Susanna Forrest: 'The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History' (2016, 2017)

Susanna Forrest: The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016, 2017).

Brilliantly written, fantastico!  Forrest clearly loves horses, but does not shy away from any aspect of their history or roles in conjunction with human beings.

Chapter headings (not including their subheadings; originals in caps): "Evolution, Domestication, Wildness, Culture, Power, Meat, Wealth, War."

The height of exploiting the horse must include the height of the British Empire. Certainly it was up there. "And so we reach the scrum of our London gentleman's horse-powered Britain, with its vanners, bussers, cabbers, pitmen's horses, farm horses, cab horses, costers' donkeys, trammers, drays, ferry and railway horses, all leaning their weight into their collars and drawing the nation along." (Pages 178-179). "By 1871, there were as many horses in the city as in the countryside, and by 1901, urban horses outnumbered rural by two thirds to one third." (Page 179). Contrary to popular imagination.

The change from horse-driven reality to truck and car-driven reality was even more shocking than the onset of self-driving vehicles will be in the near future. A similar "future shock" moment arrived with the replacement of the analog world with digital technology at the beginning of the 21st century. 

Think in terms of dramatic "tipping points" of the past, present and future. This is just one of may reasons that Forrest's The Age of the Horse is so riveting.

Horse Progress Days -- among the Amish in the 21st century, Forrest observes a twelve-horse team on display. "When this juggernaut marched on  . . . it was like standing by as a siege engine passed: the air was filled with the high jingle and clink of the connectors and heel chains, bits champed and mouthed, the work of muscle and mass, the soft rush of the Ohio soil as it was sliced deep, caught and turned over by the plough, leaving a black, shining and broken wake behind like a harbour ferry's." (Page 189).

Forrest crafts scores of such evocative, even exciting sentences, right up there with Marcel Proust and Vladimir Nabokov, among others.  I am deeply impressed.

I also like the fact that she wields the word "poleaxed" on more than one occasion. It sticks to mind.

Vivid descriptions do the job repeatedly. When Forrest is visiting China after "Golden Week," industry has paused long enough for air pollution to abate. "Over Chaoyang Park on the fourth of seven Beijing ring roads, the skies were deep blue and there was a fresh, brisk breeze that bent the tops of the silver birches lining the entry roads."  (Page 280).

To the Great Wall: "A rampart of rocky slopes rose straight from the plain, littered with huge yellow boulders, and the neat, grey crenellations of the restored Wall rose and fell along the peaks and gorges as vertiginously as a roller coaster." (Page 289).

Observing a bullfight in Portugal: "There was a cry and the gate flew open, clapping against the barrier, and out came the black bull, a surge of dark energy and muscle so thick that it guttered over its narrow rump." (Page 322).

On the adaptability of horses during the First World War of 1914-1918: "Even in Flanders in the Great War, the horses soon became accustomed to the shattering boom of shellfire and continued to pull their wagons as houses, roads and people disappeared into blasted mudscapes." (Page 334).

Horses prefer "cohesion, space and synchrony." (Page 339). The Age of the Horse is a stellar work upon which I'm still ruminating three days after finishing a first read-through -- a remarkable occurrence in the digital age, and something to be treasured.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Jean-Luc Godard: 'Adieu au Language' / 'Goodbye to Language' (2014)

Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au Language / Goodbye to Language (2014) comes in 3D and 2D versions, take your pick. 

Marshall McLuhan probably would have liked this, a playful and colorful response to the world and its changing modes of communication. Godard, like McLuhan, is quite aware of the "electronic envelope" surrounding us; that "the medium is the message;" that we live in a "global village" and are actively participating in a "global theatre." Godard wants us to remain aware of our surroundings, and of our modes and methods of communicating. If all else fails, his dog Roxie will lead the way.

Goodbye to Language is not Dada. It's not a cut-up experiment such as might have been done by Brion Gysin, William Seward Burroughs, David Bowie or Mick Jagger. It has some similarities to a David Lynch film, so a touch of Surrealism, and to Woody Allen's philosophically toying with the lenses and filters of reality (such as in Deconstructing Harry, 1997, or Melinda and Melinda, 2004). 

"The present is a strange beast." People reading from a three-dimensional book. 

"This morning is a dream."

What is most important?  "Infinity and Zero." "Sex and Death."

"A line of zeros along the sea."

Writing in a journal with a pen. Do you write letters and send them off via postal service, or is that way not your way? 

"Do something."

