Pink Air

Bohemian rhapsody

Traveling around the U.S. the past few weeks, I've visited San Francisco, Boulder, Santa Cruz, Portland and Madison. Kind of a grand tour of liberal America minus the 3A's of Austin, Ann Arbor and Asheville. And like the Grand Tourists of 19th-century Europe, I've seen all the classics: Priusii, Obamae, the winged victory of Nike. I've also seen how expensive it is to live in liberal America these days, especially in places awash in tech wealth.

But what about all those liberal and liberally educated people who haven't profited from the tech boom? A lot of them are about to retire and find that neither home equity nor pension programs, public or private, will be sufficient to maintain their lifestyles. I imagine that many of them will have to make the transition from bobo to boho and a new culture of senior bohemianism might emerge.

Bohemianism hasn't been a very visible thread in American culture in the past couple of decades, but it's experiencing a tech-oriented rebirth amongst the young reuse/recycle, make-it-yourself crowd. As a bunch of older Boomers find themselves in surprisingly straitened circumstances, they'll look for ways to maintain their interests and sense of self on a budget. Bohemianism, an identification with artistic, intellectual (and inexpensive) values, is one way to do this and one that might have immediate appeal to people who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies.

Where will they live? Probably in the cheapest, warmest places they can find. Maybe in 25 years, the Midwest and South will sprout growing boho boomer burbs (Bohobos?) with architecturally interesting social housing networks and, if Medicare ever gets sorted out, affordable health care infrastructures. Public cultural institutions might find a new life there. New community colleges focused on continuing education. Who knows, maybe young people might rediscover the pleasures and benefits of living among hip elders. And The Eagles will always have a place to play.

United we wait

It’s no secret that the U.S. air transportation system is broken. What’s interesting is the way that people are accommodating to it.

Right now, I’m sitting at San Francisco airport, where my flight has been indefinitely delayed because “the crew has refused the plane.” Never heard that before. A few minutes later, the captain came to the gate to explain his decision. A gauge showing the fuel level in the tanks on one side of the plane isn’t working, so while there’s no indication that the plane would be flying lopsided, there would be no way to know until it was too late. I noticed three interesting things about this event.

First, having the captain explain the delay is kind of like having a Sony engineer show up at your door to explain why your television doesn’t work. The attendants at the gate are like marketing. They may be nice, but you always doubt their knowledge and their honesty. Their job isn’t making a better product. It’s keeping you happy.

Second, having the captain speak at the gate feels like a protective coating has been rubbed away. In a kind of dual-reversal of roles, it feels as though we the passengers are being asked to take on an additional layer of responsibility for our own safety. I imagine the next step will be showing us the ground crew’s inspection report so that we can look up comparison data on the internet and make our own judgments about the plane’s health. Kind of like what’s happening with doctors and patients.

Finally, the captain mentioned that his was the third crew to refuse to fly the plane. In fact, he mentioned it three times in the course of a two-minute announcement. I can’t help but think that this was a coded statement of protest against an airline management that’s trying to save money by putting passenger safety at risk while the crews are heroically standing up for our safety. Is this true? Labor relations theater? Both? I don’t know. But in the end, the message is: we, the people who actually fly the planes, want you to know that we don’t trust our management. And neither should you.

Zombie Santa

This Santa doll hung in front of a Bay Area construction site for years until it died and reanimated as a zombie. (I wish I'd thought to start a time-lapse series when he was still new and jolly.) I don't know if the builders considered him a good luck charm or a way to scare off curious children, but if you get brains for Christmas this year, don't say I didn't warn you.

Interesting signs

A lot of thought goes into airport signs. In these two cases, the thought was all coming from me as I tried to understand what these signs meant:

Is surprising a good quality in a toilet?

I suppose ventriloquists might have special bathroom needs.

How to make interesting things

1. Make a list of things you find interesting
2. Crossbreed

In this case: Gerhard Richter x Dawn of the Dead =

This pairing makes a lot of sense to me. I'm surprised Richter hasn't done it himself.

Baby robot

Radiohead held an online contest to remix their song "Nude". James Houston, a student at Glasgow School of Arts, missed the deadline but aced the contest with this lovely video reinterpretation that's become so popular that Radiohead heard about it and linked to it on their site.

