The Books We Can Use to Rebuild Civilization, Selected by Neal Stephenson, Brian Eno, Tim O’Reilly & More

in Books | March 19th, 2020

With so many of us across the world stuck at home, human­i­ty’s thoughts have turned to what we’ll do when we can resume our nor­mal lives. This time of quar­an­tine, lock­down, and oth­er forms of iso­la­tion urges us to reflect, but also to read — and in many cas­es to read the impor­tant books we’d neglect­ed in our pre-coro­n­avirus lives. Quite a few such vol­umes appear in the Long Now Foun­da­tion’s “Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion,” which long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber us fea­tur­ing not long after it launched in 2014. Its name refers to a library, one that accord­ing to the Foun­da­tion’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Alexan­der Rose “will include the rough­ly 3500 books most essen­tial to sus­tain or rebuild civ­i­liza­tion.”

“Using this as an cura­to­r­i­al prin­ci­ple,” Rose adds, “is help­ing us assem­ble a very inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of books.” So too are their choic­es of peo­ple asked for rec­om­men­da­tions of books to put on the Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion’s shelves.

Take, for instance, the his­to­ry-focused list of books pro­vid­ed by Snow Crash, Crypto­nom­i­con, and The Baroque Cycle author Neal Stephen­son, a pro­lif­ic writer in his own right:

• Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol­umes 1–6 by Edward Gib­bon
• The Odyssey by Homer trans­lat­ed by Robert Fagles
• The Ili­ad by Homer trans­lat­ed by Robert Fagles
• The Struc­tures of Every­day Life: Civ­i­liza­tion & Cap­i­tal­ism, 15th-18th Cen­tu­ry, Vol­umes 1–3 by Fer­nand Braudel
• 1491: New Rev­e­la­tions of the Amer­i­c­as Before Colum­bus by Charles C. Mann
• Newton’s Prin­cip­ia for the Com­mon Read­er by S. Chan­drasekhar
• Leviathan: Or the Mat­ter, Forme, and Pow­er of a Com­mon­wealth Eccle­si­as­ti­call and Civ­il by Thomas Hobbes
• The Amer­i­can Prac­ti­cal Nav­i­ga­tor: An Epit­o­me of Nav­i­ga­tion by Nathaniel Bowditch
• Pax Bri­tan­ni­ca: A Three Vol­ume Set (Heaven’s Com­mand, Pax Bri­tan­ni­ca, and Farewell the Trum­pets) by James Mor­ris
• Son Of The Morn­ing Star: Custer and the Lit­tle Bighorn by Evan S. Con­nell
• The Siege at Peking by Peter Flem­ing
• Marl­bor­ough, His Life & Times, Vol­umes 1–6 by Win­ston Churchill
• The Mak­ing of the Atom­ic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• Dark Sun: The Mak­ing of the Hydro­gen Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• The Road to Real­i­ty: A Com­plete Guide to the Laws of the Uni­verse by Roger Pen­rose

The Long Now Foun­da­tion did­n’t just approach Stephen­son because they enjoy his nov­els: he was pre­vi­ous­ly involved with the Foun­da­tion’s “Clock of the Long Now” project, a mechan­i­cal clock engi­neered to keep time for 10,000 years and thus serve as a phys­i­cal reminder of the neces­si­ty of long-term think­ing. The process of com­ing up with ideas for the Clock pro­vid­ed Stephen­son with inspi­ra­tion for his nov­el Anath­em, which deals with monas­tic com­mu­ni­ties of intel­lec­tu­als ded­i­cat­ed to safe­guard­ing knowl­edge against the col­lapse of soci­ety.

Music pro­duc­er and visu­al artist Bri­an Eno’s album Jan­u­ary 07003 / Bell Stud­ies for The Clock of The Long Now also came out of his own work on the Clock, and as a found­ing mem­ber of the Long Now Foun­da­tion he nat­u­ral­ly also had a list of books (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) rich with his­tor­i­cal, polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal, archi­tec­tur­al, lit­er­ary, and aes­thet­ic texts to con­tribute:

• See­ing Like a State by James C Scott
• The Mind in the Cave: Con­scious­ness and the Ori­gins of Art by David Lewis-Williams
• Crowds and Pow­er by Elias Canet­ti
• The Wheels of Com­merce by Fer­nand Braudel
• Keep­ing Togeth­er in Time by William McNeill
• Danc­ing in the Streets by Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich
• Roll Jor­dan Roll by Eugene Gen­ovese
• A Pat­tern Lan­guage by Christo­pher Alexan­der et al
• The Face of Bat­tle by John Kee­gan
• A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects by  Neil Mac­Gre­gor
• Con­tin­gency, Irony and Sol­i­dar­i­ty by Richard Rorty
• The Note­books by Leonar­do da Vin­ci
• The Con­fi­dence Trap by David Runci­man
• The Dis­cov­er­ers by Daniel Boorstein
• Moth­er Nature: A His­to­ry of Moth­ers, Infants, and Nat­ur­al Selec­tion by Sarah Hrdy
• War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy
• The Cam­bridge World His­to­ry of Food (2‑Volume Set) by Ken­neth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
• The Illus­trat­ed Flo­ra of Britain and North­ern Europe by Mar­jorie Blamey & Christo­pher Grey Wil­son
• Print­ing and the Mind of Man by John Carter & Per­cy Muir
• Peter the Great: His Life and World by Richard Massie

More recent­ly, pro­gram­mer and pub­lish­er Tim O’Reil­ly drew up an even more expan­sive list of books for addi­tion to the Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion. Owing to the wide and ever-grow­ing array of tech­ni­cal books put out by the pub­lish­er that bears his name, you might guess that O’Reil­ly would most­ly rec­om­mend vol­umes per­ti­nent to rebuild­ing our dig­i­tal world. In fact he offers a range of high­ly ana­log choic­es, the­mat­i­cal­ly speak­ing, which he breaks down into four cat­e­gories. First come the “religious/ philo­soph­i­cal works”:

• The Way of Life Accord­ing to Lao Tzu trans­lat­ed by Wit­ter Byn­ner
• The Bha­gavad Gita trans­lat­ed by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
• The Analects of Con­fu­cius trans­lat­ed by Roger Ames and Hen­ry Rose­mont
• The Tri­al and Death of Socrates by Pla­to (trans­lat­ed by GMA Grube, revised by John Coop­er)
• Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugene Her­rigel
• The New Tes­ta­ment
• An Intro­duc­tion to Real­is­tic Phi­los­o­phy by John Wild
• The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces by Joseph Camp­bell
• The Masks of God (4 vol­umes) by Joseph Camp­bell

