Tallking about TED: Nathan Heller's Listen and Learn (New Yorker)

The recent copy of the New Yorker has a fascinating, well-written article on video phenomenon known as the TED Talk(s). The first page is available here and Heller has a web-only introduction here. There's several points that Heller raises or makes that are worth noting.
The first is the extent to which the online videos are shot, using 8 cameras (p. 72),  and edited to create what is an almost entirely different experience from physically attending the event. This is not necessarily any different than the dichotomy between attending a professional sporting event and watching it on TV. The screen offers a much closer, if not better, view of the field in a very dynamic, almost constantly changing series of views that the producer feels best exemplifies the action on the playing surface. The video viewer benefits though from the dynamic views that the changing camera angles offer in a way that the physical attendee does not. However, physically attending allows one to be physically present, "I was there" for the event which grants a particular status (bragging rights) to the observer. I wonder if the TED talks would not be as successful w/o the audience just as the excitement/deflation of the observing physical crowd drives excitement levels at sporting events. The presence of the audience responding enthusiastically is necessary, note the reference to "more than half of Long Beach talks end in standing ovations" (p. 74). I would suggest that the audience response drives the emotional connection on the part of the viewer. Malcolm Gladwell's talk on spaghetti sauce or Ken Robinson's talk on education lack certain poignancy w/o the audience to respond in real-time.
Knowing that the edited versions are streamlined versions of what actually happens in a TED Talk raises, in my mind, some questions of what the purpose of the TED talk is. In conjunction with the editing is the inclusion of narrative over stats/data. Stories are way more interesting than graphs, hands-down. But stories can be left as vehicles unto themselves which is somewhat dangerous because the narrative emotional effect can reduce the story to a emotionally moving moment. Back to this in a second. Robert Krulwich delivered a commencement speech at Columbia University back in 2008 which the Radiolab podcast offered up as a short entitled Tell Me a Story. This is one of my favorite speeches as Krulwich makes an incredible simple argument for the discussion, in this case, of science as story. It's brilliant. He's addressing a rang of incredibly bright science students who are going to go home and when their relatives ask what they've been doing for the past four/five years and what are they going to do now, Krulwich suggests some sort of story to explain the fairly complex scientific thing that the students have been/will be working on. Not because the relatives are dumb but because well-told, well-formulated stories clarify where esoteric language. Krulwich's point being that if these graduates really want to help people get science they need to tell quality stories about that science to help the listeners connect with the ideas.
Which is probably what the point of the TED talk is, particularly the video version. It's a story that the viewer is supposed to connect with. But to do what? Feel good, make a change, submit their own application for a TED talk, play around with TEDEd to make their own version? What's the point of TED? Is it simply edu/infotainment or something more? Does it kick back to the Enlightenment principles of humanism and the cheering-on of what we have accomplished?
I think Heller addresses the most poignant, if unintentional, point of TED, as it currently stands.

"The TED talk is today a sentimental form. Once, searching for transport, people might have read Charles Dickens, rushed the dance floor, watched the Oscars, biked Mount Tamalpais, put on Rachmaninoff, put on the Smiths, played Frisbee, poured wine until someone started reciting "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond." Now there is TED. "I got all inspired and my hair stood on end and I got weepy-like and energized and enthused," wrote a participant in an online TED-discussion forum. (The talk that brought on such delirium was about education.) Debby Ruth, a Long Beach attendee, told me that she started going to TED after reaching a point in her life when "nothing excited me anymore"; she returns now for a yearly fix. TED may present itself as an ideas conference, but most people seem to watch the lectures not so much for the information as for how they make them feel." (p. 73) (emphasis mine)

Perhaps the true contribution of the TED Talks is an excitement about ideas. Exiting ideas are good. Isaiah Berlin once stated that "an intellectual is a person who wants ideas to be as interesting as possible." I'm not convinced, however, that the goal of TED is an excitement about how interesting ideas can be, as opposed to a repackaging of that idea in an easily palatable, bite-sized tidbit. There is/can be a place for this type of interaction of ideas but the plastic-wrapped emotionalism of an exciting idea should not replace the messiness and struggling that a truly interesting idea requires.

The night each plows

The night each plows
A furrow of death
In the field of stars
Who calls?
I am nothing
But one with the one
That makes the nothing All.
- Charles Bell

Selling memory and conversation: Three thoughts on Apple/Siri's latest ads

You may have seen one of these iPhone/Siri ads from this NPR article: Hey Celebs, Are You Lonesome Tonight? Siri's Gotcha  There are three aspects to the program that struck me as I read the article and watched the included ads.

