Books 2007
December 31
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
The thing that really struck me about this book was her descriptions of dining out as being about far more than just the food. This is something I have spent a lot of time trying to describe to people.
“She didn’t care about food, but she craved this feeling of being special, important, well cared for. She would have enjoyed what she was eating because of the way it was served.”
Later, on dinner at Le Cirque, disguised as an undistinguished middle-aged woman:
“‘I did not come here simply to eat,’ Molly went on in her slow, serious voice, ‘I came here for glamour. I am willing to pay for the privilege of feeling rich and important for a few small hours. Is that too much to ask? I have come here looking for a dream, and it has turned into a nightmare. I feel frumpy and powerless. I may be nobody, but I don’t like paying to be humiliated. It isn’t right.’”
From her subsequent review:
“Food is important, and Mr. Portay is exceptionally talented. But nobody goes to Le Cirque just to eat. People go for the experience of being in a great restaurant. Sometimes they get it; sometimes they don’t. It all depends on who they are.”
I have the impression that restaurants–or at least the great ones that I have been to–re today much better than those Reichl criticizes here, in terms of treating all customers equally well. I don’t think that I stand out as any kind of “special” customer, but I don’t think that I have ever felt condescended to, at The French Laundry, at Per Se, at Alain Ducasse, anywhere. I would like to read Reichl’s recent reviews of these and other contemporary top-tier restaurants.
December 18
Y by Steve Jones
No cliches, no condescension, no pop-psych self-help. Instead, a lot of explanation of what makes men the way they are, by way of genetics, anatomy, and psychology. I don’t think I can do better than the inside flap:
“Men’s beards grow faster when their bearers expect some sex. Fewer sperm cells are made in summer. Circumcised boys are more frightened of injections than boys who have not undergone the operation. And the average length of a man’s penis is less than six inches, while that of a blue whale is ten feet.
These are only a few of the remarkable facts that spill out in Y: The Descent of Men. With marvelous literary flair, the acclaimed scientist and author Steve Jones offers a landmark exploration of maleness, based on today’s explosion of biological research about what makes a male - a topic of consuming interest to at least half the population. From what males consider to be the prince of chromosomes - the Y - to novel insights into men’s hormones, hair loss, and the hydraulics of man’s most intimate organ, Jones lays out the case for and against masculinity.
But the self-proclaimed ‘biologist in the bedroom’ goes far beyond discussing straight science. He writes, for instance, of a meeting between Napoleon and Czar Alexander in which they discussed baldness cures rather than matters of state. And, as many angry males have found out, to the law fatherhood means more than genes. A father who is not a biological parent but who leaves a family with children still has responsibility for the offspring.
Steve Jones hints at a startling truth: men are the second sex. The Y chromosome is no longer an excuse for excess. Compared with their partners, men are in relative decline, whether in social status or in length of life. Both halves of the population have to learn to cope with the Y chromosome. This book helps show them how.”
December 7
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
This book had been sitting on my bookshelf for a year or so. It of course got raves when it was published, and more than one person told me that I had to read it. I’m usually leery of this kind of book - the spiritual lessons wrapped in philosophical musings inside of a challenging quest, usually undertaken by a bright and quizzical child . . . But I thought it would be a fast read (it was), and entertaining (it was), and written in a lucid and engaging style (also true).
But ultimately, very disappointing. 8 months at sea, 300 pages of novel, and the payoff is this?
Okamoto: “The story with animals is the better story.”
Pi: “Thank you. And so it goes with God.”
That’s what’s supposed to convince me of the existence of God?! If you like stories with animals, I’ve got one for you. Lots of animals. And far more fantastic and “unbelievable,” in its details, than Pi’s story. It begins, oh, about 4.5 billion years ago, with the emergence of prokaryotes from the primordial soup . . .
November 14
On Art and Life by John Ruskin
I had somehow come this far without reading any Ruskin at all, unless it was an excerpt, or a stray essay here and there that I may have forgotten about. This slender volume of just two essays was . . . just enough. What a pompous guy he was! I guess you have to cut him a break, considering that this was written about 160 years ago . . . but some of it seems simply quaint now. Of course he couldn‘t have foreseen, when discussing the proper subject matter for artworks in iron versus those in stone, all of the materials to come.
“[The human] hand is the most perfect agent of material power existing in the universe; and its full subtlety can only be shown when the material it works on, or with, is entirely yielding.”
I can‘t help but wonder what Ruskin would have to say about computer graphics. Still, there was a certain refreshment in reading . . . full sentences. When so much of what I read today (primarily online, I mean) is a) poorly written; b) badly (or not at all) edited; c) would not be recognizable to Ruskin, LoL :•) , it's kind of fun to read his sentences, some of which go on for half a page or more.
Some worthwhile quotes for my Art page:
“The demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.”
“Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be given.”
“All art worthy the name is the energy - neither of the human body alone, nor of the human soul alone, but of both united, one guiding the other: good craftsmanship and work of the fingers joined with good emotion and work of the heart.”
October 30
Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson
I was really enthusiastic when I saw this in a bookstore - finally, someone had written the book that I thought needed writing, to demonstrate to Everyman how important evolution is to understanding why we are the way we are, why we have the problems we do, and how evolution can point to clear solutions! From the flap:
“In example after example, Wilson sheds new light on Darwin’s grand theory and how it can be applied to daily life. By turns thoughtful, provocative, and daringly funny, Evolution for Everyone addresses some of the deepest philosophical and social issues of this or any age. In helping us come to a deeper understanding of human beings and our place in the world, it might also help us to improve that world.”