Then the lit­er­a­ture:

• The Com­plete Works of William Shake­speare
• Chapman’s Homer: The Ili­ad and The Odyssey trans­lat­ed by George Chap­man
• Samuel John­son: Poems and Select­ed Prose
• To the Light­house by Vir­ginia Woolf
• The Palm at the End of the Mind by Wal­lace Stevens
• The Four Quar­tets by T.S.Eliot

Then books about “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and soci­ety”:

• A Pat­tern Lan­guage by Christo­pher Alexan­der
• The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities by Jane Jacobs
• Gov­ern­ing the Com­mons by Eli­nor Ostrom
• The Plea­sure of Find­ing Things Out by Richard Feyn­man
• The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics by Richard Feyn­man

And final­ly, “stuff that would be use­ful if civ­i­liza­tion declines”:

• The Fox­fire Books edit­ed by Eliot Wig­gin­ton (more info)
• The Track­er: The True Sto­ry of Tom Brown Jr. by Tom Brown
• Putting Food By by Ruth Hertzberg
• Luther Bur­bank: His Meth­ods and Dis­cov­er­ies and Their Prac­ti­cal Appli­ca­tion by Luther Bur­bank
• Plant and mush­room iden­ti­fi­ca­tion man­u­als for every major geog­ra­phy: Edi­ble Wild Plants: A North Amer­i­can Field Guide and Edi­ble Wild Mush­rooms of North Amer­i­ca
• Guide to Iden­ti­fy­ing Trees and Shrubs by Mark Zam­par­do

O’Reil­ly adds that “you also need engi­neer­ing, includ­ing (bicy­cles, flight, bridges, and fac­to­ries), spin­ning and weav­ing and the man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­o­gy there­of, met­al­lur­gy, mate­ri­als sci­ence, math (includ­ing slide rule design and log­a­rith­mic tables), chem­istry, biol­o­gy, fun­da­men­tals of com­put­er chips (and alter­nate ways of doing com­put­ing with­out the abil­i­ty to do a full fab).”

At the Long Now Foun­da­tion’s site you’ll find more rec­om­men­da­tions by such lumi­nar­ies as Whole Earth Cat­a­log founder Stew­art Brand, Wired found­ing edi­tor Kevin Kel­ly, and Brain Pick­ings cura­tor Maria Popo­va. Whether your inter­ests incline toward the tech­ni­cal, the his­tor­i­cal, the philo­soph­i­cal, or toward prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing else besides, the Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion has more than a few books for you to digest. (Near­ly 900 of them are avail­able for free at the Inter­net Archive.) What’s more, the coro­n­avirus has grant­ed an entire­ly plau­si­ble excuse to spend more of our days read­ing — and a fair­ly good rea­son to con­sid­er how we might run soci­ety dif­fer­ent­ly in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Stew­art Brand’s List of 76 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

Ray Brad­bury Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion (in Which Case We Need More Lit­er­a­ture!)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recreated in Authentic Byzantine Chant

in Architecture, History, Music | March 9th, 2020

Audio tech­nol­o­gy has made many excit­ing advances in the past few years, one of which enables record­ing engi­neers to cap­ture the sound of a spe­cif­ic space and recre­ate it else­where. Through a process called “con­vo­lu­tion reverb,” the sound of a con­cert hall or club can be portable, so to speak, and a band or group of singers in a stu­dio can be made to sound as if they were per­form­ing in Carnegie Hall, or inside a cave or grain silo.

Also being recre­at­ed are the sounds of goth­ic cathe­drals and Byzan­tine churches—acoustic envi­ron­ments being pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty in dig­i­tal record­ings as their phys­i­cal forms decay. This tech­nol­o­gy has giv­en schol­ars the means to rep­re­sent the music of the past as it sound­ed hun­dreds of years ago and as it was orig­i­nal­ly meant to be heard by its devout lis­ten­ers.

Music took shape in par­tic­u­lar land­scapes and archi­tec­tur­al envi­ron­ments, just as those envi­ron­ments evolved to enhance cer­tain kinds of sound. Medieval Chris­t­ian church­es were espe­cial­ly suit­ed to the hyp­not­ic chants that char­ac­ter­ize the sacred music of the time. As David Byrne puts it in his TED Talk on music and archi­tec­ture:

In a goth­ic cathe­dral, this kind of music is per­fect. It doesn’t change key, the notes are long, there’s almost no rhythm what­so­ev­er, and the room flat­ters the music. It actu­al­ly improves it.

There’s no doubt about that, espe­cial­ly in the case of the Greek Ortho­dox cathe­dral Hagia Sophia. Built in 537 AD in what was then Con­stan­tino­ple, it was once the largest build­ing in the world. Though it lost the title ear­ly on, it remains on incred­i­bly impres­sive feat of engi­neer­ing. While the struc­ture is still very much intact, no one has been able to hear its music since 1453, when the Ottoman Empire seized the city and the mas­sive church became a mosque. “Choral music was banned,” notes Scott Simon on NPR’s Week­end Edi­tion, “and the sound of the Hagia Sophia was for­got­ten until now.”

Now (that is, in the past ten years or so), well over five cen­turies lat­er, we can hear what ear­ly medieval audi­ences heard in the mas­sive Byzan­tine cathe­dral, thanks to the work of two Stan­ford pro­fes­sors, art his­to­ri­an Bis­sera Pentche­va and Jonathan Abel, who teach­es in the com­put­er music depart­ment and stud­ies, he says, “the analy­sis, syn­the­sis and pro­cess­ing of sound.”

Now a muse­um, the Hagia Sophia allowed Pentche­va and Abel to record the sound of bal­loons pop­ping in the space after-hours. “Abel used the acoustic infor­ma­tion in the bal­loon pops to cre­ate a dig­i­tal fil­ter that can make any­thing sound like it’s inside the Hagia Sophia,” as Week­end Edi­tion guest host Sam Hart­nett explains.

Pentche­va, who focus­es her work “on rean­i­mat­ing medieval art and archi­tec­ture,” was then able to “rean­i­mate” the sound of high Greek Ortho­dox chant as it would have been heard in the heart of the Byzan­tine Empire. “It’s actu­al­ly some­thing that is beyond human­i­ty that the sound is try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate,” she says.” That mes­sage needs a larg­er-than-life space for its full effect.

