1955 - 2011

When a visionary is alive, it’s easy to think of him as a constant presence, an entity that came into existence at some well-defined point with an open-ended trajectory, forging ever onward. Steve Jobs was, without a doubt, one of those presences. One forgets that even a hero’s time here is finite, and we will always struggle with the cruel finality of the trajectory’s end. Seeing that pair of dates under his name was one of the most heart-wrenching moments in my life. I have never cried so hard for someone I never knew.

Yet in a way we all knew him. There’s a reflection of him in every product he shaped. We interact with devices we love because one man had the guts and the creative vision to build a “computer for the rest of us.” His legacy lives on in the lives he has touched and the stories those people tell.

I remember a moment years ago when I grew frustrated with a bit of technology. I don’t recall what, exactly, I was working with, but some clumsy interface drove me into a rage. Once the frustration eased, however, I realized that part of what made me so angry with the gadget was the thought that whoever built it just didn’t care. I was crushed to think that someone could go through the world with enough apathy to put out junk. I got the sense that this must be what Steve felt all the time. I’m not sure I’ll ever know for certain whether this is a trait we shared, but what I saw—the sense of perfectionism and unrelenting need for improvement—gave me a role model and has driven me to where I am today. I never imagined it could hurt so much to lose a hero.

If anything, Steve’s death is a reminder to make the most of our short time here. A reminder that we must do our own part to make a dent in the universe. Great men and women have led us this far and it’s up to us to pick up where they left off. All of this brings to mind something Philippe Starck once said: “nobody is obliged to be a genius, but everybody is obliged to participate.” Our participation is required now more than ever.

The Triumph of Destruction

The architect had won all kinds of awards for the house. The critic for the Times had called it “the most important architectural work to date.” In a masterpiece of fractal elegance, each feature related to a coherent whole. Every corner, every window, every door and every step was placed with careful consideration. It was a striking work of geometric beauty; not a single feature out of place. The architect’s reputation for obsessive-compulsive attention to detail had previously only exasperated even the most patient of his clients. Now, he had finally won the attention of the critical press. There was talk of a Pritzker.

Just after construction completed, the client suffered a boating accident. For an hour or so in the I.C.U. his survival was touch-and-go. He left the hospital in a wheelchair. For the client robbed of his ability to walk, the house became an obstacle. Suddenly each step was insurmountable. The carefully proportioned doors were too tall and narrow. The windows that perfectly framed the view of the ocean below were now far above eye level. The night the final photograph for the architecture journals was taken the bulldozers returned.

Customer Inconvenience

I purchase tickets on Amtrak’s web site about once a month, so they’ve got a bunch of my information on file. They gave me a Guest Rewards number and everything. Yet every single time I buy a ticket, I see this form¹—pre-populated with the phone number and email address they have on record for me—and for some reason I am required to confirm the email that they already know and have already sent numerous confirmations and ticket receipts to.

How to Build Anything, or Three Simple Pieces That Form a Whole

Collect. Take notes. Search for patterns. Identify trends. Name things.

Find outliers. Analyze and refine your theories.

Experiment. Start building. Let mistakes happen. Keep going.

Spies

Secretly, secretly,
Microphotography
Carries a curious
Message for you.

Covert authority’s
Secret instructions are
Steganographically
Hiding from view.

Marginalia

I suppose it’s fitting that my thoughts on the subject of e-books—books, really, because what isn’t e- these days—right now aren’t much more than a few fleeting thoughts themselves.

James Gleick’s pragmatic take on electronic text is refreshing. There’s no good reason to sentimentalize the feeling of a manuscript in one’s hands, especially when the content is what we’re after. That is, with one caveat: we cannot ignore the connective tissue between texts. A single book—whether tablet, scroll, hardcover, or PDF—has no value without those that come before and after it. The writer’s cited works and readers’ wandering thoughts are the buttresses that support either side of a text. Why else would we care about preserving Donald Judd’s personal library (complete with the unexpected serendipities of his particular cataloging system) or documenting the marginalia scribbled in David Foster Wallace’s copy of Borges: A Life? Context is king.

All of this is what I love about used book stores. Each copy of a certain text is a specimen of a particular species, exhibiting minute variations in wear or the residual marks of a reader’s interest and attention. Even the provenance of a particular volume is a fascinating rabbit hole of exploration. No book on my Kindle includes an almost decade-old credit card impression from the previous owner. (At least, presumably, not available to anyone outside of Amazon.)

Evidence of a previous owner (and assigned location in a taxonomy).

A fascinating casualty of search, hypertext, and metadata may turn out to be the canonical indexing and cataloguing systems employed by libraries today. Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal are the dinosaurs of information organization methods. After all, is there any reason we place all of our botany books in one pile when a computer can search every pile in the world virtually instantaneously? (One could even question whether we should support an ethnocentric taxonomy that devotes two classes to “History of the Americas” but only one to “World History and History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.” I’d hate to be lumped into that et cetera.) I predict that many, domain-specific catalogs and taxonomies will emerge, implemented as metadata over collections of texts. This is a fairly safe assumption given that private libraries (often with small collections) employ any number of organizational schemes, some more esoteric than others.

Chris Cobb. There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World. Installation view, Adobe Bookshop, San Francisco.

While exploring various private organization schemes is an intriguing diversion, physical proximity is no longer a meaningful organizational tool for text. Which brings me to Vannevar Bush’s original concept of the Memex. Arguably the first hypertext, the conceptual framework was far ahead of the technology available in 1945. Ultimately though, the Memex is a extraordinarily prescient description of an electronic library: one that allows authors and readers alike to organize, annotate, cite, discuss, and study books. I get the feeling that we’re on the cusp of a very big change.

Clockwork

It’s easy to be frustrated with the City. Sirens, jackhammers, bedbugs, garbage trucks, drunk financial analysts, stray cats, long hours, crowded sidewalks, and Donald Trump all work tirelessly for the title of Biggest Scourge of City Life. But every once in a while, everything just works. You wake up in time to cook breakfast, walk to the subway to find a train waiting on the platform, and stroll towards the office with the crosswalk signals timed perfectly to your gait. Little moments like that make everything else worth it.