So my chief disappointment was that it did not go far enough, that Wilson did not state his case more strongly. Certainly it was well-written, and full of good examples, but somehow it left me wanting more, wanting Wilson to say, “See?! If you people were not so ignorant and willfully blind, so utterly irrational and impervious to reason, we could solve a whole lot of problems.” Because unfortunately, the problems lie primarily with the masses of people who will never even touch this book . . . as Wilson himself puts it, “The most extraordinary fact about public awareness of evolution is not that 50 percent don’t believe the theory but that nearly 100 percent haven't connected it to anything of importance in their lives.”
Three C’s of human evolution: cognition, culture, and cooperation.
And some quotes I liked:
“Science is largely a way to ensure accountability for factual claims.”
This one reminded me of stuff I’ve been reading in A New Kind of Science, I think, and other places:
“. . . the process of a bee swarm deciding upon a new home bears an uncanny resemblance to the process of a rhesus monkey deciding which way to turn its head. In both cases, an intelligent decision by the higher-level unit is caused by a mechanical process among lower-level units. The process involves an organized competition among factions representing the alternative choices, whose outcome is based on which faction reaches a threshold first. The intelligence of the upper-level unit cannot be found in any of the parts but rather emerges from the interactions among the parts. Every mind is a group mind, and every mind of a dispersed organism must include social in addition to neuronal interactions.”
And even one from the Dalai Lama:
". . . to defy the authority of empirical evidence is to disqualify oneself as someone worthy of critical engagement in a dialogue.”
September 19
JPod by Douglas Coupland
This was a funny book. Anyone who has worked in a cubicle, worked in a startup, or worked for a creative company will get this stuff . . . game designers working on a game whose features and parameters are forever being shifted by Marketing. Oh how I feel the pain.
All the stuff I see in my office is on display here: the weird toys and knick-knacks decorating people’s desks, the goofing off, the food-runs, the endless meetings and presentations, the office romances and intrigues.
“Look at it this way: Mondays suck because you’re resentful that you can’t sleep in, and it’s also the day on which sixty percent of life-sucking meetings occur. Tuesdays suck because the week has four more workdays left; you hate yourself and the world because you’re trapped in this wage-slave hamster wheel called life. Wednesdays are bad because you realize around noon that the work week is half over, but the fact that you’re viewing your life in this manner means that you’re nothing more or less than the third panel of that old, unfunny comic strip Cathy, where she realizes she’s a fat lonely spinster and her hair flies out and she makes the augghhhh! noise. Fridays are bad because you feel like a rat waiting for a food pellet to come down the chute, the food pellet being the weekend. Saturdays are okay, but only barely. And Sundays, as mentioned before, are like the day that time forgot, when nothing happens and when, perversely, you start wishing for Monday again. So give me a week of Thursdays any time. Everyone’s in a good mood, people actually get stuff done, and a glint of Saturday puts a sparkle in your step.”
September 14
The Scientist as Rebel by Freeman Dyson
Dyson is an interesting guy. He’s a hard-core, real-deal scientist who doesn’t scorn religion. He states that as a scientist, he is opposed to reductionism. He prefers an integrative, holistic kind of science.
“My message is that science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practice it. Science is an art form and not a philosophical method.”
He also describes a difference between naturalists and humanists:
“Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order of things . . . Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature.”
Religion appears in several of the discussions in this book. Dyson seems to be trying to appease that side, to not appear too one-dimensional. He talks about the good that religion can do, but never the bad.
There is a strong theme of pacifism throughout. Many of these essays concern the development of the atomic bomb, which transpired during the central part of his career, although he was not involved. The second of four sections of the book is War and Peace, and it is here that he discusses his views regarding the direction that the world took as a result of scientists developing nuclear weapons. he seems to truly believe that if, in 1939, the scientists responsible for discovering nuclear fission had banded together in an international agreement to limit and regulate the associated technology, that the development of the atomic bomb could have been avoided . . . !
I found his discussion so science and scientists much more compelling than his musings on religion and pacifism. He reminds us that “to be useful, a scientific theory does not need to be true, but it needs to be testable.”
He spends some time explaining the difference between Baconian and Cartesian science:
“Baconian science is interested in details, Cartesian science is interested in ideas . . . Modern science leapt ahead in the seventeenth century as a result of fruitful competition between Baconian and Cartesian viewpoints. The relation between Baconian science and Cartesian science is complementary. We need Baconian scientists to explore the universe and find out what is there to be explained. We need Cartesian scientists to explain and unify what we have found.”
September 2
Spook Country by William Gibson
Good book. My first fiction in a while, too. Gibson is always good, but he seems really on here. And what’s interesting is that the story takes place, essentially, in the past. Okay, 2006 is more or less the present, but what with the speed of change these days, things can become dated very quickly. And so for the guy who coined the term “cyberspace” and wrote about “jacking in” a la Keanu Reeves et al in The Matrix a good 20 years ago, when he described in such vivid detail a near-future of genetic hybrids and virtual worlds, it seems almost odd that this is not sci-fi.