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

The Electronic Envelope

In working at a library with people whose ages range across a span of sixty plus years and whose experiences derive from multiple cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and geographical locations, it's clear that we utilize, to varying degrees, layers of technology, some ancient, some new, some borrowed, some blue. Yet we all are, as much or more than anyone in the greater global society, living within the aura of an electronic envelope, as Marshall McLuhan prophetically observed in the 1960s and 1970s. 

It's also clear, from direct observation, that many, perhaps most people, shuffling or stumbling around as they stare into flickering mobile devices virtually everywhere they go and regardless of what else they may be hoping to achieve (indeed, if they are hoping to achieve anything at all), take their present state of consciousness for granted. That is, they are used to it -- rather than fresh to this provisional and incomplete state of their reality, nor are they refreshed by their techno-social links and life-perceptions.

The Electronic Envelope: we are all utilizing some kind of technology, but with different expectations and proficiencies and to wildly and widely varying outlooks.

Some adults still write letters, send cards, email (& doesn't it sound more beautiful in French? Courrier électronique, or courriel?). They make voice phone calls, text. Others just post on social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, &c. Click "Like" buttons and emoji icons to express our feelings or lack thereof. 

Some even speak with other people in a three dimensional sense, though if you go to an American post office, the chances are greater that you'll be speaking with a postal worker than a fellow customer. 

For purchasing stuff, you can go online, or use an app, or use a magic card, or use a mobile device, or draw cash from a so-called Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), or interact with a human teller, or negotiate, bid and barter. And I know about all of the above because I engage in all of the above. How about you? 

Marshall McLuhan pointed out that it's good for one's sanity -- and autonomy as a person and human being -- to remain vividly aware of the electronic envelope that surrounds us. This is partly what he meant with his various quips, such as "The Medium is the Message." This is how we perceive, or filter, or translate, social life itself. Which means there are also other ways, so let's not confine ourselves, or box ourselves in, from other means of perception. Seems like a good idea, eh? Oy!

The Electronic Envelope. Some things are quaint, obsolete, art objects, or no longer even in operation -- if so, just barely. Of the first three categories, consider the typewriter, the vinyl record, the fountain pen. Of the fourth type, consider the 8-track, Beta videotapes, telegrams, facsimiles (fax machines) and beepers.

I recently asked student workers about voice recognition services. They were aware of these and laid out the following. Are you?

Amazon: Alexa (via Echo)
Apple: Siri (via iPhone, iPad, iPod, &c.)
Windows: Cortana
Google: Google assistant / Google Home
The Internet of Things

Different workers have different preferences and some don't use any at all. 

I also asked about dictation (speech recognition) systems: you dictate or speak and your device "types" or keys out the words into a text document that you can then edit and refine. I remember using a Dictaphone system in the 1990s, for a temp job: this involved a tiny cassette recording of a boss's voice, played back with foot pedals while listening with headphones and word processing my interpretation. I also remember trying an early version of Dragon speech recognition software to mixed results. 

Google Docs has a function if you have a microphone built in your device, or attached. Google Cloud Speech API (application program interface)
Dragon -- multiple versions
Voice Finger (is this a good image?)
Tazti 
E-Speak  

Do you work with or have you tried any of the above? Does any of this "spark joy?" (As Marie Kondo aka KonMari might ask).

When I was working with international documents at Duke University's Perkins Library in the Public Documents and Maps Department, there were a variety of machine translation systems coming out. Now, Google Translate is highly useful for basic translation. But these have a long way to go as far as nuance and slang, &c. Hardly the Universal Translator envisioned on the original Star Trek fifty years ago. 

Do you utilize translation systems?  Why or why not?

Any further thoughts about the Electronic Envelope?

Looking Back but also: Onward!

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Werner Herzog: 'Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World' (2016)

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, Werner Herzog's free-wheeling documentary about the rise and impact of the internet inspires thought. Though low-key, the film is consciousness-raising, like Marshall McLuhan's concept of "the electronic envelope" into which we are folded, or McLuhan's "Global Village" (1962) and "Global Theatre" (1970).  

Here, Herzog asks several globally-connected people: "Does the internet dream of itself?" Not coincidentally, Philip K. Dick's dystopian vision is brought into the mix at one point (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- the 1968 novel that morphed into the 1982 movie Blade Runner). 

A scene from LO AND BEHOLD, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. The memorably strange choice of interview setting and style in this scene speaks volumes about Herzog and his creative crew.