Hear more about how the effect was cre­at­ed in the Week­end Edi­tion episode above. And in the videos fur­ther up, see the choral group Capel­la Romana per­form Byzan­tine chants with the Hagia Sophia effect applied. Just last year, the ensem­ble released the album of chants above, Lost Voic­es of Hagia Sophia, using the fil­ter. It is a col­lec­tion of music as valu­able to our under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the art of the Byzan­tine Empire as a restored mosa­ic or recon­struct­ed cathe­dral.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The Same Song Sung in 15 Places: A Won­der­ful Case Study of How Land­scape & Archi­tec­ture Shape the Sounds of Music

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

10 Rules of Self Discipline from the 1930 Self Help/Business Guru Napoleon Hill

in Books, Business, Life, Philosophy | March 2nd, 2020

It seems ridicu­lous to refer to the Gold­en Rule as a “weapon,” but that is just what it is—a weapon that no resis­tance on earth can with­stand! —Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill—whose ear­ly books The Law of Suc­cess (1928), The Mag­ic Lad­der To Suc­cess (1930), and Think and Grow Rich (1937) helped estab­lish the self-help genre—would be con­sid­ered a life coach or moti­va­tion­al speak­er in today’s par­lance.

And were he alive today, he’d like­ly he’d be fac­ing charges, or at the very least, can­celled for some of the behav­iors, schemes, and whop­pers Matt Novak details in an exhaus­tive­ly researched essay for Gizmodo’s Pale­o­fu­ture blog.

We think it’s impor­tant to tip you off to that shady side, because Hill’s “10 Rules for Prof­itable Self Dis­ci­pline,” above, are so sun­ny, they could spur you to dis­sem­i­nate them imme­di­ate­ly, leav­ing you vul­ner­a­ble to harsh words from bet­ter informed friends and, more cru­cial­ly, social media fol­low­ers, who are already het up about any num­ber of things in this elec­tion year, and who enjoy the cathar­sis a good call out affords.

Ergo, if you’re inclined to share, inves­ti­gate the well from which they sprung, and then decide whether or not you want to pro­ceed.

Why did we pro­ceed?

Because prac­ticed with the purest of inten­tions, these rules con­sti­tute extreme­ly human­is­tic advice from a man whose out­ward phi­los­o­phy con­tin­ues to be a touch­stone for many in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

And as evi­denced by the com­ments left by grate­ful YouTube view­ers, many of whom stum­bled across his words by acci­dent, peo­ple are thirsty for such explic­it­ly pos­i­tive guide­posts to inter­per­son­al deal­ings.

(A good num­ber also seem quite tak­en with the Vir­ginia native’s old timey speech pat­terns and vin­tage lin­go.)

If noth­ing else, apply­ing these rules could sweet­en your next argu­ment with some­one you love, or serve as inspi­ra­tion if you’re ever called upon to give a com­mence­ment speech:

Napoleon Hill’s 10 Rules for Prof­itable Self Dis­ci­pline

1. Keep a cool head around hot heads. Rage doesn’t have to be con­ta­gious,.
2. Believe that there are three sides to every argu­ment. If you’re in a dust-up, don’t assume that the fault lays with the oth­er per­son, but rather that you both shoul­der a por­tion of the blame. This is a pret­ty com­pas­sion­ate way of ensur­ing that everyone’s ass will be par­tial­ly cov­ered for both bet­ter and worse.
3. Nev­er give direc­tives to a sub­or­di­nate when you are angry. Giv­en that swift and deci­sive action is often required of those in lead­er­ship posi­tions, you’ll have to learn to ice your own hot head pret­ty quick­ly to put this one into con­sis­tent play.
4. Treat every­one as if they were a rich rel­a­tive who might leave you a siz­able inher­i­tance. Which is kind of a gross way of putting it, but oth­er­wise, we agree with Napoleon Hill that treat­ing oth­ers with respect and lov­ing atten­tion is a real “hon­ey” of a con­cept, espe­cial­ly if the oth­er per­son can offer lit­tle beyond their friend­ship.
5. When you find your­self in an unpleas­ant cir­cum­stance, imme­di­ate­ly start search­ing for the seed of an equiv­a­lent ben­e­fit with­in the expe­ri­ence. If Novak’s Giz­mo­do essay is any indi­ca­tion, Hill prob­a­bly had a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to put this one into prac­tice, squeez­ing lemon­ade from lemons of his own mak­ing.
6. Ask ques­tions and lis­ten to the answer. If you find your­self inclined to dis­agree with a state­ment, employ the phrase, “How do you know?” to get the speak­er to do all the heavy lift­ing. For exam­ple, Napoleon Hill might say to Matt Novak, “How do you know?” which would be Matt Novak’s cue to pro­duce a moun­tain of doc­u­men­ta­tion.
7. Nev­er say or do any­thing before think­ing if it will ben­e­fit some­one or hurt them. The goal is to refrain from hurt­ing oth­ers. Let those of us are with­out sin cast the first stone here. Hill’s karmic spin on this rule is that any injuries you cause that don’t imme­di­ate­ly come around to bite you in the ass, will bite you in the ass much hard­er at some future point, a la com­pound inter­est.
8. Learn the dif­fer­ence between friend­ly analy­sis and unfriend­ly crit­i­cisms. His not entire­ly fool­proof method for dis­tin­guish­ing intent is to con­sid­er the nature of your rela­tion­ship with the one offer­ing the obser­va­tions, their tone of voice, man­ner of deliv­ery, and some­what quaint­ly, whether or not they throw in any epi­thets. If it’s friend­ly, you can set some store by it. Oth­er­wise, dis­re­gard.
9. A good leader knows how to take orders cheer­ful­ly. This pairs nice­ly with Rule Num­ber 3, don’t you think?
10. Be tol­er­ant of your fel­low humans. Always.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

How Much Mon­ey Do You Need to Be Hap­py? A New Study Gives Us Some Exact Fig­ures

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City  for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY (March 5 — 28) Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Judith Butler on Nonviolence and Gender: Hear Conversation with The Partially Examined Life

in Philosophy, Podcasts | February 26th, 2020

A new Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life inter­view with Judith But­ler, Max­ine Elliot Pro­fes­sor of Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture at UC Berke­ley, dis­cuss­es the ethics and psy­chol­o­gy of non­vi­o­lence. This fol­lows a three-part treat­ment on the pod­cast of her ear­li­er work.

For a first-hand account of her new book, you can watch two 2016 lec­tures that she gave at UC Berke­ley on ear­ly ver­sions of the text:

Watch on YouTube. Watch the sec­ond lec­ture.

