Sym-pho-ny No. 5 in C minor is sure-ly one of his most rec-og-nized, and fre-quent-ly per-formed works, thanks in large part to its dra-mat-ic open-ing motif –
dun-dun-dun-DAH!
Music edu-ca-tor Hanako Sawa-da’s enter-tain-ing TED-Ed les-son, ani-mat-ed by Yael Reis-feld above, delves into the sto-ry behind this sym-pho-ny, “one of the most explo-sive pieces of music ever com-posed.”
Mid-dle and high school music teach-ers will be glad to know the cre-ators lean into the height-ened emo-tions of the piece, depict-ing the com-pos-er as a tor-tured genius whose pierc-ing gaze is bluer than Game of Thrones’ Night King.
Beethoven was already enjoy-ing a suc-cess-ful rep-u-ta-tion at the time of the symphony’s 1808 pre-miere, but not because he toiled in the ser-vice of reli-gion or wealthy patrons like his peers.
Instead, he was an ear-ly-19th cen-tu-ry bad ass, pri-or-i-tiz-ing self-expres-sion and pour-ing his emo-tions into com-po-si-tions he then sold to var-i-ous music pub-lish-ers.
With the Fifth, he real-ly shook off the rigid struc-tures of pre-vail-ing clas-si-cal norms, embrac-ing Roman-ti-cism in all its glo-ri-ous tur-moil.
The famous open-ing motif is repeat-ed to the point of obses-sion:
Through-out the piece, the motif is passed around the orches-tra like a whis-per, grad-u-al-ly reach-ing more and more instru-ments until it becomes a roar.
Besot-ted teenagers, well acquaint-ed with this feel-ing, are equipped with the inter-nal trom-bones, pic-co-los, and con-tra-bas-soons of the sort that make the piece even more urgent in feel.
Just wait until they get hold of Beethoven’s Immor-tal Beloved let-ters, writ-ten a few years after the sym-pho-ny, when the hear-ing loss he was wrestling with had pro-gressed to near total deaf-ness.
Whether or not it was the com-pos-er (and not his biog-ra-ph-er) who char-ac-ter-ized the cen-tral motif as the sound of “Fate knock-ing at the door,” it’s an apt, and riv-et-ing notion.
Take a quiz, par-tic-i-pate in a guid-ed dis-cus-sion, and cus-tomize Hanako Sawada’s les-son, “The Secrets of the World’s Most Famous Sym-pho-ny,” here.
In 20th-cen-tu-ry math-e-mat-ics, the renowned name of Nico-las Bour-ba-ki stands alone in its class — the class, that is, of renowned math-e-mat-i-cal names that don’t actu-al-ly belong to real peo-ple. Bour-ba-ki refers not to a math-e-mati-cian, but to math-e-mati-cians; a whole secret soci-ety of them, in fact, who made their name by col-lec-tive-ly com-pos-ing Ele-ments of Math-e-mat-ic. Not, mind you, Ele-ments of Math-e-mat-ics: “Bourbaki’s Ele-ments of Math-e-mat-ic — a series of text-books and pro-gram-mat-ic writ-ings first appear-ing in 1939—pointedly omit-ted the ‘s’ from the end of ‘Math-e-mat-ics,’ ” writes JSTOR Dai-ly’s Michael Barany, “as a way of insist-ing on the fun-da-men-tal uni-ty and coher-ence of a dizzy-ing-ly var-ie-gat-ed field.”
That’s mere-ly the tip of Bour-bak-i’s ice-berg of eccen-tric-i-ties. Formed in 1934 “by alum-ni of the école nor-male supérieure, a sto-ried train-ing ground for French aca-d-e-m-ic and polit-i-cal elites,” this group of high-pow-ered math-e-mat-i-cal minds set about rec-ti-fy-ing their coun-try’s loss of near-ly an entire gen-er-a-tion of math-e-mati-cians in the First World War. (While Ger-many had kept its bright-est stu-dents and sci-en-tists out of bat-tle, the French com-mit-ment to égal-ité could per-mit no such favoritism.) It was the press-ing need for revised and updat-ed text-books that spurred the mem-bers of Bour-ba-ki to their col-lab-o-ra-tive-ly pseu-do-ny-mous, indi-vid-u-al-ly anony-mous work.
