Excerpts

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“It Would Be Foolhardy To Ignore The One Man Who Is Building Human Qualities Into Robots”

January 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “The Machine-Tooled Happyland,” Ray Bradbury’s 1965 Holiday analysis of the robot-centric Disneyland:

“We live in an age of one billion robot devices that surround, bully, change and sometimes destroy us. The metal-and-plastic machines are all amoral. But by their design and function they lure us to be better or worse than we might otherwise be.

In such an age it would be foolhardy to ignore the one man who is building human qualities into robots—robots whose influence will be ricocheting off social and political institutions ten thousand afternoons from today.

Snobbery now could cripple our intellectual development. After I had heard too many people sneer at Disney and his audio-animatronic Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois exhibit at the New York World’s Fair, I went to the Disney robot factory in Glendale. I watched the finishing touches being put on a second computerized, electric- and air-pressure-driven humanoid that will “live” at Disneyland from this summer on. I saw this new effigy of Mr. Lincoln sit, stand, shift his arms, turn his wrists, twitch his fingers, put his hands behind his back, turn his head, look at me, blink and prepare to speak. In those few moments I was filled with an awe I have rarely felt in my life.

Giovanni Battista Bracelli's robot drawings, 1624.

Only a few hundred years ago all this would have been considered blasphemous, I thought. To create man is not man’s business, but God’s, it would have been said. Disney and every technician with him would have been bundled and burned at the stake in 1600.

And again, I thought, all of this was dreamed before. From the fantastic geometric robot drawings of Bracelli in 1624 to the mechanical people in Capek’s R.U.R. in 1925, others have conceived and drawn metallic extensions of man and his senses, or played at it in theater.

But the fact remains that Disney is the first to make a robot that is convincingly real, that looks, speaks and acts like a man. Disney has set the history of humanized robots on its way toward wider, more fantastic excur­sions into the needs of civilization.” (Thanks Longform.)

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“We also accompanied him on a trip to Disneyland,” 1968:

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“At Times Like These, Survival Is The Most Important Thing”

January 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

George Soros, opportunist turned alarmist, frets in a Newsweek article that the whole damn world might go bust. An excerpt:

“Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. ‘At times like these, survival is the most important thing,’ he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of ‘evil.’ Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

‘I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,’ Soros tells Newsweek. ‘We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.'”

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“The Voice In The Garage Was Distinctly Heard”

January 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Sandusky Register," March 1920.

From Smithsonian‘s Paleofuture blog, which presents a brief history of the first car phone, or “the portable stovepipe wireless telephone”:

“An article in the March 21, 1920 Sandusky Register in Sandusky, Ohio retold the story of a man in Philadelphia named W. W. Macfarlane who was experimenting with his own ‘wireless telephone.’ With a chauffeur driving him as he sat in the back seat of his moving car he amazed a reporter from The Electrical Experimenter magazine by talking to Mrs. Macfarlane, who sat in their garage 500 yards down the road.

A man with a box slung over his shoulder and holding in one hand three pieces of stove pipe placed side by side on a board climbed into an automobile on East Country Road, Elkins Park, Pa.

As he settled in the machine he picked up a telephone transmitter, set on a short handle, and said:

‘We are going to run down the road. Can you hear me?’

Other passengers in the automobile, all wearing telephone receivers, heard a woman’s voice answering: ‘Yes, perfectly. Where are you?’

By this time the machine was several hundred yards down the road and the voice in the garage was distinctly heard.

This was one of the incidents in the first demonstration of the portable wireless telephone outfit invented by W. W. Macfarlane, of Philadelphia, as described by the Electrical Experimenter.”

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“Pirates Of The Future Will Have The Option To Bypass The Cost, And Become Creators Themselves”

January 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"And if it breaks? You print another for minimal cost." (Image by Jens Gathmann@Wikipedia.)

Now that 3D printers are a reality, the two types of piracy we’ve encountered historically–physical and digital–will combine to form a new means of thievery. From Geek.com:

“Just like pirates today decide to download a movie rather than pay the high theater prices to watch it, pirates of the future will have the option to bypass the cost, and become creators themselves.

The same logic can be applied to many products: why buy the iPad X case when you can download the 3D model someone leaked/stole? Why buy a camera part when it can be printed and glued at home? Not only do you save on the retail price, there’s no shipping to worry about other than your base materials, which can be bought in bulk. And if it breaks? You print another for minimal cost. Obviously materials and 3D printer technology limit this to certain types of products, but that list is only going to expand as 3D printers improve, and, crucially, as more commercial products are made with 3D printers.”

