culture

The Means of Consumption

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PC sales are down. Way, way down.

What’s to blame? Zero Hedge says that in addition to lackluster sales and poor reception for Windows *, we are, after all, still in a pretty severely depressed economy and that there’s just no end-user demand for new OSes or new computers in general. None of which is wrong. Windows 8, in particular, severly hamstrings Windows as an operating system, forcing it to suffer from the same limitations as a phone (which is just silly, especially when Windows 7 was a solid OS).

But the comments point out that we’ve really reached a point in modern computing power where most people just don’t need it. The rise of mobile and tablet devices has only compounded that. If the average person uses a machine just to tweet or surf the internet or check email or even just watch a movie, what’s the point of having several cubic powers worth of CPUs and RAM capacity greater than that of hard drives less than a decade ago? The smaller devices speak to that and obviate a need for real “computing” devices.

But two comments in particular caught my eye. The first:

[M]ost people don’t do physics simulations, train neural nets, backtest stock trading strategies and so on.

In tight times – why upgrade something that’s already better than most need?  Even I still use some  2 core relative clunkers (that were the hottest thing going when bought).  Because they do their job and are dead-reliable.

And the second:

[E]very manuf [sic] caught the disease it seems.  They don’t give a shit about their installed base, only new sales, and are just slavishly following the migration of most people to crap mobiles – crap if you need any real computing power and flexibility and multi-tasking.

I recently got a Nexus 10 – it’s cute, sometimes handy and so on.  But solve any real problem on it?  You must be joking, it’s just not there.  It’s great for consuming content, sucks for creating anything real – it’s a toy that probably does match the mainstream mentality – the “average guy” who half of people are even dumber than.  That ain’t me.  I’m a maker…I need real tools.

This is just the digital embodiment of a long-time trend. We don’t shape our environments how we used to – we don’t create; we only consume. We refine what exists without thinking bigger. And the sad part about something like the news about PC sales, which could conceivably serve as a wakeup call, is that it won’t matter. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s that Windows 7 was fine and why should we bother iterating new versions. But the lesson is that there is at least some segment of humanity that’s trying to create and only needs the proper tools to do it. Possessing the means of consumption allows one only to consume (the Apple model); if we can repopularize “dual-use” technologies that don’t restrict content distribution but also enable its creation, well, now we might see innovation for all the right reasons.

The Challenge

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Originally meant for a Facebook post but it soon spiraled out of control. The subject is a piece by Jason Pontin in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review: “Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems.”

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills”

Since Apollo 17‘s flight in 1972, no humans have been back to the moon, or gone anywhere beyond low Earth orbit. No one has traveled faster than the crew of Apollo 10. (Since the last flight of the supersonic Concorde in 2003, civilian travel has become slower.) Blithe optimism about technology’s powers has evaporated, too, as big problems that people had imagined technology would solve, such as hunger, poverty, malaria, climate change, cancer, and the diseases of old age, have come to seem intractably hard.

Not to say that the article is entirely pessimistic for the future. In a lot of cases it’s not so much a question of know-how as it is mere willpower.

I’ve written about this before (the common thread through all writing on this seems to be the Concorde.  Humans could once buy a ticket to travel faster than the speed of sound. Those days now lie behind us).

And we’re running out of steam, too. Consider the troubled F-35 acquisition program (I hate holding up acquisitions as an example of anything, but…here I am). It’s not even as advanced as the F-22. Yet we still don’t have a combat-ready B variant (the Marine Corps has stood up an all F-35B squadron consisting of exactly three aircraft). And of course, our most advanced aircraft, the F-22 and B-2, were meant to be procured in far greater numbers but went into the “death spiral” of rising cost and declining orders.

This is not a problem unique to “legacy” industries. Even the hyped new media and tech sectors are seeing their own trivialization. As a Businessweek article pointed out, “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” As Jeff Hammerbacher says, this does indeed suck.

I don’t know what the solution is, but this is hardly a matter of perception. There’s an explanation as to why we no longer live in an age of optimism with the stars as the limit and a sense of awe and wonder at what tomorrow might bring. We’re stuck in a quagmire with little consequential technological progress, no political progress at all, and a generational rift that could just as easily be a referendum on moving into the 21st century. Other than Los Angeles, who’s building an urban heavy rail line? Who’s developing a faster way to travel? A better way to compute? A food replicator? A way to make money while also enhancing the common good?

The closest we’re getting right now is 3-D printing, and I have very high hopes for the field. Should it really reach its true potential, global supply chains will be completely disrupted (and for the better). But it’ll have to go beyond mere plastics. And other than that, what’s on the horizon? What about today, other than the tiny details, has changed in the last 30 years? What in that time has changed for the better?

