Steve Jobs / Apple Cult 2

iPhone 5 Cargo Cult
Following up on Part 1...

I think technology -- forget all the claims to a new world of participatory democracy, etc. -- has mainly been geared toward bourgeois personal convenience, toward making life as effortless and comfy as possible, so users are always connected to people and things they know.

Their iProducts make them feel safe, confident and powerful -- never far from a friend who can help, never lost, never going where no one else has gone before.

I accidentally deleted an anonymous comment on Part 1 that basically said "Jobs didn't make people zombies; people are free to choose to become zombies or not."  And I thought: But didn't Jobs, just like a heroin dealer, make it a whole lot easier for people -- who naturally gravitate to the lowest common denominator -- to become zombies?  Didn't he grease the skids to a world where it's considered wonderful that people can watch video as they walk down the sidewalk, and in essence bring their living room with them?

Never mind that the video they watch is the same old crap, and that the buzz they're addicted to is about the same old Pop crap, just updated every few years for a new crop of suckers.

So I think people who say Apple products have made this a better world really mean that the products -- by boosting their ability to be comfortable wherever they go -- have made them feel sleeker and more powerful than they would if disconnected from their Apple product.

They probably don't notice how they constantly consult their device as they walk down the street, seeking its confirmation that they still belong to the shiny world it connects, so it's hard to tell if the device is an appendage, or they're the appendage.  And they probably don't notice what pliant consumers they've become, of a corporation that's always sought maximum control of its platforms.

So when you factor in Apple's paranoid approach to leaks and criticism, Jobs' ruthless treatment of underlings, and the near-spiritual devotion of Apple consumers, it's not a stretch to consider the term "cult," even if Apple devotees belong to something a little closer to a cargo cult than a proper one.

Steve Jobs / Apple Cult

Jobs memorial; photo courtesy NY Times
I've always found the seductive nature of Apple products creepy, the way people fetishize their iPhones and laptops, petting them like a vain movie villain petting a cat.

It doesn't bother me as much that, say, custom car owners fetishize their shiny objects -- at least they built the object themselves.  And I love computers as much as the next geek, but it's not the same magical/mystical relationship Apple encourages with its sealed, candy-coated architecture.

UWS Temple

And I don't think the world Mr. Jobs has helped create is much better than the one he found, because his cultists come to believe that wi-fi is a necessity -- a human right! -- so they can stay in immediate touch with their petty concerns no matter where they are or how much it intrudes on others, so they can commandeer any and every place on earth, and help degrade our relationship to the physical world and others in it.  Now people consult their smartphone to see what's popular nearby instead of letting the unexpected happen; now people flee through museums taking pictures to flip through later, rather than look at the real thing.

At least devotees lighting candles for musicians (like at John Lennon's Strawberry Fields memorial) are in love with something intangible -- the music and/or the personality -- and not a shiny consumer object.

I think there's an important difference between the way an object makes you feel and the way a song or story makes you feel, and I think there's a huge price to pay when the world is given over to the immediate, narcissistic convenience embodied in Mr. Jobs' shiny "magical" objects.

Thank You Starbucks Thieves

I miss the days when people had to lock up their rocks
So much of the city looks just like the Generic Yuppie glass & metal building they live in, with a bank branch, Starbucks, and cellphone outlet on the ground floor.  And no matter where they go they're connected by mobile device to safety, to family & friends, to brands & trends.

So you can hardly blame them for acting like they're at home everywhere they go, traipsing around in sweatpants & flip flops with -- in between the laptop, iPhone, and stainless steel commuter mug -- at least a thousand dollars worth of shiny stuff.  You can hardly blame them for turning into Bambi.

Still, I'd like to thank the Starbucks thieves for doing what nature intended, and stealing all their stuff: As the Careless Order a Latte, Thieves Grab Something to Go [NYT]

The reporter thought "insult was added to injury" because a few people witnessed a thief in action and didn't lift a finger to stop them.  Ha!

Personally, I'd consider protecting your mom's honor, but your thousand dollars worth of shiny stuff?  After you park yourself in proximity to people then proceed to run your mouth like they don't exist?  Puh-lease... In fact I'd smile and wave at the thief, and just hope they don't sell your laptop to someone just like you.

What do you expect when so many people are more tightly bound to iPhone Space than physical space, where we have to tune out more and more every year because "public space" is being converted into a dumping ground full of the broadcast exhaust of people with their ass in this world but their head up another?