Typist, Wearing Surgical Mask, During Flu Pandemic (1918)

January 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photograph shows a New York City typist tending to her duties during the 1918 influenza outbreak. The surgical mask became a ubiquitous accessory on street cars and baseball diamonds, as well as at workplaces, but still 50 million lives were claimed worldwide. From a 2007 historical article by John Galvin in Popular Mechanics:

“Initially called ‘the three day fever,’ it started like any flu, with a cough and a headache, followed by intense chills and a fever that could quickly hit 104 degrees F. It could take a month before survivors felt completely well, and after they emerged from an energy-sapped stupor many said it felt as though they’d been aggressively hit with a club. But for those 650,000 Americans who actually died from the Spanish flu in 1918, the suffering was much worse.

Deep brown spots would appear on a victim’s cheeks and a thick, bloody fluid would begin to overwhelm his lungs. Starting at the ears, their faces would gradually turn blue as circulating blood could not get oxygenated. Soon, victims would start to drown in their own fluid — often coughing up a pinkish froth as they fought to inhale. ‘It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate,’ an army doctor, based outside of Boston at Camp Devens, wrote to a colleague in 1918. ‘It is horrible.’

The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people around the world — 34 million more than died from the First World War in progress alongside it.”

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“Mankind Didn’t Set Out Deliberately To Create A Brain”

January 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Steve Wozniak holds forth on the future of computing in a new Vancouver Sun article. An excerpt:

“Ever the engineering scientist, he offered his view that within as few as 40 years computing technology will be so advanced that computers will nearly be sentient beings capable of personality.

‘The war against the machines was a long, long time ago,’ he said.

Mankind didn’t set out deliberately to create a brain, Wozniak said. But by first building computers, and then linking them through Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet, and then creating search engines to handle the mass of information now available, the world ended up with a brain.

‘I think by accident we’re going to stumble on conscious computers that have feelings and look at you and understand how you’re doing,’ he said. ‘My iPhone has almost all the senses I have except taste and smell. It has an eye and an ear and it can feel when I am touching it and it can feel when it is being moved. It even knows where in the world it is from GPS. Even I don’t know that.”

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Johnny Cash on John Henry: “You full of vinegar now but you ’bout through.”

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“I’m One Of The Best Poets In Rock And Roll”

January 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"Very soon I began seeing her byline in the rock papers, the major intellectual conduits of youth at that time." (Image by Klaus Hiltscher.)

The opening of “The Mother Courage of Rock,” Luc Sante’s appraisal of Patti Smith in the New York Review of Books:

“I first heard of Patti Smith in 1971, when I was seventeen. The occasion was an unsigned half-column item in the New York Flyer, a short-lived local supplement toRolling Stone, marking the single performance of Cowboy Mouth, a play she cowrote and costarred in with Sam Shepard, and it was possibly her first appearance in the press. What caught my eye and made me save the clipping—besides the accompanying photo of her in a striped jersey, looking vulnerable—was her boast, ‘I’m one of the best poets in rock and roll.’ At the time, I didn’t just think I was the best poet in rock and roll; I thought I was the only one, for all that my practice consisted solely of playing ‘Sister Ray’ by the Velvet Underground very loud on the stereo and filling notebook pages with drivel that naturally fell into the song’s meter. (I later discovered that I was just one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of teenagers around the world doing essentially the same thing.)

Very soon I began seeing her byline in the rock papers, the major intellectual conduits of youth at that time. Her contributions were not ordinary. She reviewed a Lotte Lenya anthology for Rolling Stone (‘[She] lays the queen’s cards on the table and plays them with kisses and spit and a ribbon round her throat’). She wrote a half-page letter to the editors of Crawdaddy contrasting that magazine’s praise for assorted mediocrities with the true neglected stars out in the world:

Best of everything there was
and everything there is to come
is often undocumented.
Lost in the cosmos of time.
On the subway I saw the most beautiful girl.
In an unknown pool hall I saw the greatest shot in history.
A nameless blonde boy in a mohair sweater.
A drawing in a Paris alleyway. Second only to Dubuffet.

Creem devoted four pages to a portfolio of her poems (‘Christ died for somebodies sins/but not mine/melting in a pot of thieves/wild card up the sleeve/thick heart of stone/my sins my own…’—if this sounds familiar, you expect the next line to be ‘they belong to me,’ but it’s not there yet).”