First: Siri embodies the clueless alien with massive mental firepower-literally a computer for a brain-as seemingly all-knowing but lacks understanding of basic pop/cultural syntax or semantics.
My best example of this is traveling recently with my two teenage cousins sitting in the back seat of the car firing questions at the Siri program. Ridiculous questions that they would very quickly become tired of asking an adult or peer because the answers to their questions would actually be answers. Instead interaction with Siri offers either straightforwardly sincere (admitting that Siri doesn't get humor minus the occasional flash of programmed wit) or, in response to a particularly obscure or ludicrous question the phrase "I don't understand".  In this context Siri becomes a parlor game, a novelty. A harmless interactive-only version of the Turing Test where the questions being asked are designed to stump for purposes of amusement of the listeners. "Can you stump the machine?" This is the context of every friendly alien movie where the amusement comes from the watching the outsider trying to fit themselves into the daily activity/routine with which the rest of the culture is comfortable. At least it's amusing to 13 and 14 year olds.

Second: The fact you have to hit the button every time seems like an intercom system to a disembodied intelligence waiting to interact with you. The sense is not of a whimsical, helpful tool but rather the sadness of a deeply, limited conversation and the need to ask questions for almost every single thing. The NPR article suggests that "The overt message of these TV ads is obvious: By the command of your voice, Siri can help you with the mundane tasks of everyday life." Is this the true American dream-to have our questions/whims answered by simply speaking them, without labor or effort? Or is it deeper that there is something/some entity to always respond to our questions so that we never feel alone? (See this brief history of the ELIZA talk bot, built as a sort of simulation of Rogerian psychotherapy.)

Thirdly: What's especially interesting about each one of these commercials is the absence of memory. Jackson can't remember how many ounces are in a cup, Deschanel asks to be reminded to clean up her house and Malkovitch wants to know what is in store for his evening. Siri is really only helpful if the user is willing to stop remembering or at the very least cede the role of memory from the user's brain to the iPhone's memory chip. What struck me as well is the sense conveyed that not knowing or not remembering is incredibly "cool", which the use of Jackson/Deschanel and Malkovich as characters, convey.

(Not to be that old dude shaking his cane at the youngsters on the lawn but this kind of thing that draws parallels to Socrates' story of the loss of memory due to memory. Anne Blair's book Too Much to Know, which I don't have in front of me, also shares a similar story from the Muslim tradition. In both stories there is legitimate fear that writing will eliminate the need to remember. While writing has allowed for the more efficient preservation of knowledge there is something to be said for the act of remembering that, for the ancient world, writing supplanted. There's a distinct difference between purposefully recording a future event and trusting the act of recall to a tool. The paper doesn't read itself.)

"Sticking with it" versus "becoming unstuck": an exercise in metaphor

Yesterday I was reading the Cambridge book review of The Pale King and this quote, toward the end of the review stuck with me: "...based on the evidence of this novel, I’d take Pietsch’s more hopeful view, that Wallace was trying to come unstuck and believed it was worth his while to try to do so and thought of his writing as a way of understanding how to do it." (Emphasis mine)
This is a great review and worth reading but what stayed with my brain was the idea of "being stuck" versus the idea of "sticking with".
If you're not familiar with David Foster Wallace, the aformentioned mention to Wallace's being stuck references Wallace's struggle with depression. Knowing this background helps to clarify what the reviewer perceived Wallace as being stuck in. One of the best examples of being stuck, at least what leaps to mind is the story of  Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Brer Rabbit manages to stick himself so fast into the Tar Baby that his enemy, Brer Fox, comes as close as he ever will to actually eating the rabbit.  Being stuck in or on something (i.e. being stranded) is typically negative. Referring back to the quote at the top of this post suggests that becoming unstuck can be read as synonymous with escape or release. For example the phrases "stuck in traffic", "stuck (or caught) between a rock and a hard place" and, with reluctance, Linkin Park's By Myself references being "stuck on the outside" or, with more enthusiasm, The Hold Steady's "stuck between stations", convey a negative or less than desirable state. In describing the creative process there is reference to being stuck at a particular point in the process (writer's block) connecting to the metaphor of the creative process as flow in which flowing freely is a positive attribute but to be stuck is to suggest the pausing or stoppage of the creative flow. ("stuck in a rut"). The negative connotation of "being stuck" connects to the metaphorical understanding of forward is good, backwards is bad. (See Lakoff/Johnson Metaphors We Live By) Moving forward is synonymous with the idea of progress and to be stuck negates progress and/or forward movement; the loss of freedom. Being stuck as a negative idea also references the related metaphor of "life as a journey". If one is stuck, one cannot journey or progress, (Brer Rabbit cannot escape) or  therefore being stuck, in many situations, is seen as negative.

