Brotherhood 

If you could hear sound in space, you'd hear the groaning of metal, creaking, popping, uneasy expanding at its bolts and seams each time the Sun's unbridled heat makes its way around its temporary daily eclipse of the Earth, the metal beginning to stretch and bend as its temperature changes, suddenly, from arid, frigid, airless cold to its opposite: searing burning irradiated heat. If you could hear sound in space, you might hear radiation screaming. Energy makes sound, but not in space. Space is silent.

There's a small crew of astronauts inside the metal can called Bratstvo, "Brotherhood." The craft is Russian, but there are no Russians inside. They take six-month shifts, and on this shift, there's a Swede and an Australian and an American, and for the fist time in Bratsvo's four-year history, the official language inside the can is English.

Though the three of them have only been in space a few weeks, they've lived together, more or less, for the past six years, every day training, sometimes in the old converted Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily base in St. Petersburg they use for mission control, sometimes in a deep-sea tank in the Swedish waters of the Baltic Sea. The astronauts were chosen partly for their complementary skills — "A scientist, a doctor, and an engineer walk into a space station…" — but mostly because they can stand one other's company without driving each other nuts. They're a quiet, kind, hard-working set.

They each have their own duties: a mix of maintenance, science experiments, and plain old chores. They keep a chart, like roommates, that tells them whose turn it is to cook, whose turn it is to clean, and though they've come to understand the Swede is their most gifted microwave chef, and the Aussie is a bit of mess, at least for an astronaut, still, they share these chores as equally as they can.

Today is different. They've put aside their tasks, at least the dispensable ones, so they can watch CNN and Al Jazeera. You can watch CNN and Al Jazeera from space. You can watch almost all television from space. The astronauts have a radio channel open to mission control, and they're receiving incoming calls from their various governments, too. But they can't get a clear understanding of what's happening. Pakistan struck first, or maybe India did, though there are reports that the initial launch may have come from somewhere in the South China Sea — from a submarine. What they know for sure, what's indisputable, what they've seen with their own eyes, is there were twenty-four blasts across Asia, mostly focused in the Indian Subcontinent, but a few spreading into China. There were ten sudden minutes of nuclear explosions lighting up a corner of the globe, and they saw it all.

Nuclear explosions, as you might guess, look beautiful from space.

The clouds of dust that rose up into the stratosphere changed very quickly the picture of Earth from space. The familiar blue orb was suddenly watercolor smudged, burnt sienna.

Every nation and every person on Earth is on high alert, except maybe a remote few who don't yet know what's happening. But the remotest people of all, drifting 350 kilometers above the planet aboard the Bratstvo, see it more clearly than anyone. The three astronauts watch it all unfold on their monitors and in their window, while cries of alarm go up on the news stations: it's happening. The United States, then China, then Russia, while making public pleas for calm, launch their stockpiles into the sky. Each one strikes, they claim, preemptively, at the other. The astronauts behold the longest hour mankind has ever made. From space, it looks like fireworks, like a switchboard, like a blanket crackling with static electricity in the dark, like the sparking neurons of a giant brain.

And then it's quiet. There is no radio. There is no CNN. There is no Al Jazeera. A blanket of rust-colored air rises up and blocks the view from space, and while those below suffer their fear and mortality, some instantly and some slowly, these three in space watch from above, no way out, no way down, nowhere to go, counting the days before starvation, before power failure, before orbital tugs pull them back toward the home they'll never see again. 

The Beginning of the End 

The reason we hope for a Mayan apocalypse—or any pre-ordained disaster—is that it gives us an excuse to believe in a sensical order, gleaned, if not by us, at least by our betters. It is an excuse to believe in our betters.

The Ionizer 

There's dirt everywhere in this house, on every countertop, every swatch of upholstery, and every inch of floor, a thick grit of it that feels, under foot, like powdered cement and sand. We've become that house, those people, who let the housekeeping get ahead of them till it's overwhelming. We sweep often, mop almost as much, but the surface area of our floor seems as big as Iowa, and it's already started collecting a new layer of dust before we've finished sweeping up the earlier layer. It's too much.

I start dreaming of a machine, the sort of machine that a craftier man might invent, in long nights, after work, in his garage: a kind of ionizer that would work, maybe like Air Hockey, to keep the dirt from ever settling: a gravity defiance device. It would repel dirt altogether, pushing it away, like mosquitoes from citronella or like a reverse electromagnet, always humming, always working.

I imagine this device, left running at all hours, defending us from the accumulation of dust, so all the offending particles would pile up instead at the perimeter of the device's range, forming a small then larger bump ringing the house, then a mound, then a bulwark or balustrade that would grow, month after month, into an actual fortification, piling high as my waist, high as my shoulders, too high now to see past; and eventually, after passage of enough time, we'd become that house, those people, pristine, dirt-free, surrounded by a wall, no one ever going in or going out, like all the other houses and people.

This So-Called Universe 

Every now and then, I read an article about how our lives, the world we live in, the sum total of our experiences and feelings and thoughts, everything we consider real, are actually a complicated computer simulation, and it's not just likely that this is so, but it's actually likely that it must be so.

This sounds about right to me.

There are several arguments advanced in favor of this view of things, though I don't remember any of them too well. One is statistical. As soon as it's possible for a computer to simulate a universe (and, according to Moore's law, it will be possible, very soon), then there can be a lot of simulated universes. Before long, even the simulated universes will develop the computing power to simulate a universe, and over time, the number of possible simulated universes approaches infinity; whereas no matter how much time passes, there will still be only one real universe — so the odds that you are in a simulated one are almost infinitely higher than the odds that you are in a real one.

Another argument I remember is that when you zoom in very closely to an object, say, using an electron microscope, the object pixelates, the same way an image would on a computer screen. It's as if reality doesn't have enough memory to be able to render the object any more exactly: reality runs out of RAM. I don't have an electron microscope to verify this, but I suppose the difference between the word "pixel" and the word "atom" is really semantic.

A third argument relies on quantum mechanics, so I understand it even less than the other two. In quantum mechanics, a particle that might exist in this place or in that place actually exists in all of those places, as a probability, and doesn't exist in any of those places until you actually go looking for it. 

[The way I've described it here, it sounds a bit like the process of looking for my keys, which have an equal chance of existing in the kitchen, the bedroom, the pocket of my satchel, the lock of the back door, inside the pantry, inside the fridge, inside the mailbox, the bottom of the laundry machine: maybe the whole of quantum theory can be understood by the platitude, "Where were they when you saw them last?"]

Generally, human experience doesn't behave like quantum mechanics: objects exist in a single, persistent location, not simultaneously as a probability in many locations. The behaviors that are measured by quantum physicists don't match with our perception of reality. But they do match with the "reality" of videogames, where the hero approaches the door to a dungeon and might find any number of things on the other side, and even the computer doesn't know what's really there (because nothing is really there) till the hero throws open the door.

These arguments, and others like them, assert that we are currently living inside a computer simulation — and there is nothing about this premise that troubles me in the slightest. If it's true, it doesn't actually change anything. We've always gone about our lives under the assumption they're governed by certain rules, and we have generations of scientists and theologians working to better understand those rules. If we learn that these rules are part of a computer model and therefore are arbitrary, or if we learn that our universe is one of many and not unique, well, these aren't particularly surprising or disappointing revelations.

On the contrary. If we all live at the heart of a simulation, and we can prove it, then finally we have an unambiguous and non-arbitrary reason to believe in those rules, to rally around our shared function and shared governance. In discovering our world isn't true, we will finally have found a reason to believe in God, our Creator. 

That's the real assertion of this premise: that if we live inside a simulation, then the theists have been right all along.

Amish Missed Connections 

You were changing a wagon wheel. I was wearing a hat. You smiled.

* * *

At the barn raising, you borrowed my hammer and took my heart.

* * *

I was the girl reading the Bible at the community center. I cut our conversation short out of shyness. I’d love to discuss the book some more.

* * *

Your cow had prolapsed and retained her afterbirth. I expelled the placenta. Let's schedule a follow-up.

* * *

Do you still think of our rumspringa, like I do?

Backpacking to Nowhere 

or, Emergency Preparedness, pt. 2

Maybe it's because I'm back in California, or maybe because of the recent Japanese quake and tsunami, or maybe because there are only a countable number of months between now and the end of that Mayan calendar—or maybe it's because it's the job of all news media to incite me into a mad panic—but I have been completely distractedly preoccupied with a sense of impending disaster. Everywhere I go now, I wonder: what if the earthquake hits now? I drive on freeways and wonder if the road will continue to hold up underneath me; I look out at the distant Los Angeles skyline and wonder if I'll see it sway and break. The rumbles of passing planes or trucks sound, to me, tectonic. I'm having trouble sleeping.

