John Everett Branch Jr.'s Blog, page 6
May 14, 2017
Passing glances: making news pay, making Jobs sing, making protest work
How the news was made: Copies of the Times emerge from a cutting and folding machine, September 1942. (Photo by Marjory Collins)
When the Internet was young(er), publications, like other businesses, began establishing outposts there. This now seems like something of a recap of the original frontier experience: the Internet was fresh ground, unexplored territory, ripe for shaping, settling, colonizing, conquering. It may be going too far to say the whole thing exemplifies Frederick Jackson Tur...
April 30, 2017
The Echo Look: help from Amazon for the style-disadvantaged?
The Amazon Echo, which came out in 2015, is a smart speaker that responds to voice input. Amazon just released an update, called Echo Look, which not only includes the Alexa voice-response system but also has a camera, so it can both listen to you and look at you. It’s designed to sit in your bedroom and serve as some kind of fashion aide. Here’s how Jessi Hempel of Backchannel described it at the start of a short discussion: “Speak to the white oblong assistant, and it will take selfies of y...
April 23, 2017
Simple desultory philippic department: Elon Musk
A good candidate for the person I’m most tired of hearing about lately: Elon Musk, who was described yesterday by technology writer Steven Levy, in a remark that may be half tongue-in-cheek and may be purely serious, as “our current Visionary In Chief.” (That phrase appeared here.)
In what sense is Musk a visionary? I’m unsure about the origins of the high-speed transportation system called the Hyperloop, though it sounds to me like an updated version of the old pneumatic subway, but none of...
April 20, 2017
Honey, I shrunk Thackeray’s novel: A condensed Vanity Fair at the Pearl
Doing the social climb: from left, Debargo Sanyal, Tom O’Keefe, Ryan Quinn, Zachary Fine, Kate Hamill, Joey Parsons, and Brad Heberlee in the Pearl’s Vanity Fair. (Photo by Russ Rowland)
Rebecca Sharp—who is not quite the central character in Thackeray’s 1848 novel, Vanity Fair, but who would like to be—resembles a reality-TV performer. By chance of birth, she occupies an ordinary station in life; what’s worse, or perhaps better, given their own dubious careers, her parents have died, leaving...
April 6, 2017
Passing glances: protests and sex on campus
The University of California at Berkeley, which in the 60s originated what came to be called the free speech movement, has now become a major home of an un-free-speech movement, and American college campuses are now one setting for a clash, which is also playing out in the wider world, between conflicting stances toward sexual behavior. Some recent reading illustrates the issues.
Where attempts to stifle unwelcome opinions are concerned, the headline of a brief report in the April 1 issue of...
March 26, 2017
Passing glances: talkin’ bout a revolution
“The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised. There will be no rerun, brothers and sisters. The revolution will be live.” Those and other lines from Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 song-poem have been taunting and teasing viewers during the title sequence of Season Six of the HBO series Homeland, prompting us to wonder what hoped-for transformation of society in the world of the show it alludes to and whether, as happened with the 60s ideal of a new order, it’ll come to naught.
Maybe i...
March 12, 2017
Preliminary news of a new SF novel from the 80s
In the 70s and early 80s, a friend of mine found himself living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after college. Before he was (apparently) murdered by a vengeful former lover who was (apparently) a member of a crime family, he wrote a science-fiction novel. It’s got rich imperious Americans voyaging through the solar system on a luxurious cruise ship, crafty Mexicans who pilot a dilapidated spacecraft and pretend to be priests when it’s useful, a heroine of sorts who’s young and smart and pr...
March 5, 2017
Marin Ireland goes great guns in On the Exhale, a new play at the Roundabout
Marin Ireland in On the Exhale. (Photo by Joan Marcus)
Imagine you’ve been threatened with a pistol. Imagine threatening someone else with one. Imagine hefting a rifle for the first time. Imagine feeling it become a natural part of you, the way Sweeney Todd feels about his razor. Imagine being in a position to decide how easily people can obtain such weapons. Imagine having this decided for you, and for others. Imagine losing someone to gun violence. Imagine wanting to cause this loss for som...
February 26, 2017
Gone fission
Not the same as going fishing, or going nuclear. I have to work today. Fortunately, I get to do it from home, but it’s still work. Many traditional newspapers were published on weekends as well as weekdays long before I ever worked for one, and many digital publications are likewise updated every day. Though I’m usually scheduled on weekdays, today it’s my turn to join the team in getting out some of the weekend news, style, celebrity, and other reporting that Yahoo Media will produce. I can’...
February 20, 2017
My self-driving car—a saga in tweets
Will soon have new addition to my life. They say nothing can prepare me for the changes. Exciting! But I know I’ve got to clear some space.
After months of prep & expense, the big day is here. My self-driving car is supposed to deliver itself to me after work this afternoon.
1st morning of new life. My self-driving car dropped me at office & is now wandering streets of Manhattan, looking for parking. God help it.
To better prepare my SDC for the world, I’ve enrolled it in school. Annoying whe...