In Lo and Behold, Herzog interviews all sorts of people, including the visionary Elon Musk. 

As one fellow movie-watcher noted, Herzog really knows how to shake people out of the trees. 

Several facets of the internet are covered, including cyber attacks, other disruptions in the net, collaborative research, social media personae, self-driving vehicles, people afraid of "the rays," the rise of the robots and upcoming plans for colonizing Mars. 

It's not all good to think about, but behold, even the most oblivious users of the internet are daily immersed in its ways. Much to be aware of and ruminate upon.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Chimes at Midnight: Kraftwerk Late Show, Austin, Texas

It was weird listening this very morning to outdoor wind chimes dingling and tintinnabuluming as a result of a light air-breeze, sounding alternately like a bit of music echoing off a Jean Michel Jarre theme (Ryan's Daughter) or various phantom samples from a Kraftwerk track ("Computer Love," "Spacelab," etcetera).  

Indeed, life and art are often working together, hand in hand, through each other, in time, beyond space and by way of tingling memory responses triggered by music or comparable stimuli . . . 

I can write quite a lot about Kraftwerk's evening performance at Bass Concert Hall in Austin, Texas, this past Friday (September 25, 2015 A. D.), but it mostly comes down to transcending time -- funneling time and feeling and memory -- regaining two other Kraftwerk performances -- Brixton 1991 and Detroit 1998 -- heightened consciousness of our (via Marshall McLuhan) "electronic envelope," keen awareness of "the extensions of man" or humanness, our evolving nature as man-machine, human-machine -- total immersion, total realization . . . total immersion through pure art. 

I can now refer you to an excellent review of the daytime show by Wes Eichenwald here. He gets at the gist of things, giving me no reason to try to reinvent the electronic wheel for this particular post. 

Kraftwerk's music in Austin, with dazzling "retro future" interaction that included multi-lingual text (German, English, Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese . . .), numbers and Gestaltic iconography, was played more or less in this order:

 "Numbers;" "Computer World;" "Home Computer" and "It's More Fun to Compute;" "Computer Love;" "Pocket Calculator;" "The Man Machine;" "Spacelab;" "The Model;" "Neon Lights;" "Autobahn;" "Airwaves" . . . "Geiger Counter + Radioactivity;" "Ohm Sweet Ohm;" "Electric Café;" "Tour de France;" "Trans Europe Express" . . . (first encore) "The Robots;" (second encore) "Aerodynamik;" "Boom Boom Tschak" + "Techno Pop" + "Musique Non Stop" plus individual bows and a dandy Auf Wiedersehen.  

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Wallace Fowlie and the Art of Letter Writing

Professor Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) of Duke University was in his eighties when we corresponded. I first met him right after a lecture he gave that showed the connections between French poet Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: we struck up a brief conversation that led to later ones. These chats were supplemented by letters when either of us was traveling or otherwise hunkered down with work.

Wallace's letters, after a first brief introductory note, were almost invariably of an ideal length -- two pages. They were sometimes typed on his Olivetti but usually written with a pen.  What we discussed in epistles --as in person -- ranged from writing, reading, teaching, French literature, music, movies and general matters pertaining to art. I learned much from him. What I provided in return was an enthusiastic listener-reader plus some fresh insight into contemporary music.

Wallace Fowlie is a satisfying example of what can result from actively respecting and engaging worldly people -- particularly ones who happen to be over the age of 65. 

Seek and ye shall find, and listen well when you do, whether you meet once or a hundred times. Cherish, treasure and record for posterity -- my motto.

An example of one of Professor Fowlie's letters from our correspondence can be found here.

In 2015 and beyond, there's nothing to prevent letter-writing, especially when the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan put it. Letter writing is prevented only because of "a need for speed" cultivated by the disputive tendencies of modern communications; that is to say, because of 21st century impatience and the desire for instant, even if only ephemeral, gratification. 

As Gore Vidal used to quip from the Ancients, "life is short, but the art is long."

I'm open to new correspondence. If anyone would like to write, I'll send you my mailing address. Email me, if you wish, at: efrance23@gmail.com
And tally-ho!

Today's Rune: Strength.   

Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows' (2011): Take II

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011 paperback edition).

Next cycle: space and time. In "the modern era," if time is money, what is dimension and distance?

Carr considers how human conceptions of geography and time have gone from one mind-blowing worldview to another. 

By the way, what time is it?  Do you know the time of day or night? Where are you situated?

