finalize october 2024
This commit is contained in:
David Eisinger
@@ -4,6 +4,39 @@ date: 2024-09-23T11:05:50-04:00
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draft: false
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tags:
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- dispatch
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references:
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- title: "Beyond survival mode"
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url: https://austinkleon.com/2019/01/18/beyond-survival-mode/
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:24Z
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file: austinkleon-com-zppigr.txt
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- title: "The Art of Taking It Slow | The New Yorker"
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url: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/the-art-of-taking-it-slow
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:24Z
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file: www-newyorker-com-l1a2a0.txt
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- title: "Wealth = Have ÷ Need | Derek Sivers"
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url: https://sive.rs/whn
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:25Z
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file: sive-rs-lwvanv.txt
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- title: "Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language | WIRED"
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url: https://www.wired.com/story/attention-spoiled-software-engineers-take-a-lesson-from-googles-programming-language/
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:25Z
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file: www-wired-com-iimdi0.txt
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- title: "To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe - Freddie deBoer"
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url: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:26Z
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file: freddiedeboer-substack-com-wmatij.txt
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- title: "Coming home | A Working Library"
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url: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:26Z
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file: aworkinglibrary-com-nhumyz.txt
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- title: "A good assistant to your future self - Austin Kleon"
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url: https://austinkleon.com/2023/03/20/a-good-assistant-to-your-future-self/
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:27Z
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file: austinkleon-com-yahlot.txt
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- title: "Crypto's missing plateau of productivity - macwright.com"
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url: https://macwright.com/2024/09/15/cryptos-missing-plateau-of-productivity.html
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date: 2024-10-02T03:47:28Z
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file: macwright-com-6wqpgh.txt
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---
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Note: I'm trying to get back to posting these in the first couple days of the month, so this dispatch only covers the last two weeks.
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@@ -32,74 +65,72 @@ To celebrate, we headed to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which was a **scene**. Nevie
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Nico started daycare last week, which is bittersweet; it's been wonderful having him around all day. But we love our daycare and it's fun to have him and Nev in the same place.
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Just a few more weeks until my half-marathon. I'm feeling relatively good, hitting my mileage goals though dismayed with my pace on the longer runs. I'm trying to make time to run while it's light out -- I don't think running in the dark after a long day is doing me any favors.
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Just a few more weeks until my half-marathon. I'm feeling relatively good, hitting my mileage goals, I'though I'm discouraged with my pace and energy level on the longer runs. I'm trying to make time to run while it's light out -- I don't think running in the dark after a long day is doing me any favors.
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Finished a couple small house projects: added a hanging system for Nev's art table and built some storage for our reusable grocery bags.
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Finished a couple small house projects: a hanging system for Nev's art table and some storage for our reusable grocery bags.
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{{<dither IMG_6914.jpeg "782x600" />}}
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{{<dither IMG_6919.jpeg "782x600" />}}
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... If I run, it was a good day, and I feel the same way about these little home improvement efforts: any day I get to use a drill or power saw is a good day. It's something about the self-directed decision making, skill, and agency of it ...
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One of my favorite things about running is this: it doesn't matter what else happens throughout the day -- if I run, it was a good day. I feel the same way about these little home improvement efforts: any day I use a drill or power saw is a good day.
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### This month
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* Adventure: Wilmington to meet my new nephew, [Bull City Race Fest][3] half-marathon, camping at [Fairy Stone State Park][4]
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* Project:
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* Skill:
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* Project: make a new music track!
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* Skill: keep working my way through my [drum programming book][5]; I loaded up some samples onto my SP-404 and have made decent progress
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[3]: https://capstoneraces.com/bull-city-race-fest/
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[4]: https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/fairy-stone
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[5]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6399596-drum-programming
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### Reading
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* Fiction: [_House of Assassins_][5], Larry Correia -- this series isn't blowing my mind but at this point I'm invested enough that I'll see the whole thing through
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* Non-fiction: [_The World Beyond Your Head_][6], Matthew B. Crawford -- this is really very good and speaks to me at a deep level; a little dense if you (like me) don't read a lot of academic writing but highly recommended regardless
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* Fiction: [_House of Assassins_][6], Larry Correia -- this series isn't blowing my mind but at this point I'm invested enough that I'll see the whole thing through
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* Non-fiction: [_The World Beyond Your Head_][7], Matthew B. Crawford -- this is really very good and speaks to me at a deep level; a little dense if you (like me) don't read a lot of academic writing but highly recommended regardless
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[5]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/house-of-assassins-volume-2-larry-correia/218731?ean=9781982124458
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[6]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-beyond-your-head-on-becoming-an-individual-in-an-age-of-distraction-matthew-b-crawford/8484056?ean=9780374535919
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[6]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/house-of-assassins-volume-2-larry-correia/218731?ean=9781982124458
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[7]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-beyond-your-head-on-becoming-an-individual-in-an-age-of-distraction-matthew-b-crawford/8484056?ean=9780374535919
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### Links
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- [Beyond survival mode](https://austinkleon.com/2019/01/18/beyond-survival-mode/) (2024-09-27)
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* [Beyond survival mode][8]
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> Weekly art, writing, and creative inspiration from the author of Steal Like an Artist and other bestsellers. Click to read Austin Kleon, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
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> There are moments with children, even in a boring, safe, suburban existence like mine, where you just feel like you’re in Survival Mode. And every once in a while it lifts and you feel like you’ve moved beyond just surviving, and you feel like you’re actually living. The children eat their food. You all tell stories and laugh. Books after tubs with no whining. You’re a quartet, and you’re all performing the same music.
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- [The Art of Taking It Slow | The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/the-art-of-taking-it-slow) (2024-09-27)
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* [The Art of Taking It Slow][9]
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> Contemporary cycling is all about spandex and personal bests. The bicycle designer Grant Petersen has amassed an ardent following by urging people to get comfortable bikes, and go easy.
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- [Wealth = Have ÷ Need | Derek Sivers](https://sive.rs/whn) (2024-09-27)
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* [Wealth = Have ÷ Need][10]
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> Making money depends on other people, so it’s harder. It’s not entirely under your control. It’s an outer game. Reducing what you need is easier. It’s entirely under your control. It’s an inner game.
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- [Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language | WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/attention-spoiled-software-engineers-take-a-lesson-from-googles-programming-language/) (2024-09-24)
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* [Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language][11]
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> Perhaps this is why I see the ethos behind the programming language Go as both a rebuke and a potential corrective to my generation of strivers. Its creators hail from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose language of the new millennium—not the best at any one thing, but nearly the best at nearly everything. A model for our flashy times.
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> Perhaps this is why I see the ethos behind the programming language Go as both a rebuke and a potential corrective to my generation of strivers. Its creators hail from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose language of the new millennium -- not the best at any one thing, but nearly the best at nearly everything. A model for our flashy times.
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- [Using Helix's Global Search | Helix Editor Tutorials](https://helix-editor-tutorials.com/tutorials/using-helix-global-search/) (2024-09-23)
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> Unlock the full potential of Helix Editor's global search! Dive into our step-by-step guide to mastering workspace-wide searches with both basic and advanced regex techniques. Discover insider tips and the latest updates that will transform your coding efficiency.
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- [To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe](https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe?publication_id=295937&post_id=148918222&isFreemail=true&r=1dfk2&triedRedirect=true) (2024-09-22)
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* [To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe][12]
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> You have to imagine a life you can live with, where you are, when you are. If you don’t, you’ll never be satisfied. Neither AI nor anything else is coming to save you from the things you don’t like about being a person. The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it. That’s what I would tell to everyone out there: this is it. This is it. This is it. You’re never going to hang out with Mr. Data on the Holodeck. I know that, for a lot of people, mundane reality is everything they want to escape. But it could be so much worse.
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- [Coming home](https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home) (2024-09-20)
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* [Coming home][13]
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> There was a time when I felt some resonance between spending time in the social stream and doing my own work. As if the movement of the water imparted some energy or power I could make use of, and then return. But it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way.
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- [A good assistant to your future self - Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/2023/03/20/a-good-assistant-to-your-future-self/) (2024-09-16)
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* [A good assistant to your future self][14]
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> Yes, a diary is a good spaceship for time travel: for meditating on the present, flinging ourselves into the future, and visiting ourselves in the past.
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- [Crypto's missing plateau of productivity - macwright.com](https://macwright.com/2024/09/15/cryptos-missing-plateau-of-productivity.html) (2024-09-16)
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* [Crypto's missing plateau of productivity][15]
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> I think that even the most overhyped technology usually delivers some benefit to the world. And often succeeds quietly, long after the hype has died. Recent examples include 3D printing, which has found massive success in prototyping, medical applications - a friend had a filling 3D-printed right in his doctor’s office - and niche consumer items. Etsy is awash with 3D printed lamps, some even that I own. Or drones, which are now used all the time in news coverage, on job sites, and by people filming themselves hiking.
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* [Title][7]
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* [Title][8]
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* [Title][9]
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[7]: https://example.com/
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[8]: https://example.com/
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[9]: https://example.com/
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[8]: https://austinkleon.com/2019/01/18/beyond-survival-mode/
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[9]: https://sive.rs/whn
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[10]: https://www.wired.com/story/attention-spoiled-software-engineers-take-a-lesson-from-googles-programming-language/
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[11]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/the-art-of-taking-it-slow
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[12]: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe?publication_id=295937&post_id=148918222&isFreemail=true&r=1dfk2&triedRedirect=true
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[13]: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
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[14]: https://austinkleon.com/2023/03/20/a-good-assistant-to-your-future-self/
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[15]: https://macwright.com/2024/09/15/cryptos-missing-plateau-of-productivity.html
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257
static/archive/austinkleon-com-yahlot.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,257 @@
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[1]Austin Kleon
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• [2]Blog
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• [3]Books
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• [4]Newsletter
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• [5]Speaking
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• [6]About
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• [7]Contact
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• [8][9]
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You are here: [10]Blog / [11]Miscellany / A good assistant to your future self
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A good assistant to your future self
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Monday, March 20, 2023
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[12][IMG_2886-600x600]
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This morning I was flipping through my copy of the [13]Bicycle Sentences
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Journal that illustrator [14]Betsy Streeter sent me and I was quite taken with
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this final paragraph by Grant Petersen. (I’m a big fan of [15]his blog and [16]
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Just Ride.)
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He touches on [17]why I keep a diary, why I keep it [18]on paper, and the magic
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of [19]keeping a logbook. The mundane details can bring back sublime memories,
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and [20]what you think is boring now may be interesting in the future: “What
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seems bland when you write it down… will seem epic in thirty years.”
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I have a new studio routine where when I’m unsure of what to write about, I
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[21]revisit my notebooks each year [22]on today’s date. (I have notebooks going
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back 20 years, daily logbooks going back 15, but I’ve kept a daily diary for 5
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years now. That’s where a lot of gems are buried.)
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Flipping through these notebooks will usually yield something worth writing
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about. (This morning, it was [23]William Burroughs on language.)
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Reading my diary this way, which I first learned from [24]reading Thoreau’s
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diary, also shows me the cycles and patterns of my life.
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(For example: [25]Cocteau Twins and the beginning of spring are somehow
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intertwined in my life. What does that mean? And what does the fact that their
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lyrics are barely understandable mean when matched with the Burroughs? Spring
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is a season of rebirth… When babies are new, they babble and make noise without
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language… do they sound like spring to me for this reason? You can see how
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these thoughts, none of which I had when I woke up this morning, come forth
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from just reading myself.)
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[26][Screen-Shot-2023-03-20-at-11]
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Another way to think about it: Keeping a diary is being a good research
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assistant to your future self.
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This is the advice that art critic [27]Jerry Saltz has tweeted over the years:
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[28]Be a good assistant to yourself. Prepare and gather, make notations and
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sketches in your head or phone. When you work, all that mapping,
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architecture, research & preparation will be your past self giving a gift
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to the future self that you are now. That is the sacred.
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[29]I’ve never had an assistant. I am my own best assistant. My assistant
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-self is my past self loving my future self who’ll need this previous
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research when I reach for something in my work. My assistant-self has
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gotten ideas for whole articles, essays from minutes of research online.
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[30]Artists: The beautiful thing about giving yourself a little break & not
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working – those are the times when new ideas flood in from the cosmos & set
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your “assistant self” in motion, the self that will be there for your
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“future-self.” Curiosity and obsession always fill the vacuum.
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[31]Artists: Be your own best assistant. Do your research. Get your tools
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and materials in order. These will be the ancestors, spirit guides and
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self-replicating imagination of your work. This will allow art to reproduce
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itself in you. You’ll thank yourself during & afterwards.
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I have my many moments of self-loathing at my own lack of progress, but one
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thing I have done right, at least in the past half decade or so: I have been a
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good assistant to my future self.
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Joan Didion said of re-reading notebooks, “I think we are well advised to keep
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on nodding terms with the people we used to be.” This is especially true if
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they have bothered to preserve themselves so we can visit them later.
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Yes, a diary is [32]a good spaceship for time travel: for meditating on the
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present, flinging ourselves into the future, and visiting ourselves in the
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past.
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Filed Under: [33]Miscellany Tagged: [34]bicycles, [35]diaries, [36]jerry saltz,
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[37]NOTES ON WRITING AND DRAWING, [38]time travel
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[39][ ][40][Search]
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About the author
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[41]Austin Kleon
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[42]Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. He’s the bestselling author of [43]
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Steal Like An Artist and other books. [44]Read more→
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• [45]
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Subscribe to my newsletter
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Join the 200,000+ readers who get it delivered free to their inboxes every
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[50]On This Date
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• 2020: [51]Peanuts, remixed
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• 2019: [52]Drawers
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• 2018: [53]The right book at the right time
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• 2017: [54]Seasonal time
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Get the 10th anniversary gift edition
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[56]The Steal Like An Artist Audio Trilogy
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[62]t-shirts
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Recent posts
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• [63]How do you draw time?
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• [64]A plan and not enough time
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• [65]Autumn leaves (a September mixtape)
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• [66]Human resources
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• [67]Cut out verbs
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More about me
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• [80]
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© Austin Kleon 2001–2024
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• [81]Blog
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References:
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[1] https://austinkleon.com/
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[2] https://austinkleon.com/
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[3] https://austinkleon.com/books/
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[4] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
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[5] https://austinkleon.com/speaking/
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[6] https://austinkleon.com/about/
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[7] https://austinkleon.com/contact/
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[8] https://twitter.com/austinkleon
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[11] https://austinkleon.com/category/miscellany/
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[12] https://www.rivbike.com/products/bicycle-sentences
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[13] https://www.rivbike.com/products/bicycle-sentences
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[14] https://www.instagram.com/betsystreeter/?hl=en
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[15] https://www.rivbike.com/blogs/grant-petersens-blog
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[16] https://geni.us/pLVPGGl
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[17] https://austinkleon.com/2018/02/20/what-is-the-point-of-keeping-a-diary/
|
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[18] https://austinkleon.com/tag/paper-is-a-wonderful-technology
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[19] https://austinkleon.com/tag/logbook
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[20] https://austinkleon.com/2021/01/31/what-you-think-is-boring-now-may-be-interesting-in-the-future/
|
||||
[21] https://austinkleon.com/2017/12/15/on-the-importance-of-revisiting-notebooks/
|
||||
[22] https://austinkleon.com/2017/10/21/on-this-day/
|
||||
[23] https://austinkleon.com/2023/03/20/errors-in-western-language/
|
||||
[24] https://austinkleon.com/2018/11/13/a-year-of-thoreau/
|
||||
[25] https://cocteautwins.com/
|
||||
[26] https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1556296370440400896
|
||||
[27] https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz
|
||||
[28] https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1556296370440400896
|
||||
[29] https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1559535799896576000
|
||||
[30] https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1559886618575732738
|
||||
[31] https://twitter.com/jerrysaltz/status/1606742728024494080
|
||||
[32] https://austinkleon.com/2014/01/19/a-good-spaceship/
|
||||
[33] https://austinkleon.com/category/miscellany/
|
||||
[34] https://austinkleon.com/tag/bicycles/
|
||||
[35] https://austinkleon.com/tag/diaries/
|
||||
[36] https://austinkleon.com/tag/jerry-saltz/
|
||||
[37] https://austinkleon.com/tag/notes-on-writing-and-drawing/
|
||||
[38] https://austinkleon.com/tag/time-travel/
|
||||
[41] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[42] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[43] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
||||
[44] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[45] http://facebook.com/mr.austin.kleon
|
||||
[46] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[47] http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[48] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[49] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uQnyh7DAfp4uX9RN7XxEw
|
||||
[50] https://austinkleon.com/on-this-date/
|
||||
[51] https://austinkleon.com/2020/10/02/peanuts-remixed/
|
||||
[52] https://austinkleon.com/2019/10/02/drawers/
|
||||
[53] https://austinkleon.com/2018/10/02/the-right-book-at-the-right-time/
|
||||
[54] https://austinkleon.com/2017/10/02/seasonal-time/
|
||||
[55] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
||||
[56] https://austinkleon.com/steal-audiobook-trilogy
|
||||
[57] https://austinkleon.com/keepgoing
|
||||
[58] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work
|
||||
[59] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
||||
[60] https://austinkleon.com/journal
|
||||
[61] https://austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/
|
||||
[62] https://cottonbureau.com/people/austin-kleon
|
||||
[63] https://austinkleon.com/2024/10/01/how-do-you-draw-time/
|
||||
[64] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/27/a-plan-and-not-enough-time/
|
||||
[65] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/26/autumn-leaves-a-september-mixtape/
|
||||
[66] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/24/human-resources/
|
||||
[67] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/20/cut-out-verbs/
|
||||
[68] https://austinkleon.com/books/
|
||||
[69] http://austinkleon.com/newsletter
|
||||
[70] https://austinkleon.com/category/reading/my-reading-years/
|
||||
[71] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[72] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[73] http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[76] http://facebook.com/mr.austin.kleon
|
||||
[77] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[78] http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/
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||||
[79] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[80] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uQnyh7DAfp4uX9RN7XxEw
|
||||
[81] https://austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[82] https://austinkleon.com/books/
|
||||
[83] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
|
||||
[84] https://austinkleon.com/speaking/
|
||||
[85] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[86] https://austinkleon.com/contact/
|
||||
209
static/archive/austinkleon-com-zppigr.txt
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209
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|
||||
[1]Austin Kleon
|
||||
|
||||
• [2]Blog
|
||||
• [3]Books
|
||||
• [4]Newsletter
|
||||
• [5]Speaking
|
||||
• [6]About
|
||||
• [7]Contact
|
||||
• [8][9]
|
||||
|
||||
You are here: [10]Blog / [11]Miscellany / Beyond survival mode
|
||||
|
||||
Beyond survival mode
|
||||
|
||||
Friday, January 18, 2019
|
||||
|
||||
[11363958_682236831908301_987442953_n-600x600]
|
||||
|
||||
There’s a turn in Dougal Robertson’s [12]Survive The Savage Sea that really
|
||||
touched me. It comes on the family’s 25th day as castaways: the sea calms down
|
||||
and there’s a “glorious sunset and a peacefulness of the spirit.” The group
|
||||
takes turns singing songs to each other. And then:
|
||||
|
||||
I felt that we had already gone beyond thinking in terms of survival. We
|
||||
had started living from the sea as an adapted way of life… we no longer
|
||||
thought of rescue as one of the main objectives of our existence; we were
|
||||
no longer subject to the daily disappointment of a lonely vigil, to the
|
||||
idea that help might be at hand or was necessary. We no longer had that
|
||||
helpless feeling of dependence on others for our continued existence. We
|
||||
were alone, and stood alone, inhabitants of the savage sea.