But­ler has been a tremen­dous­ly influ­en­tial (and con­tro­ver­sial) fig­ure in ongo­ing intel­lec­tu­al debates about gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty. Her 1990 book Gen­der Trou­ble argues that gen­der is a “per­for­mance,” i.e. a habit­u­al group of behav­iors that reflect and rein­force social gen­der norms. Prac­tices such as dress­ing in drag sat­i­rize this per­for­mance, show­ing how even in “nor­mal” sit­u­a­tions, “act­ing fem­i­nine” is not a reflec­tion of one’s inner essence but is a mat­ter of putting on a dis­play of cul­tur­al­ly expect­ed man­ner­isms. The drag per­former (on But­ler’s analy­sis) may con­vey an absur­di­ty that decon­structs the expect­ed accord of bio­log­i­cal sex, sex­u­al pref­er­ence, and gen­der iden­ti­ty: “I’m dress­ing like a woman but am real­ly a man; also, in my every­day life, I dress like a man but am real­ly (in the way I actu­al­ly feel about myself) am a woman.” Most con­tro­ver­sial­ly, as a post-struc­tural­ist, But­ler argues that it’s not the case that there is an uncon­tro­ver­sial bio­log­i­cal fact of sex that then cul­ture con­nects gen­der behav­iors to. Instead, all of our under­stand­ing of the so-called bio­log­i­cal fact comes through the cul­tur­al lens of gen­der; we lit­er­al­ly can’t under­stand any such raw, bio­log­i­cal fact apart from its cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tions. In oth­er words, it’s not just gen­der that’s a social con­struc­tion, but bio­log­i­cal sex itself.

This posi­tion has been attacked both from the posi­tion of naive, com­mon-sense sci­en­tism (of course bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences result­ing in babies isn’t just a mat­ter of what con­cepts a par­tic­u­lar soci­ety has hap­pened to devel­op) and as a moral haz­ard and exis­ten­tial threat: In 2017 while at a con­fer­ence in Brazil, far-right Chris­t­ian groups protest­ed her pres­ence and even burned her in effi­gy.

It should also be not­ed that But­ler’s take on gen­der departs from cur­rent, intu­itive expla­na­tions of the phe­nom­e­na of trans­gen­derism, i.e. that one might feel their “true gen­der” to be dif­fer­ent from what soci­ety has assigned them. For But­ler, there is no inner gen­der essence that may or may not be dis­played authen­ti­cal­ly. Instead, the “inner” is a cul­tur­al con­struc­tion, itself built out of our exter­nal per­for­mances and the dynam­ics of our psy­chic life, which she dis­cuss­es with­in the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic tra­di­tion.

This use of psy­cho­analy­sis to explain our cul­tur­al life per­sists in new­ly released book, The Force of Non­vi­o­lence: An Ethico-Polit­i­cal Bind. Though the the­o­ry of non­vi­o­lent polit­i­cal protest may seem a far-flung top­ic from gen­der stud­ies, both involve the process of defin­ing an iden­ti­ty. In the case of gen­der, one defines one­self as a par­tic­u­lar gen­der or as being of a par­tic­u­lar sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion (as opposed to leav­ing these attrib­ut­es ambigu­ous and flu­id) by grasp­ing onto a strict social divi­sion between the avail­able sex­u­al options and declar­ing that one of them is “not me.” In But­ler’s dis­cus­sion of non­vi­o­lence, she instead focus­es on what counts as “self” in the usu­al­ly excused excep­tion to non­vi­o­lence, self-defense. She’s crit­i­ciz­ing a posi­tion where most of us claim to be non­vi­o­lent (and claim that our gov­ern­ment is non­vi­o­lent) because we are not the aggres­sors: We will fight only when we are attacked or threat­ened.

It’s not that But­ler is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly against using vio­lence to defend one­self, one’s loved ones, one’s coun­try, or any­one else who is in dan­ger of being seri­ous­ly harmed. She is, how­ev­er, argu­ing for an eth­ic of non­vi­o­lence that clear­ly under­stands our inter­re­lat­ed­ness with every­one else in the world, even and espe­cial­ly those that we might think out­side our cir­cle of con­cern. It’s too easy for us to define “self” as “peo­ple like us,” which then leaves out the rest of the pop­u­lace (and the non-human pop­u­la­tion, and the envi­ron­ment more gen­er­al­ly) from inclu­sion in our “self-defense” cal­cu­la­tions of when vio­lence might be jus­ti­fied. But­ler ana­lyzes the fear of immi­grants, for instance, as a “phan­tas­mat­ic trans­mu­ta­tion” that projects the poten­tial for vio­lence that always exists with­in our imme­di­ate social rela­tions (and even our own rage against our­selves) onto an invad­ing Oth­er. As in the case of gen­der, she wants us instead to under­stand the dynam­ics of these self-and-oth­er attri­bu­tions, to behave more ratio­nal­ly and humane­ly, and to chan­nel our unavoid­able rage con­struc­tive­ly into force­ful non-vio­lence, or what Gand­hi calls Satya­gra­ha, “polite insis­tence on the truth.” The goal of this type of polit­i­cal action is con­ver­sion, not coer­cion, and it’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion and respect­ing even a hat­ed oth­er as a griev­able equal that pro­vides a real con­trast to vio­lence. She wants us to rec­og­nize the poten­tial for vio­lence with­in each rela­tion­ship, at each moment, and to choose oth­er­wise.

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast began a dis­cus­sion of the gen­er­al con­cept of social con­struc­tion back with in Oco­to­ber with episode 227, fol­low­ing this up with appli­ca­tions of this con­cept to race (dis­cussing Kwame Antho­ny Appi­ah and Charles Mills with in episode 228 with guest Cole­man Hugh­es), to the devel­op­ment of sci­ence (con­sid­er­ing Bruno Latour on episode 230 with guest Pro­fes­sor Lyn­da Olman), and to gen­der (con­sid­er­ing Simone de Beau­voir’s The Sec­ond Sex for episode 232 with Pro­fes­sor Jen­nifer Hansen. Pro­fes­sor Hansen then con­tin­ued with hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Wes Alwan, Seth Paskin, and Dylan Casey to dis­cuss But­ler’s Gen­der Trou­ble. For fur­ther expla­na­tion of The Force of Non­vi­o­lence, see episode 236 at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is the host of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, Pret­ty Much Pop, and Naked­ly Exam­ined Music pod­casts. He is a writer and musi­cian work­ing out of Madi­son, Wis­con­sin. Read more Open Cul­ture posts about The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life.

Image by Solomon Grundy.

