The Week Link — 10/8/16
This week we read about the Presidential debates, using technology to talk to to deceased loved ones, Humans of New York, and the future of Democracy.
Welcome to the Week Link, where Sam and I discuss the best things we’ve read the following week. You can find previous lists here.
“Speak, Memory” by Casey Newton at The Verge
This article is phenomenally interesting, and very well-written. It details the death of a man named Roman Mazurenko, and how his friends created a program which read all of his past online conversations, learned how he wrote and responded, and mimicked him in conversation. It brings up a lot of interesting and complicated questions about the digital legacy we leave when we pass away, and the proper role it plays in the grieving and memorial process. This article takes a very serious, intricate look at it — deserved by the somberness and complexity of the subject matter. You really must read it for yourself. And credit to new CiP contributor Dan for finding this one — very excited to have you onboard!
In “Be Right Back,” a 2013 episode of the eerie, near-future drama Black Mirror, a young woman named Martha is devastated when her fiancée, Ash, dies in a car accident. Martha subscribes to a service that uses his previous online communications to create a digital avatar that mimics his personality with spooky accuracy. First it sends her text messages; later it re-creates his speaking voice and talks with her on the phone. Eventually she pays for an upgraded version of the service that implants Ash’s personality into an android that looks identical to him. But ultimately Martha becomes frustrated with all the subtle but important ways that the android is unlike Ash — cold, emotionless, passive — and locks it away in an attic. Not quite Ash, but too much like him for her to let go, the bot leads to a grief that spans decades.
Kuyda saw the episode after Mazurenko died, and her feelings were mixed. Memorial bots — even the primitive ones that are possible using today’s technology — seemed both inevitable and dangerous. “It’s definitely the future — I’m always for the future,” she said. “But is it really what’s beneficial for us? Is it letting go, by forcing you to actually feel everything? Or is it just having a dead person in your attic? Where is the line? Where are we? It screws with your brain.”
“Presidential Debate: Financial Markets Declare Winners and Losers” by Steven Russolillo at Wall Street Journal
This is a very short and straightforward piece, but very interesting. Markets move in anticipation of changes in value; oil prices go up when there’s fear supply may be limited in the future, and relatively safe bonds go up when people worry about the economy. But you can also find out much more complicated odds by looking at markets in a careful way. Because market prices move as people place or remove money from certain positions, or take bets, the more confident an outcome appears, the greater movement you’ll observe. And with this in mind, we can look at financial markets to see who is more likely to win the Presidential Election in November.
There was no need to wait for pundits to grade Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on their Monday debate performances. Financial markets’ judgment was swift.
Currencies, gold and some individual stocks had sharp moves Tuesday that suggested Mrs. Clinton was the victor. After months of conjecture, investors now have a real-world template for what may rise and fall as the election approaches and the candidates’ fortunes shift.
Consider the Mexican peso. It jumped 2% against the U.S. dollar during the debate, a remarkably swift move in currency markets. Mr. Trump has called for scrapping the North American Free Trade Agreement, which would hurt Mexico’s export economy. He also has advocated building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Both could hurt Mexico’s economy and currency.”
“The Vice Presidential Debate 2016, or the battle of the dads”, recapped by Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post
Alexandra Petri is part Dave Barry, part Mallory Ortberg and easily my favorite election writer this year. Her fictionalized and surreal transcript of the Kaine-Pence debate perfectly crystallizes the dynamics of it: the constant interrupting, Kaine’s stiff attempts at cleverness, Pence’s total failure to acknowledge anything Trump has said.
KAINE: I think I’ve figured out where we disagree. On a scale from zero to 1000, how much credit do you give Hillary Clinton for getting Osama Bin Laden?
PENCE: Zero. But, on the other hand, I give her 100 percent of credit for creating ISIS. She conjured it up out of nowhere in the desert when Obama found her in her lamp in a cave.
KAINE: I would love to sit down with you and really get to the bottom of where you are hearing all this.
“What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy” by Tony Judt in the New York Review of Books
I’ve excerpted the actionable part, but the whole thing, from the history of Austrian political economy to the comparison of public transportation systems in Europe, to the history of privatization, is superb. Written in 2009, it remains extremely relevant: a call to think about what economics even is and what we owe, politically, to each other. Judt’s repute as a historian is immeasurable. His readable style and his willingness to pick a side, in past and present debates, made him one of the few contemporary public intellectuals with people listened to, and for good reason.