|
||||
|
||||
Nina Katchadourian talks about how much of the book (her favorite) is really
|
||||
about [13]what it’s like to be a family, and I think that’s why this scene
|
||||
touched me so deeply.
|
||||
|
||||
There are moments with children, even in a boring, safe, suburban existence
|
||||
like mine, where you just feel like you’re in Survival Mode. And every once in
|
||||
a while it lifts and you feel like you’ve moved beyond just surviving, and you
|
||||
feel like you’re actually living. The children eat their food. You all tell
|
||||
stories and laugh. Books after tubs with no whining. You’re a quartet, and
|
||||
you’re all performing the same music.
|
||||
|
||||
The reasons these evenings are so wonderful is because they are so rare, and in
|
||||
such stark contrast to those Survival Mode days, when you’re just trying to get
|
||||
rid of the day as well as you can.
|
||||
|
||||
I’m now thinking about a passage that comes later in the “Analysis” section,
|
||||
when Robertson offers his thoughts on surviving in castaway situations:
|
||||
|
||||
If any single civilized factor in a castaway’s character helps survival, it
|
||||
is a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. It helps the castaway to laugh
|
||||
in the face of impossible situations and allows him, or her, to overcome
|
||||
the assassination of all civilized codes and characteristics which hitherto
|
||||
had been the guidelines of life.
|
||||
|
||||
“A well-developed sense of the ridiculous”—I cannot think of a better trait for
|
||||
a parent!
|
||||
|
||||
Filed Under: [14]Miscellany Tagged: [15]comedy, [16]dougal robertson, [17]
|
||||
parenting, [18]survive the savage sea
|
||||
|
||||
[19][ ][20][Search]
|
||||
About the author
|
||||
|
||||
[21]Austin Kleon
|
||||
|
||||
[22]Austin Kleon is a writer who draws. He’s the bestselling author of [23]
|
||||
Steal Like An Artist and other books. [24]Read more→
|
||||
|
||||
• [25]
|
||||
• [26]
|
||||
• [27]
|
||||
• [28]
|
||||
• [29]
|
||||
|
||||
Subscribe to my newsletter
|
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|
||||
Join the 200,000+ readers who get it delivered free to their inboxes every
|
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|
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[30]On This Date
|
||||
|
||||
• 2020: [31]Peanuts, remixed
|
||||
• 2019: [32]Drawers
|
||||
• 2018: [33]The right book at the right time
|
||||
• 2017: [34]Seasonal time
|
||||
|
||||
Get the 10th anniversary gift edition
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|
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[37]Keep Going [38]Show Your Work [39]Steal Like An Artist [40]The Steal Like
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|
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|
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Recent posts
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|
||||
• [43]How do you draw time?
|
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• [44]A plan and not enough time
|
||||
• [45]Autumn leaves (a September mixtape)
|
||||
• [46]Human resources
|
||||
• [47]Cut out verbs
|
||||
|
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More about me
|
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|
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• [57]
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• [60]
|
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|
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© Austin Kleon 2001–2024
|
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|
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• [61]Blog
|
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This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which
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References:
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|
||||
[1] https://austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[2] https://austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[3] https://austinkleon.com/books/
|
||||
[4] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
|
||||
[5] https://austinkleon.com/speaking/
|
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[6] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[7] https://austinkleon.com/contact/
|
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[8] https://twitter.com/austinkleon
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[9] https://instagram.com/austinkleon
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[10] https://austinkleon.com/
|
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[11] https://austinkleon.com/category/miscellany/
|
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[12] https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0924486732/wwwaustinkleo-20/ref=nosim/
|
||||
[13] https://austinkleon.com/2019/01/08/of-course-well-make-it/
|
||||
[14] https://austinkleon.com/category/miscellany/
|
||||
[15] https://austinkleon.com/tag/comedy/
|
||||
[16] https://austinkleon.com/tag/dougal-robertson/
|
||||
[17] https://austinkleon.com/tag/parenting/
|
||||
[18] https://austinkleon.com/tag/survive-the-savage-sea/
|
||||
[21] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[22] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[23] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
||||
[24] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[25] http://facebook.com/mr.austin.kleon
|
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[26] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
|
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[27] http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[28] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[29] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uQnyh7DAfp4uX9RN7XxEw
|
||||
[30] https://austinkleon.com/on-this-date/
|
||||
[31] https://austinkleon.com/2020/10/02/peanuts-remixed/
|
||||
[32] https://austinkleon.com/2019/10/02/drawers/
|
||||
[33] https://austinkleon.com/2018/10/02/the-right-book-at-the-right-time/
|
||||
[34] https://austinkleon.com/2017/10/02/seasonal-time/
|
||||
[35] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
||||
[36] https://austinkleon.com/steal-audiobook-trilogy
|
||||
[37] https://austinkleon.com/keepgoing
|
||||
[38] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work
|
||||
[39] https://austinkleon.com/steal/
|
||||
[40] https://austinkleon.com/journal
|
||||
[41] https://austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/
|
||||
[42] https://cottonbureau.com/people/austin-kleon
|
||||
[43] https://austinkleon.com/2024/10/01/how-do-you-draw-time/
|
||||
[44] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/27/a-plan-and-not-enough-time/
|
||||
[45] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/26/autumn-leaves-a-september-mixtape/
|
||||
[46] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/24/human-resources/
|
||||
[47] https://austinkleon.com/2024/09/20/cut-out-verbs/
|
||||
[48] https://austinkleon.com/books/
|
||||
[49] http://austinkleon.com/newsletter
|
||||
[50] https://austinkleon.com/category/reading/my-reading-years/
|
||||
[51] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[52] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
|
||||
[53] http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[56] http://facebook.com/mr.austin.kleon
|
||||
[57] http://instagram.com/austinkleon
|
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[58] http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/
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[59] http://twitter.com/austinkleon
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[60] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uQnyh7DAfp4uX9RN7XxEw
|
||||
[61] https://austinkleon.com/
|
||||
[62] https://austinkleon.com/books/
|
||||
[63] https://austinkleon.substack.com/
|
||||
[64] https://austinkleon.com/speaking/
|
||||
[65] https://austinkleon.com/about/
|
||||
[66] https://austinkleon.com/contact/
|
||||
302
static/archive/aworkinglibrary-com-nhumyz.txt
Normal file
302
static/archive/aworkinglibrary-com-nhumyz.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,302 @@
|
||||
[1]Practice the future →
|
||||
|
||||
• [2]Reading
|
||||
• [3]Writing
|
||||
• [4]Thinking
|
||||
• [5]About
|
||||
• [6]Subscribe
|
||||
|
||||
[7]
|
||||
|
||||
A working library is a blog about work, reading & technology by Mandy Brown
|
||||
|
||||
2024-09-19
|
||||
|
||||
[8]Coming home
|
||||
|
||||
What do they do,
|
||||
the singers, tale-writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers?
|
||||
They go there with empty hands,
|
||||
into the gap between.
|
||||
They come back with things in their hands.
|
||||
|
||||
[9]Le Guin, Always Coming Home, page 74
|
||||
|
||||
I’ve [10]written before about the restlessness inherent to screens, the
|
||||
inability to ever linger or pause or catch your breath. It’s a strangely
|
||||
disembodied experience, a sense of ceaseless, rustling motion when nothing is
|
||||
moving at all: electrical pulses flash and gasp beneath the oceans, your mind
|
||||
strains to catch up, your body remains still save for a few twitching digits,
|
||||
the shell that’s left behind when your spirit evacuates for the mirage of
|
||||
higher ground. We become as smooth and reflective as the screen itself, all
|
||||
glassy surfaces and metallic edges obscuring the hollowness within. No need to
|
||||
fantasize about what it might be like to upload your consciousness to the
|
||||
machine—most of us are already there.
|
||||
|
||||
It’s curious, the way we refer to media that comes at us as a stream, whether
|
||||
of moving pictures or sentence fragments, as if it were the mere flow of cool,
|
||||
fresh water running smoothly and gently at our feet. But all it takes is one
|
||||
big storm, and your friendly little stream becomes a gushing torrent of mud and
|
||||
debris, strong enough to fling cars and houses out of its path, to smash your
|
||||
own fragile body—itself mostly water and so perhaps sympathetic to the display
|
||||
of power—against the rocks.
|
||||
|
||||
One meaning of the verb “distract” is to separate, to draw apart. To separate
|
||||
the body from the spirit. To draw apart, or perhaps to draw out, as of a small
|
||||
animal lured from its den by the smell of fresh grass, only to be met by dust
|
||||
and talons. Another meaning is madness.
|
||||
|
||||
To step into the stream of any social network, to become immersed in the news,
|
||||
reactions, rage and hopes, the marketing and psyops, the funny jokes and clever
|
||||
memes, the earnest requests for mutual aid, for sign ups, for jobs, the clap
|
||||
backs and the call outs, the warnings and invitations—it can feel like a kind
|
||||
of madness. It’s unsettling, in the way that sediment is unsettled by water,
|
||||
lifted up and tossed around, scattered about. A pebble goes wherever the river
|
||||
sends it, worn down and smoothed day after day until all that’s left is sand.
|
||||
|
||||
At some point I became acutely aware of a sense of scattering or separation
|
||||
whenever I glanced at the socials. As if some part of me, or some pattern or
|
||||
vision that I cupped tenderly in my hands, was washed away, wrenched from my
|
||||
grasp before I quite realized what it was. I think of the orb spiders I often
|
||||
glimpse in my tiny city backyard, delicate webs balanced on two leaves of the
|
||||
rhododendron and the stem of a laurel. In my own work, I’m weaving ideas,
|
||||
stories, prophesies, metaphors, dreams by the shore of this great, inconstant
|
||||
stream, and every so often a wave rises up and swallows the whole affair. I
|
||||
can’t predict when a wave will come; I can, at this point, count on it coming.
|
||||
|
||||
A wise spider would move a little ways away. But not too far, because this is
|
||||
where the life is. And so I find myself thinking about how I might get some
|
||||
distance, what it means to move uphill a ways, to weave my web safe from the
|
||||
spray. To get out of the flood zone. To come home.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
Some weeks ago, I quietly shipped a new content type on A Working Library, such
|
||||
that I am now writing [11]short, [12]social-[13]shaped posts on my site and
|
||||
then sending them off to the various platforms. This is not a novel mode of
|
||||
publishing, but rather one borrowed and adapted from the [14]POSSE model
|
||||
(“publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere”) developed by the IndieWeb
|
||||
community. While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability
|
||||
to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context.
|
||||
Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a
|
||||
little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s
|
||||
thinking, but located within my own body of work. As I played with setting this
|
||||
up, I could immediately feel how that would change the kinds of things I would
|
||||
say, and it felt good. Really good. Like putting on a favorite t-shirt, or
|
||||
coming home to my solid, quiet house after a long time away.
|
||||
|
||||
A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both
|
||||
constrains and makes possible what goes within it. This is, I think, one of the
|
||||
primary justifications for having your own website. Not just so you can own
|
||||
your stuff (for some meaning of “ownership,” in a culture in which any
|
||||
billionaire can scrape your work without permission and copyright only protects
|
||||
the rich). Not just so you have a home base among the shifting winds of the
|
||||
various platforms, which rise and fall like brush before the fire. Not just so
|
||||
you can avoid setting up camp in a Nazi bar. But also so that you can shape the
|
||||
work—so that you can give shape to it, and in that shaping make possible work
|
||||
that couldn’t arise elsewhere.
|
||||
|
||||
I made a decision many years ago to shape my work around the books I read. If
|
||||
I’m being completely honest, I don’t recall spending a lot of time thinking
|
||||
about that decision or contemplating the consequences of it. It seemed right
|
||||
and so I ran with it. But it has since given rise to a kind of scholarship and
|
||||
writing that I’m not sure I would have landed on were I writing on some
|
||||
all-purpose platform, or fitting my work into someone else’s box. It’s allowed
|
||||
me to cultivate the soil to suit my purposes—rather than having to adapt my
|
||||
garden to the soil I was given. Not every seed I’ve planted has thrived, of
|
||||
course. But after all these years, some are quite hardy, while others have made
|
||||
some very rich compost. And I find myself often amazed by what emerges: not
|
||||
only the seeds I planted but a great many I never anticipated, connections and
|
||||
stories I didn’t see until I was right on top of them, until they were tangled
|
||||
at my feet. Dark velvety leaves amid glossy blooms, thorns and small sour
|
||||
fruits, vines that weave and climb and show me the way.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
This is, objectively, a difficult way to publish. There’s a great deal of
|
||||
friction between an idea or phrase coming to mind and the words making it out
|
||||
into the world. And I don’t mean the writing itself (which, as every writer
|
||||
will tell you, is dreadful), but the actual mechanics of sharing that writing.
|
||||
I mean, I am the fool who opens their damn terminal every time they want to
|
||||
publish; in recent weeks, I have spent a not insignificant number of hours
|
||||
writing some absolutely criminal CSS. I cannot, in good conscience, advise this
|
||||
path for anyone with sense. But the choice to do so suits my own proclivities:
|
||||
a desire to tinker not only with the words but with the strata underneath them,
|
||||
and a long-running interest in the material reality of publishing. And more
|
||||
often than not, I find that what I need is some friction, some labor, the
|
||||
effort to work things out. Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odds with the
|
||||
work, which requires resistance and tension in order to come into being.
|
||||
|
||||
This is one of the many reasons why I find the current conversation about [15]
|
||||
so-called generative AI so immensely frustrating: there’s all this hype about
|
||||
making everything easier and faster, about how we can eliminate all the work
|
||||
involved in the making of words and images. But no one arguing for this seems
|
||||
to have asked what’s left when the work is gone. What is the experience of
|
||||
asking for something to appear and then instantly receiving it? What changes
|
||||
between the thought and the manifestation? I fear that nothing changes, that
|
||||
nothing is changed in such a making, least of all ourselves. But then, what
|
||||
does it mean to be unchanged, for your feet to pass so lightly over the ground
|
||||
they don’t so much as disturb the sand? Even the dead make change in the world,
|
||||
as their bodies decay and and are transformed into food for beasts and bugs and
|
||||
trees. But in eliminating the effort, in refusing the temporality of making,
|
||||
the outcome of an “AI”-driven creative process is a phantasm, an
|
||||
unsubstantiality, something that passes through the world without leaving any
|
||||
trace. A root that twists back upon itself and tries to suck the water from its
|
||||
own desiccated veins.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
There was a time when I felt some resonance between spending time in the social
|
||||
stream and doing my own work. As if the movement of the water imparted some
|
||||
energy or power I could make use of, and then return. But it’s been a long time
|
||||
since I’ve felt that way. I grieve that loss: a great number of my closest
|
||||
friends are people I met in the halcyon days of Twitter, and I find I still
|
||||
often long for that kind of connection, the ambient awareness of people in
|
||||
whose company I felt at home. But I know that longing to be a kind of [16]
|
||||
nostalgia, an unrealizable wish to return to a past that never was quite as I
|
||||
remember it. I do not want those memories to be a burden, like stones weighing
|
||||
down my pockets. I want, instead, to carry them lightly and tenderly, to have
|
||||
the fortitude to accept the grief that comes with leaving the past where it
|
||||
belongs.
|
||||
|
||||
A word about the Fediverse is warranted here. I believe that we desperately
|
||||
need to be experimenting and developing methods of communication that aren’t
|
||||
beholden to either the advertising industry or the brittle egos of
|
||||
billionaires. Hitching our means of finding each other and forging
|
||||
relationships to those insatiable appetites is to invite scarcity and fear into
|
||||
our most intimate alliances. We need room to talk and to take up space, to
|
||||
listen and to be heard, to organize ourselves, absent that exponential scale of
|
||||
manipulation. And I think that something like the Fediverse, which seeks to
|
||||
locate power in small communities, and functions at the level of a protocol
|
||||
rather than a company, moves us in the right direction.
|
||||
|
||||
And yet: as much as the Fediverse is different (the governing structures, the
|
||||
incentives, the moderation, the absence of ads and engagement tricks), so much
|
||||
of it is also unsettlingly familiar—the same small boxes, the same few buttons,
|
||||
the same mechanics of following and being followed. The same babbling,
|
||||
tumbling, rushing stream of thoughts. I can’t tell if we’re stuck with this
|
||||
design because it’s familiar, or if it’s familiar because we’re stuck. Very
|
||||
likely it’s me that’s stuck, fixed in place while everything rushes around me,
|
||||
hoping for a gap, a break, a warm rock to rest awhile on. Longing for a mode of
|
||||
communication that lifts me up instead of wiping me out.