Electronic Musician Shows How He Uses His Prosthetic Arm to Control a Music Synthesizer with His Thoughts

in Health, Music, Neuroscience, Technology | February 20th, 2020

The tech­no-futur­ist prophets of the late 20th cen­tu­ry, from J.G. Bal­lard to William Gib­son to Don­na Har­away, were right, it turns out, about the inti­mate phys­i­cal unions we would form with our machines. Har­away, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of the His­to­ry of Con­scious­ness and Fem­i­nist Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz, pro­claimed her­self a cyborg back in 1985. Whether read­ers took her ideas as metaphor or pro­lep­tic social and sci­en­tif­ic fact hard­ly mat­ters in hind­sight. Her voice was pre­dic­tive of the every­day bio­met­rics and mechan­ics that lay just around the bend.

It can seem we are a long way, cul­tur­al­ly, from the decade when Haraway’s work became required read­ing in “under­grad­u­ate cur­ricu­lum at count­less uni­ver­si­ties.” But as Hari Kun­zru wrote in 1997, “in terms of the gen­er­al shift from think­ing of indi­vid­u­als as iso­lat­ed from the ‘world’ to think­ing of them as nodes on net­works, the 1990s may well be remem­bered as the begin­ning of the cyborg era.” Three decades lat­er, net­worked implants that auto­mate med­ical data track­ing and analy­sis and reg­u­late dosages have become big busi­ness, and mil­lions feed their vitals dai­ly into fit­ness track­ers and mobile devices and upload them to servers world­wide.

So, fine, we are all cyborgs now, but the usu­al use of that word tends to put us in mind of a more dra­mat­ic meld­ing of human and machine. Here too, we find the cyborg has arrived, in the form of pros­thet­ic limbs that can be con­trolled by the brain. Psy­chol­o­gist, DJ, and elec­tron­ic musi­cian Bertolt Mey­er has such a pros­the­sis, as he demon­strates in the video above. Born with­out a low­er left arm, he received a robot­ic replace­ment that he can move by send­ing sig­nals to the mus­cles that would con­trol a nat­ur­al limb. He can rotate his hand 360 degrees and use it for all sorts of tasks.

Prob­lem is, the tech­nol­o­gy has not quite caught up with Meyer’s need for speed and pre­ci­sion in manip­u­lat­ing the tiny con­trols of his mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­ers. So Mey­er, his artist hus­band Daniel, and synth builder Chrisi of KOMA Elek­tron­ik set to work on bypass­ing man­u­al con­trol alto­geth­er, with a pros­thet­ic device that attach­es to Meyer’s arm where the hand would be, and works as a con­troller for his syn­the­siz­er. He can change para­me­ters using “the sig­nals from my body that nor­mal­ly con­trol the hand,” he writes on his YouTube page. “For me, this feels like con­trol­ling the synth with my thoughts.”

Mey­er walks us through the process of build­ing his first pro­to­types in an Inspec­tor Gad­get-meets-Kraftwerk dis­play of ana­logue inge­nu­ity. We might find our­selves won­der­ing: if a hand­ful of musi­cians, artists, and audio engi­neers can turn a pros­thet­ic robot­ic arm into a mod­u­lar synth con­troller that trans­mits brain­waves, what kind of cyber­net­ic enhancements—musical and otherwise—might be com­ing soon from major research lab­o­ra­to­ries?

What­ev­er the state of cyborg tech­nol­o­gy out­side Meyer’s garage, his bril­liant inven­tion shows us one thing: the human organ­ism can adapt to being plugged into the unlike­li­est of machines. Show­ing us how he uses the Syn­Limb to con­trol a fil­ter in one of his syn­the­siz­er banks, Mey­er says, “I don’t even have to think about it. I just do it. It’s zero effort because I’m so used to pro­duc­ing this mus­cle sig­nal.”

Advance­ments in bio­me­chan­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy have giv­en dis­abled indi­vid­u­als a sig­nif­i­cant amount of restored func­tion. And as gen­er­al­ly hap­pens with major upgrades to acces­si­bil­i­ty devices, they also show us how we might all become even more close­ly inte­grat­ed with machines in the near future.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Inge­nious Sign Lan­guage Inter­preters Are Bring­ing Music to Life for the Deaf: Visu­al­iz­ing the Sound of Rhythm, Har­mo­ny & Melody

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

Neu­rosym­pho­ny: A High-Res­o­lu­tion Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

Twerk­ing, Moon­walk­ing AI Robots–They’re Now Here

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Moral Philosophy on TV? Pretty Much Pop #32 Judges The Good Place

in Philosophy, Pretty Much Pop, Television | February 20th, 2020

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt dis­cuss Michael Schur’s NBC TV show. Is it good? (Yes, or we would­n’t be cov­er­ing it?) Is it actu­al­ly a sit-com? Does it effec­tive­ly teach phi­los­o­phy? What did hav­ing actu­al philoso­phers on the staff (after sea­son one) con­tribute, and was that enough? We talk TV finales, the dra­mat­ic impact of the show’s con­vo­lut­ed struc­ture, the puz­zle of heav­en being death, and more.

Here are a few arti­cles to get you warmed up:

• “The Good Place’s Final Twist” by Karthryn VanAren­donk
• “The Good Place Was a Metaphor All Along” by Sophie Gilbert
• “The Two Philoso­phers Who Cameoed in the Good Place Finale on What They Made of Its End­ing” by Sam Adams
• “5 Moral Phi­los­o­phy Con­cepts Fea­tured on The Good Place” by Ellen Gutoskey

If you like the show, you should also check out The Offi­cial Good Place Pod­cast, espe­cial­ly the inter­views with Schur him­self. There are also sup­ple­men­tary edu­ca­tion­al videos with pro­fes­sor Todd May like this one on exis­ten­tial­ism.

A few clips: What’s the deal with the “Jere­my Bearimy” time mea­sure­ment? The Trol­ley Prob­lem, meet­ing Hypa­tia, finale clip with Arvo Part’s “Spiegel Im Spiegel.”

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Bertrand Russell’s Prison Letters Are Now Digitized & Put Online (1918 — 1961)

in History, Philosophy, Politics | February 18th, 2020

Boethius, Hen­ry David Thore­au, Anto­nio Gram­sci, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr…. It’s pos­si­ble, if one tried, to draw oth­er com­par­isons between these dis­parate fig­ures, but read­ers famil­iar with the work of all four will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize their most obvi­ous lit­er­ary com­mon­al­i­ty: all wrote some of their most impas­sioned and per­sua­sive work while unjust­ly con­fined to a cell.

In the case of Bertrand Rus­sell, how­ev­er, per­haps one of the most famous fig­ures in 20th cen­tu­ry phi­los­o­phy and intel­lec­tu­al life more gen­er­al­ly, peri­ods of incar­cer­a­tion in Brix­ton prison in 1918 and, forty-three years lat­er, in 1961, play a min­i­mal role in the larg­er dra­ma of his writ­ing life, despite the fact that he did a good deal of writ­ing, includ­ing some sig­nif­i­cant philo­soph­i­cal work, behind bars.