I recently read Charles Stross’s Halting State, which deserves a more comprehensive treatment at some point, but which also has the following passage:

“Imagine you were a time-traveller from the 1980s, say 1984, and you stepped out of your TARDIS right here, outside, uh, West Port Books.” (Which tells you where you are.) “Looking around, what would you see that tells you you’re not in Thatcherland anymore?”

“You’re playing a game, right?”

“If you want it to be a game, it’s a game.” Actually it’s not a game, it’s a stratagem, but let’s hope she doesn’t spot it.

“Okay.” She points at the office building opposite. “But that…okay, the lights are modern, and there are the flat screens inside the window. Does that help?”

“A little.” Traffic lights change: Cars drive past. “Look at the cars. They’re a little bit different, more melted-looking, and some of them don’t have drivers. But most of the buildings—they’re the same as they’ve ever been. The people, they’re the same. Okay, so fashions change a little. But how’d you tell you weren’t in 1988? As opposed to ’98? Or ’08? Or today?”

“I don’t—” She blinks rapidly, then something clicks: “The mobile phones! Everyone’s got them, and they’re a lot smaller, right?”

“I picked 1984 for a reason. They didn’t have mobies then—they were just coming in. No Internet, except a few university research departments. No cable TV, no laptops, no websites, no games—”

“Didn’t they have Space Invaders?”

You feel like kicking yourself. “I guess. But apart from that…everything out here on the street looks the same, near enough, but it doesn’t work the same.”

Humanity possesses boundless reserves of optimism just waiting for the right conditions to be unleashed. But I fear we’re a long way away from that. We currently live in an age of in-between, a mere interlude of history, with our small times and small men and small problems. What’s next?

On Chicago

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The Chicago skyline, as viewed from Wrigley Field looking south, April 5, 2011. Photo by the author.

I meant this to be a stand-alone post on Chicago, but life circumstances will also turn this into a farewell to that most quintessentially American city. Things have necessitated a homecoming, but I see it as being for the best.

Yes, I have now departed Chicago and returned home to Boston for now. Career-wise this is almost certainly the right move; the kind of work I want to do is based pretty much entirely on the East Coast, and now I’m that much closer to potential employers, etc. But I got a pretty awesome trip out of it, somehow accidentally theming it around baseball. Did you know that for some games tickets to Wrigley Field are as little as $8?

And then our road trip route took us past Jacobs Field in Cleveland, past the sign for Cooperstown (sadly, summer hours had not yet begun), and home to Boston, where Sunday night I was able to watch at Fenway as the Red Sox won their first (and to-date, only) series of the year. Against the Yankees, no less. But I digress.

Much of my thinking on Chicago as a city is reflected perfectly in a post from my old professor, Fredric Smoler:

It was thus a hyper-modern and ultra-American city, more modern and in a sense more American than New York, which predated the Republic. The quintessential American architectural form, the skyscraper, was invented here, and approaching the city from its airport the spires rise above the plain like Oz. L. Frank Baum had lived in Chicago, and I think it shows…

A fantasy of Chicago made a vast impression on people like Bertholt Brecht, for whom it symbolized immensely violent capitalist energies. Chicago no longer seems to evoke that intense energy in the minds of foreigners, or for that matter for too many Americans, and we seem to have also lost the once more varied sense of its history as well… Continue reading →

Megalopolis

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Last week I had the pleasure of attending another Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs event specifically for Young Professionals. In this case it was a conversation between all-around-urban-intellectual Greg Lindsay and architect Jeanne Gang on nothing less critical than “The Future of Cities.”

Lindsay just cowrote the book Aerotropolis: How We’ll Live Next with John Karsada, which at its most basic is about the coming airport-centric design and planning that will determine the future of cities and the course of twenty-first century urbanism. But even that mouthful of a description doesn’t really do the book justice. Reading Geoff Manaugh’s interview of Lindsay (and also, Lindsay’s of Manaugh), puts the book in a new light and raises a whole variety of additional interpretations to Aerotropolis‘ main theories.

The talk, however, did not focus solely on Lindsay’s book. After a rather stilted introduction from a local Boeing representative, Lindsay launched into a brief overview of the cities of the future. In the next twenty years more “urban fabric” will be created than in the entire rest of human history. And none of them will look like Chicago. They will be born into nowhere, separated from their surrounding regions. Continue reading →

Hyphenated-Americans

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And so all too soon, my tenure at Fortnight comes to a close.

I like to think that my last article, “Hyphenated-Americans,” ends on an optimistic note. What we are is as much what we make it as what we’re born with; we are the architects of our own dreams.* The baggage that identity carries with it is forever changing, from liability to asset, cornerstone to curiosity, cast away to embraced. And all of that goes for collective identity and culture as well.

In the grand scheme of existential questions, “Who am I?” is a close second behind “Why am I here?” Identity remains the catalyst for countless struggles within families, communities, states and nations. The heyday of 1960s-era identity politics may have passed, but we live in an age of unreconciled, increasingly fluid social boundaries.

