NB this update turned him into Leonard Nimoy. IMO that's a bug, not a feature.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Megatron's New iPhone
Megatron thinks the terms of agreement on his updates are a little coercive.
NB this update turned him into Leonard Nimoy. IMO that's a bug, not a feature.
NB this update turned him into Leonard Nimoy. IMO that's a bug, not a feature.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Byzantine, Centurion (from Oblivion Beckons, 2008)
Imagine if Chuck Schuldiner had joined Carcass and Ken Owen's replacement was Tomas Haake from Meshuggah (or maybe one of the boys from Dillinger Escape Plan?), and that's Byzantine. I think they also manage to escape the bounds of their genre better than any of these bands without looking like they're trying to. I hope these guys from the wildlands of West Virginia get the recognition they deserve now that they're back together. Imagine Meshuggah with occasional clean vocals, some Slayer influence, a truly unique sense of chord progressions, and some harmonic bits thrown in for good measure (thirds and all). All this innovation is well-presented by excellent production and some very light touches from non-traditional instruments, without compromising heaviness and aggression.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Constructed Languages in Science Fiction
Check out this post at author Marshall Maresca's blog about conlangs and the merits of fully elaborating one in the interest of complete world-building.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Insert Simulation Argument Joke Here
A visualization of the distribution of matter in the universe very soon after the Big Bang - The Bolshoi Simulation (via Vorjack at Unreasonable Faith). Starting points for your joke: either something about the little people in the simulation, or the simulators getting mad that we're forcing them to use so much computational power simulating our own universe convincingly.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Vernor Vinge at Mysterious Galaxy
I was thrilled to meet and briefly talk with the good professor Vinge this evening at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore in San Diego, where he did a reading from his most recent novel, Children of the Sky. This is in the Zones of Thought series, a sequel to Fire Upon the Deep, and takes place on the world of the Tines, a species of canine hive-minds into whose medieval civilization a human ship crashed long ago. It was also my first time at this store and how I missed it before, I don't know. It might actually be my favorite bookstore in San Diego now after that one visit. The champagne and cheese and crackers they put out didn't hurt one bit, but it was the science fiction book selection that won me over. What a resource.
Besides Children of the Sky, the audience also asked quesitons about other novels, especially Deepness in the Sky. There weren't as many singularity questions as I would have thought, considering here we had the man who invented the thing! I asked him one-on-one that if the Singularity is real, doesn't it at best mean that we'll be in a world completely re-designed by and for post-human intelligences who completely ignore us? (Still not a good outcome; ask any species whose numbers have dwindled since the start of the neolithic.) He referred back to his original 1992 essay where he coined the phrase, and said that of the tracks which could get us to the Singularity, the one that boded best for us was human intelligence enhancement - although he said that there were good arguments that humans were the last things you wanted becoming super-intelligent. (For previous posts on the Singularity go here.)
*I also have Robinson points, Barker points, and Benford points (no picture for that last one unfortunately.)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Cast Iron Crow - New Video
If you ever wondered why Alice in Chains didn't do more memorable riffs and thirds a la Maiden and Euro-infused styles of metal, you can just listen to Cast Iron Crow and you will have found paradise. This one nicely straddles the line between being formulaic and too bizarre or unpredictable to follow. Plus it's a pretty cool straight-ahead and refreshingly unpretentious video of guys playing music.
TOUR DATES:
Thu, Oct 20 Oakland Metro - Oakland, CA
Fri, Oct 28 Music Depot - Hayward, CA
Sat, Nov 5 Gilman - Berkeley, CA
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Completely Context-Dependent Power of Art
Joshua Bell played his violin as a panhandler in a metro station in Washington D.C. Interesting, because Bell is considered one of the greatest living violinists. Here's Bell performing Schubert's Ave Maria, one of the pieces he performed in the metro:
The experiment was whether the abstract power of his talent, and of the music he was performing, would cut through the fog of people's commutes. The unstated assumption is that if it doesn't, there's soemthing wrong with us.
The WaPo article deserves some criticism, but not for the questions it's asking. As such the piece is a really incisive look into high-cultural values that most of us are not comfortable questioning so explicitly, and Gene Weingarten deserves kudos for having the cajones for approaching Joshua Bell with the idea. As does Bell, who followed through on the experiment and seemed very forthcoming about his subjective experience. Indeed that may be the most interesting part of the piece. The rest is entirely predictable.
