“The Demand For Self-Reliance At Burning Man Toughens Everyone Up”

September 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Libertarian overlord Grover Norquist, whose policies, if ever enacted fully, would lead to worse lifestyles and shorter lifespans for the majority of Americans, made his way to the government-less wonderland known as Burning Man, free finally from restrictions–and perhaps his pants. Norquist’s belief that the short-term settlement in the Nevada desert is representative of what the world could be every day is no less silly than considering Spring Break a template for successful marriage. He writes about his experiences in the Guardian. Maileresque, it is not. An excerpt:

“You hear that Burning Man is full of less-than-fully-clad folks and off-label pharmaceuticals. But that’s like saying Bohemian Grove is about peeing on trees or that Chicago is Al Capone territory. Burning Man is cleaner and greener than a rally for solar power. It has more camaraderie and sense of community than a church social. And for a week in the desert, I witnessed more individual expression, alternative lifestyles and imaginative fashion than …. anywhere.

The demand for self-reliance at Burning Man toughens everyone up. There are few fools, and no malingerers. People give of themselves – small gifts like lip balm or tiny flashlights. I brought Cuban cigars. Edgy, but not as exciting as some ‘gifts’ that would have interested the federal authorities.

I’m hoping to bring the kids next year.

On my last day of my first Burning Man, at the Reno airport, a shoeless man (he had lost his shoes in the desert) was accosted by another dust-covered Burner carrying sneakers: ‘Take these,’ he said. ‘They are my Burning Man shoes.’ The shoeless man accepted the gift with dignity.”•

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“Hong Kong Is Losing Its Edge As A Global Financial And Commercial Center”

September 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

In 1997, when Hong Kong was passed from Britain to China, a brutal crackdown was feared but never materialized. But death by a thousand cuts now seems possible, with China refusing to allow free elections and acting to gradually compromise Hong Kong’s free-market might. From Rachel Lu at Foreign Policy:

“Hong Kong is losing its edge as a global financial and commercial center, and the territory’s economic clout will be overshadowed by China’s major cities by 2022. That’s the argument in an August 27 report released by Trigger Trend, an independent Chinese research firm based in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. The report emerged just days before Beijing declared it would not countenance open nominations in the planned 2017 popular election for Hong Kong’s chief executive, and its findings are likely to stoke further anxiety about the former British colony’s economic and political future.

In the wake of Beijing’s decision, Hong Kong’s democracy advocates now face a hard choice between carrying out what some have called a ‘nuclear option’ to occupy the city’s Central financial district en masse, which could disrupt businesses, or swallowing what they call a ‘fake election’ for the Chief Executive, the head of Hong Kong’s government. Either way, Beijing says it does not plan to yield to acts of civil disobedience in the special administrative region, even if protests make investors or business owners jittery.”

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“We’re Still Holding Onto The Industrial Concept Of A ‘Job'”

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

I think Krystal D’Costa of Scientific American has way too sanguine a view of what technology’s creative destruction will mean for Labor, especially in the next few decades, but she’s right that the definition of work is in flux and will only transition more as we move further from the 20th century. An excerpt:

“The jobs we hold now will not be the jobs we hold tomorrow. And with that will come a shift—as it has come before—of what ‘work’ is. This is already starting to happen. For example, one of the predictions holds that we’ll experience more leisure time. This is already possible thanks to technologies that allow us to conduct business remotely, however for it to be successful, we’re the ones who have to be ready to let go. Employers who never thought telecommuting would have a place in their workforce are now embracing it because it may save them in overhead in the long term. But the truth is that they can no longer hold to that old standard of what a worker is and does. Today’s workforce often negotiates some degree of flexibility, and all but the lowest-paying jobs tend to reap those benefits.