Greenwich Village Then & Now

Dylan & Suze Rotolo on Jones St. in the Village
Nearly 50 years ago, on January 24, 1961, Bob Dylan first arrived in Greenwich Village [Interferenza].  (Also see Touring Bob Dylan's New York, The Telegraph.)

Now the Village draws a different set, with Craigslist job listings like the one to the left for a High Frequency Trading Developer (Greenwich Village).

What more can you say about New Bloomberg City?  NYC is Wall Street's mistress, dependent on its mercenary drones and "innovations" like high frequency trading, all geared toward skimming as much as possible before the casino collapses.

Dylan said "New York was a dream... of the cosmopolitan riches of the mind.  It was a great place for me to learn and to meet others who were on similar journeys"  [Westwood One Radio, 1985; via Interferenza].

There's no room for that kind of nonsense now, when Young Republicans flock to New York dreaming of Bloombergian riches, of going to school and puking "east side, west side, all around the town," before joining the Wall Street fraternity and the shiny lifestyle it buys, eventually settling into suburban luxury in the middle of NYC -- something a Master of the Universe might find deadly boring without the knowledge that this city is always waiting up for him, legs spread, naked in furs, with lines of coke on the coffee table and a music video playing on the wall-sized TV, to the strains of Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" (sample; original lyrics):

When you're lost in the rain in Cancun
And it's bonus time too
And your portfolio fails
And your hedge fund don't pull you through
Don't put on any tears
When you're down on Los Hooters Avenue
You had your way with New York City, bro
– you can do it to Mexico too!

NYC Irritation Innovation

Sightseers swing past earth at Columbus Circle
NYC is a hotbed for innovating things that irritate.

Old irritation: Idling sightseeing buses.

New irritation: Idling sightseeing buses with huge ads exhorting people not sitting on their ass on the bus to get in shape, like above.

Old irritation: Door jumpers.  You open a door for yourself and someone a few lengths away jumps through it before you do.  They're parasitic ghosts who slip through space between real people, stealing muscle power, avoiding having to touch the filthy door (probably some of the same people who use a store restroom, don't wash their hands, then fondle merchandise or clamp their polluted hand on the escalator rail on the way out).

New irritation: Door jumpers using cellphones, who consider it only right that others open doors for them because they are busy on the phone.

Old irritation: Spatially oblivious people.  Like spaced-out tourist families that pick the most congested choke point in pedestrian traffic to stand around debating where to go next -- forcing everyone else to churn through their whirlpool of confusion.

New irritation: Spatially oblivious iPeople.  They notice you are about to collide, so they consult their cellphone -- they actually stutter-stop for a half second to study it as you converge -- as though they hope to flee into Cyber Phone Space and avoid your onrushing mass of molecules.

I have seen people do this at the most inappropriate moments -- stepping onto or off a train, in the middle of a busy doorway -- and suspect they really are split between worlds, too lazy to choose one.

And speaking of "inattention to surroundings," the article at the link below is a hoot.  It says that, even before cellphones, national park visitors would put their kids on a wild animal's back for a snapshot.  Now they use technology to extend their idiocy.  One quartet of hikers sent out high tech emergency signals three times -- each time sending a $3400 an hour helicopter into action -- and refused to fly out until forced.  Their second emergency?  They thought the local water "tasted salty."
- Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble, NYT

4th of July Toy Town NYC

Not a creature was stirring... well, maybe a mouse.
It was nice and empty out in Queens on the 4th of July.  Quiet, inviting spots under shade trees (below left); limp, tattered real flags (below right) that remind us why zero-maintenance bumper sticker flags were invented; and the LIRR commuter train tracks stretching into the overheated distance (above), so still and empty I could hear a worn part tick every so often, like an insect in rising desert heat.


Meanwhile, back in town, the Target Train (formerly the 6 Train, below) brought me back to reality and the real NYC -- once labeled Satan's Workshop, now become Santa's Toy Town -- where public space and infrastructure is sponsored by the highest bidder, those wonderful corporations that furnish what we share...

...with "street furniture" ad platforms that show us how to decorate our emptiness and keep ourselves occupied as the clock ticks down, as our supposedly sacred freedom seeps through our fingers because we can't decide how to spend it, because choosing one thing shuts out all the others.

We let con men sell us one self-serving Theme after another to fill the void, and it was only a matter of time before their sponsors became our sponsors.


And here we are, living in their Theme Park surrounded by ads for things that feed our insatiability and rob us of contentment, that lure and agitate us with pointless noise and movement, until we really believe freedom is the ability to update Facebook while lounging at the park, surrounded by thousands of shiny plastic reflections of ourselves doing the same thing.