The first task of radical dissenters today is to remind their audience of the achievements of the twentieth century, along with the likely consequences of our heedless rush to dismantle them.
The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve…The rise of the social service state, the century-long construction of a public sector whose goods and services illustrate and promote our collective identity and common purposes, the institution of welfare as a matter of right and its provision as a social duty: these were no mean accomplishments.
…Imperfect improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek. Others have spent the last three decades methodically unraveling and destabilizing those same improvements: this should make us much angrier than we are. It ought also to worry us, if only on prudential grounds: Why have we been in such a hurry to tear down the dikes laboriously set in place by our predecessors? Are we so sure that there are no floods to come?
“Donald Trump’s Nomination is the first time American politics has left me truly afraid” by Ezra Klein on Vox
On the topic of dismantling the political accomplishments of the twentieth century…Klein focuses on Trump’s personal failings, in a pretty convincing takedown, but it’s also true that what little policy Trump has offered would be a complete disaster. The window to register to vote has almost closed!
When MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked Trump about his affection for Vladimir Putin, who “kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries,” Trump replied, “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.”
But it’s not just Putin. Trump has praised Saddam Hussein because “he killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights.” He said “you’ve got to give [Kim Jong Un] credit. He goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss. It’s incredible.” It’s not just that Trump admires these authoritarians; it’s that the thing he admires about them is their authoritarianism — their ability to dispense with niceties like a free press, due process, and political opposition.
“Humans of New York and the Cavalier Consumption of Others” by Vinson Cunningham, at the New Yorker
There is a very popular Facebook page (and book) entitled Humans of New York (the book adds the subtitle Stories), which consists of one man traveling throughout New York City photographing and interviewing random people he encounters — I’m sure most of you are familiar with it. It is a pretty unique concept, and very entertaining. But it’s at best an edited and cherry-picked snapshot of a life — this article asks us to consider the limitations of the medium.
By comparison, “Stories” betrays shallow notions of truth (achievable by dialogic cut-and-paste) and egalitarianism. Both come too easily. Instead of the difference acknowledged by Caldwell and Bourke-White’s You and Their, Stanton’s all-encompassing title implies a vague, flattening humanism, too quick to forget the barriers erected — even here, and now, in New York — against real equality. (Stanton has lately taken his project farther afield as well, to India, Pakistan, Iran.) The money for Mott Hall Bridges Academy makes us feel good — and why not? — but there are many other schools, and they are part of the same unequal system.
The quick and cavalier consumption of others has something to do with Facebook, Humans of New York’s native and most comfortable medium. The humans in Stanton’s photos — just like the most photogenic and happy-seeming and apparently knowable humans in your timeline — are well and softly lit, almost laminated; the city recedes behind them in a still-recognizable blur. We understand each entry as something snatched from right here, from someplace culturally adjacent, if not identical, to the watcher’s world; there’s a sense (and, given Stanton’s apparent tirelessness, a corresponding reality) that this could just as easily be you, today, beaming out from the open windowpane of someone else’s news feed. Any ambiguity or intrigue to be found in a HONY photo is chased out into the open, and, ultimately, annihilated by Stanton’s captions, and by the satisfaction that he seems to want his followers to feel.
“Farewell” by Kaushik Basu on the World Bank’s blog
For all the talk of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus, the World Bank’s work has generally struck me as open-minded and holistic (until recently, their chief researcher was Branko Milanovic, who is vocally Leninist about World War I!). Basu, the outgoing President, is a big part of what strikes me as admirable about the Bank — the man’s known for quoting WH Auden and projects a generally humble attitude. His notes on leaving the World Bank are lovely.
It has been four years of work, learning and, above all, fun. People have been, almost without exception, warm and helpful. My wife insists I suffer from “love delusion” — a proclivity to believe more people love me than actually do. Well, delusion or not, it has been four marvelous years.
It seems just the other day that I arrived here. The place was alien and strange. I used to play a mental game. When I got into a crowded elevator, I tried to guess who would get out on which floor. I used to get it all wrong. Of late, I find I am almost always right. By using data, such as the quantity of hair-gel, the kind of perfume one has used, the level of starch in the collar, I can guess the floor the person will exit. Starched collar, gelled hair, cuff links: 12th floor. Disheveled hair, crumpled clothes to match: Will get out on the 3rd floor. Researcher.