Spook Country is of course America, post 9/11, in the midst of the war in Iraq and Homeland Security. It may seem like science fiction, Gibson seems to be telling us, but these activities that he describes, and the people who perpetrate them, do actually exist. Cameras everywhere, indeed.
August 23
The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman
Ah, here is the antidote for Gilbert-Rolfe! Someone who knows how to write a sentence, who has reasoned opinions on art (and beauty), and sets them out with the intent of sharing them with his audience.
It is interesting to see aspects of everyday life through the eyes of an art critic. I see more than a bit of myself in Kimmelman, and I suppose that is gratifying in a kind of self-laudatory way. But it’s always nice to find a kindred spirit, someone who finds art in the most unexpected places, who cares to consider the value of art in human life, who stops to look.
He talks about the role of the viewer, and how the willingness to see something as art can be a part of the process. Something I have always averred is that seeing with a certain intent can by itself be an act of creation.
And he talks about what makes art good:
“What makes art good is partly its power to proliferate as a variable memory, an intangible concept, filtered through individual consciousness.”
What also made this such an enjoyable read was his subject matter. He writes not only of pieces of art, the lives of artists, and the processes by which they create, but also about ways of carrying on a life which themselves become art. A collector of lightbulbs, the early days of cameras, or himself taking a trip to hike to the top of mountains painted by others, and seeing things from a different perspective.
I understand.
August 9
Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
I detested this book. I say that without reservation or hesitation. Despicable “post-modern” bullshit, through and through. Foucault and Derrida have both been invoked by page 3. And throughout the book, we are subjected to endless references to these two as well as to Deleuze, Barthes, Baudrillard . . . but especially Derrida, obviously the favorite.
Even before the book gets started, in the introduction by Bill Beckley, we are set up for the opacity and circuitousness of the writing to come, when he quotes Gilbert-Rolfe on the language of criticism:
“I think all the time of how language has to be very complex in order that very simple things may be said. You have the whole thing in place, hundreds of thousands of words you're not going to use and a whole array of tenses and so forth in order to order a glass of water or something of that sort or order, which ordering may of course be done in an orderly way or not, to give another example of the sort of complexity which language takes for granted and out of which it is made. This means that simplicity is at best an effect entirely and exclusively of the complex.”
Really? But it’s just the beginning of the book, and I am making a mighty effort to tease some sort of sense out of his needlessly convoluted sentences. I learn this much: For Gilbert-Rolfe, beauty is associated with frivolity. The sublime is masculine. And serious. Beauty always has a gender, and for G-R, it is always feminine.
Hey I found a concept I agree with! He tells us that the principle proper to ourselves and independent of the sensuous is reason. So why doesn’t he try being reasonable?
“I shall say that the sublime is about freedom found within the archeology of knowledge, while beauty’s independence is guaranteed only by associating it with frivolity, at which point one may assert: ‘Since its structure of deviation prohibits frivolity from being or having an origin, frivolity defies all archeology, condemns it, we could say, to frivolity.’”
Huh? Try this one:
“This is one level at which I want to talk, in what follows, about the limits of critique and, in doing so, to associate meaning-production through negation with the sublime. The proper idea is a critical idea. On the other side, if Beavis and Butthead negate a crude affirmation–and [Michael] Graves one that was not crude but has been celebrated for its severity, hence its susceptibility to appropriation by the cute or infantile–a question remains as to what might negate or otherwise cut across the regime of the negative, which their negativity affirms, by offering a critique that was itself not critical but nonetheless delimited or subverted or otherwise upset the critical.”
Futher proof of his post-modern credentials (good ol’ mediation):
“. . . if we grant that nowadays nothing has fully entered the real until it’s been described and inscribed, its own corporeality in actuality a protoreal awaiting fulfillment in mediation. (The real’s realization fulfilled in its significance, i.e., its status as a sign.)
Need some more convincing that this guy is an idiot?
“In this economy, artworks are valued not because they look good, but because they attempt to demystify the good-looking by showing it to be entangled with corrupt thought–which is to say, for their critical significance, in terms which repeat, without acknowledgment and with a view to abolishing the aesthetic rather than realizing itHegel’s reconciliation of Kantian judgment with Absolute Spirit’s (also known as Hegel’s) historical teleology. In practice, this means that one artwork, now as ever before, costs more than another because it may be said to better articulate the spirit of the age, which is, in the present case, one that believes itself to be beyond ideas like that of the spirit of the age because its Hegelianism is masked by the Nietzschean genealogies of the discourse used to explain works symbolically and contextually, but the discriminations made between, and therefore within, them are, as ever, Kantian.”
Hey I found another sentence that I like! Maybe because it’s not G-R, but rather him quoting Shirley Kaneda:
“I happen to agree with Adorno that pleasure imparts good feelings and that it is these that make us human.”
But I have a lot more book to slog through, despite the fact that that was page 60 of only 149 pages in this piece of shit. At least the remainder provides a few more laughs:
“This is the sense in which , where Newman sought to visualize the invisible concept of spatial limitlessness in order to articulate a temporality conceived as a dialectic, the sublime as the fixed point and all other points, nonrepresentational painting might now find itself concerned with a sublime founded not in a relationship between beginning and end and origin and potentiality but, instead, imagined as an indefinitely decentered context of deferral, an androgynous sublime that collapses orders of priority–figure and field, surface and support, color and drawing–into one another to propose a temporality other than that of nature, a temporality of simultaneity and sameness, in the sense of painting as a body, a completeness, which is less continuum than a combination of continua.”