We’re still holding onto the industrial concept of a ‘job’: We go somewhere and perform a task in exchange for funds. We’re engaged in the commoditization of time and labor. Make no mistake, we’re likely still going to need to buy essentials, but we may be getting those funds from different places. Work may not mean a 40-hour week. Work may not mean assembly line production. And work may not mean up at the crack of dawn to attend to the livestock. The work tied to these types of trades is already changing, but we don’t have to be run over by the promise of technology. Could the spread of AI and robotics invite the return of artisanal crafts and barter-based trade? Nowhere is this clearer than in the DIY movement, which thrives on collaboration and leverages open-source technology to power small production endeavors.”

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“People In Russia Were Dying Suddenly And Violently”

September 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Attendant to the fall of the Soviet Union was the collapse of the country’s social safety nets. Gorbachev’s transitional government and Yeltsin’s reformist one couldn’t stem a great die-off and a low birth rate, as Russia depopulated by 5% between 1992 and 2009. The fall of Communism clearly was the cause, right? But the demographic disaster has deeper roots in earlier decades and high rates of cardiovascular disease and fatal accidents may have their origins in mental-health issues, argues Masha Gessen’s excellent New York Review of Books essay, “The Dying Russians.” The opening:

“Sometime in 1993, after several trips to Russia, I noticed something bizarre and disturbing: people kept dying. I was used to losing friends to AIDS in the United States, but this was different. People in Russia were dying suddenly and violently, and their own friends and colleagues did not find these deaths shocking. Upon arriving in Moscow I called a friend with whom I had become close over the course of a year. ‘Vadim is no more,’ said his father, who picked up the phone. ‘He drowned.’ I showed up for a meeting with a newspaper reporter to have the receptionist say, ‘But he is dead, don’t you know?’ I didn’t. I’d seen the man a week earlier; he was thirty and apparently healthy. The receptionist seemed to think I was being dense. “A helicopter accident,” she finally said, in a tone that seemed to indicate I had no business being surprised.

The deaths kept piling up. People—men and women—were falling, or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartments with jammed front-door locks; getting hit by cars that sped through quiet courtyards or plowed down groups of people on a sidewalk; drowning as a result of diving drunk into a lake or ignoring sea-storm warnings or for no apparent reason; poisoning themselves with too much alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, alcohol substitutes, or drugs; and, finally, dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes.

Back in the United States after a trip to Russia, I cried on a friend’s shoulder. I was finding all this death not simply painful but impossible to process. ‘It’s not like there is a war on,’ I said.

‘But there is,’ said my friend, a somewhat older and much wiser reporter than I. ‘This is what civil war actually looks like. ‘It’s not when everybody starts running around with guns. It’s when everybody starts dying.’

My friend’s framing stood me in good stead for years. I realized the magazine stories I was writing then were the stories of destruction, casualties, survival, restoration, and the longing for peace. But useful as that way of thinking might be for a journalist, it cannot be employed by social scientists, who are still struggling to answer the question, Why are Russians dying in numbers, and at ages, and of causes never seen in any other country that is not, by any standard definition, at war?”

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A Brief Note From 1910 About An Older Sister

September 2, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the November 30, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Upper Sandusky, O. — Mrs. Job Smith, holding her 6-month-old daughter on her lap, was watching a daughter start for school, yesterday, when her 2-year-old daughter with a pair of scissors cut off one of the baby’s fingers.”

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“Yes, Of Course, That Was My Father”

September 2, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Photographs help us retain memories and hang on to life in a sense, but they’re neither memories nor life. They’re only small pieces of the bigger puzzle–just shards, not fractals. From them we piece together a menagerie. The animals are crude, but they’re better than nothing, though not by nearly as much as we often believe. From Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, Book Three:

