the new trompe l’oeil’s: physical spaces that simulate artificial spaces.
Digital wallpaper by Strukt Design Studio.
ENVISION by SUPERBIEN.
3:33 am
I happened to be up, briefly, at 3:33 am this morning and, remembering some childhood rumor, I made a wish: that everyone would have good luck.
But as I drifted to sleep I wondered if it was possible for everyone to simultaneously have good luck. Wouldn’t one person have to have an unlucky outcome for another to have the opposite?
This morning, awake, I have a more sterile answer: if everyone had good luck it wouldn’t be luck at all. I was wishing for some higher power to steal all the luck in this world.
I’ll try again at 1:11.
Behavioral economics stumbles upon childish rage.
This is hilarious in a “laughing to keep from crying” kind of way:
People who refuse the “treatment” of a feedback nudge or do the opposite of what the nudge is meant to encourage are known in the literature as “defiers” (Freedman 2006). But there are few specific examples of what motivates the defiers. We argue that political ideology may provide one explanation; an energy-conservation nudge may be ignored by conservative Republicans. Some may increase their consumption as they learn that their past consumption was “low” relative to others…Others may feel active anger at receiving the nudge.
That is, a nudge in the opposite direction.
Psychology and cognitive science are evolving quickly. Perhaps not as quickly as the cultural practices that exploit our mental capacities but then these trades (advertising, entertainment, propaganda) contribute greatly to what we know about our minds.
Related: this post on the anger in recent American politics.
Somewhere between Tron, Up and Ren & Stimpy
David OReilly‘s animated short Please Say Something is excellent and rewards repeated viewings.
(The debt to electronic music is noted: OReilly has done a video for Venetian Snares and his over-compressed reel is set to lolicore.)
Accidents are a feature not a bug.
I turned on our computerized car the other day and got a pleasant surprise. My wife had set the radio to a local college station and the DJ was playing music I’d never heard before but wanted to hear more of right away.
It was a thrill the engineers at Pandora.com, last.fm, and/or iTunes strive to provide but seldom do. It was serendipity.
In the 1963 novel Hopscotch, two lovers play a game of setting out from opposite sides of the city and reuniting by chance: “She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.”
The New Yorker describes the recent online sensation Chatroulette as the return of the repressed:
The technology behind Chatroulette is fairly basic and not particularly new. But by combining video-chatting technology and randomization Ternovskiy has bucked a decade-long trend that has made the Internet feel progressively more organized, pleasant, and safe. Google (founded in 1998) makes sure you pull up less flotsam when you search. Social networks like Friendster (2002), MySpace (2003), and Facebook (2004) let you stay in touch with a network of people you already know. Privacy settings keep out the ones you don’t. Twitter (2006) feeds you information from sources you choose to follow. Now Chatroulette has come along and showed us that we want chaos, too.
What makes life interesting – what makes life possible – is chance. Randomness. That’s not chaos, that’s the order.
A 21st century industry: meditation for mental health.
Drive through Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, walk around Soho and Chelsea, and you’ll see dozens of empty stores; commercial spaces for lease.
In Los Angeles, though, there has been a countervailing trend in retail: four years ago there were less than a few marijuana stores. Now there are at least one thousand. Clearly, consumers want to get out of their heads.
So why not a boom in meditation? Because it’s hard work. And, yet, we work out mental problems all the time through video games.
Games that shift the walls of our inner lives, games that can be laid over existing activities, games that create a bond between people. They are meditations. They are commercially viable alternatives to selling things that do not last, at prices that cannot hold for the purpose of filling a void that never goes away.
It is possible to imagine a thriving commercial sector based on delivering mental health. Through games.
Liberalism + laissez faire + immigration = ?
An excellent discussion of immigration, government neglect and its discontents. In England. But the parallels hold and the differences are enlightening.
Checkpoints around the cloud: the Conficker dilemma.
It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Apple’s decision to set up checkpoints around its cloud computing devices when reading Mark Bowden’s report on the Conficker botnet:
More than a billion computers are in use around the world, and by some estimates, a fourth of them have been surreptitiously linked to a botnet. But few botnets approach the size and menace of the one created by Conficker, which has stealthily linked between 6 million and 7 million computers.
Once created, botnets are valuable tools for criminal enterprise. Among other things, they can be used to efficiently distribute malware, to steal private information from otherwise secure Web sites or computers, to assist in fraudulent schemes, or to launch denial-of-service attacks—overwhelming a target computer with a flood of requests for response. The creator of an effective botnet, one with a wide range and the staying power to defeat security measures, can use it himself for one of the above scams, or he can sell or lease it to people who specialize in exploiting botnets. (Botnets can be bought or leased in underground markets online.)
