The World 2.0 Gets Dave All Wound Up

A perfect confluence of bizarre events nearly brought my brain to its knees recently, but luckily I have this blog where I can mix metaphors and spew detritus and then continue with my life: Cat and I finished Mad Men earlier this week, and that had me thinking about changing times and how hard it is to adapt-- and, then of course, there were the Paris attacks and the resulting technological controversies raised: metadata programs and electronic surveillance and privacy issues, and this dovetailed with what we were investigating in class . . . my students listened to  The Modern Moloch, a podcast on the history of the automobiles in the city, and how corporate lobbying changed our relationship with the car from "death machine" to "love affair" . . . and we used my Neil Postman's warning that technology is not neutral, that every piece of technology is "a burden and a blessing" to link the podcast to Leon Neyfakh's excellent article on texting and driving-- "A Deadly Habit"-- and Neyfakh and Roman Mars seem to agree that certain pieces of technology are beyond our control, and actually control us-- whether they psychologically override an already engaged prefrontal cortex, making us unable to make a good decision about using our phone while weaving through traffic, or make us change the way we relate to and coordinate with people-- including ability or inability to encrypt "personal data"-- which could contribute to terrorism but could also protect people's digital information . . . or past technology could control the infrastructure and architecture of our cities and suburbs in the future, this was the power of the car in the 1930's, after auto lobbying groups ensured that cars would have the right of way in every corridor of our country . . . these groups made us change our perception on who is to blame in an accident (instead of reckless drivers operating a dangerous vehicle it became the fault of those damned jaywalkers, walking like rubes where they shouldn't ) and while all this changing world stuff was rattling around in my brain, my son Ian's friend came flying down the street on a hands-free motorized scooter . . . and if you don't have a ten year old son then you might not know that these things are all the rage and my son Ian is now begging us to get one, and they've gotten pretty cheap and they are neat and they do work, but when he asked me if he could get one, I really had no answer for him . . . I told him he would have to wait for me to think about it (and then his friend did some lobbying and he's an eloquent little kid, he said: "my parents were skeptical too, and they took some convincing, but it's really cool!") and while I'll probably cave in on this, I'm not sure I'm even equipped to make the decision-- I don't know if a ten year old should have an electrically charged hands-free motorized vehicle which travels fifteen miles an hour and I don't know if I'm even capable of ever figuring this puzzle out-- it might be safer than his long board, but then it might not . . . and are they street legal?-- anyway, to add to this technological existential breakdown, yesterday our principal made an announcement to remind the students that though we are a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) school and though kids can use their cellphones in the halls between classes (one earbud policy) that they cannot take any pictures with their phones or record any video (I think this was in response to a fight in the hallway: kids were taking pictures and video of it, which is bad for two reasons-- these images may come back to haunt the kids at a later date and the school promises parents that their kids images won't be taken in school and used anywhere unless unless permission is granted) but I don't think the two rules are compatible-- I don't think you can let kids have phones and then tell them not to use them the way they primarily use them . . . to take pictures and video of things . . . I don't think humans can handle having the device and then not using it in all sorts of ways that are habitual and generally socially acceptable, prohibited or not, so I think we should take all the smartphones and put them in a pile and run them over with our cars . . . and our hands-free motorized scooters.

This One is No Fun

So I found out yesterday that an old student of mine (Emily Fredricks, graduated in 2011) was riding her bike to work in Philly and got hit and killed by a garbage truck; there have been protests, uproar, and extended media coverage about the accident, because she was in a Center City bike lane when she was struck . . . and right after I heard the news, I got in my car and turned on a new episode of Reply All, which presented another podcast (Heavyweight) and a transcendent story about a dude named Jesse who was riding his bike and got hit by a car and spent 17 days in a coma-- so a weird and disturbing coincidence that made me meditate on the costs of a society built around the automobile (and tomorrow is the 12 year mark of my brother's death by a car crash, and he's just one of many that I know that died in this manner . . . for a morbid but compelling take on the evolution of our automotive culture, listen to "The Modern Moloch").

