the post consumerist society

I have been reading some fairly heavy books on urbanism, which touch on modern society and the modern economy. They talk about the Ford-ist economy of mass production, and how on the ground this was followed by the consumer economy. That is, if you go round a modern western city, they are no longer based around heavy industry or indeed manufacturing things. The reek of the local brewery, tannery or linoleum works are no longer a feature of British cities.

The modern city seems to be built around satisfying the needs of a consumer society, a society that is much more about providing services and consuming goods, than it is about making old fashioned widgets that could the be distributed unchanged across the entire world.

However, on thinking about it, I think that there is now a stage beyond a society and economy based on consumer goods, to a society and economy based on consumer experience. I was watching the Made in Chelsea Come Dine with Me special, in fairness there was not a lot else on. Although the rich Chelsea residents were clearly very rich, they actually lived in quite spartan houses. Basically the houses we saw seemed to have been conventional traditional city terraced houses, where all the interior walls had been ripped out to create rooms for entertaining than stretched across the breadth and length of the entire floor of the flat. The rooms were however still fairly spartan, the basics for entertaining were all there, dining tables, chairs, large sofas, generic artwork and photos that was tasteful in an unremarkable way, but not much else.

One woman, was it Toff, or Binky, served champagne from blue china cups, all her champagne flutes had been broken at a previous party. Another, or was it the same, had guests smashing lobsters with hammers on plates.

For entertainment one person had some can-can dancers, supposedly flown in form the Moulin Rouge, while another had some elderly man in a cod Napoleonic costume demonstrating how to open a bottle of champagne with a sabre. They seemed to open a lot of bottles of champagne.

While these people were clearly very rich, their houses were relatively small, they seemed to have relatively few possessions, unless they rented mountains of storage which seemed unlikely, but they were spending a lot of money on their lifestyle. Even a low key dinner party was vastly expensive.

These people may not be exactly typical, but I think that they are an extreme example of where Western society is at at the moment. Many people are living in a post scarcity society. There is no point in buying any more physical goods, our houses are full, we don’t have the time to read ,or watch, or wear, or whatever, what we do have.

What we do want, is to subcontract out the elements of our lives that we cannot be bothered with. So we will willingly pay people to cook for us, or make coffee for us, or entertain us, or clean for us, or style our kitchens, or invest our money.

The modern economy is increasingly based on a Disney style attempt to attract and amuse, while we become disengaged tourists in our own lives.

Why the Usual Suspects annoys me, and the author's implicit contract with their audience

I have never really cared for the ending of The Usual Suspects, although I know that a lot of folk do like it. For me it undermined what went before, and I felt rather cheated and annoyed as a result. 

I suppose that the audience is making an investment in any work of linear narrative work of art that they are participating in. If you sit down to watch a film or play or read a book, then you are forced to follow the linear narrative, and even if it is enjoyable enough going, then you do feel that you are making a certain sacrifice. That there is a certain implicit contract, that you expect things to resolve themselves in the expected manner, or in a satisfyingly novel manner. That is why not many people will embark on reading a book that they know to be unfinished, for example the Mystery of Edwin Drood, and no one would expect to publish a half written book. 

There are certain writerly conventions, for example

with a Philip K Dick book with various nested narratives, you might expect this nesting to continue. In a more conventional piece of romantic fiction then you might not;

by and large something will stick to the genre it started as, there are relatively few popular exceptions, such as Dusk Till Dawn;

the level of descriptive detail will generally be sustained throughout, though some modernist works will mention major events almost in passing, the end of The Magic Mountain, or Proust do this;

you are expected to read the entire work from beginning to end, though some authors deliberately insert random text to force you to skim, for example Douglas Coupland;

improbable aspects are introduced at the start of the work, rather than the end; 

The reader not only invests time, they also invest belief in the characters and situations, so while there might be some scope to play with the ‘reality’ of what is being relayed, too much undermining of the credibility of the story will just annoy the reader, unless there was never really any reality in the first place. With certain authors you know that you are in slippery territory when you start, Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, George Perec, some science fiction. While the author might be clever inserting themselves as a character, or lyrics from popular songs, or jokey names for characters, or even parallels to historical events, for the reader these can strain the credibility of the piece and undermine it. The reader wants to be entertained, but they want to be laughing at the joke, rather than being the butt of the joke. For me, this also means avoiding any overt use of imagery, so no obvious allusions to Shakespearian plots, or classic literature, instead plausibility should be the benchmark of what is being described. 

In terms of plausibility there is either a sort of psychological plausibility, that is how you feel the world is, or a physical plausibility, that is how you see that the world is. So Kafka might be psychologically plausible, while lacking physical plausibility. 

the hollowing out of the nation state

Something strange is happening in national politics. On the outer fringes of Britain affairs at Westminster are starting to seem increasingly irrelevant. You have candidates such as Sinn Fein who are elected as MPs but never actually attend Westminster. You have active and popular parties in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland that regularly put large numbers of MPs to Westminster but clearly have no potential of ever forming a majority, and from the panicked reaction of the traditional parties, would appear to have little immediate prospect of forming an alliance with the traditional parties, Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat. 

The argument from Labour and the Conservatives seems to be, that those of us in the devolved administrations, their quaint term for Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, should just vote for a proper party like them, or we are wasting a vote on some MP for some noddy party. In fact the Conservatives seem to be going even further, and arguing that having had a bit of devolution, it really does not matter who Scots vote for, their MPs will just be some strange neutered creature of little real purpose. 

In part this is petulance, the national parties just want everyone to vote for proper national parties for Westminster MPs, in part this is short term self interest, the Conservatives only have one Scottish MP, neutering the remaining MPs does them no harm at all. 

But the national parties are playing a dangerous game, they misjudge the people of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. For many people in Scotland, the UK general election has the interest of a rather over serious reality tv show, where they all shout over each other all the time. The people of Scotland know that they have a vanishingly small voice in the election, and the Scottish voice is getting fainter and fainter. None on the UK parties are remotely appealing for most people, most people have little idea who their MP is, what they do, or why we should care. In these circumstances Scots will vote for whoever they want, but like the people electing Nigel Farage as an MEP, it is not because we expect them to say or do anything at Westminster, but because like what they are saying. 

Devolution is a slippery slope, not because it is dangerous, or leads anywhere bad, but because once you are on it, you are committed to a direction of travel, down the slope, and you really had better think though where you are going very carefully. Unfortunately the only politicians who seem to be saying anything sensible on the subject are those arguing for full independence. Independence might not be the best answer, but politicians really do need to do some serious thinking about what the other answers might be, and start promoting them, rather than the current stale blend of opportunism and indifference. 

Photos now available on Mac

 

Apple seem to ration their major announcements to their keynote speeches and the last one majored on the iWatch. Despite having a house full of apple hardware I am an abstainer from the iPhone, I spend so little of my time not in front of a keyboard that having a portable version of the internet seems expensive and pointless. Accordingly a Dick Tracy style iWatch holds little appeal.

Less prominent was the roll out of Photos, the new photo management software for Apple devices, that was touted in an earlier keynote speech. 

This offers a simpler quicker interface for interacting with your photos, and unifies the software available on OS devices, laptops and desktops and IOS devices such as iPads and iPhones. It also signals the end of iPhoto, if you install Photos, it replaces iPhoto. Aperture the higher end photo management software has now vanished from the AppStore, but will presumably remain useable for a while. Both iPhoto and Aperture would routinely use the same database, and it is this database that Photos now take ownership of. 

Where things really get interesting is the ability to store photos seamlessly in the cloud. There are plenty of cloud solutions out there, I already seem to subscribe to a chunk of them. Some are very content specific, such as iTunes Match which will store your music in the cloud, or Evernote which is restricted to various document formats. Others are less restrictive, Dropbox, or Wuala will duplicate a folder full of stuff in the cloud. Some of these will allow you to save stuff to the cloud and delete safely from your hard drive, such as iTunes Match. Dropbox will let you use it for uploading some stuff to the cloud and deleting from your own hard drive, but not photos. If you want to save your photos to the cloud with Dropbox then you still have to retain a copy on your computer. 