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Patti Smith singing “You Light Up My Life” on Kids Are People Too, 1980s:

Lotte Lenye, “Mack the Knife,” 1962:

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“UX Members Have Carried Out Shocking Acts Of Cultural Preservation And Repair”

January 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Inverting vandalism, the Urban eXperiment or UX, is a group of artists who preserve fading Parisian landmarks–after surreptitiously breaking into them. The opening of “The New French Hacker-Artist Underground,” Jon Lackman’s Wired article about the group:

“Thirty years ago, in the dead of night, a group of six Parisian teenagers pulled off what would prove to be a fateful theft. They met up at a small cafè near the Eiffel Tower to review their plans—again—before heading out into the dark. Lifting a grate from the street, they descended a ladder to a tunnel, an unlit concrete passageway carrying a cable off into the void. They followed the cable to its source: the basement of the ministry of telecommunications. Horizontal bars blocked their way, but the skinny teens all managed to wedge themselves through and ascend to the building’s ground floor. There they found three key rings in the security office and a logbook indicating that the guards were on their rounds.

But the guards were nowhere to be seen. The six interlopers combed the building for hours, encountering no one, until they found what they were looking for at the bottom of a desk drawer—maps of the ministry’s citywide network of tunnels. They took one copy of each map, then returned the keys to the security office. Heaving the ministry’s grand front door ajar, they peeked outside; no police, no passersby, no problem. They exited onto the empty Avenue de Sègur and walked home as the sun rose. The mission had been so easy that one of the youths, Natacha, seriously asked herself if she had dreamed it. No, she concluded: ‘In a dream, it would have been more complicated.’

This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for ‘Urban eXperiment.’ UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of ‘restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.’ The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris.”

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“We Possess A Technology That Removes The Last Political Barriers To War”

January 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

What if war were painless, at least for one side? And what if the American President could fight overseas without getting approval from Congress because what’s being waged isn’t precisely war as we know it, but something beyond the traditional definition? In the brave new world of drones and robots, that’s exactly where the United States is. From Peter W. Singer’s excellent New York Times Opinion piece, “Do Drones Undermine Democracy?“

“Just 10 years ago, the idea of using armed robots in war was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Today, the United States military has more than 7,000 unmanned aerial systems, popularly called drones. There are 12,000 more on the ground. Last year, they carried out hundreds of strikes — both covert and overt — in six countries, transforming the way our democracy deliberates and engages in what we used to think of as war.

We don’t have a draft anymore; less than 0.5 percent of Americans over 18 serve in the active-duty military. We do not declare war anymore; the last time Congress actually did so was in 1942 — against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. We don’t buy war bonds or pay war taxes anymore. During World War II, 85 million Americans purchased war bonds that brought the government $185 billion; in the last decade, we bought none and instead gave the richest 5 percent of Americans a tax break.

And now we possess a technology that removes the last political barriers to war. The strongest appeal of unmanned systems is that we don’t have to send someone’s son or daughter into harm’s way. But when politicians can avoid the political consequences of the condolence letter — and the impact that military casualties have on voters and on the news media — they no longer treat the previously weighty matters of war and peace the same way.”

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BigDog, by the good people at Boston Dynamics:

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“Although The Creation Museum Has Been A Target Of Ridicule By Some, It Has Drawn 1.2 Million Visitors”

January 22, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Despite an incredibly austere budget for 2012, the struggling state of Kentucky will move forward with allocating public funds toward the building of a creationist theme park, which features Noah and his Ark. Cripes. Some details about the project from Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times:

“Since Gov. Steven L. Beshear announced the plan on Wednesday, some constitutional experts have raised alarms over whether government backing for an enterprise that promotes religion violates the First Amendment’s requirement of separation of church and state. But Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, said the arrangement posed no constitutional problem, and brushed off questions about his stand on creationism.

‘The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion,’ he said at a news conference. ‘They elected me governor to create jobs.’

The theme park was conceived by the same Christian ministry that built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., where dioramas designed to debunk evolution show humans and dinosaurs coexisting peacefully on an earth created by God in six days. The ministry, Answers in Genesis, believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old — a controversial assertion even among many Bible-believing Christians.

Although the Creation Museum has been a target of ridicule by some, it has drawn 1.2 million visitors in its first three years — proving that there is a sizable paying audience for entertainment rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible.”