It is the era we take photos of, not the people in it, they can’t be captured. Not even the people in my immediate circle can. Who was the woman posing in front of the stove in the flat in Thereses gate, wearing a light-blue dress, one knee resting against the other, calves apart, in this typical 1960s posture? The one with the bob? The blue eyes and the gentle smile that was so gentle that it barely even registered as a smile? The one holding the handle of the shiny coffee pot with the red lid? Yes, that was my mother, my very own mom, but who was she? What was she thinking? How did she see her life, the one she had lived so far and the one awaiting her? Only she knows, and the photo tells you nothing. An unknown woman in an unknown room, that is all. And the man who, ten years later, is sitting on a mountainside drinking coffee from the same red thermos top, as he forgot to pack any cups before leaving, who was he? The one with the well-groomed black beard and the thick black hair? The one with the sensitive lips and amused eyes? Yes, of course, that was my father, my very own dad. But who he was to himself at this moment, or at any other, nobody knows. And so it is with all these photos, even the ones of me. They are voids, the only meaning that can be derived from them is that which time has added.•

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“Mailer Was A Natural Fit”

September 2, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

3 Quarks Daily pointed me to Geoff Dyer’s Threepenny piece of the reissue of Norman Mailer’s A Fire on the Moon, a 1970 book I’m fairly obsessed with. Only Mailer could dare enter his own midlife crisis into the Space Race and pull it off. He understood the moment in time better than most: The 1969 Apollo 11 liftoff marked the beginning of the end of human supremacy on Earth. The first two paragraphs:

“Mailer starts with the news of Hemingway’s death; we’ll start with Ezra Pound’s claim, in ABC of Reading, that literature ‘is news that STAYS news.’ The appeal of having one of America’s best-known writers cover the biggest news story of the decade—probably of the century, conceivably of all time—was obvious, and Mailer was a natural fit. Back then a lot of people were quoting the opinion that he was the best journalist in America. One of those people was Mailer himself, who took umbrage at praise that tacitly downgraded his achievements as anovelist. This gets aired very early on in a book in which, sooner or later, most things get aired. The irony is that Mailer ‘knew he was not even a good journalist.’ Unless, that is, he could succeed in redefining and enlarging journalism to cover pretty much everything, including the writing of the book in which the attempt would be made. Imagine Laurence Sterne with a huge subject, a big advance, and a looming deadline and you have some sense of the conflicting pressures at work on Of A Fire on the Moon (the original American title).

The deadline needs emphasizing. Other writers had plenty to say about the moon landing—everyone had something to say about it—but few would have had the chops to bang out 115,000 words for publication in three issues of Life magazine, the first tranche of which, Mailer groans, was due less than three weeks after the astronauts splashed down in the Pacific. That, to put it mildly, is a lot of words in a very short time: not quite as challenging a task as the one set out by John F. Kennedy in 1961—to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of the decade—but a serious job of work all the same. So the question today, when no one under the age of forty-five was alive and able to experience the event, let alone read about it as news, is the extent to which the result is compromised or enhanced by the circumstances of its occasion and composition. Now that the subject matter is the stuff of history—when the word astronaut might be used in the context of historical fiction as opposed to science fiction—does Mailer’s book pass Pound’s testing definition? And where does it stand within two quite different contexts, that of other books about the moon landings and within the large scope and wildly mixed quality of Mailer’s work as a whole?”

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“Watson Gives Researchers ‘Smarter Hunches'”

September 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In Rumsefeldian terms, IBM’s Watson has moved from fun and games to known unknowns. The AI is now being used to nudge researchers in the right direction when they’re tackling unsolved problems. From Jessica Leber at Fast Company:

“When IBM’s advanced artificial intelligence program Watson beat Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings in 2011, it was an impressive feat for a computer–but still, it was only processing information that humans already knew in order to answer trivia questions.

As IBM attempts to turn Watson into a new line of business and make it useful in a wide range of industries that are dealing lately with an overwhelming amount of data, it’s now working to push the software, which excels at learning and interpreting human language, forward into the realm of the unknown.

‘It’s not giving answers that people know anymore, it’s pointing people in directions that they should investigate,’ says IBM Watson group vice president John Gordon. ‘We’re talking about a computing system that inspires people.’

