I recently stumbled across Stewart Brand’s six-part BBC series based on his book, How Buildings Learn.
I haven’t read the book yet, but Phil Gyford’s extensive notes might be enough to tide me over.
Phil Gyford’s notes on How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009The Twenty-Dollar Millionaire
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Tom Chiarella took two grand in twenties, rolled them up, and left for New York, planning to spend three days greasing palms from gate to gate to see what it got him. Thus, he became the twenty-dollar millionaire:
I bought my way into a good table at a Les Paul show with a twenty. I got an usher at NBC to hold a front-row seat for Busta Rhymes on the Carson Daly show. I got a seat at Dos Caminos, Manhattan’s jumpingest Mexican restaurant, in five minutes despite the two-hour wait. I cut to the head of the line at the half-price Broadway ticket booth in Times Square. I got my shoes resoled in twenty minutes instead of two weeks. I got a little love by shoving a twenty into a homeless guy’s coffee cup.
[...]
A twenty can’t buy everything. I failed often enough with my twenties that there were times when I doubted whether they could do anything at all. I tried to get into the Guggenheim when it was closed. I pushed the docent to let me roll one ball in the Frick museum’s secret bowling alley. I asked a stripper for a big wet kiss. I tried to get an ABC security guard to show me Peter Jennings’s car. I attempted to jump to the head of the rotation at a karaoke place. I tried to get into the premiere of Analyze That by passing a twenty folded in the shape of a ticket. The doorman looked at me like I was a mime.Then I realized something else: Most people aren’t willing to lose their job for twenty bucks, but if they have something they already take for granted — a place in line, a seat, a ticket to a show they’ve already seen — they’ll jump on a twenty like a possum on a wet bag of groceries. It’s a matter of opportunity. You have to find your moments.
[...]
It’s all about attitude and need. You have to have the attitude. You must discern the need. If you are the least bit hesitant or apologetic for offering the money, you are doomed. No one likes to take money if he feels as though the person is stretching himself to give it away. Remember, the more public the favor, the more private the pass. Whip out the bill, move swiftly. Fold it in quarters for discretion. Use the right palm. Smile knowingly. Wave it flat, like a flag, when you’re after more favors, more fealty. In this case, use the fingertips. Either way, it’s really just a sort of greeting. Treat it like a how-do-you-do and nothing more.
The Dragon In Carl Sagan’s Garage
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Long before the invisible pink unicorn there was the dragon in Carl Sagan’s garage:
“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.
“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.
“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?
The Oak Beams of New College, Oxford
Friday, January 2nd, 2009A few years ago, I cited an amusing anecdote about really long-term planning. Stewart Brand told the tale — about the oak beams of New College, Oxford — in his BBC documentary, How Buildings Learn:
The Next World Order
Friday, January 2nd, 2009Gurcharan Das (India Unbound) suggests that The Next World Order might place China or India on the top rung of the ladder of world power, but their approaches to the state and to power could not be more different:
Two days after last month’s terrorist attack on Mumbai, I met with a Chinese friend who was visiting India on business. He was shocked as much by the transparent and competitive minute-by-minute reporting of the attack by India’s dozens of news channels as by the ineffectual response of the government. He had seen a middle-class housewife on national television tell a reporter that the Indian commandos delayed in engaging the terrorists because they were too busy guarding political big shots. He asked how the woman could get away with such a statement.I explained sarcasm resonates in a nation that is angry and disappointed with its politicians. My friend switched the subject to the poor condition of India’s roads, its dilapidated cities and the constant blackouts. Suddenly, he stopped and asked: “With all this, how did you become the second-fastest growing economy in the world? China’s leaders fear the day when India’s government will get its act together.”
The answer to his question may lie in a common saying among Indians that “our economy grows at night when the government is asleep.” As if to illustrate this, the Mumbai stock market rose in the period after the terrorist attacks. Two weeks later, in several state elections, incumbents were ousted over economic issues, not security.
All this baffled my Chinese friend, and undoubtedly many of his countrymen, whose own success story has been scripted by an efficient state. They are uneasy because their chief ally, Pakistan, is consistently linked to terrorism while across the border India’s economy keeps rising disdainfully. It puzzles them that the anger in India over the Mumbai attacks is directed against Indian politicians rather than Muslims or Pakistan.
How Buildings Learn
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Stewart Brand spent years studying how buildings learn — how they’re changed and maintained long after the visionary architect has “perfected” his design.
In 1997 he presented and co-wrote a six-part series for the BBC:
This six-part, three-hour, BBC TV series aired in 1997. I presented and co-wrote the series; it was directed by James Muncie, with music by Brian Eno. The series was based on my 1994 book, HOW BUILDINGS LEARN: What Happens After They’re Built. The book is still selling well and is used as a text in some college courses. Most of the 27 reviews on Amazon treat it as a book about system and software design, which tells me that architects are not as alert as computer people. But I knew that; that’s part of why I wrote the book. Anybody is welcome to use anything from this series in any way they like. Please don’t bug me with requests for permission. Hack away. Do credit the BBC, who put considerable time and talent into the project. Historic note: this was one of the first television productions made entirely in digital— shot digital, edited digital. The project wound up with not enough money, so digital was the workaround. The camera was so small that we seldom had to ask permission to shoot; everybody thought we were tourists. No film or sound crew. Everything technical on site was done by editors, writers, directors. That’s why the sound is a little sketchy, but there’s also some direct perception in the filming that is unusual.