August 8
Everyday by Byron Wolfe
Not a whole lot of text to read here, but 365 photos to look at. Wolfe took a photo every day for one year. He teaches photography for a living, so what was interesting was what he learned from this exercise, and the kinds of things that he came back to again and again, despite his stated goal at the beginning of the project, to every day “make at least one completely new and compelling photograph.” The things that he repeatedly found in front of his lens?
“Because I generally employed the ‘document everything’ approach, genuinely surprising themes emerged, and I learned to pay attention to things I’d not previously considered important. But what was most surprising–and reassuring–was learning that the paths I was following were anything but new. I was comforted by the reminder that for centuries, some of the most serious creative work has come from the most ordinary things: children, fruit trees, seasons, and the passage of time.”
There were not a lot of photographs here that by themselves blew me away. What was interesting was the work as a corpus, as a series. I too like series! There were a lot of Tabletops here, as well as some feet, and some hands . . .
July 27
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
This reminded me of nothing so much as John Armstrong’s books. The same calm, reflective, careful observations, the same emphasis on the meaning that visual creation brings to our lives. In this case, of course, the creations are the spaces where we live and work and spend time, spend our lives.
“Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or for worse, different people in different places - and on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”
Later:
“Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us. It requires that we open ourselves to the idea that we are affected by our surroundings even when they are made of vinyl and would be expensive and time-consuming to ameliorate. It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread. At the same time, it means acknowledging that buildings are able to solve no more than a fraction of our dissatisfactions or prevent evil from unfolding under their watch. Architecture, even at its most accomplished, will only ever constitute a small, and imperfect (expensive, prone to destruction and morally unreliable), protest against the state of things. More awkwardly still, architecture asks us to imagine that happiness might often have an unostentatious, unheroic character to it, that it might be found in a run of old floorboards or in a wash of morning light over a plaster wall in undramatic, frangible scenes of beauty that move us because we are aware of the darker backdrop against which they are set.”
And later:
“In essence, what works of design and architecture talk to us about is the kind of life that would most appropriately unfold within and around them. They tell us of certain moods that they seek to encourage and sustain in their inhabitants. While keeping us warm and helping us in mechanical ways, they simultaneously hold out an invitation for us to be specific sorts of people. They speak of visions of happiness.”
Later:
“The failure of architects to create congenial environments mirrors our inability to find happiness in other areas of our lives. Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendency which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.”
I like finding passages like this, which affirm for me that there are a few people out there, at least, who are concerned with what it is that makes us human:
“Although we belong to a species which spends an alarming amount of its time blowing things up, every now and then we are moved to add gargoyles or garlands, stars or wreaths, to our buildings for no practical reason whatever. In the finest of these flourishes, we can read signs of goodness in a material register, a form of frozen benevolence. We see in them evidence of those sides of human nature which enable us to thrive rather than simply survive. These elegant touches remind us that we are not exclusively pragmatic or sensible: we are also creatures who, with no possibility of profit or power, occasionally carve friars out of stone and mould angels onto walls. In order not to mock such details, we need a culture confident enough about its pragmatism and aggression that it can also acknowledge the contrary demands of vulnerability and play a culture, that is, sufficiently unthreatened by weakness and decadence as to allow for visible celebrations of tenderness.”
Some pretty damned good design advice too:
“To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light or turning on a tap.”
July 16
Alternadad by Neal Pollack
Several of my friends have become fathers in the past few years, and so a lot of this seems vaguely familiar. I have had just enough experience in babysitting and diaper changing to realize that . . . I don't really have the first clue what being a father would be like. And so this is a kind of lesson in what that might entail: A seemingly unlikely father - a self-employed slacker-type who wants to maintain his partying ways while raising an infant son - learns that there are sacrifices to be made, and a lot to be learned, when a baby enters the picture. Pollack's winning writing style makes this scary (!) subject matter fun and funny.
July 8
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Okay, this book is the reason I have not posted too many reviews this year to date. I think I began this novel back in January, but since it’s so big and heavy, I didn’t carry it with me on BART. It was my de facto breakfast reading all these months - about 10 pages per morning, and I think I only spilled coffee on it one time.
I will happily agree with the critics who say that there are 5 or 6 novels in here, none of them fully realized and dozens of characters, only a few of whom come close to being really fleshed out. Tangent after tangent after abandoned narrative thread. And yet it was so much fun. For every complaint, there is a passage that could only have come from Pynchon. Even where I don’t fully agree I find myself charmed:
“Like the Russian nihilists, we are metaphysicians at heart. There is a danger of becoming too logical. At the end of the day one can only consult one’s heart.”
The central theme concerns time travel:
“We are the Jews of mathematics, wandering out here in our diaspora-some destined for the past, others the future, even a few able to set out at unknown angles from the simple line of Time, upon journeys that no one can predict. . . .”
(And so it is strange that on the day I finished this, I watched the Denzel Washington movie Deja Vu . . . )
Later:
“. . . though their kiss went on for what could have been hours, so little did it have to do with clock time, she was already miles down those rails before their lips even touched.”