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“Something big is happening”:

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“Each Employee Was Given A Biscuit And A Cup Of Tea…And Within Half An Hour Started A 12-Hour Shift Fitting Glass Screens Into Beveled Frames”

January 22, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The best article I’ve read this very young new year is “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work,” an excellent New York Times piece by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher. It follows up on the question that President Obama famously asked Steve Jobs early last year during a pow-wow with Silicon Valley industry leaders: What can we do to have Apple products manufactured in America again? With his typical bluntness, Jobs told Obama it wasn’t going to happen. One reason is that contemporary America lacks a critical mass of mid-level engineers. But even if we reversed that situation, a larger problem looms: China, with its Foxconn complex, will sacrifice the health and well-being of its workers, treat them like so many indentured servants, in order to fulfill the every whim of tech titans. At any rate, it gives lie to the election-year assertion that all we have to do is loosen regulations and jobs will flood our shores. An excerpt:

“Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

‘The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that.'”

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“Everyone In Russia In The Early 1980s Knew That The Managers And Technocrats In Charge Of The Economy Were Using That Absurdity To Loot The System”

January 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In a new blog post, cultural critic Adam Curtis likens the contemporary West to the 1980s Soviet Union, an idea nearing the closing credits of entropy. An excerpt:

“There are of course vast differences between our present society and the Soviet Union of thirty years ago – for one thing they had practically no consumer goods whereas we are surrounded by them, and for another western capitalism was waiting in the wings to fill the vacuum. But there are also echoes of our present mood – a grand economic system that had once promised heaven on earth had become absurd and corrupted.

Everyone in Russia in the early 1980s knew that the managers and technocrats in charge of the economy were using that absurdity to loot the system and enrich themselves. The politicians were unable to do anything because they were in the thrall of the economic theory, and thus of the corrupt technocrats. And above all no-one in the political class could imagine any alternative future.

In the face of this most Soviet people turned away from politics and any form of engagement with society and lived day by day in a world that they knew was absurd, trapped by the lack of a vision of any other way.” (Thanks Browser.)

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Curtis’ analysis of the Computer Age:

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“Organizers Are Confident Up To Half Of Competitors Will Be Tested”

January 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Here are some things that are restricted or illegal (or at one time were illegal) in America, but are never going away: alcohol, drugs, prostitution, abortion and guns. You can forbid them, but all it does is create a far more dangerous black market. It’s tantamount to choosing worse instead of bad. The upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics in London will have the strictest drug testing ever and a 24-hour lab that will be constantly humming. Some of the athletes using drugs will be caught, many will not. From a Daily Mail article about the lab:

“Drug cheats have been warned they will be caught at next summer’s Olympics and Paralympics as London 2012 unveiled ‘the most high-tech’ laboratory in the history of the Games.

Up to 6,250 samples will be tested by 150 scientists working at the 24-hour anti-doping facility in Harlow, Essex.

All Olympic medallists will have to submit a urine sample and there will be around 1,000 blood tests.

With 10,500 athletes expected at the Olympic and Paralympic Games, organisers are confident up to half of competitors will be tested; some more than once.”

“Power Is Necessary, But Wisdom Is Essential”

January 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In 1963, the year before his death, original Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was interviewed by Playboy. An excerpt:

“Playboy: In a speech given in 1947, on the eve of Indian independence, you said, ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now comes the time when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.’ How substantial has the redemption of this pledge been? What is the spiritual and material condition of India today, after 16 years of independence? 

Nehru: India today presents a very mixed picture of hope and anguish, of remarkable advances and at the same time of inertia, of a new spirit and also of the dead hand of privilege, of an over-all and growing unity and of many disruptive tendencies. There is a great vitality and a ferment in people’s minds and activities. Perhaps we who live in the middle of this ever-changing scene do not always realize the full significance of all that is happening. Often outsiders can make a better appraisal of the situation. It is remarkable that a country and a people rooted in the remote past, who have shown so much resistance to change, should now be marching forward rapidly. We are making history in India even though we might not be conscious of it.

Jawaharlal Nehru, lying in state, 1964.

Playboy: In that same 1947 speech you specifically called for ‘the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity’ in India. Are you still optimistic about the eventual elimination of these conditions?

