Glen -
Great thoughtful and thought-provoking post (as usual). (at the risk of
verging on bro-etry?)
Sanas, the buzzy Bay Area startup that wants to make the world sound
whiter
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/sanas-startup-creates-american-voice-17382771.php
And a voice modifier from a different company here:
https://koe.ai/recast/
I was *expecting* this to be something that people might choose to use
in their ears, not in their mics... to "whiten" the world for their
listening serenity. I remember my otherwise open and
not-particularly-intolerant father evolve when he would answer the phone
and get a phone solicitor who might be from another demographic than his
own familiar one. "Axe me a question? NO, you can't AXE me a
question! I don't even know what that means..." and then he would hang
up. It was the earliest period of his impending/growing dementia and
maybe nothing more than that (he had not yet started binging on Rush
Limbaugh). I had a *much more* progressive/thoughtful/kind co-worker
who surprised me one day when she confided to me that she "didn't
understand why people couldn't be bothered to learn to speak proper
English, especially Chinese". It didn't hit me right away that she had
recently begun working closely with a Chinese-American woman who was, in
fact, hard to understand sometime. I always took it to be my "diversity
tax" that I had to listen more carefully, engage more thoughtfully,
etc. But this coworker had been tricked into a style of
intolerance/impatience I never expected from her. They continued to
work together effectively, as far as I could tell, but it was a schock
to me.
This post brings home the implications of such:
Does the rise of the Metaverse mean the decline of cities?
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/agora/2022/08/rise-metaverse-mark-zuckerberg-decline-cities
Do we want our "public spaces" (e.g. cities) to be owned by singular
corporations?
I certainly think that "the commons" are an important feature to
treasure/maintain as private property of any style rises up. In my
fascination with tiny home communities and no-drive neighborhoods, I
heard someone make the point that before the automobile, that roadways
were *much* more public spaces. I didn't grow up in a neighborhood,
but peers from my own generation down (at least) through GenX seems to
remember when the neighborhood streets (esp. cul-de-sacs) were a
playground for kids anytime between go-to/come-from work by their
parents. Open air markets are one of the more familiar examples
outside of the first world, and Malls (until a decade or less ago in the
first world*). The Enclosure Movement
<https://celdf.org/the-enclosure-movement/#:~:text=The%20Enclosure%20Movement%20was%20a,fences%20or%20hedges%20around%20it.>
is probably a useful study.
Olympia (where I live) is already bad enough, mostly renters, most of
the downtown rental properties owned by a single family. We're inching
ever so slowly to Plato's Philosopher King, except any benevolence of
the King is a mere (and sporadic) side-effect of the primary motive:
profit. This seems, to me, strongly analogous to the grifters who call
pretending to be "Agent Bob Jones" or whatever from the IRS trying to
steal money from me in the form of Walmart gift cards. I know several
of my similarly aged peers who talk loudly and often about their
rental houses, usually, since I'm surrounded by liberals now, bragging
about how they keep the rent low and try to provide a good place for
the renters to live. This altruism-washing of their rent-seeking
behavior is way too similar to disguising an East Indian voice to
sound more white. Is it really any less dystopian if you're the one on
top?
I'm not sure I disagree with the tone of your regular revisiting of the
phrase "rent seeking" in a perjorative tone, but I have to admit that I
don't understand what the alternatives are in our culture. My parents
were very adamant about not "borrowing money" and chose to "rent" our
homes until I was in middle-school when they had finally saved enough $$
to buy a lot on the edge of the small city we had moved to and then
bought a modest mobile home (12'x65' single) to live in. !0 years
later after my sister and I were long gone, and they themselves had
moved on to my father's final posting, they had to sell the mobile home
to a used dealer and the lot to someone who aspired to put up a
stick-built in it's place. There was no significant market for "the
only thing they could afford" at the time. I haven't done the
arithmetic but I'm guessing their "investment" in the property and
ultimate loss of "value" roughly equalled what they might have spent on
rent during that time. They invested a lot of their own blood, sweat,
and tears in that time and that was a *good thing*, but it felt a shame
that they felt unable to avoid the rock (debt) on one hand and being a
renter (the hard place) on the other. I know a lot of people who do
*not* want the responsibility of home-ownership yet feel burdened by not
being able to ride the expansion of various real-estate bubbles. This
is probably it's own thread to study/investigate the multi-variate
landscape of "home making" and "home ownership" with the vagaries of
"private property" and "capital accumulation", etc.
I have been both a "renter" and a "landlord" and have no significant
interest in being the latter. I was thankful when I was the former for
"righteous" landlords. They seemed to fall into two categories: 1)
private owners who were trying to augment their income through A) e.g.
the other half of a duplex/Casita, etc or B) a "starter home" which they
moved up/out of as their family grew; 2) Large private or public
organization whose goal was to provide housing as a service (for
non/profit purposes) mainly because they were more professional and
consistent/clear about their expectations/intentions/outcomes. The
problem I found with being a Landlord is captured in the phrase "my
house, your home, your home, my house". I had a guest-house on a
property that I rented to two different long-term renters before
dropping into a short-term/furnished rental arrangement and I rented my
home (furnished) for one year to a young family while I spent a year in
Berkeley. Both of those experiences were fraught with the fine line
between being an abuser and being abused. I considered the latter
context as hiring the family as house-sitters with their pay being a
significant discount on the rent they would have had to pay otherwise.
Had I considered it a straight rental relationship, I might have found
myself resentful of some things and greedy about others.
It's interesting that I don't mind the loss of possible
contact/engagement with some people because they rely solely on
Facebook (Instagram, Zoom, or whatever) for their networking. Most
breweries and music venues up here use Instagram as their primary
announcement forum. The result? I don't know about them. So I'm much
less likely to engage. That's fine. More time to think
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35901414/>. I'm "this close" to
quitting LinkedIn, too:
I agree with you on this... I have a few friends/colleagues who
regularly chide me (trivially) for not knowing about something that
happened in their life or some important event because I wasn't
"following" them on their social media of choice. I recently saw a
video clip about "endorphin fasting" which was a better take (IMO) on
how to think about one's relationship with "screens". This person
suggested taking 1 day per quarter (or as needed) with absolutely no
endorphin-stimulating experiences... in particular, consuming only
water, meditating, writing, walking. Notably no food, no socializing,
no media including reading, no hard exercise, etc. This person claimed
that in his own life (been doing it for roughly 10 years?) that
virtually every time he does this he has at least a mild "epiphany"
sometime soon after the fast. The point of the endorphin fast is
simply to reset one's sensitivity to the myriad endorphin stimulating
experiences/behaviours modern life offers consistently. It is likely
that this is what "the Sabbath" provided those so inclined in another
time/place...
People Are Flooding LinkedIn With Strange Stories. We’re Calling Them
Broetry.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/why-are-these-posts-taking-over-your-linkedin-feed-because
I have found LinkedIn problematic from the start. I have a few
situations where it seems to be "the only game in town" but many which
are just awkward and irritating. Whatever "good intentions" were
planned never worked out well for me.
We really do need honest *public* spaces, even if you hate
"socialism". The internet is a public utility and should be treated
that way. And governments should devote some of our tax monies to
corporation-independent social network platforms. Mastodon would be
perfect for that.
I don't know that I can agree with you on the assertion (about gov't
funded), but I can't honestly disagree either. Perhaps PBS/NPR are the
closest things I can think to of a "public funded/managed" public
space... but of course, it is very much "push" media, so it may well not
be a good point of departure for such a consideration. The distributed
nature of UseNet fora and the BBS Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) are
maybe better digital proto-communities to study/consider for
templates/examples?
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