One review I read suggested that as the book is jammed with so many various threads and leftovers and musings “it has the feel of a big book by an aging master who fears that he might not write another.” And indeed, as one of his characters says: “all investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.”
And so, maybe you have to live a bit, experience some passage of time, to prepare yourself for this kind of book. Yet I felt, as with his other books, that there are so many levels on display here, and you can pick and choose how you want to enjoy the work. As the above reviewer suggests, “take your time and let this big, strange, overwhelming book sink into you.”
June 18
Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online by Anastasia Goodstein
I read this one for work. My current project involves a lot of research into online social networking, in particular as it applies to our main target demographic, teenagers. So what’s this book about? The subtitle kind of says it all. And from the back cover: “Totally Wired is the first guide that explains to parents in easy-to-understand terms what kids are really up to online, and arms parents with the knowledge they need to promote Internet safety.” So if you are a parent, and you don’t know what MySpace, Facebook, and LiveJournal are all about, if you want to learn about blogging, cybering, mashups, and buddy lists, this book would be a great place to start.
I also met the author, Anastasia, when we invited her to our offices for a little consulting session, and then at the launch party for the book. She is very personable. You can check out her blog at ypulse.com
June 2
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Not unexpectedly, I liked this book a lot. Dawkins is so clear, so sensible, and so passionate. It’s too bad this book will not be read by those who need to read it. And even if it were . . . there is not much hope that rational argument such as this would pierce the fog of their irrationality. Imagine trying to convince a Muslim terrorist, willing to fly a plane into a skyscraper in the name of his/her religion, that the Christian God is the “real” god. And so any religious person believes that their god is the real one, and can’t or won’t contemplate the irrationality of the various irreconcilable positions that this engenders.
On mystery:
“As my friend Matt Ridley has written, ‘Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.’ Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: it gives them something to do. More generally . . . one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”
Dawkins explains the differences we need to keep in mind when discussing the origins of life on this planet versus the evolution of life. Chance can be used to explain the former but not the latter; the origin of life on earth is statistically not improbable. We know that in the universe there are a billion billion planets with the right conditions (of sunlight atmosphere, chemical constituents, etc.), so even a one in a billion chance of life appearing means that it has happened a billion times.
One of the ironies of the religion vs. evolution argument is that evolution (memetic selection, not genetic) is responsible for the idea of religion, of god(s) that we carry around in our heads (I use the royal “we” here!). From the chapter “The Roots of Religion”:
“Even where religions have been exploited and manipulated to the benefit of powerful individuals, the strong possibility remains that the detailed form of each religion has been largely shaped by unconscious evolution. Not by genetic natural selection, which is too slow to account for the rapid evolution and divergence of religions. The role of genetic natural selection in the story is to provide the brain, with its predilections and biases – the hardware platform and low-level system software which form the background to memetic selection. Given this background, memetic natural selection of some kind seems to me to offer a plausible account of the detailed evolution of particular religions. In the early stages of a religion’s evolution, before it becomes organized, simple memes survive by virtue of their universal appeal to human psychology. This is where the meme theory of religion and the psychological by-product theory of religion overlap. The later stages, where a religion becomes organized, elaborate and arbitrarily different from other religions, are quite well handled by the theory of memeplexes – cartels of mutually compatible memes. This doesn’t rule out the additional role of deliberate manipulation by priests and others. Religions probably are, at least in part, intelligently designed, as are schools and fashions in art.”
And you remember my constant refrain, “most people are stupid”? By which I mean, if I am more charitable, that most people don’t spend much time thinking? Dawkins quoting Bertrand Russell:
“Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.”
May 12
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
I read this book by email. Yes, by email. A co-worker hipped me to www.dailylit.com, which is a service that emails you a chapter (or a part) of a book every day. Daily Lit offers books that are out of copyright, and in the public domain. It seemed appropriate to read something very modern, using this medium. Down and Out was offered by Doctorow under the Creative Commons license, so it is one of the few contemporary books available. So I signed up, and read this in 65 installments, a quick chunk every day at work during my lunch hour for thirteen weeks.
This is one of those “near-future” sci-fi books that gives one the “ah, yeah, I get it” feeling from all of the tech stuff that the author describes, because they are all in our peripheral vision right now, just around the corner from becoming reality, if not already here in their nascent stages. Things like super high-bandwidth connnections to a network shared by all, and access to this info via some kind of personal screen that is not visible to others . . . some kind of ocular screen? Some of the trends that we see online now are taken to their logical ends: reputation is the new currency; there doesn’t seem to be any actual money anymore. You don’t have to die either - simply back yourself up into a clone (be sure to keep a recent backup, or you may lose some memories!). The story line concerns an ad-hoc group working at Disney World, and the desire of the protagonist to maintain the animatronics in the Hall of Presidents, while a rival group wants to replace these with direct-brain interfaces that would allow guests to in essence become Washington or Lincoln . . . Interesting, but really just backdrop for a sharply crafted, fast, stylish excercise in giving us a taste of a very possible future - I liked it.
May 3
True Mutations by R.U. Sirius
Usually when I try to discuss futurist topics with someone, they quickly decide I am a loony, and dismiss my conjectures as sci-fi fantasy, not relevant to the present. What they don’t realize is that the future is now. Many books and even some mainstream press have talked about rates of technological change being exponential, not linear, but the average person does not really comprehend what that means. Nor cares to try. In fact, this book doesn’t really address the speed factor. It simply assumes it, and talks very matter of factly, for the most part, about what’s coming.