“Yet instead of writ-ing text-books,” explains Quan-ta’s Kevin Hart-nett, “they end-ed up cre-at-ing some-thing com-plete-ly nov-el: free-stand-ing books that explained advanced math-e-mat-ics with-out ref-er-ence to any out-side sources.” The most dis-tinc-tive fea-ture of this already unusu-al project “was the writ-ing style: rig-or-ous, for-mal and stripped to the log-i-cal studs. The books spelled out math-e-mat-i-cal the-o-rems from the ground up with-out skip-ping any steps — exhibit-ing an unusu-al degree of thor-ough-ness among math-e-mati-cians.” Not that Bour-ba-ki lacked play-ful-ness: “In fan-ci-ful and pun-filled nar-ra-tives shared among one anoth-er and allud-ed to in out-ward-fac-ing writ-ing,” adds Barany, “Bourbaki’s col-lab-o-ra-tors embed-ded him in an elab-o-rate math-e-mat-i-cal-polit-i-cal uni-verse filled with the abstruse ter-mi-nol-o-gy and con-cepts of mod-ern the-o-ries.”
You can get an ani-mat-ed intro-duc-tion to Bour-ba-ki, which sur-vives even today as a still-pres-ti-gious and at least nom-i-nal-ly secret math-e-mat-i-cal soci-ety, in the TED-Ed les-son above. In the decades after the group’s found-ing, writes les-son author Pratik Aghor, “Bour-rbak-i’s pub-li-ca-tions became stan-dard ref-er-ences, and the group’s mem-bers took their prank as seri-ous-ly as their work.” Their com-mit-ment to the front was total: “they sent telegrams in Bour-bak-i’s name, announced his daugh-ter’s wed-ding, and pub-licly insult-ed any-one who doubt-ed his exis-tence. In 1968, when they could no longer main-tain the ruse, the group end-ed their joke the only way they could: they print-ed Bour-bak-i’s obit-u-ary, com-plete with math-e-mat-i-cal puns.” And if you laugh at the math-e-mat-i-cal pun with which Aghor ends the les-son, you may car-ry a bit of Bour-bak-i’s spir-it with-in your-self as well.
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the Sub-stack newslet-terBooks on Cities, the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall or on Face-book.
We tend to imag-ine Pom-peii as a city frozen in time by the erup-tion of Mount Vesu-vius, inhab-i-tants and all, but most Pom-pei-ians actu-al-ly sur-vived the dis-as-ter. “The vol-cano’s molten rock, scorch-ing debris and poi-so-nous gas-es killed near-ly 2,000 peo-ple” in Pom-peii and near-by Her-cu-la-neum, writes Live Sci-ence’s Lau-ra Geggel. Of the 15,000 and 20,000 peo-ple in total who’d lived there, “most stayed along the south-ern Ital-ian coast, reset-tling in the com-mu-ni-ties of Cumae, Naples, Ostia and Pute-oli,” accord-ing to the lat-est archae-o-log-i-cal research. Vesu-vius may have made refugees of them, but his-to-ry has revealed that they made the right choice.
Pom-pei-ians in par-tic-u-lar, as the TED-Ed les-son above depicts it, faced three choic-es: “seek shel-ter, escape to the south on foot, or flee to the west by sea,” the lat-ter made a viable propo-si-tion by the town’s loca-tion near the coast.
The video’s ani-ma-tion (script-ed by archae-ol-o-gy Gary Devore) dra-ma-tizes the fates of three sib-lings, Lucius, Mar-cus, and Fabia, on that fate-ful day in A.D. 79. “Fabia and her broth-ers dis-cuss the recent tremors every-one’s been feel-ing,” says the nar-ra-tor. “Lucius jokes that there’ll always be work for men who rebuild walls in Pom-peii.” It is then that the long-rum-bling Vesu-vius emits a “deaf-en-ing boom,” then spews “smoke, ash, and rock high into the air.”