The problem with the article is the unstated assumptions buried in this experiment, and the often moralistic tone employed in discussing the whole enterprise and its outcome. Weingarten beats the reader over the head with said assumptions roughly enough that it seems he was intentionally trying to get us to notice them - but if that was really the point of his whole experiment, he doesn't ever allow that he realizes this. Some of them are:
Assumption #1: Beauty in art is context-free. The experience of beauty should radiate through and wake us up, regardless of our background. Kandinsky is often held up as an example of someone whose art showed his belief in context independence, and consequently as the classic example of the failure of modern art, precisely because it could not be reduced and purified to its essence. The National Gallery Curator in the article understood this clearly and was unusually frank about it; Joshua Bell did not. What's most interesting about believing artistic beauty is so strongly objective and context-free is that this would also mean it would be easy to build a machine to measure beauty, which (I would wager) most people who think art is context free would not want to believe.
Wassily Kandinsky, Yellow Red Blue
Assumption #2, related to the first one: Beauty in art exists on a one-dimensional spectrum. Should these people in the transit station have reacted the same way to someone playing Slayer, or Elvis, or to the world's best mime? If not, why not? The obvious answer is the presumption that classical music is better.
Even leaving aside debates about the virtue of one over another set of esthetic values (i.e. metal vs. classical, of course) I do not have adequate ability even as a music appreciator to hear why Bell is so much better than anyone else. (I do however claim such abilities where metal is concerned, and exercise them frequently on this very blog, of course for your benefit dear reader.) Again, this a) assumes the existence of only one dimension along which skill can be appreciated, but also b) requires special effort from appreciators, which wouldn't be so bad if c) there wasn't a moral judgment and presumptuousness that so few people have this skill.
Assumption #3: There is a moral failure in modern life if it does not lead us to appreciate artistic beauty - when and where the artists want us to. The fact is that we're saturated with media today, and we hear far more music and see far more art than people did even fifty years ago. (Indeed, American Gen X and Yers are more likely to listen to classical music than our parents.) Notice that it was the children in this story who stopped and listened to the violinist, because it was probably the first time they'd heard a violin. If we lived in medieval Europe when most people rarely heard music, they would have stopped too, not because medieval peasants could appreciate artistic beauty better or their lives were somehow more in balance, but out of sheer novelty, just like the children did.
But more important here is the sheer presumptuousness of such an attitude on the time of the passersby. I say this is good art, and if you don't take time out of whatever is important to you to look at it, there's something wrong with you! This was in Washington D.C.; if you're American, most of those people in the station are running your government, and here's this guy distracting them with a violin! I imagine a smartass artist response to this would be, "Exactly - their lives are out of balance." Next time this same hypothetical smartass is running somewhere, to their job or to pick someone up at the airport or to meet someone for lunch, let's take ten minutes of their time and ask them to just calm down and listen to some Miles Davis before they jump in the car, and we'll see whether they're concerned with balance then. The point is, there are lots of people who enjoy Joshua Bell and classical violin, and when they want to, they go to the symphony and do it there, on their schedule, when they're expecting to. Not completely out of context when they're trying to do their jobs.
To reiterate, Bell was gracious and brave to undertake such an experiment, as was Weingarten to approach him - but the article is better as a starting point for surfacing the assumptions we have about the esthetic demands that high culture makes on our attention.
The experiment was whether the abstract power of his talent, and of the music he was performing, would cut through the fog of people's commutes. The unstated assumption is that if it doesn't, there's soemthing wrong with us.
The WaPo article deserves some criticism, but not for the questions it's asking. As such the piece is a really incisive look into high-cultural values that most of us are not comfortable questioning so explicitly, and Gene Weingarten deserves kudos for having the cajones for approaching Joshua Bell with the idea. As does Bell, who followed through on the experiment and seemed very forthcoming about his subjective experience. Indeed that may be the most interesting part of the piece. The rest is entirely predictable.
