spacer image
spacer image

September 7, 2009

Inside Every Don Draper Is Alexander Portnoy

If you don't watch Mad Men, and haven't read or don't know about Phillip Roth's novel Portnoy's Complaint, this doesn't mean anything to you.

If you do, and have, these two guys seem as far apart as any two white men inhabiting New York in the sixties could reasonably be.

And yet, there's something about Draper and Portnoy's shared desire to jump out of history (the history of the world, the history of their own families), their sense that this is the time to do it, and that sex and language are the mechanisms to do so, that pulls the two together. If they met, I think they'd have a lot to say to each other.

(Inspired by this 40th-anniversary article about Portnoy's Complaint in the Guardian.)

Tim-sig.gif
Posted September 7, 2009 at 9:16 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Books, Writing & Such, Society/Culture, Television

September 1, 2009

The Working Poor In America

Tim says,

... get stolen from, retaliated against, hurt at work and convinced not to complain, and paid less than the minimum wage, not just sometimes, but most of the time:

The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week...

In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay...

According to the study, 39 percent of those surveyed were illegal immigrants, 31 percent legal immigrants and 30 percent native-born Americans... [W]omen were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites.

Excuse me; I need to go punch something. And then maybe throw up. Then punch something else.

Comments (5) | Permasnark | Posted: 8:03 PM

August 24, 2009

Technologies Don't Transform, Societies Do, Pt. 2

As a follow up to my first linkpost on this topic, I'm adding an exhibit: Apple's celebrated "Knowledge Navigator" late-80s concept video. Watch it, then come back.

Here's the thing that's always struck me about this video. Technologically, it's wonderfully optimistic. (I love it when the professor flubs the name of the researcher he's looking for, and the computer figures out the right name, like a Google-search correcting spelling.)

But socially, it's incredibly conservative. Basically, it treats the computer interface as a synthesis of secretary, research assistant, and wife to the prototypically WASPy-dude professor. He doesn't even have to learn how to type! Imagine how short his Acknowledgements page will be! And his mom still nags him about his dad's birthday party! Oh, will life's problems never go away?

The assumptions are that 1) a breakthrough communication technology and 2) probably quite a bit of time passing won't produce any social changes at all. It won't create any new problems, either. It will simply make life easier.

We're actually usually pretty good at forecasting technological change. But we're astonishingly bad at predicting social responses to it. This is why most past attempts to predict the future strike us as unintentionally funny in retrospect: it's the mismatch between their creators' social imagination and our own -- or rather, between the constitutive blindnesses of their creators' social imagination and our own. We see and say things that they can't, and (often enough) vice versa.

Tim-sig.gif
Posted August 24, 2009 at 1:22 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Society/Culture, Technosnark

Technologies Don't Transform. Societies Do.

Tim says,

Quick-hitting today, but here's an important axiom from Dan Visel at if:book --

the social use of digital media is more transformative than the move to the digital itself

Visel's responding to Eric Harvey's "The Social History of the MP3":

The first widespread music delivery technology to emanate from outside industry control, mp3s, flowing through peer-to-peer networks and other pathways hidden in plain sight, have performed the radical task of separating music from the music industry for the first time in a century. They have facilitated the rise of an enormous pirate infrastructure; ideologically separate from the established one, but feeding off its products, multiplying and distributing them freely, without following the century-old rules of capitalist exchange. Capitalism hasn't gone away, of course, but mp3s have severely threatened its habits and rituals within music culture. There is nothing inherent or natural about paying for music, and the circulation of mp3s > through unsanctioned networks reaffirms music as a social process driven by passion, not market logic or copyright. Yet at the same time the Internet largely freed music from its packaged-good status and opened a realm of free-exchange, it also rendered those exciting new rituals very trackable. In the same way that Facebook visually represents "having friends," the mp3s coursing through file-sharing networks quantify the online social life of music by charting its path.

P.S.: This observation from Harvey's essay is a great coda to my "How the iPod Changed the Way We Read" --

This might be the most profound social shift of the mp3 era: hoarding and sharing music changed from an activity for eccentrics to the default mode of musical enjoyment for millions.
Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 8:46 AM

August 23, 2009

The Hajj as an Engine of Peace

A team of economists did some clever research focused on the impact of the Hajj—the pilgrimage to Mecca that two million Muslims make every year—not on Saudi Arabia, not on, like, the world, but simply on the people who go.