|
||||
|
||||
And so I remain at an unresolvable juncture: the intersection of the very
|
||||
strong belief that we must experiment with new modes and systems of
|
||||
communication, and the certain knowledge that every time I so much as glance at
|
||||
anything shaped like a social feed, my brain smoothes out, the web of
|
||||
connections and ideas I’m weaving is washed away, and I tumble downstream, only
|
||||
to have to pick myself up and trudge heavily through the mud back to where I
|
||||
belong.
|
||||
|
||||
It’s exhausting. It is, at this point in my life, unsustainable. I cannot dip
|
||||
into the stream, even briefly, and also maintain the awareness and focus needed
|
||||
to do my own work, the work that is uniquely mine. I cannot wade through the
|
||||
water and still protect this fragile thing in my hands. And perhaps I owe to my
|
||||
continued senescence the knowledge that I do not have time for this anymore.
|
||||
Perhaps it’s age that grants the wisdom to know where my attention belongs and
|
||||
the discipline to be able to direct it. The great power of a middle-aged woman
|
||||
is that she knows where to [17]give her fucks.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
Will it be weird, to write this way? Probably. I’m tossing the same words into
|
||||
(currently) three totally different networks, each with their own affect and
|
||||
moods and characters of the day. I’m keeping my distance, such that I likely
|
||||
won’t hear the replies (at least, not with any timeliness) or see the ripples
|
||||
my words make, should they make any at all. But maybe we need more weird—not in
|
||||
the very recent sense of the word, but in the sense of prophesy or potential, a
|
||||
spell or charm, the magic, the wild, the wyrd—that which is becoming, rather
|
||||
than that which has already passed us by.
|
||||
|
||||
In Madeline Miller’s beautiful retelling, the Greek witch-goddess Circe comes
|
||||
to understand the difference between her own magic and the greater gods’
|
||||
divinity:
|
||||
|
||||
Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divining power, which comes with
|
||||
a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched
|
||||
out, dug up, dried, chipped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung.
|
||||
|
||||
[18]Miller, Circe, page 83
|
||||
|
||||
Circe is surprised to learn that she loves the work of magic, loves it even
|
||||
when it’s infuriating and frustrating, when it’s filthy and exhausting. (The
|
||||
reader is not, I think, surprised.) But she doesn’t learn that love until she
|
||||
is exiled, left alone on an island, her only companions the birds and lions and
|
||||
wild boars. There she comes to see what her sorcery really is. There she goes
|
||||
into the gap, and discovers that magic is dirt and muscle, work and will,
|
||||
effort and choice.
|
||||
|
||||
Later, she returns to the world. Not to the world of the gods—which she comes
|
||||
to realize is a lifeless place—but to the mortal world, carrying her small
|
||||
herbs and potions, her wisdom. But as far as she travels, the island remains
|
||||
her home, the place she always comes back to.
|
||||
|
||||
My own magic is a small one: to write in order to uncover what I think; to
|
||||
prefigure a future of work that serves the living; to listen intently as people
|
||||
speak aloud a story of themselves that is, in the speaking, being rewritten.
|
||||
But it is mine. For too long I have tried to make space for it along the banks,
|
||||
to keep one foot in the water, to speak my incantations into the wind while the
|
||||
river slips the sediment out from under me and pulls me ever deeper.
|
||||
|
||||
No longer.*
|
||||
|
||||
Related books
|
||||
|
||||
[19]Always Coming Home
|
||||
|
||||
Ursula K. Le Guin
|
||||
|
||||
[20][le-guin-al]
|
||||
|
||||
An archeology of the future.
|
||||
|
||||
[21]Circe
|
||||
|
||||
Madeline Miller
|
||||
|
||||
[22][miller-cir]
|
||||
|
||||
This is a subversive and triumphant retelling of the story of Circe, daughter
|
||||
of the sun-god Helios.
|
||||
|
||||
Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
Occasional reading notes delivered to your inbox
|
||||
|
||||
Email address [23][ ] [25][subscribe]
|
||||
• [26]RSS
|
||||
• [27]Colophon
|
||||
• [28]Copyright © 2008-2024 Mandy Brown
|
||||
• [29]mandy@aworkinglibrary.com
|
||||
• [30]@aworkinglibrary
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://everythingchanges.us/
|
||||
[2] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading
|
||||
[3] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing
|
||||
[4] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking
|
||||
[5] https://aworkinglibrary.com/about
|
||||
[6] https://aworkinglibrary.com/subscribe
|
||||
[7] https://aworkinglibrary.com/
|
||||
[8] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
|
||||
[9] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/always-coming-home
|
||||
[10] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/out-of-time
|
||||
[11] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/202408071000
|
||||
[12] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/202408301732
|
||||
[13] https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/202409090848
|
||||
[14] https://indieweb.org/POSSE
|
||||
[15] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/smoke-screen
|
||||
[16] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/who-we-wish-to-become
|
||||
[17] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/unified-theory-of------
|
||||
[18] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/circe
|
||||
[19] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/always-coming-home
|
||||
[20] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/always-coming-home
|
||||
[21] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/circe
|
||||
[22] https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/circe
|
||||
[26] https://aworkinglibrary.com/feed/index.xml
|
||||
[27] https://aworkinglibrary.com/colophon/
|
||||
[28] https://aworkinglibrary.com/copyright/
|
||||
[29] mailto:mandy@aworkinglibrary.com
|
||||
[30] https://mstdn.social/@aworkinglibrary
|
||||
555
static/archive/freddiedeboer-substack-com-wmatij.txt
Normal file
555
static/archive/freddiedeboer-substack-com-wmatij.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,555 @@
|
||||
[1][https]
|
||||
|
||||
[2]Freddie deBoer
|
||||
|
||||
SubscribeSign in
|
||||
Share this post
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
|
||||
To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
|
||||
|
||||
freddiedeboer.substack.com
|
||||
Copy link
|
||||
Facebook
|
||||
Email
|
||||
Note
|
||||
Other
|
||||
|
||||
To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
|
||||
|
||||
[13][https]
|
||||
[14]Freddie deBoer
|
||||
Sep 16, 2024
|
||||
208
|
||||
Share this post
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
|
||||
To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
|
||||
|
||||
freddiedeboer.substack.com
|
||||
Copy link
|
||||
Facebook
|
||||
Email
|
||||
Note
|
||||
Other
|
||||
[21]
|
||||
159
|
||||
[22]
|
||||
Share
|
||||
[23]
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
we’re all just one more card in the catalog, man
|
||||
|
||||
Scott Alexander has [24]responded to my advice that we should not imagine
|
||||
ourselves to be living in some sort of revolutionary epoch. You can decide for
|
||||
yourself if he’s convincing. I continue to maintain the basic point that a) we
|
||||
are definitionally more likely to live in ordinary times than extraordinary and
|
||||
b) we are conditioned to overstate our own uniqueness and importance, not even
|
||||
as a matter of intellect or character but as a basic reality of cognitive
|
||||
science, a consequence of living as a consciousness. I would say that, for one
|
||||
thing, his schema would suggest that someone living in the 1810s or 1860s or
|
||||
1910s had just as much cause to think that they lived in extraordinary times as
|
||||
we do, and yet Alexander certainly seems to think that now is more important
|
||||
than then. I do want to address this one point.
|
||||
|
||||
Freddie sort of starts thinking in this direction[25]^6, but shuts it down
|
||||
on the grounds that some people think technological growth rates have
|
||||
slowed down since the mid-20th century. Usually the metric that gets
|
||||
brought out to support this is changes in total factor productivity, which
|
||||
do show the mid-20th century as a more dynamic period than today. So fine,
|
||||
let’s do the same calculation with total productivity. My impression from
|
||||
eyeballing [26]this paper is that about 35% of all increase in TFP growth
|
||||
and 15% of all log TFP growth has still happened during Freddie’s lifetime.
|
||||
|
||||
Let’s take as given the claim in the last sentence is true: it’s still
|
||||
inarguable that meaningful technological growth has dramatically slowed in the
|
||||
last 50 years compared to the 100 prior years, to choose an arbitrary but
|
||||
useful comparison. And if that’s true, it suggests that the notion of
|
||||
continuous exponential human growth is nonsense. And if that’s true, it doesn’t
|
||||
in and of itself disprove the narrative that ChatGPT is the Mahdi and will
|
||||
usher us into paradise, but it does make the overarching narrative of a simple
|
||||
exponential climb into a godlike metahuman future harder to maintain. If human
|
||||
development has already slowed significantly, shouldn’t that suggest that it
|
||||
may very well slow further?
|
||||
|
||||
I will again refer people to Robert J. Gordon’s [27]The Rise & Fall of American
|
||||
Growth, which is where the 1870-1970 and then 1970-current split is best
|
||||
articulated. I read it, and it’s a classic academic book that ponderously pours
|
||||
data on to the same basic observations over and over again. (Just like, for
|
||||
example, Capital in the Twenty-First Century and many many others.) That’s what
|
||||
an academic book of that type is meant to do; It’s just that I don’t expect
|
||||
anyone else to feel moved to read it. What makes it so valuable, though, is
|
||||
that Gordon spends so much time looking at very specific economic segments and
|
||||
not just demonstrating that productivity and growth have slowed but why they’ve
|
||||
slowed in very specific terms. And I can’t point to a single piece of evidence
|
||||
that does a better job than that book. I would, however, suggest that some
|
||||
common sense would be useful here. I’ll spare you from doing my “time traveler
|
||||
from 1910 traveling to 1960 vs a time traveler from 1960 traveling to 2010” bit
|
||||
in the main text, but you can read it in a footnote below.[28]1 The fundamental
|
||||
observation is simply that beyond the various productivity and growth numbers,
|
||||
the lived experience of being human changed dramatically more from 1870ish
|
||||
through 1970ish than in the 50ish years since then. To repeat myself, a vast
|
||||
majority of what we call the advances of modernity stem directly from the
|
||||
development of cheap, stable, relatively safe, reliable refined fossil fuels,
|
||||
from electricity generation to cars to planes to modern heating systems to
|
||||
fertilizers.
|
||||
|
||||
[29]
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
[30]source
|
||||
|
||||
What I’m suggesting is that people trying to insist that we are on the verge of
|
||||
a species-altering change in living conditions and possibilities, and who point
|
||||
to this kind of chart to do so, are letting the scale of these charts obscure
|
||||
the fact that the transition from the original iPhone to the iPhone 14 (fifteen
|
||||
years apart) is not anything like the transition from Sputnik to Apollo 17
|
||||
(fifteen years apart), that they just aren’t remotely comparable in human
|
||||
terms. The internet is absolutely choked with these dumb charts, which would
|
||||
make you think that the technological leap from the Apple McIntosh to the
|
||||
hybrid car was dramatically more meaningful than the development from the
|
||||
telescope to the telephone. Which is fucking nutty! If you think this chart is
|
||||
particularly bad, go pick another one. They’re all obviously produced with the
|
||||
intent of convincing you that human progress is going to continue to scale
|
||||
exponentially into the future forever. But a) it would frankly be bizarre if
|
||||
that were true, given how actual history actually works and b) we’ve already
|
||||
seen that progress stall out, if we’re only honest with ourselves about what’s
|
||||
been happening. It may be that people are correct to identify contemporary
|
||||
machine learning as the key technology to take us to Valhalla. But I think the
|
||||
notion of continuous exponential growth becomes a lot less credible if you
|
||||
recognize that we haven’t even maintained that growth in the previous
|
||||
half-century.
|
||||
|
||||
And the way we talk here matters a great deal. I always get people accusing me
|
||||
of minimizing recent development. But of course I understand how important
|
||||
recent developments have been, particularly in medicine. If you have a young
|
||||
child with cystic fibrosis, their projected lifespan has changed dramatically
|
||||
just in the past year or two. But at a population level, recent improvements to
|
||||
average life expectancy just can’t hold a candle to the era that saw the
|
||||
development of modern germ theory and the first antibiotics and modern
|
||||
anesthesia and the first “dead virus” vaccines and the widespread adoption of
|
||||
medical hygiene rules and oral contraception and exogenous insulin and heart
|
||||
stents, all of which emerged in a 100 year period. This is the issue with
|
||||
insisting on casting every new development in world-historic terms: the
|
||||
brick-and-mortar chip-chip-chip of better living conditions and slow progress
|
||||
gets devalued.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
I listened to the [31]latest episode of Derek Thompson’s (highly recommended)
|
||||
Plain English podcast, with DeepMind researcher Pushmeet Kohli. Kohli and his
|
||||
colleagues are using machine learning in drug discovery, particularly through
|
||||
the [32]protein folding that’s such an essential element of developing new
|
||||
medicines. This work, they demonstrate, is well-suited to what modern large
|
||||
language models can do. It’s also one of the very, very few places where the
|
||||
hype for these systems might actually be warranted; the vast majority of
|
||||
breathlessly-discussed “AI” possibilities would not even be particularly
|
||||
transformative if they came to pass, which most of them won’t. (AI doomerism
|
||||
relies on the idea that consciousness, superintelligence, and ill intent will
|
||||
prove to be “emergent” properties of LLMs, which no one can articulate in
|
||||
remotely rigorous terms and which most actual LLM researchers dismiss as
|
||||
nonsense.) Drug discovery is definitely a big deal and these tools seem very
|
||||
promising. The question Derek didn’t ask is, I think, a central one: why call
|
||||
this “artificial intelligence” at all? Nothing that DeepMind is working on
|
||||
requires “emergence.” Their tools are not agentic/choice-making. They have no
|
||||
consciousness, nor are they required to in order to fulfill their purpose.
|
||||
They’re very powerful systems built on very powerful algorithms but that’s
|
||||
fundamentally what they are, systems built on algorithms. So where does
|
||||
intelligence come in at all, and why is it necessary?
|
||||
|
||||
This is part of the basic poverty of the current “AI” discourse - the core
|
||||
concept of agentic, self-directed, learning, and conscious computer technology
|
||||
has given way to just any instance of “a computer doing complicated stuff.”
|
||||
DeepMind is developing a potentially profoundly-useful technology built on
|
||||
algorithms that appear to work. Why is that not enough? Algorithms that work
|
||||
are good enough.
|
||||
|
||||
In the podcast, Derek says that GPT has mapped human language. I would push
|
||||
back against that, forcefully - a map is not probabilistic. You can have a
|
||||
better or a worse map, but a map is not fundamentally stochastic and GPT’s
|
||||
understanding of language will always have error bars, due to its basic
|
||||
architecture. This is why “AI” has conspicuously failed in one of the many
|
||||
tasks it is confidently asserted to be on the brink of solving, which is
|
||||
producing a complete and functioning syntax for the grammar of a human
|
||||
language. This was exactly Chomsky’s point when he and colleagues [33]critiqued
|
||||
ChatGPT; the modern era of linguistics began precisely when he and his
|
||||
generation came to understand that language is rule-bound in a way that is
|
||||
fundamentally neurological and probably genetic. (Which is to say, it does not
|
||||
rely on the ingestion of data, hence the [34]poverty of the stimulus.) And
|
||||
that’s precisely what LLMs don’t do, proceed from a list of static rules and
|
||||
build understanding step-wise. If they did, tech companies wouldn’t be where
|
||||
they are now, which is trying to somehow ingest more language data than has
|
||||
ever been produced by all human beings combined in the history of the world.
|
||||
|
||||
What unites the two preceding paragraphs is simply this: my confusion as to why
|
||||
reality itself is never good enough. Why does our culture insist on overselling
|
||||
and overhyping when there are genuinely impressive developments happening? Is
|
||||
it just literally about stock prices? I think it might literally be about stock
|
||||
prices.
