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“Newspapers Would Openly Solicit Companies For Paid Advertising Designed To Look Like Straight News”

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

Not even during the second half of 20th-century America, when owning a print-media organ was tantamount to a license to mint money, did we see a brief, shining moment when native advertising was considered so unseemly that it simply couldn’t be done. Oh, it was done. Today’s foundering news industry’s penchant for more and bigger advertorials is merely a deeper embrace of a practice that’s always been. 

From Matt Novak’s Paleofuture riposte to John Oliver’s very funny piece about the separation of church and state:

“One of the most interesting articles on the history of advertisements disguised as news is probably Linda Lawson’s 1988 paper, ‘Advertisements Masquerading as News in Turn-of-the-Century American Periodicals.’

Lawson explains just how prevalent advertorials were over a century ago. Back then they were called ‘reading notices:’

One such marketing technique was the reading notice. Assuming that people would be more likely to read news stories and editorials than display advertisements, businesses began writing advertisements in the form of news copy. Newspaper and magazine editors agreed to print them for money. 

Lawson cites over a dozen specific cases of advertising content appearing as editorial at the turn of the 20th century, and meticulously documents the many fights over the ethics involved. Newspapers would openly solicit companies for paid advertising designed to look like straight news, demanding much higher rates than traditional ads. Lawson even describes an instance in 1886 when the New York Times asked for and received $1,200 from the Bell Telephone Company in exchange for positive coverage.

Not long after this minor scandal at the Times, New York’s newspaper of record became the harshest critic of accepting money for editorial coverage.”

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“The Robocar Might Create Something Akin To A ‘Neighbourhood Elevator'”

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

Brad Templeton, Google driverless-division consultant, has written a new essay addressing urban density in a time of robocars. An excerpt:

“In today’s cities, there is a ‘downtown’ but there are many other neighbourhood centers, based around an interesting urban street. On that street are shops, restaurants and more, and it is pleasant and productive to walk around them. Houses near these streets are highly valued, and within a block of the cool street real estate values soar. Real estate ads all advertise these places as ‘steps from…’ the cool street. These local centers are space a mile or so apart in medium density urban spaces, a bit more in suburban areas. For those who live more than about 10 minutes, the cool street is more distant, and a destination for walks rather than the place you live.

When you have skyscraper density, as in downtowns and most of Manhattan, there is much greater density of retail streets, and everybody is close to neighbourhood activity and shopping. You just step out of your unit and take the elevator down to be right in the thick of things — a very walkable space. But most cities consist of lots of land with packed single family homes and townhomes, or apartment blocks 2-3 stories high.

The robocar might create something akin to a ‘neighbourhood elevator.’ Imagine a house 3/4 of a mile from the local cool street. In the house is a button. You might press the button and go out. Not that long after you get to the curb, a small robocar pulls up. This is a simple, low-speed model that only goes 30mph. It doesn’t have seatbelts, and is tall and not very aerodynamic. You might just stand in it, rather than sit. You get in and it starts heading towards your neighbourhood center. If you like, you tell it a more specific destination along the street and it takes you there.”

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“There Is Still No Universally Accepted Definition Of Where Space Begins”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’ve mentioned before how much I love the Internet magazine Aeon, one of the smartest things anywhere. All praise to the site’s co-founders Paul and Bridget Hains, their Deputy Editors Ed Lake and Ross Andersen (who’s also written some of the periodical’s best pieces) and the entire staff.

One excellent new essay is Greg Klerkx’s “Outer Limits,” which points out that “space” has never truly been defined. The opening:

“Any time we embark upon a journey, be it a morning commute or a leisurely day trip, we engage in transition. We are a travelling species, which means transitions are commonplace for us, mundane even. But there are some trips that can still fire the human imagination, and none more so than the journey, experienced only by a lucky few, from the surface of Earth to the beginning of space.

On his 108-minute flight in 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human being in space, reached a peak altitude of 327 kilometres (203 miles), after blasting off the planet atop a mighty Vostok rocket. After launch shook his tiny capsule violently, Gagarin experienced the feeling of weightlessness, and saw the curvature of the Earth first-hand. By all accounts, he crossed the mysterious border between the Earth and space. Or did he? It has been more than half a century since Gagarin’s historic journey, but there is still no universally accepted definition of where space begins.

There is general agreement that ‘space’ starts where the Earth’s physical influence ends or is significantly displaced, but no consensus as to where that line actually lies. Does space begin where the Earth’s atmosphere ends? That would seem sensible, except the atmosphere extends some 800 kilometres above the planet. That would exclude Gagarin’s flight, and the International Space Station (ISS) whose orbit around the Earth is only 400 kilometres high. Earth’s gravity might well seem like another natural candidate for ‘edge of space’ status, but you have to travel 21 million kilometres before our planet’s gravity loses out to other forces, and that’s roughly halfway to Venus.

The International Astronautical Federation marks the beginning of space, for aviation purposes, at the 100-kilometre mark, where the Earth’s atmosphere is so negligible that conventional aircraft cannot travel fast enough to generate aerodynamic lift. There are other, more arbitrary numbers. In the 1960s, 8 US pilots earned their astronaut wings by flying the arrow-shaped X-15 rocket plane above 80 kilometres. In the US, this standard still applies, meaning that any American who flies on one of Virgin Galactic’s private spacecraft will officially become an astronaut.