The feeling reminds me of those months after September 11: it's a Chicken Little "sky-is-falling" feeling. The sense back then was that planes might crash and buildings might fall on a scale we hadn't previously imagined; and now it's a looming awareness that the earth might shake harder and the waves might roll higher; but the general form of the feeling is this: there is a certain amount of stability which I am used to being able to take for granted, and now I can't; and it turns out maybe I need to be able to assume a certain amount of stability if I want to sleep or plan for my future or function in the world in any sort of way.

But the most confusing thing about this feeling is that, since I can't persuade myself that disaster won't come—I can't rationally explain that there won't be an earthquake, etc.—instead I start to believe the only relief will be when the earthquake does come. When the disaster strikes, then the tension that's been building up in me will be relieved, just like the tension building up in the tectonic plates will be relieved. The changes this disaster will bring will be unpredictable and maybe catastrophic, but at least they'll be here, now, instead of looming in the unseeable future, and transformed from vague fear into solvable problems. Disaster offers, if nothing else, relief from ambiguous worry, and finally a clarity of focus: can I survive? Can I help my friends and loved ones to survive?¹

How calming the arrival of actual disaster will be.

Till then, the best I can do is fill this backpack with emergency supplies: water, nonperishable food, flashlight, batteries, cellphone charger… The list goes on. I'm packing for a trip I hope never to take, a trip to nowhere in particular, itinerary unknown.²

---

1. The funniest joke I've heard recently was a friend telling me she'd put together an earthquake safety kit: "It's a month's supply of wine and chocolate." Then I realized she wasn't joking.

2. Contingency plans, like insurance and aesthetic minimalism, are a luxury of the bourgeoisie.

White Noise 

Last night, I fell asleep with the white noise machine set to play "Gentle Rain," even though outside there really was gentle rain. The real rain noise was almost indistinguishable from the artificial one, but in the end, I decided the real sound would be too unpredictable, so I turned the volume up on the machine, till the sound of the gentle rain was completely drowned in the sound of gentle rain.

At breakfast, I had to pick between a rough-looking organic apple and a shiny symmetrical one, glistening with wax—and that's when I realized: reality is too real. We can't handle reality; or if we can, we prefer not to. Reality is uneven: it's juicy but it's bruised. What we want, or seem to want more and more, is something other than real—a little more than, and a little less. Something maybe 80% real, to protect us from the unpleasant 20%.

[Reality can be "augmented" as much by what's taken away as what's added.]

A shiny plump apple that looks exactly like we think an apple should, and has no taste whatsoever. The looped sounds of a dry rainstorm, and your feet never get wet. An airbrushed magazine model, never has a grumpy day. Boneless chicken breasts, resemble tofu more than poultry. A fast food hamburger, soy-enriched, salt-soaked, pre-digested, and its relation to an actual hamburger distant and probably illegitimate.

One reason we prefer familiar brands is their consistent uniformity: they take a kind of stress out of decision-making. Starbucks might not make the best coffee, but you know exactly what you'll get—and it'll be better than the liquid dirt that you might get served at the Mom and Pop cafe. Brands help people manage their personal risk (even when that "risk" is no greater than a bad cup of coffee).

And mass production in general has required the removal of unevenness and unpredictability from its results. Now, so many generations deep into industrialism—so long that we've lost the cultural wisdom of other modes of production—we've become averse to anomalies, differences, unpredictability, randomness.

[White noise machines, by design, exist to protect us from anomalous sound.]

We've wrapped ourselves in a kind of idealism: we want "perfect" apples, perfect women, perfect rain. And for that, we sacrifice a kind of romanticism, because by "perfect," we don't mean the best, but only the most unflawed—the least unique. We drown out life with the sound of life.

The Alphabet According to Google 

Amazon
Best Buy
CraigsList
Dictionary
eBay
Facebook
Gmail
Hotmail
Ikea
JetBlue
Kohls
Lowes
Mapquest
Netflix
Orbitz
Pandora
Quotes
REI
Sears
Target
USPS
Verizon
Weather
Xbox
Yahoo
Zillow

The Definition of "Like" 

If you know any actors or solo musicians, then maybe you've seen this terrible bit of syntax, one of Facebook's many contributions to über-narcisism:

“[Your friend's name] likes [your friend's name], and suggests that you like them too.

You receive this notification when your friend decides it's time to create a "fan page" for themselves on Facebook, and invites you to show your support by "liking" them—when in reality this practice makes you like them slightly less.

My Own Private Inferno 

In the 20th century, we each got 15 minutes of fame. In the 21st century, we each get our own private level of Hell, filled only with the things that we like.

The Man of Tomorrow 

Superman was persuaded to hire an IT guy. "Why do I need email?," he asked. "I can see clear to the horizon. I can hear radio frequencies across the globe." But his mother Martha wanted to send him photos, and Lois was always looking for a decent Scrabble partner. Most compelling, the NSA had evidence that Lex Luther was developing an advanced computer virus to take over the world. "How are you going to save us," the President asked him, "if you don't even know how to open up Outlook?"

"If I can't open up Outlook, I'll be the only one safe from the virus!" But he didn't like to think of himself as ignorant, so he hired a cousin of Jimmy Olsen's to install a complement of hardware and software into the Fortress of Solitude.

"How do I turn it on?," he asked the IT guy.

"The Internet? You don't turn on the Internet. It's always on, like the Sun."

Lois came over to show him how it all worked. "You should Google yourself! Look: one million, four-hundred sixty thousand results! Hey, click on the 'News' link: see if my stories are at the top."

"It says I already have a page on MySpace. What's MySpace?"

"Don't worry about MySpace," Lois answered.

When she came back a week later, he was still sitting at the computer. "Hey Lois! I'm the mayor of the Fortress of Solitude! @ThatSuperman has 400,000 followers!"

"You have a Twitter account?"

"I've got to protect my online brand, Lois."

The Internet afforded Superman with a whole new set of data that he could use to monitor crime, and to keep peace and order across the planet.

"Wait—Lex Luther is your Facebook Friend?"

"Well, we know a lot of the same people. And sometimes he harvests my crops in Farmville. Anyway, he doesn't really have time for world dominion anymore."

The Internet was far more effective at eliminating violent crime than Superman had ever been, because the criminals now mostly stayed at home—uploading photos of old capers, editing Wikipedia entries on classic bank heists, and playing each other at Mafia Wars till they fell asleep at their keyboards, icing each other all night long, from the safety of their dreams.

Tech Support Our Troops 

The people most interested in my blog this week are making repeated visits from Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I can't tell from looking at my analytics software which blog posts they like most. "Therapy" and "Page Not Found" are both popular.

But the visitors from Fort Huachuca, Arizona aren't much interested in reading, really.

Fort Huachuca, Arizona is home to the United States Army Information Systems Engineering Command, and it seems that this week, they've started basic training in "SQL injections"—a process by which a hacker tries to get at usernames and passwords and whatever else, by appending some computer code to the end of a page's URL:

http://site.com/article.php?id=9%20union%20select%20Username,0,1,2%20from%20admin

As the people at USAISEC surely know, it's prudent to add some simple protections to your website, to help prevent SQL injections: a tweak to the php.ini file, for instance, and an extra function to strip the most dubious keywords from the URL's string ($string = eregi_replace($badWords, "", $string);)

Whatever their motive, I'm glad the site's found new visitors! Welcome, USAISEC! Don't forget to "like" me on Facebook and "follow" me on Twitter! I hope you find some things here that you like, and I hope that my usernames and passwords are not among those things.

Thanks for keeping us safe.

The Rapid Acceleration of Things 

or, Microblog Killed the Internet Star, pt. 2

I'm thinking about the rapid acceleration of things.

Also, I realize there's a certain set of writers who fixate on the "rapid acceleration of things," by which we mean "culture," by which we mean the things we consume; the values by which we evaluate them; the ground beneath our feet. I realize there's a certain set of writers who aim to write about these things, though these things shift rapidly, so are, by their nature, hard to write about, hard to understand—like trying to write graffiti on the side of a moving bullet train. And I realize that though I have an affinity for these types of writers, I'm not sure I've ever been one of them, nor am I entirely sure I want to be—because at some level, anyone who writes about the "rapid acceleration of things" is writing about shopping, really. Aren't they?

But here I am, caught in the act of noticing my own very thoughts shrinking, shrinking, the way we're told an object will shrink as it approaches the speed of light: the faster my thoughts get, the smaller they get, too. Look even at the short history of this blog, an ongoing exercise in concision, now so successful an exercise that the blog posts are, most days, non-existent.

