Author: admin

Recently I had dinner with some friends who were arguing for forgiving college student debt in the U.S. Their argument goes roughly as follows:

To pay college costs — in some cases over $60,000 per year — young people and their families can go deeply into debt, often for many years. Many are never able to get out from under that debt burden, and so their chances for economic advancement remain permanently crippled.

It’s not as though they have much of a choice. In the U.S. one’s chances for professional success are very low if one does not have a college degree.

My friends argue that the increased short term tax burden to pay off those loans would be more than offset within just a few years by the more robust economy that would result.

This is a powerful argument. Yet there are aspects to our nation’s state of economic disparity that resist straightforward rational discussion. But I can try anyway.

More tomorrow.

Recently I was thinking of the lovely first line of Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Except my mind did a sort of funny substitution: “Last night I dreamt I went to Pemberley again.”

It’s not really such a stretch. The literary trail from du Maurier’s Rebecca back to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is fairly clear and quite easy to trace. In both cases a hyper-romantic tale is viewed through the prism of a symbolic locale. Even the sounds of the two words “Manderley” and “Pemberley” have a similar musical line.

Similarly, I was recently thinking about the opening line of Melville’s Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael.”

Except my mind did a similar sort of substitution: “Call me Starbuck.”

Again there is a similar parallel at work. A sweeping saga of a ship adrift, facing an implacable enemy that mocks our all too human conceit of hegemony over nature. We are told a tale of terrible isolation, of vast stretches of emptiness, of insidious tendrils of madness threatening to seep in at every moment, and above all of the uncertainty that creeps into the thoughts of every crew member, not just of getting home, but of whether there is any longer such a thing as home.

I am speaking, of course, of Battlestar Galactica — a work that arguably could not have existed but for the cultural influence of Moby Dick.

I wonder what other works could likewise evoke their literary kin, via a substitution, in the opening line, of a single word.

I was having a conversation today with an friend I hadn’t seen in a while, who mentioned something I had recently said on my blog. I said “Oh, you read my blog?”

There was a pause, then she replied “Well, every once in a while.”

And I realized that we had perhaps gotten into a slightly complicated topic.

There are friends who are perfectly happy to tell me that they read my blog every day. There is, of course, a vastly greater group of people who never read my blog.

Then there are people who don’t want me to think they read it too often, because, you know, maybe that means they are paying too much attention. And that wouldn’t be cool.

I’m not sure why, but I think that in between state is interesting. It suggests that something, somehow, is being negotiated.

I gave a talk last week at the MIT Media Lab. To my surprise, many of the questions afterwards were not about the things I had talked about.

Rather, they were questions about my process. How do I work, and how do I prototype? What goes into deciding how long to spend on an idea, and how do I know whether to move forward?

I understood that these questions, all of them asked by professors, were for the benefit of the students in the room.

One of the beautiful and startling things about youth is that the young know they will live forever. Oh, if you ask them, they will acknowledge that they will die one day. But in their hearts they do not believe it. Life is infinite, possibilities are endless, and it is all just beginning.

But after a while the heart begins to understand differently. We look upon our parents and see our own future, we understand that the clock is ticking, and we recalibrate.

And we learn the value of time.

Much of what I do is rapid prototyping. When I have an idea, I work fast to implement a quick sketch — perhaps a short interactive graphics program that runs on the web — without worrying too much about the details. I’m not looking for perfection, but for a sign that will tell me whether to stop now, or to go forward. Or maybe to veer off in a related direction.

This is what the professors asking those leading questions were getting at. Time is valuable, and spending three months to build something that may lead nowhere is not a good use of one’s time. Good rapid prototyping skills are a way of maximizing life, of making the most of the time we have.

Because when all is said and done, you know only two things for sure: (1) You do not know how much time you have left to get things done, and (2) You surely have less time than you did a year ago.

Bach, then Stravinsky,
Then Beethoven. Old Ludwig
Was the best, by far.

This afternoon I was in one of those long and involved conversations about how amazing the octopus is. People were swapping stories.

For example there was about the octopus who climbed out of its tank in somebody’s living room, made its way across to the fish tank across the room, ate a fish, and climbed back into its own tank (all captured on video).

Or the incident, also captured on video, where an octopus makes itself completely invisible by changing its skin color to perfectly match the texture behind it.

Or the fact that Jaron Lanier refuses to eat octopus, because he considers it a sentient creature.

This went on for a while, these hymns to the intellectual, social and emotional superiority of the octopus.

Feeling the need to contribute, I said “don’t forget the political.”

“Political?” some people looked confused. “What’s political about an octopus?”

“Haven’t you ever heard,” I asked, “of Octopi Wall Street?”

Today I wished a happy birthday to somebody who was born on 4/8/64, and who happens to enjoy math.

In fact, she was born at 4:44 in the morning, on a Wednesday (the fourth day of the week).

Clear there are powers at work here. The numbers 4, 8 and 64 are all there.

But what about the powers of two that were skipped over???

Which is why I was very glad to be able to wish her, in base 16, a happy 32nd birthday.

This weekend a friend and I happened to overhear a conversation, just as one guy was saying to another “I’m sorry — I’m bad about reading texts.”

I told my friend, after we had walked on a bit, that I had no idea what the intent of that sentence was. “Is he saying that he spends too much time reading texts,” I asked, “or that he doesn’t read his texts often enough?”

My assumption would have been the first meaning, since a lot of people in my social circle find it annoying when people spend all their time reading texts — especially while an actual live human being is standing there RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM.

As it happened my friend had heard the little bit of the conversation that came just a few seconds earlier. He explained that the other person had shown up late, and had told the first guy that he’d texted ahead to say he would be late. But the first guy hadn’t read the text, so he’d been standing there waiting.

So I had had it backwards.

My friend further explained — and here is the nice subtle part — that the guy’s “apology” for being bad at reading texts was actually a criticism. He was really saying that deciding it’s ok to be late, just because you know you can send a text, is not ok.

Hmm. Maybe it’s good to be bad about reading texts.

Kind of a silly game that I made up this weekend, appropriate for our questionable economy. Feel free to try your hand at it:

“I was going to be a plumber, but it was too draining.”

“I wanted to go into vacuum science, but I sucked at it.”

“They wanted me to become a fencer, but I never got the point.”

“I was in the pillow stuffing biz, but it only got me down.”

“I was going to become a tunnel driller, but it was boring.”

“They said I’d get rich selling photocopies, but I was duped.”

“I joined a food preserve company, but they canned me.”

“I was a lumberjack, until I got the axe.”

OK, just because this has come up several times in the last few weeks…

When you meet somebody at a dinner party, or an awards event, or a wedding reception, and they seem very interesting, and knowledgeable, and intelligent, and fun to talk to, there is one hard and fast rule you must follow:

When they bring up the subject of Woody Allen, do not agree to talk about Woody Allen. No matter how desperately they plead with you to engage in a conversation on this important topic, however heartfelt their plea that this is really the most important topic in the world, you must change the subject.

Be firm, be adamant, be forceful. Do whatever you need to do, but change the subject immediately.

Trust me.