Excerpts

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“If Amazon Encourages Its Staff To Be Straight With Each Other About What Should Be Fixed, So Much The Better”

September 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Tim Harford’s FT reading of the recent New York Times Amazon exposé is, well, subjective.

Most of us probably recognized a place in which workers are asked to surrender their lives for a corporation, given impossible goals and abused and undermined when they prove human. Making it worse, there would seem to be a thick air of paranoia in the offices because a good percentage of the criticism is rooted in power consolidation, not job performance. It sounds like the Hunger Games with an on-campus farmer’s market, a place where sociopaths thrive. As anyone who’s worked in Internet companies (myself included) knows, these types of outfits are toxic and meant to be avoided, stock options or no stock options.

Harford’s take is different, and to me, puzzling. He sees a culture in Amazon that may actually be refreshingly straightforward, a paragon of things improving through workplace honesty. Perhaps its candor just being misinterpreted as rudeness because the company embodies a rare virtue? If only that were so. That kind of arrangement would be great. 

His opening:

Last month’s Amazon exposé in The New York Times evidently touched a white-collar nerve. Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld described what might euphemistically be called an “intense” culture at Amazon’s headquarters in a feature article that promptly became the most commented-on story in the newspaper’s website’s history. As Kantor and Streitfeld told it, Amazon reduces grown men to tears and comes down hard on staff whose performance is compromised by distractions such as stillborn children, dying parents or simply having a family. Not for the first time, The Onion was 15 years ahead of the story with a December 2000 headline that bleakly satirised a certain management style: “There’s No ‘My Kid Has Cancer’ In Team.”

Mixed in with the grim anecdotes was a tale of a bracingly honest culture of criticism and self-criticism. (Rival firms, we are told, have been hiring Amazon workers after they’ve quit in exasperation, but are worried that these new hires may have become such aggressive “Amholes” that they won’t fit in anywhere else.)

At Amazon, performance reviews seem alarmingly blunt. One worker’s boss reeled off a litany of unachieved goals and inadequate skills. As the stunned recipient steeled himself to be fired, he was astonished when his superior announced, “Congratulations, you’re being promoted,” and gave him a hug.

It is important to distinguish between a lack of compassion and a lack of tact. It’s astonishing how often we pass up the chance to give or receive useful advice. If Amazon encourages its staff to be straight with each other about what should be fixed, so much the better.•

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“Astronauts Have Also Reported Missing The Earth”

September 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

When astronauts have familiar sensory experience removed, the mind can travel into itself even as the whole person rushes into the outer space. The body is, of course, also prone to these dramatic shifts in environments during interplanetary travel, and peopled missions to Mars will go beyond all previous boundaries.

Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka’s 887 days total in space, NASA’s twin study and its “One-Year Crew” astronaut-isolation experiment that just began in Hawaii, are some of the test runs for trips to Mars. 

From Chris Arridge at The Conversation:

The mind in space

NASA’s One-Year Crew is also undertaking a study of the psychological effects of living in a confined environment for an extended period of time. Studies have revealed a number of psychiatric problems during space travel, mostly transient anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic responses such as toothache, prostatitis, and cardiac arrhythmia.

Astronauts have also reported missing the Earth. Following his flight in 2010, [Mikhail] Korniyenko said: “The thing you miss there most of all is the Earth itself. I missed smells. I missed trees, I even dreamt of them. I even hallucinated. I thought I smelled a real fire and something being barbecued on it! I ended up putting pictures of trees on the walls to cheer up. You do miss the Earth there.” . However, the effect of looking down on Earth and appreciating its beauty has a strong positive reaction in astronauts and cosmonauts. Does this speak to some particular deep psychological connection between Earth and human beings? Would humans born on Mars develop the same connection with the red planet?•

“It Does Much More Good Than Evil”

September 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We like to think we have empathy, but how can we truly see things through someone else’s eyes, especially if their reality has known extremes ours hasn’t? To help us, some of them paint a picture.

Ai Weiwei does that, in many different ways. The Chinese artist has been imprisoned and beaten and detained, continually detained. There seems to be some sort of detente in his current state of relations with government authorities, but his experiences don’t go away–they shape him. So he may view consumerism and technology differently than I do, but his feelings from within his context are just as valuable. Maybe more so.

For a NYRB article, Ian Johnson facilitated a pizzeria lunch in Berlin between Ai Weiwei, his passport in hand once again, and exiled writer Liao Yiwu. The artist believes China, viewed broadly, is better for its modernization, and that the world is mostly improved by social media. An excerpt:

Question:

What do you think of think of the modernization theory—that when people get to a certain standard of living, when people are no longer just concerned with food or shelter, they start to demand things. We could see that historically in South Korea, or Taiwan, say thirty years ago. Does that have any relevance to China today?

Ai Weiwei:

It does, very obviously. If you see those young kids, they’re better off than their parents. They’ve been sent to study abroad. They can travel more freely. They get on the internet. They get iPhones and iPads and video games.

Question:

Are the Chinese authorities aware of it?

Ai Weiwei:

They are aware of it, but I don’t know to what degree, and I don’t know if they have the right measures. To understand the crisis you need a philosophical mind and the system never really had that kind of discussion—like the one we’re having now, and to openly discuss it. To openly discuss it means first you have a balanced view and you get every mind involved, so the solution will be more democratic rather than some authoritarian solution, which will just create more problems. All they care about are results, but life is about more than results. It’s about our involvement, our passive involvement in each individual’s mind, and that’s why we can say we love it or we hate it.

Question:

One way people engage is through social media. Obviously that’s changed things a lot but it also seems to encourage a bit of a, not civil society, but uncivil society—people cursing each other and so on.

Ai Weiwei:

It does much more good than evil. Of course, if you have a society that never had a public platform or public property, it’s something new. It becomes an outlet for huge pressure. It’s like an explosion, but only because the building is not well-designed. If you had ten outlets [of expression], people would be much more friendly and courteous.

That’s why a modern structure is so important to deal with contemporary problems. It’s not about ideology. All those concepts of democracy or freedom of speech. It’s really about efficient tactics to solve modern problems. That problem is to recognize and protect each individual’s rights and to contribute them to society. Of course China is far from that. First it needs a philosophical understanding and then it needs laws to protect those rights and legislation designed for separate powers. All of that is not established in China now and that’s why I say China is not a modern society.•

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“Want To Buy Stock Linked To The Brand Of Angels Rookie Left-Hander Andrew Heaney?”

September 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

As Ken Rosenthal reports at Fox Sports, Andrew Heaney has become the first Major League Baseball player to agree to sell stock in his future earnings. For 10% of all he makes through salary, endorsements and personal appearances during his playing career, the Angels rookie pitcher will receive $3.34 million.