The research design is straight outta Freakonomics: In Pakistan, more than 100,000 people apply for Hajj visas every year. Around 60% get them. The unsuccessful applicants form the perfect control group; compare their feelings about the world to their pretty-much-identical peers who snagged visas and made the Hajj, and voila, you have science.

Anyway, the findings:

Our results support the idea that the Hajj helps to integrate the Muslim world, leading to a strengthening of global Islamic beliefs, a weakened attachment to local religious customs, and a sense of unity and equality with others who are ordinarily separated in everyday life by sect, ethnicity, nationality, or gender, but who are brought together during the Hajj. Although the Hajj may help forge a common Islamic identity, there is no evidence that this is defined in opposition to non-Muslims. On the contrary, the notions of equality and harmony appear to extend to adherents of other religions as well. These results contrast sharply with the view that increased Islamic orthodoxy goes hand in hand with extremism.

And I like this detail:

We complement the harmony index by exploring the extent to which the Hajj leads to greater inclination to peace. [...] Examining some of the component questions, we find that the Hajj almost doubles the number of respondents who declare that Osama bin Laden's goals are incorrect, from 6.8% to 13.1%, and increases the fraction declaring his methods incorrect from 16% to 21%.

More factoids, not necessarily related to the research: Most Pakistani Hajjis spend four years saving for the trip. It costs about US$2,000, which about 2.5 times Pakistan's per-capita GDP. And, this part is a little dense, but how would you like to design this web app:

The Hajj lottery is conducted over parties of up to 20 individuals who will travel and stay together during the pilgrimage. Parties are formed either voluntarily, often along family lines, or by staff of the bank branches. Parties are assigned into separate strata for the two main Islamic sects (Sunni/Shia), eight regional cities of departure, and two types of accommodation that vary slightly in housing quality. A computer algorithm selects parties randomly from each stratum until the quota of individuals for that stratum is full.

Reading this paper is an opportunity to reflect on just how intense the Hajj is these days. I mean, two million people! All pushed through the same space, at the same time. In the desert. The best description I've found of the event's history and modern dimensions is in Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens. A big part of the Bin Laden fortune came from building facilities in and around Mecca to support the crush of the Hajj. Think air conditioning, and lots of it.

However, having said all that, I'm on a new Flickr hunt now. All the images we usually see of the Hajj are of the mind-blowing masses. But what about the dorky vacation photos? I like these images because they cut it back down to size. On some levels ,this is completely foreign. On other levels... it's family vacation.

(Thanks to Tim for snagging the article for me.)

Robin-sig.gif
Posted August 23, 2009 at 5:38 | Comments (0) | Permasnark
File under: Society/Culture

August 13, 2009

Generations

Robin says,

I'm only now digging into Joshua Glenn's generations, recommended by Tim—but I gotta tell you, this is too much fun. Jason Kottke provides a handy menu; in particular, I recommend reading about the New Gods, the OGX, and of course: the Net generation.

That last label seems really right to me, by the way. It's become increasingly clear, based on nostalgia that's welling up even now in our late 20s, that this generation is going to find itself, at age 90, still swapping tales of the first BBSes we ever dialed, the first web pages we ever wrote. "And it was by hand, too!"

Now, I have no idea if this is true, but I like the sound of it:

Whereas OGXers and PCers enjoy brooding over the past, assembling fragments of past cultural moments into collages in various media, Netters take a less complicated approach. They just dig the past, and slip it on like a Halloween costume. (Paging Andre 3000, Amanda Palmer, Sisqo, Pink, and Jack White!) It's no longer the case that Americans in their 20s and early 30s want their reheated entertainments freshened up with air quotes. These days, they prefer taking it straight.