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
Here’s some things I think, without any particular qualifications to think
|
||||
them.
|
||||
|
||||
• The speed of light is an actual hard speed limit; various sci-fi tricks
|
||||
like warp drive and traveling through wormholes have immense practical and
|
||||
theoretical barriers to being usable and I don’t think they’ll ever be
|
||||
overcome
|
||||
|
||||
• Time travel into the past actually is impossible, which is why no one has
|
||||
ever come back to tell us about it
|
||||
|
||||
• Even if we achieve speeds on the order of (say) 10% of the speed of light,
|
||||
which we almost certainly can’t for simple relativity reasons, traveling to
|
||||
potentially habitable stars will take hundreds of years; we have no reason
|
||||
to believe that cryofreeze/stasis/etc technologies are actually achievable;
|
||||
multigenerational interstellar travel is likely impossible for all the
|
||||
reasons Kim Stanley Robinson lays out [35]here; we will therefore never
|
||||
colonize the stars and in the exceedingly unlikely event that we survive to
|
||||
see it, we’ll die when our sun expands to become a red giant; we might mine
|
||||
or colonize planets or moons in our solar system, but that won’t
|
||||
fundamentally change human life
|
||||
|
||||
• There’s very likely other life in the universe, even intelligent life, but
|
||||
given that the cosmic speed limit will apply to them too, we’ll never meet
|
||||
with any of them physically, and given the distances involved synchronous
|
||||
communication is essentially impossible
|
||||
|
||||
• Quantum entanglement won’t allow for faster-than-light communication for
|
||||
the reasons enumerated in [36]this video
|
||||
|
||||
• We don’t live in a simulation
|
||||
|
||||
• Even if there are many worlds/multiple dimensions we’ll never experience
|
||||
them directly and thus they’ll have no practical impact on our lives
|
||||
|
||||
• We’ll never “upload” our consciousness into computers to live forever,
|
||||
which suggests that there is some such thing as our consciousness separate
|
||||
from the physiological structures that contain it, which is a dualist
|
||||
fantasy
|
||||
|
||||
• Artificial intelligences of various kinds will develop and emerge and have
|
||||
meaningful consequences for humans and improve quality of life, but they
|
||||
won’t somehow enable us to transcend the physical limitations of the
|
||||
material world, that is, no free energy, no breaking the laws of physics,
|
||||
no eternal life
|
||||
|
||||
• We’re all going to die, and it’s going to feel far too soon for almost all
|
||||
of us.
|
||||
|
||||
Look, stuff is gonna happen. Technology is going to grow. A lot of it will be
|
||||
good and some of it will be bad. I don’t doubt, for example, that in a hundred
|
||||
years the science of human genomic editing will fundamentally transform many
|
||||
elements of human life and, in particular, undermine basic human notions of
|
||||
“meritocracy” and just deserts. Obviously, that could go do a lot of bad as
|
||||
well as a lot of good. I could also easily see a world, even in a decade or
|
||||
two, where a significant chunk of the human population spends almost all of its
|
||||
time in virtual reality and essentially disconnects from actual human life;
|
||||
that sounds straightforwardly bad, to me, and would justify [37]anti-tech
|
||||
terrorism. One way or another life is gonna change. Human beings will change.
|
||||
Life expectancy is going to increase. We’re gonna have a lot of cool new toys.
|
||||
But, fundamentally, we live in a mundane universe and that will never change.
|
||||
|
||||
And, crucially, it’s our nature to adapt to make the extraordinary seem
|
||||
mundane. I’m a big believer in a steady state/thermostatic concept of
|
||||
happiness, which suggests that we mostly have our own individual levels of
|
||||
default life satisfaction and we tend to gravitate to that level over time.
|
||||
It’s not that events just don’t matter for how we feel; if you fall in love
|
||||
you’ll feel more happy and if you go to prison you’ll feel more unhappy. Of
|
||||
course you can make your life better and be an incrementally happier person. I
|
||||
have, over the course of my own life. But we reliably, slowly adapt to change
|
||||
and float back towards our baseline level of life satisfaction. And with
|
||||
technology, particularly, things that seem remarkable come to seem boring at a
|
||||
relentless pace. Smartphone sales have slowed because we’ve wrung all the
|
||||
innovation out of them that we can and people now see them as commodities.
|
||||
Who’s excited to upgrade from a Galaxy Sx to a Galaxy Sx+1, no matter how
|
||||
remarkable the underlying technology? The PlayStation 5 Pro is an absolutely
|
||||
remarkable piece of human ingenuity, and yet many people feel cynical and
|
||||
underwhelmed about it, and I don’t blame them. The Nintendo64, now, that felt
|
||||
revolutionary. Is that fair, the ever-ratcheting expectations game? Doesn’t
|
||||
matter. It’s human nature.
|
||||
|
||||
Ultimately, I do want to tell people to please try and chill out, yes. No, I
|
||||
don’t think AI Jesus is about to come and initiate the Rapture, and the desire
|
||||
for that to be true seems to be derived from very naked psychological needs. We
|
||||
live in a mundane world, a world of homework and waiting for the bus and
|
||||
sorting the recyclables and doing the laundry and holding your shirt over your
|
||||
nose when you enter a public bathroom and trying to find a credit card that
|
||||
offers a slightly better points program. It just keeps going, day after day
|
||||
after grinding day. You never get removed from it, never escape it. And yes,
|
||||
there’s transcendence and beauty and fun and satisfaction and growth and
|
||||
meaning, all of it! But you find that all in the mundane, generally; those few
|
||||
who spend their lives in a state of constant stimulation and novelty, well, God
|
||||
bless them. Most of the time they didn’t get there through their choices but
|
||||
through random chance. I’m saying all of this because I think a lot of people
|
||||
spend their time yearning for some great fissure in their lives where there’s a
|
||||
massive and permanent division between the before and the after, and all of
|
||||
this AI stuff is giving rational people an excuse to be irrational. (Of course,
|
||||
this is the number two fantasy behind the great American civic religion,
|
||||
“Someday, I’ll be a celebrity.”)
|
||||
|
||||
You have to imagine a life you can live with, where you are, when you are. If
|
||||
you don’t, you’ll never be satisfied. Neither AI nor anything else is coming to
|
||||
save you from the things you don’t like about being a person. The better life
|
||||
you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by
|
||||
your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own
|
||||
expectations. You live here. This is it. That’s what I would tell to everyone
|
||||
out there: this is it. This is it. This is it. You’re never going to hang out
|
||||
with Mr. Data on the Holodeck. I know that, for a lot of people, mundane
|
||||
reality is everything they want to escape. But it could be so much worse.
|
||||
|
||||
[38]1
|
||||
|
||||
A person living in the United States the 1910s would be someone who
|
||||
|
||||
• Very likely did not have indoor plumbing, meaning they used an outhouse,
|
||||
got water from a well, could not routinely bathe or wash their hands, and
|
||||
was subject to all manner of illness for these reasons, to say nothing of
|
||||
the unpleasant nature of lacking these amenities
|
||||
|
||||
• Almost certainly did not have an electrified home, the consequences of
|
||||
which are obviously numerous and significant compared to modern existence
|
||||
|
||||
• Had no artificial refrigeration at all and relied on blocks of delivered
|
||||
ice where possible, which when combined with a lack of modern food
|
||||
production regulation and hygienic storage led to vastly higher rates of
|
||||
foodborne illness
|
||||
|
||||
• Got around by horse and cart for anything nearby, taking hours to go more
|
||||
than a few miles; got around by train for anything domestic and far away,
|
||||
remarkably fast in many ways but still slow compared to plane travel and on
|
||||
set schedules and from and to a certain set number of places; got around by
|
||||
steamship if having to travel over water, which was very expensive for
|
||||
ordinary people and glacially slow compared to modern methods
|
||||
|
||||
• Could expect to see their children die at a rate of about 15% in the first
|
||||
year of life and could expect to die themselves (as the mother) or their
|
||||
partner to die (as the father) at a rate of about 1%
|
||||
|
||||
• Had a life expectancy of about 45 to 50 years if a man and about 50 to 55
|
||||
years if a woman, and faced the looming threat of the 1918 influenza
|
||||
pandemic (which killed something like 700,000 Americans) to say nothing of
|
||||
the constant threats of polio (27,000 cases in the 1916 outbreak alone),
|
||||
tuberculosis (200,000 new American cases a year and 100,000-150,000 deaths
|
||||
a year in the 1910s), and all manner of infectious diseases that are now
|
||||
eminently treatable
|
||||
|
||||
• Did not yet have commercial radio, though ham radio technology existed (for
|
||||
those with access to electricity); nor was there television, obviously;
|
||||
only 10% of households had a telephone; telegraph technology existed and
|
||||
was remarkably sophisticated but not very accessible
|
||||
|
||||
I could go on. Let’s say we teleport our 1910 fellow to 1960.
|
||||
|
||||
• Outside of a few stubborn places in the deep South and some truly
|
||||
out-of-the-way rural locales, almost all American homes have indoor
|
||||
plumbing, which allows for using a flush toilet, washing your hands,
|
||||
regularly taking showers or baths, and having handy access to clean water
|
||||
for drinking and cooking
|
||||
|
||||
• The vast majority of American homes are electrified, allowing for indoor
|
||||
artificial lighting without the fumes or dangers of oil-based light, along
|
||||
with a myriad of household gadgets and devices
|
||||
|
||||
• Most American homes have refrigerators, expanding the kinds of foods that
|
||||
are practical accessible (with help from modern supply lines and
|
||||
transportation) and seriously reducing the risks of food poisoning and
|
||||
similar ills
|
||||
|
||||
• 80+% of American households have a car, dramatically expanding the
|
||||
geographical range that can be traveled, reducing transportation time in
|
||||
all manner of contexts, and making long commutes for work practically
|
||||
possible, albeit with major consequences for safety and the environment
|
||||
|
||||
• The infant mortality rate in the first year of life has plunged to 2.6%,
|
||||
while the maternal mortality rate has fallen to less than .05%.
|
||||
|
||||
• Men’s life expectancy has grown to more than 65 years and women’s to about
|
||||
73 years; the incidence of new cases of polio had fallen to about 3,000 by
|
||||
1960 and in the next several years the disease would be essentially
|
||||
eradicated from the United States; there were some 84,000 new cases of
|
||||
tuberculosis, almost all of them in rural and impoverished areas, and the
|
||||
survival rate was meaningfully higher; ordinary Americans now had a decent
|
||||
shot at having access to chemotherapy, antibiotics, heart bypass surgery….
|
||||
|
||||
• 90% of American households have a radio, better than 85% have a television,
|
||||
bringing information and entertainment into the homes of millions; 90% have
|
||||
a telephone, enabling instant peer-to-peer communication with a vast
|
||||
network and dramatically improving the capability of emergency services,
|
||||
practical access to information, the ability to socialize and connect with
|
||||
those who are geogrpahically distance, etc etc….
|
||||
|
||||
Again, I could go on. The 1910 person would find the world utterly transformed.
|
||||
The interstate highway system, in and of and by itself, is a change that’s
|
||||
absolutely massive in the most practical and physical and meaningful terms.
|
||||
Every aspect of life has changed in deep, obvious, material ways. Now let’s
|
||||
take someone from 1960 to 2010.
|
||||
|
||||
• It is still the case that almost all American households have indoor
|
||||
plumbing; the number without has fallen, but because of ceiling effects the
|
||||
amount of change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960; indoor plumbing
|
||||
has already been accomplished
|
||||
|
||||
• It is still the case that almost all American households have electricity;
|
||||
the number without has fallen, but because of ceiling effects the amount of
|
||||
change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960; electrification has
|
||||
already been accomplished
|
||||
|
||||
• Most American homes still have refrigerators; they’re nicer and bigger and
|
||||
more energy efficient but they do the same thing; regulatory standards are
|
||||
maybe, maybe, maybe a little better?; the range of foods available has
|
||||
increased, maybe the quality, but the change is vastly smaller than from
|
||||
1910 to 1960
|
||||
|
||||
• The percentage of American households with cars has risen to 90%. That
|
||||
increase is meaningful but doesn’t represent any revolutionary change to
|
||||
average living conditions. The cars are way, way safer and nicer than those
|
||||
in 1960, but they’re still almost exclusively burning fossil fuels and
|
||||
otherwise function in the same way that they did in the 1960s. The
|
||||
interstate system has expanded but someone driving on it in 2010 might not
|
||||
even notice any difference since 1960
|
||||
|
||||
• The infant mortality rate has fallen from 26 per 1000 in 1960 to 6 per 1000
|
||||
in 2010. That’s a lot! But it’s very small compared to the improvement from
|
||||
1910 to 1960. Similarly, the maternal mortality rate has improved but from
|
||||
next to nothing to even closer to nothing
|
||||
|
||||
• Men’s life expectancy has grown to about 76.2 years for men and 81 for
|
||||
women; again, meaningful and important but simply not at the same scale as
|
||||
from 1910 to 1960
|
||||
|
||||
• Almost everybody has a telephone, but that was true in 1960; almost
|
||||
everybody has a television, but that was true in 2010. They are much more
|
||||
sophisticated and now portable and can access far more content, but in both
|
||||
cases the changes are a matter of refinement and development, not dramatic
|
||||
innovation. In general, information technology has proceeded at a
|
||||
remarkable pace, but in terms of the actual lived experience of human
|
||||
beings, it’s very difficult to argue that the introduction of the internet
|
||||
etc can keep pace with the immense practical and material changes
|
||||
introduced in the previous era.
|
||||
|
||||
208
|
||||
Share this post
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
|
||||
To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
|
||||
|
||||
freddiedeboer.substack.com
|
||||
Copy link
|
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|
||||
Email
|
||||
Note
|
||||
Other
|
||||
[45]
|
||||
159
|
||||
[46]
|
||||
Share
|
||||
PreviousNext
|
||||
|
||||
159 Comments
|
||||
|
||||
[https]
|
||||
[ ]
|
||||
[51]
|
||||
Feral Finster
|
||||
[52]Feral Finster
|
||||
[53]Sep 16·edited Sep 16
|
||||
|
||||
1. Scott and ACX readers seem to have a beef with you.
|
||||
|
||||
2. I suspect that we are living in revolutionary times, not merely
|
||||
[50] because of impending technological advances, but because the likelihood
|
||||
[https] that the tools we already have will be abused approaches 1:1.
|
||||
|
||||
What we have now would make a Himmler, a Goebbels, a Vyshinskii weep
|
||||
hopt satly pony tears of joy and envy. Already, people of influence and
|
||||
authority are licking their chops.
|
||||
|
||||
Expand full comment
|
||||
Reply
|
||||
Share
|
||||
|
||||
[55]21 replies by Freddie deBoer and others
|
||||
|
||||
[57]
|
||||
BronxZooCobra
|
||||
[58]Sep 16
|
||||
|
||||
There is also the other side of the argument where people are
|
||||
[56] incredibly uncomfortable with all the magic and wonder that will occur
|
||||
[https] after they are gone. It’s more comforting to think the future will
|
||||
resemble the now than to think of all that will be that one won’t be
|
||||
around to experience.
|
||||
|
||||
Expand full comment
|
||||
Reply
|
||||
Share
|
||||
|
||||
[60]14 replies
|
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[76]Privacy ∙ [77]Terms ∙ [78]Collection notice
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[79] Start Writing[80]Get the app
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[81]Substack is the home for great culture
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References:
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[1] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
|
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[2] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
|
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[13] https://substack.com/profile/12666725-freddie-deboer
|
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[14] https://substack.com/@freddiedeboer
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[21] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comments
|
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[22] javascript:void(0)
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[23] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff6232ab1-1a24-4290-b3b9-1de9025d9c13_4500x2233.png
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||||
[24] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism
|
||||
[25] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism#footnote-6-148609720
|
||||
[26] https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/55043/1/s40797-023-00221-x%20%281%29.pdf
|
||||
[27] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175805/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-growth
|
||||
[28] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe#footnote-1-148918222
|
||||
[29] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffba9fb25-337a-43be-8b21-570a4cfe95fc_850x509.png
|
||||
[30] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353714693_A_Technology_Countdown_Approach_To_Historical_Timelines
|
||||
[31] https://open.spotify.com/episode/49QLyJeU56X1DYRhFk0x2S?si=5ebcb656a9f245b7
|
||||
[32] https://comis.med.uvm.edu/VIC/coursefiles/MD540/MD540-Protein_Organization_10400_574581210/Protein-org/Protein_Organization8.html
|
||||
[33] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html
|
||||
[34] https://web.archive.org/web/20130921205122id_/http://www.philosophy.dept.shef.ac.uk/papers/POS.pdf
|
||||
[35] https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html
|
||||
[36] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLqk7uaENAY&t=166s&pp=ygUgY29vbCB3b3JsZHMgcXVhbnR1bSBlbnRhbmdsZW1lbnQ%3D
|
||||
[37] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/ants-in-the-server-racks-21st-century
|
||||
[38] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe#footnote-anchor-1-148918222
|
||||
[45] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comments
|
||||
[46] javascript:void(0)
|
||||
[50] https://substack.com/profile/2255172-feral-finster
|
||||
[51] https://substack.com/profile/2255172-feral-finster
|
||||
[52] https://feralfinster313120.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=comment_metadata
|
||||
[53] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182752
|
||||
[55] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182752
|
||||
[56] https://substack.com/profile/19997282-bronxzoocobra
|
||||
[57] https://substack.com/profile/19997282-bronxzoocobra
|
||||
[58] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182974
|
||||
[60] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182974
|
||||
[61] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comments
|
||||
[76] https://substack.com/privacy
|
||||
[77] https://substack.com/tos
|
||||
[78] https://substack.com/ccpa#personal-data-collected
|
||||
[79] https://substack.com/signup?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=footer
|
||||
[80] https://substack.com/app/app-store-redirect?utm_campaign=app-marketing&utm_content=web-footer-button
|
||||
[81] https://substack.com/
|
||||
[88] https://enable-javascript.com/
|
||||
67
static/archive/macwright-com-6wqpgh.txt
Normal file
67
static/archive/macwright-com-6wqpgh.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
|
||||
[1]Tom MacWright
|
||||
|
||||
tom@macwright.com
|
||||
|
||||
[2]Tom MacWright
|
||||
|
||||
• [3]Writing
|
||||
• [4]Reading
|
||||
• [5]Photos
|
||||
• [6]Projects
|
||||
• [7]Drawings
|
||||
• [8]Micro⇠
|
||||
• [9]About
|
||||
|
||||
Crypto's missing plateau of productivity
|
||||
|
||||
2024-09-15
|
||||
|
||||
I think that even the most overhyped technology usually delivers some benefit
|
||||
to the world. And often succeeds quietly, long after the hype has died. Recent
|
||||
examples include 3D printing, which has found massive success in prototyping,
|
||||
medical applications - a friend had a filling 3D-printed right in his doctor’s
|
||||
office - and niche consumer items. Etsy is awash with 3D printed lamps, some
|
||||
[10]even that I own. Or drones, which are now used all the time in news
|
||||
coverage, on job sites, and by people filming themselves hiking.
|
||||
|
||||
I suspect that even if Augmented Reality doesn’t take off, it’ll leave in its
|
||||
wake big advances in miniaturized projectors, improved optics, and scene
|
||||
understanding algorithms in computer vision and ML. The internet of things
|
||||
didn’t really work and most people’s Alexa speakers are only used for setting
|
||||
alarms, but the hype-wave did justify the deployment of much-needed
|
||||
technologies like IPv6, Zigbee, and BLE.
|
||||
|
||||
So, the thought is: none of this applies to crypto. It didn’t work, and it also
|
||||
didn’t fund the development of any lasting technological advance. There’s no
|
||||
legacy. The crypto industry’s research didn’t create new foundations for
|
||||
building decentralized databases. Next-generation cryptography kept rolling on,
|
||||
and, as far as I know, none of it owes much to the cryptocurrency industry.
|
||||
Nothing new has been discovered about economics: as Matt Levine says, [11]“One
|
||||
thing that I say frequently around here is that crypto keeps learning the
|
||||
lessons of traditional finance at high speed.” It’s hard to name anything of
|
||||
value that came out of this hype wave. We incinerated all that investment, and
|
||||
randomly redistributed some wealth, and… what else?
|
||||
|
||||
The best I can come up with is the popularization of [12]zero-knowledge proofs,
|
||||
which play some role in Zerocash and Ethereum but are a fundamental advance in
|
||||
security and have other applications.
|
||||
|
||||
Maybe there’s something I’m missing? But it reminds me of [13]the end of Burn
|
||||
After Reading: “What did we learn? We learned not to do it again.”