The problem with the article is the unstated assumptions buried in this experiment, and the often moralistic tone employed in discussing the whole enterprise and its outcome. Weingarten beats the reader over the head with said assumptions roughly enough that it seems he was intentionally trying to get us to notice them - but if that was really the point of his whole experiment, he doesn't ever allow that he realizes this. Some of them are:
Assumption #1: Beauty in art is context-free. The experience of beauty should radiate through and wake us up, regardless of our background. Kandinsky is often held up as an example of someone whose art showed his belief in context independence, and consequently as the classic example of the failure of modern art, precisely because it could not be reduced and purified to its essence. The National Gallery Curator in the article understood this clearly and was unusually frank about it; Joshua Bell did not. What's most interesting about believing artistic beauty is so strongly objective and context-free is that this would also mean it would be easy to build a machine to measure beauty, which (I would wager) most people who think art is context free would not want to believe.
Wassily Kandinsky, Yellow Red Blue
Assumption #2, related to the first one: Beauty in art exists on a one-dimensional spectrum. Should these people in the transit station have reacted the same way to someone playing Slayer, or Elvis, or to the world's best mime? If not, why not? The obvious answer is the presumption that classical music is better.
Even leaving aside debates about the virtue of one over another set of esthetic values (i.e. metal vs. classical, of course) I do not have adequate ability even as a music appreciator to hear why Bell is so much better than anyone else. (I do however claim such abilities where metal is concerned, and exercise them frequently on this very blog, of course for your benefit dear reader.) Again, this a) assumes the existence of only one dimension along which skill can be appreciated, but also b) requires special effort from appreciators, which wouldn't be so bad if c) there wasn't a moral judgment and presumptuousness that so few people have this skill.
Assumption #3: There is a moral failure in modern life if it does not lead us to appreciate artistic beauty - when and where the artists want us to. The fact is that we're saturated with media today, and we hear far more music and see far more art than people did even fifty years ago. (Indeed, American Gen X and Yers are more likely to listen to classical music than our parents.) Notice that it was the children in this story who stopped and listened to the violinist, because it was probably the first time they'd heard a violin. If we lived in medieval Europe when most people rarely heard music, they would have stopped too, not because medieval peasants could appreciate artistic beauty better or their lives were somehow more in balance, but out of sheer novelty, just like the children did.
But more important here is the sheer presumptuousness of such an attitude on the time of the passersby. I say this is good art, and if you don't take time out of whatever is important to you to look at it, there's something wrong with you! This was in Washington D.C.; if you're American, most of those people in the station are running your government, and here's this guy distracting them with a violin! I imagine a smartass artist response to this would be, "Exactly - their lives are out of balance." Next time this same hypothetical smartass is running somewhere, to their job or to pick someone up at the airport or to meet someone for lunch, let's take ten minutes of their time and ask them to just calm down and listen to some Miles Davis before they jump in the car, and we'll see whether they're concerned with balance then. The point is, there are lots of people who enjoy Joshua Bell and classical violin, and when they want to, they go to the symphony and do it there, on their schedule, when they're expecting to. Not completely out of context when they're trying to do their jobs.
To reiterate, Bell was gracious and brave to undertake such an experiment, as was Weingarten to approach him - but the article is better as a starting point for surfacing the assumptions we have about the esthetic demands that high culture makes on our attention.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Nomad 927, Choke (2011)
Check out Nomad 927, a San Diego experimental band. If you think of a very well thought-out Pelican with vocals, you'd be close. As cannot be pointed out enough, metal is awesome, and science fiction is awesome, and the song below has a famous insane computer in it at one point. What more do you need you idiot?!?! Their debut live performance (the anti blackout show) is tomorrow (today really), Tuesday, October 4 at 7:00pm at the Park Gallery in University Heights, San Diego. Click the little play button to hear their song Choke.
Get more of Nomad 927 here.
Get more of Nomad 927 here.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Alexander Shulgin Documentary
If there's any single person that embodies Berkeley, California it's this guy.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Rova Saxophone Quartet, The Drift
Here's Rova Quartet's website.
While I'm posting classical saxophone stuff I might as well put a link to a Debussy piece for orchestra with saxophone.
There Are Many Nerds In San Diego
...and below is where to meet them. Moving here from San Francisco 2 years ago, I've often complained that San Diego culture isn't nearly geeky enough. Slowly but surely over the past few months I've discovered the nerdy corners and nooks of this place. There are lots of interesting, smart, fun, strange people here. In the interest of making San Diego a nerdier place, and to save you the trouble of digging, I highly recommend the following organizations to meet your fellow oddballs, science geeks, metalheads, and deviants:
The San Diego New Atheists and Agnostics - a predominantly social organization that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Atheist groups are always great places to meet interesting folks. General secular group events (including this one's) are listed centrally at SDCoR's calendar (the San Diego Coalition of Reason).
