Holidays Past - and FUTURE - Technology Issue - Also, a memorial to 9/11/01

=============For the first issue after the disaster at the World Trade Center, dated September 24 - the Cover had to be special. It was. It was a plain solid black with the Magazine Title, date and price.============= I cannot think of a more apt memorial.

Emphasis on the "DIGITAL AGE" (Theme of the earlier issue.)

You should have subscribed to "THE NEW YORKER" magazine back in September. If you had done so; then you would have seen and read this most thought provoking issue, dated November 27, 2000. If you did not subscribe, it is not too late. Back issues are available. This issue gives Technology its long overdue due. Here is a synopsis:

THE NEW YORKER is named after the most powerful city in the world but is written for every citizen of that same world. You may safely read every single page, including the informative advertising. Parochialism has no place in this publication. As noted in an earlier review, the magazine is organized into several distinct sections that concentrate on one main theme for the issue. The ISSUE under review had a theme of how technology and people interact. From cover to cover, nearly every component of the issue supports this theme. What follows concentrates on the DIGITAL AGE articles:

COVER

"Thanksgiving.com" shows an impression of the future of humankind. The ultra modern future is represented by aspects of the past rendered in art deco style. A single person, looking like an adult "Henry", wears a space suit with a bib, sits in a dentist chair, ingesting a "Virtual" turkey dinner through a hose. The portions are selected with a mouse, providing a variety of satisfying and overly nutritious viands. There are connections to the chair that carry eliminative wastes away. The meal, and everything else the person needs are furnished via a rube goldberg snarl of pipes that come through the wall and ceiling. The power for all of this life-sustaining nourishment is provided by a single electric wire. The room is a cell, trim is in riveted steel, and a large framed window shows us the world of the future.
There are artifacts from the past, including the Chrysler and Empire State buildings; which are dwarfed by taller structures. Through the maze created by this jungle, several airships pass; bridges lead from building to building, lights in the buildings suggest other life may exist.
Here is a virtual prisoner of virtuality.


BOOK CURRENTS Page 38

Here are essays on encryption. The first is about the breaking of a coded text this year. The text was written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1841. No, it was not "Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine".

THE TALK OF THE TOWN - Page 67

DEPT OF USEFUL THINGS - Page 72
Essay on confused consumers and voters or "How a Butterfly might be mistaken for a stove." Also, human engineering and the balloting equipment.

"THE FINANCIAL PAGE" - Page 74
The credit card and its merchandising. Rate fixing versus micro marketed pre-approvals for certain ZIP Codes. Why they trust everyone - for a price.


THE DIGITAL AGE -
The THEME; exciting, frightening and thought provoking.

Michael Specter 96 OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS
"No Place to Hide" - G.P.S. (Global Positioning Satellite) receivers everywhere assure a future of "Big Brother" surveillance for (of) everyone and everything. Technology both benign and sinister. An exhaustive investigative report on the hows and the whys; as well as the wherefores of this technology. Among the proposed applications is time travel.

John Cassidy 106 THE WORLD OF BUSINESS
"The Productivity Mirage" - Do computers really make us more efficient?

American productivity is a factor considered when estimating the Economic Growth of a country. Cassidy uses two examples to enliven the anxieties about a looming recession.
An IBM study demonstrated that a Personal Computer may not be as much of an asset as hoped. For under $2,000 you can buy a PC with the same power as the Mainframe that was used by NASA to put men on the moon. What can you, with basic chores to do such as letters and spreadsheets, do with all of this power? The letter, perish the thought, could be done just as easily on an IBM XT. At IBM, letters done on a typewriter usually required 8 modifications. On a PC, more than 40! The same letter, mind you. The rub is that the excess power is counted as being applied - everyone is sending payloads to the moon. That is what makes the U.S. economy sizzle.
Managers can oversee every aspect of operations in a given environment. Once everything is entered into a PC, analyses are infinite. Reports are measured in "Stack Feet/Month". Nobody can read it all nor digest the portion that was read.

This phenomenon is not new. In 1962, Eldon Industries, a plastics component manufacturer occupied a new facility across the street from an NCR distribution and sales building. Soon, a couple of NCR mainframes made the short trip across the intervening lane. A herd of computer experts came on board to feed the data into these machines. Soon, managers were receiving information on everything. Every day, overpaid clerks delivered 5 foot high stacks of ledger size output to every department office. The clerk picked up the previous day report and delivered it to the trash heap. Etc. Awash in data, nobody could figure out what was happening. The president stopped the craziness by shutting off the power and laying off anyone who could be caught in the mainframe facility. It is yesterday once more.

Cassidy goes on to scare the living daylights out of anyone who thinks a PC on every desk is a productivity improvement. Wall Street and the Banks may have caught on at last. Since more and more workers do not collect an hourly wage, nobody knows how much time it takes to do something. The question at this time is, "If productivity has improved, why do I have to work so darned much to do something?" Indeed, why does a job that used to take 40 hours or less to accomplish now take two or three times longer - and for the same pay?

Rodney Rothman - PERSONAL HISTORY
"My Fake Job" - Pretending to belong to an Internet Company.

Rothman walks into a gleaming new DOT.NOTHING, SOMA company and sits down at a vacant desk. For two weeks he reports on time and does nothing, has no job description and no pay. An incredible but instructive stunt that strips away the B.S. that pervades some of the now and late dot.com enterprises. A reminder of the old business saying: "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance; Baffle them with your B***S**T." Reality is much more frightening than fiction in Technology.

NOTE: In a retraction of sorts, the EDITORS scolded Rothman for not mentioning that his mother worked at "DOT.NOTHING" and for reporting a MASSAGE that apparently did not happen!

David Denby 132 A REPORTER AT LARGE
"The Speed of Light" - The race to build the EverNet.

Denby crawls into manholes and climbs into executive suites to explore the role that Glass Fibre Cable is playing in Communications Technology.

More frightening stuff - much of the glass cable installed for the past few years is not compatible with new Fibre Optic equipment. Again, Wall Street probably heard it first.

Larissa MacFarquhar 142 LETTER FROM SCOTLAND
"Monster in the Monitor" - Loch Ness hunters and why they believe.

Using new technology to find an old nothing. The usual Little Green Men quandary; you cannot prove that they do not exist. The Western World of Thought was saved by this premise; One Cannot Prove the Negative - Aristotle A fundamental tactic of many true believers. "Prove that Nessie does not exist."

The rest of the magazine pales in comparison but is still useful - there is enough content to last a week.

THE CRITICS - Books, The Theatre, and the Current Cinema are covered. It includes a delightful essay on "Ernestine". Her creator (Think "Laugh-In") had scruples. 13 Misfits are recreated in a revival of "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe." Do we qualify?

The back page is protected by the back cover.
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