That seems like a really bad financial decision to me on the part of the player and also the stockholders, should they emerge. Heaney received a $2.6 million signing bonuses, has earned the major-league minimum $507.5K this year and will receive slightly more in 2016. If wise about his future, he’ll hold on to as much of this money as possible until when and if he earns much bigger amounts.

He’s a pitcher and his arm could blow out at any moment, but he probably could buy insurance for the next couple of years until he reaches arbitration, at which time he’ll likely be earning far more in a single season than the stake he accepted. (I should point out that Heaney is very talented, perhaps not an ace, but better than average.) 

Shareholders will only earn returns if Heaney makes in excess of $33.4 million dollars, which is also far from a guarantee. It seems more likely than not to be a lose-lose situation.

From Rosenthal:

Want to buy stock linked to the brand of Angels rookie left-hander Andrew Heaney? Fans will soon get that chance.

Heaney, 24, has become the first baseball player to enter into a brand contract with Fantex, the company announced on Thursday.

Under the terms of the deal, Heaney will receive $3.34 million in exchange for 10 percent of all future earnings related to his brand, including player contracts, corporate endorsements and appearance fees.

The agreement is contingent on Fantex obtaining the financing necessary to pay the purchase price. The shares are not yet up for sale, and Heaney, his agents and Fantex officials cannot yet comment.

Both Major League Baseball and the players union consented to Heaney’s deal, which could be the first of several involving major leaguers. …

The union also had reservations, including Heaney’s giving up a sizable percentage of his future earnings and risking disclosure on a broad number of issues, including injuries and potential discipline, sources said. 

The deal, however, could benefit the union in other ways. Heaney already has received a $2.6 million signing bonus as the No. 9 overall pick in the 2012 draft. Now, with nearly $6 million in earnings, he likely will be less inclined to sign a below-market extension.•

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“Supermarkets Will Have Shelves Of Home DNA Tests”

September 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

As we develop “perfect knowledge” of whole-planet genetics, the ability to manipulate DNA, to “edit’ life, to engineer evolution, will grow exponentially. Obviously, the consequences, intended and unintended, will be profound. 

In Dawn Field’s new Aeon piece, one of my favorite essays of the year, the author wonders about a landscape of nights brightened by glowing trees, pigs nurtured to possess human organs for transplantation and a potential consolidated genetic registry. Diseases may be wiped out but so likely will any remnant of privacy. The idea of “bespoke creatures” may be discomfiting, but the author believes we should probably be more worried about the species we’re eliminating with climate change and other irresponsible behaviors. Lots of small, interesting facts (“Kuwait recently introduced mandatory DNA testing of its entire population as an anti-terrorism measure”) support an acute big-picture understanding.

An excerpt:

By 2020, many hospitals will have genomic medicine departments, designing medical therapies based on your personal genetic constitution. Gene sequencers – machines that can take a blood sample and reel off your entire genetic blueprint – will shrink below the size of USB drives. Supermarkets will have shelves of home DNA tests, perhaps nestled between the cosmetics and medicines, for everything from whether your baby will be good at sports to the breed of cat you just adopted, to whether your kitchen counter harbours enough ‘good bacteria’. We will all know someone who has had their genome probed for medical reasons, perhaps even ourselves. Personal DNA stories – including the quality of the bugs in your gut– will be the stuff of cocktail party chitchat.

By 2025, projections suggest that we will have sequenced the genomes of billions of individuals. This is largely down to the explosive growth in the field of cancer genomics. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, became one of the early adopters of genomic medicine when he had the cancer that killed him sequenced. Many others will follow. And we will become more and more willing to act on what our genes tell us. Just as the actress Angelina Jolie chose to undergo a double mastectomy to stem her chances of developing breast cancer, society will think nothing of making decisions based on a wide range of genes and gene combinations. Already a study has quantified the ‘Angelina Jolie effect’. Following her public announcement, the number of women turning to DNA testing to assess their risk for familial breast cancer doubled.

For better or worse, we will increasingly define ourselves by our DNA.•

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“There Is A Strong Current Of Nostalgia For The Late ’70s And Early ’80s In New York”

September 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Image by Richard Sandler.

Image by Richard Sandler.


New York City has always been about money, but it wasn’t always only about money.

In a wonderfully written T Magazine piece, Edmund White wonders why there’s nostalgia for NYC of the 1970s and early 1980s, and I think I know the answer: Despite being something of a dangerous dump in those days, when even the President told us we could drop dead, that’s the last time the city belonged to us all, people of every class, before it became wholly about real estate and Wall Street. It was livable, you could make a living, even if sometimes you had to run for your life.

It wasn’t all good. For all the NYPD harassment of minorities now, the city then was much more divided racially. And the child prostitution that was allowed to flourish in Times Square isn’t something anyone could feel nostalgic about. But it did seem, on some level, we were all in it together. Most working-class people have now been pushed to the margins of the city by real-estate prices and gentrification and globalization, and that won’t stop until they go over the edge. That’s the only edge left.

White’s opening:

THERE IS A STRONG CURRENT of nostalgia for the late ’70s and early ’80s in New York, even among those who never lived through it — the era when the city was edgy and dangerous, when women carried Mace in their purses, when even men asked the taxi driver to wait until they’d crossed the 15 feet to the front door of their building, when a blackout plunged whole neighborhoods into frantic looting, when subway cars were covered with graffiti, when Balanchine was at the height of his powers and the New York State Theater was New York’s intellectual salon, when John Lennon was murdered by a Salinger-reading born-again, when Philip Roth was already famous, Don DeLillo had yet to become famous, and most literary insiders were betting on Harold Brodkey’s long-awaited novel, which his editor, Gordon Lish, declared would be ‘‘the one necessary American narrative work of this century.’’ (It flopped when it finally came out in 1991 as ‘‘The Runaway Soul.’’)

This was the last period in American culture when the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow still pertained, when writers and painters and theater people still wanted to be (or were willing to be) ‘‘martyrs to art.’’ This was the last moment when a novelist or poet might withdraw a book that had already been accepted for publication and continue to fiddle with it for the next two or three years. This was the last time when a New York poet was reluctant to introduce to his arty friends someone who was a Hollywood film director, for fear the movies would be considered too low-status.•

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“There Is An Automation Revolution In China”

September 11, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Robots will show up in China just in time,” Daniel Kahneman has reportedly said, and that’s probably a true statement, though not an uncomplicated one. In order to sustain itself with a giant population that will go gray without also developing widespread automation, China will need robotics on a mass scale. Of course, the problem is huge swaths of the employed will be disappeared from their jobs. They will be promised a better life, better positions, but these guarantees won’t likely be true. It will be a transitional phase with great pain.