Even schol­ars well-read in Russell’s work may have lit­tle knowl­edge of his prison writ­ing, and for good rea­son: most of it has been inac­ces­si­ble. “Now, for the first time,” writes Eri­ca Balch at McMas­ter University’s Brighter World blog, “Russell’s prison letters—part of McMaster’s Bertrand Rus­sell Archives—are being made avail­able online through a new dig­i­ti­za­tion project devel­oped by the Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre. Com­plete with detailed anno­ta­tions and ful­ly search­able text, the project is pro­vid­ing schol­ars from around the world with access to these rarely seen mate­ri­als.”

The con­tents of the let­ters reveal oth­er rea­sons that Russell’s prison writ­ing isn’t bet­ter known. He did plen­ty of impas­sioned and per­sua­sive writ­ing for the pub­lic out­side of a prison cell—publishing fiery books, essays, and lec­tures against war and pro­pa­gan­da and in defense of free thought through­out his life. Behind bars, how­ev­er, Russell’s writ­ing turned almost sole­ly pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al, in let­ters addressed pri­mar­i­ly to “his then lover Lady Con­stance Malle­son (known as ‘Colette’) and his for­mer lover, aris­to­crat and socialite Lady Otto­line Mor­rell.”

The 105 let­ters “reveal the pri­vate thoughts of one of the 20th century’s most pub­lic fig­ures and pro­vide an inter­est­ing win­dow on Russell’s inner life,” says Andrew Bone, Senior Research Asso­ciate at McMaster’s Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre.  Most of the let­ters “were writ­ten in secret,” Balch notes, “and smug­gled out of Brix­ton by Russell’s friends, con­cealed between the uncut pages of books.” Rus­sell was only allowed one let­ter per week; offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned cor­re­spon­dence is writ­ten on prison sta­tion­ary and bears the Brix­ton governor’s ini­tials.

A life­long paci­fist, Rus­sell was first jailed for six months in 1918 for a speech oppos­ing U.S. entry into World War I. “I found prison in many ways quite agree­able,” he lat­er wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “I had no engage­ments, no dif­fi­cult deci­sions to make, no fear of callers, no inter­rup­tions to my work. I read enor­mous­ly; I wrote a book, ‘Intro­duc­tion to Math­e­mat­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy’… and began the work for ‘Analy­sis of Mind,’” a project that nev­er reached fruition. In 1961, at age 89, he was jailed for sev­en days for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Lon­don anti-nuclear demon­stra­tion.

Dur­ing his first stay as a pris­on­er of Brixton’s “first divi­sion,” Rus­sell was “allowed to fur­nish his cell, wear civil­ian clothes, pur­chase catered food, and most impor­tant­ly, be exempt­ed from prison work while he pur­sued his pro­fes­sion as an author,” as the Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre points out. It’s lit­tle won­der he looked for­ward to the expe­ri­ence as a “hol­i­day from respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he wrote in a let­ter to his broth­er, Frank, four days after he began his sen­tence.

Rus­sell may not have suffered—or acquired a height­ened sense of polit­i­cal urgency—while behind bars (at one point he was heard laugh­ing out loud and had to be remind­ed by the war­den that “prison is a place of pun­ish­ment”). But his prison let­ters offer sig­nif­i­cant insight into not only the deeply emo­tion­al rela­tion­ships he had with Malle­son and Mor­rell, but also his rela­tion­ship with oth­er mem­bers of the famous Blooms­bury group and “lit­er­ary celebri­ties such as D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot,” writes Balch, “many of whom are ref­er­enced in the let­ters.”

The 104 let­ters from 1918, includ­ing Russell’s cor­re­spon­dence with his broth­er, his pub­lish­er, The Nation mag­a­zine and oth­ers, are all avail­able in orig­i­nal scans with tran­scrip­tions and anno­ta­tions at the McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Bertrand Rus­sell Research Cen­tre site. The final let­ter, num­ber 105, the sole piece of cor­re­spon­dence from Russell’s week­long stay in Brix­ton in 1961, is addressed to his wife Edith.

My Dar­ling,

The lawyer’s nice young man brought me cheer­ing news of you and told me I could write to you, which I had not known. Every one here treats me kind­ly and the only thing I mind is being away from you. At all odd min­utes I have the illu­sion that you are there, and for­get that if I sneeze it won’t dis­turb you. I am enjoy­ing Madame de Staël immense­ly, hav­ing at last got round to read­ing her. At odd moments I argue the­ol­o­gy with the chap­lain and med­i­cine with the Doc­tor, and so the time pass­es eas­i­ly. But sep­a­ra­tion from you is quite hor­rid, Dear­est Love, it will be heav­en­ly when we are togeth­er again. Take care of your­self, Beloved.

B.

As in most of the ear­li­er let­ters, Rus­sell avoids pol­i­tics and keeps things per­son­al. But as in near­ly all of his writ­ing, the prose is live­ly, evoca­tive, and poignant, reveal­ing much about the per­son­al­i­ty behind it. While these let­ters may nev­er achieve the sta­tus of great lit­er­a­ture, by virtue of their pri­vate nature and their minor role in Russell’s major canon, that does not mean they aren’t a joy to read, for stu­dents of Bertrand Rus­sell and any­one else who appre­ci­ates the work­ings of a bril­liant philo­soph­i­cal and eth­i­cal mind. Enter the Brix­ton Let­ter archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

Bertrand Rus­sell Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948) 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Footage from the Psychology Experiment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obedience Study (1961)

in Psychology | February 13th, 2020

For decades fol­low­ing World War II,  the world was left won­der­ing how the atroc­i­ties of the Holo­caust could have been per­pe­trat­ed in the midst of—and, most hor­rif­i­cal­ly, by—a mod­ern and civ­i­lized soci­ety. How did peo­ple come to engage in a will­ing and sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion of their neigh­bors? Psy­chol­o­gists, whose field had grown into a grudg­ing­ly respect­ed sci­ence by the mid­point of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, were eager to tack­le the ques­tion.

In 1961, Yale University’s Stan­ley Mil­gram began a series of infa­mous obe­di­ence exper­i­ments. While Adolf Eichmann’s tri­al was under­way in Jerusalem (result­ing in Han­nah Arendt’s five-piece reportage, which became one of The New York­er magazine’s most dra­mat­ic and con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle series), Mil­gram began to sus­pect that human nature was more straight­for­ward than ear­li­er the­o­rists had imag­ined; he won­dered, as he lat­er wrote, “Could it be that Eich­mann and his mil­lion accom­plices in the Holo­caust were just fol­low­ing orders? Could we call them all accom­plices?”