3RDspace is a cool venue in Normal Heights that hosts groups, art shows, you name it. Look at their calendar to see what's coming up.
Lesswrong - whether or not you're in San Diego, this rationality blog lists meetups for cities around the world, and some have been in San Diego and Irvine.
Sifter - gathers interesting folks and often focuses on exercise and outdoors stuff.
Che Cafe - frequent metal.
Should you decide to go to any of their events, feel free to say it was Mike and his awesome blog Speculative Nonfiction that steered you there. This will gain you immediate credibility.
The San Diego New Atheists and Agnostics - a predominantly social organization that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Atheist groups are always great places to meet interesting folks. General secular group events (including this one's) are listed centrally at SDCoR's calendar (the San Diego Coalition of Reason).
3RDspace is a cool venue in Normal Heights that hosts groups, art shows, you name it. Look at their calendar to see what's coming up.
Lesswrong - whether or not you're in San Diego, this rationality blog lists meetups for cities around the world, and some have been in San Diego and Irvine.
Sifter - gathers interesting folks and often focuses on exercise and outdoors stuff.
Che Cafe - frequent metal.
Should you decide to go to any of their events, feel free to say it was Mike and his awesome blog Speculative Nonfiction that steered you there. This will gain you immediate credibility.
Richard Cheese, Man in the Box (cover, orig. Alice in Chains, Facelift, 1990)
This is more clever than you'd think. It's also a smart idea to expand your audience, because when you're genre-shifting like this you can record just about any music that you enjoy, and then put the lyrics with it and say "this is Man in the Box". (The Tori Amos approach to Slayer's Reign in Blood was quite guilty of this; it's not clear that it's an interpretation at all.) But to be fair to Mr. Cheese, this sounds more like Man in the Box than I expected.
This version is almost more Klezmer than lounge-lizard.
This version is almost more Klezmer than lounge-lizard.
Paper: Habitability of Tidelocked Planets
People in the planetary science groups at UC Berkeley and U. Hawaii produced this paper, which models possible instabilities in the climates of gravitationally tidelocked planets. As you might expect, in terms of habitability, it's worse to be tidelocked than not. Although Mars isn't tidelocked they use it as an example of the kind of run-away weathering that tidelocking could produce.
Here's an article of what would happen to our geography if the earth stopped rotating.
Iapetus is tidally locked to Saturn, as the Moon is to Earth.
Here's an article of what would happen to our geography if the earth stopped rotating.
Iapetus is tidally locked to Saturn, as the Moon is to Earth.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
At Least Humans Have an Enzyme That Breaks Down Carbon Nanotubes
Kagan et al demonstrated last year that myeloperoxidase (which clinical types will recognize as an oxidative defense against certain bacteria) can break down nanotubes. Thus allaying once and far all any remaining concerns about the singularity and bio-invasive gray goo.*
Above: Believe the Singularity is coming? Well then you can rest easy that when the AIs decompile you in order to print matter at their whim, at least your hand won't turn all black and fall off like that. Not because of the specific structures pictured here that is. You're welcome.
*By that I mean, not allaying once and for all those concerns.
Above: Believe the Singularity is coming? Well then you can rest easy that when the AIs decompile you in order to print matter at their whim, at least your hand won't turn all black and fall off like that. Not because of the specific structures pictured here that is. You're welcome.
*By that I mean, not allaying once and for all those concerns.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Van Canto, Battery (orig. Metallica, Master of Puppets, 1986)
I especially like the huge ancient-Rome-sounding perfect fifths they did for the bridge section. H/T to my fellow UCSD SOM Class of 2014 metahleads.
Only disappointment was that I was hoping the female would take the guitar solo. Around 2003 there was a crazy Japanese guy who did an all-vocal recording of himself covering Slayer's Angel of Death and put it up by MP3 (pre-Youtube days) but I can't find it. A music professor friend of mine once said that the evolution of Western music was strange in that the two kinds of sounds that humans make either imitate beating something rhythmically, or the tonality of the human voice, and Western music until recently neglected the former entirely in favor of the latter. So it's interesting that in versions of metal songs that return to more traditional instrument - strings like Apocalpytica, or the human voice as here - that they still end up including drums, much to their betterment. Ever seen Apocalyptica live? Their drummer might be my favorite that I've ever seen perform.