It is a series of interviews the R.U. Sirius (Ken Goffman, founder and editor-in-chief of MONDO 2000) had with various thinkers in particularly relevant fields: computer technology, naturally, virtual reality, brain science, transhumanism, and also mysticism/spiritualism - this last being for me by far the weakest section, and actually a bit irritating to read.
Technoculture is endlessly counter-cultural, according to RUS. And therein lies his hope. At the beginning of the book, he lays out the framework of his own thinking, in terms of his pessimism/optimism vis-a-vis a possible technotopian future:
a) I’m very pessimistic about the survival of anything we might credibly call liberty of freedom or any level of personal autonomy - even within
the limits we’re accustomed to in the US in this world. America is in decline and what will rise up to replace it will be worse, at least in these
terms.
b) I’m moderately pessimistic about the state of the global environment and is ability to sustain life for billions of people.
c) I’m slightly optimistic about he global economy, ultimately that wealth will grow and get distributed; and that some of the incredible potentials
ech revolution discussed by various interview subjects in my book will come to pass and will work out pretty well, maybe even fabulously well, maybe
even a species-wide positive mutation over the 21st Century. I’d be far more optimistic if it weren’t for my pessimism about the environment.
And what is a true mutation? “The only hope, slim–but not quite anorexic, is actual evolution. . . a positive mutation in the human species, starting at the edge.”
In my discussions with others, one of the things that often causes them to roll their eyes is my profession of a belief in the ability of technology to save us. (Most people think that technology is what has gotten us into our current mess.) And so this was interesting to read:
“It turns out that the pace of technological improvements in efficiency has been relatively constant over time, enough so that Art Rosenfeld (of the California Energy Commission and Lawrence Berkeley Lab) calls it a “Moore’s Law of Efficiency.” Since 1845, the amount of energy required to produce the same amount of (cost-adjusted) GNP has steadily decreased by about 1% per year. That’s through relative neglect, with efficiency a side-benefit of other technological improvements. But guess what? During the 1970s, the last time we had an “energy crisis,” efficiency improved by 4% per year. A 2% rate would be totally achievable. And a 2% rate would make a huge difference: With 1% annual improvement, population stabilizing at around 10 billion, and overall increase in standards of living to US/EU levels, the globe would be using 40 percent more energy in 2100 than today. But by bumping up overall efficiency improvement to 2% averaged over the next century, we’d actually end up using half our current levels of energy.”
From the brain science section, a gem, for someone who has worked as a part of the Marketing department of my company (I’m not saying I condone this! Just pointing out that it’s happening):
“I wouldn’t say I’m thrilled about the work of Brighthouse Institute for Thought Sciences, but I’m certainly intrigued. the company, led by neuroscientists from Emory University, uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to reveal the impact that specific ad campaigns have on a viewer’s brain. Volunteers in one study completed a survey about their likes and dislikes in different product categories. Then, while under the fMRI scanner, they were shown items on the screen. The researchers, according to the company’s press release, “pinpointed the preference area of the brain. Using this data, the Thought Sciences team can now help their client to design better products and services and a more effective marketing campaign.” Like something from a Philip K. Dick novel, the technique is called “neuromarketing.” (David Pescovtiz)
And from Zach Lynch on his book Neurosociety: How Brain Science Will Shape The Future of Business, Politics, And Culture:
“In short, we came from an agriculture society that developed into an industrial society, and today we live in an information society, where information technology is the driving force of societal change. My thesis is that neurotechnology will be the next driving technology that will shape humanity’s future.”
In the transhumanist section, in regard to biotech, and what’s happening in genetics, David Ewing Duncan says, “I was particularly excited to write a newspaper column about this. I don’t think the newspaper audience gets the implications of what’s going on.” And I couldn’t agree more. Most people just don’t have a clue. But genetic engineering is here Now. And as Duncan says, “We have the technology to alter the germ line. Somebody’s going to do it . . . manipulating evolution. It’s not even a question of it anymore; it’s a question of when and how.” Do you care? Do you want to be a part of that discussion? And the larger questions: Do you want to evolve? Do you want to survive? Get ready.
“I think the term (transhumanism) is a bit empty. In my mind, most of the citizens of the western world are transhumanists. Every woman who uses a birth control pill is altering her biology in fundamental ways to get the result she wants. Every person wearing glasses or contact lenses, everyone who puts a cell phone to their ear, everyone who pops a multi-vitamin, or drinks a cup of coffee to wake up in the morning or stay awake on a long drive–they’re all transhumanists. We are, as a rule, interested in products and technologies that expand our capabilities, that give us control over our world and minds and bodies.”
It is good to read people who have their eyes open, and who think. It’s refreshing:
“A refrigerator is an illuminated gallery; a grocery display is an alpine microclimate. A refrigerator is also a meditative shrine, a domestic contemplative icon. Before an opened refrigerator, we stand mesmerized, our hand on the door, staring into the myriad possibilities and combiations of foodstuffs. We are hypnotized by the tableau of package designs and colors, the cool theatre of imminent satisfaction.