It used to be I was interested in novellas, feature articles, essays; gradually then short stories, reviews, prose poems; then further devolution—dictionary definitions, haiku, one-liners. Pithyisms. And now this. Now, nothing, or nearly nothing. Now an ever-growing amalgam of single sentences, 140 characters posted here and there, the accumulation of which adds up to ... what? Like the accumulation of the day's acts adds up to what? Yet at the end of the year, or the decade, or the lifetime, it has added up to an accumulation, at least—as if we ourselves are the sum total of the habitual thoughts that we hiccup day after day; and maybe that is all we are...

They say that media alters the way we think: the printing press caused us to begin to apprehend the world as if it were a book, taught us to "read" the world. Film affected our understanding of space and time, to the point that now, when we dream (the deepest recesses of our subconscious), we edit scenes together as if it were a movie, with montages and jump cuts and fades and soundtracks and action/adventure.

And now, this vast headless beast, the Internet—what does it do to our brain? The lines that once connected one idea to another (like turning the page in a book, like wiping from one scene to the next) now explode and link off in a hundred different directions. There is no one path, but a hundred paths, each one halfway followed, each one holding our interest only till the next explosion carries us off in another direction; and we, the voyager, are barely contiguous, but rather a string of breadcrumbs, a traceroute, an audit trail: we become simply a log of what we have seen. We are the storyteller, chronicling link after link after link, feeling after feeling after feeling; but we are no longer the story. We are the narrator but no longer the protagonist. We are the current flowing through the grid; but—What do we light up?, and Why?, are questions that we no longer ask, questions we cannot answer in 140 characters. And maybe not at all...

Microblog Killed the Internet Star 

Who has time for blogging, what with all the Twittering, all the links posted to Facebook, all the quotes posted to Tumblr, all the photos pushed up to Flickr?

The age of easy Internet publishing—so easy that you can do most of it from your telephone!—is also rendering the act of actual writing to be somewhat difficult, extraneous, and neglected—at least writing anything more substantial than 140 characters. It is something now reserved only for the vast expanses of leisure time we have on international flights, long weekend getaways in the country, and time spent safely off the Internet, in refuge from the steady stream of microthoughts parceled out with thumbs into small portable devices. That is to say, rarely to never—till we forcibly wrest ourselves away from the chatter for a few elusive, peaceful moments of restive thought and creative repose.

Maybe tomorrow.

(Maybe I'll tweet about it.)

Operation: Dystopia 

Life at the End of Oil

U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, sans combustion engines

A few years ago, at the beginning of the Iraq War, I posited that the sub rosa motivation for invading the Middle East was based on an undisclosed drastic shortfall in world oil reserves. Conventional wisdom says there are 100-200 years worth of oil left in the earth; suppose that number is closer to 10-20? If the end is actually nigh, then the neocons would want to keep this secret, and also stake claim to whatever oil is left.

But one doesn't need to believe in a neocon conspiracy theory to wonder if the end is nigh. As a simple result of increasing demand,1 oil prices continue rising to new highs, including this week's largest single jump ever; the G8 leaders are expressing "serious concerns" about the impact it will have on the world economy.

Given that the end of the oil economy is inevitable (sooner or later), still, economists have yet to present us a clear picture of what this "impact" will be: what will our lives be like, at the end of oil?

Instead, this portraiture has been left to the film makers and fiction writers (as perhaps it should?), who lately offer us more and more vivid depictions of dystopia—stories which are no longer relegated to the pulpy science fiction section, but rather have worked their way into the mainstream: Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men shows us the last generation of humanity, in a not-too-distant future where people have lost the ability to procreate; Cormac McCarthy's The Road doesn't even bother to describe the nature of its particular apocalypse, focusing instead on the stricken brutality of getting by in this terrible but imaginable future.

Both tales depict the quick failure the values we've come to associate with "enlightenment" and even "humanity"; both show an ongoing conflict between an almost habitual will toward kindness to others, and a required escalation of self-serving (often violent) greed for self-preservation.

Between that future (the complete faltering of civilization) and this present (the age when we're first able to say, without exaggeration or even conjecture, that our current lifestyle is no longer tenable), what can we realistically expect and imagine?

Imagine a World Without Oil (more...)

What I Like 

"What really matters is what you like, not what you are like... Books, records, films—these things matter. Call me shallow, but it's the fuckin' truth." - Rob Gordon, High Fidelity

Technology has finally arrived to do what I myself have found nearly impossible to do—figure out what I like.

For the last week, I've been followed around by a robot, who reads over my shoulder. The robot reads the same mountains of data that I do, and while I'm busy thinking profound thoughts (like "Hmm!" and "Really?!?"), the robot is doing heavier lifting: it is looking for common themes and threads.

Eventually, the robot boils down all of the data into a set of tags, which show me, in certain terms, what I like. (See a sample, to the left.) And based on that, the robot recommends other things that I'd like.

So far, the robot is mostly right.

It certainly has a better sense of what I like than I do.

This "robot" is a web application built by the people at Twine.com, a website still in beta, whose ultimate goal also includes sharing information ("twines") between its users—helping me find not only what I like, but also people who like what I like.

Soon enough, the robot is sure to figure out that, most often, what I like is to be left alone. I'm content to leave the social networking aside for now, and settle more simply for allowing the robot to read my mind...

Command Line Existential Crisis 

$ whatis whoami

The World According to Facebook 

Or, Christopher Is, pt. 2

Yesterday, my mother asked me about the well-being of my sister's husband's brother's wife's father. "Huh?" That's my brother-in-law's sister-in-law's father, or, to put it another way, my own father-in-law three times removed.

If it is true that we are all separated by no more than six degrees of separation (and it is true, according to MSN Messenger), then my relationship with this person employs no fewer than four of those degrees. I have met my brother-in-law's sister-in-law, once, and I might have been able to recall her name, if someone offered me a hint of the first couple letters. I've never met her father, didn't have any ideas as to his health, and asked my mother how in the world she knew of this person.

Her answer?: "Facebook."1

(Unlike 99.9% of the Facebook population, my mother was born in the 40s.)

*      *     *

Unlike 99.9% of people born in the 70s, I am a regular user of Facebook. I know what superhero I am ("Rogue"), which German philosopher ("Heidegger"), and whether or not I'm a "hottie" (duh). If you're nice to me, I might "brew your a spot of tea," and if you're not, I might give you "the people's elbow." I can defend myself against the attacks of your zombie and vampire armies. I update my status often. And in the midst of all of this din of useless information, I failed to notice that there was something wrong with the health of my sister's husband's brother's wife's father.

Like 99.9% of the Facebook population, I was completely absorbed with stupid games and, ultimately, with myself. If the point of this software is to bring people closer together, then in this random sample of one time, it did not work.

*      *     *

There is a new feature in Facebook, through which the website makes its own recommendations about whom we should befriend. Its logic is fairly straightforward triadic interaction: "the friend of my friend is my friend." If several of my friends have a friend in common, then the software concludes that I, too, might know this person.

In other words, it mines out that second degree of separation, and shows a list it calls "People You May Know."

Looking at the list, I do in fact see some familiar names, but to me it reads more like, "People I Would Know, If Only I'd Been More Outgoing and Socially Confident"—friends of friends who might or might not remember me, if I were to click on the link to their name.2 Facebook offers me an alternate reality, where I can imagine myself at the center of a wider, and ever-growing, circle of friends—or at least "friends." I can know more and more about these people, what they're doing, where they're going, what music or films they like, whether or not their marriage (to someone I've never met) is working out3—without ever encountering them in the real world, in the future or in the past.

As for my actual friends, I'm not sure that Facebook draws us closer. Occasionally we'll get together (online) for a game of Scrabble, or I'll "throw [virtual] toilet paper" at them. But no more than that. And some days I wonder if that's the limit of what we have in common—if that is all our friendship ever was—and I worry that perhaps Facebook has become, instead of a collection of friends, more like a resting place for failed friendships, people with whom throwing toilet paper is enough.

---

1. I didn't even know my mom was on Facebook. She never "friended" me.

2. My friend Carolyn pointed out that this same list might also be "People You Hate, and Have Consciously Decided Not to Befriend in Facebook"—in which case, this new "feature" is a bit of an annoyance. She added too that I've never asked to be her Facebook friend, and that I've never mentioned her on my blog.

3. The single most remarkable moment of Facebook pathos I have yet to see—even more pathetic than my mother not "friending" me—was the moment when someone I know changed their relationship status from "Married" to "Separated", and announcement of the change was published out to the Facebook world. Compare with a lover's fight recently overheard: "You can break up with me," she said, "but I'm not changing my Facebook status!"

Coming Soon, to a Mob Near You 

If you don't already own an Apple iPhone, now might be the time to pick one up—so you have a little time to learn how it works, before it changes forever.