Other nations that will have to keep pace with China in this new “arms race,” even if they don’t have the same complex population issues. These countries, America included, will have to seek political solutions.

From Yue Wang at the South China Morning Post:

There is an automation revolution in China. Factory owners are turning to robots amid rising labour costs, worker-protests and greater demand for quality. In 2013, the country overtook Japan as the world’s largest market for industrial robots, accounting for 20 per cent of global supply, according to the International Federation of Robotics, an industry group based in Germany.

As robots march into Chinese factories, global automation companies are racing to invest. Demand is primarily driven by the car sector, which accounts for 40 to 50 per cent of robot demand in China, according to consultancy Solidiance.

But the big race is now in the electronics sector.  Adapting robots to the needs of fast-changing production lines is a challenge for global players such as Japan’s Fanuc Corp, Yaskawa Electric Corp, German’s Kuka Corp and Swiss robot maker ABB.

“Robotics has the limitation of requiring intensive change-out to adapt to a new product model or production line scenario,” says Pilar Dieter, a partner at Solidiance. “If a robotics manufacturer can solve this dilemma, they will certainly hold a coveted position in the market.”•

 

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“Our Society Will Approach An ‘Information Barrier'”

September 11, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

My problem with the late Polish author Stanislaw Lem stems from his disdain for Franz Kafka, an early influence whom he ultimately deemed “repugnant“–and he meant it in a negative way! 

Lem, of course, was brilliant, a Hoover of knowledge with a jet pack inside his head, his attentions rapidly moving far and wide. His 1964 nonfiction work, Summa Technologiae, which wasn’t wholly translated into English until 2013, serves as the foundation for Lee Billings’ latest wonderful essay, the Nautilus piece “The Book No One Read.” (I’ll acknowledge I’m one of those impoverished souls.) Billings argues that Lem is something of a Digital Age Cassandra, warning us that past a point we’ll no longer be able to manage our technological progress if we don’t engineer what might be termed a posthuman superintelligence. In a sense, we will be the end of us, and that’s the most hopeful outcome. As Billings states, Lem was asking a very fundamental question: “Does technology control humanity, or does humanity control technology?”

An excerpt:

In its early stages, Lem writes, the development of technology is a self-reinforcing process that promotes homeostasis, the ability to maintain stability in the face of continual change and increasing disorder. That is, incremental advances in technology tend to progressively increase a society’s resilience against disruptive environmental forces such as pandemics, famines, earthquakes, and asteroid strikes. More advances lead to more protection, which promotes more advances still.

And yet, Lem argues, that same technology-driven positive feedback loop is also an Achilles heel for planetary civilizations, at least for ours here on Earth. As advances in science and technology accrue and the pace of discovery continues its acceleration, our society will approach an “information barrier” beyond which our brains—organs blindly, stochastically shaped by evolution for vastly different purposes—can no longer efficiently interpret and act on the deluge of information.

Past this point, our civilization should reach the end of what has been a period of exponential growth in science and technology. Homeostasis will break down, and without some major intervention, we will collapse into a “developmental crisis” from which we may never fully recover. Attempts to simply muddle through, Lem writes, would only lead to a vicious circle of boom-and-bust economic bubbles as society meanders blindly down a random, path-dependent route of scientific discovery and technological development. “Victories, that is, suddenly appearing domains of some new wonderful activity,” he writes, “will engulf us in their sheer size, thus preventing us from noticing some other opportunities—which may turn out to be even more valuable in the long run.”•

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“It Scanned As Many As 9.7 Million English-Language News Articles In About 60 Seconds”

September 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

When it’s time to make a decision, the choice isn’t best left to instinct. It’s clearly better to have some idea, to study and do research, but where’s the line between a tool that helps you do so and a decision engine?

If machines can eventually fly and drive and reason better than us, will that free us up to redefine our role or leave us with none? I think in the very long term, we’ll be the “machines” that replace us, but if I’m wrong, we could exit stage left.

From Keiko Nannichi’s Asahi Shimbun piece about Hitachi’s new “decision software”:

During a recent demonstration, a prototype was asked whether the ban on casinos should be lifted in Japan.

In favor of the ban, the program said more people would become addicted to casino gambling, and that it is likely to spur the incidence of crime.

It cited job creation and impact on stimulating the economy as grounds for lifting the ban.

The program came up with for and against reasons after it scanned as many as 9.7 million English-language news articles in about 60 seconds.

The program first establishes the theme of the question asked and then gathers related articles. It then locates passages describing reasons and grounds for and against the casino industry and compiles and reads texts on both positions.

The program can be applied to many fields as more data become available in various fields, according to Hitachi.

For example, the AI program could perform a similar task in assisting doctors on deciding whether to proceed with surgery if electronic data on patients and relevant research literature are presented.•

 

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“I’ve Seen How Quickly New Roles Can Appear And Disappear”

September 10, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Education now is largely preparation for a world that won’t exist on graduation day, and it’s not entirely the fault of our learning system. No one can really pinpoint where to from here, not with robotics and AI moving forward in a rapid but unpredictable manner. It’s difficult to learn to dance on a moving floor. Professions can rise and fall in a day, relatively speaking.

In a Fast Company piece, Ryan Holmes offers prescriptions which aren’t new but are the best we currently have: a more free-range education based on the Montessori method and guaranteed basic income. An excerpt:

White-collar roles once thought to be the exclusive domain of human beings could also end up on the chopping block. The first to go, according to the experts Pew surveyed, include paralegals, bookkeepers, transcriptionists, and medical secretaries. The widespread use of DIY tax and finance software and automatic transcription tools like Siri only hints at the changes to come in these sectors. The important thing to note is that these jobs aren’t just repetitive mechanical functions. They require an ability to learn and adapt to new information. And this is precisely why the coming AI revolution is so scary.

I’ve seen how quickly new roles can appear and disappear even in my own sector, social media. Just a few years ago, “social media manager” was one of the most in-demand job functions on the career site Indeed.com. Then social media management tools—including those made by my company, Hootsuite—became more widespread and easy to use. Social media use has increased exponentially since then, but demand for dedicated social media managers hasn’t kept pace. This is still a critical role in large organizations, but for many businesses, ever more sophisticated technology has transformed social media from a discrete job into something that people all across an organization can do. …

Promoting creativity and encouraging independent thinking might help us stay ahead of job losses in the short term. But in the long term, advanced robots may well be able to execute even some of these uniquely “human” functions better than we can. Here we’re getting into the realm of “strong” or “full” AI—machines that aren’t just able to learn basic tasks but can master pretty much anything. If you’re a futurist, this is when talk of the “singularity” comes into the picture—the moment when computers can make themselves smarter, leading to capabilities that match, and then quickly exceed, our own.•

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“In Her Prime, She Didn’t Have Casual Readers”

September 10, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Reassessment–a chastening, even–often attends the publication of a biography, especially in the cases of writers or politicians. Joan Didion’s received a surprising number of calls for impeachment with the publication of Tracy Daugherty’s book about her.

