Bruner Blog
All Bruner, All the Time
The iPod vs. Sliced Bread
Taking on the assumption repeated in many articles that the Mac's iPod MP3 player is the best thing since sliced bread, the MorningNews.org puts the iPod and sliced bread to a head-to-head comparison.
Read on Jish.
- 8/10/2002
* * *
Happy Birthday, Mom!
(Whew, I got that in just before the date changed.)
I love you!
- 8/10/2002
* * *
Libraries and the FBI
Christian Baily blogged last week about what he called "a great commercial" from the Ad Council that shows a kid being escorted out of a library by police because of a book he check out, with the tagline "What if America wasn't America?" A bunch of other bloggers picked up on his post, including Nick Denton and Boing Boing. Nobody apparently saw any irony in the commercial (which you can see for yourself here).
I've met Christian a few times, a swell guy and I mean him no disrespect, but I can't resist pointing out that I blogged about this a month ago on ExecutiveSummary.com when I heard the host of NPR's "On the Media" show, Brooke Gladstone, really rip into the creator of this "Campaign for Freedom" ad series. Her main beef was this particular library ad, which she pointed out stood in blatant hipocracy to the recently passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which explicitly allows for the F.B.I. to secretly monitor people's library habits (read my previous post for details and an amusing transcript).
I wouldn't have bothered calling much attention to this, but tonight I heard a great piece on exactly this subject -- the F.B.I.'s new powers to monitor library users -- on NPR: click here for the Real Audio file. Here's NPR's summary of the segment:
The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of Sept. 11, gives the FBI greatly expanded powers to search records of all kinds. NPR's Nancy Solomon reports on a recent survey showing that the Bureau has contacted 85 public libraries since the act was passed.
- 8/10/2002
* * *
Deja Vu: The Bloggies
Didn't I just blog about The Bloggies the other day? Yes, I boldly predicted the inevitably of blog award ceremonies (still dizzy off the high of predicting BlogTree two weeks before it hit DayPop). Well, I hit gold again. I'm so damn visionary, I'm now predicting the past!
Blogging legend Jish stumbled upon the lowly Bruner Blog and pointed out that Nikolai Nolan has been organizing the Bloggy Awards already for the last two years. Jish would know, having won "Best Canadian Blog" in 2001 (a backhanded complement if I ever heard one), thanks no doubt in large part to his shamless "Nominate me!!!" appeal to readers. (That got me wondering whether Jish's distinctive .nu domain was perhaps for Newfoundland, but no, turns out it's for Niue, a tiny Polynesian island that apparently subsidizes its GDP by selling domain registrations.) Sadly, I see Jish failed in his bid to repeat his success in 2002 for "Best American Blog" (I don't know the backstory on the nationality switch; you know how tetchy those Canook's are about the whole "America" thing).
I'd say this still wasn't exactly what I had in mind, in that it appears to be a purly online effort of primarily one blogger and his blog circle, a worthy contribution to the blogosphere, to be sure, but not exactly on par with the Oscars or even the Webbies. But then, I suppose a real bloggers ceremony is impractical, as unlike the film and general web industries, there's no money in blogging, so no one is likely to underwrite the expenses of pomp and circumstance for a bunch of blog nerds. Besides, it's not like "the public" gives a rat's ass about the world's best blog. In any event, it would still be nice to see these awards formalized a bit more, at least with their own domain (TheBloggies.com is still available).
- 8/10/2002
* * *
Blooger.com
It's unregistered.
- 8/10/2002
* * *
Banned Austin Powers Promo?
Don't know if it was really banned or not, but I found this preview (7MB MPEG) for the disappointing "Goldmember" film. (The KaZaA pirate who uploaded indicated it was banned). The preview is actually pretty funny, starring Verne Troyer (Mini-Me), who gets brutally slammed around in the film (pretty cruel slapstick for the poor little fella), but in this trailer he demonstrates his considerable talent.
- 8/10/2002
* * *
Temporary Reprieve From Computer Hell
The only happiness I can report is that I will now shut this ugly chapter of the blog with the report that the new printer (nearly $400, with the extended warantee and extra ink cartridge) works. Now I just have to reload all other apps...