A freezer is a time capsule. Last year’s green beans, flashboiled and frozen, taste almost as good as they did when picked. Freezers are chronological wine cellars of nostalgia, whether they contain the frozen chicken picked up two months ago at the farmers’ market or the six-month-old chocolate ice cream growing a beard of ice crystals. The freezer holds an embryo of the ice age.” (Christopher Dewdney, from Last Flesh: Life in the Transhuman Era)
Elsewhere:
“I don’t think politics is all that important. Spending too much time focused on politics leads to total despair with the state of the human race. But if you look at the whole spectrum of human behavior. I think the science and the arts are driving it. I think the sciences and the arts relate to a lot more of human behavior than politics does. They’re going to try to stop developments in science, but they’re not going to stop it and it’s going to change everything. I think we’re going to have major breakthroughs in biotech in the next five-ten years and they can’t do a damned thing to stop it. It’s going to change the whole world. Meanwhile the Japanese are planning on building hotels in space.” (Robert Anton Wilson)
The last section, on more spiritual/mystical aspects of futurism, were as I said not very compelling to me. Anytime I see the spelling, “magick” or “magickal” all kinds of red flags go up, and I am on guard. Topics like super-synchronicity, morphic resonance, and “celibacy as a sort of reverse sex magick,” (Genesis P-Orridge) just can’t hold my interest or gain my respect.
Still, all in all, I am happy to find that there are others out there looking, and thinking, and talking, eager for the future and unafraid to embrace change . . . evolving.
April 16
Body Type: Intimate Messages Etched in Flesh by Ina Saltz
This simultaneously attracted and repelled me. “The first book devoted entirely to typographical tattoos, Body Type: Intimate Messages Etched in Flesh explores the ideas and emotions behind this indelible commitment. This stunning photography collection features commentary on the letterforms by renowned graphic designer and typographer Ina Saltz, as well as personal recollections by the tattooed on the motivations for their chosen word. From Shakespeare to Radiohead, from celebrations of love and self to homage and memorial, the wide breadth of messages captured provides insight in to the human condition.”
Although I admired some of the tattoos on an artistic and/or typographical basis, nearly all of them - and the comments regarding them by their owners - confirmed for me that I am anti-tattoo.
April 11
The Splendid Feast of Reason by S. Jonathan Singer
“Sociobiology is here to stay, inevitably growing more and more influential as the science of biology continues to yield new insights into human beings and their behavior. It is a primary theme of this book to encourage bringing biological sciences to bear on human affairs.”
What is life?
“The property that characterizes living systems is that they are never in thermodynamic equilibrium. Equilibrium is death. Life is governed mainly by the principles of irreversible thermodynamics, whereas the inanimate world generally conforms to the laws of reversible thermodynamics.”
“The axiomatic basis of modern biology is that the activities of life are entirely a matter of chemistry and physics.”
And if you ever need a handy definition of a gene:
“The modern definition of a gene at the molecular level: it is a linear stretch of DNA whose nucleotide sequence encodes the linear amino acid sequence of a specific protein molecule. Because the proteins carry out most of the chemical and functional aspects of life, these processes are encoded in the DNA and are transmitted hereditarily when the DNA is faithfully replicated and passed on to the next generation.”
On applying what evolution teaches us to our current predicament:
“The majority of us must rapidly acquire an awareness of the operations of evolution, an awareness that experts possess but seem powerless to disseminate to the general public. With this knowledge must then come the wisdom to apply it to our human, particularly technological, activities. As awesome as our technological skills have become, if they do not soon submit to the higher skill of rational wisdom, they will wreak havoc on life–and, in particular, on human life–quite possibly within only a few more generations. The will to deal rationally with these problems now is humanity’s best hope for a civilized future.”
And a criticism that my friends might level at me (!):
“As we have seen, however, modern science, having abandoned the traditional religious view of a a purposeful universe ruled by a benevolent deity, has substituted for it a secular universe whose purpose is unfathomable and whose outlook is primarily materialistic.”
Later:
“A major part of the problem for humanists is the failure, stemming from either incompetence or unwillingness, to discriminate between science and technology; the conflation of the two results in tarring the knowledge acquired by science with the brush of technological exploitation. there may be legitimate reasons for the humanities to express hostility toward much of modern technology and its often inhumane consequences; however, those reasons do not apply to the sciences themselves, which are devoted to the acquisition of knowledge, not artifacts.”
March 28
Toothpicks & Logos - Design in Everyday Life by John Heskett
Have you ever seen design actually defined?
"Design, stripped to its essence, can be defined as the human capacity to shape and make our environment in ways without precedent in nature, to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives."Later:
"With choice comes responsibility. Choice implies alternatives in how ends can be achieved, for what purposes, and for whose advantage. It means that design is not only about initial decisions or concepts by designers, but also about how these are implemented and by what means we can evaluate their effect or benefit.
The capacity to design, in short, is in innumerable ways at the very core of our existence as a species. No other creatures on the planet have this same capacity."
Later:
"In other words, objects are not just expressions of a solution to a particular problem at any point in time, but can extend much further, into embodying ideas about how life can be lived in a dynamic process of innovation and refinement beyond the constraints of time and place."
And also:
"If the basic proposition of this book is that design has evolved historically in a layered pattern, rather than a linear evolution in which new developments eliminate previous manifestations, then we can expect new layers to be added that will alter the role and relationships of pre-existing modes."