I’ve never been a fan of Play It As It Lays (leave the smut to the professionals, please), but Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album are sensational (in the best sense of the word). Yes, Didion was a fashion-magazine veteran savvy enough to wear cool sunglasses and pose at the wheel of her Stingray, but her efforts at auto-iconography don’t even rate when compared to, say, Hunter S. Thompson’s. Since they both had the chops, who even cares?

A lot of the backlash stems from the then-aphasiac author’s depiction of California as haywire during the ’60s and ’70s. Her home state, that traitor! Sure, a big-picture take of the fantasia that is California can’t completely satisfy, and perhaps her portrait flattered East Coasters, but maybe most disturbing is that she did land on numerous and troubling truths of that place in that time. Although some will argue that these were mere distortions.

From a very well-written Barnes & Noble review of Daugherty’s bio by Tom Carson, a self-described Didion skeptic:

In her prime, she didn’t have casual readers; her gift for imposing her sensibility on events didn’t permit it. The paradox of The Year of Magical Thinking‘s success was that it introduced her to a nonliterary audience largely unaware that she’d been generating intimations of morbidity, desolation, and the existential jitters out of pretty much any topic put in front of her, from 1968’s career-defining essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem on. When “California” still blended the worst of heaven and the best of hell in Noo Yawk intellectuals’ minds, no other writer matched native daughter Didion at being the anti−Beach Boys.

In her home state’s very entertaining transformation from freakish American exotica to the place lit by rockets’ pink glare that the other forty-nine all try to be, she’s a pivotal figure: the last West Coast chronicler to make a career of insisting that where she came from was special, strange, and always latently monstrous. That happened to be precisely the view her culturally unnerved audience wanted endorsed at the time, but Didion also invited derision by treating her perpetually threatened morale as the ultimate gauge of how badly the twentieth century was botching its job. In a memorable hit piece, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison called her “a neurasthenic Cher.” Pauline Kael read Didion’s “ridiculously swank” 1970 novel Play It as It Lays “between bouts of disbelieving giggles.” Maybe not insignificantly, she tends to drive other woman writers up the wall — especially if, like Kael, they’re California gals themselves — more than men, who usually flip for her solemn tension.•

__________________________________

In the 1970s, Tom Brokaw profiled Didion, when she still called California home.

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“I Think That American Exceptionalism Will Be The Death Of Us”

September 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Film, Politics | Permalink

More than any other reason, Donald Trump has supporters–a loud minority, no matter what he says–because some Americans feel awful and want to stamp their feet and say they’re great. That’s what people do when they’re at their worst, their most bitter. Easier to do that than seek real solutions.

Michael Moore is releasing a new documentary about American militarism, the brilliantly titled Where to Invade Next, and sat for a Q&A with the Vice staff. (They’ve labeled it an “exclusive” because Moore is famously shy and probably won’t do any more press for the film.) I interviewed Moore years ago and he’s a nice, bright guy, though I don’t agree with his political purity. That’s what led him to support Ralph Nader in 2000, in the ludicrous belief that there was no difference Bush and Gore. It’s what drove Moore to lambaste the Affordable Care Act, a flawed piece of legislation I’ll agree, but a marked improvement and a huge step in the right direction. Whether it’s some demanding exceptionalism or others accepting only perfection, it’s puzzling when adults see the world in only black and white.

An excerpt from Vice:

Question:

But don’t you also think that the country has to be open to introspection? The narrative of American exceptionalism—the idea that this is the best, bravest, most free country ever—to me suggests a culture that is not introspective. Do you think Americans are introspective?

Michael Moore:

Well, I think that American exceptionalism will be the death of us. It’s almost like saying we don’t really need to find a cure for cancer ’cause we’re big enough and brave enough to suck it up and get through it. It’s the sort of belief that we’re on top when we’re not.

Question:

What do you think politicians are trying to say when they talk about American exceptionalism?

Michael Moore:

They’re trying to make people feel good, who deep down inside don’t feel good… In America we keep saying, “We’re number one, we’re number one,” and it’s at the point now where we need to think about who we are really trying to convince.

The facts don’t bear it out. We’re not number one in education, we’re not number one in mass transit, we’re not number one in health care, we’re not number one in… name it, you know?

Question:

So is your film documenting the death of the American dream?

Michael Moore:

I think you could say that about my earlier films, but I think that that so-called dream is already dead. And people know it. But they also really realize that it’s also just what it says it was: a dream. It wasn’t the American reality. It was a dream. And the dream has become a nightmare for millions of people because they’re not going to get the life that their parents had, and they know their kids are not going to get to have the life that they’ve had.•

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“Political Orders Change”

September 9, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Can Homo sapiens survive climate change, the long recovery process that will follow it and become a thriving multi-planet species? Not without huge changes.

In an excellent Nautilus interview astrobiologist David Grinspoon conducted with writer Kim Stanley Robinson, the sci-fi author discusses how humans can endure the Anthropocene. Robinson believes it will require a global economic system with ecology at its heart. Hard to imagine that shift, even with a planetary Easter Island in our eyes. Perhaps when it’s even clearer that there’s no other choice we’ll make the right one?

One exchange:

David Grinspoon: 

So, are we talking evolution or revolution? Do we need to escape from path dependence and start anew?

Kim Stanley Robinson: 

No, we have to alter the system we already have, because like an animal with evolutionary constraints, we can’t change everything and start from scratch. But what we could do is reconstruct regulations on the existing global economic system. For this, we would need to wrench capitalism so that the global rules of the World Bank, etc., required ecological sustainability as their main criterion. That way, prices would shift to match their true costs. Burning carbon would cost more than it does now, and clean energy would become cheaper than burning carbon. This would address the most pressing part of our crisis, but finding a replacement for the market to allocate goods and price them is not easy.

As we enter this new mass extinction event, at some point there is going to be a global civilization response that will try to deal with it: try to cope, survive, and repair landscapes and ecosystems. The scientific method and democratic politics are going to be the crucial tools, I’d say. For them to work, we need universal justice and education because we need active and well-educated citizens who are empowered and live at adequacy.

From where we are now, this looks pretty hard, but I think that’s because capitalism as we know it is represented as natural, entrenched, and immutable. None of that is true. It’s a political order and political orders change. What we want is to remember that our system is constructed for a purpose, and so in need of constant fixing and new tries.•

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“The Automobile Just Isn’t That Important To People’s Lives Anymore”

September 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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American auto sales have ticked up since the beginning of our unbalanced economic recovery, but teens are no longer rushing to get licenses and become owners, which sends a mixed message about the idea that we’re passed peak-car, an idea which began reverberating in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. 