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://macwright.com/
|
||||
[2] https://macwright.com/
|
||||
[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
|
||||
[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
|
||||
[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
|
||||
[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
|
||||
[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
|
||||
[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
|
||||
[9] https://macwright.com/about/
|
||||
[10] https://www.etsy.com/listing/1001875399/aspen-table-lamp-mushroom-lamp-modern?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=3d+printed+lamp&ref=sr_gallery-1-7&bes=1&sts=1&ret=1&content_source=34ccc20e2da3df5906473c82c6fb7ae0e3bcf572%253A1001875399&organic_search_click=1
|
||||
[11] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-08-15/stablecoins-can-have-bank-runs
|
||||
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interactive_zero-knowledge_proof
|
||||
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlA9hmrC8DU
|
||||
44
static/archive/sive-rs-lwvanv.txt
Normal file
44
static/archive/sive-rs-lwvanv.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||
[1]Derek Sivers
|
||||
[2]Articles:
|
||||
|
||||
Wealth = Have ÷ Need
|
||||
|
||||
2024-09-27
|
||||
|
||||
Not a new idea, but just another visualization and reminder.
|
||||
|
||||
Wealth, feeling like you have plenty, is an equation.
|
||||
|
||||
Wealth = Have ÷ Need
|
||||
|
||||
If you have nothing, then focus on having some.
|
||||
|
||||
Once you have some, the easiest way to increase your wealth is to decrease your
|
||||
needs.
|
||||
|
||||
Have 10 but think you need 100? You are poor.
|
||||
|
||||
Have 10 but only need 5? You are wealthy.
|
||||
|
||||
Have 10 but are happy with 1? You are very wealthy.
|
||||
|
||||
Making money depends on other people, so it’s harder. It’s not entirely under
|
||||
your control. It’s an outer game.
|
||||
|
||||
Reducing what you need is easier. It’s entirely under your control. It’s an
|
||||
inner game.
|
||||
|
||||
I used to look for ways to make money, but I haven’t done that in years. Now I
|
||||
keep looking for ways to need less and want less.
|
||||
|
||||
© 2024 [3]Derek Sivers.
|
||||
|
||||
Copy & share: [4]sive.rs/whn
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://sive.rs/
|
||||
[2] https://sive.rs/blog
|
||||
[3] https://sive.rs/
|
||||
[4] https://sive.rs/whn
|
||||
844
static/archive/www-newyorker-com-l1a2a0.txt
Normal file
844
static/archive/www-newyorker-com-l1a2a0.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,844 @@
|
||||
[1]Skip to main content
|
||||
[2]The New Yorker
|
||||
|
||||
• [3]Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
[4]Search
|
||||
|
||||
• [5]The Latest
|
||||
• [6]News
|
||||
• [7]Books & Culture
|
||||
• [8]Fiction & Poetry
|
||||
• [9]Humor & Cartoons
|
||||
• [10]Magazine
|
||||
• [11]Puzzles & Games
|
||||
• [12]Video
|
||||
• [13]Podcasts
|
||||
• [14]Goings On
|
||||
• [15]Festival
|
||||
|
||||
Open Navigation Menu
|
||||
|
||||
Find anything you save across the site in your account [17]
|
||||
|
||||
Close Alert
|
||||
[19]The New Yorker
|
||||
[20]Annals of Design
|
||||
|
||||
The Art of Taking It Slow
|
||||
|
||||
Contemporary cycling is all about spandex and personal bests. The bicycle
|
||||
designer Grant Petersen has amassed an ardent following by urging people to get
|
||||
comfortable bikes, and go easy.
|
||||
By [21]Anna Wiener
|
||||
September 16, 2024
|
||||
|
||||
• [22]
|
||||
• [23]
|
||||
• [24]
|
||||
• [25]
|
||||
• [26]
|
||||
|
||||
A man rides a bike down a dirt path.
|
||||
Petersen has written that bikes can “just about save the world, or at least
|
||||
make you happy.”Photographs by Jake Stangel for The New Yorker
|
||||
Save this story
|
||||
Save this story
|
||||
|
||||
There are places in California that can make a person feel in tune with
|
||||
geological time, newly alert, on the brink of something cosmic. Walnut Creek,
|
||||
an affluent suburb east of [29]San Francisco, is not one of them. Nestled in
|
||||
the foothills of stately Mt. Diablo, the city’s quaint downtown is buffeted by
|
||||
chain retailers and big-box stores. On a recent summer morning, I took the
|
||||
train there to meet Grant Petersen, the bicycle designer, writer, and founder
|
||||
of Rivendell Bicycle Works. Petersen has become famous for making beautiful
|
||||
bikes, using materials and components that his industry has mostly abandoned,
|
||||
and for promoting a vision of cycling that is low-key, functional, anti-car,
|
||||
and anti-corporate. He has polarizing opinions and an outsized influence.
|
||||
Sensing that it would be uncouth to arrive on foot, and wanting to honestly
|
||||
communicate my level of commitment to cycling, I brought my bike: a red
|
||||
nineteen-eighties Nashbar that I purchased in my mid-twenties, rode happily for
|
||||
a decade, and abandoned when I became pregnant and freshly terrified of death.
|
||||
The bike had spent the past two years hanging vertically in the garage, where,
|
||||
from time to time, I accidentally backed into it with the car. The wheels were
|
||||
out of true, and—a separate issue—couldn’t be removed: I had installed locking
|
||||
anti-theft skewers, then lost the key.
|
||||
|
||||
Petersen met me at the BART station. There were ways in which my bike was not
|
||||
up to Rivendell standards: it had sylphlike tires and an over-all look of
|
||||
abandonment. He was polite about the situation. “It’s steel, it has lugs,” he
|
||||
said. Petersen is seventy and muscular, with buttony blue eyes, a gentle smile,
|
||||
and graying hair that gravitates toward the middle of his head, like a cresting
|
||||
wave. That morning, he was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, a red bandanna,
|
||||
and loose pants made by Rivendell’s clothing line, MUSA, which Petersen
|
||||
developed himself. (“They seem to fit like normal pants, thank god,” a
|
||||
description on the Web site reads.) He was riding a Rivendell Roaduno, “a
|
||||
single-ish speed road bike” painted banana-slug yellow, and he set off on the
|
||||
sidewalk, beckoning for me to follow.
|
||||
|
||||
In the past forty years, cycling has increasingly been branded as a form of
|
||||
exercise, one that emphasizes speed, optimization, and competition. On any
|
||||
given morning, in Central, Prospect, and Golden Gate Parks, gangs of
|
||||
white-collar workers—wearing curve-hugging performance apparel and tethered to
|
||||
the cloud by G.P.S.—whiz in circles, cheating the wind. Indoor fitness
|
||||
companies, such as SoulCycle and Peloton, have reinforced the image of cycling
|
||||
as a high-octane cardio workout. Most new, high-end bikes are compact,
|
||||
lightweight, and hyper-responsive, with carbon-fibre frames, drop handlebars,
|
||||
and disk brakes, some of which are hydraulic. One of the bikes recommended by
|
||||
Bicycling magazine last year has a matte-black colorway with “a stealthy
|
||||
aesthetic”: the cables and wires are tucked inside the frame. The bike is
|
||||
advertised as “race bred, built for speed.”
|
||||
|
||||
Petersen believes that the bike industry’s focus on racing—along with
|
||||
“competition and a pervasive addiction to technology”—has had a poisonous
|
||||
influence on cycling culture. He dislikes the widespread marketing to
|
||||
recreational riders of spandex kits, squirty energy gels, and workout apps such
|
||||
as Strava. He thinks that low, curved handlebars contort riders into an
|
||||
unnatural position; that bicycles made of carbon fibre and aluminum have safety
|
||||
issues; and that stretchy synthetics have nothing on seersucker and wool. “The
|
||||
whole purpose of pro riding now is to create a demand at the retail level for
|
||||
the really expensive bicycles,” he said. He sees the glorification of
|
||||
speed—personal bests, constant quantification, metrics, leaderboards—as
|
||||
discouraging to entry-level riders who might otherwise enjoy life with a bike.
|
||||
“I would like to see the Tour de France only allow riders to ride one bike the
|
||||
entire tour,” he said. “Do their own maintenance, change their own flats, the
|
||||
way that normal people have to. Racing would have a positive trickle-down
|
||||
effect, instead of the way it is now. Bikes would be better, they’d be safer,
|
||||
and they would last longer. And the races themselves wouldn’t be less
|
||||
interesting at all.”
|
||||
|
||||
Rivendell’s bicycles are marketed as “UNracing” bikes. The frames are made of
|
||||
lugged, brazed steel. They have long wheelbases, luxurious chainstays, and
|
||||
sloping top tubes. “The rear triangle of his bikes, you could fly a plane
|
||||
through there,” Ashton Lambie, a record-breaking American track cyclist, said
|
||||
admiringly. “Nobody is doing that.” The bikes have playful names—Roadini,
|
||||
Atlantis, Hunqapillar, Susie W. Longbolts—and run roughly from two thousand to
|
||||
five thousand dollars, depending on the build. One of Rivendell’s signatures is
|
||||
the country bike: a rig equally suitable for paved roads and, as the company
|
||||
puts it, “the kinds of fire trails a Conestoga wagon could negotiate, but not
|
||||
the kind that would require a jackass.” Rivendell frames are generally
|
||||
outfitted with upright handlebars, leather saddles, manual shifters, platform
|
||||
pedals, and lush, chubby tires. They are designed to accommodate racks,
|
||||
baskets, fenders, and bags—whatever is useful for cross-country touring, local
|
||||
bike camping, and running errands. “Bikes are turning ugly,” Petersen recently
|
||||
wrote. “I personally have more respect, tons of respect, for somebody who rides
|
||||
around town, to work, for shopping, and for fun, than somebody who does
|
||||
front-flips on handrails with a fifty-foot dropoff on one side.” He is an
|
||||
advocate of pleasurable, unhurried riding—alone, or with family and friends—and
|
||||
is obsessive about comfort. Through the years, Rivendell bicycles have amassed
|
||||
a devoted following. People take portraits of their bikes in stunning natural
|
||||
environments and post them to social media; they “Riv up” non-Rivendell frames;
|
||||
they pore over Petersen’s writing, and adopt his preferences. Adam Leibow, the
|
||||
publisher of Calling in Sick, an “extreme alternative cycling magazine,” told
|
||||
me, “Some people call Rivendell a cult.”
|
||||
|
||||
In Walnut Creek, I tailed Petersen as he pedalled at a leisurely pace back to
|
||||
Rivendell’s headquarters. For the past twenty-six years, the company has
|
||||
occupied a six-bay industrial space in a sleepy area by the highway. One of the
|
||||
bays is a showroom, though it felt less like a sales floor and more like a
|
||||
clubhouse. A mobile of lugs, made by a local teen-ager, twirled from the
|
||||
ceiling. Rows of bicycles leaned nonchalantly against their kickstands.
|
||||
Rivendells are distinctive: they have Kodachrome paint jobs, elegant decals,
|
||||
and delicate metal-inlay head badges—a sort of hood ornament for bikes. The
|
||||
lugs, steel sockets that connect the tubing of a bicycle frame, have patterns
|
||||
and shapes cut into them—a heart, a diamond, the curl of a leaf. Even the fork
|
||||
crowns are pretty. In a 1996 catalogue, Petersen wrote that he likes “the idea
|
||||
of a fine frame being identifiable by brand, even without its paint, decals,
|
||||
and head badge, if it happens to wind up in a junkyard 100 years from now . . .
|
||||
in 2095, a hobo art connoisseur could saunter by, see the frame, pick it up, be
|
||||
drawn to the joints, and say ‘(Burp) Ha!—an old Rivendell.’ ”
|
||||
|
||||
[30]Woman standing in front of giant can of prebiotic soda with door.
|
||||
Cartoon by Lindsey Budde
|
||||
Copy link to cartoon
|
||||
|
||||
Link copied
|
||||
|
||||
Shop
|
||||
|
||||
We were greeted in the showroom by Will Keating, Rivendell’s general manager, a
|
||||
tall lapsed skateboarder in his mid-thirties. He was wearing Vans, Dickies, and
|
||||
a baseball cap embroidered with the Calling in Sick logo. Rivendell has twelve
|
||||
employees, a disproportionate number of whom are into vintage cameras; for a
|
||||
while, the shop had a darkroom. (“Skateboarders tend to follow a trajectory,”
|
||||
Keating told me. “They skate, then they get into photography, then they get
|
||||
into bicycles, and then they get into birding.”) On the wall, there were
|
||||
monochrome photos of Petersen’s employees and their friends: well-dressed,
|
||||
tattooed, and helmetless, they rolled through groves of oak and eucalyptus, and
|
||||
pedalled along sun-dappled ridges. The photographs looked like an ad for
|
||||
California.
|
||||
|
||||
These days, some mainstream bikes incorporate electronics requiring batteries
|
||||
and firmware: shifters that change gears at the press of a button, or power
|
||||
meters that collect data on a rider’s output. “So many basic things are being
|
||||
teched out of existence,” Petersen said. He saw this as a function of business
|
||||
incentives: electronics break or need replacement; an upgrade is always around
|
||||
the corner. Petersen’s objections are practical but also philosophical. As
|
||||
bikes become higher-tech, riders lose skills and agency. “A lot of sports have
|
||||
been watered down,” [33]Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, told me.
|
||||
“People are bicycling, but they have a motor. And people are climbing, but
|
||||
they’re climbing indoors. They’re riding big waves, but they’re being pulled in
|
||||
by Jet Skis. Yet there are a few people that are bucking the trend.”
|
||||
|
||||
In the Rivendell showroom, a table held a silver bike frame, fitted with
|
||||
shifters and a drivetrain: the system of cranks, chains, pedals, and gears that
|
||||
propels a bicycle. “It gets really sappy if I try to talk about the beauty of a
|
||||
mechanical movement,” Petersen said. “I don’t want to be poetic about it at
|
||||
all. But I think people like to see how things work.” He turned the crank and
|
||||
moved the friction shifter—a small, silent paddle that shifts gears smoothly,
|
||||
“like a ramp rather than stairs,” as the Rivendell Web site describes it—which
|
||||
was the industry standard until the mid-eighties, when index shifting was
|
||||
introduced. We watched the derailleur lift the chain from gear to gear. “It’s
|
||||
so simple and so easy,” he said. “It takes a little bit of practice, and it’s
|
||||
that little bit of practice that dooms it, absolutely dooms it, in the market.”
|
||||
Electronic parts, he said, were cheaper and easier to make, and lowered the bar
|
||||
to entry. “But the thing that’s lost in there—it’s the control that you have.”
|
||||
|
||||
I followed him to his office, a narrow room stuffed neatly with tools, books,
|
||||
fly-fishing supplies, and, on a high shelf, a plastic box full of rare
|
||||
derailleurs. There were two ergonomic kneeling stools; the landline telephone
|
||||
was wrapped in a block of ergonomic foam. By the door to the office was a
|
||||
small, framed color photo of two friendly-looking septuagenarians, standing
|
||||
next to a pair of Rivendell bicycles. “Are those your parents?” I asked. “No,”
|
||||
Petersen said. “That’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.”
|
||||
|
||||
Petersen grew up in Lafayette, California, a suburb one town over from Walnut
|
||||
Creek. His father was a mechanical engineer, and his mother was a painter and a
|
||||
homemaker. Petersen was a well-liked, athletic, outdoorsy kid, and when he
|
||||
describes his childhood—baseball, paper routes, slingshots, pheasant-hunting—it
|
||||
can bring to mind a mid-century Boy Scout Handbook. Still, he felt apart from
|
||||
his peers. “I wet the bed until I was twenty-three,” he said. “It changes your
|
||||
whole point of view toward life.” He never had sleepovers and was shy around
|
||||
girls. The problem, a physiological one, limited his future prospects. When he
|
||||
graduated from high school, in 1972, dorm life seemed impossible. So he stayed
|
||||
home, enrolled at a local junior college, and, in 1975, began working at the
|
||||
newly opened R.E.I. outpost in Berkeley, a hub of the Bay Area’s energetic
|
||||
outdoor-recreation scene. (Petersen said that for a time the company instituted
|
||||
a rule, “No handwritten signs,” after he began taping up long, chatty shelf
|
||||
talkers for products he liked.) He took up mountaineering and rock climbing,
|
||||
and commuted to work on his bicycle, a thirty-mile round trip. In the summer of
|
||||
1976, he and a girlfriend biked across the country, from Walnut Creek to
|
||||
northern Connecticut, and hitchhiked back.
|
||||
|
||||
Throughout his twenties, Petersen raced in local competitions. Chris Watson, a
|
||||
friend and teammate, said, “He probably doesn’t want to tout this fact, but he
|
||||
shaved his legs like the rest of us.” Most of his peers relied on bicycle parts
|
||||
made by Campagnolo, an upscale Italian company, but Petersen couldn’t afford
|
||||
them. “I think I had thirteen different brands and seven different countries
|
||||
represented on my racing bike,” he said. “It was a hodgepodge, but it worked
|
||||
perfectly.” He was talented but ambivalent about competing. “I know the racing
|
||||
scene extremely well, I know the culture really well, I’m comfortable with it,
|
||||
and I hate it,” he told me.
|
||||
|
||||
In 1984, Petersen took an entry-level job at Bridgestone Cycle U.S.A., an
|
||||
offshoot of the Japanese tire conglomerate. Bridgestone was Japan’s largest
|
||||
bicycle manufacturer, but the American office, which had a half-dozen
|
||||
employees, was not staffed by bicycle experts. Petersen and Watson, who worked
|
||||
in the sales department, helped design a bike called the MB-1, which combined
|
||||
the sportiness and speed of a road bike with the strength of a mountain bike.