"The technology of the map gave to man a new and more comprehending mind, better able to understand the unseen forces that shape his surroundings and his existence. . . What the map did for space -- translate a natural phenomenon into an artificial and intellectual conception of that phenomenon -- another technology, the mechanical clock, did for time."  (Carr, page 41). 

One may use a map to get from point A to point B, and calculate time of passage with a little math. Time/space -> actual elapsed time & ever-shifting estimated time of arrival.

In order to work in the contemporary electrified world, most workers need to become tethered to a factory-like space/time rhythm -- even though such a tether never feels quite "natural."  If abstracted time and mapped geography came naturally to us, we wouldn't need watches or clocks, maps or GPS.  

So, in the last x thousand years, we as humans have proceeded from operating through the scrim of hunter/gatherer and agricultural concepts of time according to season, moon, sun, and changed -- by say what we call "the 19th century" -- to more regimented railroad/military mobilization/factory production schedules. Electricity makes the industrialized way easy to maintain -- even if we must keep one eye on the clock to keep ourselves aligned with the greater electric beehive.

With such changes in time/space worldviews, we have gained in "efficiency" and possibility, but have also lost a good deal of connection with season, moon, sun and nature in general. Win some, lose some.

Do you have any preference between time and space? Are you happy living in "the present?"  Or is there some other "era" that tickles your fancy, where and when you'd rather be? 

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows' (2011): Take I

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011 paperback edition).

Well, how's your noodle holding up inside the electronic envelope?  Has the internet made mush of your attention span and ability to think deeply?

These are essential questions raised and explored by Nicholas Carr, using Marshall McLuhan as a jumping off point. 

"The Net has become my all-purpose medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind," Carr notes on page 6.

He cites a study that observed how many people don't read in a traditional way, but rather "skip around, scanning for pertinent information of interest" (page 9).

This is how I seek out "news" and "updates," certainly, though I read books, longer articles and poetry in basically the same "left to right" manner that I've done since childhood, regardless of format (that is, I do this with both printed materials and digitized etexts). Also, I make sure to take plenty of time away from "the madding crowd" -- online or in my actual 3D physical space -- for deep reading, contemplation, writing, connecting, thinking, or zoning out. 

How about you?  How about people born within the digital age?

To be continued: No sense in making this post any longer or heavier: online readers tend to devote only about ten seconds per webpage and read (or skim) only about 18% of content, missing or ignoring 82% of the rest (page 135). Still, thanks for reading even that much.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

The Eyes of Texas: T Bone Burnett at the Lone Star Film Festival (2010)

In remembering that T Bone Burnett had brought up Marshall McLuhan during the 2010 Lone Star Film Festival in November, 2010, I dug up my notes from his talks. Saw him at three different venues on or around November 13, 2010. These scribbles were made during T Bone's interview with Bobbie Wygant. 

T Bone has worked on many projects, ranging from his own albums to the music for Coen Brothers' films (The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Inside Llewyn Davis) to Walk the Line and Crazy Heart.

Bobbie Wygant asked T-Bone about his inspirations while living in Fort Worth, Texas.

There was a place called the Capri Theatre and they showed [Luis] Buñuel films and [Jean-Luc] Godard films and [Federico] Fellini films and [Sergei] Eisenstein and [Akiro] Kurosawa . . . these incredible foreign films in Fort Worth, Texas, & it was like a portal into another universe . . . I appreciated it so much. I learned. I would say it was through these two places, the Capri Theatre and Record Town, that I sort of learned everything I've lived my whole life on.

[My 2015 update]: The Capri (which also went by other names) was torn down I think in the 1980s. Nothing has replaced it. Fort Worth needs independent "art house" theatres -- at least one, for God's sake. Fort Worth's three major art museums are wonderful resources, and "Magnolia at the Modern" screens independent and international movies on weekends. However, new art does better in less controlled, contained or restricted environments; that is, via more free-wheeling & Bohemian focal points.

At another venue in 2010, T Bone Burnett spoke of his agreement with Marshall McLuhan, that a new medium envelopes an old medium and lifts elements of the old medium into higher art forms.

Examples: TV becomes more engaging when eclipsed by the internet (The Sopranos, etc.); analog music (vinyl record technology) becomes more absorbing when made obsolescent by digital music. 

Let's be mindful that we are surrounded by an electronic envelope of many layers. 

There's more, but that's a taste of it.

Today's Rune: The Self. 