Gath-er-ing up his own fam-i-ly from Her-cu-la-neum, Mar-cus goes sea-ward, but the waves are “brim-ming with vol-canic mat-ter, mak-ing it impos-si-ble for boats to nav-i-gate close enough to shore.” As sub-se-quent phas-es of the erup-tion fur-ther dev-as-tate the towns, the luck-less Lucius finds him-self entombed in the room where he’d been await-ing his fiancée. Shel-ter-ing with her hus-band and daugh-ters, and hear-ing the roof of her home “groan under the weight of vol-canic debris,” Fabia alone makes the choice to join the stream of human-i-ty walk-ing south-east, away from the vol-cano. This sounds rea-son-able, although when Wired’s Cody Cas-sidy asks Uni-ver-si-ty of Naples Fed-eri-co II foren-sic anthro-pol-o-gist Pier Pao-lo Petrone to rec-om-mend the best course of action, the expert sug-gests flee-ing to the north, toward Her-cu-la-neum and final-ly Naples — and more imme-di-ate-ly, toward Vesu-vius.
“The road between Pom-peii and Naples was well main-tained,” Petrone tells Cas-sidy, “and the writ-ten records of those who sur-vived sug-gest that most of the suc-cess-ful escapees went north — while most of the bod-ies of the attempt-ed escapees (who admit-ted-ly left far too late) have been found to the south.” Should you find your-self walk-ing the thir-teen miles between between Pom-peii and Naples in the midst of a vol-canic erup-tion, you should “avoid overex-er-tion and take any oppor-tu-ni-ty to drink fresh water.” As Petrone writes, “only those who man-aged to under-stand from the begin-ning the grav-i-ty of the sit-u-a-tion” — the Fabi-as, in oth-er words — “escaped in time.” The likes of Mount Vesu-vius would seem to rank low on the list of dan-gers fac-ing human-i-ty today, but near-ly two mil-len-nia after Pom-peii, it is, after all, still active.
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the Sub-stack newslet-terBooks on Cities, the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall or on Face-book.
In 2015, 3.8 bil-lion years after “cre-ativ-i-ty emerged” out of “sheer-est empti-ness,” Ker-mit the Frog was tapped to give a talk on cre-ativ-i-ty at TEDx-Jack-son.
How did a local, one-day event man-age to snag such a glob-al icon?
The con-fer-ence took place 15 years after Henson’s untime-ly death, leav-ing Ker-mit to be ani-mat-ed by Steven Whit-mire, the first of two pup-peteers to tack-le a role wide-ly under-stood to be Henson’s alter ego.
The voice isn’t quite the same, but the man-ner-isms are, includ-ing the throat clear-ing and crum-pled facial expres-sions.
Also present are a num-ber of TED Talk tropes, the smart phone prompts, the dark stage, pro-jec-tions designed to empha-size pro-found points.
A num-ber of jokes fail to elic-it the expect-ed laughs … we’ll leave it up to you to deter-mine whether the fault lays with the live audi-ence or the mate-r-i-al. (It’s not easy being green and work-ing blue comes with chal-lenges, too.)
Were he to give his TED Talk now, in 2021, Ker-mit prob-a-bly wouldn’t describe the audience’s col-lec-tive deci-sion to “accept a premise, sus-pend our dis-be-lief and just enjoy the ride” as a “con-spir-a-cy of crazi-ness.”
He might bypass a bina-ry quote like “If neces-si-ty is the moth-er of inven-tion, then cre-ativ-i-ty is the father.”
He’d also be advised to steer clear of a pho-to of Miss Pig-gy dressed as a geisha, and secure her con-sent to share some of the raci-er anec-dotes… even though she is a known atten-tion hog.
He would “tran-scend and include” in the words of philoso-pher Ken Wilber, one of many inspi-ra-tions he cites over the course of his 23-minute con-sid-er-a-tion of cre-ativ-i-ty and its ori-gins, attempt-ing to answer the ques-tion, “Why are we here?”