At an event in New York today, IBM showed off the ways some of its early customers are using the Watson ‘Discovery Advisor’ in research, development, and innovation, especially in the realm of biotech and life sciences. Watson’s aim is to speed up discoveries by teams of researchers by, for example, scanning and interpreting millions of scientific books, articles, and data points–far more than any person’s brain could analyze–and generating new hypothesis or leads that might be fruitful to investigate. Or, as Gordon puts it, Watson gives researchers ‘smarter hunches.'”

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“Its Most Popular Service Was Banned Throughout Germany”

September 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Uber has just hit a speed bump in Germany, facing its first nation-wide ban (which it’s defying). Instead of getting giddy in interviews over the potential destruction of jobs, company CEO Travis Kalanick would do himself a big favor if he would instead focus on the ways the old system was flawed. Take my city of New York for instance: It’s always been difficult to get a taxi to the outer boroughs from Manhattan, African-Americans have had a hell of a time getting a ride anywhere and unwitting tourists have often been ripped off by predatory drivers. Uber can be viewed as an equalizer of sorts (provided it doesn’t fail in the same manner). From Jeevan Vasagar at the Financial Times:

“Uber is facing its biggest legal challenge so far after its most popular service was banned throughout Germany, marking the first time the disruptive taxi app has been hit with a country-wide restriction.

The temporary injunction imposed by Frankfurt’s Regional Court prohibits the fast-growing company, valued in a recent funding round at $17bn, from operating its Uber Pop ‘ride-sharing’ service, known as Uber X in other markets.

Uber said it would continue to operate in defiance of the injunction, but it faces fines of up to €250,000 ($328,000) per trip if it is caught violating the ban, which does not affect its higher-priced ‘Black’ limousine service.

The San Francisco-based start-up is one of a number of Silicon Valley firms, including Google and Facebook, to face a regulatory backlash in Europe, where authorities have led the way in questioning the practices of California’s leading technology companies.”

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“Marx Claimed That Automation Would Bring About The End Of Capitalism”

September 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A highly automated society will have to create good jobs in yet-to-exist fields or….what? I don’t think everyone can survive by renting out their couch on airbnb (though I think airbnb is a great idea). From Jordan Pearson at Vice Motherboard:

“Once robots take over society’s productive forces, people will have more free time than ever before, which will ‘redound to the benefit of emancipated labour, and is the condition of its emancipation,’ Marx wrote. Humans, once freed from the bonds of soul-crushing capitalist labour, will develop new means of social thought and cooperation outside of the wage relation that frames most of our interactions under capitalism. In short, Marx claimed that automation would bring about the end of capitalism.

It’s a familiar sentiment that  thanks to robots being in vogue, but we only have to look to the recent past to know that things didn’t exactly work out that way. Capitalism is very much alive and well, despite automation’s steady march towards ascendancy over the centuries. The reason is this: automation doesn’t disrupt capitalism. It’s an integral part of the system.”

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Old Print Article: “Grave Robbers Rouse ‘Dead’ Woman To Life,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1932)

September 1, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Back when the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was still spelling Romania as “Rumania,” the paper published a positively preposterous piece about a wealthy woman who was supposedly saved from being buried alive by unlikely liberators. From the December 18, 1932 article:

“Vienna — From the village of Nagy Perente, in Transylvania, comes a story of an occurrence so remarkable as to be almost unbelievable. Its accuracy has, however, been established, according to an accredited investigator.

A rich Rumanian woman living in Nagy Perente died a short time ago–or was supposed to have died–and was buried in a little mountain cemetery not far from her home. According to the local custom all her jewelry was buried with her–gold earrings, necklaces and bangles with a number of gems, were placed in the coffin.

