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Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Video: Emma Watson Chats With Scott Feinberg About 'The Perks' and Downsides of Being Emma Watson
What would it take for America to be optimistic again?
September 11th, 2012Top StoryWhat would it take for America to be optimistic again?By Charlie Jane Anders
Are we just finally succumbing to fatal levels of angst? Do Americans just not believe in a bright future any more? And what would it take for the United States to feel cheery again? Top image: Abandoned power plant in Maryland, photo by Studio Tempura on Flickr. Google the phrase "American malaise" and you'll see plenty of pretty recent instances. A lot of this has to do with our ongoing econom-ick. But not all — there's also just a sense that America is no longer in a position of leadership. And a lot of this has to do with our declining position in science and technology. Writing back in 2010, Mort Zuckerman said:
And that still seems to be a fair summary of at least some of what underlies our national feeling of bleh. In his convention speech, Mitt Romney even mentioned the Moon landing, saying that when he was young, "To be an American was to assume that all things were possible. When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the Moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there." Although Romney went on to insist that Neil Armstrong spirit is still alive, there was still a lot of wistfulness in those long past-tense paragraphs. Obama, meanwhile, derided the whole notion of "blind optimism," as the antithesis of informed hope.
The only reason we don't see the insanely futuristic nature of our world is because of "manufactured normalcy," our tendency to believe we're in "a static and dull continuous present." Photo by Martin Abegglen/Flickr. And there's no denying it: Our technology has improved by leaps and bounds, both in the sense of gadgets and in our ability to treat the most horrific diseases. So why don't we feel more optimistic, when even greater technological breakthroughs maybe just on the horizon? Maybe it's because Americans are hardwired to think of optimism, not in terms of shiny toys, but in terms of exploring new physical territories. Which is why the Space Age was more optimistic than the Internet Age. What the heck is a final frontier, anyway?Star Trek might be the most famous burst of Kennedy-esque optimism about space travel ever created. And at the start of every Star Trek: TOS (and TNG) episode, the Captain of the Enterprise intones the words, "Space: the final frontier." What does that even mean? A frontier is a boundary between two countries, like between France and Belgium, or maybe an outer region that's still being settled. Calling space a "frontier" seems to imply that there's something on the other side of space. Click to view But when Captain Kirk calls space a "frontier," he's actually referring to America's myth of The Frontier. Our cherished legend about our Westward expansion, when people swarmed across the prairies in wagon trains. Captain Kirk wasn't alone in describing space exploration in terms of the Frontier — former astronaut John Glenn used the F-word in a famous 1983 speech as well. And as Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy note in their book Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution and Interplanetary Travel:
But the Frontier and the Western exploration are intimately linked with scientific progress in the American mythos. In one of the most important speeches about America's heritage in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner claimed that "to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics," including "inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things," and of course individualism. The Frontier, we're told, made us inventors. The trouble with Westward expansion is eventually you hit an ocean. The West becomes the land of Beverly Hills Nannies and Portland zinesters, not rugged individualists. (The Portland zinesters might be individualists, but we'll leave it to you to decide whether they're rugged.) Maybe Americans just can't get that excited about progress, unless it plays into that narrative, of exploration and expansion. We want to seek out strange new worlds and new civilizations. We want to boldly go, not boldly carry around the latest widget. So what's our solution?Now we come to the hard part — the pundit-izing. There are actually all sorts of reasons why Americans no longer feel as optimistic about technological progress (or life in general), including 1) the decreasing availability of cheap energy sources, 2) the rising environmental costs of progress, and 3) the fact that the rise of high-tech warfare has coincided with the increasing tendency of our victories to be Pyrrhic. (The fact that I'm posting this on 9/11 is purely a coincidence, by the way — but it may be an apt one.) But the lack of a new "Frontier" definitely seems to be a part of the problem. And we can't just deal with it by declaring something to be a frontier, like "frontiers in medicine" or "frontiers in cellphone gaming." So here are a few completely half-baked suggestions:
How far off are we from having a cyber-y environment that is real enough, and maybe scary enough, to make us feel like we're bravely stepping into new, unexplored territory? Maybe a decade or two?
But also, if it actually turns out we could mine the asteroid belt as James Cameron and others seem to believe, that would be a hell of a prospecting mission for us to watch. 3) Come up with a brand new narrative  |
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Who Is So Afraid Of A Jalopnik Story About Ferrari They'd Try To Make Us Pull It Down?
September 11th, 2012Top StoryWho Is So Afraid Of A Jalopnik Story About Ferrari They'd Try To Make Us Pull It Down?By Travis Okulski
Maduri's story was republished here on Jalopnik with his permission. Just today, Maduri emailed us to say that the article has been totally retracted and requests it be removed. What gives? Is Ferrari doing to him what they did to Chris Harris after writing about their test cars? Maduri's post, which was published here as How Ferrari Is Losing A Generation Of Buyers, details his shopping experience at Ferrari Toronto and how he was actually so put off that he went across the street to McLaren Toronto to take a look around. But today, Maduri's post has been removed from his website, Double Clutch, and we received an email regarding it as well. This is what it said:
Ferrari is notorious for having a controlling hand with their cars, even after they leave the showroom. They even make cars that they don't let you keep in your own home. Chris Harris noted that Ferrari won't even let journalists drive Ferraris that aren't given to them from the factory.
Our pieces on how Ferrari tweaks its press cars earned him a lifetime ban from Maranello. The only way he'd get to drive a Ferrari again is buying one, which is what he did. Ferrari also shut down communications with us and we've been invited on no Ferrari drives. Because Maduri dared to speak the truth about what he saw as flaws in Ferrari's dealership practices, he might be facing a good amount of pressure from the Prancing Horse to take the article down so he won't be blacklisted by Maranello. It could be a personal decision (we doubt it), it could be the dealership, it could be many things. Given how Ferrari's PR team uses its strong-arm techniques against journalists and customers, we can imagine them turning the heat up on someone who spoke out like this. We've reached out to Ferrari and are yet to hear a comment.  |
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