From Here On Out

I remember one evening in South Philadelphia when my father and I were nearly clipped by a speeding car in the parking lot of a stadium after a football game. Relieved that we'd come away uninjured, my father remarked: "Imagine our lives ebbing out here, in this parking lot . . ." His tone was one of bemusement; I imagine now a twinkle in his eye. The absurdity of life wrapped up in an instant: akin to a statement Winston Churchill made via radio in 1939:  "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key." Churchill was speaking of Russia, but he might just as well have been speaking about life.

My father was very attuned to language and communications. He spent much of his working life in advertising and marketing, so this makes perfect sense. He would hear a word or phrase and repeat it aloud, followed by a little commentary: "that's a good word" or "that's a good phrase," for example.

I remember having elliptical conversations with him about the news and media presentation, advertisements and public relations' "spin." When it came to phrases like "at the end of the day" and "going forward" we both agreed that they were stale and unimaginative. What they are is reflexive -- virtually empty fillers. 

Clichés, Idioms, and euphemisms abound, whether the speaker or writer is aware of them or not.  Phrases like "at the end of the day" support William S. Burroughs' notion of the "word virus" in how quickly they spread and become pandemic, ubiquitous "across" geographic space thanks to global communications. 

"In any case," here is a sampling from some of my recent field notes about language usage and contemporary social activity.

Yesterday, I attended a poetry slam and found it interesting that two speakers read poems using cellphones as platforms for their texts. 

I've seen several patrons using mobile phones to take pictures of books or catalog records, and have found this so clever that I now do the same thing -- handy when I want to make sure to remember my parking space at an airport, for instance.

Marshall McLuhan would have us keep aware of how we communicate, the modes, the methods, the devices, the medium (or plural media) and so on. 

Instead of "going forward," how about the older expression, "from here on out?" 

I like creative mimicry in auditory exchanges or outright conversation: instead of saying "a climate of fear," I heard someone say, "It was a calamity of fear. . ."  Must have been what this person had misheard broadcast(ed) somewhere, and tried to mimic, thereby "coming up with" a creative variation on a stale phrase, letting us see the old phrase in a new way. Can you dig?

OH (an acronym for overheard used via Twitter, etc.): "They really did a number on him." 

"Whatever happened to the charwoman and the ragman?"

My father would sometimes respond to some joker on TV, or in recalling an on the job encounter with one: "What a piece of work that guy is" -- hearkening back to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Scene 2):

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

There are words that are stale and words that are fresh, words refashioned, words reincarnated, phrases reanimated, and others that are unceremoniously put into suspended animation or exiled, willy-nilly, to some terrible Siberia of forgotten words.

Donald Delbert France (1934-2013), RIP. 

Today's Rune: Flow.   

McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed

And now it's time to step out of one alternate universe (whatever we were last discussing) and into another: that as perceived by Marshall McLuhan. 

First off, keep in mind that he was both Catholic and Canadian. 

Secondly, that his books are fascinating, but so are his media appearances. His spirit moves within a universe parallel to yet also distinct from that inhabited by the spirit of William S. Burroughs. 

Regarding Language & Communication. 

McLuhan: "The media is the message" and "The media is the massage." 

Burroughs: "The word is now a virus," the cut-up, and "towers open fire."

W. Terrence Gordon's McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Continuum, 2010) delves into the background and context of McLuhan's ideas; swats away criticisms that Gordon believes are due to misunderstanding of McLuhan's train of thought; and follows McLuhan's evolution and extension of ideas and his revision of older ones. He particularly shows the continuity in McLuhan's work, beyond seeming oddities, randomness and diversions.

Gordon's book "rekindled" my interest in McLuhan. I just happened to pick up a physical 3D copy of the book -- rather than read it on a Kindle -- but either way, it's slow going at first, picks up speed, then finishes off with play.

McLuhan was very much into art and artists as well as science and communication. 

Start anywhere. How about page 121?

". . . art is the sharpening of clichés into probes, into new forms that stimulate new awareness." 

I agree completely here: take something "ordinary" or "routine" and show it, or see it, in a new way, employing a fresh perspective, looking at it from a different angle. 

That is, change how we see or express something from an "automatic everyday way" into another way, so that we no longer "take things for granted" but are "granted" expanded consciousness.  

For anything, anywhere, anytime: stop being "used to it" and start getting "new to it."

"Escape into understanding" (page 95).

Some nitty gritty:

'Media are powerful agents of change in how we experience the world, how we interact with each other, how we use our physical space, how we use our physical senses -- the same senses that media extend. They must be studied for their effects, because their interaction obscures those effects and deprives us of the control required to use media effectively' (page 107).