Recent scientific discoveries have further muddled our terrestrial-celestial border confusion. In 2009, an instrument called the Suprathermal Ion Imager (SII) pinpointed 118 kilometres as the point at which charged particles from space begin to overwhelm the relatively mild particle flow of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. That was the point, researchers argued, where space really begins. Headlines hailing the discovery of the ‘edge of space’ briefly splashed across the media, but the attendant stories were hesitant, bracketing any notions of finality with alternative edge-of-space definitions.”

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“It Struck People As Unnatural”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a Vox post, Matthew Yglesias manages to get excited over time zones, a remnant of the railroad era. He suggests one global time to avoid confusion from a welter of zones that often don’t make sense. An excerpt about what a world would like like post-time zones:

“If the whole world used a single GMT-based time, schedules would still vary. In general most people would sleep when it’s dark out and work when it’s light out. So at 23:00, most of London would be at home or in bed and most of Los Angeles would be at the office. But of course London’s bartenders would probably be at work while some shift workers in LA would be grabbing a nap. The difference from today is that if you were putting together a London-LA conference call at 21:00 there’d be only one possible interpretation of the proposal. A flight that leaves New York at 14:00 and lands in Paris at 20:00 is a six-hour flight, with no need to keep track of time zones. If your appointment is in El Paso at 11:30 you don’t need to remember that it’s in a different time zone than the rest of Texas.

This has always been the underlying logic of the railroad time scheme — clockface times should be abstracted away from considerations of solar position. But the initial introduction of railroad time was controversial. It struck people as unnatural. Today, however, we are very accustomed to the idea that time zone boundaries should be bent for the sake of convenience and practicality. That means we should move to the most convenient and most practical time system of all — a single Earth Time for all of humanity.”

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“It Was The First Time Anyone Had Seen A Computer Like This”

August 6, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Wearable computing, as predicted by an IBM spot 17 years ago. From the commercial’s director, John Allen: “We did this piece for IBM in 1997 or so. It was the first time anyone had seen a computer like this, wearable, almost invisible, elegant and futuristic. In fact, we still haven’t seen anything like this. It was a prototype that had to be signed in and out every time it was transported.”

“We Can Shape The Genetic Future Of Our Species, But Should We?”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I often doubt we have the intelligence to survive as a species without bioenhancement, but one of the downsides of gene manipulation is that that someone, some group, gets to choose what’s best about humans. 

Go to the Guardian to watch a lecture by IVF expert Professor Robert Winston, a bioconservative, who cautions against designer humans. From the lecture’s introduction:

“The question he will address is whether scientists should be given free rein to use advances in molecular biology – in particular our increasing ability to manipulate the genetic blueprint carried by eggs and sperm – to direct the evolution of our species and create Humanity 2.0.

That such a thing will one day be possible is beyond doubt now that geneticists can precisely edit the genome of monkeys. This procedure, and others like it, will allow us to replace faulty or otherwise “undesirable” genes in the human germline with new improved versions of the same gene.

In principle we could design humans to be stronger, smarter and less susceptible to physical and mental illness. It has been suggested, for example, that our genome could be tweaked to make future generations resistant to HIV. We can already edit the DNA in patients’ immune cells to make them less susceptible to the virus.

So we can shape the genetic future of our species, but should we? Is it ethically defensible to determine the genetic fate of people not yet born? “

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“This Is A Kind Of War With A Non-Human Enemy”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The numbers tell us that there’ll likely be another global pandemic someday, the population density always demands it, but it won’t likely be the Ebola virus. That doesn’t mean it’s any less horrifying for the people suffering from it or those treating the patients. Richard Preston, an Ebola expert who’s written on the topic in his book, The Hot Zone, and in the New Yorker, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A trio of exchanges follow.

_______________________

Question:

Is any of the panic surrounding Ebola justified?

Richard Preston:

Not entirely justified. This is a kind of war with a non-human enemy. It is a fairly clever and very aggressive enemy. However, if you are in a jam it is never a good idea to panic. That’s how you lose. The doctors in Africa definitely are not panicking, they are just working 20 hours a day in the fight. And we sure don’t have to panic in the US, we’ve got a strong medical care system.

_______________________

Question:

How can the doctors and nurses prevent themselves from getting the virus as they help others?

Richard Preston:

They haven’t been able to fully protect themselves, doctors and nurses are dying. They’re wearing full protection biohazard suits, but the Ebola wards are just horrifying, 30 Ebola patients with one doctor and one nurse, both in space suits. Conditions are awful in those wards, we need more doctors and nurses – not even a space suit can totally protect you if the ward is really a mess.

_______________________

Question:

What do you think about this experimental serum that we heard about being used on Thursday? Something that is directly contributing to the two Americans’ recovery, or not necessarily the case?

Also, are there any common lasting effects among those that manage to live through Ebola? All I’ve heard about is some joint problems and whatnot, but I would’ve expected there to be much more severe aftereffects.

Richard Preston:

Good q’s – the antibody serum ZMAPP seems to be amazingly effective but we don’t know because it’s only been tried on the two patients. As for aftereffects, i interviewed Dr. Shem Musoke who nearly died of Marburg (close cousin of Ebola) and he told me it took him about a year to recover fully but now he was fine. It’s a crushing disease but if you survive you do recover.•

 

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“I Wouldn’t Be Afraid Of Any Robot Or Mechanical Man”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

When I was noodling around the other day to find a robot image for the piece about the automated 1929 department stores, I came across an illustration of Jack Dempsey squaring off with a life-size bucket of bolts. It was the window dressing of a 1934 Popular Mechanics article in which the former champion, retired by that point, explained that he would always be able to deliver a KO to AI. I don’t know; I think the “Manassa Mauler” would have been in trouble if a robot had hit him in his pretty, pretty nose. 