Bandits Open Grave

That night three bandits, lured by the prospect of some rich plunder, easily obtainable, opened the grave, pried off the coffin lid and reached in to grasp the gold and jewels. As they did so a sleepy voice murmured. ‘What do you want?’ and the eyes of the supposedly dead woman opened. She grasped the sides of the coffin and attempted to rise to her feet.

One of the bandits fainted, but his companions fled the scene.

Revived by the cold night air, the woman, still in her shroud, rose to her feet and fell out of the coffin.

Staggered to Her Home

Then, clutching at tombstones and steadying herself along the church wall, she staggered the few hundred yards to her home.

Her husband was so overjoyed at her return that he intervened with the police to secure the removal to a hospital of the bandit, who was still lying in a dead faint in the churchyard.

The woman had been suffering from sleeping sickness, and the local doctor had made out a death certificate when her lethargic condition gave her the appearance of death.”

 

“He’ll Do Your Bidding If You Press The Right Button In The Remote Control”

September 1, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

On this Labor Day, here’s a 1956 video of Bernard Smith’s creation Robert the Robot, shown here working around the house, which was part of the wave of robo-utopia present in Australia in the middle of last century.

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“They Do Not Get Tired, Drunk Or Angry”

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

A few more thoughts on autonomous vehicles, these from economist Tim Harford at the Financial Times. One thing in his article I didn’t know about is that Germany has been road-testing robocars for two decades. The opening:

“Last Wednesday Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, invited British cities to express their interest in being used as testing grounds for driverless cars. The hope is that the UK will gain an edge in this promising new industry. (German autonomous cars were being tested on German, French and Danish public roads 20 years ago, so the time is surely ripe for the UK to leap into a position of technological leadership.)

On Tuesday, a very different motoring story was in the news. Mark Slater, a lorry driver, was convicted of murdering Trevor Allen. He had lost his temper and deliberately driven a 17 tonne lorry over Mr Allen’s head. It is a striking juxtaposition.

The idea of cars that drive themselves is unsettling, but with drivers like Slater at large, the age of the driverless car cannot come quickly enough.

But the question of how safe robotic cars are, or might become, is rather different from the question of the risks of a computer-guided car are perceived, and how they might be repackaged by regulators, insurers and the courts.

On the first question, it is highly likely that a computer will one day do a better, safer, more courteous job of driving than you can. It is too early to be certain of that, because serious accidents are rare. An early benchmark for Google’s famous driverless car programme was to complete 100,000 miles driving on public roads – but American drivers in general only kill someone every 100m miles.

Still, the safety record so far seems good, and computers have some obvious advantages. They do not get tired, drunk or angry. They are absurdly patient in the face of wobbly cyclists, learner drivers and road hogs.

But there are bound to be hiccups.”

 

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Recently Posted On NYC’S Craigslist

September 1, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Serious inquiries only.”

I want to sell my soul!! I AM SERIOUS! – $9999999 (anywhere)

I AM SERIOUS! I want to sell my soul.

I am SHOCKED that in all of NYC there isn’t one person who can contact Satan and have him get in touch with me. He can reply to this email.

I have a “soul” and it’s up for sale to the highest bidder. Man or devil, I don’t care which!

I want CASH! I will accept a life time of living in rich luxury with a beautiful (by MY standards) WOMAN in lieu of a cash payment.

Serious inquiries only. If you are serious, I will reply shortly.

“The Public Seems To Think That All Of The Technology Issues Are Solved”

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

Autonomous vehicles are probably not as close as we’d like nor as far in the distance as we might believe, but they’re not road-ready yet and hurdling those last few obstacles may be more difficult than all the ones that came before them. From Lee Gomes at Technology Review:

“Would you buy a self-driving car that couldn’t drive itself in 99 percent of the country? Or that knew nearly nothing about parking, couldn’t be taken out in snow or heavy rain, and would drive straight over a gaping pothole?

If your answer is yes, then check out the Google Self-Driving Car, model year 2014.

