]]>I'm trying not to order from them, since hearing the radiolab essay on their fulfillment centers. Which, of course, are independent companies on contract, so Amazon proper isn't liable for abuses that occur there.
One thing Amazon has in common with Google, which may end up playing a larger role in evil than their mail-order business, is their effective joint monopoly on cloud computing. Its not just local newspapers and small businesses that run on EC2 servers -- a majority of bioinformatics computation worldwide is clouded to Amazon as well, and probably heavy-lifting computation in a number of other fields. Even companies that could (and for privacy or espionage reasons probably should) run their own data centers don't, meaning that Google and Amazon set the costs for high-end data analysis.
I literally pushed them out the door. Five minutes went by, them sitting on the front stairs moping. Then they tied to get back inside. "This is boring. There is nothing to do outside." I closed the door in their cute little disappointed faces. This process repeated and went on for some time. Eventually they got so bored they started playing. Just like that. And here I realized and remembered something from my own childhood. The best times I ever had was when I was really bored, with a bunch of friends with nothing to do.
Related: What Is Post-Internet Art? As an alternative to art that only exists inside computers, some artists are now using technology to create art with an enduring physical presence.
And a bunch more high-tech: 20 Crucial Terms Every 21st Century Futurist Should Know. There's way too much here for me to try to comment, but I will say that most of these things would not be stopped by energy decline, economic collapse, or climate catastrophe. They would develop in parallel with all that -- unless they're stopped by being half-baked ideas in the first place.
]]>What I remember from ecological modeling is that models almost always crash, even when modeling systems that are robust in the real world. Mathematically, you could say that a model progresses to a stable attractor and, for obvious reasons, most attractors in synthetic systems are boundary conditions - the point at which there are no rabbits, or all the biomass is trees. These never happen in real life because correction factors exist that are negligible except in extreme circumstances (and consequently impossible to model accurately). Saying that this model predicts a crash just means it doesn't account for everything that happens when some other factor goes to eleven.
Customer service is a dying skill. It is all about people, face to face ideally, trying to give them what they need even if that isn't what they start out asking you for, and making it a pleasant experience. Some of the best interns in my library came from tending shitty bars.
And you can't standardize it, although that seems to be the corporate goal. It has to be about *that* specific moment and the people who are sharing it. Maybe you just have to give half a shit about the guy on the opposite side of that desk or counter? If you actually care, people will pick up on that and express appreciation, and that makes a much nicer day for everyone.
I worry lately that with so much tech in the way of kids as they grow up and get out into the world, they have trouble with that kind of thing. They end up being rude or careless without meaning to be, they can't read the signals, so no one knows what's going on or how anyone feels about it.
In the coffee house in the linked essay, the patron wants to be validated in their hipness, but that isn't even a real thing, so what is it that they *really* need? Maybe they are asking the barista to reassure them that they're doing something valuable with their lives?
Loosely related: Why being too busy makes us feel so good. The article explains how we're too busy and why it's bad, but it never actually tells us why being busy makes people feel good, except with an unsupported speculation that it distracts us from facing death. I'm not qualified to answer -- I love free time and hate busyness so much that I sometimes fantasize about being in solitary confinement. But I'm going to be busy tomorrow and Wednesday, which is why I'm posting today and probably Tuesday.
]]>]]>Really the only way we can stabilise the system is with a war effort style mobilisation that actually has the right game plan. It's technically possible (or was technically possible a decade ago) but it's not politically possible. So what's actually going to happen? See the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Venezuela, Greece? That's the endgame if we don't do an orderly energy descent.
A good test of any behavior, including any use of technology, is: what happens if I do it for a while and then stop? Or: does this application of technology make me weaker or stronger in its absence?
So GPS navigation makes us worse at navigating in the absense of GPS, escalators make us worse at going between floors in the absence of escalators, and so on. So far, most human use of technology has been in this category, so it's a good bet that we'll keep going in this direction, for example through virtual reality or body implants.
We could choose to go in the other direction, and use future technology in a way that makes us stronger in its absence. For example, we could use neurofeedback to learn mindfulness, or virtual reality to learn physical skills. I expect this kind of thing to be uncommon, so the overall trend will be for human powers (without technology) to be whittled down to nothing.
Meanwhile, it's easy to imagine how biotech could increase biodiversity in the long term (and a good use of computers would be to support this).
But biotech can also be used to make life weaker. Right now, almost all genetic modification is being done to make crops that are dependent on industrial agriculture with high energy inputs. The danger is that inevitable biotech catastrophes will serve as the excuse to give central control systems a strict monopoly over biotech, and they will use it to stamp out biodiversity and create life that is dependent on those control systems for its survival.
Loosely related, last night I watched some of the Academy Awards, and I'm just astonished at the level of bullshit. It's like those organisms they discovered living around volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean where it was thought nothing could survive. How did our culture evolve the ability to be entertained by something so slick, cautious, predictable, and saccharine? Maybe the actual entertainment value is that if you watch closely with great skill, you might catch a glimpse of something real.
]]>