There's something to be said for a genre that inspires this kind of passion and inventivity. You don't see people doing stuff like this for Philip Glass or Lady Gaga.
Only disappointment was that I was hoping the female would take the guitar solo. Around 2003 there was a crazy Japanese guy who did an all-vocal recording of himself covering Slayer's Angel of Death and put it up by MP3 (pre-Youtube days) but I can't find it. A music professor friend of mine once said that the evolution of Western music was strange in that the two kinds of sounds that humans make either imitate beating something rhythmically, or the tonality of the human voice, and Western music until recently neglected the former entirely in favor of the latter. So it's interesting that in versions of metal songs that return to more traditional instrument - strings like Apocalpytica, or the human voice as here - that they still end up including drums, much to their betterment. Ever seen Apocalyptica live? Their drummer might be my favorite that I've ever seen perform.
There's something to be said for a genre that inspires this kind of passion and inventivity. You don't see people doing stuff like this for Philip Glass or Lady Gaga.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Cast Iron Crow in SoCal Early-Mid November
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The BNR Death Metal Tournament; Or, the Triumph of the Classics
Older records on average did better in BNR's death metal tournament. The average age of the releases in each round increased as the tournament moved toward a champion.
You'll note that I adjusted the y-axis from 0, because even in the first round (with the on-average newest releases) the average age was still 16 years old. That's right - the youngest group of records, on average, came out in 1995.
Why might this trend exist? The following possible explanations assume that the number and accessibility of metal releases has remained roughly constant since the late 80s (easy to argue with, more below) and also that the voting represents actual opinion.
1) Maybe the old sh*t is better. This is the most interesting possibility, especially if it generalizes to other areas of art. ("I liked Dali's early stuff but he sold out man.")
2) It's rare that people become metal fans and then later stop liking metal, but as people age, they do stop getting into new bands. Also, most metal fans aren't old enough to be lost through death, and it's not growing any faster than it ever was; so by the population dynamics of metal, most metal fans should have been metal fans for a while. Therefore there may be a tendency for more people to like older stuff. Note that if this is true, the average age should stay constant. So in other words, if they run this tournament again in 10 years, the average age of the first round should stay about 16 years, but then it will mean a release date of about 2005, not 1995.
3) In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses something like Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") as it applies to art over time. If 90% of everything is crap, the older something is that has remained accessible and current, the better it's likely to be - assuming quality has even a slight positive correlation with retention of interest in the work over time. Hence, instead of constantly digging for what might be a great work of art or literature or music (but probably won't be), a reliance on classical canons is a good crowd-sourcing strategy. And it's the rare death metal connoisseur who won't enjoy Death's Leprosy, the winner of the tournament.
4) Again generalizeable: maybe early successes in a genre define the genre. These constraints then sow the seeds of the genre's stagnation, because if future works stray from those constraints, they aren't as good; and if future works remain within those constraints, they're boring and not as good. That Leprosy is not compared against Megadeth's Rust in Peace (which won BNR's separate tournament for "regular" metal) but is the winner of its own category is interesting, because it's clearly being measured differently. This might be a good definition for speciation in the arts.
Note that if anything, metal releases have become more abundant and more accessible since the 90s and certainly the 80s. Therefore, if changing accessibility has an effect, it should skew toward the later releases (assuming quality is constant, we would find more good metal albums later, just because there are more metal albums later). So that can't explain what we're seeing here.
Other comments from this peanut gallery, which you should probably dismiss as being expressions of personal taste only:
- I'm surprised that Deicide got as far in this competition as it did. Even when I was 17 it was mostly good for a laugh, although carrying around this tape in school was enough to get me the nickname of Satan, which stuck for years.
- I love both Obituary's Cause of Death and In Flames' Jester Race but if I had to pick one I'd go with the latter. Looking at how the voting went, the neoclassical NWOSDM sound seems to be fading at the close of the metal Silver Age.
You'll note that I adjusted the y-axis from 0, because even in the first round (with the on-average newest releases) the average age was still 16 years old. That's right - the youngest group of records, on average, came out in 1995.
Why might this trend exist? The following possible explanations assume that the number and accessibility of metal releases has remained roughly constant since the late 80s (easy to argue with, more below) and also that the voting represents actual opinion.
