AMCHITKA

1971

After my year of being a VISTA volunteer in the tiny remote Eskimo village of Sleetmute, Alaska, I was transferred to the Hawaii Curriculum Center at the University of Hawaii on Oahu. Some change. The Center’s mission was to develop creative educational materials specifically for the elementary schools of Hawaii. Because this was essentially my first ‘design’ job, I had nothing to compare it to, but looking back now I realize that the incredibly talented people there were developing what we now call interactive media way ahead of its time, and also looking back, I can see where my whole design career began to take shape.

And, need I mention again that this was HAWAII..... Mind-blowingly beautiful and inspirational. While it was only one year since I had gotten my industrial design degree from Pratt, that already seemed like a lifetime ago.

At Pratt, my senior project was a sensory playground where little kids, regardless of physical abilities, could play together in a safe environment and learn from each other. My playground eventually wound up having a crater-like shape. Now Hawaii had it share of craters and volcanos, and also had these incredible golf courses. “I was just fooling around with some idea sketches when a friend of mine  Dana Jones saw them and thought I should meet her friend Jack Throp, the Director of the Honolulu Zoo.

To my surprise, Jack loved my idea and showed me this little parcel of land he had. It was too small for an actual playscape, and not even in a public area, but nevertheless it was a piece of actual land for me to play around with. Great! My little plot was located between the zoo proper and the maintenance yard where the zoo crew worked ‘behind-the-scenes' to keep the zoo up and running and the animals healthy and fed.

Jack introduced me to the crew, told them what I’d be doing and also that I’d be ‘on my own’. Fine with me. I also got to park my car in the maintenance yard and occasionally  I would hang out or eat my lunch with the crew. Seeing what went on ‘backstage’ was always fascinating.

One day when I arrived I sensed that ‘something’ was different. Did you ever get that feeling? I had no real reason to think so and yet I did. Anyway I brushed it off and went about my business. 

At lunchtime I still felt ‘something’ in the air. I asked one of the guys “What’s going on?” “Nothing” he replied. Okay. Maybe I’m wrong, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. Maybe it’s the guys listening to their little transistor radios. I said “OK...SOMETHING’S going on...What?” Finally this older guy tells me to sit down, and it a way.... to shut up! 

He told me this story. During World War II, when the Japanese forces invaded a city, one of the first things they did was to open up the zoo’s cages and let the wild animals out. They didn’t have to worry, they had guns, but the city’s population was thrown into even greater chaos. That was history.

He then asked me if I had heard about the Amchitka underground atomic test that was to take place in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands today. I did. Everyone in Hawaii had it in the back of their minds. He told me that at the first sign of a tsunami heading toward the islands, the Honolulu Police had orders to ‘put down’ all the big animals at the zoo to prevent their escape. Wow. I’m stunned. And then he told me that the maintenance crew, totally on their own, had made secret plans to move the big cats and others animals from the zoo to hidden enclosures they had built in the mountains above Honolulu. Wow again.

That’s why these guys were all on a hair trigger, listening to their tiny transistor radios and ready to go into action. That’s why there were so many different trucks around that morning. 

We waited. The blast went off on schedule. There was no tsunami. Everything went back to normal. 

Still, those guys! Those guys!

Bravo !

AMERICAN SHWABATI

CONSTRUCTIONS / CASTINGS 2003-4

CAN I ASK YOU A QUESTION?

I was talking with my friend Pat the other day and mentioned that although Amazon doesn’t tell you how much business each product line is generating, it’s clear that they've had successes and failures. Their cloud computing services division appears to be both very lucrative and strategic, but they’ve also abandoned the idea of an Amazon Phone. I heard that the engineers who were working on the phone project were switched over to another product called ECHO. 