Anyhow, it booked artificial intelligence and boxing on the same card 35 years before the computerized Ali-Marciano fight. The piece’s opening:

“I CAN whip any mechanical robot that ever has or ever will be made. Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical, maybe you will say it’s just the voice of a ‘has-been,’ but I assure you that neither is true.

I was talking over old times with my friend Captain W. H. Fawcett and during the course of conversation he remarked that undoubtedly mechanical ingenuity has done much to improve the work of many boxers.

‘That’s true,’ I answered, ‘but nothing mechanical will ever be able to whip an honest to goodness boxer. Even right now, despite the fact that I am definitely through with the ring as a fighter, I wouldn’t be afraid of any robot or mechanical man. I could tear it to pieces, bolt by bolt and scatter its brain wheels and cogs all over the canvas.’

The reason is simple: Engineers can build a robot that will possess everything except brains. And without brains no man can ever attain championship class in the boxing game. It is true enough that we have had some rare intellectual specimens in the higher frames of boxing glory, but I can truthfully say that no man ever attained genuine boxing recognition without real headwork.”

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“The Book Is More A Reflection On How All Civilizations Are Doomed To Die”

August 5, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Fake, Science/Tech | Permalink

From Hugh Schofield of the BBC, more about Planet of the Apes novelist Pierre Boulle, who was always mystified by the success of his story about a simian civilization:

“In Boulle’s original book the story is told by two honeymooners holidaying in space, who find a bottle containing a manuscript. It is by a French journalist who tells of his adventures on a planet run by monkeys, where the humans are the dumb animals.

At the end of the account, the journalist arrives back at Orly airport in Paris where he finds the staff… are apes. And there is a kicker when we discover the two honeymooners are themselves chimpanzees.

The one moment the book does not contain is possibly the most memorable point of the film – the discovery at the end of the half-buried Statue of Liberty.

In the film, this communicates the astounding fact that the travellers have fast-forwarded in time, and that they are back on Earth – an Earth devastated by nuclear war, in which the apes have emerged as the new dominant species.

In Boulle’s book, the events take place not on Earth but on a distant planet. (In fact the 2001 film remake by Tim Burton was closer to the book’s plot.)

‘It is a big difference. In the film there is this sense of human responsibility. It is man that has led to the destruction of the planet,’ says Clement Pieyre, who catalogued Boulle’s manuscripts at the French National Library.

‘But the book is more a reflection on how all civilisations are doomed to die. There has been no human fault. It is just that the return to savagery will come about anyway. Everything perishes,’ he says”

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Old Print Article: “Has Sold His Own Skeleton,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

August 5, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"“In school I soon learned to unjoint my head.”

“In school I soon learned to unjoint my head.”

A performer of sorts blessed with extreme double-jointedness was the subject of a profile in the May 11, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, in which he discussed a business arrangement that would not be completed until after his back had cracked for the final time. An excerpt:

“A freak in Barnum’s side show, who is in no sense of the word a fake, is Charles E. Hilliard. He dislocates his joints and replaces them at will to the great astonishment of the many visitors. The most eminent physicians in this and other countries have tried to solve the man’s peculiar gift, but all have failed and it remains as great a puzzle, to himself as well as others, as when he first discovered he could loosen himself, so to speak, without doing any harm or causing any pain. Mr. Hilliard is of medium height, lithe and graceful, and is possessed of his share of manly beauty. An Eagle reporter interviewed this stumbling block to science yesterday and drew from him a life history which is full on incident and novelty.

‘I was born at Martinsburg, W. Va.,’ he began, ‘on August 16, 1857. I grew up to a schooling age the same as any other child. One day–I remember it well–I climbed into an orchard from which little boys were supposed to be excluded, and catching sight of a dog, quickly jumped the fence into the roadway, turning my ankle when I struck the ground. It didn’t hurt any, so I kicked against the fence and snap it back into place again. I went home and scared my parents almost into hysterics by repeating my snap act, and they sent post haste for a doctor. He twisted me and hammered me, and found a lot of new places that could be broken without pain, finally giving up the puzzle with the consoling theory that there was a screw loose somewhere. In school I soon learned to unjoint my head and could write on the blackboard and look squarely at the school at the same time. I always cracked my ankles instead of snapping my fingers to attract the teacher’s attention, and if I found I was being beaten in a foot race I always managed to have a broken leg or twisted foot for ten, or fifteen, minutes as an excuse for having lost. When a bucket of coal was needed my wrist was always dislocated; during harvest time a dislocated knee came in very handy. I couldn’t carry water with a dislocated shoulder nor weed a garden with three broken fingers on each hand, so I managed to have things pretty easy during my childhood. As I grew older I found there were few joints in my body that I could not dislocate and it gradually got to worrying me. I consulted one doctor after another and one word, enigma, gives the result of all their investigations.

‘I now began to get used to being an exhibition through having so many doctors experimenting with me and resolved to accept one of the many offers that kept pouring in upon me to visit medical colleges, throughout this country and England, and after exhibiting for a time before surgeons and students at home, I took an engagement in the Royal College, in London, where they kept me for seven years and yet could tell no more when I left than when I entered. College work pays me the best, I get $150 a week at a college, but I have worked for $75 in a museum just because I wanted a change so much.

“He is married, well educated and a very pleasing conversationalist.”

“He is married, well educated and a very pleasing conversationalist.”