- 8/9/2002
* * *
A New Low for Me and Computers
Okay, I'm rested. I'll try to keep the foul language to a minimum. But by this afternoon I really, really hate computers. I hate computers with the white-hot intensity of a thousand burning suns.
Briefly, for anyone who could possibly care, here's the update since last night's ravings: first thing this morning (or thereabouts) I called IBM again, got right through to a technician who walked me through the critical erase-everything-and-start-over-from-scratch phase of my computer troubleshooting. So over the last couple of hours I've gotten email set up reasonably again and made the sad discovery of the first of what will doubtless prove to be many things I stupidly neglected to back up: all my Outlook files (e.g., a year's worth of bookmarks...). Oh well...
I still have many fun-filled hours of reconstructing my digital life in front of me, but here's the really hilarious part (hilarious in the way that you have to laugh like you're brain is about to exlode with insane fury): I still can't print. You see, that's hilarious because I have a ~300-page document that it's critical I print in order to complete a client project by Monday morning (which still lots more work besides justing printing, of course), which has driven me finally to face the wipe-everything-and-reinstall-the-operating-system test phase of my months of troubleshooting this stupid printer problem (during which time I've kludgily made do simply emailing documents to my wife who graciously prints them at her unsuspecting workplace; unfortunately, she's out of town at the moment), so that, after spending 15 of the last 23 hours starting reinstalling everything (and losing critical data and many necessary work hours in the process), the printer still doesn't work. I mean, that's like in-a-bell-tower-with-a-rifle funny!
Excuse me, I'm going to go to Circuit City and buy a new printer, and see if that might possibly help...
- 8/9/2002
* * *
Money
I don't see this on DayPop yet, but this is brilliant political commentary on the recent corporate scandals, in Flash, set to Pink Floyd's classic "Money." Thanks to sister Sue (and kisses to Little Ricky!).
- 8/9/2002
* * *
15 Reasons Why I Won't Own a Car
Can't sleep. Too pissed off about computers. So I figured I'd get up and rant about something else. At least it's a rant I've been thinking of writing for quite a while.
 I almost wish that I wanted a car, so I could get a weird French compressed air car, but thankfully I have no interest whatsoever in owning a car, and hopefully I never will. I've now been car-free for 18 years. One of the few excellent pieces of advice my step-father gave me that I actually listened to: "You don't want a car, they're nothing but trouble." Last time I owned a car I was 19, a '63 Chevy Belair, like this one, which, rumor has it, was last seen being pushed off the Rimrocks of Billings, MT. Good riddance.
True, I now live in NYC, where it's more impactical to have a car than not, and I don't begrudge friends living in places like Montana, LA, Maine, Maryland and elsewhere for having cars, where it would be completley impractical not to. That said, I did manage four years in SF without one. That wasn't completely impractical, though it certainly gave me a different impression of California. But by that time I'd lived long enough without one that I wanted to see how far I could push it. We rented cars periodically to get out of town, got really good at the buses, took a lot of taxis, and I was in extremely good shape from biking all across town over those hills. We probably would have enjoyed the Bay Area more were we more mobile, but I have no regrets.
Here are 15 reasons why not:
- I don't have to spend thousands of dollars buying a car.
- I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars a year on insurance.
- I don't have to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars a year on unexpected repairs.
- I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars a year on parking tickets, towing, speeding tickets and the like.
- I don't have to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on gasoline every year.
- I don't get stuck in traffic or suffer from road rage.
- I don't have to drive around the block for half an hour looking for parking.
- I don't have to worry about having one more drink for the road, if I feel like it.
- I don't have to worry about accidentally, heaven forbid, running over someone's child.
- I don't have to worry about some jerk at the mall putting a huge scratch or dent in my perfect, beloved paint-job.
- I don't have to feel guilty for being totally in love with a stupid car.
- I don't have to feel guilty about further increasing the riches and power of Saudi Arabian princes and Texas Republican oil oligarchs.
- I don't have to feel guilty about rewarding GM and the rest of the bastards for perpetrating one of the most dastardly conspiracies of the modern age (the destruction of public transportation in this country).
- I don't have to feel guilty about ripping a hole bigger and bigger in the ozone layer as a gift to future generations (here's an idea: don't drive the SUV to the mall; shop online!)