The belief was that smartphones, not cars or motorcycles, were now the tools of freedom, and that’s true, but the changes also have to do with the flattening of the middle class, the skyrocketing of college-tuition costs and the emergence of the Gig Economy.

Certainly the sector is bracing for a radical reimagining, with driverless cars in development and more powerful companies hoping to enter the already robust rideshare sector. The auto industry might hope the shift away from purchases are more fashion than fundamental, but for that to be true two major trends–the rush toward urban living and the proliferation of mobile devices–would have to be reversed. And that’s not happening.

One caveat to all this is we may have passed peak-car only according to the rules imposed by Big Auto. 3-D printers might reawaken the want for wheels if costs fall precipitously and vehicles become green and highly customizable.

From Marc Fisher’s Washington Post article “Cruising Toward Oblivion“:

For nearly all of the first century of automobile travel, getting your license meant liberation from parental control, a passport to the open road. Today, only half of millennials bother to get their driver’s licenses by age 18. Car culture, the 20th-century engine of the American Dream, is an old guy’s game.

“The automobile just isn’t that important to people’s lives anymore,” says Mike Berger, a historian who studies the social effect of the car. “The automobile provided the means for teenagers to live their own lives. Social media blows any limits out of the water. You don’t need the car to go find friends.”

Much of the emotional meaning of the car, especially to young adults, has transferred to the smartphone, says Mark Lizewskie, executive director of the Antique Automobile Club of America Museum in Hershey, Pa. “Instead of Ford versus Chevy, it’s Apple versus Android, and instead of customizing their ride, they customize their phones with covers and apps,” he says. “You express yourself through your phone, whereas lately, cars have become more like appliances, with 100,000-mile warranties.”

The number of vehicles on American roads soared every year until the recession hit in 2008. Then the number plummeted. Recently, it’s crept back up. Similarly, the number of drivers has leveled off. …

No, it’s the economy, stupid, some car industry analysts and executives say. The recession hit this generation just as it was about to put down roots. Fewer jobs meant less money, which translated into an inability to buy, insure or maintain a car.

Now, as the economy bounces back, auto sales are up 4 percent in the first half of this year. Americans are choosing big vehicles again. Thanks in part to low gas prices, sales of SUVs and light trucks are up. Sedans, subcompacts, hybrids and electrics are down.

“This is all actually economics, not preferences,” says Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit group funded by government and industry grants. When the cost of owning a car drops below 10 percent of income, “young people will stop telling pollsters they can do without cars. You say you’re not interested in owning something if you can’t afford it,” he argues.•

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“Drones Are Set To Become A Defining Feature Of This Century”

September 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The sluggishness of legislation to keep pace with drone development isn’t a surprise, but it’s still worrisome. Looking back to the Montgolfier brothers’ 18th-century experimentation with hot-air ballooning and forward to a time when the drone is ubiquitous, Gbenga Oduntan of the Conversation wonders about the future of international regulation, a thorny enterprise for sure. An excerpt:

Drones are set to become a defining feature of this century. Thousands are already in operation in most developed countries worldwide – and that is likely to grow to hundreds of thousands as drones of different shapes and sizes are deployed by the media, emergency services, scientists, farmers, sports enthusiasts, hobbyists, photographers, the armed forces and government agencies.

Eventually commercial uses will dwarf all others. Amazon promises to deliver purchases within 30 minutes via delivery drones. Domino’s Pizza has staged hot pizza drone delivery. More than 20 industries are approved to fly commercial drones in the US alone, and developing countries are following suit.

The question is, is this boom in drones moving faster than the law? How to fit such a proliferation of drones into the current regulations? The answers will need to be written into national and international laws quickly in order to govern an increasingly busy airspace. Many existing laws may need to be tweaked, including those governing cyber-security, stalking, privacy and human rights legislation, insurance, contract and commercial law, even the laws of war.•

“When You Come Out Of It, It Feels Like Reality Isn’t Real”

September 9, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

vrhelmet7

I don’t agree with Elon Musk that there’ll be less physical movement in the future because of Virtual Reality, not if we’re measuring step for step and gesture for gesture. We will likely see fewer miles traveled, however. Business trips, for instance, will be radically changed by VR. Perhaps, as J.G. Ballard predicted nearly four decades ago, everyone is staying home.

From Kia Makarechi at Vanity Fair:

“It’s quite transformative,” Musk said. “You really feel like you’re there, and then when you come out of it, it feels like reality isn’t real.”

“I think we’ll see less physical movement in the future, as a result of the virtual-reality stuff,” Musk said.

As video games get more lifelike and incorporate technologies such as haptic suits, Musk noted, “it becomes, beyond a certain resolution, indistinguishable from reality.”

The entrepreneur and futurist then offered a twist: “There are likely to be millions, maybe billions of such simulations. So, then, what are the odds that we’re actually in base reality? Isn’t it one in billions?”•

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“The Trainee Wasn’t A Fresh-Faced J-School Graduate”

September 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In both the CBS News video I embedded yesterday and in the recent Nieman Reports article by Celeste LeCompte, an argument is made that the automation of newsrooms, a process that began back in the 1970s, is a good thing that’ll free up the hands of journalists to do more important work. Well, that’s part of the story.

Seasoned reporters who could do more than an inverted triangle piece always did so. This arrangement isn’t a new occurrence courtesy of the Second Machine Age. Those small-scale stories were mostly a training ground for cubs to practice a formula and grow beyond it. Software taking on this task will mean fewer hires and less-on-the-job learning, ultimately providing a smaller pool of potential talent and fewer eyes, ears and voices–at least on the professional end of things. And that, of course, doesn’t even begin to speak to the missteps, ethical and otherwise, that will occur.

I’m not saying such software isn’t a useful tool; it certainly is. But as is always the case with technology, something’s lost as something’s gained.

The Nieman Reports opening:

Philana Patterson, assistant business editor for the Associated Press, has been covering business since the mid-1990s. Before joining the AP, she worked as a business reporter for both local newspapers and Dow Jones Newswires and as a producer at Bloomberg. “I’ve written thousands of earnings stories, and I’ve edited even more,” she says. “I’m very familiar with earnings.” Patterson manages more than a dozen staffers on the business news desk, and her expertise landed her on an AP stylebook committee that sets the guidelines for AP’s earnings stories. So last year, when the AP needed someone to train its newest newsroom member on how to write an earnings story, Patterson was an obvious choice.