‘By the way I suppose you read in the newspapers a few years ago how I sold my bones. I had received various offers from half a dozen cranks scattered over the country from $1,000 to $4,000 for my body after death, but I paid no attention to them. Finally, one day while I was exhibiting at the Bellevue Hospital, Philadelphia, Dr. Doremus came up to me with a pleasant smile and the equally pleasant greeting of, ‘Well, Hilliard, how much for your bones to-day?’ ‘They’re $6,000 to-day,’ said I, laughing. ‘It’s a go,’ he answered, and the next day he sent me a check for that amount, and I signed a contract giving him my skeleton after death, but reserving the right to use it myself until death occurs.’

Mr. Hilliard has never known what it was to be ill, and is in perfect physical condition. He is married, well educated and a very pleasing conversationalist.”

“Water Is ‘The Big Elephant In The Room’ For Tech Companies”

August 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The bigger threat to a growing global population might not be food shortages but water scarcity. As more people in China and elsewhere take greater advantage of inventions of the Industrial and Computer Ages, the need for water acquisition grows.

A Financial Times series “A World Without Water,” begins today, in FT fashion, by examining how the lack of H2O affects corporations. While you would expect Coke to be apoplectic about potential shortfalls, technology companies are likewise concerned (or should be). An excerpt from Pilita Clark’s piece:

“Google, for example, declines to say how much it spent on a plant it has built at one of its data centres in the US state of Georgia, which enables it to use diverted sewer water to keep its servers cool. Nor has it disclosed how much it spends at a Belgian data centre that uses water from an industrial canal.

Joe Kava, the company’s head of data centre operations, has warned that water is ‘the big elephant in the room’ for tech companies, which can typically use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day. ‘We’ve been focusing on power consumption and energy efficiency and that’s excellent,’ he said in 2009. ‘I think the next thing we need to turn our attention to is what do we do about the looming water crisis?’ As water becomes more scarce, data companies’ use of it could attract public scrutiny, he added, possibly resulting in regulations governing how much water they consume.

Google told the FT last week that its focus on water conservation means it now has a facility in Finland cooled entirely by seawater. It is also looking at using captured rainwater in South Carolina.

Regulation is a growing concern for many companies, which is a reason investors are starting to press for more disclosure about water risks.”

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“We’re In The Mad Max Stage Of The Media Business”

August 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Bill Keller, former New York Times executive editor, is spearheading the Marshall Project, a fledgling, non-profit news organization that covers criminal justice, something incredibly necessary with current U.S. drug policies, a too-large prison population and print outlets downsizing and capsizing. A quick exchange about the non-profit journalism model from an Ask Me Anything he and reporter Maurice Possley just conducted on Reddit:

“Question:

Many Future of News talking heads think that when news orgs become non-profit, they muddy the waters for everyone trying to find a new, sustainable financial model for doing the news.

Do you think the non-profit model is here to stay, or a temporary solution while journalists scramble for the next few years figuring out what works in for-profit?

Bill Keller:

Honest answer? Who the hell knows? We’re in the Mad Max stage of the media business. I expect some non-profits (meaning non-profit-on-purpose, as opposed to trying-unsuccessfully-to-be-profitable) will be around for a long time, as long as there are philanthropies and individuals who value quality journalism. After all, NPR seems to be pretty permanent, and it’s the ultimate non-profit news outlet.”

 

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A Brief Note From 1891 About A Novel Surgery

August 4, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 21, 1891 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Decatur, Ill. – A surgeon of this city has just completed a novel surgical operation. He removed part of four ribs of a cat and inserted them in the nose of a young lady, forming a perfect bridge for the nose. The bones of the nose had decayed and were removed. This is said to be the first operation of the kind known in the annals of surgery.”

“Perhaps More Troubling, Is To Consider That Musk’s Comparison Of A.I. To Nukes Is Apt”

August 4, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Commenting on philosopher Nick Bostrom’s new book, Elon Musk compared superintelligence to nuclear weapons in terms of the danger it poses us. From Adario Strange at Mashable:

“Nevertheless, the comparison of A.I. to nuclear weapons, a threat that has cast a worrying shadow over much of the last 30 years in terms of humanity’s longevity possibly being cut short by a nuclear war, immediately raises a couple of questions.

The first, and most likely from many quarters, will be to question Musk’s future-casting. Some may use Musk’s A.I. concerns — which remain fantastical to many — as proof that his predictions regarding electric cars and commercial space travel are the visions of someone who has seen too many science fiction films. ‘If Musk really thinks robots might destroy humanity, maybe we need to dismiss his long view thoughts on other technologies.’ Those essays are likely already being written.

The other, and perhaps more troubling, is to consider that Musk’s comparison of A.I. to nukes is apt. What if Musk, empowered by rare insight from his exclusive perch guiding the very real future of space travel and automobiles, really has an accurate line on the future of A.I.?

Later, doubling down on his initial tweet, Musk wrote, ‘Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.'”

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“There Is Still A Sizable Part Of Helen Gurley Brown That Believes She Is Plain And Slightly Inadequate”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As a feminist, Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmopolitan’s legendary editor, was, how you say, complicated. A trailblazer in many ways–especially in regards to sex and single girls–she was also a workaholic seemingly afflicted by low-self esteem, serious body dysmorphia and massive insecurities. Brown sold women’s sexuality with the gusto of Guccione, if not with the same visual explicitness. She was a wave ahead of the feminists of her day, but also in some senses a step back. She may have had it all, but some of it was questionable. From Judy Bachrach’s 1982 People article about Brown:

“Her eyes are so demurely downcast she can scarcely raise them to acknowledge a compliment. ‘My outfit?’ she whispers at a noontime visitor to her Manhattan office, nervously fingering the Adolfo black knit that swathes her body. ‘Well, I suppose it’s all right. I mean it should be because these patterned stockings are from Geoffrey Beene. But then’—fingers clutch at her throat—’I don’t know. I mean Estée Lauder says these gold chains are out of style.’ The face grows distraught. ‘Oh, here I go again, criticizing myself when I get praise. Now why do I do that?’