Nehru: What tomorrow’s India will be like, I cannot say. I can only express my hopes and wishes. Naturally, I want India to advance on the material plane, to fulfill her plans, to raise the standard of living of her vast population. I want the narrow conflicts of today in the name of religion or caste, language or province, to cease, and a classless and casteless society to be built up where every individual has full opportunity to grow according to his worth and ability. In particular, I hope that the curse of caste will be ended, for with it there cannot be either democracy or socialism. Tomorrow’s India will be what we make it by today’s labors. I have no doubt but that India will progress industrially and otherwise; that she will advance in science and technology; that our people’s standards will rise; that education will spread; that health conditions will be better; and that art and culture will enrich people’s lives. We have started on this pilgrimage with strong purpose and good heart, and we shall reach the end of the journey, however long that might be. But what I am concerned with is not merely our material progress, but the quality and depth of our people. Gaining power through industrial processes, will they lose themselves in the quest of individual wealth and soft living? That would be a tragedy for it would be a negation of what India has stood for in the past and, I think, in the present time also as exemplified by Gandhi. Power is necessary, but wisdom is essential. It is only power with wisdom that is good.”

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A thumbnail of Nehru’s life, including his 1949 NYC ticker-tape parade:

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“They Are Called Lockdown Rooms: No Information Goes In Or Out Without A Reason”

January 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From “The Secrets Apple Keeps,” Adam Lashinsky’s new Fortune article about the cultish internal nature of the tech giant:

“Apple employees know something big is afoot when the carpenters appear in their office building. New walls are quickly erected. Doors are added and new security protocols put into place. Windows that once were transparent are now frosted. Other rooms have no windows at all. They are called lockdown rooms: No information goes in or out without a reason.

The hubbub is disconcerting for employees. Quite likely you have no idea what is going on, and it’s not like you’re going to ask. If it hasn’t been disclosed to you, then it’s literally none of your business. What’s more, your badge, which got you into particular areas before the new construction, no longer works in those places. All you can surmise is that a new, highly secretive project is under way, and you are not in the know. End of story.

Secrecy takes two basic forms at Apple — external and internal. There is the obvious kind, the secrecy that Apple uses as a way of keeping its products and practices hidden from competitors and the rest of the outside world. This cloaking device is the easier of the two types for the rank and file to understand because many companies try to keep their innovations under wraps. Internal secrecy, as evidenced by those mysterious walls and off-limits areas, is tougher to stomach. Yet the link between secrecy and productivity is one way that Apple (AAPL) challenges long-held management truths and the notion of transparency as a corporate virtue.

All companies have secrets, of course. The difference is that at Apple everything is a secret.” (Thanks Browser.)

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A Rolling Thunder performance of “One Too Many Mornings,” Steve Jobs’ favorite Bob Dylan song. Not even close to Dylan’s best, but to each his own.

“One Too Many Mornings”

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

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“The Creation Of WikiLeaks Was, In Part, A Response To Iraq”

January 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West." (Image by Espen Moe.)

From Michael Hastings’ new interview in Rolling Stone with Wikileak’s head leaker, Julian Assange, on what inspired him to begin disseminating classified information:

“Then, two years later, the U.S. invaded Iraq.
The creation of WikiLeaks was, in part, a response to Iraq. There were a number of whistle-blowers who came out in relation to Iraq, and it was clear to me that what the world was missing in the days of Iraq propaganda was a way for inside sources who knew what was really going on to communicate that information to the public. Quite a few who did ended up in very dire circumstances, including David Kelly, the British scientist who either committed suicide or was murdered over his revelations about weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West. It was also the clearest case, in my living memory, of media manipulation and the creation of a war through ignorance.“

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“Sony Promoted The Machine’s Ability To ‘Time Shift’ Programming”

January 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"Sony...introduced its Betamax video tape recorder to the U.S. consumer market in early 1976." (Image by Franny Wentzel.)

For more than three decades, Hollywood has been fighting a losing battle with technology, trying to pause time in an era when there was less competition, when making boatloads of cash required little ingenuity. From the movie establishment’s landmark case in futility, in which it fought to make home video recorders illegal:

“Universal City Studios, Inc. et al. v. Sony Corporation of America Inc. et al., commonly known as the Betamax case, was the first concerted legal response of the American film industry to the home video revolution. After nearly a decade of announcements and false starts by one American company or another, Sony, the Japanese electronics manufacturing giant, introduced its Betamax video tape recorder to the U.S. consumer market in early 1976 at an affordable price. In its marketing strategy Sony promoted the machine’s ability to ‘time shift’ programming–that is, to record a television program off the air even while watching another show on a different channel.

The plaintiffs, Universal and Walt Disney Productions on behalf of the Hollywood majors, charged that the ability of the Betamax to copy programming off air was an infringement of copyright and sought to halt the sale of the machines. The studios were ostensibly trying to protect film and television producers from the economic consequences of unauthorized mass duplication and distribution. However, Universal might have also wanted to prevent Betamax from capturing a significant segment of the fledgling home video market before its parent company, MCA, could introduce its DiscoVision laserdisc system, which was to scheduled for test marketing in the fall of 1977.”