On the other hand the phrase "sticking with it" is positive. "Sticking with it" implies perseverance through a difficult situation and even if that particular situation didn't end successfully the act of "sticking with it" can be added as a sort of back-handed encouragement ("We lost the game but at least we stuck it out to the end.")  Successful gymnast dismounts are often commentated as "sticking the landing" or having "stuck the landing" implying the successful setting of feet back onto the gymn floor w/o wavering or falling over. ("Sticking the landing" may have some relationship to the gymnast's ability to control their body not only through the, typically, continuous, movements on the particular apparatus but also to stop completely so that by ceasing all movement they demonstrate the end of their routine and control of their selves.)   The phrase "sticking it out" also can refer to perseverance through a difficult situations through a particularly grueling process and succeeding, or at least making it, to the end. ("It was a tough climb, but I stuck it out for the view(s) from the top.") To "stick it out" implies a sense in which the thing (it) in which one is participating or undertaking is less than the sum of the whole. That is the "it" is relatively small to the overall benefit of sticking it out. I think this also has a connection to the metaphor of "life as a journey" as the ability to successfully "stick it out"  or "sticking with it" implies that it is a temporary, or at least non-permanent, state. One can stick it out or stick with it because one can see the end. (On the flipside, failing to "stick it out" during a difficult situation or a situation in which others can see the end(ing) is typically seen as failing or a direct result of giving up.)
The ability to "stick it out" carries with it the sense that the "it" is finite; at the very least one can see the end of whatever one is sticking. Because the outcomes of many of life's events are not foreknown, sticking it out also carries with it hope that the end result is different than the currently expected or experienced state of being.
I think the difference in understanding "sticking it out" versus being "stuck" is one of proximity or perspective. Note that "sticking it out" or "sticking with it" are related to whatever it is as companion or as platform. Personal effort is being made to maintain close distance/proximity to the thing that is causing difficulty. One is pursuing or must at least keep pace with that thing to which one is trying to master or beat. To become unstuck from something implies that the "it" has somehow overtaken you or that you are, or have become, subservient to the situation. Brer Rabbit is unable to free himself from the Tar Baby or if one's creative flow is blocked; reading any author's memoir or instructions on how to write often includes steps explaining how to remove that block or to realize the creative flow.
However both metaphors of "becoming unstuck" or "sticking with it" depend on the concept of life as a journey. Both depend upon the idea of progress as positive to derive their meanings.
(I'm not sure if there's a larger concept to draw upon here. I thought there was in the time I've spent thinking about it but that concept has come in and out of focus and currently it's pretty far out of focus so I'm going to leave this here. If I'm able to derive something further, I'll post it.)

On reading "the other stuff"

"When Matthew Arnold keeled over, in April, 1888, while hurrying to catch the Liverpool tram, Walt Whitman told a friend, “He will not be missed.” Arnold was, in short, “one of the dudes of literature.” Whitman probably figured that his own gnarly hirsuteness would save him from becoming a dude. He was wrong, and therein lies a lesson for all hardworking scribblers: stick around long enough, develop a cult following, gain the approval of one or two literary dudes, and you, too, can become respectable...For the longest time, there was little ambiguity between literary fiction and genre fiction: one was good for you, one simply tasted good....The guilty pleasure label peels off more easily if we recall that the novel itself was something of a guilty pleasure. In the mid-eighteenth century, there was a hovering suspicion that novels were for people not really serious about literature. Instead of laboring over" An Essay on Man" or some musty verse drama, readers could turn the pages of an amusing French nove or even on e by Richardson or Fielding. Unlike works of moral or religious instruction, novels were diverting. Of course, if they proved too diverting, how good could they be?"
~"Easy Writers" by Arthur Krystal The New Yorker May 2012.

Great piece on the development and role of "guilty pleasure" reading and the weird shifting criteria that is used to determine what falls into that area. Should it be all Plato all the time or is there a role for the mind expanding story like DFW's Infinite Jest or Bolano's 2666 or Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad or the latest Grisham? The reader simply doesn't have to work as hard at Grisham, or even Egan, as the other two. Reading can't always be work, I think, because then that process ceases to be measureable by the pleasures of the process.