The editor of Cosmopolitan does that because at 60—after a poor childhood in Arkansas, 23 years of obscurity as a secretary and ad agency copywriter in Los Angeles, as well as bouts with dermabrasion, massive dieting, massive exercising and massive success as a writer and movie biggie’s wife—there is still a sizable part of Helen Gurley Brown that believes she is plain and slightly inadequate. That her taut, 5’4″, 105-pound body still isn’t quite right. That the nose she once had (‘She keeps a photo of it in her files,’ says an ex-Cosmo staffer) might just be the real her. That her no-college education is deficient. That she is not merely tiny but, to use a favorite term, a ‘mouseburger.’

No matter. Helen’s 66-year-old husband and chief booster, David Brown, who co-produced The Sting, The Sugarland Express and Jaws I and II, says, ‘I think she’s a classical beauty.’ The editor’s friend, gossip columnist Liz Smith, observes, ‘Helen is a fanatic. The perfection of her body is a form of religious fanaticism. She saw herself as very unattractive and felt she could rise above it.’ Pause. ‘And she did.’

Smith notes that Helen will dine out with pals but have only ‘a Perrier and a horrifying little fish.’ She’ll not only pinch pennies, but has been known to take the untouched wine from a festive lunch table—and the balloons too. Why? Because like Cosmo’s two million readers and the fans of her first smash book, Sex and the Single Girl, and her current autobiographical/inspirational hit, Having it All, Brown knows she didn’t go from poverty to high priestess of passion simply through mouseburgering. She did it, she admits, through shrewd use of self-deprecation and lowered lids, through affairs both good and rotten that have involved married office colleagues (never rule out anyone, she writes, even the boss: ‘Why discriminate against him?”). But above all, she succeeded through devoted toil.

‘One of the things that binds Helen and David is their discipline for work,’ says Dick Zanuck, David’s partner in Zanuck/Brown Co. ‘They don’t have a lot outside their careers. She does not play canasta or lunch with the girls. He does not go fishing.’

Their sports are taking care of each other. Helen has been known to snatch the bread out of David’s mouth in restaurants to keep him at his trim 160 pounds. ‘I have been a terrific wife,’ she likes to say. Each morning, at their triplex on Manhattan’s Central Park West, she weighs David, then fixes his breakfast (bran muffins, juice, scrambled eggs or fish cakes or cereal). When he dares to make his own, she grouches, ‘You don’t like me today.’ She never lets him fret about her. Once, when she was scheduled in advance for a series of operations, she didn’t tell David until ‘the night before I went into the hospital.’ Why should he worry about her for three weeks?'”

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“Workers Start By Strapping Their Feet On To Foot Pads At The Base Of The Robot”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Someday the workers will mostly be robots, even the human ones. A South Korean shipbuilding firm is experimenting with encasing employees in exoskeleton suits that will allow them veritable superpowers. Just make sure to recharge your batteries. From Hal Hodson at New Scientist:

“AT A sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing.

It was all part of a test last year by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, at their facility in Okpo-dong. The company, one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, wants to take production to the next level by outfitting staff with robot exoskeletons that give them superhuman strength.

Gilwhoan Chu, the lead engineer for the firm’s research and development arm, says the pilot showed that the exoskeleton does help workers perform their tasks. His team is working to improve the prototypes so that they can go into regular use in the shipyard, where robots already run a large portion of a hugely complex assembly system.

The exoskeleton fits anyone between 160 and 185 centimetres tall. Workers do not feel the weight of its 28-kilogram frame of carbon, aluminium alloy and steel, as the suit supports itself and is engineered to follow the wearer’s movements. With a 3-hour battery life, the exoskeleton allows users to walk at a normal pace and, in its prototype form, it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.

To don the exoskeleton, workers start by strapping their feet on to foot pads at the base of the robot.”

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“The Future Of The Car As Personal Transport Will Morph Into Time/Use Formats”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Earlier this year, Jonathan Moore of Speedhunters did an excellent interview with artist and visual futurist Syd Mead, whose outré automobile designs which have enriched film (Blade Runner, most famously), print publications and imaginations for decades. An excerpt about the role of cars in a time when we’ve passed peak-auto:

Jonathan Moore:

With a declining interest in the car nowadays, the car as personal transport appears an ever more precarious economic prospect. Do you think that the car as a private but communal mode of transport is living on borrowed time? What’s coming next and how quickly will it arrive? Is it the ’sentient, super-evolved version of the horse’? And did you already sketch it in the ’60s?!’

Syd Mead:

The future of the car as personal transport will morph into time/use formats probably owned either by municipal agencies, a variation of corporate rental schemes and rotating mileage based lease by single lessees. With 50 percent of the world’s population living in cities, I predict that a lot of high-density core urban mobility will be by moving platforms, sidewalks, escalators and lift platforms as architectural enclosures become larger and more interconnected. The autonomous car is almost here already, making ‘call, ride and forget’ a real personal transport factor.