|
||||
“I had more influence over Bridgestone bicycles than I should have,” Petersen
|
||||
told me. “But nobody knew anything about bicycles except for me.” The bike sold
|
||||
out immediately, and subsequent models from Bridgestone Cycle U.S.A. bear
|
||||
certain hallmarks of a Petersen build. Kyle Kelley, the owner of Allez LA, a
|
||||
bike shop in Los Angeles, described Petersen’s Bridgestone designs as “some of
|
||||
the best race bikes in the history of mountain biking, period.” Petersen became
|
||||
the division’s head of marketing. He formed a subscription club for Bridgestone
|
||||
riders and enthusiasts, the Bridgestone Owners Bunch, and began publishing a
|
||||
newsletter called the BOB Gazette. The newsletter had articles, product
|
||||
listings, Q. & A.s, word games, tips (“next time somebody hoodwinks you into
|
||||
giving a therapeutic massage, do it with a rolling pin”), and a devoted
|
||||
readership. BOBs, as they were known, were thrifty, embraced a D.I.Y. ethos,
|
||||
and valued function over prestige. “I am philosophically for putting cheap,
|
||||
really high-functioning stuff on a bike,” Petersen told me. “A
|
||||
twenty-eight-dollar derailleur on a thirty-five-hundred-dollar bike has a kind
|
||||
of beauty in itself.”
|
||||
|
||||
In 1994, Bridgestone announced that it was shuttering its U.S. bicycle
|
||||
operation. Petersen told me that he had an informal standing job offer from
|
||||
Specialized, a major bicycle manufacturer, but that he couldn’t get excited
|
||||
about the changes in the mainstream market. Production was moving to China.
|
||||
Mountain bikes had begun to draw influence from motocross, incorporating shocks
|
||||
and suspension forks. The introduction of carbon fibre and titanium brought new
|
||||
manufacturers, including aerospace companies, into the industry. “The
|
||||
proportions, designs, paint jobs, graphics were hard for me to embrace,”
|
||||
Petersen said. The timing was not ideal: he and his wife, Mary Anderson, had a
|
||||
five-year-old daughter and were expecting a second child. Still, in the final
|
||||
issue of the BOB Gazette, he announced that he would be forming his own
|
||||
company. “For better or worse, for richer or poorer, Rivendell will reflect my
|
||||
extreme personal taste,” he wrote.
|
||||
|
||||
Within a few months, Petersen raised eighty-nine thousand dollars from friends
|
||||
and family, and set up shop in his garage. Anderson became the company’s
|
||||
vice-president. Rivendell’s first product was beeswax, for lubricating bolt
|
||||
threads; Petersen processed it in his kitchen. He began publishing another
|
||||
newsletter, the Rivendell Reader, and distributed it to the old BOB mailing
|
||||
list. “In the simplest terms, I think of bicycles as rideable art that can just
|
||||
about save the world, or at least make you happy,” he told readers. “Yet so
|
||||
many modern bicycles are promoted as tools for self-aggrandizement, status, and
|
||||
hammering the competition to a pulp, and the bikes themselves look like
|
||||
hoodlums, thugs, and ne’er-do-wells.” The Reader was rich with information
|
||||
about bike parts and accessories, and often incorporated Petersen’s non-bicycle
|
||||
interests, as with a short physics primer on “Why a Boomerang Boomerangs,”
|
||||
written by a boomerang designer. The newsletter also included a column titled
|
||||
“Progress Report,” a detailed journal of the company’s development.
|
||||
Financially, Rivendell was almost always in the red. “We’re forging ahead with
|
||||
little projects that cost loot but will pay off down the road—all stuff a
|
||||
financial advisor would advise against, I’m sure,” Petersen wrote, in 1999, at
|
||||
a low point. “But the lugs are so fun, and it’s so ironic that here we are
|
||||
doing them in an age when almost nobody gives a hoot. It’s tragic and funny at
|
||||
the same time.”
|
||||
|
||||
A few days after I met Petersen, I went downstairs to retrieve the mail and
|
||||
found a cardboard box containing what can only be described as a dossier: old
|
||||
Bridgestone catalogues, issues of the BOB Gazette, a nearly complete archive of
|
||||
the Rivendell Reader. The box also included an issue of Outside magazine from
|
||||
1996, in which there was a story about Petersen—a “messiah to cycling
|
||||
Luddites”—under the headline “Lead Us Not Into Titanium.” He’d been styled for
|
||||
the photograph, in baggy jeans and a dark shirt buttoned clerically to the
|
||||
neck. A Post-it had been slapped over the text: “Hate it,” he’d pencilled.
|
||||
“They made me wear the clothes.” In an issue of the Reader from the same year,
|
||||
Petersen responded to the article in his “Progress Report”: “Man, I look like a
|
||||
turkey posing in the damn sunset holding up a frame I didn’t even make myself,
|
||||
and the text has me some kind of damn leader of the *$#@$!#a$#$ ‘flock,’ and
|
||||
that’s so insulting and misdirected and man, it makes me mad. . . . I don’t
|
||||
hate titanium! It’s good material! It’s pretty! No rusto! Bravo! Whatever!
|
||||
Damn!”
|
||||
|
||||
Rivendell’s employees object to descriptions of the company’s following as
|
||||
cultlike. “The other stuff is the cult,” Keating told me. “Putting the suit on,
|
||||
and going as fast as possible, and using the bars like this”—we were sitting at
|
||||
a table, and he hunched over his coffee cup, as if to protect it. “That’s the
|
||||
culty stuff, right? We’re just making nice bikes for regular people.” Still,
|
||||
people kind of get a bug. They buy in. The RBW Owners Bunch, an online forum
|
||||
for fans, has more than five thousand members, and users post on a daily basis.
|
||||
People organize “Riv Rides” in their home towns, and name-check their bikes in
|
||||
their professional bios and Instagram handles. On one afternoon that I visited,
|
||||
employees were nibbling on a large cheesecake from Junior’s, sent by a
|
||||
customer. Leah Peterson, a nurse in southwest Michigan, and the owner of three
|
||||
Platypuses—a curvy, elongated upright country bike—sends themed enamel pins to
|
||||
other Platypus-riding “Riv Sisters.” Some years ago, when she visited the shop,
|
||||
the crew suspended a large cardboard welcome sign from the ceiling; she and
|
||||
Petersen cruised around town on a HubbuHubbuH, Rivendell’s tandem. Several
|
||||
months later, her father died unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism. She was
|
||||
astonished to open the mail and find handwritten notes from the Rivendell
|
||||
staff. “What company sends you a sympathy card when your dad dies?” she asked
|
||||
me.
|
||||
|
||||
[34]Sperm cells travel together.
|
||||
“But I’m not even a natural leader.”
|
||||
Cartoon by Victoria Roberts
|
||||
Copy link to cartoon
|
||||
|
||||
Link copied
|
||||
|
||||
Shop
|
||||
|
||||
An undeniable part of Rivendell’s appeal is Petersen. The guy has an aura. He
|
||||
tends to ride in long-sleeved shirts, pants, and Teva sandals, on bicycles
|
||||
dotted with multicolor nail polish. He wraps some of his handlebars in colorful
|
||||
felt or tape and hemp twine, then shellacs them. (“I like to put a broccoli
|
||||
rubberband amidships,” he has written; it adds grip.) From time to time, he’ll
|
||||
strap poems to his basket or bars, then memorize them on trail rides. A
|
||||
pragmatist, he is a fan of what he calls the S24O, or the sub-twenty-four-hour
|
||||
overnight, a sort of working cyclist’s staycation—“bicycle camping for the time
|
||||
challenged”—in which participants ride into nature near their homes, camp out
|
||||
for one night, and return in the morning. In 2012, he published “Just Ride: A
|
||||
Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike,” which offers advice on cycling
|
||||
technique, diet, fitness, and etiquette (“Be saintlike on the bike path”).
|
||||
Controversially, he is ambivalent about helmets: he believes that most are
|
||||
inadequately padded, sacrificing safety for style; that our cultural obsession
|
||||
with them unfairly places the onus on cyclists, not drivers; and that they
|
||||
instill unearned confidence. (“Don’t risk-compensate,” he told me, as I clipped
|
||||
mine on.) His own helmet, which he wears only occasionally, is augmented with
|
||||
packing foam.
|
||||
|
||||
Petersen keeps a blog, Grant’s Blahg: a freewheeling repository of business
|
||||
updates, how-to tips, personal reflections, bicycle information, appreciative
|
||||
photos of goats, and so on. He takes his interests seriously, and when
|
||||
something captures his attention—fly-fishing, insulin, behavioral psychology—he
|
||||
goes deep. He also has strong feelings about soap (pine tar is best), the
|
||||
figures on American currency (“Put Pooh on a coin”), and spelling bees (“To
|
||||
titillate the audience, the contestants don’t all spell the same words”). He is
|
||||
less dogmatic about e-bikes than one might expect (“Better than a car”). He
|
||||
enjoys wordplay; one Rivendell publication, a twenty-page flyer, excluded the
|
||||
letter “E.” “It’s not about the bike, it’s about the relationship,” Richard
|
||||
Sachs, a master frame builder, told me. “You’re buying Grant. You’re buying
|
||||
Grant’s intellectual property, and his forty or fifty years of staying true to
|
||||
his belief system.”
|
||||
|
||||
Recently, out at a bar with friends, I struck up a conversation with a man in
|
||||
his late thirties, a climate-impact investor named Peter, who was sitting alone
|
||||
at a sidewalk table, drinking a beer. Across from him was a Rivendell: an A.
|
||||
Homer Hilsen frame, with thick tires, side-pull brakes, saddlebags, and
|
||||
built-in lights, which ran on wheel-generated electricity. Peter said that he
|
||||
had wanted it to be an “apocalypse bike”: good for commuting, running errands,
|
||||
and bike camping, but also something he could “hop on after an earthquake and
|
||||
get anywhere, dependent on no one.” He had been taken aback by how often
|
||||
strangers initiated conversations with him about Rivendell; I was the third
|
||||
person to approach him that evening. “Would I have bought this bike if I knew
|
||||
people would talk to me about it multiple times a week?” he asked. Still, a few
|
||||
minutes later, he said he was thinking about buying a second.
|
||||
|
||||
In July, Petersen enlisted his friend Dan Leto to drive us out to Fernandez
|
||||
Ranch, in Martinez, for a trail ride. Petersen is a licensed driver but hates
|
||||
to do it—“It scares me, the thought of hurting somebody”—and estimates that he
|
||||
has spent ninety minutes behind the wheel of a car in the past four years. When
|
||||
Leto arrived at the shop, driving a white nineties Ford Explorer (Eddie Bauer
|
||||
edition), the temperature was ticking toward triple digits. Petersen
|
||||
disappeared into the workroom, and returned with a blue bandanna soaked in cold
|
||||
water, which he tied around my neck, like a tiny cape. That morning, he had
|
||||
taken a sunscreen stick to his face, and his cheeks and forehead were covered
|
||||
in thick white streaks; an equally sopped bandanna hung around his own neck. He
|
||||
looked a little crazy. “Sit behind the airbag,” Petersen instructed, pointing
|
||||
to the front seat; he and Keating, who came along, folded themselves into the
|
||||
back.
|
||||
|
||||
The ranch, a seven-thousand-acre nature reserve, is just off the highway, a few
|
||||
miles from a Chevron refinery. For much of the year, it is grassy and lush,
|
||||
with rolling meadows and riots of wildflowers. But this was midsummer, and the
|
||||
earth was golden, crunchy, and pocked with ground-squirrel holes. In the
|
||||
parking lot, Petersen eyeballed the bicycle he had brought for me, a moss-green
|
||||
Clem Smith Jr., with thick tires and upright bars. The seat was higher than I
|
||||
was used to: I had ridden almost exclusively on pavement, with traffic, and was
|
||||
used to dropping a foot to the ground at short notice. The previous week,
|
||||
trying a Platypus at Rivendell HQ, I had slung a leg over the frame, pushed
|
||||
myself up onto the saddle, and fallen over. Petersen looked at me. “This saddle
|
||||
height is ergonomically fine but psychologically terrifying,” he said, and
|
||||
lowered the seat.
|
||||
|
||||
The ride that Petersen had chosen was short: a series of switchbacks, climbing
|
||||
to an overlook, and then a long, voluptuous descent. In the days leading up to
|
||||
it, he had nervously e-mailed me advice and instructions—on friction-shifting,
|
||||
pedalling uphill, and coasting down steep descents—appended with apologies for
|
||||
being “helicopter-y.” His two daughters are about my age, and I had the feeling
|
||||
that if I hurt myself, consoling him would be the worst part. We started up the
|
||||
narrow trail, moving from an open field to a shaded grove. The highway and
|
||||
refinery fell out of sight. I was slow, and not at peace. On the ascent, I had
|
||||
to walk the Clem a bit, guiding it up the trail like a donkey, and, despite
|
||||
everyone being relentlessly reassuring and kind, I engaged in a little
|
||||
therapeutic self-talk to quell my shame at dragging the pace down.
|
||||
|
||||
About halfway through the ride, I came to a fork in the road. I didn’t know
|
||||
which path the others had taken, and I stood for a while, appreciating the
|
||||
shade of the oak trees, the quiet, the bandanna crisping around my neck. I
|
||||
tried to channel an essay of Petersen’s, written in 2002, on what he calls
|
||||
“underbiking”: taking a bike somewhere it isn’t obviously built to go. “Riding
|
||||
an UB changes how you look at any terrain,” he wrote. “You ride where it lets
|
||||
you ride, walk when it wants you to, and rely more on your growing skills than
|
||||
on the latest technology.” This struck me as a harmonic way of moving through
|
||||
the world—not my way, but whatever. I pushed off, found the group, and followed
|
||||
them down a steep, exhilarating slide. Dry earth sputtered against my calves. I
|
||||
loosened my hold on the brakes. Even in the heat, with friction shifters I
|
||||
didn’t understand how to use, I felt a flicker of my favorite feeling:
|
||||
competence. The wide tires were emboldening; the saddle height was
|
||||
psychologically fine. It was by far the longest, heaviest bicycle I had ever
|
||||
been on, and it moved with a surprising grace.
|
||||
|
||||
We dismounted in the parking lot. The sun returned to being unforgiving. I had
|
||||
no idea what time it was or how long we’d been out. I wanted to do the whole
|
||||
thing again. I looked at my phone: texts from the babysitter, calendar alerts,
|
||||
a moldering heap of e-mails. “Don’t you just feel like a kid again?” Leto
|
||||
asked, as he and Petersen began disassembling the bikes and loading them into
|
||||
the car. I knew what he meant. But I felt, instead, a very adult sense of
|
||||
longing—as if I had just glimpsed, at a deeply inconvenient time, a new and
|
||||
appealing way to live.
|
||||
|
||||
Petersen often cites, as inspiration for Rivendell, a 1972 catalogue for
|
||||
Chouinard Equipment, the precursor to Patagonia. In the catalogue, Yvon
|
||||
Chouinard took his industry to task for the environmental damage of rock
|
||||
climbing and copped to his own culpability, as a purveyor of steel pitons. “I
|
||||
can relate to what he’s trying to do, because I’ve tried to do the same thing,”
|
||||
Chouinard told me, of Petersen. Like Chouinard, who has expressed concern about
|
||||
Patagonia’s size continuing to increase, Petersen is wary of growth. There are
|
||||
only a small number of factories that do things the Rivendell way. Its lugs,
|
||||
which are made using lost-wax casting, are incredibly strong but take a long
|
||||
time to make. The vast majority of the frames are painted by a single person.
|
||||
“I don’t want to dilute anything,” Petersen said. “I don’t want to be like
|
||||
Filson, trying to sell ranch wear to urbanites.”
|
||||
|
||||
Last year, Rivendell brought in four million dollars in revenue. The company
|
||||
sells about fifteen hundred bicycles a year, alongside parts, pants, and other
|
||||
things that Petersen appreciates, including merino-wool socks and sweaters,
|
||||
copies of “[37]The Wind in the Willows,” brass bike bells (“Noisy but
|
||||
friendly”), bandannas (“They come to you stiff”), and Olbas aromatherapy
|
||||
inhalers (“My often congested son-in-law tried it, and within two seconds
|
||||
asked, ‘Is it addicting?’ ”). Rivendell works with a small number of dealers,
|
||||
but sells most of its bicycles directly to customers. The company does not have
|
||||
a large storage facility, and inventory is limited. “I am no businessman, but
|
||||
it does seem like perhaps they are leaving some amount of money on the table if
|
||||
their frames sell out in 4 minutes?!” a friend recently texted me, after
|
||||
failing to secure a Joe Appaloosa during a presale. “I don’t think growth is
|
||||
necessarily good,” Petersen told me. “When you’re making a whole lot of
|
||||
something, with the goal being profits, there are usually compromises.”
|
||||
|
||||
Since 1999, Rivendell has produced Silver, its own line of components, which
|
||||
include friction shifters, cranks, and hubs. Some are “virtual but ethically
|
||||
produced knockoffs” of products that have been discontinued by larger companies
|
||||
such as Shimano and SunTour. “We’re trying to become independent of the big
|
||||
bicycle-parts makers,” Petersen said. “Ten years ago, we could still get stuff
|
||||
that we liked. Twenty years ago, it was easy. Now it’s really hard.” The
|
||||
obsolescence of mechanical parts has been a fixation of his for more than
|
||||
thirty years: at Bridgestone, he kept an “Endangered Species Calendar,” a
|
||||
monthly listing of bicycle parts that appeared to be going out of style. Eben
|
||||
Weiss, the author of the blog Bike Snob NYC, told me, of friction shifters, “If
|
||||
it wasn’t for someone like Grant, you could only get them on eBay. He keeps
|
||||
them alive.” For five years, Rivendell has been working on manufacturing its
|
||||
own derailleur. “He doesn’t make business decisions,” Weiss said. “He makes
|
||||
decisions for the love of cycling.”
|
||||
|
||||
Image may contain Clothing Hat Adult Person Photography Baseball Cap Cap Baby
|
||||
Bicycle Transportation and Vehicle
|
||||
Petersen believes that the bike industry’s focus on racing—along with
|
||||
“competition and a pervasive addiction to technology”—has had a poisonous
|
||||
influence on cycling culture.