Enjoy the first part:
Kill the one you’re with
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Richard Fernandez calls them the people of the shadows, the ordinary people terrorized by their own “freedom fighters”:
What’s sometimes overlooked in the news coverage of “militant” organizations like Hamas is the role they play in oppressing their own people. Historically terrorist organizations have had to kill many more of their own people than the enemy, for the simple reason that maintaining control over their population, not defeating the enemy army, is their political priority. Rarely have the absurdist consequences of this been so clearly demonstrated than by events in Mosul.
A suicide bomber on a bicycle in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul targeted a protest condemning Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, killing one civilian and wounding 16 on Sunday, police said.“One civilian was killed and 16 were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up when he rode his bicycle into the middle of an anti-Israeli demonstration in the city,” local police Major Wael Rasheed told AFP….
Mosul, the country’s second largest city, is believed to be the last urban stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has been behind hundreds of bombings since the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
It makes sense in a bizarre kind of way. In the terrorist calculus, attacking one crowd is as good as another. It garners the same amount of publicity and sows the same amount of terror; greater even for being so unpredictable. To paraphrase Crosby, Stills and Nash — when you can’t kill the one you hate, then kill the one you’re with.
Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Tuesday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains how Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans, to unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic:
“The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide,” Kawaoka’s team wrote.It killed 2.5 percent of victims, compared to fewer than 1 percent during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia.
“We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia,” Kawaoka said in a statement.
They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract.
But a complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs.
The three genes — called PA, PB1, and PB2 — along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka’s team found.
Most flu experts agree that a pandemic of influenza will almost certainly strike again. No one knows when or what strain it will be but one big suspect now is the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
H5N1 is circulating among poultry in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. It rarely affects humans but has killed 247 of the 391 people infected since 2003.
A few mutations would make it into a pandemic strain that could kill millions globally within a few months.
Four licensed drugs can fight flu but the viruses regularly mutate into resistant forms — just as bacteria evolve into forms that evade antibiotics.
Herd behavior is a form of procrastination
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Arnold Kling explains how herd behavior is a form of procrastination:
As I write this, on January 1st, 2009, the U.S. economy is in recession. There is evidence that consumers have cut back on their purchases of automobiles and other durable goods. They have cut back on their purchases of jewelry and other discretionary purchases. As a result, prices on these goods have been marked down.One might think that it would be rational for consumers to shift some of their purchases to times like this. That is, it would be rational at the margin to buy more during a recession and to buy less during a boom. Yet we know that the opposite is what happens. It appears that:
- Consumers cut back especially on durable goods purchases during a recession, when such goods are cheap.
- The typical investor buys more stock near the peak than near the trough.
- The typical firm hires more labor near the peak of a cycle, when labor is expensive, than near the trough of the cycle, when labor is cheap.
Let us call this phenomenon herding, because people behave as a herd in a way that is contrary to their interests as individuals. A rational economic agent tries to buy low and sell high. The herd does it the other way around.
There are two reasons for economists to be interested in herding. One reason is that it poses a puzzle about behavior, since herding seems inconsistent with rational decision-making. Second, herding accentuates business cycles. If instead people behaved more countercyclically, the cycles would be dampened.
As a specific example, consider the real estate boom and bust. In 2005 and 2006, fewer people should have been trying to buy real estate and more people should have been trying to sell. Today, we seem to have the opposite, with many people foregoing opportunities to buy and many people anxious to sell, even though prices are low.
As of January 1st, 2009, is it a good time to buy real estate? To most people, the answer is, “No. Wait until prices decline further.” This reasoning may prove correct, in the sense that prices may very well decline further. However, I predict that the average person who reasons this way will end up buying real estate at prices that are considerably higher than they are today. Instead of buying at the bottom, they will miss the bottom and instead buy at some point well into the next upswing.
People confuse perfect market timing with feasible market timing. When prices are high, they think to themselves, “If I get out now, I may miss out on more profits. I’ll keep putting money in.” Implicitly, they are assuming that they will be able to time the market better by waiting. They are afraid that if they sell now, they will have failed to time the market perfectly. They do not take account of the fact that perfect market timing is not really feasible.
Similarly, when prices are low, they think to themselves, “If I get in now, prices may fall further. I’ll wait until they go lower.” Again, they are acting as if they can time the market perfectly.
In a famous lecture, Procrastination and Obedience, George Akerlof argued that a lot of irrational behavior could be explained by procrastination. You don’t quit smoking today, because you know you can quit smoking tomorrow. What you fail to account for is the fact that tomorrow you will once again think that postponing quitting smoking by another day is a good idea.
I think that herding behavior takes place for the same reason. People realize that prices are too high, but they put off selling until tomorrow. Or, people realize that prices are too low, but they put off buying until tomorrow.
The problem is that nobody can predict when the herd will turn, and when it does it turns so quickly that the procrastinators lose.
The Untied States of America
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
A few years ago, Juan Enriquez wrote a book, The Untied States of America — not a typo — about how nations come and go, and how the US might fracture into multiple pieces.
Enriquez is the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project and was a member of Craig Venter’s marine-based team to collect genetic data from the world’s oceans.
As the CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation and chief of staff for Mexico’s secretary of state, Enriquez helped negotiate a cease-fire with Zapatista rebels. He is chair and CEO of Biotechonomy, a research and investment firm helping to fund new genomics firms.
His Pop!Tech Pop!Cast introduces many of his ideas: