What's ahead, April-June '22
Plans for newsletter prose goodies, a change, and maybe an adventure with podcasting.
Read time: about 4 minutes. This week: Topics that I’m planning for April-June, a dozen or so to bring us to mid-year. Next week: “Elevator music” used to be everywhere. It still is, but it uses different “pipes.”
Perfunctory begging: Push the button, and share this post to give a friend an idea of what’s coming up.
Before I ran this newsletter’s first post in January this year, I listed a dozen topics that I thought I’d explore, just to give people an idea of what the weeks would bring. Many of them ended up as topics. “Technocomplex” isn’t like many other Substacks, because it has a broader scope than most and wanders around a bit. This is a strength, I believe, but I’ll admit it does complicate answering the “what-is-your-newsletter-in-one-sentence” question.
It’s time to look ahead to the coming weeks — another dozen or so posts should bring us to July 2022. Counting all posts from January to June, we’ll have navigated a half-year’s worth of rather eclectic reading. The topics below aren’t promises, since current events do frame some posts (such as last week’s on Ukraine). But I’ll get to many of them.
The thought of transforming a post to a podcast has also persistently visited me lately. I might try that, if I can think about a post more “aurally” than usual.
Another thing: I’m going to open up discussion. I’ve avoided that since I have steadfastly not read comments anywhere online — they tend to descend into trollish dreck — but many people find comments useful, helpful, and sometimes fun. We’ll see.
What I’m noodling about, in no particular order
Muzak™. What else? It’s all around, this elevator music, but the delivery methods have changed a bit. “Easy-listening” FM, Muzak™, and its many competitors had been piped into environments, making up a social space. Maybe it’s not so pervasive in stores and restaurants anymore, but the music is still “listened to,” if not shared, even in quiet places. A topic I bumped into while looking for something else — sometimes those are the best.
Yup, seersucker season. Fusty old tradition has it begin on Memorial Day, but climate change has reset the calendar, I’d say. Garb signals not just seasons but social norms and pressures, too. Why is there such a thing as “fashion” and why doesn’t everyone wear seersucker, as cool and stylish as it is?
Seminar guests for fall 2022. Putting together a seminar at Duke is kinda like organizing a “salon.” I get to ask the question, “Who do I want to spend a hour or so talking with about pressing matters of technology and humanity?” I try to hammer down the plans for my teaching quite early, in the vain hope that plans might order the creative chaos of teaching a seminar. The guests are a special treat for me and for my students.
24 heures du Mans. The ninetieth run of the twenty-four hour endurance race takes place in Le Mans, France, on June 11-12. It has profoundly influenced car development because it puts engineering and human strength to a rigorous test. I’d like to see a race in person, actually. But there are racing movies. One with Françoise Hardy, whom I find completely entrancing, isn’t about Le Mans specifically, but worth a watch. I’ll probably do a movie round up, too.
Extended mind. This one’s paired with the “Grasping mind” post from March, which mainly focused on the mind bounded in the body and, particularly, in the hands. But what if mind extends beyond the body? Many thinkers are moving in that direction, and the idea recasts that way we view tools, computers, and social media.
Writers, also students. This reverses the usual schooling fundamental that students are students first and only occasionally writers. That view traps writing into a false mode, which is“about” neither writing nor learning. What happens when you “ungrade” and then write? A second reflection on my experience ungrading last fall. I’ll continue ungrading, with amendments, this coming fall, too.
Pygmalion again, or the problem with sex robots. I promise this one will be safe for work, but if you click a link or two, you might want to be in incognito mode. (I’ll try to warn you.) The topic is gaining attention from mainstream academics, too, which means of course that it’s not just a topic for the future.
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“Whaddya name yours?” People treat their cars like pets. Or children. Ever name a car you owned? You probably did or if you didn’t, you knew someone who did. I rode around in a friend’s “Vincent Van Go” — a VW van from the 1970s. My cars, however, had names that couldn’t be said in polite company.
After the car, what? Is “automobility” also inevitability? If you’re like me, you can hardly imagine a world where cars are not an essential element. What if we moved to a world where they were less essential?
Mind the chickens, please! A review of caricatures and drawings that trace ways the automobile remolded civic life in America in the early decades of the twentieth century. This post complements the one on “MoToR eyeglasses” and tire ads.
Got any thoughts on the topics? Leads I should follow? Guidance for what you are hoping for from this newsletter? Use the comments below. I’ll watch for your comments (literally with bated breath).
Tags: post roadmap, automobile history, ungrading, writing, sex robot, empathy, auto racing, racing film, formula 1, muzak, popular music, easy listening, men’s fashion, fashion, seersucker, print media