Of course, Google isn’t yet selling its now-famous robotic vehicle and has said that its technology will be thoroughly tested before it ever does. But the car clearly isn’t ready yet, as evidenced by the list of things it can’t currently do—volunteered by Chris Urmson, director of the Google car team.

Google’s cars have safely driven more than 700,000 miles. As a result, ‘the public seems to think that all of the technology issues are solved,’ says Steven Shladover, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies. ‘But that is simply not the case.’

No one knows that better than Urmson. But he says he is optimistic about tackling outstanding challenges and that it’s ‘going to happen more quickly than many people think.'”

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“We Crave A Concrete Idea Of What Real Anti-Aging Medication Could Consist Of”

September 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, who believes the summers can be endless, sat for an interview with Marty Nomko of Psychology Today. An excerpt:

“Question:

You and those at your foundation and allied scientists believe there’s a 50 percent chance that your proposed strategies for repairing age-related cell damage will come to fruition within 20 to 25 years. What’s your evidence for that?

Aubrey de Grey: 

It’s the same kind of evidence that any pioneering technologist has: We have a concrete idea of what real anti-aging medication would consist of plus detailed knowledge of what technology already exists that constitutes the starting-points for developing that medication. So we have a reasonable sense of how hard it is to get from here to there and thus how long it will probably take.

Question:

That sounds like a blend of evidence and gut feeling.

Aubrey de Grey: 

It’s a different sort of evidence than what basic scientists use to make progress in understanding nature but it’s exactly the way technologists always work in devising new ways to manipulate nature.”

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“A Nearby Human Stranger Will Relay The Message Verbally To Its Intended Recipient”

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

Some people think Miranda July is too quirky, but fuck them. The artist has developed an app which is both impersonal and (oddly) personal. From Katie Collins at Ars Technica:

“No matter how many emoticons you use, messaging apps (for the most part) remain a rather impersonal form of communication that fall somewhere between e-mail and phone calls on the formality scale.

Artist and actress Miranda July is hoping to change this with her new messaging app Somebody, which will send your missives not directly to your friend, but to a nearby human stranger who will relay the message verbally to its intended recipient.

While the app is very much a real piece of technology, it is also a far-reaching public art project that to some extent involves the sender replacing their avatar with a real-life messenger, who is being directed in a mini performance. On the app’s website, July describes Somebody as: ‘The antithesis of the utilitarian efficiency that tech promises, here, finally, is an app that makes us nervous, giddy, and alert to the people around us.’

To send a message, you select a friend from within the app and that friend will respond letting you know whether or not it is a good time for them. You then write out your note and add instructions and actions, to help your messenger get the delivery just right. You’ll be able to select a nearby messenger to be your stand-in by looking at their picture, their likes, their reviews, and their ratings. Your friend and stand-in will be sent each other’s pictures and locations so they can find one another. Once your message has been delivered, you will be notified.”

___________________

“Are you the favorite person of anybody?”

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“I Just Want To Answer The Man Representing Satan”

September 1, 2014 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Hippie culture crossed wires with Christian culture and Jesus went electric, became a superstar. As do a lot of idealistic and naive American dreams, Jesus Freaks got their start in California, urged on in this case by the Hollywood Free Paper. The movement peaked in 1972, splintering thereafter. This 43-minute film from that year of ascendancy, in which even Hal Lindsey pops up, is a fascinating artifact of the time.

“Society Is Going To Realize That Power As Great As Uber’s Needs To Be Checked”

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

Andrew Leonard of Salon might be getting ahead of himself when he sees a triumphant Uber getting its comeuppance from regulators, not only because the ride-share leader hasn’t yet won, but because Amazon, which has won and rolled over many an industry in the process, has been able to avoid legal curtailment simply because it gives people what they want and is willing to absorb short- and mid-term losses to do so. For the foreseeable future–and perhaps permanently–convenience will rule the day. But in the very long run, Leonard’s scenario is possible. An excerpt:

“The real question we should be asking ourselves is this: What happens when a company with the DNA of Uber ends up winning it all? What happens when the local taxi companies are destroyed and Lyft is crushed? When Uber has dominant market position in every major city on the globe? ‘UberEverywhere’ isn’t a joke. It’s a mantra, a call to arms, a holy ideology.