Simply put, ECHO is just like Siri on the Apple iPhone or Cortana on Android phones EXCEPT rather than being on your phone it is a physical product that sits on your table like a big back tube. No keyboard. Connect it into your wireless system and you just talk to it. The name that ECHO answers to is ‘Alexa’ and for now that can’t be changed. “Alexa, what’s the weather like today?”.”Alexa, How long is it gonna take me to get to the La Brea Tar Pits?”, “Alexa play any Lou Reed song”. It's stuff you can pretty much already do with your phone which you always seem to have with you. There’s not much new but the big surprise is that ECHO appears to be a big hit. In fact I hear Google is rushing to get their version out.

I guess, discounting the Roomba, it’s more or less the first robot people are letting into their homes. Because these devices are connected to the internet, there’s a lot of time-saving help they can probably dispense controlling your relationship with the ‘internet of things’, but as the ‘artificial intelligence’ behind them matures, so will their ‘artificial personality’, and they’ll know a lot about you. 

As these devices become smarter we can look for them to offer suggestions, and we all have heard of the power of suggestion.

  

When Microsoft bought Linkedin they also acquired Lynda.com (a skill building site). Now when you apply for a job thru Linkedin, ECHO might have the ability to scan the other applicants for that job and ‘suggest’ that perhaps brushing up on your Photoshop skills might be helpful, but hey, it’s just a suggestion. And by the way use this coupon….

Anyway none of this is really much different than what happens today with online advertising. That’s because in all these interactions you’re initiating the request. You start the conversation. That won’t always be the case.

I guess Stanley Kubrick had it pegged with this little tidbit from ‘2001’.

HAL: (To Dave) “By the way, do you mind if I ask you a personal question”?

We’re just an autocorrect away from the “Internet of Things” becoming the “Internet of Thinks”.

THREE WISE MEN
Acrylic on canvas, each 12" x 24", 2016

THE PARALLAX CONUNDRUM

   I was describing the Parallax Conundrum to George, my personal trainer. “OK, now the Parallax Conundrum applies to a lot of situations in life but the one that you might have experienced the most is this: You’re driving down the street and you spot a pretty girl walking on the sidewalk. There is also a telephone pole or other obstruction on the sidewalk.The Parallax Conundrum states that no matter how fast or slow traffic is moving (or even stopped) and no matter what direction she's walking in or speed she’s walking at, somehow the pole will always block your view of her.”

 “YES!” George exclaimed! “That’s amazing, it happens to me all the time. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I just didn’t know that there was an actual name for it.” 

 “There wasn’t”, I said, “I just made it up, but you know what I’m talking about, right?” “Absolutely!” he replied.

 Others that I have described the Parallax Conundrum to all have acknowledged having had the experience and have responded with remarks like “That just happened to me today."

 Is it a law of nature, a perversion of probability or just your plain bad luck?

 That's the Parallax Conundrum.

BUT FIRST  .....  

My toilet bowl is spotless,
The dishes are all clean,
I’ve washed my floors and ceiling,
And everything in-between
I’ve put away all of my clothes
And polished every shoe
And now I’m almost ready for
The work I’ve gotta do.

But there’s no harm in waiting
For the football game to end
And I really owe a letter to
My Polish pen-pal friend
And I feel a little hungry
So I’ll go out and get a snack
But I’ll get down to the work I have to do
Just as soon as I get back.

You know….I better check the thermostat
And set the temperature just right
And install all brand-new light bulbs
Not too dim and not too bright
And I’ll sharpen all my pencils
Hey, you know I really care
‘Cause when you've got real work to do
You always want to be prepared.

I’ll inspect all of my furniture
To make sure that it won’t break
And I’ve got to feed the goldfish
Not too fast now, flake by flake
And it’s time to give the dog a bone
So he doesn’t get too thin
And I’d better let the cat out or
If she’s out, I’ll let her in.

So finally I’m ready
And everything’s just great
But I am a little tired
And it’s getting kinda late
And my bed is looking better
Each time I look that way
Oh well, I guess my work will wait
For me another day.

Next post will probably be tomorrow and will be a short true story I've called 'JAILBIRD'

Good night. SR.