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Time shifting with Sony Betamax, 1977:

“You’ve Never Even Read Shakespeare, You Imbecile!”

January 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

There are all sorts of entertainment for all sorts of occasions, but I’ll always like best the kind that upsets conventions and makes the audience want to tear down the stage. Do not please the people–the people are already far too pleased. Playwright Alfred Jarry angered ticket buyers in just such a fashion in 1896. An excerpt about the tumult from Karl Whitney at 3:AM Magazine:

“Arguably Jarry’s greatest literary creation, and certainly his best known, was the character of Père Ubu, the corpulent and vulgar ‘King of Poland’ who emerged, swearing forcefully, in Ubu Roi (performed onstage in 1896, but printed versions predate the theatrical performances). The first performances of the play caused a stir. Partly, this was because of the shock of the new – as Brotchie points out: ‘it was as though a modernist play from the middle of the next century had been dropped on the stage without all the intervening theatrical developments that might have acclimatized the audience to its conventions.’ On the other hand, many of Jarry’s friends in the avant-garde weren’t leaving anything to chance: they turned up with mischief in mind, and caused – or at least contributed to – an uproar in the theatre. At one point the poet Fernand Gregh shouted out his opinion: ‘It’s as beautiful as Shakespeare,; to which his own brother shot back from the balcony: ‘You’ve never even read Shakespeare, you imbecile!'”

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“Bon jour, Père Ubu”:

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“According To This New Research, The Online Echo Chamber Doesn’t Exist”

January 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I find so many great things online by accident that I’ve never been quite as concerned about Internet filters as some have. In “The End of the Echo Chamber,” Farhad Manjoo of Slate writes about new research–albeit research conducted by the very interested party Facebook–that suggests that the Web is inherently serendipitous (or perhaps we are) no matter how much personalization, targeting or narrowcasting is forced upon us. The opening:

“Today, Facebook is publishing a study that disproves some hoary conventional wisdom about the Web. According to this new research, the online echo chamber doesn’t exist.

This is of particular interest to me. In 2008, I wrote True Enough, a book that argued that digital technology is splitting society into discrete, ideologically like-minded tribes that read, watch, or listen only to news that confirms their own beliefs. I’m not the only one who’s worried about this. Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org, argued in his recent book The Filter Bubble that Web personalization algorithms like Facebook’s News Feed force us to consume a dangerously narrow range of news. The echo chamber was also central to Cass Sunstein’s thesis, in his book Republic.com, that the Web may be incompatible with democracy itself. If we’re all just echoing our friends’ ideas about the world, is society doomed to become ever more polarized and solipsistic?

It turns out we’re not doomed. The new Facebook study is one of the largest and most rigorous investigations into how people receive and react to news. It was led by Eytan Bakshy, who began the work in 2010 when he was finishing his Ph.D. in information studies at the University of Michigan. He is now a researcher on Facebook’s data team, which conducts academic-type studies into how users behave on the teeming network.”

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“Hann Finally Converted His Airport Research Into A Breakthrough Sneaker”

January 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “The Greatest Running Shoe Never Sold,” Bob Parks’ new Businessweek article about a lone inventor trying to partner with a mega-corporation:

“Late one night in August 1997, 54-year-old inventor Lenn Rockford Hann placed two bottles of Gatorade near Concourse F of Chicago O’Hare International Airport, unlaced his sneakers, removed his socks, then dodged curious maintenance workers for two hours while running 13.1 miles on the walkways. His pace surprised him. He was convinced the springy, resilient surface was almost perfect. ‘My legs felt amazing,’ says Hann, a marathoner. ‘I’ve been chasing a shoe that feels that good ever since.’

For years, Hann had been designing a running shoe that he hoped would give him an edge. After his airport run (in the days of lighter security, naturally), he knew he was on to something, and he became obsessed with O’Hare’s movable sidewalks. Finding a walkway in the midst of repair on a subsequent jog, he jumped into the pit to look at its clockworks. There he found rollers on each side, with nothing holding people up in the middle but the belt’s tension. The next day, Hann called the belt company, Dunlop Conveyer Belting, and learned they were adjusted to 2,500 foot-pounds of force to create the right balance.