Also ref-er-enced: Michelan-ge-lo, Albert Ein-stein, Sal-vador Dali, Charles Baude-laire, Zen mas-ter Shun-ryū Suzu-ki, math-e-mati-cian Alfred North White-head, author and edu-ca-tor, Sir Ken Robin-son (who appears, briefly) and of course, Hen-son, who applaud-ed the “ridicu-lous opti-mism” of fling-ing one-self into cre-ative explo-rations, unsure of what one might find.
He can’t wan-der freely about the stage, but he does share some stir-ring thoughts on col-lab-o-ra-tion, men-tors, and the impor-tance of main-tain-ing “beginner’s mind,” free of pre-con-cep-tions.
The two char-ac-ters at the core of origa-mi (折り紙), one of the best-known Japan-ese words around the world, mean “fold-ing” and “paper.” You might well have guessed that, but giv-en the vari-ety and elab-o-rate-ness of the con-struc-tions pro-duced by origa-mi mas-ters over the past few cen-turies, the sim-plic-i-ty of the prac-tice’s basic nature bears repeat-ing. Those mas-ters must devel-op no slight degree of man-u-al dex-ter-i-ty, it goes with-out say-ing, but also a for-mi-da-ble math-e-mat-i-cal under-stand-ing of their medi-um. In many cas-es that under-stand-ing is intu-itive; in the TED-Ed les-son above, origa-mi artist Evan Zodl makes it explic-it.
Zodl’s les-son explains that “though most origa-mi mod-els are three-dimen-sion-al, their crease pat-terns are usu-al-ly designed to fold flat, with-out intro-duc-ing any new creas-es or cut-ting the paper.”(Incidentally, the Japan-ese word for paper art involv-ing cuts is kiriga-mi, or 切り紙.)
An “abstract, 2D design” thus becomes, in the origa-mi mas-ter’s hands, “a 3D form,” but only in accor-dance with a set of four sim-ple rules Zodl explains. He does so clear-ly and under-stand-ably — and in a way that for many of us may exhume buried geom-e-try-class mem-o-ries — but like actu-al works of origa-mi, they’re bet-ter shown than described: hence the vivid accom-pa-ny-ing ani-ma-tions of Char-lotte Arene.
Origami’s prin-ci-ples and prod-ucts may be fas-ci-nat-ing to con-tem-plate, but “the abil-i-ty to fold a large sur-face into a com-pact shape” has also proven to have seri-ous real-world appli-ca-tions. Zodl points to an origa-mi-based re-imag-i-na-tion of “the tra-di-tion-al stent graft, a tube used to open and sup-port dam-aged blood ves-sels.” This in addi-tion to “airbags, solar arrays, self-fold-ing robots, and even DNA nanos-truc-tures” — as well as a mas-sive “star shade” for space tele-scopes that blocks the glare of near-by stars. If you’d like to get start-ed on your own tac-tile under-stand-ing of all this, do have a look at Zodl’s own Youtube chan-nel, as well as oth-ers like Origa-mi Instruc-tions. Don’t let the elab-o-rate-ly fold-ed flow-ers, boats, or ani-mals you’ve seen intim-i-date you; start with a sim-ple box and work your way up from there. If origa-mi shows us any-thing, after all, it’s that com-plex-i-ty begins with sim-plic-i-ty.
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the Sub-stack newslet-terBooks on Cities, the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall or on Face-book.
Those in a posi-tion to know sug-gest that ver-min shy away from yel-low-ish-greens such as that favored by the Emper-or because they “resem-ble areas of intense light-ing.”
We’d like to offer an alter-nate the-o-ry.
Could it be that the crit-ters’ ances-tors passed down a cel-lu-lar mem-o-ry of the per-ils of arsenic?
Napoleon, like thou-sands of oth-ers, was smit-ten with a hue known as Scheele’s Green, named for Carl Wil-helm Scheele, the Ger-man-Swedish phar-ma-ceu-ti-cal chemist who dis-cov-ered oxy-gen, chlo-rine, and unfor-tu-nate-ly, a gor-geous, tox-ic green pig-ment that’s also a cupric hydro-gen arsen-ite.