‘So-called mass transit is the automobile. Bus systems, light rail and combinations thereof are subject to unionized strikes, expensive staffing costs and maintenance of route fixtures and machinery. Dial in aggressive riders who ignore rules of civility and you have a worrisome vector in public transportation. I sketched and rendered the ‘electronic herd’ concept years ago, depicting MTU’s (Mobile Transit Units) traveling in a bunch, thus creating a high-density use of existing thoroughfare routing.

The private automobile as a personal possession will certainly survive, but as an increasingly expensive proposition for those who choose, like now, to own a vehicle that sits unused for various periods of time. We have four vehicles in our ‘stable’: an ’03 Sebring convertible, an ’09 Cadillac DTS and two collector cars, a 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser two-door with electric windows and the 1972 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop. Working at home, the two collector cars are operated maybe once every two weeks, the Sebring maybe once a month. The Cadillac is the most used daily driver and it has only 16,000 miles after almost five years of use.•

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“In effect, I was creating my own world”:

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“Some Of The Spiders Are Large And Remarkably Deadly”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Boy, that David Carr is a flawless writer. You never see the editor’s hand in his work, something that is rarer than you might think for reporters unless you’re reading closely. Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic at the New Yorker, is the same way. Pretty much perfect every time out. Journalists who write on that level can pull you into reading something you might not be initially interested in, give you something you didn’t expect.

From Carr’s latest New York Times piece in which he visits Glenn Greenwald, a bothersome man who’s useful even if you’re not sure you always trust his judgement, at his Rio de Janeiro home base, a surprisingly lo-fi lair for perhaps the most wired journalist on Earth:

“For all its challenges — the monkeys and dogs have daily throw-downs and some of the spiders are large and remarkably deadly — the location suits him, the eternal guerrilla fighting from the mountains. When cable television calls, he races down the hill to a satellite facility, suit coat and tie on top, sandals and shorts on the bottom.

On Tuesday morning last week, Mr. Greenwald was pleased. He woke up early and wrote an uncharacteristically brief post about the huge number of civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict. He was proud of the pie charts he had managed to conjure to go with his post.

‘I went to Google and typed in ‘create a pie chart’ and I ended up with an online pie-chart maker probably intended for first graders,’ he said. I mentioned that he now works for a digital news site that has a $250 million endowment from Mr. Omidyar and some very talented data journalists and graphic artists.

‘Yeah, I know, but I would have had to wait and I didn’t want to wait,’ he said. ‘There are others things, like the 7,000-word story we just did on the surveillance of Muslim Americans that 15 people probably worked on — the video, graphic and editing resources make a huge difference. But I wanted this to be simple and I wanted it to be mine.’

True to his intent, Mr. Greenwald’s first-grade pie charts entered the bloodstream of the web, coursing around Twitter and various blogs. Nothing — other than yet another dog rescue — pleases Mr. Greenwald more than lobbing in something from a great distance and watching it detonate.”

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Old Print Article: “Robots With Personality,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1929)

August 4, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Who shall say into what these automatic salesmen will develop?”

Arkady Joseph “A.J.” Sack was decades ahead of his time in scheme if not execution. The Russian-born businessperson (and historian), who had an ardor for animatronics, announced in the late 1920s that he would open a chain of automated department stores, the first to be located in Manhattan, which would feature talking robots rather than salespeople. One human would oversee the entire operation, with the machines communicating information to customers about the 150 products offered, accepting payments and thanking shoppers for their business, giving carbon-based workers the day off every day. The shops never opened.

In the March 10, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Marcia Nardi wrote an article about Sack and his helpful hardware, though the story focuses more on the robots and their sociological effects (skipping merrily past the specter of mass unemployment), rather than going into detail about the stores. (You can learn more specifics about the proposed shops here and here.) Two excerpts from the long article.

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“Before this winter is out, America will have been invaded by a whole army of salesmen-robots which have been called ‘almost human automatons,’ and of which the Associated Press says: ‘They will do everything but slap the customer on the back and ask him how his family is.’

In other words now that the infant penny-in-the-slot machine, not unfamiliar to commuting subwayites, has reached maturity and adult robustness, the salesman-robot is about to take his place along with the radio and airplane as one of the marvels of the Twentieth Century.

The salesmen-robots have been devised by the Consolidated Automatic Merchandising Corporation and A.J. Sack, the chairman of the firm, looks forward to their debut into the business world with all the assurance of the Creator when he commanded Eve to spring forth from Adam’s Rib.

‘In America today,’ says Mr. Sack, ‘we look over the merchandise in our homes, through the advertising pages of newspapers and magazines. Even in our travels and pleasure excursions, we actually shop through the medium of posters and billboards. National advertising, grown to the dimensions of a billion dollar industry, sells us on hundreds of articles in advance of our seeing them.

‘Having been sold on an article because it is standardized and advertised, it is hardly logical or economical to have a human being perform the simple, mechanical operation of exchanging this article for money. An Automatic Merchandising Machine can perform this work at less expense and more promptly.'”

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“With the inquiries and orders on hand, there will probably be a million and a half robots at work before long–mechanical men that will not only give the public what it wants in the way of service but will also add a little human touch to their purely mechanical function by saying ‘Thank you’ and by repeating the slogan connected with the merchandise they offer.

These robots will not have human forms like the robots of Captain Roberts and Captain Richards and will bear less resemblance outwardly to their English brother and sister than to their sires, the weighing and postage stamp and bar of chocolate machines, and will have much in common with the restaurants where you don’t require the smile of a pretty waitress in order to get your lunch.

