A History and Anti-History of C20

Published
Hal Siegel
on February 10, 2009
in References
.

I’m currently reading Tools for Conviviality, by Ivan Illich, and a biography of Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics, Dark Hero of the Information Age. I often read more than one book at a time, and I heartily recommend it. There is no formal program to it, or rationale: I just like being able to shift back and forth from one text to another, depending on how my mood suits me.

This case is no different. I kept seeing Illich’s name pop up, and Tools for Conviviality seemed to dovetail with a lot of the ideas that have been swimming around my head recently. The same thing is more or less the case with Cybernetics. I really don’t know much about “control theory”, other than the ways in which the idea of “feedback loops” have entered our lingua franca, but system-oriented designers like Hugh Dubberly have noted that Cybernetics could provide generalized models and frameworks to address contemporary design problems. I thought about trying to tackle one of Wiener’s own books on the subject, but the fact is that I have no head for math. I have a hard enough time switching from fractions to decimals, so I figured that differential equations and the likes might be a bit out of my league.

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Lugubrist Architecture in New York

Published
Hal Siegel
on January 9, 2009
in Essays
.

 It is a couple of days before Christmas, 2008, and I am running a few errands downtown before the holiday break. I find myself at the corner of Lafayette and Houston. Heading north on Lafayette initiates a stereotypically Proustian interlude of memories; I spent a lot of time in this neighborhood, as a student and a young professional. I reach the southeast corner of Lafayette and Bond, and pause to take in the sights. At this particular corner there are plenty of visual treats from which to choose: lots of high-end boutiques, restaurants, Astor Place dead ahead, Midtown rising to the north, etc. Of course, me being me, I can’t help but keep from eyeballing the non-descript, ground-floor entrance to the building on the north corner: Chuck Close’s studio. Hey, to each his own. 

 Crossing to the north side of street, I’m about to continue on my way when I suddenly remember: “Isn’t that Herzog and de Meuron building on Bond Street?” Out of curiosity, I turn the corner and start down the street. On the southside, is a brand new condo of curious design. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but it certainly looks expensive. “Is that it?” I wonder. My gaze turns back to the northside, and then it hits me: 

 ”Oh. Wow…” 

“Jesus Chr…”

“Holy Cr…”

 And on in that vein for some time. I’ve found 40 Bond. 

 First: it just looks huge. Yet it does not break the horizon line of the other buildings. They’ve gone bonkers with the scale of the windows and the entryways to give it a sense of, well, hugeness. 

 Then there is the wall/fence thing, about which much has been written and pondered (if you follow these sorts things). Is it really an ode to graffiti? This seemed to be the prevailing sentiment, but that seems off, now that I see it up close. But who knows? It seems like sheer, utter madness. Oh, and I discover, it’s functional to boot. The whole thing is a series of private entrances to what clearly are (enormous) townhouses. 

Did I mention it’s Coke-bottle green?

 I run up to close to check out the detailing for which H&dM are famous. They do not disappoint. Unfortunately I’m not an architect or an engineer and so I lack the language to appropriately describe the insane level of detailing that has been encoded into the metal skin at the street level. Luckily though, I do have an iPhone.

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Clint Eastwood at the start of the still-new 21st

Published
Hal Siegel
on December 12, 2008
in Quotes
.

These spectral figures, totems of masculinity and mementos from a heroic cinematic age, are what make this unassuming film — small in scale if not in the scope of its ideas — more than just a vendetta flick or an entertainment about a crazy coot and the exotic strangers next door. As the story unfolds and the gangbangers return and Walt reaches for his gun, the film moves from comedy into drama and then tragedy and then into something completely unexpected. We’ve seen this western before, though not quite. Because this isn’t John Wayne near the end of the 20th century, but Clint Eastwood at the start of the still-new 21st, remaking the image of the hero for one more and perhaps final time, one generation of Americans making way for the next.

That probably sounds heavier than I mean, but “Gran Torino” doesn’t go down lightly. Despite all the jokes — the scenes of Walt lighting up at female flattery and scrambling for Hmong delicacies — the film has the feel of a requiem. Melancholy is etched in every long shot of Detroit’s decimated, emptied streets and in the faces of those who remain to still walk in them. Made in the 1960s and ’70s, the Gran Torino was never a great symbol of American automotive might, which makes Walt’s love for the car more poignant. It was made by an industry that now barely makes cars, in a city that hardly works, in a country that too often has felt recently as if it can’t do anything right anymore except, every so often, make a movie like this one.

An exquisite review by Manohla Dargis in The Times. It almost stands on its own. I was already looking forward to Gran Torino. Now even more so.

A Mostly Peer-Produced Review of Nike+

Published
Hal Siegel
on December 10, 2008
in Quotes and References
.

I’ve been intrigued by the Nike+ system for some time now. It is without a doubt an impressive feat of engineering, and the overall design is exactly what one would expect from Nike, one of the best known brands on the planet (and a company that has long embraced design as a competitive advantage). But I am particularly interested in Nike+ because of its networked aspects: it is one of the few examples I have found where a comprehensive, top-down design program has been carefully and successfully blended with bottom-up tools in the form of an online, social application.

Now let me be clear though: I’ve never actually tested any of the Nike+ products. To use an apt sports metaphor, I’m just a spectator in the stands. I have thought about going out and buying a Nike+ sports kit. But it seemed like a frivolous expense just so I could satisfy my own curiousity. Then I hit on what I thought was a better and more interesting idea: why not ask the internet? Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing the internet is supposed to be good for? So I did. Now I present for you my findings, with a few of my own comments added for good measure.

(Caveat Emptor: the Nike+ sports kit has been out for a number of years, and has naturally gone through many product updates, etc. So some of this information may be old, or stale, or no longer even exactly true. This is not meant to be a comprehensive “review”. Rather, it is what is: I typed “Nike+ into Google, and this is the most interesting stuff I found over the course of a few weeks.)

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Peak Hierarchy

Published
Hal Siegel
on December 9, 2008
in Quotes
.

Anthropologists who study evolution believe that once a group of humans becomes larger than 150 people, they need to invent hierarchies in order to structure relationships and assure social trust. What is new about our times – the age of the Internet – is that you can now functionally coordinate small groups of people on a global scale. Social trust doesn’t need to be organized by hierarchical organizations; it can arise from the bottom up and self-organize into small groups that share common values and purposes. Such distributed networks have given us GNU Linux and open source software, Wikipedia, social networking, the Public Library of Science and other open-access journals, and countless other online commons.

This is something new under the sun: a new and functional mode of organizational life.

For the moment, the peer production economy is mostly occurring online, dealing with intangible products like creative works and information. But the social dynamics of peer production are proving to be astonishingly effective in organizing the creative energies of huge numbers of dispersed people. Could it be the template for similar changes in the “real world” of conventional industry? Will its institutional norms of mass participation, transparency and accountability begin to “compete” with hierarchical institutions?

— from Not Just Peak Oil, But “Peak Heirarchy” Too? by David Bollier