Yesterday, Apple released a "software development kit" for the iPhone. An SDK is a set of code libraries and other resources for software programmers: it's not the sort of thing that usually leads to press coverage in the mainstream media. But this is Apple we're talking about—the company that likes to "think different": the demand for this SDK was so high that it briefly brought down the Apple.com website.

Who knew there were so many eager programmers waiting in the wings?

The iPhone SDK will allow people, for the first time, to develop their own applications for the iPhone. Till now, every program running on the iPhone was under the strict control of Apple itself: they alone were dictating what web browser I could use, what email program, what games. Till now, the pretty little black box was under lock and key.

Now, Apple's thrown it to the smart mob.

* * *

The term "smart mob" was first introduced1 to describe a then-new trend in mobile technology: the use of SMS text messages to coordinate the efforts of large, otherwise-unconnected hordes of people, often for impromptu raves: an SMS would get sent to an entire "thumb tribe" to meet at this warehouse, or that vacant lot. The push of a few buttons was enough to mobilize a mob of people with a common goal—to go out dancing.

The technique was quickly adopted by political activists, who were able to use their mobile phones to communicate with one another to stay one step ahead of law enforcement during protests; and even by foot soldiers on the ground in Iraq, whose first-hand intel was often more reliable than what they were receiving from HQ.

But the term also overlaps with the idea of "collective intelligence," which underpins many of the wider trends taking place on the Internet: customer-written product reviews, wikis, and social networking sites (like Digg and del.icio.us) are founded on the premise that if you solicit opinions from a wide enough pool of people, truth will out.2 Eventually, the "smart mob" will ensure that the best products receive the best reviews and that the Wikipedia articles are accurate. Democracy (of a sort) and free market economy (of a sort) combine till the smart mob is smarter than any of its individuals.

Which is why, if you are Apple and you want to load the iPhone with "killer apps," you don't have to build or code or even conceive of any of them. All you have to do is ask the smart mob. Give them the tools, and let them build the killer apps for you.3

---

1. By Howard Rheingold, in his 2002 book of the same name.

2. As famous and influential as Wikipedia, the effect of the release of the photos from Abu Ghraib prison can also be considered a consequence of the "smart mob": once the information hit the network, the interpretation of that information was no longer in control of the spin doctors, but rather, the smart mob.

3. Another recent SDK release that caused mainstream excitement was Facebook's: the majority of that site's content was developed not by Facebook but by third-party developers, who used the SDK to create the numerous applications—Vampires, Scrabulous—that make the site so fun and so annoying. Tim Hartford recently equated this to the furniture store Ikea—a store that gives you the tools to design and build your own furniture, and depends on you to do all the heavy lifting.

Laugh Track 

If you use Gmail (the free, web-based email service from everyone's favorite Internet software monolith, Google), then you're probably used to the sponsored ads that span the right hand side of all of your email messages. Maybe you're so used to them, you barely notice them anymore.

Or maybe, like me, you take them personally.

Google's software scans the contents of each email thread and delivers targeted ads that it thinks are "relevant" to the subject at hand. Sometimes it succeeds with uncanny accuracy; sometimes its logic is hard to glean.

Most of the time, it seems to be making fun of me.

Take, for example, a recent email in which I asked a friend if I could borrow a drill gun, because I don't own any power tools. The ad that came back? Oh, no! I'm emo!

The email where I brag about my recent trips to the gym earns me this "relevant" ad: Children's Workout NYC. An email where I think I'm being sexy and flirty winds up serving this ad: Have a Cute 3-Year Old? And a correspondence regarding a possible writing job delivers this: Need a seasoned ghost writer?

I draft a letter and send it—via Gmail—to Google's ad department:

Dear Google: I've been keeping an eye on the ads that appear in my email, and I have some questions about how you determine "relevancy." At best, the ads seem not very relevant; at worst, they're a bit mean-spirited. I realize they're selected by an algorithm, but still, it's hard not to feel like you're heckling. Please let me know what I can do to help you to target me more effectively as a market for your advertisers.

The ad that comes back in the right column? Pay-Per-Click Doesn't Work.

Finally, a relevant one...

On Punching the Clock 

or, Work, pt. 2

You say you assemble us here to work for you because we're smart. We're adaptive. We're hackers. We're raised on games. So you give us a set of rules—on tardiness, on non-disclosure, on whatever—you give us a set of rules and we're going to game them. We're going to learn your system till we know them better than you, and then we'll punch holes through it—partly because you say you want misfits, rebels and troublemakers—and partly just because that's what we do.

Death in the Afternoon 

or, the Computer of Theseus

Today a loyal and stalwart friend of mine passed away. Before you start drafting your sympathy cards, I should clarify: this old friend of mine, who goes by the name "Agamemnon," is a computer. He's had a good full life and it was his time.

Still, I'm moved to write a few words.

I first met Agamemnon when I moved back to New York in 2002. We met on Canal Street, at one of those sketchy "Just Fell Off a Truck" electronics stores. I brought him home, opened him up, and took him apart. It was love at first sight.

He's hosted my music collection, my video collection, this website, and countless hours that I probably should have spent with people instead. He's reinvented himself more times than I have, with new parts, new software: when he finally gave up his last guttural whir this week, there wasn't a single original part in him; I'd replaced him piece by piece, so that this dead husk of plastic and metal is, in some ways, not even the same computer.

So this computer, which I named for the great bullish Greek king, in the end bore more resemblance to that ship of Theseus:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians..., for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

If you replace each broken part of the ship, piece by piece, as it falls into disrepair, until every single part has been replaced, then are you on the same ship or a different ship? And if you replace every last part of a computer while continuing to use it through all those years, is it the same computer?

These are the sort of questions I can ponder now that Agamemnon is gone (and with it, my music collection, my video collection, and many of my pastimes)...

Toward the End of iLife 

For months now, my aged iPod had been dying a slow death, unlike anything I'd ever seen. Considering the years I spent in hospice care for iPods, that's saying something. Mine had taken on symptoms of a previously unknown terminal disease, and my meager medicine could do nothing to save it—only make its last days comfortable.

The iPod, old, scarred, fat, rough around the edges, had nonetheless been a stalwart workhorse, and we'd been through the wars together. He was moody, petulant sometimes, but he knew how to talk to me, and vice versa; and he had a playlist to suit my every mood. (Which means many.)

Then he got a little fussy. He seemed to disagree with my taste in music, and sometimes refused to play songs, no matter how I insisted. Every now and then, he'd chirp and hiss with purely analog sounds, sounds we haven't heard since selling our turntable to that pawn shop on Melrose.

Then, like a cantankerous old man, the iPod got reclusive and antisocial—wouldn't talk to my computer at all. "You've got plenty of music on here already," he growled. "What need for any more? (Kids today...)"

So the collection of music on the iPod was now permanent. (If I'd known, if I'd only gotten some warning, I might have been a little more careful before loading up the Avril Lavigne, the John Cougar, the Motley Crüe, the annoying John Cage opera... But we never see the end coming: we always assume there will be more time...)

Toward the end, the iPod got belligerent, actually mean: he'd send electrical shocks through the headphones without warning or reason. Maybe it was spite. Maybe like an old man passing gas—out of his control, or simply to remind us he's in the room, not to be forgotten, not dead yet. We'll never know which.

The Internet is Evil 

or, the Tragic Pleasure of Pity and Fear 2.0

I've said it before and I'll say it again: in a world as big as ours, I'm amazed people are even as nice to each other as they are. That's why I find Web 2.0 and all of its resultant buzzwords so encouraging: all of this "social networking" is making us "collectively intelligent," and helping us find our "affiliations" on the "long tail."

So why is it, every time I surf the Internet, I find people socially networking at one another's expense? I found this clip the other day, from a British radio show—something I'd never have found before Web 2.0.

I've played it over and over and I can't stop: it offers too many kinds of awful, all in one place, to turn away.

This is high drama of the Internet Age, with all the formal structures of classic tragedy—her squeaky expectant hope ("What sort of ring?") shows a kind of innocent nobility, but is followed immediately by the reveal of her tragic flaw ("How much is it worth?"); then, the drawn-out anticipation of the episode ("I'm so in love with him... I can't wait to get married and have babies."), and finally the terrible reversal and recognition: she's knocked speechless by the radio host ("Wha-?"), and stays on the line while pilloried across Yorkshire and the World Wide Web—"Everyone knows you're a dirty little tart."

But for all the spectacle of this poor girl's tragedy, don't forget to save some pathos for the boyfriend (who chose to end a four-year "perfect" relationship not with a conversation, but instead via a radio show proxy), and for the radio DJ, too, who has made this his life's work.

If the power of catharsis comes in part from fear that these events could befall us, as well as the protagonist, then I am afraid of playing any of these roles, and this is cathartic times three.

i/Pod 

or, Soundtrack of My Life, pt. 1

When I worked for Apple Computer, people would come to me with their iPod and ask, "What does the 'i' stand for?"