Scheele’s Green, aka Schloss Green, was cheap and easy to pro-duce, and quick-ly replaced the less vivid cop-per car-bon-ate based green dyes that had been in use pri-or to the mid 1770s.
The col-or was an imme-di-ate hit when it made its appear-ance, show-ing up in arti-fi-cial flow-ers, can-dles, toys, fash-ion-able ladies’ cloth-ing, soap, beau-ty prod-ucts, con-fec-tions, and wall-pa-per.
A month before Napoleon died, he includ-ed the fol-low-ing phrase in his will: My death is pre-ma-ture. I have been assas-si-nat-ed by the Eng-lish oli-gop-oly and their hired mur-der-er…”
His exit at 51 was indeed untime-ly, but per-haps the wall-pa-per, and not the Eng-lish oli-gop-oly, is the greater cul-prit, espe-cial-ly if it was hung with arsenic-laced paste, to fur-ther deter rats.
When Scheele’s Green wall-pa-per, like the striped pat-tern in Napoleon’s bath-room, became damp or moldy, the pig-ment in it metab-o-lized, releas-ing poi-so-nous arsenic-laden vapors.
Napoleon’s First Valet Louis-Joseph Marc-hand recalled the “child-ish joy” with which the emper-or jumped into the tub where he rel-ished soak-ing for long spells:
The bath-tub was a tremen-dous oak chest lined with lead. It required an excep-tion-al quan-ti-ty of water, and one had to go a half mile away and trans-port it in a bar-rel.
Baths also fig-ured in Sec-ond Valet Louis éti-enne Saint-Denis’ rec-ol-lec-tions of his master’s ill-ness:
His reme-dies con-sist-ed only of warm nap-kins applied to his side, to baths, which he took fre-quent-ly, and to a diet which he observed from time to time.
In Napoleon’s case, arsenic was like-ly just one of many com-pounds tax-ing an already trou-bled sys-tem. In the course of treat-ments for a vari-ety of symptoms—swollen legs, abdom-i-nal pain, jaun-dice, vom-it-ing, weakness—Napoleon was sub-ject-ed to a smor-gas-bord of oth-er tox-ic sub-stances. He was said to con-sume large amounts of a sweet apri-cot-based drink con-tain-ing hydro-cyan-ic acid. He had been giv-en tarter emet-ic, an anti-mon-al com-pound, by a Cor-si-can doc-tor. (Like arsenic, anti-mo-ny would also help explain the pre-served state of his body at exhuma-tion.) Two days before his death, his British doc-tors gave him a dose of calomel, or mer-curous chlo-ride, after which he col-lapsed into a stu-por and nev-er recov-ered.
As Napoleon was vom-it-ing a black-ish liq-uid and expir-ing, fac-to-ry and gar-ment work-ers who han-dled Scheele’s Green dye and its close cousin, Paris Green, were suf-fer-ing untold mor-ti-fi-ca-tions of the flesh, from hideous lesions, ulcers and extreme gas-tric dis-tress to heart dis-ease and can-cer.
Fash-ion-first women who spent the day corset-ed in volu-mi-nous green dress-es were keel-ing over from skin-to-arsenic con-tact. Their seam-stress-es’ green fin-gers were in wretched con-di-tion.
In 2008, an Ital-ian team test-ed strands of Napoleon’s hair from four points in his life—childhood, exile, his death, and the day there-after. They deter-mined that all the sam-ples con-tained rough-ly 100 times the arsenic lev-els of con-tem-po-rary peo-ple in a con-trol group.
Napoleon’s son and wife, Empress Josephine, also had notice-ably ele-vat-ed arsenic lev-els.
Had we been alive and liv-ing in Europe back then, ours like-ly would have been too.
All that green!
But what about the wall-pa-per?
A scrap pur-port-ed-ly from the din-ing room, where Napoleon was relo-cat-ed short-ly before death, was found by a woman in Nor-folk, Eng-land, past-ed into a fam-i-ly scrap-book above the hand-writ-ten cap-tion, This small piece of paper was tak-en off the wall of the room in which the spir-it of Napoleon returned to God who gave it.
