Musings – Page 6 – A place for my stuff

Google and the New Economy

Here are some very enlightening quotations from a recent article on Google at Time magazine:

ERIC SCHMIDT (CEO): “The company isn’t run for the long-term value of our shareholders but for the long-term value of our end users.”

LARRY PAGE (Founder): “If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach.”

Bravo, boys. Here’s to what I hope will begin a revolution toward an economy where profit is secondary to the greater good and to personal satisfaction. If that sounds ridiculously optimistic, consider this: a hundred years ago industries thrived because they filled a need, a necessity, and profit was derived from that, but today it seems like the tenor of business in this country is one of want, of convenience. We are finding ever more luxuries with which to fill our lives. The middle class is doing much less physical labor. We’re getting to a point where necessity is no longer the mother of invention, convenience is. Our lives are so convenient now that many more of us have the option of taking a job we enjoy versus a job we’re forced into. I feel like trade skills are falling off while interchangeable office skills are on the rise. In that environment, there exists more freedom to choose a job you enjoy. Your daily aim then becomes doing your job well because you care about the work.

I’m not saying this is widespread right now, nor will come to pass for the entire populace any time soon, but I really think it might be possible. Give it a thousand years and we’ll see. The danger between now and then becomes finding something enjoyable for everyone to do. Today there are so many members of my generation and younger who are so affluent that they’re bored to tears and psychologically abused by an army of marketers trying to sell them unnecessary trinkets and pleasures. They have no idea where to start looking for something about which they can be passionate. They need mental, emotional and spiritual food and they’ve got Kelly Clarkson and MTV. We’ve traded in physical hardship for psychological stress. For everything you gain, you lose something I suppose.

Anyway, that all just popped in from out of nowhere. Not sure if it’s coherent but oh well. Thinking about those two statements and how they run completely counter to traditional capitalism brings me a great deal of joy. Maybe change can start at the top for once.

The Film of Tomorrow

“The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them. It may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening; the story of a trip, a sickness, their military service, their marriage, their last vacation…and it will be enjoyable because it will be true, and new…The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has. The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.”

— François Truffaut, published in Arts magazine, May 1957

I couldn’t help but read that through the lens of blogging. In a few more years, blogs may morph into video podcasting for everyone, and then Truffaut will have been 50 years ahead of his time. Bloggers certainly aren’t filmmakers by any stretch of the imagination, but it still seems like an eerily prescient quotation. I also think it applies to my thrilling adventures with digital photography. I’m certainly no civil servant to the camera.

On a related note, I went to Suncoast last night, and DVDs were all 30% off, and I STILL bought nothing. I’m holding out for 50% off because nobody else cares about the DVDs I want (for example, Truffaut films and other snooty Criterion collection discs).

I am a Genius

America loves reality TV. America loves 24-hour news channel punditry. It’s only a matter of time before we combine them together for a series in which a handful of people are chosen to argue with each other, vote each other off the show, and whoever wins gets to become a Fox News pundit.

You heard it here first. It would be like American Idol, only with less beauty and talent.

Perspective

Driving across the river bridge this morning I saw a man walking north in the soutbound lane of the interstate. For those who don’t know, the dowtown river bridge is three lanes on both sides with no room for pedestrians to walk. I noticed the man was carrying a gas can. I then passed by his stalled car just beyond the halfway point of the bridge. For the next two miles I saw the bumper-to-bumper madness, a product of his motionless vehicle in the right hand lane.

That guy knows the blues. To run out of gas on the interstate, on a bridge with no shoulder, and to have to get out of the car, go get gas and come back…that’s about the deepest troubles a motorist can have. At least with an accident, you have it and it’s over. This guy has to continually be in danger just to get some gas. Never again will I complain about having a bad morning.

In Love with an Idea, Part III

The Onion made a nice contribution to my interior discourse on the nature of love (click here for part I and part II) with this week’s article “I Love the Idea of My Wife.” Although the piece is comic, comedy is often one of the best sources of truth, so there are some good ideas to consider. This was my favorite bit:

“Frankly, I’d be lost without her. But I guess I’d feel that way about pretty much anybody who was from the same age group, economic tier, and level of education, and who I happened to marry 20-odd years ago, back when it was time to acquire a wife.”

I guess another title for the article would be “In Love with a Socio-Economic Construct.” I think that scenario is probably true for the majority of all marriages. I don’t think it’s anything to feel weird about; I think most people are largely interchangeable. Like LEGOs®, we’re all differently shaped pieces that fit together in particular ways. I know I could probably happily marry any number of girls I know. Of course they’d all be from similar demographic backgrounds, because we all have our own preferences – similar age group, economic tier, and education just mean that our mates will be more likely to understand us – you could keep going all the way back into species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, and kingdom [1] if you want. The dangerous thing the author does is compare his wife to a garden implement and a financial investment. There are plenty of people out there like that, I’m sure.

While I’ll be the first to admit that people are interchangeable, I’ll add that some of us are much more oddly shaped than others, and so will not fit together with just anyone. So therein lies the challenge: finding the best match.

1.) Yes I’m just showing off my retention of 9th grade science. Although in Arkansas some people do get more adventurous in their mating preferences…probably as far up as phylum.

Captions

Recently I’ve had a series of pictures come up to me and demand captions.

“Goodbye cruel world!”

Must Be This Tall to Ride

“We’re getting married!!”