The trainee wasn’t a fresh-faced j-school graduate, responsible for covering a dozen companies a quarter, however. It was a piece of software called Wordsmith, and by the end of its first year on the job, it would write more stories than Patterson had in her entire career. Patterson’s job was to get it up to speed.

Patterson’s task is becoming increasingly common in newsrooms. Journalists at ProPublica, Forbes, The New York Times, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Yahoo, and others are using algorithms to help them tell stories about business and sports as well as education, inequality, public safety, and more. For most organizations, automating parts of reporting and publishing efforts is a way to both reduce reporters’ workloads and to take advantage of new data resources. In the process, automation is raising new questions about what it means to encode news judgment in algorithms, how to customize stories to target specific audiences without making ethical missteps, and how to communicate these new efforts to audiences.

Automation is also opening up new opportunities for journalists to do what they do best: tell stories that matter. With new tools for discovering and understanding massive amounts of information, journalists and publishers alike are finding new ways to identify and report important, very human tales embedded in big data.

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“I Fear That The IRS Doesn’t Have The Courage To Take On Scientology”

September 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Film, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It might seem strange to call a filmmaker a writer of perfect essays, but that’s an apt description of Alex Gibney. The director consistently turns out potent work that brims with intelligence and never loses its precision despite the great passion propelling it. Having just followed up a documentary about one popular storyteller (L. Ron Hubbard) with a film about another one (Steve Jobs), Gibney did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Have any Scientologists done anything in retribution for Going Clear to you personally? I thought it was a great documentary by the way.

Alex Gibney:

They have tried to make my life uncomfortable through online harassment and occasional in-person confrontations. But it’s what they are doing to the subjects of the film that is really terrible. Those who appeared have reported harassment by PIs, economic and physical threats and lots of on-line vilification.

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Question:

My question is about Going Clear. At the end of the film, you display a list of high ranking Scientologists who refused to be interviewed or never responded to your interview requests. Among those is Tom Cruise and Captain David Miscavige. What would you like to have asked these men, if you had been given the opportunity?

Alex Gibney:

I would have asked them both about specific aspects of the story. For example, I would have asked Cruise detailed questions about the Nazanin Boniadi episode. I also would have asked him how it is that he can defend the allegations of human rights abuses that have been confirmed by so many. Re: Miscavige, I would have asked him detailed questions about the battle against the IRS and also about the hole and the Cruise wiretap and so much much more. I find it instructive that Miscavige won’t permit anyone to ask him questions.

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Question:

Do you see Scientology continuing to have tax exempt status, or do you think the “religion” is on the way out?

Alex Gibney:

I fear that the IRS doesn’t have the courage to take on Scientology. I think they should lose their exemption because they are really a money-making organization disguised as a religion and because the church has an appalling human rights record. Why should we subsidize that? I wrote a piece about this in the L.A. Times.

Question:

Isn’t that pretty much true of all organized religions?

Alex Gibney:

Depends. I don’t have any problem with subsidizing anti-poverty programs. But I think the exemption should be based on that – which in theory it is supposed to be – rather than on belief in a deity.

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Question:

What do you make of Pope Francis and his tenure as Pontiff? Shockingly, MEA MAXIMA CULPA gave me more respect for Pope Benedict, and I lost a lot of respect for Pope John Paul II.

Alex Gibney:

I am truly impressed by Pope Francis. I love his principled stands on the growing disparity between rich and poor and the destruction of our environment. He has changed things more than I ever thought possible and acted as a moral force for change for everyone. I find it appalling that prominent wealthy Catholics suggest that he should not involve himself in economic issues. If a Pope can’t talk about morality and economic justice, he shouldn’t be Pope.

____________________________

Question:

What were you most surprised to learn about Steve Jobs?

Alex Gibney:

Three things. 1) I was fascinated to find out about his interest in zen. What CEO has a monk as a spiritual advisor? 2) I was surprised to learn how much the teams at Apple took care of invention of the actual products. Steve was more of a storyteller.

Question:

What’s number 3?

Alex Gibney:

Good question.•

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“I’m Number One With Hispanics”

September 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

The Economist interview with Donald Trump isn’t as woeful as the Maureen Dowd one for the New York Times, but it still isn’t very good. There are precious few follow-up questions to counter the subject’s usual nonsense about race, global politics and his biography and nothing at all about how consistently and drastically wrong this self-styled economic genius has been about money matters in recent years. It seems the publication was happy to have a Q&A with someone so prominently in the news and performed like a matador, stepping aside to let the bull rush on through. When someone’s made the type of odious racist and xenophobic statements Trump has, sounding deeply fascistic in the process, either do a thorough job or don’t do it at all. 

Two exchanges follow.

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The Economist:

If the terms of trade can be changed, as you say, why haven’t today’s politicians of either party done it?

Donald Trump:

Because they’re grossly incompetent. And they are not negotiators. And they are grossly incompetent. And I have friends from China – by the way I love China. I love Japan. I have people that buy my apartments, I have people that work for me from China. I love Mexico. I mean, Mexico, I have thousands of people from Mexico that work for me. Thousands. Hispanics. In fact a poll just came out, Public Policy Polling, where I am leading with Hispanics, can you believe that, after what you have been hearing? I’m leading, I’m number one with Hispanics.

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The Economist:

You use the phrase “silent majority” that Nixon used in 1969. Do you hear echoes of that time now?

Donald Trump:

No, it doesn’t echo. I’ll tell you what. I’ve heard the term, but for the last 20 years I really haven’t heard the term. But I went to a rally in Alabama, and there were 31,000 people there, you’ve seen it, you’ve read about it. It was the largest, the most amount of people – a lot of people say in the history of primaries, because you know, I mean, you are talking about…certainly in the history of early primaries. Because 31,000 people. It was going to be in a hotel, 500 people, and then it turned out to be 10,000 people and then it turned… so we went from a hotel to a convention centre to a football stadium. So we had 31,000 people and it was amazing. And I looked and I said, this is the silent majority. Though they weren’t silent, because they want to see proper change, not Obama change. And what happened is, I thought of that term, I just said the words silent majority. Now, it hasn’t been used in a long time because I guess it is associated somewhat with Nixon. But honestly it’s two words, that when you put together describe what is happening very well. There’s a group of people, great people in this country that have been disenfranchised. Their country has been taken away from them. Things have happened, having to do with many things including political correctness, where people are so worried about being politically correct that they are unable to function. And with me, hey, look I’m politically correct, I went to a great school, I was a good student, look, I’m a smart guy. I built a great company. I did The Art of the Deal which is the number one selling business book of all time, I did many other best-sellers. You know, I did 12 best-sellers. I did The Apprentice, which was one of the most successful television shows of the last 25 years. You know, all that stuff. But the words “silent majority”, the words “silent majority” are very descriptive of what is happening with me.•

 

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“New Forms Of Slavery Are The Hallmark Of These Wealthy Countries”

September 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

You can find in President Trump’s support the desire for an illusory America that will never be. The very complex problems which the candidate is ill-prepared to address have been dutifully avoided. There’s no discussion of automation vanishing jobs. There’s no talk about how China is the world leader in cancer rates and air pollution as partial payment for its hellbent shift into capitalism. You’ll hear from Trump that Dubai has such beautiful, modern airports and lavish golf courses because that state’s leaders are much smarter than ours are, but there’s no mention of their willingness to use quasi-slave labor. 