Wasting our freedom on baubles, signing our world over to the highest bidder, so sold-out that -- like a small dog whose owner dresses it in a tiny sailor suit -- we don't even notice we've turned into clowns, into Barbie & Ken dolls riding toy trains, the playthings of sponsors whose only interest is keeping us hypnotized and nursing at their machines until they've sucked us dry.

They got rid of graffiti on trains so this could happen!

Socialist Census Forms

Inflatable Census Idol / Emergency Ark, Union Square
Obama's socialists, applying their godless scientific techniques to counting and sorting us like sardines, have sent a census form cleverly addressed to The Resident at my address -- even though they already know who I am.

Thanks to the Facebook "privacy policy" that stays one step ahead of me in its quest to rip me open -- so advertisers and other Internet predators can toy with my beating heart like an Aztec priest -- any information I give the Census Takers will be easy to link to my tax forms, which means the godless IRS may find out I have fewer than the few hundred dependents I claim.

The Census Takers will want to know personal religious details that are none of their business, like the fact that I have 17 wives.

I was going to limit myself to one wife for each month of the year, but five of the first dozen disobeyed me and I had to trade them in.  Then each wife has, I don't know, two to ten children apiece, and they're all on welfare.

"Render unto Caesar the bills from Babylon," I say, because I have to spend all the time I'm not procreating becoming more righteous so [God] will notice me, down here in the multitudes of pseudo-righteous phonies.

Then there's the illegal aliens I rented the basement to -- who I'm pretty sure have built a sub-basement and rented it out to aliens from an even more godforsaken country, where the people are not just ignorant savages who can't even speak English, but freckled in the most nauseating hues imaginable, marked by [God] for the suffering they deserve.

I wouldn't mind the hideously freckled illegal aliens so much -- because, being too ugly to come out in the daytime, they would not compete with me for the work I would take if it did not interfere with my procreating and righteousness -- but I've noticed the floor up here is starting to slouch, and I'm worried they might be building a sub-sub-basement themselves down there, to rent out to beings so alien they don't come outside at all.

I would go down and check, but I'm worried I would never come out again!

So the Census Takers can go to hell!  Righteous, real Americans like me are as unquantifiable as the number of letters in the name of [God].  And maybe the socialists don't know how many of us there are, but [God] does, and the last time I talked to Him, He said His privacy policy will never change, and that...

What happens in this religion stays in this religion!

Say hallelujah!

[ Trying to Break Down Resistance to the Census ]

Critical Fountainhead

First The End of the Critic?, then the war over art criticism and journalistic ethics summarized by Ed Winkleman.  Cultural criticism is under siege.

So it was refreshing to watch The Fountainhead for the first time the other day and soak up its nostalgic warning: Beware the diabolical and powerful Architecture Critic, or you'll wind up pulling a plow on a collective farm.

O for the days when critics swayed The Masses!

My notes after viewing:

- Ayn Rand was 12 years old when she wrote this, right?

- The setup: A self hating, sexually repressed Gestapo worm is chopped up and comes back as 3 people: the cold and empty, riding-crop wielding heiress Dominique Francon; the heroic, iconoclastic architect Howard Roark (Frank Lloyd Wright meets Albert Speer meets The Unabomber); and tabloid tycoon Gail Wynand, a Rupert Murdoch clone.  Then the tabloid's architecture critic, Ellsworth Toohey, conspires to destroy Howard because he is too heroically individualistic.

Still, I was so moved I put together the storyboard below.

The movie starts with a bang: Howard is expelled from architecture school because he will not conform and submit to mediocrity.  Then the 3 worms proceed to spout each others' lines to each other, as captured in the subtitles and comments:




And now, 60 years after the triumph of Ayn's will, with our shared institutions crumbling, we can heroically and individually: vote for our favorite future casino lounge singer on American Idol (owned by Rupert); poison ourselves with the bitter, dead-end politics of The New York Post and Fox News (owned by Rupert); and express ourselves by throwing up gang signs on our MySpace page (owned by Rupert).

Soon we'll have American Idol-style government that changes daily by cell phone vote.  (Which might not be a bad idea, but would be... owned by Rupert.)

And soon the last newspaper critic will be sent packing, their wealth of knowledge useless to a world that doesn't really need help choosing between McDonald's and Burger King, or really enjoy the effort it takes to decipher all those words, when pictures will do.