My laptop is getting a bit old and with only 250 gig of hard drive space it is starting to run out of space. I have built up a fair few photos, and recently bought a DSLR which allows me to take a mountain of photos, and a lot of gigabytes of data, very quickly. Accordingly I have long been interested in some means to save my photos to the cloud. 

Flickr will allow you to upload any volume of stuff, but it is not really a backup means, and although you can treat photos as private, it is a fair amount of work and there is always the risk that you have inadvertently uploaded something to the public site that you did not want to. 

Accordingly something integrated straight into my usual photo management application that provides cloud storage is definitely something that I am interested in. 

When Photos came out, I did check for reviews, apart from Walt Mossberg, who had a problem with uploading because of a corrupted database, there was little objective opinion out there. However the monthly cost for what I was needing was less than a pound so rather than wait for the next issue of MacFormat or whatever I just jumped in. The support pages reported a lot of problems, as they invariably do, with minimal comment from Apple, also fairly standard. There were also some ingenious ‘solutions’ involving Terminal scripts. 

From long experience I generally avoid hacking about with my computer, and for anything involving an irreplaceable database or the cloud, I find it best to just leave it running, overnight if needs be, and let it sort itself out. It did take a few days of uploading, but eventually the upload completed. My iPad is too aged to access the photos on the cloud, but I presume that they are there. 

There are various issues with backing up photos, 

1  you are probably backing up a database rather than a collection of individual photos, and a corrupted database means you lose everything. Backing up to the cloud is all very well, but you need to be confident that any corruption is contained at source, and a corrupted database on your laptop does not upload to corrupt the cloud back up too

2  it s not going to be quick, you could be uploading gigabytes of data, upload speeds are a lot less than download speeds, expect to run things overnight 

3  increasingly, if it is on your computer, it is a kick in the pants away from being in the cloud, and it is not inconceivable that it could be made public at some point 

4 you will end up renting access to your photos, 

Despite some investigating I really could not find a practical means of backing up my photos to the cloud, so I thoroughly welcome the option within Photos. It does seem reasonably straightforward but it is certainly not instant, and it would be easy to mess about and corrupt your database of photos. In a few years everyone could be using it. Just how reliable is it? Only time will tell, other back up options remain advisable but Photos cloud storage does seem like a useful and timely solution for most folk. 

 

A guide to the 21st century - the multi-generational house

One of the key innovations in housing within the twenty first century was the widespread adoption of the multi-generational house. These took various forms, for example in Japan, with the adoption of mortgages that would be paid off over successive generations, high land prices, and the tradition of relatively small land prices, the actual house might not look all that unusual to western eyes.

Similarly within America, and amongst the very rich, where there was already a preparedness to live in houses with a very large aggregate area, with regular guests and perhaps live in servants, the multi-generational home might not appear so distinctive to their eyes.

However as a major building type, and method of living it became relatively common in Europe over the century proving more palatable and robust, for many, than the cohousing model, which was to remain relatively niche.

There is a degree of commonality around the multi-generational home. At the core tends to be a single level area that is available to the oldest residents. This has fixed services, the kitchen and bathroom facilities, but also has adaptable stud walls to create rooms. As these are stud walls they can be altered, however the walls themselves, and any doors or other building fabric, are built and finished to a good standard to provide effective sound insulation. In general access to this space is all on the level and amply sufficient to allow wheelchair access. However the fixed building still affords flexibility so that further alterations could be made to further improve accessibility. The ability to alter to suit changing needs is key to this whole ground floor area. It is relatively straightforward to increase space to improve accessibility, or to partition the area to create additional rooms, but the essential core of the building can remain familiar, as will its surroundings, allowing the degree of continuity that is invaluable for the elderly.

