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Category: ecology

ecology

Song of the City

Published November 1, 2015 by cgerrish

I want to call it a “song,” but it's really more of a hum, a drone. Less like a melody, and more like one of those eternal drone pieces by LaMonte Young. It's the sound that a city makes, but it's not something you hear in an ordinary way. It's a vibration that one's whole body can sense.

In the Sunday paper, a writer was documenting his interior journey, as his family was priced out of Brooklyn and moved to a suburb, up the Hudson River Valley. In passing, he noted, “I didn't really vibe with the city anymore.” What he was afraid he'd miss, was no longer there. The charge he'd felt was gone. And the process of attuning himself to his new environment was going better than anticipated.

The vibrant drone of a city isn't an abstraction, it's the sound and feel of all the things in the city. When the composition of those things changes enough, the feel of the city changes. Some have a kind of faith that New York City will always be some version of itself. It's core hum will always throw off roughly the same set of vibrations. The hum of a city can be an addictive experience. You can see the rush of the city in the eyes of young people strutting down the sidewalk mouthing the words, “New York City,” to the rest of their crew.

SoHo, the area south of Houston street, has been ruined for a long time. The corporations chased the artists out years ago. But walking around SoHo now, one can feel the pre-packaged, bland, corporate cool even more. The vibrations that drew these corporations to that part of town are almost entirely gone. Slivers of the older SoHo manage, somehow, to continue to exist. They emit strong beacons, that are nonetheless swallowed by the roar of commerce surrounding them.

It's as though the experience, the sound of the city, had been replaced with a store, offering to sell you the sound of the city. And not the actual sound of the city, that's gone, it's an “amazing simulation.”

 

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Once You Can Fake Sincerity…

Published September 19, 2015 by cgerrish

I hadn't been following the major recall of Volkswagen's cars very closely. Nearly a half million cars had been recalled, and I assumed it was some safety issue. When I sat down with my newspaper and cup of coffee this morning and read the details–I almost did a spit take.

Here's how the NY Times put it:

The Environmental Protection Agency accused the German automaker of using software to detect when the car is undergoing its periodic state emissions testing. Only during such tests are the cars' full emissions control systems turned on. During normal driving situations, the controls are turned off, allowing the cars to spew as much as 40 times as much pollution as allowed under the Clean Air Act, the E.P.A. said.

There's your techno-utopia for you. It's a variation on the old saying, “once you can fake sincerity, you've really got it made.”

 

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Hymnody of the Network

Published April 23, 2015 by cgerrish

I came across this piece of music while reading David Byrne's latest post about his new project, Contemporary Color. One of the groups in a competition he was observing performed to a song by Vienna Teng called “The Hymn of Acxiom.” A hymn is a song of praise.

Acxiom is a database company that tracks personal data on the Network. They sell that data to other corporations for a variety of purposes to be used in many contexts. When I was working in online identity, we hired Acxiom to create out-of-band questions as a second factor in user authentication. For instance, you might provide a password and then answer a question from Acxiom. For example, here are three addresses. Have you ever lived at any of them? They can create that kind of question on the fly because they know everything about just about everyone.

Traditionally a hymn is addressed to a deity. The form of this song tells us something about the attitude of the singer. The hymn is also meant to be sung by the community surrounding the deity. Stewart Brand believes that humans have supplanted the gods, and must now act like it, in the face of global warming and other planetary disasters. Certainly humans, as a species, have put a stamp on the fate of the planet and all its inhabitants. But an individual human doesn't have the power of the whole species. And as “gods” is a plural, it doesn't preclude the possibility of others. Say, Acxiom, for instance.

A Hymn of Acxiom

Somebody hears you. You know that, you know that…

Somebody hears you. You know that inside.

Someone is learning the colors of all your moods, to

(say just the right thing and) show that you’re understood.

Here you’re known.

Leave your life open. You don’t have, you don’t have…

Leave your life open. You don’t have to hide.

Someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these

(mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot.

Keep them all.

Let our formulas find your soul.

We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind),

Marshal feed and force (our machines will)

To design you a perfect love—

Or (better still) a perfect lust.

O how glorious, glorious: a brand new need is born.

Now we possess you. You’ll own that, you’ll own that…

Now we possess you. You’ll own that in time.

Now we will build you an endlessly upward world,

(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth.

Is that wrong?

Isn’t this what you want?

Amen.

 

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Corporate Team Building: The Devil’s Staircase

Published March 21, 2015 by cgerrish

Fintan O'Toole has a piece in a recent New York Review of Books called, “Beckett in Love.” He starts the piece, not with love, but with failure. Not an uncommon gambit when ruminating about Samuel Beckett. O'Toole begins with the point of contact most familiar to the person least familiar with the author. It's a favorite quote of the entrepreneurial set because it resonates with a strategy of dogged determination.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

The quote is from the late work “Worstward Ho.” In an age where we thirst for “context,” except when it doesn't suit our purposes, O'Toole goes on to explain the larger context of the quote.

“Fail better” (which I recently saw on a recruitment advertisement for a financial services company) is followed a few lines later by a reminder that, for Beckett, the phrase is an exhortation, not to keep trying until you succeed but to keep failing until you fail completely: “Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good.”

The popular form of the quote is plucked from Beckett's “Worstward Ho” in an attempt to turn failure into just another strain of pre-natal success. Beckett, on the other hand, only found his own voice by delving deeper and deeper into failure, loss, exile, and poverty. It's fair to say that Beckett found a form of humor in these depths, but it isn't the free and superior laugh of the successful entrepreneur — the master satisfied with a job well done after several setbacks. Nor is it the comedy of bringing the high and mighty to earth, rather it's the laughter of the lowest when the epiphany strikes that there may not be a “bottom” to hit.

One imagines the corporate team building exercise where the high-priced enthusiasm consultant leads the bright-eyed group of employees through a visualization.

You know that dream where you're falling? Take yourself to that place right now. You're falling and falling. You begin to panic. Surely you'll stop soon. Perhaps you'll begin flying. But no, you fall and fall. What happens when the bottom comes? Terror sets in. It will be the end. It doesn't come. The exquisite disorientation of falling continues on and on. Numbness. And then, a moment when the absurdity of your situation emerges. You smile inwardly as you consider the notion that there may be no bottom to hit.

 

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