The idea of a single American identity is a relatively recent construct. During the American Revolution, it was hard to find a single unifying idea beyond that of throwing off the yoke of British rule. But after the war was won, the fledgling Republic suffered its own trials. The failed Articles of Confederation presaged Shay’s Rebellion, and the final Constitution used today. We struggled through a bloody five-year civil war before reuniting, even if at gunpoint. There has always been tension and impetus in different directions here; the United States has always been a restless melting pot.

Today, we’re anything but united. Politically, ethnically and regionally, we’re split even more than perhaps we realize. The number of overlapping identities and allegiances that exist lead to an incredible number of constructed personas. Are Americans a collection of adjectives –Jewish, gay, Christian, Muslim, white, black, Arab, female, young, old–or, are we something more than the sum of these parts? And in an age of ever-increasing fracture, what do we still have in common?

Read the rest at Fortnight. And also, stay tuned for Fortnight, Volume II. My editors, Adam and Samantha, already have some amazing names lined up: James Ransone of Generation Kill and The Wire fame, author Benjamin Hale (whose debut novel The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is really quite excellent), Army Lieutenant Rajiv Srinivasan, and Digital Democracy founder Mark Belinsky, just to name a few. And those are just the contributors. I can’t even imagine what kind of luminaries they’ll find. As always, thanks for humoring these digressions.

*Apologies for the reference, I only just saw Inception for the first time the other night.

Whatever Happened, Happened

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My new piece at Fortnight, partially inspired by the events of the MV Mavi Mamara Gaza flotilla raid, is all about the facts and just the facts, ma’m. More specifically, it’s about how no one agrees on what should be indisputable, universally accepted truths. Reality itself is now up for debate.

On May 31, 2010, Israeli naval commandos rappelled onto a series of boats in an enemy flotilla that was attempting to run a blockade off of Gaza. Provoked, Jerusalem had no choice but to respond to and interdict the flotilla. Met with hostile resistance as they boarded the boats—rappelling down from helicopters—the Israeli troops responded in kind, and neutralized the terrorist threat.

Or: On May 31, 2010, a band of Jewish thugs murdered several innocent protesters who were on a mission of mercy to the blighted Gaza strip. In an attempt to persuade the world of the injustices and cruelty being perpetrated on the innocent peoples of Palestine, Israel proved that it could not tolerate even peaceful protest, and violated its own principles of free speech by slaughtering those attempting to exercise their rights.

But, how about we phrase it this way: On May 31, 2010, a bunch of people were killed and injured on boats in the Mediterranean. Two parties, clearly at odds with each other, both overreacted and some people died because of it.

Nobody wins.

Sadly, time will heal little, and temporal distance from the Gaza flotilla incident will do even less to clarify what happened and why. Who is correct in their interpretation of history?

***

Today, there is no single agreed-upon history from which to gauge correct accounts of political events. Facts are debatable. Ignorance and willful denial can coexist in a single narrative. Conspiracy theories and epistemic alternate realities (or, to use the recent turn of phrase, a certain “epistemic closure”) run rampant and unchecked. Cultural differences in conceptualizing time even play a part. And this all assumes there is an active desire and search for truth; many news consumers now cope with a world in which shoving their collective past down the “memory hole” is de rigueur.

Read the rest over at Fortnight.

“I want my enviroment to be a product of me.”

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Yesterday I fixed the toilet.

The handle had been giving us trouble for  a while; it used some antiquated metal contraption to connect to the flush valve. The handle bar was connected to the pull rod by Christmas ribbon. But finally the rod completely separated from the flush valve, leaving things awkward for a couple days.

I wasn’t sure if I knew what I was doing. My handiwork has been limited to cutting pieces of wood and putting nails into them. One time I cut some pipe for a home garden, though I’m pretty sure I just held the pipes so they wouldn’t fall to the ground. But the toilet was in need of assistance.

My girlfriend suggested we just tell the landlord and get him to fix it. “Nonsense,” I said, “it will be $20 at most, and we should figure out how it works anyways.” Translation: I should figure that out. But off I went to Home Depot, and found the flush valve assembly I needed for just over $5. Rather serendipitously, when I got home the City of Chicago had shut off water to our block because of a frozen pipe and burst main up the street. So the tank drained, I bent the existing assembly out of the way (having no pliers), and installed the new flapper.

The object of my designs.

When the water came back on eight hours later, I was finally able to test the repaired toilet. It worked! It was better than before, too; the handle never seemed to stick in the down position.

Whenever that toilet gets a flushed, I crack a little smile. I did this. Not the landlord, not my dad, not a friend – me. And that feeling, that sense of triumph and accomplishment – however fleeting – is something that has been conspicuously absent from my life. I would imagine it’s been absent from others’, as well.