Fly fishing

My family grew up about 20 minutes from the Jersey Shore so fishing with my dad, and occasionally other siblings, off the jetties of Sandy Hook for blackfish in the early morning sunlight with the incoming tide crashing over the rocks was a fairly regular occurrence and are treasured childhood memories. My brother Drew still lives in this area and focuses his fishing time and energies on the pursuit of the striped bass. Striped bass fishing is exciting because it entails wading out into the surf to about belly button or chest deep water and throwing your line with clam attached out and then just standing there waiting for the striped bass to hit. It's 11:00 at night so it's pretty dark standing in the ocean while occasionally things swim into one of your legs. And you need to make sure to pay attention as to where the water is hitting you because an ideal time to fish for striped bass is when the tide is coming in which means the water is going to climb up your body necessitating a slow retreat back towards the shore. Because the tide is coming in, the distance back to shore can be longer than the distance originally traversed to get out. It's a really lovely and enjoyable experience. The gentle slap of the waves against your chest, quiet conversation and, when fortunate, the excitement of the fish on the line.

I took a couple of years off/away from fishing after a largely empty week-long fishing trip at Lake Champlain. After finishing college though I've started to get back into fishing slowly but surely. While there's two different areas of fishing (fresh-water and salt water) there's also two main types of fishing gear.* The majority, and easiest, is what is known as a spinning reel which is your standard rod and reel setup. You throw out your lure, worm, what-have-you and reel it back at the appropriate speed to whatever it is you're trying to catch. Spinning setups have some variation but are pretty uniform and fairly easy to operate.  The other gear option is fly-fishing. Fly-fishing is an approach to fishing that carries with it a decent amount of romance, think Hemingway's Nick Adam stories, and is pretty difficult to do well. Successful fly fishing requires the ability to whip a tiny fly tied to 9-10 feet of quite tiny line which is in turned to a much thicker line, back and forth through the air gathering distance and velocity so that the fisherman can gently lay the fly exactly where he wants it. This requires a decent amount of space especially if one wants to avoid the dreaded side sport known as "tree fishing". 

Largely because of the romantic aspect of fly-fishing, I've always wanted to try it. A little over a year ago, Drew was given a fly pole and reel by a friend which Drew passed on to me. Part of this was pure brotherly altruism the other part was the fact that it's a left-handed reel that can't be switched to be used as a right-hand reel. 
I've been practicing, off and on, trying to get the technique down which is a decent chunk of work because not only are you thinking about where the line is going in front of you, there is also the backcast, when the line goes back behind you, to be concerned about. There's also the angle of the rod to maintain, how far forward and back you're working the rod tip because too far forward and the fly crashes prematurely into the water and not far enough forward and the fly smacks into the back of your head. There's a lot to think about and it's a decent amount of work. However, it can also be rewarding where "rewarding" equals actually catching a fish.

My father-in-law and I headed out to Russica Falls last weekend to try out the fly fishing. The falls are about 50 minutes south of the Clarks Summit area. My father-in-law had fished there a lot in the 80's but hadn't been back in a while. The falls, and the ensuing stream/tiny river is a part of the Bushkill which has some pretty decent falls farther downstream.

For perspectives sake, here's a picture of Russica Falls.

                                            

Another picture w/ less brush in the way:

The falls are the first thing you see. You park and then hike down to pick up the creek/river way farther down and then work back up towards the falls. I'm wearing neoprene chest waders and my father-in-law is wearing hip waders because we work our back up the falls in the water. Usually this is pretty straightforward but the water was about six inches higher than normal, due to the amount of extra rain recently received and the stream was pretty hard to navigate due to the current. Also the following pictures appear somewhat blurry or smeared because my phone was in a plastic bag to make sure if I fell all the way in the phone would stay dry. I did actually catch a decent brown trout but since the pole was in one hand and the fish was in the other no picture was taken. My father-in-law can vouch for me, if needed.

How the stream appeared most of the way. You can kind of see the white water splotches.

My father-in-law fishing.

This shot was taken at a pool where the water was calm enough to try traditional dry-fly fishing.Up to and past the pool we were nymph fishing which consists of a nymph, 2 split shots and a strike indicator which is a bright yellow foam float attached your line that sinks when a fish, presumably, has bitten. You flip the nymph into a likely spot watch the strike indicator float past you and then flip the entire assembly upstream again to repeat the process. While this is dramatically simpler than traditional fly-fishing, it still takes a decent amount of finesse and practice.

View from my pole headed upstream.

Father-in-law working the opposite bank. 

What should follow here is a picture of the 300 lb. bear we saw crossing the road on our way back home but neither of us were coordinated enough to get our phones pointed in the right spot to take the picture or to remember there was an actual camera in the center console of the car so no picture of the bear follows. 

Overall, it was a good outing. We both caught fish, neither of us fell all the way in and saw a bear. Really for a fisherman the only part the really matters is the first part-we caught fish.

*There's also spearfishing, used w/ scuba and bow fishing which is trying to shoot fish w/ an arrow that has a line attached to it but these are peripheral.