I like Radiohead, old computers and cleverness, so of course I love it. But it also makes me feel like weeping, which is odd. I think that Houston may have explained my reaction when he says:

I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

I find that incredibly touching. As a person with autistic tendencies, I feel an enormous sympathy for babies, animals and machines. This is a song I wrote a few years ago, a lullaby for newborn robots:
Download baby_robot.mp3

(image: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/14/hacked-robot-babytoy.html)

Measure for measure

I've been meaning to mention the New York Times' songwriting blog for a few weeks. As someone interested in both the meaning of pop songs and how they mean, I find the writing here satisfying and enlightening in a way that very little published musical criticism is.

It's nice (but not necessary) that the authors (Andrew Bird, Darell Brown, Rosanne Cash and Suzanne Vega) are also well-known musicians. In fact, musicians' views of their own songs are often a distraction that keeps you from paying attention to what the song means to you.

But these musicians are very focused on the often stumbly process of song making and how even for the creator, the meaning of the song emerges from the process and the song itself. They address the sweet spot of music appreciation that sits between the technical and the emotional and try to show how a note hit a little flat or the acoustics of a room can illuminate  a whole song.

Another example of this deeply in-between way of thinking about pop music is Tim Riley's book about every one of the Beatles' songs. I wonder if you could write a similar book about ads.

The rate card that rates you

Not many companies are as interesting as Google. From their basic technology to how they make money, they repeatedly make you think "Okay, so that means..." and a bunch of new implications come spilling out.

Today's NYT outlines the workings of Google's "ad quality" team. Because the creative and placement variables of Google ads are relatively few and are controlled by Google, they can experiment with them and directly measure the results. This helps them determine how to price ads which makes them more money.

Even more interesting, one of the variables they incorporate into their pricing and placement model is the quality of the consumer's experience after they click on the ad:

Over time, the company also looked beyond click-through rates to rank ads. Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads. Soon, the loading speed of a landing page will also be considered.

These factors contribute to an ad’s “quality score.” The higher that score, the less the advertiser has to bid to secure top billing. For example, an advertiser who offers to pay $1 per click to attract those searching for “vacation rentals in Colorado” may receive more prominent placement than another who bids $1.50 for the same query but has a lower quality score. An advertiser with a very low quality score may have to bid so much for placement as to make it uneconomical.

Quality scores work as an incentive to advertisers to improve their ads, which benefits users and, in turn, benefits Google.

Yikes! Better service (and can better products be far behind?) leading to lower ad rates? Some advertisers are confused and angry ("many advertisers complain that the company was, in essence, deciding who can and cannot advertise on its system") but Google seems to believe that the overall health/value of their ad system is increased when consumers believe that Google ads represent relevant and high-quality suggestions.

Most media discriminate among advertisers in some way. You're not going to see a Hooters ad in Vanity Fair anytime soon.  But I've never heard of a media company digging so deeply into the post-ad consumer experience and using it to directly affect rates. I can feel the possible implications radiating outwards...

Most e-mailed lists

I've been meaning to look into whether there were any consistent criteria for "most e-mailed" articles.  Lots of media sites must have large datasets by now. I'd like to see an analysis of them.

I did find this article from Slate in which some thinking is slapped on the question. It's focused on only one story and the tone is thuddingly cynical (which is saying something coming from me), but it's interesting.

Interesting speaker list

I.A. is due less than a month from now and his speaker list is filling out nicely. Here are some of the people we expect and sort of what we expect them to say/do:

Alexandru Rosu on the Romanian Peasants Museum (I'm a big fan of the Museum. I'd live there if I could.)
Anne Charbonneau on an as yet unspecified interesting subject
Chidi Onwuka on urban nomads
Daniel Bonn on the physics of quicksand
Devon Reid on love
Esme Vos on building municipal wireless networks
Geert Wissink on cognitive psychology and social software
Jeff Ubois on personal digital archives
Jennifer Benavidez on salsa and The Seven Deadly Sins of the Dance Floor (with actual dancing! (which in retrospect, should have been the conference tagline))
Massimo Benvegnù on the enduring legacy of Russ Meyer
Nina Siegal on something involving Rembrandt, Golden Age Holland, autopsies and the Anatomical Theater (if she could just get zombies in there somehow...)
Otto Berchem on a kidnapping in Memphis (He's putting together an art piece based on a choir singing an ode to a girl who was kidnapped 25 years ago and hidden in the church where the choir...well, you just have to hear it.)
Otto Kokke will describe his system of the world (I didn't know other people had them too.)
Paul Hughes on an as yet unspecified interesting subject

We're expecting confirmation from someone who herds bacteria and a boutique beer brewer with samples for the audience. We'll keep them apart.