What happens when Uber’s priorities turn to generating cash rather than spending it? What happens to labor — the Uber drivers — when they have no alternative but Uber? What happens when it rains and the surge-pricing spikes and there’s nowhere else to go? A company with the street-fighting ethos of Uber isn’t going to let drivers unionize, and it certainly isn’t going to pay them more than it is required to by the harsh laws of competition. It will also dump them entirely in a nanosecond when self-driving cars prove that they are cheaper and safer. Making the case that drivers are benefitting from the current recruitment wars starts to look like a pretty short-term play. The more powerful Uber gets, the more leverage it will have over labor.

So here’s what’s going to happen. Society is going to realize that power as great as Uber’s needs to be checked. Uber, by virtue of its own success, will demonstrate where the lines need to be drawn for the general good. When Uber is the only game in town, the necessity for comprehensive requirements for commercial insurance and background checks will be obvious. When Uber starts using its logistics clout and unlimited investment capital to go after UPS and Hertz and FedEx, regulators will start wondering about antitrust issues.”

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“It Is Awesome”

August 31, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Steve Wozniak, who recently damned Tesla cars with faint praise, selling the Datsun 280-ZX in 1979.

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A Brief Note From 1910 About A Rare Condition

August 31, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 18, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Philadelphia, Pa. — A man with his heart, stomach, liver, spleen and intestines all on the wrong side of his body was exhibited, last night, by Dr. G. Harlan Wells of the Hahneman College, at a meeting of the Philadelphia Academy of Medicine.

The condition is a very rare one and is called by the doctors ‘situe viscerum inversus.’ His organs being misplaced did not seem to bother the man in the least. He is 45 years old, a machinist by trade and enjoys the best of health.”

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“They Are A Growing Corner Of The Broader Sharing Economy”

August 31, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Claire Cain Miller has a New York Times piece about the Rental Economy, which was nurtured, unsurprisingly, during the Great Recession, when owning became onerous if not impossible. It works best so far with expensive items that are needed or desired infrequently. The opening:

“Things that you can now rent instead of buying: a power drill, a song, a tent, an office for an hour, a Prada handbag, a wedding dress, a painting, a dog, your neighbor’s car, a drone.

This new way of consuming — call it the Netflix economy — is being built by web start-ups that either rent items themselves or serve as middlemen, connecting people who want something with people who own it. They are a growing corner of the broader sharing economy, in which people rent out rooms in their homes on Airbnb or drive people in their cars with Uber or Lyft. Soon, tech entrepreneurs and investors say, we’ll be able to rent much of what we always thought we must own.

It is no coincidence that many of these companies — like Rent the Runway for designer dresses and Getaround for private cars — were born during the financial crisis, when people needed new ways to save money, as well as new ways to make it. The ones that have survived and grown during the recovery could herald a cultural shift away from the overconsumption that has driven so much of American culture — not to mention American debt.”

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“We Could Be At The Cusp Of A Third Computing Revolution”

August 31, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Everything’s Connected,” Timothy B. Lee’s Vox article about the promise of a new technological dawn in which gadgets linked to the Internet can anticipate our commands. It’s mostly fun and games now, but such apps could eventually cause profound change. An excerpt:

“Every couple of decades, the plunging cost of computing power gives birth to a new kind of computing platform. The 1970s saw the introduction of the first integrated computer chips, making possible PCs that were small and cheap enough that anyone could have one on their desks. In the late 1990s, a new generation of low-power chips allowed the creation of mobile computers — smartphones — that fit in our pockets and could run all day on a single charge.