|
||||
|
||||
Through the years, some of Petersen’s ideas have filtered into the cycling
|
||||
mainstream. People go on S24Os, and refer to them as such. They take road bikes
|
||||
into the mountains and document their adventures on Instagram, using the
|
||||
hashtag #underbiking. In some corners of the industry, baskets, racks, and
|
||||
thicker tires are popular; Petersen is widely credited with bringing an
|
||||
unfashionable wheel size—the plump, gravel-friendly 650b—back into circulation.
|
||||
Newer brands such as Surly, Crust, and Velo Orange now make similar frames. But
|
||||
some cyclists find Petersen overbearing. They are comfortable in spandex and
|
||||
motivated by a little competition. They don’t mind if their bikes won’t last
|
||||
forever. They have their own joy. Armin Landgraf, the C.E.O. of Specialized,
|
||||
said that his customers like buying professional-tier bikes seen at the Tour de
|
||||
France for a sense of connection with the sport. “It’s a passion,” he said.
|
||||
|
||||
The main critique that Petersen faces is that his preferences are needlessly
|
||||
nostalgic. In 1990, a columnist for Bicycling dubbed Petersen a “retro-grouch,”
|
||||
and joked that he must be a descendant of nineteenth-century penny-farthing
|
||||
riders. (An ardent cyclist of my acquaintance, who underwent his own Rivendell
|
||||
“journey,” told me that he had once worn Petersen’s recommended brand of wool
|
||||
underwear on a multi-week tour: “It didn’t work out well,” he said. “For my
|
||||
butt.”) But the same qualities that provoke this critique are part of
|
||||
Rivendell’s appeal—as is true of other niche, low-tech products that attract
|
||||
dedicated enthusiasts, such as film cameras and vintage watches. “Bikes look
|
||||
very digital these days,” Kelley, of Allez LA, said. “Rivendells look very
|
||||
analog.” He joked that the typical Rivendell customer is someone who “maybe
|
||||
still has a flip phone” and listens to vinyl: “They get a feeling when they see
|
||||
something that doesn’t look new.” Georgena Terry, a famed bicycle designer who
|
||||
specializes in bikes for women, told me that electronic shifting was valuable
|
||||
for some of her older customers, such as those with arthritis. Still, she
|
||||
described Petersen as an “icon” in the industry. “Even people who would never
|
||||
ride one of Grant’s bikes, because they just think they’re too simple, or
|
||||
whatever, still have a great deal of respect for him,” she said.
|
||||
|
||||
In 2018, Petersen posted angrily on the Blahg about the Trump Administration’s
|
||||
[38]family-separation policies, and was surprised when some of his readers
|
||||
pushed back. Later that year, Rivendell began offering discounts to interested
|
||||
Black customers who came into the shop: an effort at anti-racist action, if an
|
||||
imperfect one. In 2020, Petersen formalized the program, calling it Black
|
||||
Reparations Pricing, and started the Black Reparations Fund, a donation pool.
|
||||
Days later, right-wing lawyers accused Rivendell of illegally discriminating
|
||||
against customers based on race. Petersen’s lawyers advised him to shut the
|
||||
program down. The company renamed its charitable fund “Bikes R Fun,” to
|
||||
maintain the same initials; last year, it gave sixty-two thousand dollars to
|
||||
charities. Petersen also fund-raises for individuals, including “Grocery Guy,”
|
||||
a Black checkout worker he met at a local supermarket, and Isabel Galán, a
|
||||
single mother of three living in the South Bronx, whom Petersen read about in a
|
||||
Times article about undocumented women. He is interested in making cycling more
|
||||
inclusive and accessible, although he is aware that the revolution won’t be
|
||||
riding four-thousand-dollar Rivendells. He is currently working on a
|
||||
multivolume book project, “An Illustrated History of the American Bicycle:
|
||||
Riding through Racism, Sexism, Pollution, Politics, and Pop Culture.” It begins
|
||||
with the Big Bang.
|
||||
|
||||
Rivendell’s future isn’t obvious, or even inevitable. “For the first ten years,
|
||||
we were one bad month away from not being able to pay the bills,” Petersen
|
||||
said. Twice, in 2008 and 2018, the company could barely make rent and payroll.
|
||||
Both times, Petersen appealed to customers, who purchased gift cards and other
|
||||
items to reinvigorate cash flow; the second time around, customers bought more
|
||||
than two hundred thousand dollars in store credit. Rivendell could double its
|
||||
prices, Petersen said, but he didn’t want people to get precious. “They
|
||||
wouldn’t use them as everyday bikes,” he said. It was only in 2020 that
|
||||
Rivendell’s finances started to stabilize, after the pandemic-era bicycle boom
|
||||
and a newfound popularity in the Japanese market. (Keating, the general
|
||||
manager, credits Blue Lug, a chain of bike shops in Japan, with much of the
|
||||
company’s current health.) These days, Petersen’s primary concern is getting
|
||||
Rivendell to a place where his employees, if they want to, can stay for the
|
||||
rest of their careers. “I know, and they know, and it’s absolutely clear: if we
|
||||
quit doing what we’re doing, nobody is going to pick it up,” he said. “Nobody’s
|
||||
going to do it.”
|
||||
|
||||
In August, I joined Leibow, from Calling in Sick, for a weekend ride. At about
|
||||
nine in the morning, six of his friends, including Keating, gathered at the
|
||||
base of the Golden Gate Bridge, wearing sweatshirts, plaid button-downs, and
|
||||
Vans slip-ons. A thick fog hung over the bay, cloaking the arches. Seagulls
|
||||
drifted in the wind; cars on the bridge passed into nothing. We were headed
|
||||
into Marin, a popular destination for San Francisco cyclists: on weekends, the
|
||||
roads are inundated with riders in sleek-looking pelotons, who roll up to
|
||||
small-town main drags and, rocking lightly in clipless bike shoes, click-clack
|
||||
into bakeries for halftime refreshments. A few yards away from us, two people
|
||||
with spandex outfits, matching white helmets, and lithe physiques clasped each
|
||||
other against the cold. I thought about something Petersen had written on the
|
||||
Blahg: “A beautiful bicycle in a beautiful biome makes sense.” There was
|
||||
something romantic about the Rivendells. They made the other bikes on the road
|
||||
look mean.
|
||||
|
||||
Petersen had loaned me an A. Homer Hilsen the color of celestine, with upright
|
||||
bars and a metal basket. Leibow and two others were on green Rivendell Clem Ls,
|
||||
a step-through model with an ultra-low top tube, to which Calling in Sick once
|
||||
dedicated an entire issue. One of the Clem owners said that, on a recent ride,
|
||||
a stranger on the trail had heckled him, hollering, “Nice that your sister let
|
||||
you borrow her bike!” Though Rivendell’s customer base has historically skewed
|
||||
middle-aged—the target audience for comfort—during the past decade the company
|
||||
has become popular among younger riders, many of them skateboarders, who have
|
||||
found that the bicycles are fun, and hardy enough, to take off-road. “The brand
|
||||
ethos is about being O.K. with going slow,” Leibow told me. “But the reality
|
||||
is, people who want to go fast go fast, even if it’s on a Rivendell.”
|
||||
|
||||
At a not especially swift pace, we crossed into the hills and started up a
|
||||
paved, curving road, toward the trail. The ground was littered with sardines,
|
||||
presumably dropped by birds. Wild fennel grew along the shoulder; Leibow
|
||||
harvested some fronds to chew on. He and Keating, who have both spent years
|
||||
riding around the Marin Headlands at night, to take advantage of the empty
|
||||
roads, seemed familiar with the area at a near-molecular level. At the
|
||||
trailhead, Keating suggested that we take a little air out of my tires.
|
||||
“Personal preference,” he said. Then we turned onto a rutted, rocky hiking
|
||||
path. We rode to a retired battery, which hung over the Pacific Ocean. A gun
|
||||
pit, filled with water, had been overtaken by newts. Three different brands of
|
||||
gummy bears materialized. The riders leaned over the pool, eyeballing the
|
||||
salamanders, shooting the breeze.
|
||||
|
||||
The strength and fearlessness of the others filled me with an almost
|
||||
indescribable envy. What was it like to leave for a long ride at dusk—or cycle
|
||||
off into the woods with a sleeping bag, a patch kit, and some groceries—and be
|
||||
reasonably assured you’d have a great night? The world seemed divided between
|
||||
two types of people: those with a command of the physical world, and everyone
|
||||
else. The former had confidence, skill, and know-how; the rest of us had
|
||||
YouTube tutorials on removing anti-theft skewers.
|
||||
|
||||
Back in the city, I parted ways with Leibow and company. For the first time in
|
||||
a long time, I had no particular place to be. It was pleasant to be
|
||||
purposeless. As I passed other riders in Golden Gate Park, I was aware that the
|
||||
Homer was signalling like crazy to an in-group, and I felt like a poseur: if
|
||||
someone had a question about, say, the drivetrain, I wouldn’t have an answer.
|
||||
But I wanted to—not for cachet, but because it felt right. I thought about all
|
||||
the ways relentless optimization could contort a good time. I felt a not
|
||||
unfamiliar anxiety about Stuff, its overabundance and baseline cheapness. I
|
||||
tried not to get clipped by an e-bike.
|
||||
|
||||
A few weeks later, I went out to Walnut Creek to return the loaner. Since our
|
||||
last meeting, Petersen and I had exchanged dozens of e-mails: about Virginia
|
||||
peanuts, rubber bands, and a ride he’d taken with his nearly two-year-old
|
||||
granddaughter on a Rosco Bebe—a Rivendell designed to hold a baby
|
||||
carrier—during which he’d fed her berries and figs foraged from the saddle.
|
||||
“Bicycles!” he wrote, at one point. “Eventually get a really good one that
|
||||
works for your life and is beautiful and you love. It’s just basic.” When I got
|
||||
to the showroom, my red Nashbar was leaning against a wall. Amid the
|
||||
Rivendells, it looked a little wan, and much smaller than I remembered. I was
|
||||
happy to see it. Still, before I left, Petersen sent me around the block on a
|
||||
grape-purple Platypus. I cruised past the auto-body shops and a restaurant
|
||||
puffing anise-scented air. The Platypus was agile, and sturdy as a parade
|
||||
float. “You could have that bike for the rest of your life,” Petersen said.
|
||||
“Imagine that frame, fifty years old, how beautiful that would be.” ♦
|
||||
|
||||
Published in the print edition of the [39]September 23, 2024, issue, with the
|
||||
headline “Joy Ride.”
|
||||
|
||||
New Yorker Favorites
|
||||
|
||||
• After a London teen-ager plummeted into the Thames, his parents discovered
|
||||
that he’d been [40]posing as an oligarch’s son.
|
||||
|
||||
• Don’t put off reading this [41]article on procrastination.
|
||||
|
||||
• Why you [42]can’t get a restaurant reservation.
|
||||
|
||||
• Is it O.K. to eat [43]any type of meat?
|
||||
|
||||
• What it was like being [44]married to the Marquis de Sade.
|
||||
|
||||
• [45]An excerpt from Sally Rooney’s new novel.
|
||||
|
||||
[46]Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New
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Yorker.
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|
||||
[47][undefined]
|
||||
[48]Anna Wiener is a contributing writer at The New Yorker covering the Bay
|
||||
Area, technology, and the cultural influence of Silicon Valley. She is the
|
||||
author of the memoir “[49]Uncanny Valley.”
|
||||
More:[50]Bikes
|
||||
Read More
|
||||
[51]
|
||||
Among the Gaza Protest Voters
|
||||
The Political Scene
|
||||
[52]
|
||||
Among the Gaza Protest Voters
|
||||
[53]
|
||||
Among the Gaza Protest Voters
|
||||
Some progressives in Michigan say that they won’t support Kamala Harris unless
|
||||
she changes her policy on Israel. Will their tactics persuade her, or risk
|
||||
throwing the election to Trump?
|
||||
By Andrew Marantz
|
||||
[54]
|
||||
Land of the Flea
|
||||
U.S. Journal
|
||||
[55]
|
||||
Land of the Flea
|
||||
[56]
|
||||
Land of the Flea
|
||||
A road trip though America’s annual celebration of other people’s stuff.
|
||||
By Paige Williams
|
||||
[57]
|
||||
Is It Time to Torch the Constitution?
|
||||
Books
|
||||
[58]
|
||||
Is It Time to Torch the Constitution?
|
||||
[59]
|
||||
Is It Time to Torch the Constitution?
|
||||
Some scholars say that it’s to blame for our political dysfunction—and that we
|
||||
need to start over.
|
||||
By Louis Menand
|
||||
[60]
|
||||
Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us
|
||||
Profiles
|
||||
[61]
|
||||
Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us
|
||||
[62]
|
||||
Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us
|
||||
“Playground,” Powers’s new novel, aims to do for the oceans what “The
|
||||
Overstory” did for trees.
|
||||
By Hua Hsu
|
||||
[63]The New Yorker
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References:
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||||
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||||
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/the-art-of-taking-it-slow#main-content
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[8] https://www.newyorker.com/fiction-and-poetry
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[9] https://www.newyorker.com/humor
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[10] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine
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[11] https://www.newyorker.com/crossword-puzzles-and-games
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[12] https://www.newyorker.com/video
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[13] https://www.newyorker.com/podcasts
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[14] https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on
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[15] https://festival.newyorker.com/
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[17] https://www.newyorker.com/account/saved
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[19] https://www.newyorker.com/
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[20] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/annals-of-design
|
||||
[21] https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/anna-wiener
|
||||
[22] https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?&display=popup&caption=The%20Art%20of%20Taking%20It%20Slow&app_id=1147169538698836&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2024%2F09%2F23%2Fthe-art-of-taking-it-slow%3Futm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned
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[23] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2024%2F09%2F23%2Fthe-art-of-taking-it-slow%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned&text=The%20Art%20of%20Taking%20It%20Slow&via=NewYorker
|
||||
[24] mailto:?subject=The%20Art%20of%20Taking%20It%20Slow&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2024%2F09%2F23%2Fthe-art-of-taking-it-slow%3Futm_source%3Donsite-share%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker
|
||||
[25] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/the-art-of-taking-it-slow#
|
||||
[26] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23/the-art-of-taking-it-slow#
|
||||
[29] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/23/what-happened-to-san-francisco-really
|
||||
[30] https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a60478-rd
|
||||
[33] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-philosopher-king
|
||||
[34] https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a23568
|
||||
[37] https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Willows-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039091/
|
||||
[38] https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-uncounted-families-torn-apart-at-the-border-by-the-trump-administration
|
||||
[39] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/23
|
||||
[40] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/12/a-teens-fatal-plunge-into-the-london-underworld
|
||||
[41] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/later-procrastination
|
||||
[42] https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/why-you-cant-get-a-restaurant-reservation
|
||||
[43] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/09/flesh-of-your-flesh-meat-vegetarianism
|
||||
[44] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/10/12/at-home-with-the-marquis-de-sade
|
||||
[45] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/08/opening-theory-fiction-sally-rooney
|
||||
[46] https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/daily
|
||||
[47] https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/anna-wiener
|
||||
[48] https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/anna-wiener
|
||||
[49] https://www.amazon.com/Uncanny-Valley-Memoir-Anna-Wiener/dp/0374278016
|
||||
[50] https://www.newyorker.com/tag/bikes
|
||||
[51] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/30/uncommitted-voters-gaza-election-michigan-harris-trump#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[52] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/30/uncommitted-voters-gaza-election-michigan-harris-trump#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[53] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/30/uncommitted-voters-gaza-election-michigan-harris-trump#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[54] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/land-of-the-flea#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[55] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/land-of-the-flea#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[56] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/land-of-the-flea#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[57] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/30/constitution-book-reviews-chemerinsky-pierson-schickler#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[58] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/30/constitution-book-reviews-chemerinsky-pierson-schickler#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[59] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/30/constitution-book-reviews-chemerinsky-pierson-schickler#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[60] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/richard-powers-profile#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[61] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/richard-powers-profile#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
|
||||
[62] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/richard-powers-profile#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc-v4_5fc7e0b8-fd3f-4c21-849e-38a811f4d0b5_similar2-3
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[63] https://www.newyorker.com/
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• [20]The Big Story
|
||||
• [21]Business
|
||||
• [22]Science
|
||||
• [23]Culture
|
||||
• [24]Ideas
|
||||
• [25]Merch
|
||||
|
||||
• [26]Podcasts
|
||||
• [27]Video
|
||||
• [28]Newsletters
|
||||
• [29]Magazine
|
||||
• [30]Travel
|
||||
• [31]Steven Levy's Plaintext Column
|
||||
• [32]WIRED Classics from the Archive
|
||||
• [33]Events
|
||||
• [34]WIRED Insider
|
||||
• [35]WIRED Consulting
|
||||
• [36]Jobs
|
||||
• [37]Coupons
|
||||
|
||||
[38]Sheon Han
|
||||
[39]Business
|
||||
Sep 23, 2024 6:30 AM
|
||||
|
||||
Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming
|
||||
Language
|
||||
|
||||
The language Go hails from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer
|
||||
commercial ambitions. My generation of strivers has a lot to learn.
|
||||
A marbel squirrel sculpture in a garden
|
||||
ILLUSTRATION: SAMUEL TOMSON
|
||||
Save
|
||||
Save
|
||||
|
||||
Many of today’s programmers—excuse me, software engineers—consider themselves
|
||||
“creatives.” Artists of a sort. They are given to ostentatious personal
|
||||
websites with cleverly hidden Easter eggs and parallax scrolling; they confer
|
||||
upon themselves multihyphenate job titles
|
||||
(“ex-Amazon-engineer-investor-author”) and crowd their laptops with
|
||||
identity-signaling vinyl stickers. Some regard themselves as literary
|
||||
sophisticates. Consider the references smashed into certain product names:
|
||||
Apache Kafka, ScyllaDB, Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
|
||||
|
||||
[42]Machine Readable
|
||||
An 8 bit lips character looking suspicious with its hand on its chin.
|
||||
A regular column about programming. Because if/when the machines take over, we
|
||||
should at least speak their language.