In a London Review of Books piece about the ongoing refugee crisis, Slavoj Žižek examines the need for a nouveau forms of slavery in the contemporary global economy. These people are still cheaper than machines, for now.

An excerpt:

New forms of slavery are the hallmark of these wealthy countries: millions of immigrant workers on the Arabian peninsula are deprived of elementary civil rights and freedoms; in Asia, millions of workers live in sweatshops organised like concentration camps. But there are examples closer to home. On 1 December 2013 a Chinese-owned clothing factory in Prato, near Florence, burned down, killing seven workers trapped in an improvised cardboard dormitory. ‘No one can say they are surprised at this,’ Roberto Pistonina, a local trade unionist, remarked, ‘because everyone has known for years that, in the area between Florence and Prato, hundreds if not thousands of people are living and working in conditions of near slavery.’ There are more than four thousand Chinese-owned businesses in Prato, and thousands of Chinese immigrants are believed to be living in the city illegally, working as many as 16 hours a day for a network of workshops and wholesalers.

The new slavery is not confined to the suburbs of Shanghai, or Dubai, or Qatar. It is in our midst; we just don’t see it, or pretend not to see it. Sweated labour is a structural necessity of today’s global capitalism. Many of the refugees entering Europe will become part of its growing precarious workforce, in many cases at the expense of local workers, who react to the threat by joining the latest wave of anti-immigrant populism.

In escaping their war-torn homelands, the refugees are possessed by a dream. Refugees arriving in southern Italy do not want to stay there: many of them are trying to get to Scandinavia. The thousands of migrants in Calais are not satisfied with France: they are ready to risk their lives to enter the UK. Tens of thousands of refugees in Balkan countries are desperate to get to Germany. They assert their dreams as their unconditional right, and demand from the European authorities not only proper food and medical care but also transportation to the destination of their choice. There is something enigmatically utopian in this demand: as if it were the duty of Europe to realise their dreams – dreams which, incidentally, are out of reach of most Europeans (surely a good number of Southern and Eastern Europeans would prefer to live in Norway too?). It is precisely when people find themselves in poverty, distress and danger – when we’d expect them to settle for a minimum of safety and wellbeing – that their utopianism becomes most intransigent. But the hard truth to be faced by the refugees is that ‘there is no Norway,’ even in Norway.•

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“It Needs To Participate In This Change”

September 8, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Apple has managed Steve Jobs’ legacy so well that people no longer mention the company has failed to deliver the next killer product after the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Unless, of course, you count the Apple Watch, and if you do, you’re alone. The ridiculous sum earned from the middle of the Jobs 2.0 trio of inventions has overwhelmed all talk of the company losing its edge. For now, at least. 

Tim Cook et. al. realize that won’t always be the case, so like the rich company it is, Apple is pouring money into major categories which seem poised to play a major role in commerce this century: transportation and AI. Those, of course, are also two sectors that are going to coalesce. 

Excerpts follow from reports on Apple’s growing interest in autos and machine learning.

_________________________

From Chris Mims’ WSJ piece, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting an Apple Car“:

Technology is set to radically transform everything from who owns automobiles to how they work, and much of this change is driven by the very mobile devices that are Apple’s bread and butter. If Apple is serious about maintaining its gargantuan size, it needs to participate in this change, even if it’s just at the level of experimenting with how it can integrate its software and hardware into the transportation system of the future. Even if, as Apple has often said about its ventures into television, cars start out as just a “hobby.”

Take self-driving cars. There’s plenty of evidence, from hiring and patents to an open records request by U.K. newspaper the Guardian, that Apple is at least thinking about building them.

Estimates for when self-driving technology will be ready for widespread adoption range from the wildly optimistic—five years, according to the head of self-driving technology at Google Inc.—to decades after, perhaps even somewhere beyond 2040.

That’s an eternity in technology years.•

_________________________

From Julia Love’s Reuters piece about Apple collecting AI talent:

Apple has ramped up its hiring of artificial intelligence experts, recruiting from PhD programs, posting dozens of job listings and greatly increasing the size of its AI staff, a review of hiring sites suggests and numerous sources confirm.

The goal is to challenge Google in an area the Internet search giant has long dominated: smartphone features that give users what they want before they ask.

As part of its push, the company is currently trying to hire at least 86 more employees with expertise in the branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, according to a recent analysis of Apple job postings. The company has also stepped up its courtship of machine-learning PhD’s, joining Google, Amazon, Facebook and others in a fierce contest, leading academics say. …

While Apple helped pioneer mobile intelligence–it’s Siri introduced the concept of a digital assistant to consumers in 2011–the company has since lost ground to Google and Microsoft, whose digital assistants have become more adept at learning about users and helping them with their daily routines.

As users increasingly demand phones that understand them and tailor services accordingly, Apple cannot afford to let the gap persist, experts say. The iPhone generated almost two-thirds of Apple’s revenue in the most recent quarter, so even a small advantage for Android poses a threat.

“What seemed like science fiction only four years ago has become an expectation,” said venture capitalist Gary Morgenthaler, who was one of the original investors in Siri before it was acquired by Apple in 2010.•

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“At Least A Few Uninitiated Readers Must Have Wondered Just Who This Pretentious Reptile Was”

September 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

The band played on as the Titanic went down, and Julian Niccolini, Managing Partner of the Four Seasons, may likewise sink with the ship.

The hoary bastion of power lunches for privileged New Yorkers is soon to shutter, and Niccolini will either reopen it downtown or be doing a stretch in prison. That’s because the infamously “handsy” proprietor was arrested earlier this year for the sexual abuse of a woman who attended a party at the dated establishment. 

In a very good GQ article, Robert Draper sees the fall of Four Seasons and its unruly ruler in terms of a generational shift, when a passé concept of white, male privilege ran up against new table manners.