Alex Does His Impression of David Dunn

When you're napping on the couch on a beautiful fall afternoon, but you want to get motivated, so you can enjoy the day, one of the fastest ways to get upright is to hear your wife say: "Alex got hit by a car . . . he's okay . . . but he got hit by a car"; I went from sleeping to very very awake in a matter of seconds, and I'll spare you any of the anxiety we suffered in the short drive up 5th Avenue to the intersection with Benner Street and assure you that Alex is okay, and lucky for it; anyway, we arrived at the scene and there were police and a crowd of kids-- he was at a birthday party at a friend's house and they were taking  a walk to town-- and Alex was sitting upright on the curb, being questioned by an EMT, and the car that hit him was still there, a gray Honda Civic, and it was the typical story: Alex wanted to catch up with his friends and he took a cursory glance in either direction on Benner, but didn't see a car turning from 5th (there's a tall set of bushes that obstructs the view) and he darted across and this guy turned right, so luckily the car was moving fairly slowly, and even more luckily, it was a small car with a rounded hood and not an SUV, so Alex got hit on the right hip, bounced off the hood and fell on his left side, he scraped up his left hip, abdomen and both his wrists-- but he didn't hit his head-- and after a couple hours in the emergency room, Dr. Pepper pronounced him good to go (I'm sure they placed Dr. Pepper in pediatric emergency because his name is a surefire way to cheer up nervous parents) . . . no broken bones, no blood in his urine, and no head, neck, or spine trauma . . . while they were checking him over, Dr. Pepper asked my son about this particular wound and that particular wound, trying to ascertain what he sustained when he got hit by the car, and Alex had to explain that some of the abrasions were from when he recently was attacked by a swarm of yellowjackets, as he had picked at some of the scabs, and a cut on his hand was from when he fell on a sharp pencil at school, and his ankle hurt from the accident but also when he got cleated at soccer, and I realized that he's taken a real beating this school year, practically auditioning for the Bruce Willis role in Unbreakable . . . and that kids can be really tough, much tougher than their parents-- because I had nightmares last night and didn't sleep very well, but Alex took some ibuprofen and is still sleeping like a baby as I post this . . . the doctor said he'll probably be a bit sore today, especially his hips, and he'll probably skip his soccer game, and I hope he'll look both ways twice now before he crosses the street (and I think the group of his friends who witnessed this will also be a bit more cautious) but in the end, he was excited to have a great story for school on Monday -- I got hit by a car!-- and maybe when he's older, I'll have him listen to The Modern Moloch and try to explain to him how lucky he was, but for now I'll just have to believe that he learned his lesson, and will take his time crossing in the future (and we had plenty of time to think about this and discuss it in the emergency room, because things move fairly slow there, and this also made me realize that we spent the bulk of this beautiful fall day waiting around, because that morning I took the kids to the ski shop for their seasonal ski and snowboard rentals, which is a long and boring process, and the thought certainly crossed my mind in the emergency room that renting snowboards and skis could very well be setting up future visits to emergency room and future discussion about making good decisions and taking your time when you're doing something dangerous . . . but what are you going to do: keep your kids inside all the time?)

I Learn Two Things in One Day!

I have been on a podcast binge, and if you listen to enough podcasts, it's hard not to learn something . . . and so while I was listening to an episode of 99% Invisible about augmented reality called "Reality (Only)" I noticed that Roman Mars was talking much faster than usual, in an almost robotic voice -- but this fit the theme of the show, which was about "reactive music": a unique soundtrack that comes from your headphones, an auditory overlay created by and from the sounds around you, mixed and mastered in your smartphone -- but then a young woman explained something about "reactive music," and her voice was too fast and so I took a look at my Ipod and apparently there is a "variable speed" function for people who don't have the patience to listen to a podcast at normal speed . . . and so I fixed this and Roman Mars returned to normal, his voice deep, calm, and collected and then I actually learned something from a podcast, not about the podcast playing device; and I am going to hyperbolically call this podcast my favorite of all time, it is an episode called "The Modern Moloch," which details how automobiles went from hated, lethal contraptions . . . technological demons to which we sacrificed our children (a political cartoon from the 1920's) to a piece of Americana that we always had a "love affair" with; the podcast explains how an auto lobbying group called "Motordom," realized that it was in the automobile industry's best interest for cars to be allowed unlimited access to the city, and so came up with some NRA style logic -- cars didn't kill people, reckless drivers killed people (this brings to mind Neil Postman's rule of thumb, that no piece of technology is neutral) and along with reckless drivers, you can also have reckless pedestrians . . . this was a paradigm shift, as before this the street was a place for kids to play, adults to socialize, work to be done, and carts to move at somewhere around 5 miles an hour . . . and then Motordom brilliantly co-opted a term for redneck -- a "jay" -- and came up with the novel idea of "jaywalking," which was more a term of ridicule than something legal -- and from this time forward, the streets belonged to the auto (the podcast also has excerpts from Dupont's program where they explain that Americans have a "love affair" with the automobile . . . and since it's "love," then we don't have to behave rationally) and while I try to drive as little as possible, because I hate cars, I know that I'm a hypocrite, because I still use my car to get to work, to go on vacation, and often to get around town, when I could walk, and I often wax eloquently about my Jeep Cherokee and fully understand how many of us fondly remember our first shitty car . . . but it still makes me happy to learn that we didn't always have a "love affair" with automobiles, the affair was shoved down our throat by industry and propaganda, and if we try hard enough, perhaps some day we can take back the streets for our children (I think this bucolic vision involves flying cars).