In the most famous his exper­i­ments, Mil­gram osten­si­bly recruit­ed par­tic­i­pants to take part in a study assess­ing the effects of pain on learn­ing. In real­i­ty, he want­ed to see how far he could push the aver­age Amer­i­can to admin­is­ter painful elec­tric shocks to a fel­low human being.

When par­tic­i­pants arrived at his lab, Milgram’s assis­tant would ask them, as well as a sec­ond man, to draw slips of paper to receive their roles for the exper­i­ment. In fact, the sec­ond man was a con­fed­er­ate; the par­tic­i­pant would always draw the role of “teacher,” and the sec­ond man would invari­ably be made the “learn­er.”

The par­tic­i­pants received instruc­tions to teach pairs of words to the con­fed­er­ate. After they had read the list of words once, the teach­ers were to test the learner’s recall by read­ing one word, and ask­ing the learn­er to name one of the four words asso­ci­at­ed with it. The exper­i­menter told the par­tic­i­pants to pun­ish any learn­er mis­takes by push­ing a but­ton and admin­is­ter­ing an elec­tric shock; while they could not see the learn­er, par­tic­i­pants could hear his screams. The con­fed­er­ate, of course, remained unharmed, and mere­ly act­ed out in pain, with each mis­take cost­ing him an addi­tion­al 15 volts of pun­ish­ment. In case par­tic­i­pants fal­tered in their sci­en­tif­ic resolve, the exper­i­menter was near­by to urge them, using four author­i­ta­tive state­ments:

Please con­tin­ue.

The exper­i­ment requires that you con­tin­ue.

It is absolute­ly essen­tial that you con­tin­ue.

You have no oth­er choice, you must go on.

In a jar­ring set of find­ings, Mil­gram found that 26 of the 40 par­tic­i­pants obeyed instruc­tions, admin­is­ter­ing shocks all the way from “Slight Shock,” to “Dan­ger: Severe Shock.” The final two omi­nous switch­es were sim­ply marked “XXX.” Even when the learn­ers would pound on the walls in agony after seem­ing­ly receiv­ing 300 volts, par­tic­i­pants per­sist­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, the learn­er sim­ply stopped respond­ing.

Although they fol­lowed instruc­tions, par­tic­i­pants repeat­ed­ly expressed their desire to stop the exper­i­ment, and showed clear signs of extreme dis­com­fort:

“I observed a mature and ini­tial­ly poised busi­ness­man enter the lab­o­ra­to­ry smil­ing and con­fi­dent. With­in 20 min­utes he was reduced to a twitch­ing, stut­ter­ing wreck, who was rapid­ly approach­ing a point of ner­vous col­lapse… At one point he pushed his fist into his fore­head and mut­tered: “Oh God, let’s stop it.” And yet he con­tin­ued to respond to every word of the exper­i­menter, and obeyed to the end.” 

Milgram’s study set off a pow­der keg whose impact remains felt to this day. Eth­i­cal­ly, many object­ed to the decep­tion and the lack of ade­quate par­tic­i­pant debrief­ing. Oth­ers claimed that Mil­gram overem­pha­sized human nature’s propen­si­ty for blind obe­di­ence, with the exper­i­menter often urg­ing par­tic­i­pants to con­tin­ue many more times than the four stock phras­es allowed.

In the clip above, you can watch orig­i­nal footage from Milgram’s  exper­i­ment, fright­en­ing in its insid­i­ous sim­plic­i­ty. (See a full doc­u­men­tary on the study below.) The man admin­is­ter­ing the shock grows increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with his part in the pro­ceed­ings, and almost walks out, ask­ing “Who’s going to take the respon­si­bil­i­ty for any­thing that hap­pens to that gen­tle­man?” When the exper­i­menter replies, “I’m respon­si­ble,” the man, absolv­ing him­self, con­tin­ues. As the per­son receiv­ing the shocks grows increas­ing­ly pan­icked, com­plain­ing about his heart and ask­ing to be let out, the par­tic­i­pant makes his objec­tions known but appears par­a­lyzed, sheep­ish­ly turn­ing to the exper­i­menter, unable to leave.

Although Milgram’s work has drawn crit­ics, his results endure. While chang­ing the experiment’s pro­ce­dure may alter com­pli­ance (e.g., hav­ing the exper­i­menter speak to par­tic­i­pants over the phone rather than remain in the same room through­out the exper­i­ment decreased obe­di­ence rates), repli­ca­tions have tend­ed to con­firm Milgram’s ini­tial find­ings. Whether one is urged once or a dozen times, peo­ple tend to take on the yoke of author­i­ty as absolute, relin­quish­ing their per­son­al agency in the pain they impart. Human nature, it seems, has no Manichean leanings—merely a pli­ant bent.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

The Pow­er of Con­for­mi­ty: 1962 Episode of Can­did Cam­era Reveals the Strange Psy­chol­o­gy of Rid­ing Ele­va­tors

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Free Online Cours­es Psy­chol­o­gy

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based sci­ence and cul­ture writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman

An Artist Tricks Google Maps Into Creating a Virtual Traffic Jam, Using a Little Red Wagon & 99 Smartphones

in Google, Life, Maps, Technology, Travel | February 7th, 2020

Some­times the mirac­u­lous time-sav­ing con­ve­niences we’ve come to depend on can have the oppo­site effect, as artist Simon Wick­ert recent­ly demon­strat­ed, ambling about the streets of Berlin at a Huck Finn-ish pace, tow­ing a squeaky-wheeled red wag­on loaded with 99 sec­ond­hand smart­phones.

Each phone had a SIM card, and all were run­ning the Google Maps app.

The result?

A near-instan­ta­neous “vir­tu­al traf­fic jam” on Google Maps, even though bicy­clists seem to vast­ly out­num­ber motorists along Wick­ert’s route.

As a Google spokesper­son told 9to5 Google’s Ben Schoon short­ly after news of Wickert’s stunt began to spread:

Traf­fic data in Google Maps is refreshed con­tin­u­ous­ly thanks to infor­ma­tion from a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing aggre­gat­ed anonymized data from peo­ple who have loca­tion ser­vices turned on and con­tri­bu­tions from the Google Maps com­mu­ni­ty.

In oth­er words, had you checked your phone before head­ing out to the Baumhaus an der Mauer (Tree­house on the Wall), the Urban Art Clash Gallery, OMA’s Café, or some oth­er spot close to Wickert’s lit­tle red wagon’s trail of terror—like Google’s Berlin office—you might have thought twice about your intend­ed path, or even going at all, see­ing bridges and streets change from a free and easy green to an osten­si­bly grid­locked red.