Athletic brands spend millions every year trying to build a better sneaker that will propel them to the front of the $6.3 billion running shoe business, one of the biggest and most visible areas of sporting goods, with 11 percent growth in 2011, according to industry analyst SportsOneSource. Nearly all sneakers have a sole that looks like lasagna, composed of layers of rubber, foam, and plastic. The fluffy foam is made from ethylene-vinyl acetate, or EVA, which has its critics: EVA adds weight to shoes, and lab tests show it requires more energy per stride. Running shoe companies have long sought an EVA substitute that absorbs shock but also returns more energy. ‘Consumers like the cushioned feeling associated with a conventional running shoe,’ says Darren Stefanyshyn, a University of Calgary researcher and former chairperson of the Footwear Biomechanics Group. ‘If you could provide that without using foam, you’d have a winner.’

It took him eleven years, but Hann finally converted his airport research into a breakthrough sneaker patented in 2008, a shoe with an entirely different system to cushion and propel the foot. It quickly attracted the attention of fast-growing athletic brand Under Armour (UA), which spent two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop it as the prospective centerpiece of the company’s first line of footwear. Hann’s shoe was scheduled to launch early this year and was poised to rock the footwear industry, but it never quite made it to market.”

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“The Concept Of A Combined Wristwatch And Calculator Is A Natural Outgrowth Of Today’s Digital Watch And Pocket Calculator Technologies”

January 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1977, Hewlett-Packard introduced the original wristwatch-calculator combo, which was the first commercially available wearable computer. The 01 Wrist Instrument didn’t just provide a variety of functions–calculator, stopwatch, 200-year calendar, among them–it also allowed for the interaction of these functions. Portable tools have grown exponentially more sophisticated in the subsequent 35 years, but our general use of them seems to have remained simple and largely uninspired. Have the numbers we carry in our pockets shrunk so much that we’ve forgotten their value? Is the meaning reduced to so much lint? From the Hewlett-Packard Journal, December 1977:

“The concept of a combined wristwatch and calculator is a natural outgrowth of today’s digital watch and pocket calculator technologies. However, merely putting these two functions into one small case does not add significantly to the capabilities already available to the consumer. Only when the time and computation functions are allowed to interact freely can the full potential of the combination be realized and significant new capabilities be made available.

It is this interaction, along with state-of-the-art watch and calculator technologies, that provide the wearer of the HP-01 Wrist Instrument with the information that was previously unavailable, and makes the HP-01, after a brief experience with it, more difficult to do without than it might at first appear.”

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Hologram of HP-01 Wrist Instrument:

“These Are All Cheap Tricks Compared With What The Real World Has To Offer”

January 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

How can you have stunning science fiction when science itself is so stunning? From “Superstuff: When Quantam Goes Big,” a Michael Brooks article at New Scientist:

“FOR centuries, con artists have convinced the masses that it is possible to defy gravity or walk through walls. Victorian audiences gasped at tricks of levitation involving crinolined ladies hovering over tables. Even before then, fraudsters and deluded inventors were proudly displaying perpetual-motion machines that could do impossible things, such as make liquids flow uphill without consuming energy. Today, magicians still make solid rings pass through each other and become interlinked – or so it appears. But these are all cheap tricks compared with what the real world has to offer.

Cool a piece of metal or a bucket of helium to near absolute zero and, in the right conditions, you will see the metal levitating above a magnet, liquid helium flowing up the walls of its container or solids passing through each other. ‘We love to observe these phenomena in the lab,’ says Ed Hinds of Imperial College, London.

This weirdness is not mere entertainment, though. From these strange phenomena we can tease out all of chemistry and biology, find deliverance from our energy crisis and perhaps even unveil the ultimate nature of the universe. Welcome to the world of superstuff.” (Thanks Browser.)

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It’s only a trick, for now–1900:

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“How Would You Behave, If The Devices That Surround Your Life Were Suddenly Turned Against You?”

January 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “The Hacker Is Watching,” David Kushner’s new GQ piece about the unlikely culprit behind a creepy new wave of computer hacking, which exploits the omnipresence of cameras, among other things:

“The more ubiquitous cameras become, the less we’re aware they’re even there. They stare out at us blankly from our phones and laptops, our Xboxes and iPads, a billion eyes and ears just waiting to be turned on. But what if they were switched on—by someone else—when you least expected it? How would you feel, how would you behave, if the devices that surround your life were suddenly turned against you?