- To what extent I am in good shape at all anymore is still thanks to biking.
The only real downside is I have to suffer being such a sanctimonious prick all the time.
- 8/9/2002
* * *
Offline, No Email
Per all the below, my email is out till next update. If for some unlikely reason you really need to reach me, call.
- 8/9/2002
* * *
Now I Really Hate Computers
A little update, for those of you who can't sleep. Since my rant below, I backed up all the essential data on the harddrive (I hope) and got ready for the big erase-everything step of this fun computer-meltdown thing, but I ran into a little snag. The laptop wouldn't read the "Product Recovery CD-ROM." Rebooted with it in the drive several times and tried to launch it from the laptop OS, but no dice. Every which way I tried, couldn't boot on the disk or even launch any app off it. Great.
So at 12:15am, I call IBM tech support. Five minutes of voice options followed by 20 minutes of uninterrupted easy-listening jazz, followed by five minutes of easy-listening jazz with frequent interruptions to "Please hold on for the next available representative," followed by...nothing. Dead air. Held on that for another five minutes, with frequent interreptions of my shouting "HELLO?!?! IS ANYONE FUCKING THERE?!?!" followed by my hanging up in disgust and cracking another beer.
On top of all that, the trackpad on the wife's iBook is like some kind of stress detector and has gone completely haywire in response to my blood pressure so that I now have virtually no control over mouse functions. Barely keeping bodily functions in check. Plus, about half of the Blogger features are disabled on this ancient hunk of junk.
I really can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring. I'm positively going to spring out of bed first thing to greet this day.
- 8/9/2002
* * *
I Fucking Hate Computers
I fucking hate computers. Fucking hate them! My hatred for them at the moment is riled. Details to come in a long series of essays when I get around to it.
For the moment, I am coming to you from a Macintosh, but don't any of you Mac zombies out there take that as a victory. This thing is a piece of shit, too. Still running 8.6 b/c who the hell has time to update the system. Anyway, it's her machine, so the OS is her problem. I was a loyal Apple customer from 1983 (my first machine was Dad's hand-me-down Apple II) till 1998 when my old business partner dragged me kicking and screeming into WinHell. Now you'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to switch back, for reasons maybe I'll get around to expounding upon at some later date.
Believe me, it's not for any love of Microsoft. Tonight, for example, my wrath is particularly directed at their piece of shit operating system, along with Palm, Brother and the whole lot of them, really. Ryze, for example, has sent me four losers in a row who flaked out on me before finishing a design for a new logo. (If you, dear reader are a real designer, email me.) Now Craig's List found me a young computer jock who spent four hours trying to make my Palm sync and my printer print, and left me in much worse shape than when he started. (Needless to say, he'd never heard of blogs. He did, however, remind me there was one other funny thing about Goldmember: the rap video. Tho it's not worth sitting thru the whole movie for. Look for it on KaZaA eventually.)
So, it's 10pm, and I'm going to get started on backing up everything, wiping my laptop clean, reinstalling Win 2000 and then call it a night. Tomorrow should be fun.
As I said, I'll be expounding on this theme shortly in my first column for MediaPost (which I had otherwise been planning to finish this evening), but let me summarize my thesis thusly: The biggest problem that the Internet still faces in becoming a fully developed medium on the scale of television or a shopping channel like catelogs or retail is that, when you come right down to it, computers still fucking suck. The old joke is still true: you've never had to reinstall the operating system on your television or your local grocery store.
- 8/8/2002
* * *
NASCAR to Teach NYPD How to Drive?
I just caught a news snippet on WNYC to the effect that NASCAR has offered to (? - has begun?) training NY police and ambulance drivers on high-speed driving techniques. Searched around on the web, but can't confirm. Would love another source on that, if you know of it.
- 8/8/2002
* * *
Bp vs. Prague Redux
Erik D'Amato just discovered some older Bruner Blog rants and offers these insights:
Enjoyed yr bit on the whole bp vs pg issue.
Seems you forgot one extremely obvious and crucial - and, from your perspective, probably very cheering - factor: the neutonian coolness equilibrium effect.
Whatever edge zlaty praha may have had over bp then re coolness will (and has already) been more than made up for by the inevitable melanoma-like incurable uncoolness from basking too long in an adoring sun.