People always wanted to know what the "i" stood for.

Silly people.

It stands for "I." ¹

* * *

The iPod puts "10,000 songs in your pocket" — and once they're in your pocket, you will never ever have to listen to anyone else's music, ever again. You won't have to compromise with your co-workers, you won't have to let some radio DJ expose you to something you haven't heard. You won't have to risk listening to anything new.

That the name of this device begins with the letter "I" should come as a surprise to no one.

It's the "pod" part I've only recently started to understand.

* * *

My "in-ear" headphones block out all ambient sound as I walk down the street; I'm completely immersed in my music, walking in time to what I imagine is the soundtrack of my life. My heart rises and falls with the highs and lows of the music, a dramatic arc playing itself out in the three-minute intervals of pop songs. As I walk down the street, I join the pantheon of well-scored movie heroes: Tony Manero, Lloyd Dobler, Maverick, and me. In the world of my beat, I have no need for the world. I am protagonist. I am invincible.

I am oblivious to oncoming traffic and step out in front of a van.

Maybe I should turn the volume down a notch.

* * *

I used to think the "pod" in "iPod" was because it let each of us surround ourselves in a wall of our own music, and, enclosed in this wall, we were protected from any outside intrusion. But I was on the train the other day, and I noticed there were only three or four people in the car who weren't wearing iPods. Everyone else had white cables dangling out of their ears, and a vacant stare. They bobbed their heads up and down, dancing to music that only they could hear. That's when I realized the "pod" in "iPod" is more an Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of thing.

* * *

"What's on your iPod?," asks the regular column in that magazine I read, and the celebrity of the month is supposed to list out five songs. "Well,thanks for asking: actually, I have 10,000 songs on my iPod, but you want me to list five, so I'll list the same five everyone else is listing this month. That way, you'll think I'm 'wired', and not 'tired' or 'expired'. This month, I'm listening to that Gnarls Barkley album, and the new Thom Yorke. I'm still trying to 'absorb' that album by The Editors, and I'm also listening to that Sun Kil Moon disc of Modest Mouse covers, even though I don't like Sun Kil Moon. And just so you don't think I'm completely stuck in the 'now', I've just put that old Matthew Sweet album on 'high-rotation.' Hey, did you know they're releasing a 15th anniversary cut of that album (maybe because it's been long enough now that we've all had a chance to forget that it's not very good?)."

Is it a coincidence that these are all new releases?

Do the publishers of my magazine actually distribute the CDs? Or do they just get kickbacks from the record labels?

"i" is for individuality.

"Random is the new order." "Enjoy uncertainty." "Choose to lose control."

"Welcome to the digital music revolution."

"What does the 'Pod' stand for?"

"Why is the 'i' so little?"

1. Now I work for a company called "iFactory," but iFactory is an agency that serves clients; when people ask me what the "i" stands for, I tell them it stands for "you."

---

Ridiculous Ironic Dilemma 

Damn Wikipedia.

It started Sunday morning, trying to learn the historic origin of Father's Day. (More collect calls on this day than any other.)

It traveled, somehow, through John Banville (after being told, at three bookstores, "I've never heard of him." Don't you know, people, that there's no higher goal in life, there's nothing I want more, than to win the Booker Prize, like Banville?—though for me it's just plain impossible...)

It passed through Trazodone (who knew it conflicted with grapefruit juice?), through absinthe (not poisonous, after all...), through Erik Erikson (which stage is this one, Erik?, because I need to know...), before finally arriving—four hours later—at the same place it always seems to arrive:

Marxism.

Marx is the Kevin Bacon of Wikipedia.

Damn Wikipedia.

Now I'm caught up in the midst of a ridiculous ironic dilemma: I have to decide, before the registration deadline, whether to spend an exorbitant amount of money at America's most elite private university on a class on Marxism—because after many years of study at other expensive and elite schools (and many many visits to Wikipedia), I have to admit that I still don't understand what is meant by dialectical materialism.

[Knowledge of Marxism has absolutely no commodity-value and barely any use-value, and frankly, I suspect my motives in wanting to take the class, because I've never forgotten the graffiti in the men's room of New York's KGB Bar: "Communist girls are легко."]

The registration deadline is coming up. And if I could just manage to get off Wikipedia, I might even fill out the application...

TV 2.0 

I've never had a casual relationship with television (or, for that matter, much of anything else). I haven't had a TV for the whole of my adult life; I've aligned myself instead with the snobs who read The New Yorker and donate to NPR, and it's made me mostly happy.

But somehow, week after week, there I am, tuned into Veronica Mars, to Battlestar Galactica, to Smallville. Though I've long forbade television from my home, the miracles of DVD and the Internet have allowed these nefarious influences to creep in through every available port: there are movies in my mailbox and in my Xbox, on my iBook and on my iPod.

I spend at least four hours a week watching TV, and I don't even have a TV.

* * *

"Television is dead, long live television. A new study from IBM Corp. confirms many fears that today's television industry is being killed by technology, but it also outlines many ways those same developments are creating new opportunities for creativity and revenue. "The End of Television as We Know It: A Future Industry Perspective" gazes out to 2012. It basically sees a landscape fragmented by consumers now being drawn to specialized content on the multiplicity of channels currently available and predicts that these viewers will move "beyond niche to individualized viewing" as they embrace on-demand, self-scheduling, portability and other emerging options. "Look to see the networks' oligopoly diminish, along with a significant decline in the share of revenue generated from broadcast advertising," said the report's author, Saul Berman, global partner at IBM Business Consulting Services, Media & Entertainment. (Chris Marlowe, Hollywood Reporter)"

* * *

A friend accuses me: "You'll never understand TV because you don't watch it in its natural element." I'm not sure what he's getting at. Does he mean commercials? Because I watch commercials. Does he mean addiction, how some people will build their whole week around the schedule in the TV Guide? Because I am on a schedule.

My friend, I conclude, is an analog snob.

What my friend doesn't know ... My personal TV war is escalating: I've contracted with Comcast for the first time in my life. (It was cheaper to get both basic cable AND high-speed Internet than just the one.) I'm losing more and more time to these infernal shows. And you'll never guess what came in the mail today...

Spam-o-Rator 

It took me a little while to recognize the signs. First came the anonymous comment on this blog: "Get a job!!!"—which confused me, because I read this while at work.

Perhaps sensing my confusion, this person soon posted a follow-up: "Get a job and stop spamming people with the bogus email!!!!!!"

This guy thought I was responsible for his spam? I don't even know what "Cialis" is.

It never occurred to me that people are hired to send spam. This must be the sort of work that awaits the people who answer those ads, "Make $10,000 a month, from home." What a racket! Though I wasn't currently sending spam to anyone, I was now thinking about it. I could use an extra $10,000 a month. Thanks for the tip, buddy!

Soon, I realized that my domain name—two of my domain names, actually—had been hijacked and used as the "Reply To" address in someone's (what's the euphemism?) "email marketing campaign." I realized this, because over the next hour, I got over a hundred messages with the subject "Undeliverable Mail." My anonymous commenter got off easy: he probably got one or two mails in his Inbox, whereas my BlackBerry was in such a constant state of vibrating in my pocket that I thought I was having some kind of seizure.

All of which gave me a newfound appreciation for all the crap flooding my various inboxes. These aren't junk mails; these are opportunities!

I wonder which kind of spam "I" was sending out? (After all, I'd only get one chance to make a first impression...) Was I a social networker?:

Hi, Hope I am not writing to wrong address. I am nice, pretty looking girl. I am planning on visiting your town this month. Can we meet each other in person?

Was I offering people a second chance?:

Homeowners! Less-than-perfect credit? Average credit? GREAT Credit? Your credit score doesn't matter!

Or was I a source for enhanced joy and excitement?:

Give her something to smile about! You've seen our pills on TV, in your local health stores, and on the Web, and the question you have been asking yourself is - do they really work? The answer is YES!

So, the next time you see spam in your mailbox, think of me. I'm not responsible for it—but I wish I were....

Metaphors in a Nutshell (or, The Philosophy of C#)  

I've tried to maintain, here and elsewhere, that it's possible to have a "humanities" heart trapped in a computer geek's body, and I've recently found a kindred spirit over at O'Reilly & Associates, publishers of such fun reads as XSLT and ColdFusion in a Nutshell, who it turns out have a surprisingly philosophical bent.

I curled up with Learning C#, a primer to Microsoft's programming language, and I came across this section in one of the early paragraphs:

"Of course, all of the objects of your program are just metaphors for the objects in your problem domain."