Beyond criminal enterprise, botnets are also potentially dangerous weapons. If the right order were given, and all these computers worked together in one concerted effort, a botnet with that much computing power could crack many codes, break into and plunder just about any protected database in the world, and potentially hobble or even destroy almost any computer network, including those that make up a country’s vital modern infrastructure: systems that control banking, telephones, energy flow, air traffic, health-care information—even the Internet itself.
The key word there is could, because so far Conficker has done none of those things. It has been activated only once, to perform a relatively mundane spamming operation—enough to demonstrate that it is not benign. No one knows who created it. No one yet fully understands how it works. No one knows how to stop it or kill it. And no one even knows for sure why it exists.
Also, paging Mr. Baudrillard:
“If I disappear, there’s no map,” [Rodney Joffe] says. “So if you take us down, whole countries can actually disappear from the grid. They’re connected, but no one can find their way there, because the map’s disappeared.”
Modern music in popular 20th century film scores; wishing on a post-iPad version of The New Yorker
I look forward to the day when I am reading an article which references several different pieces of music and I don’t have to put the magazine down, go to a computer, search for the right recording, listen to it, and then pick up the magazine again.
Rather, I’ll be reading the article, come across a name, click on it, a menu will pop open, I’ll listen to the bit the author had in mind, close it, and go back to where I was. Until then, if you’re reading the May 17 New Yorker profile of composer Michael Giacchino, here are some of the references:
Jerry Goldsmith, Planet of the Apes: titles, The Hunt
György Ligeti, as in 2001, Atmospheres, Requiem
Bernard Herrmann, Citizen Kane, Vertigo
Leonard Rosenman, The Car
Michael Giacchino, “Lost” character motifs
Party of one.
We are, each of us, multiple people: a composite of diverging traits, a constant battle of wills, a mind regarding itself. This truth echoes throughout history, from myth to religion, from philosophy to modern science. There is no unitary self, only the desire to become one.
This struggle to become one’s self – possibly the defining struggle of our lives – has been especially suggestive to modern artists who have made the airy notion of multiplicity palpable in painting, sculpture, literature and cinema.
The science fiction film is especially suited for this existential drama. 2001, a thriller that pits man versus artificial intelligence and then man versus a superior intelligence, ends with the protagonist standing over his own dying body. Solaris, in some ways a rebuttal to 2001, also depicts an astronaut humbled by his own inability to confront an intelligence beyond his own.
In the movie Moon, an astronaut discovers he has been left to die, again and again. This hero is first challenged and then aided by perfect clones of himself. It’s a promising set-up – how would you treat yourself if you happened upon yourself? – but one that is largely unexplored.
Not only does this premise deserve another try, it could be a fantastic first-person video game. The player would end up playing with or against himself, countering or abetting his own previous, concurrent or future moves; embodied by several, seemingly independent avatars.
Professions that make quick studies of people.
Doctors and con men.
Hating on The Man but providing no alternatives.
A lively and chilling essay on the radical individualism that could, if unchecked by culture and further aided by technology and demagogues, turn America into the kind of failed society parodied by the movie Idiocracy:
But the blame does not fall on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or the Republican Party alone. We are experiencing just one more aftershock from the libertarian eruption that we all, whatever our partisan leanings, have willed into being. For half a century now Americans have been rebelling in the name of individual freedom. Some wanted a more tolerant society with greater private autonomy, and now we have it, which is a good thing—though it also brought us more out-of-wedlock births, a soft pornographic popular culture, and a drug trade that serves casual users while destroying poor American neighborhoods and destabilizing foreign nations. Others wanted to be free from taxes and regulations so they could get rich fast, and they have—and it’s left the more vulnerable among us in financial ruin, holding precarious jobs, and scrambling to find health care for their children. We wanted our two revolutions. Well, we have had them.
Now an angry group of Americans wants to be freer still—free from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians who don’t talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesn’t). They want to say what they have to say without fear of contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them they’re right. They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules—and, who knows, they may succeed. This is America, where wishes come true. And where no one remembers the adage “Beware what you wish for.”
An expert’s opinion on the Gulf of Mexico spill, reactions.
“shelburn, who is a retired manager for an offshore underwater service company” in The Oil Drum:
For those who are appalled that BP had no contingency plans in case of a spill, perhaps you think the skimmer vessels, the miles and miles of inflatable boom, and the couple hundred trained oil spill control personnel that you see on TV just materialized out of thin air. In fact, they have been on standby for a couple decades. They train, work on small spills, and prepare for disaster. As Rockman says: think of them as a fire department, paid for by the oil companies, under requirements of the US government.
For those who are appalled by the lack of government response, consider that the US Coast Guard was underway in minutes after the blow out, and their spill response personnel (as well as the teams and equipment from the oil industry) were already onsite, standing by, before the rig sank.