But even as the automobile and airplane must smile incredulously as they contemplate their own tintypes of 1908, who shall say into what these automatic salesmen will develop?

Inventors of the future will probably perfect these machines so that they will be able to do everything a man does, but most likely they will never be able to make robots think. That is where the robots fall down, but that is also where their success lies.

We no longer need the personality of glib-tongued salesmen to influence our choice in buying small commodities. He might just as well be a mechanical man of iron and steel with electricity in his veins instead of blood for all the need the customer now has of salesmanship abilities. In the same way people in many other industries and trades have been similarly reduced to mere automatons, and perhaps some day other robots beside the salesman type will be the means of releasing that horde of countless workers whose tedious machinelike jobs in our factories and offices and telephone exchanges often leave their minds too dull and inert for any real enjoyment of their free hours. 

‘Yes, these robots have an importance beyond their economic one,’ says Mr. Sack, ‘It is true, of course, that the discord between modern production and the old-fashioned methods of distribution originally prompted their invention and is responsible for their growing popularity. But it is an established fact that every step in the development of our machinery age means also, in the long run, a forward step in the development of our civilization and culture. The energy released through the application of machinery in production is already responsible for our higher standards of living, and for the development and appreciation of art, music and literature among broad masses of people. The substitution of mechanical slaves for human slaves will inevitably result in further development of cultural progress among those who will gradually be freed from the deadening monotony of a mechanical job.'”

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“If It Had Hit, We Would Still Be Picking Up The Pieces”

August 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when,” Vera Lynn sang, incongruously, at the end of Dr. Strangelove, the Earth settling in for a nuclear winter, with no future meetings between humans on the schedule. We probably have the world end in art so much because it’s going to in reality. Probably not soon, though the water from those melting icebergs could thin the herd considerably. But someday our planet will be a melting, uninhabitable rock and even the whole universe will eventually cease to be (though there is a chance we could survive the end of that as well). One entry from Sarah Gray’s “Pick Your Doomsday,” a Salon article outlining scenarios the could wipe out humanity:

“Solar Flares:

It was recently revealed that in 2012, humanity may have had a close brush with doom, all due to solar flares. On July 23, 2012, the sun belched one of the most massive plasma clouds ever detected with a speed of 3,000 km per second, according to the Guardian. That is four times as fast as a typical solar flare. The flare could have caused a massive blackout of satellite communications, power grids and electronic devices. And if the solar storm had occurred a week earlier it would have.

‘If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,’ University of Colorado’s Daniel Baker told the Guardian. Baker is part of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. ‘I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,’ he continued. ‘If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.'”

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“I Think President Putin Represents A Deep Strain In Russia That Is Probably Harmful To Russia Over The Long Term”

August 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When Vladimir Putin went aggressive with Ukraine, he was heralded by some in this country as appearing “strong” and President Obama as seeming “weak,” although you’d have to be pretty simple to view things that way. Putin was sticking his foot in it but good–his ass, too–becoming ensnared in a quagmire the way the U.S. did when invading Iraq, leaving himself wide open for things to career out of control (like MH-17 being shot down). Putin was a 20th-century leader adrift in the 21-st century, a visitor from the past trying to commandeer the future, and that never turns out well.

One passage from the new long-form Economist interview with Obama, which focuses on his dealings with Russia and China:

“The Economist: 

Because that is the key issue, whether China ends up inside that system or challenging it. That’s the really big issue of our times, I think.

President Obama: 

It is. And I think it’s important for the United States and Europe to continue to welcome China as a full partner in these international norms. It’s important for us to recognise that there are going to be times where there are tensions and conflicts. But I think those are manageable.

And it’s my belief that as China shifts its economy away from simply being the low-cost manufacturer of the world to wanting to move up the value chain, then suddenly issues like protecting intellectual property become more relevant to their companies, not just to US companies.

One thing I will say about China, though, is you also have to be pretty firm with them, because they will push as hard as they can until they meet resistance. They’re not sentimental, and they are not interested in abstractions. And so simple appeals to international norms are insufficient. There have to be mechanisms both to be tough with them when we think that they’re breaching international norms, but also to show them the potential benefits over the long term. And what is true for China then becomes an analogy for many of the other emerging markets.

The Economist:

What about the people who are just outright difficult? Russia being the obvious example at the moment. You tried to ‘reset’ with Russia. Angela Merkel spent the whole time telephoning Vladimir Putin. To what extent do you feel let down almost personally by what’s happened?

President Obama: 

I don’t feel let down. We had a very productive relationship with President Medvedev. We got a lot of things done that we needed to get done. Russia I think has always had a Janus-like quality, both looking east and west, and I think President Putin represents a deep strain in Russia that is probably harmful to Russia over the long term, but in the short term can be politically popular at home and very troublesome abroad.

But I do think it’s important to keep perspective. Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking. And so we have to respond with resolve in what are effectively regional challenges that Russia presents. We have to make sure that they don’t escalate where suddenly nuclear weapons are back in the discussion of foreign policy. And as long as we do that, then I think history is on our side.”

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A Brief Note From 1911 About A Crossed Line

August 3, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 31, 1811 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“St. Claireville, O.–During a thunderstorm at Harrisville, Ada Morgan, a high school girl, while talking over the telephone was knocked unconscious when lightning came in on the wire. The hair was burned from the left side of the head, and one ear was badly burned and a strip of skin an inch wide was burned on the girl’s body from the head to the foot, where the shoe was torn off. She will recover.”