Then a boxed-out section:

Metaphors

Many of the concepts used throughout this book, and any book on programming, are actually metaphors. We get so used to the metaphors that we forget they are metaphors. You are used to talking about a window on your program, but of course there is no such thing; there is just a rectangle with text and images in it. It looks like a window into your document so we call it a window. Of course, you don't actually have a document either, just bits of memory. No folders, no buttons—these are all just metaphors.

There are many levels to these metaphors. When you see a window on the screen, the window itself is just a metaphor enhanced by an image drawn on your screen. That image is created by lighting tiny dots on the screen, called pixels. These pixels are lit in response to instructions written in your C# program. Each instruction is really a metaphor; the actual instructions that are read by your computer are in Assembly language, low-level instructions that are fed into the underlying computer chip. These Assembly language instructions map to a series of 1s and 0s that the chip understands. Of course, the 1s and 0s are just metaphors for electricity in wires. When two wires meet, we measure the amount of electricity, and if there is a threshold amount we call it 1, otherwise 0. You get the idea.

Good metaphors can be very powerful. The art of object-oriented programming is really the art of conceiving of good metaphors.

Text from Learning C# by Jesse Liberty.

Dharma.com 

"The world is full of suffering. Birth is suffering, old age is suffering, sickness and death are sufferings. In fact, life that is not free from desire and passion is always involved with distress. This is called the Truth of Suffering."

I got it in my head that I needed a new computer. As if the four I currently own weren't enough. Through some feat of acrobatic logic, I justified this need to myself as "minimalism": only by purchasing a new, more powerful computer could I hope to consolidate my needs into a single machine. If I buy the one, I'd be free of the four. Or so I reasoned.

I moved money from column A to column B; I counted what was in the bank; I shook the piggy bank to its core. But there wasn't enough money, and there wouldn't be any time soon. If I wanted this new computer—and remember, I needed the new computer, for some reason or another—I'd have to sell off my four old computers before buying the new replacement...

"The cause of human sufferings is undoubtedly found in the thirsts of the physical body and in illusions of worldly passion. Desire seeks that which it feels desirable. This is called the Truth of the Cause of Suffering."

The laptop's the only one of these clunkers worth anything; it's also the one that'd be hardest to be without. Still, if I sell the laptop, then the new computer is nearly within reach. And once I have the new computer, all will be well. All of my trouble and dissatisfaction will pass away, so powerful is this new computer.

I found a buyer for my laptop; the stars were coming into alignment; soon, the new computer would be mine.

"If desire, which lies at the root of all human passion, can be removed, then passion will die out and all human suffering will be ended. This is called the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering."

Why oh why, dear laptop, won't you power up today? Wherefore this flashing question mark? Why the raspy thumping noise coming from the vicinity of your hard drive?

Why oh why did I let your warranty expire?

Ah, the best laid plans of trackpads and men.

"In order to enter into a state where there is no desire and no suffering, one must follow a certain Path. This is called the Truth of the Noble Path to the Cessation of the Cause of Suffering."

Maybe I didn't need a new computer, after all....

(Text from The Teachings of Buddha, by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

---

Things They Don't Teach You in Art School (Part One)

Wherein Chris Goes Against the Dharma, Buys and Installs a Replacement Hard Drive, and Restores Hope to His Desperate Greedy Pipedream to Buy a New Computer

This was performed by a trained stuntman. Please do not try this trick at home.

��

Lost and Found 

(for TZ)

I make no secret that I'm interested in who visits this blog: I track (and even post) some of the more interesting keyword searches that lead people to The Urban Sherpa. Yesterday, I noticed that, according to one of these searches, someone actually seemed to be looking for me: there had been a Google search for my name, followed by an adjective that this person thought was a propos. Sure enough, Google pointed them here, where the person clicked, presumably skimmed through a few paragraphs, and then, seeing no indication the site was mine, moved on.

It made me feel as if, trapped on a desert island, having lit all the signal fires, I was jumping up and down on the beach and waving my arms while a ship passed slowly out of view.

I don't know why it made me so sad. After all, when I moved to New York a few years ago, it was at least partly because I wanted to disappear. I wanted an empty Inbox, an unblinking light on my answering machine, and a future that wasn't clogged with any kind of expectation.

When people rave about life in New York City, they'll often talk about restaurants and rock bands, first run movie theatres, Broadway shows, bars open till dawn, life without cars. But not to be left off the list is anonymity. In a city of over 8 million people, very few of them care.

Why do I think that's a good thing?

* * *

"You have been invited to join AC's professional network." "You have been invited to join SM's network of friends." "MF wants you to be her Friendster." "JB has invited you to update your contact information." "Don't forget to register your birthday at BirthdayAlarm.com." "KT wants to be your birthday pal." "SH has sent you an Evite." "JP has sent you an Evite." "CP has sent you an Evite."

There's spam, and then there's this—the incessant, pre-programmed legitimate correspondence from friends and acquaintances. Though almost always well-intended, these messages invariably sit in my Inbox unopened and unread.

It seems wrong to complain about too much attention when there are so many lonely people in the world. But there is something nefarious about it, don't you think?—all of these messages mediated by machines. The messages are just too many steps removed from my friends and their intentions; I might as well be getting email from cyborgs.

Among them, Evites are the worst. Nothing sets off my cyberpunk paranoia like an Evite. Evite, the free online invitation service, works so hard to be helpful: they post maps to the event, and list nearby restaurants and bars; they offer live-updating gift registry and allow the party-goers to post photos of their revelry. But if Evite wants to be so helpful, then why don't they put the date of the event inside their email? Why do they force me instead to follow a link for the information? Why, once I'm on their website, do they take so much trouble to track me?

Evite allows the host of an event to see when, and how often, a guest checks the invitation. Anyone who has used an Evite to announce an event has had this experience: someone you've invited to your party checks the invitation daily, but never bothers to RSVP and doesn't show up at the event. What cue was this person looking for, that drove them to view the invitation every day? What would have tipped them finally to reply—not yes or no, but simply, "Maybe"? According to what rules of etiquette is a daily refusal to RSVP acceptable?

[Anyone who has used an Evite has also probably done this to someone else. Here's a tip: as soon as you reply "Maybe", the Evite stops tracking your visits to its site.]

I know when I look at an Evite that a real person created it. (At least I think so.) And generally, this person is someone who cares about me—maybe not passionately, but enough to want to share an evening of their life with me. I know that this person is using the Evite to communicate in a manner that is convenient, efficient, and sometimes even clever, offering many advantages over traditional mailed invitations or personalized phone calls. I know all these things. But I also know that when I refuse to reply to my friend's Evite, I am not snubbing my friend. Oh no. I am snubbing a machine, only, and surely rules of etiquette do not apply to machines. I can't be expected to thank the elevator for taking me, dependably, to the 24th floor. Can I?

Why does this feel like a justification, then?

* * *

I am notorious for not picking up my phone. "Oh," a friend says when I finally answer, "I thought this was a voicemail." I've also been known to create custom spam-filters for certain (urban-legend-prone) (distant) relatives.

I'm not an anti-social person (or at least that's I keep telling myself...), so I wonder if what's really going on is simpler: in a world in which we're all under constant media barrage, I'm filtering out a few things still within my control—an Evite here, a second-cousin-once-removed there. It's nothing personal, really. I'm just looking for a tiny bit of peace and quiet. I'm just looking for a little desert island...

---

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Rock and a Hard Place 

I wrote my first letter to Congress in March of 1999. Clinton was still president, Monica Lewinsky had just released a book, there was a war in Yugoslavia, programmers were preparing the world for Y2K, the Pentagon was testing a luckless missile defense system, dot coms were booming—and, after years of complacency, I, Citizen, was moved to action, impassioned and empowered by my voice in the our representative democracy.

Congress, you see, was about to vote on the fate of Internet radio.

Even then I could see that my cause célèbre was simultaneously selfish, bourgeois, and kind of silly, and that there might have been more socially-conscious ways to spend my energy. But what could I do? I really liked the music.

That's why I'm a little nervous lately, as the Supreme Court reviews "MGM Versus Grokster," a case that pits the big greedy entertainment industry toe-to-toe against the big greedy tech industry. (I love them both so much!) On the one hand, the music industry says that file sharing software is facilitating widespread theft of their product. On the other hand, creators of software say that if the law restricts a product because it might potentially be used to break the law, then very few products are safe from litigation: the VCR, the photocopier and even the printing press would never have been invented for fear of the potential lawsuits.

Oy.

There's no real indication yet of how the Court will rule: Scalia seems testy, tired of talking about Betamax; Souter doesn't want to have to give up his iPod. One argument the Court is not likely to hear is the one put forth by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture and creator of the "creative commons" copyright license. Lessig says that the function of copyright is to protect a creator and provide amble opportunity for reward—but that it is in the best interest of society if, once the creator has had that opportunity, that then the copyright should expire, and the work should become the property of the general public. Congress, at the behest of media conglomerates (most notably Disney), has continued to extend copyrights well past their original expire date, and Lessig suggests that this is not only unfair, but disadvantageous, because it prevents future creators from learning from, or being inspired by, the original work.