|
||||
|
||||
Much of that, I admit, applies to me. The difference is I’m a tad short on
|
||||
talents to hyphenate, and my toy projects—with names like “Nabokov” (I know, I
|
||||
know)—are better off staying on my laptop. I entered this world pretty much the
|
||||
moment [43]software engineering overtook banking as the most reviled
|
||||
profession. There’s a lot of hatred, and self-hatred, to contend with.
|
||||
|
||||
Perhaps this is why I see the ethos behind the programming language Go as both
|
||||
a rebuke and a potential corrective to my generation of strivers. Its creators
|
||||
hail from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial
|
||||
ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose language of the
|
||||
new millennium—not the best at any one thing, but nearly the best at nearly
|
||||
everything. A model for our flashy times.
|
||||
|
||||
If I were to categorize programming languages like art movements, there would
|
||||
be mid-century utilitarianism (Fortran, COBOL), high-theory formalism (Haskell,
|
||||
Agda), Americorporate pragmatism (C#, Java), grassroots communitarianism
|
||||
(Python, Ruby), and esoteric hedonism (Befunge, Brainfuck). And I’d say Go,
|
||||
often described as “C for the 21st century,” represents neoclassicism: not so
|
||||
much a revolution as a throwback.
|
||||
|
||||
Back in 2007, three programmers at Google came together around the shared sense
|
||||
that standard languages like C++ and Java had become hard to use and poorly
|
||||
adapted to the current, more cloud-oriented computing environment. One was Ken
|
||||
Thompson, formerly of Bell Labs and a recipient of the Turing Award for his
|
||||
work on Unix, the mitochondrial Eve of operating systems. (These days, OS
|
||||
people don’t mess with programming languages—doing both is akin to an Olympic
|
||||
high jumper also qualifying for the marathon.) Joining him was Rob Pike,
|
||||
another Bell Labs alum who, along with Thompson, created the Unicode encoding
|
||||
standard UTF-8. You can thank them for your emoji.
|
||||
|
||||
Watching these doyens of programming create Go was like seeing Scorsese, De
|
||||
Niro, and Pesci reunite for The Irishman. Even its flippantly SEO-unfriendly
|
||||
name could be forgiven. I mean, the sheer chutzpah of it. A move only the
|
||||
reigning search engine king would dare.
|
||||
|
||||
The language quickly gained traction. The prestige of Google must’ve helped,
|
||||
but I assume there was an unmet hunger for novelty. By 2009, the year of Go’s
|
||||
debut, the youngest of mainstream languages were mostly still from 1995—a true
|
||||
annus mirabilis, when Ruby, PHP, Java, and JavaScript all came out.
|
||||
|
||||
It wasn’t that advancements in programming language design had stalled.
|
||||
Language designers are a magnificently brainy bunch, many with a reformist zeal
|
||||
for dislodging the status quo. But what they end up building can sometimes
|
||||
resemble a starchitect’s high-design marvel that turns out to have drainage
|
||||
problems. Most new languages never overcome basic performance issues.
|
||||
|
||||
But from the get-go, Go was (sorry) ready to go. I once wrote a small search
|
||||
engine in Python for sifting through my notes and documents, but it was
|
||||
unusably sluggish. Rewritten in Go, my pitiful serpent grew wings and took off,
|
||||
running 30 times faster. As some astute readers might have guessed, this
|
||||
program was my “Nabokov.”
|
||||
|
||||
Most Popular
|
||||
|
||||
• [44]
|
||||
The Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18
|
||||
Gear
|
||||
[45]
|
||||
The Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18
|
||||
By Julian Chokkattu
|
||||
• [46]
|
||||
How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet
|
||||
Culture
|
||||
[47]
|
||||
How a 15-Year-Old Gamer Became the Patron Saint of the Internet
|
||||
By Kyle MacNeill
|
||||
• [48]
|
||||
Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs
|
||||
Gear
|
||||
[49]
|
||||
Give Your Back a Break With Our Favorite Office Chairs
|
||||
By Julian Chokkattu
|
||||
• [50]
|
||||
The Best Espresso Machines for the Home Barista
|
||||
Gear
|
||||
[51]
|
||||
The Best Espresso Machines for the Home Barista
|
||||
By Jaina Grey
|
||||
•
|
||||
|
||||
This is not to say that Go is a perfect language. It’s more workhorse than show
|
||||
horse. And it came out 15 years ago, enough time for a stream of breakup
|
||||
stories and critiques to cycle through the industry’s paper of record, Hacker
|
||||
News.
|
||||
|
||||
To wit: Many find Go code ugly. There’s a procrustean uniformity to it, and it
|
||||
lacks the tidy shorthands of, say, Ruby or Python, so even common patterns can
|
||||
become messy and cluttered. (Ask a Go programmer about “error handling.”) Also,
|
||||
you can’t run the code, even with correct syntax, unless certain styles are
|
||||
strictly followed. Imagine a word processor that does not allow you to save
|
||||
unless your essay is free of grammatical errors.
|
||||
|
||||
I’m happy to admit that Go lacks the ergonomics of newer languages. But I
|
||||
struggle to dispel the suspicion that these are the complaints of a spoiled
|
||||
era. If the chief engineer of the first-generation Ford Mustang were tasked
|
||||
with designing a new line of cars, and did so remarkably—models of practicality
|
||||
and workmanship—would you complain about them having no touchscreens?
|
||||
|
||||
It’s odd to think how young the field of computer science is. Alan Turing’s
|
||||
paper that launched the field is less than a century old, and we live in a
|
||||
small window of time where pioneers are alive and professionally active, even
|
||||
into their eighties. Go is a language created by people who had nothing left to
|
||||
prove.
|
||||
|
||||
I hope it isn’t too contrived to speak of a “late style” in programming. The
|
||||
idea is usually attributed to the German philosopher Theodor Adorno, who
|
||||
observed a growing contradiction and alienation in Beethoven’s later work. The
|
||||
literary critic Edward Said expanded on the notion in his posthumous book On
|
||||
Late Style, discussing how some artists, when facing impending mortality,
|
||||
reject traditional artistic closure and instead embrace fragmentation and
|
||||
unresolved tension.
|
||||
|
||||
What I find more intriguing—and rarer than we might have thought—are the cases
|
||||
where masters in their later years do accept a certain closure and, as Said put
|
||||
it, maintain a “spirit of reconciliation and serenity.” Social media has
|
||||
provided us with the disappointing yet sobering spectacle wherein supposedly
|
||||
accomplished individuals—since we’re talking technology here, certain computer
|
||||
scientists in AI who shall remain nameless come to mind—regularly engage in
|
||||
unseemly reckonings with their residual baggage.
|
||||
|
||||
But when I think about Go, I feel a sense of serenity. Instead of involving
|
||||
themselves in spats with young kvetchers, the Go team directs you to their FAQ
|
||||
page—the gold standard of FAQ pages—written in a gentle, statesmanlike tone.
|
||||
And with that, they rest their case. I suppose that’s where some people do end
|
||||
up: completely, even plainly, at ease with their work. To know it’s possible,
|
||||
someday, perhaps, is a balm. Maybe my generation will learn to tame our egos
|
||||
and find our footing. We still have a few decades to make it so.
|
||||
|
||||
You Might Also Like …
|
||||
|
||||
• In your inbox: Our [52]biggest stories, handpicked for you each day
|
||||
|
||||
• Inside [53]Google’s 7-year mission to give AI a robot body
|
||||
|
||||
• The Big Interview: [54]Mark Cuban wants to fight pharma’s middlemen
|
||||
|
||||
• [55]The world’s biggest bitcoin mine is rattling this Texas oil town
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||||
|
||||
• Event: Join us for [56]WIRED Health on March 18 in London
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||||
|
||||
[57]Sheon Han is a writer and programmer based in Palo Alto, California. His
|
||||
work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Quanta Magazine, and
|
||||
elsewhere.
|
||||
|
||||
Topics[58]Machine Readable[59]coding[60]programming[61]Computers[62]computer
|
||||
science[63]software[64]Google
|
||||
Read More
|
||||
[65]
|
||||
OpenAI Announces a New AI Model, Code-Named Strawberry, That Solves Difficult
|
||||
Problems Step by Step
|
||||
[66]
|
||||
OpenAI Announces a New AI Model, Code-Named Strawberry, That Solves Difficult
|
||||
Problems Step by Step
|
||||
The ChatGPT maker reveals details of what’s officially known as OpenAI o1,
|
||||
which shows that AI needs more than scale to advance.
|
||||
Will Knight
|
||||
[67]
|
||||
The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder
|
||||
[68]
|
||||
The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder
|
||||
Stanford computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is unveiling a startup that aims to
|
||||
teach AI systems deep knowledge of physical reality. Investors are throwing
|
||||
money at it.
|
||||
Steven Levy
|
||||
[69]
|
||||
Inside Google’s 7-Year Mission to Give AI a Robot Body
|
||||
[70]
|
||||
Inside Google’s 7-Year Mission to Give AI a Robot Body
|
||||
As the head of Alphabet’s AI-powered robotics moonshot, I came to believe many
|
||||
things. For one, robots can’t come soon enough. For another, they shouldn’t
|
||||
look like us.
|
||||
Hans Peter Brondmo
|
||||
[71]
|
||||
This New Tech Puts AI In Touch With Its Emotions&-and Yours
|
||||
[72]
|
||||
This New Tech Puts AI In Touch With Its Emotions—and Yours
|
||||
Hume AI, a startup founded by a psychologist who specializes in measuring
|
||||
emotion, gives some top large language models a realistic human voice.
|
||||
Will Knight
|
||||
[73]
|
||||
Crispr-Enhanced Viruses Are Being Deployed Against UTIs
|
||||
[74]
|
||||
Crispr-Enhanced Viruses Are Being Deployed Against UTIs
|
||||
With antibiotics losing their effectiveness, one company is turning to gene
|
||||
editing and bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—to combat infections.
|
||||
Emily Mullin
|
||||
[75]
|
||||
This iPhone ‘Supercycle’ May Not Be So Super
|
||||
[76]
|
||||
This iPhone ‘Supercycle’ May Not Be So Super
|
||||
Some Apple analysts believe AI will spur a boom in iPhone sales. But not
|
||||
everyone’s buying the hype.
|
||||
Lauren Goode
|
||||
[77]
|
||||
Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type
|
||||
[78]
|
||||
Apple Vision Pro’s Eye Tracking Exposed What People Type
|
||||
The Vision Pro uses 3D avatars on calls and for streaming. These researchers
|
||||
used eye tracking to work out the passwords and PINs people typed with their
|
||||
avatars.
|
||||
Matt Burgess
|
||||
[79]
|
||||
An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic
|
||||
[80]
|
||||
An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic
|
||||
Cedric Dark is a gun-owning emergency physician, a father, and the cousin of a
|
||||
man who was shot to death. This is what he—and the science—say needs to change.
|
||||
Cedric Dark
|
||||
[81]WIRED
|
||||
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information
|
||||
and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED
|
||||
conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our
|
||||
lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and
|
||||
innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and
|
||||
new industries.
|
||||
|
||||
More From WIRED
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© 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from
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Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced,
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||||
• [120]
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||||
• [121]
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/attention-spoiled-software-engineers-take-a-lesson-from-googles-programming-language/#main-content
|
||||
[3] https://www.wired.com/account/saved
|
||||
[5] https://www.wired.com/
|
||||
[6] https://www.wired.com/category/security/
|
||||
[7] https://www.wired.com/category/politics/
|
||||
[8] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/
|
||||
[9] https://www.wired.com/category/big-story/
|
||||
[10] https://www.wired.com/category/business/
|
||||
[11] https://www.wired.com/category/science/
|
||||
[12] https://www.wired.com/category/culture/
|
||||
[13] https://www.wired.com/category/ideas/
|
||||
[14] https://shop.wired.com/
|
||||
[16] https://www.wired.com/search/
|
||||
[17] https://www.wired.com/category/security/
|
||||
[18] https://www.wired.com/category/politics/
|
||||
[19] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/
|
||||
[20] https://www.wired.com/category/big-story/
|
||||
[21] https://www.wired.com/category/business/
|
||||
[22] https://www.wired.com/category/science/
|
||||
[23] https://www.wired.com/category/culture/
|
||||
[24] https://www.wired.com/category/ideas/
|
||||
[25] https://shop.wired.com/
|
||||
[26] https://www.wired.com/podcasts/
|
||||
[27] https://www.wired.com/video/
|
||||
[28] https://www.wired.com/newsletter?sourceCode=navbar
|
||||
[29] https://www.wired.com/magazine
|
||||
[30] http://wired.com/travel
|
||||
[31] https://www.wired.com/tag/plaintext/
|
||||
[32] https://www.wired.com/tag/wired-classic/
|
||||
[33] https://www.wired.com/tag/wired-events/
|
||||
[34] https://www.wired.com/category/wiredinsider/
|
||||
[35] https://www.wired.com/tag/wired-consulting/
|
||||
[36] https://jobs.wired.com/?source=navbar
|
||||
[37] https://www.wired.com/coupons
|
||||
[38] https://www.wired.com/author/sheon-han/
|
||||
[39] https://www.wired.com/category/business
|
||||
[42] https://www.wired.com/tag/machine-readable/
|
||||
[43] https://www.wired.com/tag/programming/
|
||||
[44] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-iphone-ios-18-ipados-18-new-features/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[45] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-iphone-ios-18-ipados-18-new-features/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[46] https://www.wired.com/story/carlo-acutis-millennial-patron-saint-internet/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[47] https://www.wired.com/story/carlo-acutis-millennial-patron-saint-internet/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[48] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-office-chairs/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[49] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-office-chairs/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[50] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-espresso-machines/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[51] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-espresso-machines/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_8c1d84b3-dd85-4f7f-bece-ebc200c4adfb_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi
|
||||
[52] https://www.wired.com/newsletter/daily?sourceCode=BottomStories
|
||||
[53] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-mission-to-give-ai-robot-body/
|
||||
[54] https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-after-shark-tank-mark-cuban-just-wants-to-break-shit-especially-the-prescription-drug-industry/
|
||||
[55] https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-biggest-bitcoin-mine-is-rattling-this-texas-oil-town/
|
||||
[56] https://health.wired.com/?sourceCode=BottomStories
|
||||
[57] https://www.wired.com/author/sheon-han/
|
||||
[58] https://www.wired.com/tag/machine-readable/
|
||||
[59] https://www.wired.com/tag/coding/
|
||||
[60] https://www.wired.com/tag/programming/
|
||||
[61] https://www.wired.com/tag/computers/
|
||||
[62] https://www.wired.com/tag/computer-science/
|
||||
[63] https://www.wired.com/tag/software/
|
||||
[64] https://www.wired.com/tag/google/
|
||||
[65] https://www.wired.com/story/openai-o1-strawberry-problem-reasoning/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[66] https://www.wired.com/story/openai-o1-strawberry-problem-reasoning/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[67] https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-the-godmother-of-ai-wants-everyone-to-be-a-world-builder/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[68] https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-the-godmother-of-ai-wants-everyone-to-be-a-world-builder/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[69] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-mission-to-give-ai-robot-body/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[70] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-mission-to-give-ai-robot-body/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[71] https://www.wired.com/story/hume-ai-emotional-intelligence/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[72] https://www.wired.com/story/hume-ai-emotional-intelligence/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[73] https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-enhanced-viruses-are-being-deployed-against-utis/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[74] https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-enhanced-viruses-are-being-deployed-against-utis/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[75] https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-16-supercycle/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[76] https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-16-supercycle/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[77] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-vision-pro-persona-eye-tracking-spy-typing/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[78] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-vision-pro-persona-eye-tracking-spy-typing/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[79] https://www.wired.com/story/an-er-doctors-cure-for-americas-gun-epidemic/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[80] https://www.wired.com/story/an-er-doctors-cure-for-americas-gun-epidemic/#intcid=recommendations_wired-bottom-recirc-v4_c28d288f-1ad3-47fd-be7b-f9ca05c22f9f_roberta-similarity1
|
||||
[81] https://www.wired.com/
|
||||
[83] https://www.wired.com/subscribe/
|
||||
[84] https://www.wired.com/newsletter?sourceCode=HeaderAndFooter
|
||||
[85] https://www.wired.com/about/faq/
|
||||
[86] https://www.wired.com/about/wired-staff/
|
||||
[87] https://www.wired.com/about/wired-on-background-policy/
|
||||
[88] https://archive.wired.com/t/storefront/storefront
|
||||
[89] https://www.wired.com/about/rss-feeds/
|
||||
[90] https://www.wired.com/about/accessibility-help/
|
||||
[92] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/reviews/
|
||||
[93] https://www.wired.com/category/gear/buying-guides/
|
||||
[94] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-mattresses/
|
||||
[95] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-electric-bikes/
|
||||
[96] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-soundbars/
|
||||
[97] https://www.wired.com/tag/culture-guides/
|
||||
[98] https://www.wired.com/tag/wearables/
|
||||
[99] https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-tvs/
|
||||
[100] https://www.wired.com/tag/coupons/
|
||||
[101] https://www.wired.com/coupons/info/code-guarantee.html
|
||||
[102] https://www.condenast.com/brands/wired
|
||||
[103] https://www.wired.com/about/feedback/
|
||||
[104] https://subscriptions.wired.com/pubs/N3/WIR/Register.jsp?cds_page_id=175371&cds_mag_code=WIR&id=1423757547774&lsid=50431012277019467&vid=1
|
||||
[105] https://www.wired.com/about/wired-jobs/
|
||||
[106] https://www.wired.com/about/press/
|
||||
[107] https://www.condenaststore.com/
|
||||
[108] https://www.condenast.com/user-agreement/
|
||||
[109] http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy
|
||||
[110] http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-california
|
||||
[111] http://www.aboutads.info/
|
||||
[113] https://www.wired.it/
|
||||
[114] https://wired.jp/
|
||||
[115] https://www.wired.cz/
|
||||
[116] https://www.facebook.com/wired/
|
||||
[117] https://twitter.com/wired/
|
||||
[118] https://pinterest.com/wired/
|
||||
[119] https://www.youtube.com/user/wired/
|
||||
[120] https://instagram.com/wired/
|
||||
[121] https://www.tiktok.com/@wired?lang=en
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user