To the extent that anyone cares, the phrase "I lived in Prague in the early 1990s" is as deadly as a boring hippy uncle's reminder that, yes, yes, he was actually at Woodstock.
And Budapest?
Altamont!
You also, strangely, do not mention the even more crucial f-o-o-d question, and do not give a final rant re that book.
I'm not sure where I'm supposed to stand on the question of boiled bread vs. fried cheese. I didn't eat enough Czech food to have an informed opinion, and while there are some Hungarian specialties I'm partial to (Jokai bean soup and every manner of goose liver come to mind), I'm not foolish enough to propose here that paprika and lard are cornerstones of great European cuisine. I am reminded, however, of visiting Warsaw and going to a bookstore to pick up a Polish cookbook. The clerk brought us to the English-language section and hands me a cookbook the size of Webster's Second Unabridged dictionary. When I suggested I was looking for something a bit more compact, and mimed the dimensions I had in mind, she scowled and told me through my interpreter, "Just cabbage alone wouldn't fit into a cookbook that size." Mmmm, cabbage.
What's unclear is Mr. D'Amato's own position on all of this. If I'm supposed to remember you from my Bp glory days, apologies, that was a lot of Unicum ago.
As for the novel, let's just say I'm taking a bit of a break. Really have had trouble getting into it and have set it aside for a while, not even half way thru. Finishing up some previously abandoned books just now instead. Have a flight to Montana coming up next week, I'll try again. Meanwhile, I just got my copy of Ken Layne's Dot.Con in the mail, so Prague better get good fast, as I'm itching to relive my other set of nostalgias -- the heyday of Internet entrepreneurialism.
- 8/8/2002
* * *
Journalist Fired for Blogging
Veteran journalist Steve Olafson just got fired from the Houston Chronicle for blogging.
- 8/8/2002
* * *
Goldmember
Don't bother. The funniest moment of the film is in the open credits, where, being strafed by an attack helicopter, Austin Powers pushes an ejector button in his sports car and goes summersalting through the air above the helicopter, guns blazing. There. I've ruined the funniest scene in the film for you, so you don't need to bother seeing the rest, unless you just can't get enough of poo-poo and pee-pee jokes.
- 8/8/2002
* * *
Thanks Also to America for Guns, Tits and Slavery
Step-brohiem Jay responds to my Ugly American rant:
Pick up a copy of Video Night In Kathmandu by Pico Iyer, read it and then apologize to me, to yourself and to the American people for writing the very rant you did not want to (the one in praise of the fact we invented guns and titty and thuggish shouting about the concerns of black men). Most indigenous American art forms have been coopted from people we dragged here in chains and continued to treat poorly, or naïve immigrants who didn’t know anything about patent law.
True enough. In my defense, I tried (tho perhaps not convincingly) to avoid making that post pure self-congradulations or moral vindication, but just a statement of fact that this country influenced the world, for better and worse, more in the last century than any other. I agree that often brought cruel consequences here and abroad, but to say we didn't have that influence, as someone had previously suggested to me, is mistaken. Will pick up the book and am already sorry for my part in all of it.
- 8/7/2002
* * *
The European Union of Yugoslavia
My good friend Steve Carlson (co-founder with myself of Budapest Week newspaper) is a really talented writer, though he doesn't do enough of it for my liking. He's talking about a book idea now, and I would be eager to read it, as I love whatever he writes. He just spent four weeks driving through the former Yugoslavia -- Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro -- along with two other dear friends of mine. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Balkans, including these countries myself (though not during actual warfare, as did several other friends of mine, who made their professional reputations on it, including Peter Maass). Despite how screwed up that poor region of the globe has been in the last decade, I have a particularly warm spot for Yuog-land, and recommend a journey there to anyone who's able.
Steve just posted a travel log about his road trip to his web site. Highly recommended reading.
- 8/6/2002
* * *
Rick Bruner Speaks!
Are you, like me, obsessed with Rick Bruner? Would you like to hear him speak right now? If so, click here (and get help).