Think back on The Wind Done Gone, the 2002 novel by Alice Randall based upon Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind was originally published in 1936 and it did pretty well for Ms. Mitchell and her kin—so well, in fact, that the story became enmeshed in the what it means to grow up in the South. Randall claims to have written her book as a riff on her own personal and cultural lore, not unlike writing a book on Paul Bunyon, Lady Macbeth, or King Arthur. According to the copyright law at the time of the book's publication, Gone With the Wind should have entered the public domain in 1999, fifty years after the author's death. But Congress voted to extend its copyright until 2031, and Margaret Mitchell's estate fought bitterly to prevent the release of The Wind Done Gone, saying it constituted an unauthorized sequel. Randall, on the other hand, claimed "the time has come for America to understand how an African-American woman, and many African-Americans, view the book that has influenced our country's culture and how we view ourselves as a country."

Stealing is stealing is stealing is stealing... but, when I copy a song from a CD onto my computer, I have in no way lessened or taken away from the song itself—from its "aura," as Benjamin might call it. The song is just as catchy and its lyrics just as poignant as before I copied it. So it has value as a commodity, but it also has value as an object of art—and the two are distinct, with the latter not threatened at all by sharing the song. In fact, a song may become more catchy and poignant as more people hear it, and as it gets entrenched deeper into people's awareness—like Gone With the Wind entered into the consciousness of Alice Randall.

If the entertainment studios had their way, every time a format changed, you'd have to buy all your records all over again. In their ideal world, we would hold restricted licenses to our content, not ownership. Digital rights management would cripple our all-powerful computers, creating backups would be impossible, and the basic human impulse to share the wealth of information that helps define who we are would be beset with obstacles. This is not paranoia. At every step of the way, intellectual-property-right holders have resisted technological innovations that give ordinary people more scope to enjoy and consume music, television, movies or any other content.

That's why MGM vs. Grokster is so important. The deeper we get into the digital age, the more we will be defined not by our relationships with physical objects but with the data that we have accumulated in our journeys through life. If we lose the right to own that data and do what we want with it, if the power of the computer, and the Net, is taken from us, we're at risk of losing a lot more than a few files—we stand at risk of losing the evidence that tells us who we are.

from "Music Rules" by Andrew Leonard

"Creative commons" says that, like park-adjacent property, intellectual property also becomes more valuable when it's abutted to a collective common, where people come together to share with and influence each other. It says that artists should be and need to be compensated for their work, and that, at some point, that work must go back into the public wellspring, to become part of the culture's lore, because its value there is far more significant than the value it generates to shareholders and third-generation hangers-on.

You never hear about people writing letters to their Supreme Court Justices....

Up On Blocks 

I've just come into possession of my fourth computer. Actually, the tally comes out a little differently depending on how you count it, and four is the lowest option: it doesn't count the Palm Pilot, the iPods, or the Xbox. Four bona fide personal computers—finally begging the question "Why?", even to me.

Oscar Wilde said, "Nothing succeeds like excess."

Until now, I think I've done a good job justifying the, um, "need" for each of my computers. At least I've been able to throw around enough jargon to quiet protestations: "Oh," I say as if it's obvious, "I need that for ASP development." "That one? I have to have a Unix box; in any case, I couldn't do streaming media without that one." Even if anyone could understand me, no one would guess that I don't do any ASP development, or that I've never once streamed media from anywhere, and honestly don't really know how. I've heard it's pretty easy. I keep meaning to learn.

I'm totally flummoxed by this fourth machine. It's old but not ancient. (In fact, it's an exact twin of that aforementioned "Unix box.") It's still valuable enough that it would be ridiculous to throw it away, but it's not really valuable enough to sell or even lug to some desperate non-profit (i.e., where I work). The best I can figure, I'll wind up stripping it for parts, morphing it with its twin into some souped-up silicon Frankenstein—and even then, all the parts I don't use will add up to another more-or-less functioning computer—at least one more than I actually need....

As I get out my tool chest (a neat little medicine bag of sorts, full of miniature hex keys and jewelers screwdrivers), it's easy to imagine an alternate reality where I have full-sized tools, ratchets and sockets and wrenches; a reality where I have a garage full of fuel filters and fan belts, instead of a milk crate of Ethernet cables and old PCI cards. A reality where my fourth computer is in the driveway, under a tarp, up on blocks, and where I promise that I'm going to fix it up, soon. Real soon.

Computer Head 

MP3 audio track

I've had my head in a computer for days now, and it's had an unsettling effect that I call, simply, "computer head." Computer head comes after too many hours or days of writing code, of passing variables into functions, of running if-then-else conditionals and for-next-while loops.

Non-computer people may not understand how beautiful a computer is, how perfect its mind. Things work, or they don't. Conditions are met, or they aren't. A function is performed, and it returns a value, true or false. The job of the programmer is to mediate between this immaculate computer logic and the sloppy unordered world. A programmer takes a world of chaotic choices and judgments, and systematizes it.

The world, of course, puts forth such little effort to comply. At 6pm, the programmer may have fit everything into a tidy system, but by 11, nodding off to sleep, that same programmer will suddenly realize whole scenarios for which that system won't work. There, in the dark, staring at the ceiling, where people might count sheep, the programmer sees brackets, parentheses and semicolons flying by; and there will be no rest till every loose end falls neatly into some predefined place. It's why programmers are notorious for working late hours, for staying at their desks and living off M&Ms (M&Ms, by the way, won't muck up a keyboard...): while the world goes unreined, there is no peace in the would-be-tidy mind of the programmer.

I'm in this frame of mind when a friend calls. I can't pick up the phone: I've already made the transition into fastidious computer-think, and I can't afford to undo it with a human interface. "Human interface." I actually think this. I see my caller ID and immediately reduce this to a variable, $Caller = "Peter". Before I can stop myself, I've built a function in my head to decide whether or not to pick up:

function PickUpPhone ($Caller, $q) {
	# where q is the "friendship quotient"
	if (!($AnswerPhone) {
		$Caller["pissedOff"]++;
	}
	while ($Caller["pissedOff"] >= q) {
		friendship = FALSE;
	}
	return friendship;
}

I don't take the call, and I think there really is a decent chance that $Caller["pissedOff"]++. Instead, I break for lunch, and at the deli, I start codifying their array of menu items:

              <item><sandwich><tuna>; 
              <item><soup><splitpea type="vegetarian">;

Stop it.

But I can't stop it. I get back to the office and it's worse than before: "Hello, $Accountant;" "If MeetingLength > 1 hour, then Morale = (Morale -1);"

By the time I get home, I can't feel my body. I'm not sure I have one anymore, and I'm not sure I need one. I think of taking a bath, or going for a walk, but instead, I go straight to a computer, to tweak some code. After all, "$TrainRide > 15 minutes," which gave me plenty of time to discover new ways that my system could be improved, and the world could be made more perfect. It's almost there...

It's Getting Hot in Here 

Yesterday I installed some extensions into my Firefox web browser, and now, down in the bottom right hand corner, I get live, up-to-date weather reports reminding me how searingly cold it is outside. "Brooklyn," it says. "11 degrees." There's not quite enough room in that little status bar for it to elaborate—frozen pipes, cars plowed in, the homeless man I saw with three wool coats piled on top of one another.

But inside, on the radio, in the newspaper, in the magazines, it's all about hot hot hot. The world, as if we didn't know already, is going to hell in a hand basket—a hand basket full of CO² and other fossil fuel emissions.

First came a study published in the journal Science, not about smoke stacks or SUVs, but about the critters who provide us with fossil fuels in the first place. (No, I don't mean the Saudis.) 250 million years ago, there was a massive global extinction on a scale that far exceeded the end of the dinosaurs—death on a scale so great that it's called, simply, The Great Dying. It's been assumed that extinction on such a grand scale must have been the result of a sudden cataclysm, like a meteor impact. Not so, according to these latest findings, which claim that the extinctions happened gradually over 10 million years —so gradually that they can only be attributed to the warming of the planet which was going on at the same time.

Cut to the present day. The New York Times on Tuesday had some attractive graphics that show the measurable melting of the icecaps in Antarctica. And in London, another cheery group of scientists have published the results of the largest-ever study of contemporary global warming. Things, they say, are heating up twice as fast as previously thought—and it's looking to get hot. Maybe as much as +20F degrees hot.

From where I sit, that would be 31 degrees, which isn't exactly the nightmare scenario I've been imaging. I mean, 31 degrees and that homeless man would still want to wear one or two wool coats. With the wind chill outside, who among us wouldn't wish for a little global warming? (Of course, if it were 20 degrees warmer, my neighborhood would also be under water...)