In 1980, she con-tact-ed chemist David Jones, whom she had recent-ly heard on BBC Radio dis-cussing vaporous bio-chem-istry and Vic-to-ri-an wall-pa-per. She agreed to let him test the scrap using non-destruc-tive x?ray flu-o-res-cence spec-troscopy. The result?
.12 grams of arsenic per square meter. (Wall-pa-pers con-tain-ing 0.6 to 0.015 grams per square meter were deter-mined to be haz-ardous.)
Dr. Jones described watch-ing the arsenic lev-els peak-ing on the lab’s print out as “a crazy, won-der-ful moment.” He reit-er-at-ed that the house in which Napoleon was impris-oned was “noto-ri-ous-ly damp,” mak-ing it easy for a 19th cen-tu-ry fan to peel off a sou-venir in “an inspired act of van-dal-ism.”
Death by wall-pa-per and oth-er envi-ron-men-tal fac-tors is def-i-nite-ly less cloak and dag-ger than assas-si-na-tion by the Eng-lish oli-gop-oly, hired mur-der-er, and oth-er con-spir-a-cy the-o-ries that had thrived on the pres-ence of arsenic in sam-ples of Napoleon’s hair.
As Dr. Jones recalled:
…sev-er-al his-to-ri-ans were upset by my claim that it was all an acci-dent of decor…Napoleon him-self feared he was dying of stom-ach can-cer, the dis-ease which had killed his father; and indeed his autop-sy revealed that his stom-ach was very dam-aged. It had at least one big ulcer…My feel-ing is that Napoleon would have died in any case. His arseni-cal wall-pa-per might mere-ly have has-tened the event by a day or so. Mur-der con-spir-a-cy the-o-rists will have to find new evi-dence!
We can’t resist men-tion-ing that when the emper-or was exhumed and shipped back to France, 19 years after his death, his corpse showed lit-tle or no decom-po-si-tion.
Green con-tin-ues to be a nox-ious col-or when humans attempt to repro-duce it in the phys-i-cal realm. As Alice Rawthorn observed The New York Times:
The cru-el truth is that most forms of the col-or green, the most pow-er-ful sym-bol of sus-tain-able design, aren’t eco-log-i-cal-ly respon-si-ble, and can be dam-ag-ing to the envi-ron-ment.
Ayun Hal-l-i-day is an author, illus-tra-tor, the-ater mak-er and Chief Pri-ma-tol-o-gist of the East Vil-lage Inky zine. She most recent-ly appeared as a French Cana-di-an bear who trav-els to New York City in search of food and mean-ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse. Fol-low her @AyunHalliday.
Is this what we want? A post-truth world where tox-i-c-i-ty and trib-al-ism trump bridge build-ing and con-sen-sus seek-ing? —Ya?l Eisen-stat
It’s an increas-ing-ly famil-iar occur-rence.
A friend you’ve enjoyed recon-nect-ing with in the dig-i-tal realm makes a dra-mat-ic announce-ment on their social media page. They’re delet-ing their Face-book account with-in the next 24 hours, so shoot them a PM with your email if you’d like to stay in touch.
Such deci-sions used to be spurred by the desire to get more done or return to neglect-ed pas-times such as read-ing, paint-ing, and going for long uncon-nect-ed nature walks.
These announce-ments could induce equal parts guilt and anx-i-ety in those of us who depend on social media to get the word out about our low-bud-get cre-ative projects, though being prone to Inter-net addic-tion, we were near-ly as like-ly to be the one mak-ing the announce-ment.
For many, the break was tem-po-rary. More of a social media fast, a chance to reeval-u-ate, rest, recharge, and ulti-mate-ly return.
Legit-i-mate con-cerns were also raised with regard to pri-va-cy. Who’s on the receiv-ing end of all the sen-si-tive infor-ma-tion we’re offer-ing up? What are they doing with it? Is some-one lis-ten-ing in?
But in this elec-tion year, the deci-sion to quit Face-book is apt to be dri-ven by the very real fear that democ-ra-cy as we know it is at stake.