Funny, though, to see the list of notable births from 1979 (which is my year, too, if just barely):

1979: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Claire Danes, Kate Hudson, Foxy Brown, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mena Suvari, Rosario Dawson, Adam Brody, Brandy, Lance Bass, Pete Wentz, Norah Jones, Pink, Bam Margera, Adam Levine, Avey Tare, Nathan Followill, Alison Lohman, Brandon Routh, Chris Daughtry, Dan Auerbach, Nick Stahl. Elsewhere: Pete Doherty, Heath Ledger, Evangeline Lilly, Corinne Bailey Rae, Petra Nemcova, Sophie Dahl, Matt Tong.

Wait, is there seriously not a single writer on that list? It's all actors and musicians! Something is amiss, here.

Comments (5) | Permasnark | Posted: 12:00 AM

August 4, 2009

Pepper LaBeija Has My Wisdom Teeth

Matt says,

Also from my I ♥ the Internet file, Kottke alerts us that the entirety of Paris Is Burning is available on YouTube, for the time being at least. It's probably fair to say this documentary changed my life. Somehow, confronted with a culture too rich and enormous for the ghetto it's been relegated to, the film manages not to gawk or exoticize or judge. Jennie Livingston takes the world of voguing and drag balls completely on its own terms, no small feat at the pinnacle of the AIDS epidemic in GLBT America. For a post-adolescent gay boy fresh out of Christian school, this was a revelation. I can't imagine that most people wouldn't find a completely different and equally valuable story in it.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:21 PM

August 3, 2009

Sacred Texts

Tim says,

All this gabbin' 'bout Shakespeare makes me wonder - what are the sacred, that is, foundational, texts for us? (Feel free to variously define "us.")

I mean Shakespeare's plays are one; I think the Bible is or ought to be another; The Simpsons, seasons 2-8; the original Star Wars trilogy; Sophocles; The Great Gatsby; Goodfellas...

I'm half kidding, one quarter reaching, and one quarter deadly serious; what cultural references are now, for you, and in your interactions with others, just assumed, like the way Moby Dick assumes King Lear, Paradise Lost, and the King James Bible?

Comments (8) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:44 AM

July 27, 2009

Tim's thoughts: Smart summary/extension, Matt the First. Can I now reduce the thread to some conceptual bullet po... >>

Fun Work Could Mean Free Work

Matt Penniman penned one of my favorite new liberal arts: negotiation. Now, here's a guest post from Matt that I think can serve as the seed for an interesting conversation this week. Call it the Snarkmarket Forum on Free; Matt's provocative vision kicks it off. —Robin

20090727_funfree.png

Snarkmarket (along with others) has been talking recently about the economic model implicit in the free release of New Liberal Arts and the deliberately limited revenue realized from its sale. As one of the authors of that book, I was conscious going into the project that I wouldn't be paid for my contribution, no matter how successful or influential the book might become—and with the release of Chris Anderson's book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," this seems like a good time to discuss working for free.

Virginia Postrel's review of "Free" in the New York Times ends with the following paragraphs:

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," Samuel Johnson said, and that attitude has had a good two-century run. But the Web is full of blockheads, whether they're rate-busting amateurs or professionals trawling for speaking gigs. All this free stuff raises the real standard of living, by making it ever easier for people to find entertainment, information and communication that pleases them.

Business strategy, however, seeks not only to create but to capture value. Free is about a phenomenon in which almost all the new value goes to consumers, not producers. It is false to assume that no price means no value. But it is equally false to argue that value implies profitability.

This is true as far as it goes, but I think it's more interesting as a starting point than an ending point. In particular, I feel like it misses the non-monetary value that work produces for those who do it.

Most of us, if we're fortunate, derive some form of value from the work we do, above and beyond the pay we receive. We enjoy working, or we enjoy the status that results from doing a certain kind of work—being widely recognized as a scholarly authority or having our ideas praised by people we respect and admire. To the extent that this intrinsic value is higher than the monetary value we could receive for doing something else, we will happily work for less or work for free, because the non-economic rewards are so significant.

Now, in the previous economic paradigm, it was possible to do work that you would have done for less or for free and still be paid well for it, because it was too much trouble for your employers/clients to find someone who could do the work as well and for free. But the internet drastically reduces that barrier. Imagine trying to find people to write a computer operating system and all the associated applications without expecting payment before the internet—now look at Linux.