Still, why do the environmentalists wait till these frigid days to sound off about global warming? Remember a year ago, when Al Gore gave a speech on the subject on what was recorded as the coldest day in decades? Doesn't he realize this makes him look silly?

Then again, when we're wearing mittens and earmuffs, we pretty much all look silly. And if New York and London and Tokyo wind up underwater, well, I guess we'll look pretty silly then, too...

Alexis Rockman's Manifest Destiny, on display at the Brooklyn Museum ... till it's under water....

P.S. You, too, can participate in the global nay-saying. ClimatePrediction.net is home to the scientists who have been mapping the climate changes; they do it by borrowing the computers of thousands of volunteers, a la SETI-at-Home (except useful). Heck, I've probably melted Antarctica on my computer a dozen times.

The Rise of the Creative Corporal 

The November cover story of MIT's Technology Review was an article by David Talbot called "How Technology Failed in Iraq." The article is an attempt to appraise the successes and failures (mostly the latter) of "the Pentagon's initial attempts to transform the military into a smaller, smarter, sensor-dependent, networked force." It widely cites Lt. Col. Ernest "Rock" Marcone, battalion commander with the 69th Armor of the Third Infantry Division, and the leader of an operation called Objective Peach, which required the capture of a bridge en route to Baghdad:

“Next to the fall of Baghdad,” says Marcone, “that bridge was the most important piece of terrain in the theater, and no one can tell me what's defending it. Not how many troops, what units, what tanks, anything. There is zero information getting to me. Someone may have known above me, but the information didn't get to me on the ground.” ...

One communications intercept did reach him: a single Iraqi brigade was moving south from the airport. But Marcone says no sensors, no network, conveyed the far more dangerous reality, which confronted him at 3:00 a.m. April 3. He faced not one brigade but three: between 25 and 30 tanks, plus 70 to 80 armored personnel carriers, artillery, and between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi soldiers coming from three directions. This mass of firepower and soldiers attacked a U.S. force of 1,000 soldiers supported by just 30 tanks and 14 Bradley fighting vehicles. The Iraqi deployment was just the kind of conventional, massed force that's easiest to detect. Yet “We got nothing until they slammed into us,” Marcone recalls.

Though press coverage of the Iraqi war seems to be tapering off in the U.S. and abroad, one message is becoming consistently clear, from Objective Peach to Abu Ghraib: the Pentagon's top-down authority structure hasn't been adequate for controlling or understanding what's happening on the ground. The Technology Review article describes the various network links that allowed for uploading information from the ground back to centralized command centers, where it could be processed, vetted, filtered, and approved, before being relayed back, through various channels, to the commanders in the field—by which time it was outdated, stripped of unorthodox information, and more or less useless.

Another article, "Battle Lessons," from this week's New Yorker, describes the some of the lateral communication between soldiers in Iraq, and suggests that the ingenuities of the common foot soldier— and their sharing information with one another, via the Internet—is the lesson to learn from military operations in Iraq. What bloggers have been doing to big news media, uniformed bloggers are now also doing to military command structures: bypassing them. (Cf. disintermediation.) And in the face of "a surprising lack of detailed guidance from higher headquarters," the soldiers on the ground have been "exercising their initiative to the point of occasional genius."

Dan Baum, the author of the New Yorker article, wonders if it's generational:

While most high-ranking officers are baby boomers, most lieutenants and captains are of Generation X, born in the mid-sixties or after. Gen X officers, often the product of single-parent homes or homes in which both parents worked, are markedly more self-reliant and confident of their abilities than their baby-boomer superiors, according to Army surveys of both groups. Baby boomers moved up the ranks during the comfortable clarity of the Cold War, but the Gen Xers came of age during messy peacekeeping missions in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti. Gen Xers are notoriously unimpressed by rank…. This turns out to be a positive development for the Army, because the exigencies of the Iraq war are forcing the decision-making downward: tank captains tell of being handed authority, mid-battle, for tasks that used to be reserved for colonels.

But it all smacks, too, of the cultural changes that Richard Florida described a few years back in The Rise of the Creative Class.

Florida begins his book with a "thought experiment": Take a typical man on the street from the year 1900 and drop him into the 1950s. Then take someone from the 1950s and move him into present day. Who would experience greater change? After having some fun at the expense of the 1900 man struggling with new-fangled technology, Florida concludes that despite some more obvious familiarities, the 1950s man will actually feel far more alienated, because of the significant cultural changes our society has undergone in the last half-century. The cause of these shifts, he says, is "the rise of human creativity as the key factor in our economy and society," and the resulting creation of what he calls a "creative class."

These people engage in complex problem solving that involves a great deal of independent judgment and requires high levels of education or human capital. In addition, all members of the Creative Class—whether they are artists or engineers, musicians or computer scientists, writers or entrepreneurs—share a common creative ethos that values creativity, individuality, difference, and merit. For the members of the Creative Class, every aspect and every manifestation of creativity—technological, cultural and economic—is interlinked and inseparable.

Florida's larger thesis is that if one wants to reap the benefits of the creative class, then one must first embrace the values that foster the creative class. Austin and Seattle are able to attract high-tech industry where Pittsburgh is not, Florida explains, because Austin and Seattle have a thriving music scene and are notoriously gay-friendly. Pittsburgh, and cities like it, are "trapped in the past," suffering from "institutional sclerosis."

It is hard to imagine an institution with harder arteries than the Pentagon. An army that is having trouble recruiting, and one that is (like it or not) dependent on the creative innovations of its soldiers, might do well to read the book. Gen X, and the "Creative Class," are here to stay.

The End of the World, Again 

Have you been following these headlines, or what? I'm not just talking about the largest-scale earthquake of my lifetime, leading to floods of Biblical proportions, or the volcano that erupted in India soon after. I'm also talking about the deluge rains and the tornado that hit Los Angeles this week. I'm talking about the snow in Texas, the snow in the United Arab Emirates, and a sixty degree New Year's in New York. I'm talking about the new world order in Palestine, about the upcoming nuclear showdown in North Korea. What is going on in Kashmir, these days, anyway? Whatever happened with those missing Iraqi explosives? And speaking of missing explosives, do they do an end-of-year inventory on the nukes in the former Soviet Union?

That's right, boys and girls: it's that time of year again—time for the End of the World.

And what better time for it? We're just two short weeks away from the re-inauguration of George W. Bush, whom Jesus has taken into His heart as his own Personal President. W talks all nice, "compassionate conservative," blah blah blah. But isn't he also the Rapture President? The one who believes that the end is coming, and when it comes, only the Christians will be saved? (His kind of Christians, I mean.) And when is this Rapture thing, anyway?

"There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth, distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." (Lk. 21: 25-26).

Well, that sounds, uh, ... like it could be kind of soon. Especially with foreign policy like ours. Be ready.

Living the iLife (i) 

I'd been working for Apple Computer, hawking iPods for nearly a year, when I remembered "The Museum of Me." I'd forgotten it, though I'd been living in it for some time, and though I'd been spending my days building virtual trusses for others who wanted to do the same, as if for some "Habitat for Humanity" of the Digital Age — Habitat for Individuality.

I'd gone all-digital when I moved from California to New York in 2002: if it wouldn't fit onto my computer, then I had no use for it. Essays, photos, movies, and music — especially music. My music library would play without interruption for forty-two days, and assured me that I would never ever ever have to listen to a song I didn't already know and like. It would play and I would joke that it was my own personal radio station, but with no commercials and no music I didn't like. Sometimes I would forget that it wasn't radio; I'd think, "What a great mix! What station is this?", before remembering that I didn't own a radio, that I hadn't listened to a radio in two years.

Insulated by iTunes, I was buttressed against the harsh discordance of the world. Here there was no disagreement, no difficulty, not even any need for discourse. It was mine, all mine. Me and my taste were hermetically sealed, and there was the peace and quiet of only the noise that I myself had created...

Thanks to Apple's "iLife" software suite — iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD and GarageBand, we've been set free. We've got "10,000 songs in our pocket"; even "making music has never seemed so natural." And home movies aren't just for the home anymore: "iMovie has single-handedly made cinematographers out of parents, grandparents, students, teachers, small business owners and many other people just like you."

Kill the DJ, and in the same stroke, the record industry, the film studios, and every hydra-head of the entire monopolistic "Culture Industry." We're not beholden to them anymore: we're living the iLife. Our lives are changed forever. We're no longer passive shoppers; we're savvy media producers, each and every person with a home computer.

And ... this is not a good thing. That iPod you keep in your pocket full of all of your favorite music: it is killing our society.... Let me explain why.

[TO BE CONTINUED...]