For-mer CIA ana-lyst, for-eign ser-vice offi-cer, and—for six months—Facebook’s Glob-al Head of Elec-tions Integri-ty Ops for polit-i-cal adver-tis-ing, Ya?l Eisen-stat, address-es these pre-oc-cu-pa-tions in her TED Talk, “Dear Face-book, This is How You’re Break-ing Democ-ra-cy,” above.
Eisen-stat con-trasts the civil-i-ty of her past face-to-face ”hearts and minds”-based engage-ments with sus-pect-ed ter-ror-ists and anti-West-ern cler-ics to the polar-iza-tion and cul-ture of hatred that Facebook’s algo-rithms foment.
As many users have come to sus-pect, Face-book rewards inflam-ma-to-ry con-tent with ampli-fi-ca-tion. Truth does not fac-tor into the equa-tion, nor does sin-cer-i-ty of mes-sage or mes-sen-ger.
Lies are more engag-ing online than truth. As long as [social media] algo-rithms’ goals are to keep us engaged, they will feed us the poi-son that plays to our worst instincts and human weak-ness-es.
Eisen-stat, who has val-ued the ease with which Face-book allows her to main-tain rela-tion-ships with far-flung friends, found her-self effec-tive-ly demot-ed on her sec-ond day at the social media giant, her title revised, and her access to high lev-el meet-ings revoked. Her hir-ing appears to have been pure-ly orna-men-tal, a pal-lia-tive ruse in response to mount-ing pub-lic con-cern.
They are mak-ing all sorts of reac-tive changes around the mar-gins of the issues, [to sug-gest] that they are tak-ing things seri-ous-ly – such as build-ing an ad library or ver-i-fy-ing that polit-i-cal adver-tis-ers reside in the coun-try in which they adver-tis-ing – things they should have been doing already. But they were nev-er going to make the fun-da-men-tal changes that address the key sys-temic issues that make Face-book ripe for manip-u-la-tion, viral mis-in-for-ma-tion and oth-er ways that the plat-form can be used to affect democ-ra-cy.
In the same inter-view she assert-ed that Facebook’s recent-ly imple-ment-ed over-sight board is lit-tle more than an inter-est-ing the-o-ry that will nev-er result in the total over-haul of its busi-ness mod-el:
First of all, it’s anoth-er exam-ple of Face-book putting respon-si-bil-i-ty on some-one else. The over-sight board does not have any author-i-ty to actu-al-ly address any of the poli-cies that Face-book writes and enforces, or the under-ly-ing sys-temic issues that make the plat-form absolute-ly rife for dis-in-for-ma-tion and all sorts of bad behav-iour and manip-u-la-tion.
The sec-ond issue is: it’s basi-cal-ly an appeal process for con-tent that was already tak-en down. The big-ger ques-tion is the con-tent that remains up. Third, they are not even going to be oper-a-tional until late fall and, for a com-pa-ny that claims to move fast and break things, that’s absurd.
Nine min-utes into her TED Talk, she offers con-crete sug-ges-tions for things the Face-book brass could do if it was tru-ly seri-ous about imple-ment-ing reform:
Stop ampli-fy-ing and rec-om-mend-ing dis-in-for-ma-tion and bias-based hatred, no mat-ter who is behind it—from con-spir-a-cy the-o-rists to our cur-rent pres-i-dent.
Dis-con-tin-ue per-son-al-iza-tion tech-niques that don’t dif-fer-en-ti-ate between tar-get-ed polit-i-cal con-tent and tar-get-ed ads for ath-let-ic footwear.
Retrain algo-rithms to focus on a met-rics beyond what users click or linger on.
Imple-ment safe-ty fea-tures that would ensure that sen-si-tive con-tent is reviewed before it is allowed to go viral.
Hope-ful-ly view-ers are not feel-ing maxed out on con-tact-ing their rep-re-sen-ta-tives, as gov-ern-ment enforce-ment is Eisenstat’s only pre-scrip-tion for get-ting Face-book to alter its prod-uct and prof-it mod-el. And that will require sus-tained civic engage-ment.