I wonder if we're heading toward an economy where, to put it bluntly, people don't get paid for doing fun things. If something is fun—for someone in the world who finds it fun enough to become good at it, and to do it without expecting pay—it will no longer pay.

In this world, people still work for money, maybe 20 hours a week, but they don't really derive happiness from their jobs (if their job was something that people enjoyed doing, like playing in a symphony or writing poetry, it wouldn't pay—someone would be doing it for free*). They spend the rest of their time doing things for free, things that produce tremendous creative value for themselves and for others, but form a gift economy outside the normal capitalist economy.

I think most creative, intellectual, and information-oriented pursuits would end up on the free side of that divide—which is not to devalue them at all. Rather, I think that clarity about the kinds of rewards you could expect from each activity could lessen a lot of the anxiety about "how will I make a living as a writer, journalist, playwright, composer?" Maybe you won't—and that's okay.

*When I say "free," I don't necessarily mean $0.00. You might still earn some token payments for your creative effort, but not enough to contribute in a meaningful way to your income—a few hundred dollars a year, perhaps.

Matt-sig.gif
Posted July 27, 2009 at 9:54 | Comments (27) | Permasnark
File under: Media Galaxy, Society/Culture, Technosnark

July 26, 2009

Dan (oops, I mean Robin)'s thoughts: Both of those book refs are great -- thanks, Tim and Dan. I feel like the time is ripe fo... >>

The Uniform Makes the Mind

So, James Fallows is talking about the Department of Homeland Security, and one of his readers writes in to suggest a very simple improvement:

BootsBloused.jpg
Yes, the name "Homeland Security" is simply horrible, but the clothes may be the real problem. This may sound frivolous, but I don't think it is. The issue is boots. Combat boots. Boots with pants tucked in and "bloused." Black boots with thick soles. Swat teams wear them, and now Border Patrol folks routinely do. Coast Guard folks wear them, when they used not to. I believe that wearing military-type boots instead of shoes tends to make the wearer feel more military and therefore more aggressive. Customs agents used not to take undocumented people off ferries that don't cross international borders, but they took people off internal Washington State ferries last year. Coast Guard personnel used to be regarded as people who helped boaters, but now they wear boots and talk like fighters.

One great way to civilize Homeland Security would be to confiscate the boots and reissue shoes.

The boots! (Emphasis mine.)

This got me thinking: To what degree do all kinds of uniforms affect the behavior of their wearers in all sorts of ways? Yesterday, Molly Young came at it from a different direction:

The nurse's uniform of scrubs has always appeared materially and figuratively ill-fitting to me. I know there are practical considerations to factor in, but there are also psychic ones. Our uniforms dictate how we move and act, after all.

Police wear broad-shouldered mono-colored tool-belted outfits because it is practical but also because it lends swagger and enlarges their stature. Doctors are no longer required to wear white coats, but I trust a doctor more when he does.

Why, then, do nurses wear pajamas? Wouldn't they feel more efficient in crisp pant-and-blouse combos? Wouldn't their movements be more assured? It is hard not to shuffle in scrubs. It is also hard not to slouch.

(Emphasis mine again.)

We can extend it even further. Think of the "uniforms" of New York and Silicon Valley: suits vs. sandals. How do those divergent skins affect the way you think about yourself and your work? When you put on a uniform, official or otherwise, you're not just putting on a pair of pants. You're putting on an arsenal of signals and assumptions—many of them hard-won over decades or centuries by other wearers of the same duds.

When you put on a uniform, you're summoning some of that spirit to your side! Jeez, it's like a pagan ritual if you think about it that way. "O great god of hipster awesomeness, aid me this day. Lend me thy credibility. I constrict my thighs in thy name." Scrrrunch.

Is there a good history of clothing out there? Clothing is technology, after all—one of our very first. And if you think about it that way, we've been cyborgs for a long time: the boundary between body and technology blurred. And I like the idea that, like any body part, clothing doesn't just do our bidding, but provides feedback, too—it has imperatives of its own.

And now we've got people working on smart clothes laced with conductive thread. (There's a diagram in the book on the other side of that link that explains how to turn a button into, uh, a button. You know, for turning things on and off. Cool.) In decades, or a century, are we going to think, jeez, how could those people stand to lurch around in sheaths of dumb fiber? The whole point of clothes is that they connect you to everything around you. My shirt is my iPhone.