- 8/6/2002
* * *
Media Officially Out of Love with Bush
Well, it's official, Matt Welch was right: the media no longer loves Dubya. From among the top 10 links on DayPop 40 today:
- "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies: Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board" - Washington Post
- "Before Sept. 11: The Secret History" - TIME Magazine
- "Bush's Shame" - New York Times Op-Ed piece by Thomas Friedman about President Bush's "pathetic, mealy-mouthed response" to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's sentencing of 63-year-old Saad Eddin Ibrahim to seven years at "hard labor" for promoting democracy.
- 8/6/2002
* * *
The Bloggies Award Ceremony
Since I was duly credited (search "Who's Your Daddy" -- her archives are messed up) with the prescience for having predicted the emergence of something like BlogTree, I'll go on record with another prediction: The Bloggies -- a blog award ceremony. Why not? We've already got The Webbies. Can't you imagine how much bloggers (not to mention the rest of...) would get a kick out of a proper gala full of self-adoration? Just make sure Dave Winer wins some life-time achievement award or some such, otherwise we'll never hear the end of it.
I see I'm not alone in this idea. BloggyAwards.com is already registered, but TheBloggies.com is still available.
- 8/6/2002
* * *
Agreement from Across the Pond
Wow, it's posts like this one that suddenly make blogging seem worthwhile. (Who am I kidding? I'd blog regardless.) When I wrote my rant over the weekend about the "America Century," I had a bad feeling that I was either saying something so obvious (that the 20th Century was shaped more by America than any other country) that it was hardly worth writing out, or it was going to piss off some folks quite properly. So far, no emails, but I did just come across this tremendously flattering response to it posted by Frenchman Olivier Travers on his excellent WebVoice blog (also the voice behind the essential TheEndOfFree.com and the comprehensive Amazon affiliate SciFiFan.com):
I've tried to argue this point with fellow countrymen time and again, but I never really managed to get them to go down from their French high horse. Faced with the same list of American accomplishments, one guy had the guts to tell me Jazz wasn't American! Meanwhile, his girlfriend had built the impression that Americans were crass illiterates after a year spent at the University of Middle of Cornfield, Nowhere State. Well, guess what, students in third-grade universities this size of the pond show a similar lack of culture, besides they don't mind being a financial burden to their parents till the age of 28.
Europe, whose greatest innovations since WWII are lousy Nokia phones and Big Brother TV shows (sorry, electronic music comes from the US too,) has only herself to blame for crass mass consumerism. We should realize the fumes of high cultural achievements we're so proud of inhaling (or rather we claim to cherish while we in fact consume American output,) emanate from an ever-more distant past. Americans are illiterate because they can't locate our tiny countries on a map? Well, we can't do the same for Indian or Chinese provinces that are probably as populated as our whole continent, so let's start addressing our distorted world perspective and stop thinking Europe is the center of the universe. This ain't the 18th century anymore.
- 8/6/2002
* * *
Google on Warhol
Google gets funky for Warhol's birthday.
(Yeah, right, like you're going to check the Bruner Blog today before having some reason to Google and notice this logo here first. A boy can dream, can't he?)
- 8/6/2002
* * *
Japan Launches Compulsory IDs for All Citizens
Japan, expressing its love for individuality, just implemented compulsory seriel numbers for all citizens. I'm sure my friends at the Crypto Rights Foundation are thrilled. It's not clear to me from this story, however, exactly how the IDs will be used.
Source: Nick Denton
- 8/5/2002
* * *
Note to Self: Avoid Rooftops in Electrical Storms
Belated update that no one cares about, but I may have given stalkers the spook Friday night by inviting them to find me on a rooftop in Brooklyn. As it turned out, I had the good sense to stay home, as there was a fierce electrical storm that night (tho it didn't do much for the stifling humidity that persists). Unfornunately, one 25-year-old man who didn't share my good sense was struck dead by lightning watching the storm from his Manhattan rooftop.
Also, don't run with scissors.
- 8/5/2002
* * *
Reuters, Oddly Enough
I finally figured out where Mark gets much of his material: the "Oddly Enough" section on the Reuters site, a collection of wacky News-of-the-Weird-type stories. Today's headlines include "Police 'Rescue' Sex Doll from Lake", "European Women Marry U.S. Death Row Inmates" and my favorite, "Vacation Mix-Up: a Tale of Two Sydneys," about a British couple who bought a ticket on the Internet for Sydney and were suprised on landing that they were not in Australia but in Sydney, Canada, "the industrial town known as 'the steel city' -- population 26,083. "They decided they might as well stay for a few days, having come all this way," said [Air Canada spokesperson Andrea] Batten. "It's going to be a trip to remember."