For a week after the initial incident, from the blowout April 20 until April 28, things weren’t going well. The BOP was still leaking, and the weather was slowing recovery operations, but it is fair to say that the incident was reasonably “under control”. There was no need for Obama to get directly involved, mobilize the Dept of Defense, etc.
On April 29, everything started falling apart–a true worst case scenario. That morning, it was obvious the leakage from the BOP had increased dramatically. Even worse, the weather changed and strong offshore winds start moving the oil directly toward some of the most sensitive barrier islands in Louisiana. Not only did the wind change direction, but by evening, it also increased to the point it effectively shut down all skimming and recovery operations and most boom deployments.
The media, which had had only superficial coverage up to this point, got heavily involved and disseminated a great deal of technical information that was just plain incorrect.
There is a certainly an expectation that someone may be to blame for the uncontrolled blow out with its loss of life, and potential for extreme environmental and economic damage. But, it is my opinion, with some understanding of the complexities and technical and operational challenges involved, that both the oil industry and the government operational people have responded to the incident quickly and professionally. I wish I could say the same for the media, the politicians and the bloggers.
via the Browser.
Something special in the air.
Two days ago, while waiting for a flight at LAX, I heard this p.a. announcement: “Atención, will passenger [redacted] please return to the security desk.” The announcement was made twice. Judging from the accent, I would say the speaker is Hispanic but his mother tongue is English.
On a flight today, the captain gave his usual spiel about the flying time and conditions. He referred to our destination as “Los Angeles, the city of angels.” Then he labored through a Spanish version, struggling with most of the cadences but trying quite hard to nail it. It’s my first time ever hearing the airplane’s captain do his spiel in Spanish, let alone someone clearly practicing Spanish as an adult learner.
Back at LAX, walking past the TSA agents, I heard one say: “That’s so stupid. I think they did it to piss people off.” Another replied “They did the same thing last year.” They were discussing the Phoenix Suns NBA team donning Los Suns jerseys for Cinco de Mayo. Judging from their accents, I’d guess the two agents are African-American.
It’s said that the plural of anecdote is not data but I have a feeling something very interesting is happening in the US of A. Thank you state legislature of Arizona. Or, as it is becoming fashionable to say, muchas gracias.
Exiles
Heading to O’Hare airport by cab, we hit a wall of traffic. The driver recommends dropping me off at a train station. He’d heard me speaking in Spanish and asks me where I am from. I say Cuba, he says Somalia. I ask him how he likes the Chicago winters and he says he goes to Dubai for the winters to visit his mother who is also exiled. He says he can’t visit his country or he’ll be shot. As I get out I say I look forward to the day when he and I can both visit our homelands. He laughs. As I write this on a train in Chicago headed to a plane to Los Angeles I have tears in my eyes.
The homegrown anarchists of our time.
The dude who tried to fly his plane into an IRS building is from Texas.
The dude who tried to blow up his van in Times Square is from Connecticut.
Conversations with my imaginary nemesis: marketing matters.
I have an ongoing conversation with an imaginary nemesis. We are both in the business of making people happy.
Today my nemesis said to me: Don’t you know your audience? They drink a can of soda every day. These are soda drinking people.
To which I replied: No, they’re thirsty people. What they’re drinking now is not who they are but what they know.
The $1,800 drivers license.
I just read a note from an immigrant who reports he has been in this country for 16 years, having arrived at the age of 15 and immediately started working. He is now married, pays taxes and has a driver’s license.
He writes that he paid $1,800 cash for his driver’s license. Where it really only costs about $35. The state didn’t get a penny of those $1,765 even though it very well should have (who knows what the illicit dealer did with the money; I doubt it was pay for homeless shelters, language immersion programs, ambulatory health clinics, etc.)
If one illegal immigrant can save up to buy an $1,800 driver’s license, the cost of absorbing illegal immigrants can certainly be offset by absorbing the robust black market around their presence; let alone the shadow economy of unreported cash payments.
The audacity of oil spill containment.
While describing BP’s desperate efforts to contain their massive oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, the NYT lets drop this gem: “The impact of chemical dispersants on deepwater ecology is unclear.”
I’ve read that one way to prevent the extinction of a species is to make it into a delicious dish. People will care more for it. I don’t think you can make a dish out of deepwater ecology but finding ways for the public to invest in the environment might be a way to drive innovation or, at least, force companies to pay for wrecking that environment:
He stopped to speak to several fishermen, assuring them that BP would reimburse them for lost earnings. But reimbursement may be one of the largest battles to come, given that federal law sets a limit of $75 million on BP’s liability for damages, apart from the cleanup costs.
“It’s going to be extremely tricky” to reimburse fishermen and others if economic damages tally above $75 million, said Stuart Smith, a New Orleans-based lawyer who is pushing for Congressional action to amend the law. “They may not be obligated to pay more than that unless they agree to do it.”