As long as Wick­ert kept mov­ing, he was able to con­tin­ue fool­ing the algo­rithm into think­ing 99 humans were all using their phone’s Maps app for nav­i­ga­tion­al pur­pos­es in a small, con­gest­ed area.

Obvi­ous­ly, a cou­ple of bus­es could eas­i­ly be respon­si­ble for car­ry­ing 99 smart­phones in active use, but it’s unlike­ly those phones own­ers would be con­sult­ing the map app in the pas­sen­ger seats, when they could be scrolling through Insta­gram or play­ing Can­dy Crush.

Wick­ert also dis­cov­ered that his vir­tu­al traf­fic jam dis­ap­peared when­ev­er a car passed his wag­onload.

The spokesper­son who engaged with Schoon put a good-natured face on Google’s response to Wickert’s hack, say­ing, “We’ve launched the abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between cars and motor­cy­cles in sev­er­al coun­tries includ­ing India, Indone­sia and Egypt, though we haven’t quite cracked trav­el­ing by wag­on. We appre­ci­ate see­ing cre­ative uses of Google Maps like this as it helps us make maps work bet­ter over time.”

Mean­while, the artist’s puck­ish stunt, which he describes as a “per­for­mance and instal­la­tion,” seems anchored by sin­cere philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions, as evi­denced by the inclu­sion on his web­site of the below excerpt from “The Pow­er of Vir­tu­al Maps,” urban researcher Moritz Ahlert’s recent essay in the Ham­burg­er Jour­nal für Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie, :

The advent of Google’s Geo Tools began in 2005 with Maps and Earth, fol­lowed by Street View in 2007. They have since become enor­mous­ly more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced. Google’s vir­tu­al maps have lit­tle in com­mon with clas­si­cal ana­log maps. The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence is that Google’s maps are inter­ac­tive  – scrol­lable, search­able and zoomable. Google’s map ser­vice has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed our under­stand­ing of what a map is, how we inter­act with maps, their tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions, and how they look aes­thet­i­cal­ly.

In this fash­ion, Google Maps makes vir­tu­al changes to the real city. Appli­ca­tions such as Airbnb and Car­shar­ing have an immense impact on cities: on their hous­ing mar­ket and mobil­i­ty cul­ture, for instance. There is also a major impact on how we find a roman­tic part­ner, thanks to dat­ing plat­forms such as Tin­der, and on our self-quan­ti­fy­ing behav­ior, thanks to the nike jog­ging app. Or map-based food deliv­ery apps like deliv­eroo or foodo­ra. All of these apps func­tion via inter­faces with Google Maps and cre­ate new forms of dig­i­tal cap­i­tal­ism and com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion. With­out these maps, car shar­ing sys­tems, new taxi apps, bike rental sys­tems and online trans­port agency ser­vices such as Uber would be unthink­able. An addi­tion­al map­ping mar­ket is pro­vid­ed by self-dri­ving cars; again, Google has already estab­lished a posi­tion for itself.

With its Geo Tools, Google has cre­at­ed a plat­form that allows users and busi­ness­es to inter­act with maps in a nov­el way. This means that ques­tions relat­ing to pow­er in the dis­course of car­tog­ra­phy have to be refor­mu­lat­ed. But what is the rela­tion­ship between the art of enabling and tech­niques of super­vi­sion, con­trol and reg­u­la­tion in Google’s maps? Do these maps func­tion as dis­pos­i­tive nets that deter­mine the behav­ior, opin­ions and images of liv­ing beings, exer­cis­ing pow­er and con­trol­ling knowl­edge? Maps, which them­selves are the prod­uct of a com­bi­na­tion of states of knowl­edge and states of pow­er, have an inscribed pow­er dis­pos­i­tive. Google’s sim­u­la­tion-based map and world mod­els deter­mine the actu­al­i­ty and per­cep­tion of phys­i­cal spaces and the devel­op­ment of action mod­els.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Why Every Nominated Film Will Win the 2020 Oscar: A Pretty Much Pop Podcast Debate (ep. 30)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 6th, 2020

The 2020 Acad­e­my Awards are near­ly upon us! Real­is­ti­cal­ly, most of you will find this episode well after the win­ners have already been announced, but seri­ous­ly, that should not affect your enjoy­ment of this dis­cus­sion. Your intre­pid non-film-crit­ic Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts have each been ran­dom­ly assigned three of the best pic­ture nom­i­nees to argue for either for why it should with the Oscar, or if we real­ly don’t like it, why we think it will win any­way. The assign­ments were as fol­lows:

• Mark Lin­sen­may­er: 1917, Lit­tle Women, Jok­er
• Eri­ca Spyres: Jojo Rab­bit, Par­a­site, Once Upon a Time…in Hol­ly­wood*
• Bri­an Hirt: Ford v Fer­rari,  Mar­riage Sto­ry, The Irish­man**

*Cov­ered in our ep. 12.
**Cov­ered in our ep. 29.

As we hash out the rel­a­tive mer­its of these films, we reflect on what it is to be an Oscar-win­ning type-of-film as opposed to one peo­ple might actu­al­ly enjoy watch­ing, pat­terns of what kinds of films win in which cat­e­gories, and the effect of view­ing con­di­tions, pri­or knowl­edge, and pre­con­cep­tions on our enjoy­ment.

In prepa­ra­tion, we all watched all nine films and looked at some of the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive reviews about them. Here are a few more arti­cles cov­er­ing the Oscars more gen­er­al­ly that we also used to make our­selves more sus­cep­ti­ble to OSCAR FEVER.

• “Why the Oscars Still Mat­ter” by Cheryl Boone Isaacs (last year)
• “The 2020 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions Con­firm That Awards Don’t Mat­ter” by Kara Weisen­stein
• “This Year’s Oscars Are a Joke” by Gene Sey­mour
• “Oscars 2020 Nom­i­na­tions: 12 Biggest Snubs” by Bri­an Tal­leri­co
• “Com­plete List of Every ‘Best Pic­ture’ Oscar Win­ner Ever” by Matt Mur­ray

The par­tic­u­lar neg­a­tive 1917 review Mark talks about was by Richard Brody. Here’s an arti­cle about Joaquin Phoenix impro­vis­ing his stunt work as Eri­ca men­tions. Speak­ing of Jok­er, have you heard the (sub)Text pod­cast pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark’s Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life co-host Wes Alwan on the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic dimen­sions of that film?

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion mus­ing about past win­ners and 2020 act­ing cat­e­gories that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.