But I'm getting a bit off-track, here. Even today, our clothes are anything but dumb. They actually communicate a lot more, and a lot more effectively, than most of us do on our own. And, just as importantly, they deeply influence our behavior along the way.

This is all to say: I'm on board with Fallows' correspondent. Let's get those guards out of boots.

Sandals, maybe?

Robin-sig.gif
Posted July 26, 2009 at 12:37 | Comments (5) | Permasnark
File under: Society/Culture

July 16, 2009

Tim's thoughts: Well, maybe you could create a program that transcodes the video at variable at framerates. So yo... >>

No, Faster! No, Slower!

One of the things I like about video on computers—vs. video on tapes and decks—is that the framerate is so much more flexible. 24fps? Sure. 60fps? Why not! 17fps? Let's give it a try.

Now of course, on a computer, all of this is still gated by the lockstep refresh of the monitor. So there's still a rigid rate being imposed at some point.

But that's not so for film, and it was especially flexible in the old days, before things got standardized. Images were captured, and played back, at all sorts of crazy framerates—and people argued about it!

I like this bit, noted by Mike Migurski:

On the active role of the projectionist: A 1915 projectionist's handbook declared -- in emphatic capitals -- 'THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SET CAMERA SPEED!' The correct speed of projection, it added, is the speed at which each individual scene was taken -- 'which may -- and often does -- vary wildly.' And it declared: 'One of the highest functions of projection is to watch the screen and regulate the speed of projection to synchronise with the speed of taking.'

Like a ship's navigator keeping a hand on the wheel. Cool.

Here's a thought experiment. Could we come up with some kind of gadget that "re-physicalizes" digital video so we could have this kind of fun again? Maybe it flashes images onto a re-writable strip of film. Maybe it's an Arduino-powered kinetoscope with images rendered in E Ink!

Robin-sig.gif
Posted July 16, 2009 at 3:37 | Comments (3) | Permasnark
File under: Media Galaxy, Society/Culture

July 15, 2009

Ocean of Storms

Robin says,

It's a cliche at this point: You walked on the moon. Now what?

But even so, these photos of Apollo astronauts—then and now—are incredibly compelling.

Related: I'm now (finally) reading Moon Dust. Even just fifty pages in, it's terrific.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:12 PM

July 13, 2009

Ferguson/Fallows on China

Robin says,

This 75-minute dialogue between Niall Ferguson and James Fallows, about China and its relationship with the U.S., is nuanced, detailed, and thought-provoking.

(My view here is colored by the facts that a) James Fallows has been my favorite journalist since I started reading his Atlantic articles back in college and b) I want to somehow, somehow, learn to speak like Niall Ferguson. Scottish accent and all? I think so.)

Anyway, Ferguson and Fallows really argue here—in the way two smart people argue over dinner, not in the way that people argue ("argue") on cable news. It's always surprisingly thrilling to see people actually think on camera.

To set it up, the point they don't dispute is that, right now, the world's most important entity is "Chimerica"—the blended economies of China and America. At this point, even after the economic shocks of 2008 and 2009, they are still inseperable, and incoherent without each other.

Ferguson and Fallows disagree on what happens next. Ferguson says Chimerica is doomed, and get ready for a painful disruption. Fallows, fresh off of three years living in China, is more optimistic—he thinks the relationship is flexible, durable, and many-faceted.

I saw Niall Ferguson debate Peter Schwartz here in San Francisco, and all I gotta say is: I wouldn't want to face off with this guy across a stage. He is erudite, to be sure; but he also carries and deploys his erudition in a particularly cutting way—like an Oxford don James Bond.

Anyway, I emerged from the 75 minutes mostly on the side of Fallows—but I always appreciate Ferguson's gloomy, ultra-realist point of view. Also, Fallows follows up here.

Comments (11) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:10 PM

July 12, 2009

Robin's thoughts: I love that last bit of imagery: "...a love letter that can reach your beloved wherever she is, f... >>

Romance, Manuscripts, and Cyborgs

Virginia Heffernan says that internet romances "are not romances between people at all. They