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“Tesla Will Produce 35,000 Cars This Year And Up To 100,000 In 2015”

August 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A company selling thirty-five thousand cars, even one-hundred thousand, would normally be a small deal in annual auto sales, but it does feel like Tesla is starting to move the arrow on electric vehicles a significant distance from EMPTY. Just as hopeful is the giant battery plant that Tesla is creating with Panasonic. The real tell, however, will be when there’s a second, third and fourth competitor for Musk’s machines, when that road begins to crowd. From Charles Fleming at the Los Angeles Times:

“Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk promised shareholders a dramatic boost in the production of his company’s electric cars, telling investors that Tesla will produce 35,000 cars this year and up to 100,000 in 2015.

Tesla, which reported earnings Thursday, also confirmed that the company has begun construction in Reno, Nev., on the first of possibly several battery factories. That news came hours after Tesla announced that it had entered into a long-term partnership with Panasonic Corp. to produce the vehicles’ lithium-ion batteries.

The $5-billion cost of multiple ‘gigafactory’ locations would be shared by Panasonic, which would be expected to match Tesla’s 40% commitment, with an additional 20% commitment coming from other investors and contributions from governments where the factories will be built.

Earlier reports had said Panasonic could invest between $200 million and $1 billion in the massive facility.

Tesla had said recently that California — where the Palo Alto company started and builds all of its automobiles and components — was competing with Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for the right to host the factory. As many as 6,500 workers could be employed in the battery plant or plants.”

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“You Could Send People A Lot More Than Just Maps And Menus With This Thing”

August 3, 2014 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Douglas Coupland’s latest Financial Times column, in which he acknowledges not being able to capitalize on being well-positioned to foresee the explosion of fax machines, Starbucks and zombie films:

“In 1985 I was working in a Tokyo magazine office where, from across the room, I often heard a faint whirring sound. After a few days I went to look, and I saw hand-drawn maps emerging from what appeared to be a photocopier . . . yet nothing was being photocopied. I asked and was told, ‘It’s a fax.’

‘A fax?’

‘Yes, a fax.’

I did some research and quickly learnt that fax machines were developed in Japan specifically because their postal system’s wayfinding is contextual rather than based on streets and street numbers. You can’t just say 123 East Ginza Way; you need maps, often with railway underpasses, subway nodes and visual landmarks. Just before lunchtime, when the office fax seemed to kick into overdrive, it was usually the office manager and local restaurants swapping menus and food orders.

I remember thinking, ‘Hmmm . . . you know, you could send people a lot more than just maps and menus with this thing . . . you could send, well . . . letters and documents.'”

 

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“It’s Rare That We Spend Much Time Wondering What Is Going On Within Our Pocket Computers”

August 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Holy fuck, we have incredibly powerful computers in our shirt pockets!

That seemed unimaginable even recently. Yet we’re so consumed with the function and how we can manipulate it to flatter our egos that we often forget to be filled with wonder. There are political costs and other prices to pay for such bland, unquestioning acceptance. The opening of Robert Herritt’s New Atlantis essay, “When Technology Ceases to Amaze“: 

“Few of us stand in awe at every text message that materializes on our smartphone screen. This is a good thing, for the most part. One can hardly be expected to maintain a state of perpetual bewilderment at the technical marvels we carry around in our pockets. But had a fully charged iPhone fallen from the sky, say, sixty years ago, like the pristine Coke bottle discovered by an African tribe in the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy, whoever came upon it would have been more than a little amazed. Indeed, the operations of the touch-sensitive slab would have seemed like a series of well-executed magic tricks — events that are manifestly real, but the causes of which are so effectively obscured as to produce the sensation that one is witnessing something impossible.

We would imagine that, lacking any knowledge of the causal antecedents of the device’s high-resolution animations, our mid-century iPhone wielder would have been compelled to ask how the mysterious object worked. He may have even devised a rudimentary theory, the same way a magician’s awestruck spectators grope for explanations after witnessing a seemingly impossible feat.

But is it ignorance of how the mysterious iPhone works that is the true source of this person’s wonder and curiosity? How many of us today have a better understanding of how our newest gadgets work than would our hypothetical friend from the 1950s? Yet it’s rare that we spend much time wondering what is going on within our pocket computers, or any of the various pieces of high technology we interact with every day.

Back in 2002, the authors of the National Academy of Engineering report Technically Speaking: Why All Americans Need to Know More About Technology observed that, ‘Americans use technology with a minimal comprehension of how or why it works or the implications of its use or even where it comes from.’ The danger, they argue, is that, given our lack of comprehension, we ‘are poorly equipped to recognize, let alone ponder or address, the challenges technology poses or the problems it could solve.’

It is certainly true that we might be missing out on some important conversations about the future of the Internet and the like. If the recent controversies over NSA data collection prove anything, it is that there are real political costs to ignoring basic technical questions about the devices we routinely use. But there are broader issues at play when it comes to our easy technological ignorance. Thanks to the abundance of sleek technologies that mediate our lives, the everyday environment of most Americans is filled with mystery.

We are used to telling ourselves the opposite: that, through the march of scientific progress and technical expertise, we’re continuously increasing our knowledge of our surroundings. This belief is surely true in some important respects. But our failure to be more probing about the inscrutable gadgets around us is perhaps the clearest evidence that our appetite for satisfying explanations, and our ability to discover them, may not be as strong as we think. This state of affairs should strike us as more than merely curious — especially since the skills required to seek out relevant information, evaluate competing theories, and make informed judgments about complex issues are only becoming more critical.”

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