronic Arts representatives aren’t lurking the halls of Northwestern with charts and craniometers. The concept is absurd on its face, and just as absurd when applied to young athletes.

What makes Major League Baseball’s draft, which takes place in two weeks, especially ridiculous is that in addition to being clearly unjust, it’s also inefficient. Drafting is no exact science in basketball or football, but at least in those sports the top amateur talents are both readily identified and actually available. Eight of the top 10 finishers in this year’s NBA Most Valuable Player voting were top-five draft picks overall, for example, and Marc Gasol and Tony Parker, who weren’t, were both special cases.

Of the 28 players who placed in the top 10 in last year’s baseball MVP voting or top five in Cy Young voting, though, a little more than half were first-round picks. Eight were originally signed as amateur free agents, meaning they weren’t subject to the draft at all. The draft isn’t a lottery, but it’s closer than it should be given that its nominal purpose is to distribute the best talent to the worst teams.

One sign of this randomness is the way expected returns flatten out through the draft. This year, the Mets, who were lousy last year, have the 11th overall pick, while the Yankees, who were very good, have the 26th. If the draft worked as it’s supposed to, you’d expect that the Mets’ pick would be substantially more valuable, based on historical data.

That isn’t even close to being true, though.”

 

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“The Sequence Is Then Fed Into A Custom-Built Computer Program That Spits Out A 3D Model Of A Face”

May 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

This is fascinating and creepy and fascinating and creepy: An artist collects discarded objects that have residue of DNA (cigarettes, chewing gum, etc.) and sequences the genetic code so that she can print out a 3D face based on it. From Twisted Sifter:

“Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist who is interested in exploring art as research and public inquiry. Traversing media ranging from algorithms to DNA, her work seeks to question fundamental assumptions underpinning perceptions of human nature, technology and the environment.

In her fascinating series entitled Stranger Visions, Heather collects DNA samples from discarded objects found on the street such as hair, nails, cigarette butts and chewing gum.

She then takes the samples to a DIY biology lab where she extracts the DNA and sequences the results. The sequence is then fed into a custom-built computer program that spits out a 3D model of a face which she then prints. The process and ideas behind such a provocative exploration are fascinating.”

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“The Sheer Meanspiritedness Of The Obamacare Opponents Will Become Ever More Obvious”

May 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fears can divide and threats can hold people in place. But what if those boogeymen are cast aside even for a little while? What if the curtain is drawn back and the worst fears are never realized?

The biggest worry that his enemies have had about President Obama from the very beginning isn’t that he would fail but that he would succeed, that he could present a plausible alternative to the harmful reality most Americans have been facing since the start of the Reagan revolution. And we’ve stayed there thanks to the use of wedge issues and demonizing. But the President wanted to transform that. Time, technology and demography are on his side.

What if health-care reform makes our lives better while costing us less money? What if gay marriage isn’t harmful to the moral fabric of society but actually improves it? What if women having control over their lives makes for a healthier, more secure country? What if all the things that we’ve been told are un-American actually make for a stronger America? Once we know the truth, how will lies ever work again?

A brief explanation from Paul Krugman, if you missed it on this Memorial Day holiday, of the potential of Obamacare in action:

“Still, here’s what it seems is about to happen: millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all. And as contrasts emerge between the experience of states like California that are making the most of the new policy and that of states like Texas whose politicians are doing their best to undermine it, the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious.

So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.”

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“The Emergence Of Privately Funded Rocket Launches, Space Tourism And Space Exploration Hold The Potential For More Substantive Disputes”

May 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a perspective in the Economist on far-flung copyright laws, in the wake of astronaut Chris Hadfield’s Bowie cover in space:

“In this particular case the matter is straightforward because Commander Hadfield had obtained permission to record and distribute the song, and production and distribution was entirely terrestrial. Commander Hadfield and his son Evan spent several months hammering out details with Mr Bowie’s representatives, and with NASA, Russia’s space agency ROSCOSMOS and the CSA. The copyright issue may seem trivial, but the emergence of privately funded rocket launches, space tourism and space exploration hold the potential for more substantive disputes. If an astronaut were to travel to the Moon, an asteroid or Mars on a privately funded spacecraft, the situation would become knottier still, because the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967 applies to countries, not companies or private individuals. J.A.L. Sterling, a London-based expert on international copyright law, anticipated all this in a 2008 paper, ‘Space Copyright Law: the new dimension.‘ in which he lists dozens more potentially problematic scenarios that could arise, some seemingly risible at first. He asks what would have happened if, on a moon landing broadcast live by NASA across the world, two astronauts were overcome by emotion and burst into song—one covered by copyright. NASA might still be engaged in litigation 40 years later. More prosaically and immediately plausibly, Sterling considers space travellers who put copyrighted material from Earth on a server reachable from space, or engage in rights-violating ‘public performances’ for crewmates. If the first person to walk on Mars decides to launch into ‘A Whole New World.‘ the rights will need to have been cleared with Disney first.”

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