And of course I liked this one (reminds me a bit of Ayn Rand’s description of Art, actually):"Objects are a crucial expression of ideas of how we could or should live, put into tangible form. As such, they communicate with an immediacy and directness that is not just visual, but can involve other senses. Our experience of an automobile is not solely through how it looks, but also through the feel of seats and controls, the sound of the engine, the scent of upholstery, how it rides upon the road."
March 21
Everything Reverberates - Thoughts on Design by Chronicle Books
Very brief little book of quotations from (mostly) designers and artists. Interestingly, although the subtitle indicates that this book is concerned with design, many of the quotes were quite art-specific, e.g.
“Most people ignorantly suppose that artists are the decorators of our human
existence, the esthetes to whom the cultivated turn when the real business
of the day is done . . . . Far from being merely decorative, the artist’s
awareness is one of the few guardians of the inherent sanity and equilibrium
of the human spirit that we have.”
- Robert Motherwell
Lot of interesting tidbits. Very tasty!
March 14
quirkyalone - a manifesto for uncompromising romantics by Sasha Cagen
I had to give this a look, since it’s just possible that I fit into the category. Much as I dislike labels, this one almost suits me. The definition which begins the book:
quirk• y adj. distinctive; unintentionally different; without artifice
a• lone adj. Apart from others, uncoupled; sometimes found in solitude
(enjoying it)
quirk• y a• lone n. a person who enjoys being single (but is not
opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather
than date for the sake of being in a couple. With unique traits and an optimistic
spirit; a sensibility that transcends relationship status. Also adj. Of, relating
to, or embodying quirkyalones.
See also: romantic, idealist, independent.
Whenever you see a book like this, you have to think: Rationalization. This is a person who is alone, a loser, and wants to make it seem like actually that’s not the case. Really they are hip and cool and only because no-one out there can appreciate their wonderful qualities are they by themselves. But of course there is the possibility that they’ll meet someone who does share their quirky traits, so the author has also coined the term "quirkytogethers" for such couples.
I’m being a bit harsh. But truly, if I had just seen this on the shelf while browsing the bookstore, I wouldn’t have picked it up. I think I read about it in a review, either online somewhere, or in one of the mags I subscribe to, and that encouraged me to check it out. And yes, I scored pretty high on the "Are You a Quirkyalone" quiz. So, am I quirkyalone? Ultimately, no, I’m still just Sean.
February 24
The Secret Power of Beauty by John Armstrong
Armstrong is one of my very favorite writers on art and aesthetics. His vision seems crystal clear, and his writing reflects this.
After a description of an essay by Baudelaire:
“Recognition of injustice and human misery doesn’t require us to hate every manifestation of luxury; we fear that if we allow ourselves to enjoy the look of expensive or authoritarian things we are being seduced by them; will be unable to retain our other, more critical, opinions. Baudelaire teaches us that this fear is often misplaced.
This might seem a minor point, but probably a good portion of our aesthetic responses are stimulated or inhibited by our political or economic attitudes. But, Baudelaire seems to suggest, this is claustrophobic. Recognizing the defects of military life dosn’t require that we find soldiers’ uniforms ugly; recognizing that poverty is a problem doesn’t require that we close our eyes to the sleek dignity of a sports car.”
And later:
“Our aesthetic education consists not just in being exposed to various types of beauty. It requires that we think through, and feel, for ouselves what image of happiness–what way of life, what ways of taking pleasure–an object proposes to its beholders. But it then remains that we discover which–if any–of these speaks most intimately and honestly to us. The process of developing one’s own taste is partly the process of developing a feel for the things that are most eloquent of happiness. This is a real task, not something which happens automatically.”
February 10
Art Incorporated by Julian Stallabrass
This was one of those reminders that sometimes I don’t analyze things deeply enough, content to accept things for what they appear to be on the surface. It’s an old trope, the (insert whatever subject here) in bed with corporate America, just another aspect of our consumer culture. And this time, through the lens of an Englishman. So you know that class consciousness will be rearing its ugly head. And yet, there were some interesting arguments. The jacket blurb says it all: “Contemporary art seeks to bamboozle its viewers while being the willing slave of business and government.”
Relevant quote:
“Governments, as we have seen, look to art as a social salve, and hope that socially interactive art will act as bandaging for the grave wounds continually prised open by capital. Corporations may also employ it specifically to leaven workplace environments with creative play, and free up company structures and methods with innovative thinking. Art is refashioned as management consultancy.”
Here’s a quote I liked:
“Displacement is a key technique of advertising, like art, which must shock and amuse or at least interest the viewer; use and placement are the main elements
that separate art and advertising, which otherwise remain close and engage in frequent theft from one another.”
January 17
The Creation by Edward O. Wilson
I didn’t like this one nearly as much as other books of Wilson’s that I’ve read. I didn’t like how he pandered to the church. I think I will more enjoy Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, as I know they will be unrelenting in this regard.
One other thing I strongly disagreed with:
“Environmental damage can be defined as any change that alters our surroundings in a direction contrary to humanity’s inborn physical and emotional needs. We are not evolving autonomously into something new. Nor are we likely in the foreseeable future to change our basic nature by genetic engineering, as some giddily futuristic writers have envisioned.”