1) Maybe the old sh*t is better. This is the most interesting possibility, especially if it generalizes to other areas of art. ("I liked Dali's early stuff but he sold out man.")
2) It's rare that people become metal fans and then later stop liking metal, but as people age, they do stop getting into new bands. Also, most metal fans aren't old enough to be lost through death, and it's not growing any faster than it ever was; so by the population dynamics of metal, most metal fans should have been metal fans for a while. Therefore there may be a tendency for more people to like older stuff. Note that if this is true, the average age should stay constant. So in other words, if they run this tournament again in 10 years, the average age of the first round should stay about 16 years, but then it will mean a release date of about 2005, not 1995.
3) In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses something like Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") as it applies to art over time. If 90% of everything is crap, the older something is that has remained accessible and current, the better it's likely to be - assuming quality has even a slight positive correlation with retention of interest in the work over time. Hence, instead of constantly digging for what might be a great work of art or literature or music (but probably won't be), a reliance on classical canons is a good crowd-sourcing strategy. And it's the rare death metal connoisseur who won't enjoy Death's Leprosy, the winner of the tournament.
4) Again generalizeable: maybe early successes in a genre define the genre. These constraints then sow the seeds of the genre's stagnation, because if future works stray from those constraints, they aren't as good; and if future works remain within those constraints, they're boring and not as good. That Leprosy is not compared against Megadeth's Rust in Peace (which won BNR's separate tournament for "regular" metal) but is the winner of its own category is interesting, because it's clearly being measured differently. This might be a good definition for speciation in the arts.
Note that if anything, metal releases have become more abundant and more accessible since the 90s and certainly the 80s. Therefore, if changing accessibility has an effect, it should skew toward the later releases (assuming quality is constant, we would find more good metal albums later, just because there are more metal albums later). So that can't explain what we're seeing here.
Other comments from this peanut gallery, which you should probably dismiss as being expressions of personal taste only:
- I'm surprised that Deicide got as far in this competition as it did. Even when I was 17 it was mostly good for a laugh, although carrying around this tape in school was enough to get me the nickname of Satan, which stuck for years.
- I love both Obituary's Cause of Death and In Flames' Jester Race but if I had to pick one I'd go with the latter. Looking at how the voting went, the neoclassical NWOSDM sound seems to be fading at the close of the metal Silver Age.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Games and Hyper-Reality
This lecture by CMU Prof Jesse Schell should be retitled "How Our Worst Cognitive Weaknesses Are Exploited For Money By Video Game Makers". Using games as incentives to get people to do things isn't a new idea but he boils a lot of it down to psychology in a very clear way. This brings up lots of points.
There are lots of people who don't ever play video games; unless you count this version of Missile Command, I'm one of them. It's not that we're Amish or something, but many of us just don't see the point of spending time learning skills (i.e. the necessary information and maneuvering in a game) that are not transferable out of the game, and which result only in points in the game. Here are some points that are much more worthwhile spending time on: going up 50 points on your credit score! going down 30 seconds on your mile time! Going down 20 points on your cholesterol! That last one gives you literal life points.
The problem is that I (and many other people) wish we were better at paying attention to those kinds of points. Life already is a kind of game anyway (especially if you think we live in a simulation) but the problem is reinforcement. If saving money and eating well and investing and doing speed work-outs (which I hate) had some kind of immediate positive feedback, either from beating your friends or seeing automatically how you've improved over time, lots of people would do them more and better. Schell talks about this at the end of the lecture. If somehow my efforts in Halo or Mafia Wars (those are games, right?) could help me organize my finances, then I would play those SOBs every damn day.
Schell also makes a few comments on the commodification of experience, echoing comments that Umberto Eco and others have made about modern capitalism, and how this has changed life specifically for American consumers. The experiences which are created and sold to us are quite brighter, more clearly-defined, more real than the things they're imitating – and they become "hyper-real". (Ever have a cherry pie without coloring and extra flavors, and realize you didn't like it as much?) This wasn't key to Schell's talk but it's interesting to see this theme's convergence with the technology world.
My own eureka moment on this came during a visit to the California Adventure section of Disneyland, which features various California gold-rush-history-themed rides set among transplanted ponderosa pines and ersatz Sierra granite. As I stood looking over the simulated whitewater of one of the rides, it occurred to me that I could be in the real actual Sierras, with wild ponderosas and genuine granite and whitewater, in about four hours. With no lines, and no screaming kids (or not screaming for long anyway, until the mountain lions do us a favor). But I had still paid to be at this fake one. The commodification of "wilderness" experience is my particular high horse, but then again I'm just fine with going to Taco Bell for "Mexican food", so I guess we all have to pick our compromises.