The Acceleration of History

Of course the Internet speeds the exchange of information, allowing scientific communication to accelerate and advancements to be made more quickly, but something I’ve noticed recently is that it has a similar effect on the distribution of historical facts. I have seen more references to Saturnalia this holiday season than in any previous year, and I blame the ease with which the Internet allows us to transmit information. In the case of Saturnalia, it’s likely a side effect of this hubub regarding references to “Christmas” versus “holidays.” Apparently the tide of political correctness is being turned back toward the Christian majority who want to make sure that everyone knows Christ is the reason for the season. I won’t get into that, though [1].

What I’ve been seeing lately are a flurry of emails and weblinks discussing December 25 and its Saturnalian origins. Much the way Easter was co-opted by the Christians from pagan tradition, so Christmas was conveniently placed at the same time of the Romans’ Saturnalia in an effort to convert the heathens. In fact, most biblical scholars put Christ’s actual birth a few years back into the B.C., and probably in spring or summer, as the Nativity would have been an unlikely scene in the dead of winter. Not many shepherds would keep their flock by night in the fields during the cold season.

Another, completely unrelated historical item I came across today was graffiti from the walls of Pompeii. For some reason I never considered that the scrawlings on the walls of truck stop bathrooms have a long tradition, stretching back very likely to the first days of indoor lavatories. The Pompeii markings read nearly identically to their counterparts in the modern day. The topics are alternately scatalogical (“show us your hairy privates”) and romantic (“Marcus loves Spendusa”). I also never realized “I was here” has been written on walls for millenia. Were we to intuit the central message of humanity from these writings, one could only assume that it would read: “We were here, we had sex, we loved.”

For anyone searching for the meaning of life, the answer may well lie right there.

1.) Yet.

In Love with an Idea, Part II

About two years ago around this time someone said to me that she liked the fact that I had no expectations. We were in the early days of our relationship then and while I’m still not entirely sure what she meant by that, I suspect it had something to do with me not expecting us to be doing certain things[1] or for either of us to be fulfilling a particular role. We just acted naturally and were comfortable with whatever came our way. No pressure, no requirements, just a relaxed pace to our time together.

Unnecessary expectations may be tied to the appealing assumptions we make regarding someone to whom we know we are attracted but do not fully know.

Once the boyfriend/girlfriend exclusivity threshold has been passed, we assign different standards of behavior to the other person. These are expectations, and they vary from person to person. Perhaps it was the case that I had only the most essential expectations for our relationship: thou shalt not mug down with others, and thou shalt show affection often. Some people may extend these to more complex rules and regulations: thou shalt always call me at least twice daily, thou shalt have sex with me nightly.

Relationships work best when there is balance, and a balance of expectations is essential. However, for those of you who may find yourself discontent in your dealings with others (romantic or otherwise), examine your expectations and make sure they aren’t the problem.

Do I sound too much like Dr. Phil? I’m sorry. I just write this stuff as it comes and try not to judge it. Also a good way to approach a relationship…

1.) Maybe I wasn’t being pushy for sex.

Eudora Welty, Homely Woman

For some reason a thought passed through my mind about a passage I read some months ago about a Eudora Welty biographer who insinuated that the reason Welty became a writer was because she was unattractive. This caused something of a stir in some literary circles.

Obviously artistic talent has little to do with physical appearance, although Hollywood would have you believe otherwise. While I can say that in my experience the top 10 most talented people I have ever seen have been reasonably unattractive people, there are certainly exceptions. It’s really a non-issue, a purely coincidental affair [1]. What’s interesting to me is the disquieting truth that many unattractive people do tend to develop talents and generally become more interesting people because they can’t get by on looks. While I maintain that the reason I took up the guitar was to make weird noises, getting girls has certainly been more than one awkward-looking guitarist’s reason to start playing [2].

Writers, painters, musicians, actors…are we all doing what we do because we’re not good-looking and/or we sucked at football? It may well be true. If you’re an unattractive person, it behooves you to develop an interesting or pleasant or creative disposition so that people will be attracted to you. If I had been better at following through on my swing and had less acne, perhaps I would have been a baseball star and girls would have taken more notice of me, and I wouldn’t have had the free time or inclination to practice an instrument or write or read books, etc.

I think the critics of that Welty biographer feel threatened by the notion that homely people become creative people because they’re homely. I don’t entirely recoil at the idea. I wasn’t good at sports and I certainly didn’t get by on my looks, but I am what I’ve become and I like it. I don’t envy the beautiful people or the atheletes. Their world appears even more illusory and empty than the worlds the rest of us inhabit.

This reminds me of a line from an episode of Sports Night:

And in that moment, Dan was reminded once again why he wanted to write in the first place. It’s for the same reason anybody does anything: to impress women.

1.) The arguments of eugenics enthusiasts notwithstanding.

2.) I would like to remind the audience that, if anything, the guitar stole a social life from me in high school, and thus far has been responsible for bringing me only one girlfriend. And we only met because she was my bass player.

Tea, Earl Gray, Hot

Salon has a neat article on desktop manufacturing (yes you have to view an ad to get to it, but on the bright side it’s probably a John Mayer Trio ad). It looks to be the first step toward a Star Trek-style replicator. A device like that always makes me wonder if, as technology continually removes the physical and financial restraints of production, supply might change its relationship to demand. It’s the same issue as file sharing – if demand becomes near-infinite, what happens to demand and value? And if some desktop device can replicate the manufacturing processes of hundreds of industries, how does that affect their bottom lines? If the aim of technology is to make life easier and do more for us, what else is left for us to do to make a living? Could such a device eliminate commodity-based industries, leaving us only with service industries? If a device can make you anything you want, what’s left to want?