Design, ideas and other flotsam
Transmission #4
Hello. Welcome.
This is Transmissions by me, Martin Brown. Father. Husband. Designer at Craig Walker and lecturer at RMIT. Marty to most.
This is the fourth in an ongoing (mostly) fortnightly newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way.
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Ideas
The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power
by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The New Yorker
With US President Biden’s promising signals on climate policy, perhaps there might be some small glimmers of hope after all, and we may be (sloowwwly) turning the corner in addressing climate change.
One fascinating question is how great a role nuclear power will play in a decarbonised future. This article takes a folksy approach to what really should be a more serious conversation – how are we prepared to balance the terrifying but surprisingly small risks of nuclear power with the mundane yet highly dangerous CO2 accumulations of fossil-fuel powered plants?
On this topic, there’s a fascinating paper called Be Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident which argues that the reaction to the accident actually caused more harms than the accident itself:
After the accident, all nuclear power stations ceased operation and nuclear power was replaced by fossil fuels, causing an exogenous increase in electricity prices. This increase led to a reduction in energy consumption, which caused an increase in mortality during very cold temperatures. We estimate that the increase in mortality from higher electricity prices outnumbers the mortality from the accident itself.
See also: radiation measured by bananas. They also release anti-matter!
Or we could wait for commercial-scale fusion power. (The old joke stays true: fusion is, and always will be, 30 years away).
Design
Secrets about People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to René Girard
Alex Danco
I’m currently working on a project that is really forcing me to look deeply at consumerism, and how we choose express ourselves through the goods we buy and the experiences we covet. A blog post (ht @GrantHowie) led me to the work of René Girard, who’s Mimetic Theory posits that in seeking social affirmation, we don’t actually want things. Instead, we’re actually looking to be someone else – someone whom we admire – and that we use our consumption as a proxy towards this aim:
The true root of all desire, Girard and others argue, is never in the objects or the experience we pursue; it’s really about the other person from whom we’ve learned to want these things.
This puts us into all kinds of uncomfortable positions as our goals are never actually attainable, but the Buddhists have known this forever and it doesn’t seem to stop anyone doing it.
It did get me thinking about evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller’s book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. In it Miller argues that a great deal of our consumption is driven by the signals we’re compelled to send to others. That beyond satisfying our basic needs, our luxuries, like a peacock’s tail, are signals that both the wearer and the observer know are ridiculous and unnecessary, but that is precisely the point. It’s exactly their lack of utility that we recognise as valuable. A Cartier watch performs no better than a regular watch but it does signal that the wearer can effectively waste thousands of dollars on signaling to others how much disposable income they have (or how generous their boss is). The wastage is the whole point.
Of course we also have to also pretend that these signals are somehow not that important, because then we’re just being showy, and that, of course, is crass, and not what we’re trying to signal at all. We’re signalling the time, we just need to keep figuring out how to hide it best.
On the flipside to this is a great phrase that I was introduced to by a former client and Ray-Ban marketing exec, to describe how they needed to position any fancy new glasses: they needed to provide a functional alibi. In a remarkable feat of mental contortion, consumers (particularly men I was told), in order to justify a high price tag, need to believe that their luxury glasses have some kind of new, functional benefit. The alibi must exist, because it allows people to tell a story to themselves that fits with their inner vision of self-improvement, rather than one of conspicuous consumption or mimetic desire – “I don’t just want these glasses, I need them because they will allow me to do X.”
No matter spurious the alibi might be, it was essential to create one. For instance, the aerodynamic shape of some glasses didn’t just look cool (and reinforce mimetic links to actual professional athletes, to Girard’s point), but also actually reduces drag and turbulence. Cue chortling.
The ad-man-cum-behavioural economist Rory Sutherland has written a lot about this kind of this. Read his work, he’s got a terrific knack for being both hilarious and insightful.
Quotes
“Making a train journey 20 per cent faster might cost hundreds of millions, but making it 20 per cent more enjoyable may cost almost nothing. It seems likely that the biggest progress in the next 50 years may come not from improvements in technology but in psychology and design thinking. Put simply, it’s easy to achieve massive improvements in perception at a fraction of the cost of equivalent improvements in reality.”
“Remember also that perhaps twenty passengers on any flight might be delighted to receive a text message telling them that their flight is delayed – namely the people running late.”
– both these pearlers are by Rory Sutherland, from his book, Alchemy
Other
Lots of climate stuff. Bill Gates has a new book out. The good news – he has a plan! The bad news – it’s really hard!
Stewart Brand and former California Governer Gerry Brown in conversation on the Origins Of ‘Planetary Realism’ And ‘Whole Earth Thinking’
How might corporations become more accountable in their plans for carbon reduction?
The rise of carbon-negative buildings. More like this, please.
Forget about Perseverance’s mind-blowing images, in 1965, a “real-time data translator” machine converted a Mariner 4 digital image data into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the official processed image, employees from NASA attached the strips side by side to a display panel and hand coloured the numbers like a paint-by-numbers picture. (ht @tvanryzewyk)
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