It's funny because it's true (update!)

I think this applies to me.

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Part of the reason that I thought this was so funny is that over the course of the past couple of weeks I've determined that I am, in fact, a dilettante in the general sense of the word. A dabbler. One who has a "broad but shallow attachment to any field." I know the word generally is taken in a negative sense nowadays, but it is, for better or worse, an accurate description of me based on my history. My next question is, what do I do with that realization?
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My Xmas wish list

It would be nice if people would take seriously the issue of consumption. Adbusters has been trying to publicize the issue for years, and one of their classic anti-events is coming up this Friday. Yes, it's Buy Nothing Day, the day you avoid crowded malls and hyped-up bullshit. Another proposed activity is Buy Nothing Christmas. The site tells us: "Buy Nothing Christmas is not really about refusing to spend a dime over the holiday season. It’s about taking a deep breath and deciding to opt out of the hype‚ the overcrowded malls‚ and the stressful to–do lists. It’s about reminding ourselves to really think about what we are buying‚ why we are buying it‚ and whether we really need it at all."

This is an idea that I completely support, for a couple of reasons. First, I hate the shopping. Second, I hate trying to come up with ideas for what other people should by for me. Third, I have so much stuff already. A lot of the stuff I have - whether received as a gift or purchased by myself, sits around and never is used. Yet at the time, I "needed" it. Hell, I still find myself "needing" stuff, or just wanting things enough to say, "Fuckit, I'm buyin' that."

Simultaneously, I'm a huge fan of the bounty that capitalism has produced in this country. Apparently, I contain multitudes.

Now, a lot of people out there will argue that anti-consumerism is akin to communism, or is illogical (if I literally consume nothing, I'll die, for example), or is it's own form of hyped-up bullshit and or hypocrisy. And I'm not going to engage that, because it would be pointless. I think the biggest argument I can make is that it's not about anti-consumerism, but rather mindful consumerism. Think about your consumption and its consequences. It's not easy, but if we start paying attention, and teaching our kids to pay attention, maybe in a couple of generations people will find it easier to consume less. Assuming they aren't too busy fighting each other over puddles of filthy water.

It dawned on me ...

Oh, that was my ponderable: This "Age of Aquarius" thing. If the Piscean Age correlates strongly with the rise of Christianity, which is symbolized by the fish, what characteristics might one expect in an age characterized by the water-bearer? What does water "mean"? Rising seas, environmental issues, lots of urination? While I don't believe in the legitimacy of astrology as a "way of knowing" - I am, after all, a product of my culture and environment, and we are still living in a society dominated by Enlightenment principles that value human reason and our ability to know the world through empirical means. But cultural phenomena based in superstition fascinate me. While the mythologies of the Greeks and Romans are mere stories to us now, they left a rich literary and artistic legacy that we can still appreciate. The mythology of Christianity still clings, unfortunately, and disgusts me in its application, but I love the architectural heritage, and just last night I listened to Mozart's Requiem again. Simply amazing, yes. So umm... I don't remember where I was going - oh yeah - So, I wonder about that whole Aquarian thing. Ya know. As I do.

Screw the world - Jeebus is coming back soon!

"End Times" Theology Endangers Us All

I've believed this for a long time, but haven't taken the time to express it so clearly.

Culturally inappropriate!

Fran and I are talking about world issues, and we briefly mentioned Chinese population growth policies. The following phrase popped into my head: "This is Bob Barker reminding you to spay or neuter your Asian."

Date night = marketer's dream

I mentioned that we saw Stardust over the weekend (by the way - if you are thinking about seeing it, do!). I forgot to say that we arrived about one minute after showtime, during an ad for Dell computers. Then we sat through three more ads, including one for Verizon and a REALLY annoying one for gum. Why are ticket prices still so high (6$ for a matinee) if I'm having to watch all these ads too? It makes me think of this scene from Futurama. Fry doesn't mention "menus" though. "Dinner and a movie" is apparently the perfect time to try selling people stuff.

Phone home

Today we dumped Sprint and switched our phone service to Verizon (but our numbers haven't changed, fortunately). We've got 30 days to decide if we like the service (though I really don't know who we'd switch to if we didn't) and the phones. After spending several minutes transferring my numbers, I don't know how I feel about the keypad, but I imagine I'll get used to it. I'm not interested in spending a lot of money on a phone, and I don't need much (at least not right now - eventually it would be nice to cram everything - phone, internets/email, palmtop computer/PDA, camera, video recorder, music/dvd player, time machine, hope chest, meds dispenser, etc etc etc - into a single portable package). The camera is a nice bonus, but wasn't vital - of course, try finding a phone without a camera in it, and good luck to ya.

I was kind of excited about the new hardware, but I feel a little let down, for some reason. I imagine if we'd gone in for the whole phone/text/picture/web/music thing, and the requisite equipment, I'd be spending the next few days like a giddy kid in some kind of store. But like I said - why would I need that?

2057: The City, Take 2

Remember a couple days ago, when I talked about the city of the future? Today I read a piece from 1999 called "The American Metropolis at Century's End," by Robert Fishman. The premise was: Let's survey prominent "urban specialists" (architects & landscape architects, urban planners, historians, and so on) and put together a list of the top 10 influences on American cities in the 2nd half of the 20th century, and another list of the 10 most likely influences for the 1st half of the 21st.