When next you meet an exis-ten-tial-ist, ask him what kind of exis-ten-tial-ist s/he is. There are at least as many vari-eties of exis-ten-tial-ism as there have been high-pro-file thinkers pro-pound-ing it. Sev-er-al major strains ran through post-war France alone, most famous-ly those cham-pi-oned by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beau-voir, and Albert Camus — who explic-it-ly reject-ed exis-ten-tial-ism, in part due to a philo-soph-i-cal split with Sartre, but who nev-er-the-less gets cat-e-go-rized among the exis-ten-tial-ists today. We could, per-haps, more accu-rate-ly describe Camus as an absur-dist, a thinker who starts with the inher-ent mean-ing-less and futil-i-ty of life and pro-ceeds, not nec-es-sar-i-ly in an obvi-ous direc-tion, from there.
The ani-mat-ed TED-Ed les-son above sheds light on the his-tor-i-cal events and per-son-al expe-ri-ences that brought Camus to this world-view. Begin-ning in the trou-bled colo-nial Alge-ria of the ear-ly 20th-cen-tu-ry in which he was born and raised, edu-ca-tor Nina Med-vin-skaya goes on to tell of his peri-ods as a resis-tance jour-nal-ist in France and as a nov-el-ist, in which capac-i-ty he would write such endur-ing works as The Stranger and The Plague. Med-vin-skaya illu-mi-nates Camus’ cen-tral insight with a well-known image from his ear-li-er essay “The Myth of Sisy-phus,” on the Greek king con-demned by the gods to roll a boul-der up a hill for all eter-ni-ty.
“Camus argues that all of human-i-ty is in the same posi-tion,” says Med-vin-skaya, “and only when we accept the mean-ing-less-ness of our lives can we face the absurd with our heads held high.” But “Camus’ con-tem-po-raries weren’t so accept-ing of futil-i-ty.” (Here the Quentin Blake-style illus-tra-tions por-tray a cou-ple of fig-ures bear-ing a strong resem-blance to Sartre and de Beau-voir.) Many exis-ten-tial-ists “advo-cat-ed for vio-lent rev-o-lu-tion to upend sys-tems they believed were depriv-ing peo-ple of agency and pur-pose.” Such calls haven’t gone silent in 2020, just as The Plague — one of Camus’ writ-ings in response to rev-o-lu-tion-ary exis-ten-tial-ism — has only gained rel-e-vance in a time of glob-al pan-dem-ic.
Last month the Boston Review’s Car-men Lea Dege con-sid-ered the recent come-back of the thought, exem-pli-fied in dif-fer-ent ways by Camus, Sartre, and oth-ers, that “reject-ed reli-gious and polit-i-cal dog-ma, expressed scorn for aca-d-e-m-ic abstrac-tion, and focused on the fini-tude and absur-di-ty of human exis-tence.” This resur-gence of inter-est “is not entire-ly sur-pris-ing. The body of work we now think of as exis-ten-tial-ist emerged dur-ing the first half of the twen-ti-eth cen-tu-ry in con-flict-rid-den Ger-many and France, where uncer-tain-ty per-me-at-ed every dimen-sion of soci-ety.” As much as our soci-eties have changed since then, uncer-tain-ty has a way of return-ing.
Today “we define our-selves and oth-ers on the basis of class, reli-gion, race, and nation-al-i-ty, or even child-hood influ-ences and sub-con-scious dri-ves, to gain con-trol over the con-tin-gen-cies of the world and insert our-selves in the myr-i-ad ways peo-ple have failed and suc-ceed-ed in human his-to-ry.” But the exis-ten-tial-ists argued that “this con-trol is illu-so-ry and decep-tive,” an “allur-ing dis-trac-tion from our own fragili-ty” that ulti-mate-ly “cor-rodes our abil-i-ty to live well.” For the exis-ten-tial-ists, pur-suit of good life first demands an accep-tance of not just fragili-ty but futil-i-ty, mean-ing-less-ness, absur-di-ty, and ambi-gu-i-ty, among oth-er con-di-tions that strike us as deeply unac-cept-able. As Camus put it, we must imag-ine Sisy-phus hap-py. But can we?
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the Sub-stack newslet-terBooks on Cities, the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall, on Face-book, or on Insta-gram.
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