Being "always on" is being always off, to something.
The Pleasures of Circulating
Topic: Society
2:37 pm EDT, Mar 18, 2007
It may seem a bit eccentric to cross the Atlantic by plane merely to take a walk. At least it would have seemed odd to me before and even during a recent excursion to England. But afterward, it also made sense, in a quirky way. On my transoceanic return flight, with plenty of time to reflect on what the previous week meant, I had something of a revelation. It came to me that I had gone to London because I wanted to breathe by stretching my legs; I had wanted to think on foot.
The garden flew round with the angel, The angel flew round with the clouds, And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round And the clouds flew round with the clouds.
What sounds like sheer tedium, in rhythm, rhymes, and repeated words, Stevens calls “pleasures.” As I remarked at the start of this essay, pedestrian life gives access to greater-than-pedestrian experiences. The ordinariness of the daily round opens us to discoveries of self and of world. The garden moves with the angel, the angel with the clouds, and finally the clouds dissolve into one another. Stevens has begun what looks like a list, something linear, which then turns in upon itself, undoing our expectation of something greater. From garden to angels to clouds: we are waiting for something else to follow “clouds,” but it’s clouds all the way in a gentle, nebulous intensity. They are like us. Always on the move, always flying “round” like the clouds, we are never lost because we are going nowhere.
In his plan for midtown Philadelphia he attempted to press the forms of Piranesi's Rome of 1762 into the service of the modern city. In this, expressways were thought as "rivers" and the traffic-light controlled streets as "canals." Kahn was conscious of the profound antipathy between the automobile and the city and of the fatal link between consumerism, the suburban shopping center and the decline of the urban core. He proposed a "dock" solution (1956) comprising a 6-story cylindrical silo housing 1,500 cars and surrounded on its perimeter by 18-story blocks that was deprived of elements at a human scale.
Architecture is also the street. There is no order to the movement on streets. Streets look alike, reflecting little of the activities they serve -- Carcasson... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]
In popular culture, Goa has long embodied qualities hard to find in India — it is quaint, laid-back, libertine — and its real estate boom may be more about mythology than location. It is the kind of place, you repeatedly hear, where a woman can go out of the house in shorts, or where people are reasonably tolerant of a situation like Patrao’s living with Kaur, who, at 34, is much younger, and not even his wife. An acquaintance of mine in Delhi who owns a house in Goa put it bluntly: If you want to get out of India, come to Goa.
Once having committed stupidity, it seemed preferable to remain consistently stupid until the bitter end. I would stick to my guns, even if they were pointed at my own head.
The award-winning NPR radio show, This American Life, is headed for the small screen next month on Showtime. Their six-episode run begins March 22.
In this week's The Phoenix, Boston's alternative newsweekly, seems disappointed at the demystification that comes with seeing:
Given Glass's obsessive standards, you might assume the television show is exactly what he promised us at the Opera House: a unique entity that "looks and feels like nothing else on TV." Not only does it fall short of delivering that, it lacks the magical quality that makes the radio program such a joy to listen to each week.
The Wizard of Oz knew what he was doing when he hid himself away in a tiny room with a big microphone. Some things are far grander when they're heard and never seen.
"This American Life" on TV achieves the same contemplative mood as the radio show. And it has a striking spareness of imagery, much as "Life" on radio has a spareness of sound.
And in New York? Well, a year ago, they were setting the bar low:
If Glass can lure even half of his radio show's 1.7 million weekly listeners to TV, Showtime will consider it a hit.
I've recommended the main trailer here; other videos are linked at the official site referenced above.
Flatland is a feature film adaptation of the 1884 novel by Edwin A. Abbott. Only 1,000 copies of this Special Collector's Limited Edition DVD, signed and numbered by the filmmaker with a special feedback email, will be sold.
In another step from its roots selling telecommunications hardware, Cisco Systems Inc. has agreed to buy videoconferencing company WebEx Communications Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash.
This is being covered widely ... some people are still misreading it as a move into content. A case in point, from the Chicago Tribune:
The San Jose-based company has recently made a number of acquisitions branching out from its core business of supplying networking gear and into communications, social networking and other areas that help drive traffic over the network and increase demand for its core equipment.
Cisco will tell the street whatever it thinks it wants to hear. But this notion of driving demand for routers is a total misreading of the strategy. These moves are really about context. As Paul Saffo said 13 years ago:
It is not content but context that will matter most a decade or so from now. The scarce resource will not be stuff, but point of view.
The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching, and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.
So, you see, Cisco is getting into the point of view business.
Other coverage:
... furthering its push beyond its core market for networking gear and into business communications ...
Cisco's takeover of Scientific-Atlanta was intended to increase its ability to deliver content directly to the homes of consumers.
... acquired IronPort Systems, a maker of antispam and antivirus security products.
"As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently," Charles H. Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, said in a statement. "The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications."
So what's WebEx got that Cisco wants? It aids Cisco in a battle with Microsoft in the growing market for what's known as unified communications ...
They are battling for control of enterprise communications.
... analysts say IBM likely was interested, too.
Cisco may be looking to acquire companies that specialize in customer relationship management or mobile communications.
CBS: The Power and the Profits, by David Halberstam
Topic: Society
10:32 pm EDT, Mar 15, 2007
Nothing like a little historical context to go beside your latest updates.
However the Toynbee or the Gibbon of the future adjudges what happened to American society, he will need to reckon large with the impact of radio and television. By the 1950s, TV had become the greatest new instrument of political and social influence in the nation. How that happened, how TV became both a shaper and a creature of politics, both a maker and a prisoner of public tastes, is most simply told as the story of one broadcasting network, of its founder and indomitable chairman, William S. Paley, and the men who helped make CBS into Paley's golden candy store.
David Halberstam has written that story as part of a larger work in progress about centers of power in America and the ways they have been affected by science, technology, and modern communications.
The advent of the half hour news program made television the major source of news for many Americans and the only source for a dismayingly large number of them. This vested in broadcasters awesome responsibilities and a sense that they had ventured into a political minefield. In the first installment of his two part examination of the growth of broadcasting, television journalism, and the CBS network in particular, David Halberstam showed how the medium became both a shaper and a creature of politics, both a maker and a prisoner of public tastes.
In this installment he tells how three Presidents influenced and were influenced by TV, how TV made Vietnam into an electronic war, and how, reluctantly, it dealt with the Watergate tragedy.
Then go watch Network, or at least read this original NYT review, published the same year this Halberstam piece was published. (There are plenty more to choose from, if that one doesn't suit you.)
Even the most successful business models erode over time.
The key to thriving under such tough conditions is adaptability. ... companies must continually update their business model ...
All of the possible methods of bringing customers value -- anything from more-efficient production lines to new products and services -- boil down to just three fundamental strategies:
* Industrial efficiency, which creates value by producing standardized offerings at low cost. Manufacturers and fast-food restaurants rely on this approach.
* Network services, which creates value by connecting clients to other people or other parts of the network. Telephone companies, delivery services and Internet middlemen such as eBay use this method.
* Knowledge intensive, which creates value by applying customized expertise to clients' problems. Law firms and medical practices are prime examples.