An excerpt: 

Whichever room you choose, you’ll notice two things. First is that the food is exorbitant (over $70 for some entrées) and often lackluster. A wild snapper with corn and guajillo sauce I had at lunch seemed a tired throwback to the nouveau-southwestern craze a couple of decades back. The ahi tuna burger from the bar menu was resoundingly inedible. Such trifles, as even restaurant critics who have consistently praised The Four Seasons acknowledge, are ultimately beside the point. You come here to bask in the spaciousness of what Jackie Onassis liked to call “the cathedral.” You come to take your rightful place in the pantheon and to be seen occupying that choice real estate. About a thousand faithful Four Seasons customers have a “house account”—meaning the bill typically goes directly to their companies. My old boss, former GQ editor-in-chief Art Cooper, had one such arrangement with The Four Seasons. According to Julian, Art spent about $200,000 a year at his favorite restaurant and never once saw a receipt—all the way up until June of 2003, when he rose from his corner booth, lumbered over to a barstool, succumbed to a stroke, and died at the age of 65.

That’s the second thing you’ll notice about The Four Seasons: Its clientele is, eh, not youthful. Still, it’s possible to look down from Siberia upon the octo- and nona-genarians and to imagine them as younger, hungrier, Bonfire of the Vanities versions of their present-day selves.

Julian Niccolini was present at their ascension, and they at his. On the subway to work each morning, he studied the Times, the Daily News, and Women’s Wear Daily to find out which celebrities were in town, what schemes the ultra-wealthy were up to, and who was cavorting with whom. The Grill Room’s seating chart became Julian’s interpretation of America’s pecking order. Even the richest of patrons would come to learn that this was Julian’s roost. As longtime customer Bill White, the CEO of the development firm Constellations Group, puts it, “The Four Seasons is one place where the customer isn’t always right.”

Julian’s reputation as a host persisted to the point that he was eventually penning columns in Gotham, Details, and the New York Observer, where he’d flatter this or that “beautiful” customer while gossiping about others (Bethenny Frankel urinating in a wine bucket). He also dispensed wisdom that ranged from the practical (like when to wear a linen suit) to the prurient (like what to do when a woman hits on you when your wife is standing nearby). At least a few uninitiated readers must have wondered just who this pretentious reptile was.•

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“Many Workers Take Them By Necessity, Not Choice”

September 7, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Gig Economy has been on the margins of America, but the fear is that it’s going mainstream. If technology, which hasn’t proved to be the worker’s friend, allows contingent employment to become the norm, we really aren’t arranged to handle that new reality. President Obama has been a champion of Labor, particularly in his second term, but he’s chastening elements of a system that may not continue. A piecemeal economy, if pervasive, will need fresh answers.

From Katie Johnston at the Boston Globe:

To be sure, technology has helped make workers more productive. But they are reaping few of the rewards that come from producing more in less time, and at lower costs. From 2000 to 2014, net productivity rose by nearly 22 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. The gain in hourly compensation during that time? Less than 2 percent.

Nearly all the benefits of the surge in productivity have gone to top executives, in the form of bigger pay packages; to owners, as higher profits; and to investors, as better returns, the Economic Policy Institute said.

The rise of what’s being called the gig economy gives people the flexibility to work when and where they want — a great advantage for many workers. But few of these jobs come with benefits, or a guarantee of steady work. Many workers take them by necessity, not choice.

These types of arrangements are growing, and not only with so-called sharing economy firms such as the ride-hailing service Uber or TaskRabbit, which finds labor for daily chores. A recent study by the Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog agency, found that as many as 40 percent of employed Americans in 2010 were contingent workers — part-timers, temps, day laborers, or independent contractors — up from 35 percent in 2006.•

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“There Will Be Another Rapidly Evolving And Advancing Intelligence Besides That Of Machines: Our Own”

September 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

There’s a decent chance that we become the “monsters” we fear.

Superintelligent machines that become our conquerors are often said to be on the horizon, but I think they’re a further distance away. When we do get close enough to see them, they may resemble us. They will be another version of ourselves, a new “human” resulting from a souped-up evolution of our own design. We will be the end of us. Not soon, but someday.

In Stephen Hsu’s excellent Nautilus essay about a co-evolution of carbon and silicon, he envisions a “future with a diversity of both human and machine intelligences.” An excerpt:

By 2050, there will be another rapidly evolving and advancing intelligence besides that of machines: our own. The cost to sequence a human genome has fallen below $1,000, and powerful methods have been developed to unravel the genetic architecture of complex traits such as human cognitive ability. Technologies already exist which allow genomic selection of embryos during in vitro fertilization—an embryo’s DNA can be sequenced from a single extracted cell. Recent advances such as CRISPR allow highly targeted editing of genomes, and will eventually find their uses in human reproduction.

The potential for improved human intelligence is enormous. Cognitive ability is influenced by thousands of genetic loci, each of small effect. If all were simultaneously improved, it would be possible to achieve, very roughly, about 100 standard deviations of improvement, corresponding to an IQ of over 1,000. We can’t imagine what capabilities this level of intelligence represents, but we can be sure it is far beyond our own. Cognitive engineering, via direct edits to embryonic human DNA, will eventually produce individuals who are well beyond all historical figures in cognitive ability. By 2050, this process will likely have begun.

These two threads—smarter people and smarter machines—will inevitably intersect. Just as machines will be much smarter in 2050, we can expect that the humans who design, build, and program them will also be smarter.•

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“They Have Created Forces That Are More Powerful Than Governments And Banks”

September 6, 2015 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Parallel to Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs doc is Danny Boyle’s fictional take on the subject, the mercifully Kutcher-less exploration of the motivations of the Apple founder and his peers in Silicon Valley. In a Guardian piece by Catherine Shoard, the director discusses his movie at Telluride in somewhat though not overwhelmingly hyperbolic terms. The opening:

The director Danny Boyle has called for more films to be made about the creators of influential new technology. Speaking at the Telluride film festival, where his Aaron Sorkin-scripted biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is winning largely rave reviews, Boyle said that those in the movie industry had a responsibility to examine the import of people such as Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook creator who was the subject of Sorkin’s 2010 hit, The Social Network.

“These films have to be made,” he said. “Benign as they may seem, they have created forces that are more powerful than governments and banks. And they don’t seem motivated by money. I find that extraordinary. It’s a paradigm shift we seem blissfully unaware of. They’re not interested in money but in data. Our data.”

The film is largely an interiors piece, unfolding in real time in the 40 minutes before three key Apple product launches: the Mac in 1984, the NeXT box in 1988, once Jobs has split from Apple, and the iMac in 1998, when he’s back in business with the company. Yet despite the offer of tax breaks from countries such as England and Hungary, Boyle was insistent that the film not be shot far from Silicon Valley. “San Francisco is the Bethlehem of the second industrial revolution,” he said. “It’s where the extraordinary forces emerged that now rule our lives.”•

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