Just because I can, here's the first list:
1. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act and the Dominance of the Automobile
2. Federal Housing Administration Mortgage Financing and Subdivision Regulation
3. De-Industrialization of Central Cities
4. Urban Renewal: Downtown Redevelopment and Public Housing Projects (1949 Housing Act)
5. Levittown (the Mass-Produced Suburban Tract House)
6. Racial Segregation and Job Discrimination in Cities and Suburbs
7. Enclosed Shopping Malls
8. Sunbelt-Style Sprawl
9. Air Conditioning
10. Urban Riots of the 1960s

But what about the future? What do the experts think could be the most influential factors in the future development of the American metropolis? Let's take a look:
1. Growing Disparities of Wealth
2. The Suburban Political Majority
3. Aging of the Baby Boomers
4. A Perpetual "Underclass" in the Central Cities and Inner-Ring Suburbs
5. Smart Growth: Environmental and Planning Initiatives to Limit Sprawl
6. The Internet
7. Deterioration of the First-Ring Post-1945 Suburbs
8. Shrinking Household Size
9. Expanded Superhighway System of "Outer Beltways" to Serve New Edge Cities
10. Racial Integration as Part of the Increasing Diversity in Cities and Suburbs

The article mentioned that these top 10 lists were selected from 25 choices (for the past 50 years) and 19 choices (for the next 50). I don't know what the 19 "future" choices were, but I kind of doubt the list included "holographic cartoon sharks," "self-driving cars," and "personal robots."

Break out your shades, cuz the future is blazin'

The other night I saw this show - well, part of it - on the Science Channel called "2057." Actually, it was three shows. There was one about "The Body" (which I didn't see) and one about "The World" (which I also didn't see) and one about "The City" (which I saw in part). I was intrigued by this concept of the future of the city. Given my studies in landscape architecture and my leaning toward urban design, I wonder what the future of the city holds. So I thought, This should be interesting.

Do I need to say at this point that I was disappointed? Apparently the city of the future is defined entirely by technology. I did learn a few things from the 20 minutes or so that I watched.

1) In 50 years, everyone will have a personal holographic pet that follows them around and apparently keeps children safe via its GPS module. Or something. It didn't make a lot of sense at the time, and makes even less now that I see it written down.

2) In 50 years, bipedal robotic assistants will be common. They will exhibit basic human form (a torso, head, two arms, and two legs). Everyone will have one, and old people will still cherish their 35-year-old models of these devices. Really? Given the rate at which technology becomes obsolete in the year 2007, I'm finding it hard to believe that a dusty old manbot from 2020 will still be around 37 years later. Also, which would we restrict them to the limited humanoid form? Why not give them 4 or 6 legs, so they'll be more stable? And throw on 6 or 8 arms, to increase their capacity to carry our groceries.

3) In 50 years, some fogey will build his grandson a souped up holographic cartoon shark buddy, and then run away from home (but leave his archaic robot friend behind). The kid will proceed to hook up grampa's 50-year-old laptop to the 2057 version of the internet (which, by the way, will be EVERYWHERE), and put his new pal into the city-wide internet, where it will swim from one gigantic holo-billboard to another. With it, unbeknownst to the annoying brat, it will carry an ancient computer virus that will cause the entire urban network to crash. (This reveals a couple of things: again, it appears that within the next 10 years or so, technology will stop being obsolete, and backwards-compatibility will extend so far into the past as to make obsolescence ... obsolete. With any luck, they'll be able to read those 5-1/4" floppies I've got in the bottom of my desk drawer.)

4) In the ensuing chaos, traffic jams will reappear for the first time in 40 years, because automated cars and networked roads and GPS satellites will make sure that the traffic is always flowing smoothly (up to that point, at least), and there will never be any technical glitches that cause that system to fail. Thankfully, this seamless flow of traffic has also eliminated traffic accidents and related fatalities, and, as previously noted, there are never any major malfunctions in the system. Looks like Microsoft will be losing the contract on that one. (Note to self: Invest accordingly.)

5) The police force will oversee all manner of things, including the city-wide network. In the ultimate irony, the kid who brings down the city (in a performance reminiscent of Jeff Goldblum's character in Independence Day) turns out to be the son of the Chief Inspector of Integrated City Network, or whatever title this apparent police state will bestow on the person in charge.

There was no talk of the actual city of the future. Will suburbia continue to dominate the urban landscape of the industrialized world? Will multi-nodal cities spring up around present metropolises? Where will people work, relative to where they live? Will the concepts of New Urbanism finally be implemented in an effective way, or will we continue to see contemporary suburbia dressed up in ever-fancier tuxedos? Will "urban sprawl" - however you define it - be curtailed? What about poverty and race? Will segregation of the poor, blacks, and poor blacks continue to be de rigeur? What about environmental and ecological issues? How will cities of the future address the problems associated with massive impervious surfaces and the urban heat island effect? Will green space be recognized as a valuable sociocultural and physical component of the city, and will metropolitan areas be planned accordingly? Will urban planning itself become a more holistic and proactive discipline?

What about the fact that the vast majority of the world's population is (and will continue to be) located at the meeting point of water and land? What effect will rising sea levels have? What about climate change? Signs point to more frequent and severe tropical storms. Will New Orleans be remembered as the first of many coastal cities destroyed by storms?

And we havent' even looked at developing countries. What of the inconceivably massive slums that accompany so many major cities worldwide? How will continued population growth and urbanization in the developing world affect the quality of life in Bombay and its ilk?

Apparently, these are not questions that matter. Apparently, in 50 years, the city will continue to be defined as it matters to middle- and upper-class Caucasian Americans, and how technology will make their lives easier and safer.

I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a show on the Science Channel.