Although the ground floor is the apparent core of the building, in practice, from within, it tends to resemble a traditional bungalow, though those fonder of more open plan living can end up with a more loft style appearance. Additional habitation is available, at least two, perhaps more, separate dwellings are provided. These will tend to both be contained within the overall floor space of the ground floor, and form the first floor. These are each independently accessed, in the main they are separated by a structural load bearing wall, but there are stud work gaps within this that would allow for doorways. The kitchen and other living spaces are smaller than those on the ground floor, however as those on the ground floor are on the large size, those on the second floor are still of an acceptable size. For the first floor dwellings flexibility is less of a priority and the rooms tend to be fairly fixed. Where possible a central atrium or courtyard is maintained at the centre of the house and even where a lift is not in place, space sufficient to install one is left available.

In addition to the flexibility over installing a lift, the second floor is not necessarily envisaged as the top floor. From the street the houses all have the appearance of a three storey building even where they only have two, because the exterior walls continue above the second floor to provide the walls of a possible third floor. Where there is no requirement for a third floor the space forms a roof garden, or an awning can be used to create semi sheltered workspace or storage space. Where additional rooms are required the space can be readily converted, as elsewhere the walls are a mix of structural and temporary, with the temporary being easily removed to create windows. By retaining these apparently surplus exterior walls, the buildings are not only easily expandable but are generally robust to any changes in planning policy, as the can be expanded without any alteration to the building footprint or outward appearance.

In general the multi-generational home appears to be no different from the local vernacular, although it may appear to be slightly larger than some houses. They are generally set on reasonable sized building plots, but this size is there to provide flexibility, for example car parking, bin storage, the ability to provide a vegetable plot or children’s play area, rather than to provide extensive grounds that require maintenance. Therefore depending on the preferences of the occupants the outdoor space might provide an attractive but high maintenance garden, or be mono blocked to provide ample parking or house a skip and outdoor storage for building supplies for a tradesman that works from home.

A multi-generational house will generally be set somewhere that is not unduly remote, with ready access to local services, both those for the young and for the old. They can therefore be expensive and that is why flexibility and a modular approach are key. They are never particularly high specification buildings, instead they are robust and built to last. They are often built by a working couple as they approach retirement, with the ground floor being envisaged as their forever home. It is possible to simply finish the ground floor, and leave the remaining elements unbuilt until required. The independent houses above can be occupied by grown up children, other relatives, or indeed let out to form a source of income. There is adequate space for a communal approach, for example large meals can easily be accommodated, alternatively separate living rooms are provided, so that residents can easily entertain themselves and others in the context of their larger setting or independently.

 

 

talent is superfluous

Nowadays a rare talent really is not all that uncommon. When there is a whole interconnected world out there, the most statistically unusual of talents is common enough to occur a few times. The genuine rarity is someone that we might care about. A story only really works if it has characters that we might in some way care about. Be they good, bad or indifferent, we have to care to some extent. So the news and media need to have players cavorting on the stage, it does not care who they are or what they do, as long as the viewing public cares about them to some extent. So we care about Madonna falling off a stage because her cape did not come off, we care about minor celebrities appearing with Kevin Bacon in an advert. Out of that great soup of anonymity we see and recognise faces, and we can see the story that is told about them. 

There are only ever going to be a finite number of people that are widely recognised, for the media there is no more valuable commodity than fame, however thin the claim to fame, if the public care, then that is enough. 

celebrity

In the past most musicians would make more from their tours than their albums, and probably made more money out of tee shirts and programmes than selling tickets. The distance between what someone appears to do, and where they earn their money has now stretched out even further. There seem to be plenty of modern ‘stars’ for whom any music is at best an incidental part of what they are providing. The papers are filled with photos of Rita Ora and Nicky Minaj, out of all proportion to their significance as musicians. I don’t think we should view this as a negative, if they are smart enough to supply something that the media want, and will pay for, then good luck to them. They do at least seem to provide something in exchange for their celebrity, there are a phalanx of other celebrities who have only the most spurious of claims to notability, perhaps once being the girlfriend of a footballer, or being married to someone famous.