Transmission #54: Bluesmen, International Airbnb Style, Mediocre Computing and High-Tech Modernism
Design, ideas and other flotsam.
Hello. Welcome.
This is Transmissions by me, Marty Brown.
What is Transmissions? It’s an ongoing, usually fortnightly newsletter that collates some of the more interesting stories, links, quotes and other curios that float my way.
I’m always keen to get your thoughts on what you make of it, and if you have stumbled across any links you’d love to share, please get in touch!
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Design
Hellhounds on His Trail
Michael Hall • Texas Monthly • Link
Mack McCormick, recently deceased, was a genius, a recluse, and one of the foremost documentarians of early American blues music. For years he pursued the ghost of Robert Johnson, the legendary bluesman, who, so the tale goes, sold his soul to the devil to play the blues. McCormick blazed a multi-decade trail to unearth the truth of Johnson’s life, but the closer he got, the further the truth slipped away, as McCormick succumbed to the ravages of writers block, age, and crippling mental health challenges. This story, told by his friend Michael Hall, is a searching investigation of the man and his obsession.
The Age of Average
Alex Murrell • Link
Localised design is being ironed out. The internet, internationalism, and the dreaded ‘algorithm’ are increasingly selecting for an optimised, hygienic, middle-ground. We see it everywhere, from ‘international Airbnb style’ interior design, to sans serif logos, to the mind-numbing dullness of modern car design. If anything, the trend is intensifying. What way out?
The Dawn of Mediocre Computing
Venkatesh Rao • Link
Rao has an uncanny knack for identifying and coining terms for the strange and newly emerging concepts in the world. Here is again, with the notion of ‘mediocre computing’.
Mediocre computing is computing that aims for parity with mediocre human performance in a realish domains where notions of excellence are ill-posed.
Excellent computing is computing that aims to surpass the best-performing humans in stylized, closed-world domains where notions of excellence are well-posed.
Remember, in the weird but realish world we live in, mediocre is actually harder than excellent, and way more useful.
Ideas
The Moral Economy of High-Tech Modernism
Henry Farrell and Marion Fourcade • Daedalus • Link
Don’t be put off by the dry-as-a-biscuit title. A prescient examination of how we are shifting from 20th century power structures that were built from bureaucracies, to a new model – one which embeds bureaucracy into code. Some of this new governance is visible and discussed, but most of it it is buried, deeply impenetrable to investigation, or even understanding, by the general citizenry.
At the end of the day, the relationship between high modernism and high-tech modernism is a struggle between two elites: a new elite of coders, who claim to mediate the wisdom of crowds, and an older elite who based their claims to legitimacy on specialized professional, scientific, or bureaucratic knowledge. Both elites draw on rhetorical resources to justify their positions; neither is disinterested.
Chart of the Week
Stress accumulates without a break between meetings. Something akin to acceptance in Meeting Four, however.
Seen something you’d love to share? Drop me a note in the comments.
Other
📕 Despite much cynicism, it seems like Obama doesn’t have a personal cabal of tasteful curators: actually compiles his own book lists. Link
👪 Gripping yarn about three children, driven to a train station Barcelona in the 1980s and then left then, abandoned by their parents. Link
👶 Birthrates around the world are plummeting. Panacea for a resource-depleted world, or the end of civilisation as we know it? Link
👔 How to spot quality in menswear. Link
Thanks for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. See you in a fortnight!