I mean, how often do we get the chance to do anything that ends with tangible, visible results? When are we able to contribute, even in small fashion, to our everyday surroundings? We’re convinced, nay, compelled to sit back and let others do everything for us. To not assist bystanders in lieu of those with “professional” qualifications. To “vote” in elections where no one responds to us and nothing ever changes.

The agency has been revoked from our lives. For a brief moment I was able to improve one tiny aspect of my own. If only there was a way to exercise that power at all times.

Human Sacrifice, Cats and Dogs Living Together

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Mass hysteria!

“Truedog” has found the one word necessary to describe modern America: ‘hysterical‘. Everything’s blown out of proportion; no one has an ounce of common sense; we’ve all lost our collective shit. He also offers a most intriguing explanation:

Here’s my theory:  I think everyone in America shares an unconscious, often hidden, and largely unarticulated conclusion that we fucked up, the glory days are over, the country is in deep shit, and there’s no way out.  We know in our bones that we’re falling apart and the rest of the world is moving ahead.  Forget about being #1, we’ll be lucky to level off at #17.  I think that panic is shared across the political board.  Although ideology plays a strong role in who is blamed, the hysteria comes from a common root.  This isn’t just about now or the unemployment rate.  It’s deeper and more primal.  It taps into our inner terror of losing our grip and never getting it back.  Hysteria is just the vibration in our national fuselage as the American empire noses over and loses altitude. People sense they have lost something and are frantic over it.

So let’s just chill the fuck out until we regain our senses, or at least come to grips with our emerging place in the world. In the meantime, we would do well to acknowledge that we’re overreacting, and to at least back up our paranoia with meaningful actions instead of half-assing it. Bruce Schneier suggests that we close the Washington Monument instead of installing airport-like security. “We can reopen the monument when every foiled or failed terrorist plot causes us to praise our security, instead of redoubling it.”

Deep breaths.

On Value

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Recent headlines like this:

And this:

And this:

Are enough to make you ask: why are we still pretending that these people produce anything of value whatsoever? That their hyper-inflated ‘MegaJob‘ salaries are anything close to realistic compensation? When will we publicly acknowledge that the vast majority of the American finance sector is completely full of shit and damages the reputation and capabilities of this country?

Manipulation of numbers produces nothing. It contributes nothing. If you want to do that, download R and make a graph. But don’t make $500,000 a year to do nothing.

Supposedly the recession is ‘over’ and we’re beginning to recover. But if ‘recovery’ means restoring the finance sector to its previous pedestal atop the grand pantheon of economic bullshit, then that kind of recovery leaves us worse off than we were before. Nothing has changed. It could take ten years to restore unemployment levels to what they were before the recession, and all the while new immigration will be rewriting the face of the country. Much as Elizabeth Warren tries (bless her heart) to change the culture of Wall Street, she is fighting a losing battle. Who would voluntarily surrender an obscene paycheck ‘for the good of the nation’?

We have never been particularly good as a country at rewarding the right kind of work – at paying firemen and manufacturers and miners and the other types of employees that produce something tangible. But the current state of inequality is mind-boggling. And for those like Matt Ridley, who would seek to lull us into a sense of complacency by comparing human life not to that of our parents, not to that of the last three decades, but to the entirety of human history, that’s not where we get out benchmarks for today. We misplaced our priorities a long time ago; are we ever going to find them?

Fin

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I have a new piece out at Fortnight today. This one, in keeping with the dire overtones of the last, is all about our fascination with the apocalypse and mass destruction. Featuring awesome artwork by Matt McCann! Brief sample:

We’re pretty fucked, and we know it.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the grim economic and political situation in which our generation has found itself. If the present is indeed a culmination of the trends of the last two decades, then it would seem to be no mere coincidence that our era has witnessed a phenomenal rise across all forms of media in the formerly obscure subgenres of nihilism, post-apocalypticism and dystopian fiction. And even less surprising is how avidly our generation has consumed the stuff.

We were born into upheaval and collapse. We were raised during the height of the Cold War, and were toddlers when the Soviet Union disintegrated and Germany reunited. For those of us raised in the United States, then came the boom years of the Clinton era. Even to our less-than-fully-conscious minds, things seemed to be going pretty well. At least one, if not both our parents (or all four) had a job. We were safe from scary things like that Gorbyshave man, and this fantastic new thing called AOL was making our lives really interesting.

But as they say, “the night is darkest before dawn”—and, perhaps by the same token, the day is brightest at sunset. The unbelievable trauma that the destruction of the World Trade Center and the E-Ring of the Pentagon wrought on my nation was unparalleled in living memory. For our generation, it defined the beginning of our maturity, including attention to politics and global affairs…

Read the rest at Fortnight.