It’s a question that James Kelly and his girlfriend, Amy Wright, never thought they’d have to entertain. But one instant message changed everything. Amy, a 20-year-old brunette at the University of California at Irvine, was on her laptop when she got an IM from a random guy nicknamed mistahxxxrightme, asking her for webcam sex. Out of the blue, like that. Amy told the guy off, but he IM’d again, saying he knew all about her, and to prove it he started describing her dorm room, the color of her walls, the pattern on her sheets, the pictures on her walls. ‘You have a pink vibrator,’ he said. It was like Amy’d slipped into a stalker movie. Then he sent her an image file. Amy watched in horror as the picture materialized on the screen: a shot of her in that very room, naked on the bed, having webcam sex with James.

Mistah X wasn’t done. The hacker fired off a note to James’s ex-girlfriend Carla Gagnon: ‘nice video I hope you still remember this if you want to chat and find out before I put it online hit me up.’ Attached was a video still of her in the nude. Then the hacker contacted James directly, boasting that he had control of his computer, and it became clear this wasn’t about sex: He was toying with them. As Mistah X taunted James, his IMs filling the screen, James called Amy: He had the creep online. What should he do? They talked about calling the cops, but no sooner had James said the words than the hacker reprimanded him. ‘I know you’re talking to each other right now!’ he wrote. James’s throat constricted; how did the stalker know what he was saying? Did he bug his room?

They were powerless. Amy decided to call the cops herself. But the instant she phoned the dispatcher, a message chimed on her screen. It was from the hacker. ‘I know you just called the police,’ he wrote. She panicked. How could he possibly know? She ran into her bathroom and slammed the door behind her. As she pleaded for the police to come quickly, she reached into the shower and cranked the water all the way up, hoping the hacker couldn’t hear her.”

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“The Bellman Who Fetched His Bags Said He Was A Famous Writer”

January 16, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “Love, Boxing, and Hunter S. Thompson,” screenwriter John Kaye’s raucous Los Angeles Review of Books essay:

“HUNTER AND INGA: 1978

The third (and last) time I went to New Orleans was in September of 1978. I was living in Marin County, and I took the red-eye out of San Francisco, flying on a first-class ticket paid for by Universal Pictures, the studio that was financing the movie I was contracted to write. The story was to be loosely based on an article written by Hunter Thompson that had been recently published in Rolling Stone magazine. Titled ‘The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat,’ the 30,000-word piece detailed many of the (supposedly) true-life adventures Hunter had experienced with Oscar Zeta Acosta, the radical Chicano lawyer who he’d earlier canonized in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Hunter and I were in New Orleans to attend the hugely anticipated rematch between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, the former Olympic champion who, after only seven fights, had defeated Ali in February. The plan was to meet up at the Fairmont, a once-elegant hotel that was located in the center of the business district and within walking distance of the historic French Quarter. Although Hunter was not in his room when I arrived, he’d instructed the hotel management to watch for me and make sure I was treated with great respect.

‘I was told by Mister Thompson to mark you down as a VIP, that you were on a mission of considerable importance,’ said Inga, the head of guest services, as we rode the elevator up to my floor. ‘Since he was dressed quite eccentrically, in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, I assumed he was pulling my leg. The bellman who fetched his bags said he was a famous writer. Are you a writer also?’ I told her I wrote movies. ‘Are you famous?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have any cocaine?’

I stared at her. Her smile was odd, both reassuring and intensely hopeful. In the cartoon balloon I saw over her head were the words: I’m yours if you do. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘That is good.'”

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The late-career Ali regains the title yet again:

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“I Know Of No Literary Work Written By An Animal–And That Is Very Sad”

January 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Videos | Permalink

"Have animals had, in the past, a literature of their own?"

Eccentric composer Erik Satie published some odd humor pieces in Vanity Fair. They were more strange than funny. From “A Learned Lecture on Music and Animals,” which ran in 1922, three years before his death:

“Indeed we have no example either of painting or of sculpture made by an animal. Their taste does not lead them towards these two arts.

Architecture and Music, however, have attracted them–the rabbit constructs tunnels–both for himself and the beagle hound.

The bird builds a nest, a marvel of art and industry, wherein he himself may live with his family–

Even the cuckoo is a fairly good judge of architecture.

We would continue to cite similar examples indefinitely.

So much for architecture.

I know of no literary work written by an animal–and that is very sad.

Have animals had, in the past, a literature of their own?

It is quite possible. No doubt, it was destroyed by a fire–a very, very large fire.”

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“Gymnopédie No.1,” which was the end music for My Dinner With Andre:

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