Attention must be paid to what we're doing and how we're doing it. 

All one need do is consider, if one is old enough, some of the daily behavioral changes engendered by the deployment of mobile digital devices and wireless communication, even within a single decade, especially in the early 21st century. 

If young enough (i.e. too young to have lived through the analog to digital morp), consider horse and foot culture vs. rail and steamship culture vs. automobile and atomic bomb "drive-thru" culture.

Armed with imagination, just about anyone young, old or in between can "escape [bleary everyday myopia] into [sharper, more farsighted] understanding."       

There's much much more, but I'll stop here for the purposes of inspiration beyond "pattern recognition." 

One can only absorb so much at one time without chucking all of it out the window, becoming a litter bug, and who wants that? Not I, said the Fly. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

The Medium is the Message: Cassette Tapes

". . . an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. Because we are benumbed by any new technology — which in turn creates a totally new environment — we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it, just as we’ve done with jazz, and as we’re now doing with the garbage of the mechanical environment via pop art. . . -- “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” Playboy (March 1969).

As an influential medium, the cassette tape took off in the 1970s, overcoming reel-to-reel and the 8-Track and challenging vinyl LPs. But behind it emerged the CD, and behind that, digital downloads. What next?

According to Kara Rose in "Cassette Tapes See New Life after MP3s," USA Today (October 3, 2011 - updated), cassette sales peaked in 1990 with over 440 million sold. New "herds" were "killed off" as quickly and brutally as the American Bison after the American Civil War, but like the Buffalo in the 20th century and with care and consideration in the 21st, cassettes have made a modest comeback. It's worth noting that cassettes cost about one tenth of what vinyl did to produce -- though they certainly were not priced that way in the 1980s. Nowadays, cassettes and CDs can be produced in small batches by musicians and their associates -- and priced competitively. The not quite "old environment" has become, as Marshall McLuhan phrases it above,  "more visible" with the passage of time. Now we have so many options that a person can barely know where to turn at any particular moment -- or so it would seem by daily observation. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.       

Show Me the Way to the Next Little Dollar

Above: from Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's Tout va bien / Everything's All Right (1972).

A supermarket . . . 700 million francs a day in sales. A large sales outlet, and social theatre at the same time. Everyone's shouting . . . except the audience. Outside the factory, it's still like a factory.

Does one banter with the cashier at the end of each checkout line to make this a more humanizing economic exchange?

I take items out of a wheeled shopping cart or hand-held shopping basket, and the cashier managing the checkout lane I'm in conveys them down an automated belt with the flick of a switch, scans them for price transmitted via barcode, rings it up, maybe bags them after asking questions (paper, plastic, reusable, box, or nothing?). I pay by swiping a plastic card or with paper cash and maybe coins; if with debit card, I withdraw a little extra cash perhaps. My money is transferred via the cashier (or "sales associate"), who interacts with an automated cash register system, delivering my money to the store; eventually some of these funds make their way to stock holders as residual quarterly profits. Voila. Thanks to millions of such transactions, the Mitt Romneys and John McCains of the world can build another mansion they don't need and will never live in. Meanwhile, I have exchanged my money for goods; the cashier, who is being monitored, inspected, audited, randomly drug-tested and actively cajoled to be more efficient in every way possible, receives nothing more than a relatively low and flat hourly wage for her efforts. 

General questions about shopping in "supermarkets."

1) Why are so many lanes unstaffed most of the time at most such places I've been to in the USA?

2) Why do most American stores require cashiers to stand, instead of sit (with exceptions like German-owned Aldi stores)?

3) What impact does the U-Scan checkout line have on sellers and buyers?

4) Will buyers be forced to act more universally as prosumers? Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler noticed -- forty years ago -- a socio-economic trend toward increasing producer-consumer do-more-yourself activity, which has come to change banking (ATMs, online banking), "service stations" (self-service gas pumping using credit, debit, barcode or cash), and replaced "travel agents" with do-it-yourself online (or telephonic) travel and dining reservations. Prosumer activity is supposed to save the buyer money; in reality, it saves the seller more money, thanks to transferring actual labor exertion to the buyer -- thereby reducing the seller's own labor costs.

5) Shopping lists and wireless beacons.  Lost in the supermarket? No worries, your shopping cart mounted device will guide you right to them! No need to ask a worker for help. What's next?  

Today's Rune: Protection.