You might have thought "Air Canada" would have been their tip off.
- 8/5/2002
* * *
I Just Want to Post on My Blog All Day
Any Todd Rundgren fans out there? His infectous little groove "Bang on the Drum All Day" has been running through my head the last few days, but with the lyrics
I don't want to work
I want to post on the blog all day
I don't want to play
I just want to post on the blog all day
BTW, pointless trivia about Todd Rundgren: until actress Liv Tyler was about 9 years old, she grew up thinking Rundgren was her father till a DNA test proved Areosmith's Steve Tyler was in fact her pa. Now you know.
- 8/5/2002
* * *
SF, I Still Love You
I'm reminded again that some of my SF friends still read the Bruner Blog. (Shout out to Marshall Strategy -- good luck w/ the new company, Ken!) And yes, Gaby, perhaps "soulless backwater" was a bit harsh (I can't help myself from picking a fight on this blog, that's the whole fun of it, really). (BTW, what's up with your permalinks, girl? How can I give you proper linky love if I can't point to the post?) There were, of course, lots of things I did love about the place, most of all my several good friends there (even if they weren't a posse, per se). But let's just say I'm having a lot more fun in NYC during the recession than I ever did in Bagdad by the Bay during the boom.
- 8/5/2002
* * *
Improve Your Blog's Google Ranking With DMOZ
Search the word "blog" on Google and notice that most of those sites in the first several pages of results have a "Category" listing, such as "Category: Computers > Internet > On the Web > Weblogs > Personal"
This is because every site registered with the Open Directory Project (ODP, aka DMOZ.org)
is guaranteed to be in the database Google searches (which itself makes up only a relatively small fraction of all Web pages). Also, a link to your site from Yahoo! or DMOZ is weighted with the highest value in terms of Google's in-bound-link-based ranking algorithm (i.e., Google gives higher ranking to those sites with lots of URLs from other sites pointing in at them, particularly links from sites that are highly valued). Here's a discussion thread on WebMasterWorld.com (a great resource about the niche of search engine optimization) that explains more about all this.
Therefore, if you blog and you care about showing up on Google, make sure your blog is registered with DMOZ. Here is the main page for Computers: Internet: On the Web: Weblogs -- click where it says "add URL" at the top of the page.
- 8/4/2002
* * *
The American Century
*Gulp* I'm probably going to regret this, but a conversation I had the other night has been gnawing at me. In fact, even though I didn't make the list, I would comfortably call myself a liberal. I truly don't consider myself to be a jingoistic, gung-ho, rah-rah America promoter. I lived five years in Europe (Budapest), which gave me some perspective on my country's role in the world. But during that time abroad, I also got really sick of hearing Europeans say that America didn't have a "culture." Not compared to Europe anyway. I'd look at the blue jeans on their asses, the music playing in the background, the burger or pizza crumbs on their lips and think, "Yeah, right, may I have the pleasure of the next waltz?"
Well, I got into it again the other night with a young Hungarian woman I don't know well (and whom I believe does not read the Bruner Blog, but if you do, dear, nothing personal, I swear! You are lovely and charming). We were talking about the state of the world these days, and I wanted to make a point along the lines that while the 20th Century had been the American Century, the cultural dominance we have exerted on the rest of the world for many years might not sustain itself long into the next century, given the New World Order, etc.
The conversation didn't get further along those lines, though, as my new friend immediately seized with incredulity on my premise that the 20th Century had in any way been dominated by America. Granted, this person grew up (till the ripe age of her mid teens, probably) under Soviet Communism, so perhaps she was somewhat shielded in her youth from what I was had in mind, but I was still surprised that she thought that this was a point worth arguing about.
I mean, am I living with cultural blinders on, nationalistic to the point of myopia, or is it not true that the United States did in fact have disproportionate influence on the way the rest of the world has lived in the past 100 years or so?