In both cases, it took technology companies about a decade to figure out how to take full advantage of the capabilities of the new platform. PCs were clumsy niche products until the Macintosh (and later Windows) made them user-friendly starting in 1984. Smartphones didn’t reach their full potential until Apple invented a modern multi-touch interface for the iPhone in 2007.

We could be at the cusp of a third computing revolution. Once again, a new generation of computer chips is dramatically smaller, cheaper, and less power-hungry than the generation that preceded it. And like PCs in 1978 or smart phones in 2001, the current generation of products seem more like toys than a technology revolution.

What’s missing is software to allow consumers to manage dozens of connected devices in their homes and offices as effortlessly as we manage apps and websites today. It’s likely to take several more years for the necessary technology to mature. But it when it does, it could be a big deal.

So what might the world look like when there are tiny computers everywhere?”

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“He Had Been Clearing Dishes In The Officer’s Mess When The Hindenburg Began To Burn”

August 31, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Is the phrase “Oh, the humanity!” the most famous “play-by-play” call ever, still widely known? That was the succinct takeaway of radio reporter Herbert Morrison’s broadcast about the disaster of the Hindenburg, the German commercial airship that burst into flames over New Jersey on May 6, 1937. Shockingly, the majority of the passengers and crew survived. Bruce Weber has written a New York Times obituary about Werner Franz, who was a 14-year-old cabin boy when the ship went down and had been the last surviving crew member. The nasty footnote: He was later a member of Luftwaffe. An excerpt:

“The Hindenburg, 800 feet long (more than three times the length of a Boeing 747) and 135 feet in diameter, had its maiden voyage on March 4, 1936, and made 62 safe flights before its destruction. Mr. Franz had made four round-trip crossings on it, to both North and South America. As he recalled his experience of the crash in a book published in Germany a year later, he had been clearing dishes in the officer’s mess when the Hindenburg began to burn.

‘Franz heard a thud, and he felt the ship shake and point sharply upward as the burning tail crashed to the ground,’ Mr. [Dan] Grossman wrote on his website, airships.net, summarizing the German account. ‘Hydrogen flames roared above and behind him as the ship tilted more steeply, and then a ballast tank ruptured, dousing Franz with water.’

The inadvertent soaking was Mr. Franz’s good fortune, offering a buffer against the mounting heat and flame. He kicked open a hatch used to bring supplies onto the ship, and when the ground loomed close enough, he leapt to safety, running from the wreckage before it could entrap him. He suffered no injuries.”

 

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“The FAA Roadmap Explicitly States There Must Be One Pilot Per Drone”

August 31, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A follow-up post to the recent one about Google angling to outdo Amazon in the delivery-drone sector, this one about the regulatory issues involved. Even when navigational and battery challenges are worked through, the greater obstacle in the path may be governmental, at least in the near-term future. From Jack Nicas at the Wall Street Journal:

“Then there are the regulatory hurdles. There, the issue isn’t so much the Federal Aviation Administration’s current effective ban on commercial drones. The agency says it plans to propose rules for small drones in November, with the rules likely finalized one or two years later. That timeline jibes with Google’s and Amazon’s stated plans for delivery drones. Still, the FAA has missed several previous deadlines for the rules, and their importance means several big federal departments will have to weigh in, which could further delay things.

The devil is likely to be in the details of those rules. The FAA has said it will prohibit fully autonomous drone flights for the foreseeable future—even after the broader ban is lifted. Its five-year roadmap for drone integration, released last year,  says that a pilot will be required to fly each drone, or at least have ‘override authority to assume control at all times.’ Some have suggested one pilot could oversee many largely autonomous drones with the ability to jump into control if any device malfunctions, but the FAA roadmap explicitly states there must be one pilot per drone.

Depending on how this policy materializes in the final rule, it could create a big headache for Google’s and Amazon’s plans — and many other potential drone applications. Delivery drones would likely have to be autonomous to be cost efficient.”

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