Disney vs. actual Sierra Foothills.
Notice though that the question of hyper-reality applies to things we purchase mostly for their sensory content: music, food, experiences like Disneyland. Why? Some of the hyper-reality has to do with the brute sensory input of colors and flavor and meeting preconceptions, but some of it has to do with the ideas and beliefs you experience while you're consuming the product. So far it seems to be mostly food products that have exploited this avenue; i.e. you're thinking about how thoughtful of a person you are for buying fair-trade coffee and local organic produce, and what kind of wonderful people from a distant land you've interacted with indirectly. But not all products are as amenable to this as food. I don't know that people are concerned with whether their external A/C unit is "authentic".
There are lots of people who don't ever play video games; unless you count this version of Missile Command, I'm one of them. It's not that we're Amish or something, but many of us just don't see the point of spending time learning skills (i.e. the necessary information and maneuvering in a game) that are not transferable out of the game, and which result only in points in the game. Here are some points that are much more worthwhile spending time on: going up 50 points on your credit score! going down 30 seconds on your mile time! Going down 20 points on your cholesterol! That last one gives you literal life points.
The problem is that I (and many other people) wish we were better at paying attention to those kinds of points. Life already is a kind of game anyway (especially if you think we live in a simulation) but the problem is reinforcement. If saving money and eating well and investing and doing speed work-outs (which I hate) had some kind of immediate positive feedback, either from beating your friends or seeing automatically how you've improved over time, lots of people would do them more and better. Schell talks about this at the end of the lecture. If somehow my efforts in Halo or Mafia Wars (those are games, right?) could help me organize my finances, then I would play those SOBs every damn day.
Schell also makes a few comments on the commodification of experience, echoing comments that Umberto Eco and others have made about modern capitalism, and how this has changed life specifically for American consumers. The experiences which are created and sold to us are quite brighter, more clearly-defined, more real than the things they're imitating – and they become "hyper-real". (Ever have a cherry pie without coloring and extra flavors, and realize you didn't like it as much?) This wasn't key to Schell's talk but it's interesting to see this theme's convergence with the technology world.
My own eureka moment on this came during a visit to the California Adventure section of Disneyland, which features various California gold-rush-history-themed rides set among transplanted ponderosa pines and ersatz Sierra granite. As I stood looking over the simulated whitewater of one of the rides, it occurred to me that I could be in the real actual Sierras, with wild ponderosas and genuine granite and whitewater, in about four hours. With no lines, and no screaming kids (or not screaming for long anyway, until the mountain lions do us a favor). But I had still paid to be at this fake one. The commodification of "wilderness" experience is my particular high horse, but then again I'm just fine with going to Taco Bell for "Mexican food", so I guess we all have to pick our compromises.
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Notice though that the question of hyper-reality applies to things we purchase mostly for their sensory content: music, food, experiences like Disneyland. Why? Some of the hyper-reality has to do with the brute sensory input of colors and flavor and meeting preconceptions, but some of it has to do with the ideas and beliefs you experience while you're consuming the product. So far it seems to be mostly food products that have exploited this avenue; i.e. you're thinking about how thoughtful of a person you are for buying fair-trade coffee and local organic produce, and what kind of wonderful people from a distant land you've interacted with indirectly. But not all products are as amenable to this as food. I don't know that people are concerned with whether their external A/C unit is "authentic".
"Creed is Good"
I think that phrase is even darker and more nihilistic than Gordon Gecko would have uttered, but this Slate article makes that dubious claim.
True confession, not only did I actually not mind Creed but I performed covers (singing Scott Stapp's part) with current Cast Iron Crow bassist Joseph Evans on guitar. (Next show, September 17th at the Englander in San Leandro.)
I just realized I'm the Ron McGovney of Cast Iron Crow.
True confession, not only did I actually not mind Creed but I performed covers (singing Scott Stapp's part) with current Cast Iron Crow bassist Joseph Evans on guitar. (Next show, September 17th at the Englander in San Leandro.)
I just realized I'm the Ron McGovney of Cast Iron Crow.
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