For example, starting with "The Arts" and "Culture," I'm thinking in terms of jazz music, rock music, hip hop, modern musical theater, modern dance, motion pictures and casual fashion. As for technology and communications, there is, oh, say the telephone, television, the automobile, mass production, air travel, air conditioning, computers and the Internet. And let's not forget issues like civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, the environmental movement, the United Nations and modern philanthropy. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Let me be clear that I am not suggesting that all of these trends and inventions occurred in a vacuum exclusively in America by "full-blooded" Americans. Obviously, jazz, blues and rock music were born out of traditions from Europe and Africa. Of course I've heard of the Lumiere brothers, Fellini and Bollywood, but I just don't think I'm going out on a limb to suggest that Hollywood's influence on the global film industry is overwhelming. Of course, French, English, Hungarians and many other nationalities made important contributions to the technologies I've named above, including the TV, computer and motion pictures, both as immigrants in America and in their homelands. And in the alternative universe where there were no America, probably many or most of these things would have come to pass in any event (e.g., the car, air travel, the environmental movement, etc., though I'm less sure about jazz, The Simpsons or Amazon.com).
I'm also not suggesting that everyone in Hungary or Pakistan or Nepal or wherever are listening to American Top 40 and wearing baseball caps and surfing Amazon. But similar American characteristics of modern life are certainly recognizeable in almost every corner of the globe, more pervasively, anyway, than French, Japanese, Argentine or any other country's international impact.
I could cite the obvious patriot stuff about American inventiveness, entrepreneurialism, can-do spirit, personal liberty, democracy, etc. And to a large extent, I'd agree those is true. But I'd argue that the forces most responsible for the influence this country has wielded in shaping "world culture" in the past century were sales savvy and unbridled consumerism. America simply has the largest affluent consumer base in the world. Once a phenomenon -- be it the hamburger, a Bruce Willis flick or laws against beating up gay people -- has found wide enough acceptance in this society, the producers and promoters of that phenomenon know that it has very wide appeal, and they can benefit from the momentum and economies of scale they achieved in "selling" to this market in order to replicate that success in countries around the world. No other country has that advantage.
Also, I am not saying that America's influence on the world is all for the good, far from it. I strongly believe that American-style consumerism, not to mention foreign politics, have wrought terrible ills on people and the environment around the world, the consequences of which are at least almost equal to the corresponding benefits. And the financial scandals ofi the last year are only going to further erode international confidence in "The American Way of Life."
My point is, I wasn't trying to make a judgment call that premise. I thought I was just stating a fact: America, more than any other country, anyway, dominated the 20th Century. I'm amazed this was even a point of debate, but I've encountered the sentiment too often while living in Europe before to let it go (now that I blog). I suppose that blue jeans, t-shirts, rock music, TV sitcoms, the World Wide Web, the telephone and so on are taken so much for granted today as part of daily life everywhere that people like my new friend consider these things to be universal and they no longer see the American stamp in their innovation. To my friend's mind, "culture" apparently meant "high culture," which she felt excluded America (T.S. Elliot, George Gershwin, Orsen Welles, et al, notwithstanding).
The Simpsons is broadcast in more than 100 countries, and BayWatch is the most popular TV show on the planet. High culture, perhaps not, but the last time I watched a Dutch, Nigerian or Chinese TV show was, well, never. (Granted, I don't have cable.) Sure, everyone eats sushi anymore (although I'd bet it caught on in NY before Paris), but not many folks in London or Rio are walking around in Kimonos and bamboo slippers to the best of my knowledge. As for Karaoke, they're more than welcome to take it back.
And let's not even get into World Wars I and II. As for the Cold War, what is the best of the Soviet Union's legacy on world culture? Tremendous sacrifice in WWII, great ballet, subsidized recordings of Tchaikovsky and... Remind me what else the Hungarians are thankful to the Russians for.
Of course the 20th Century was the American Century. In the last 100 years, by example, through consumer appeal, through economic and military might, this country has defined in very large part what modern life, for better and worse, means all around the world today. Obviously. That's what September 11th was all about.
As for the 21st Century, well, I never got that far in the conversation, and I'll leave it here for another writing. All I can say is, if not America, than who?
Feel free to flame away.
- 8/4/2002
* * *
|
