Rockem Sockem Robots, Capitalism and Drug Dealers

The goal of almost any successful business is to have loyal repeat customers. Some businesses like Starbucks or Crack Dealers have products that are conveniently habit forming. If you liked the coffee or crack you’ll buy it again.

Not all products are so naturally addictive, so the seller must rely on satisfying the needs of the buyer with quality or reliability or customer service. If this is successfully done then the buyer doesn’t fear buying something new from the same seller if they see it advertised. If you like the iPod you’re much more likely to buy an iMac or iSlate.

While this inclination to repeat purchasing can be focused on a product like coffee or a company like Apple, a more far-reaching habit can be formed with buying in general. One sees a product advertised, buys the product, and if they’re satisfied are more likely to buy the next product that is promoted to them. Satisfied customers for any product helps the next product that comes along.

As a kid I would get up early on Saturday mornings to watch the slate of cartoon programming and be bombarded with commercials for the irresistible Rock’em Socke’m Robots. The commercials made them appear to be remote controlled robots that fought each other until the loser’s head popped off. I was mesmerized. The commercial was repeated to me hundreds of times and each time I became ever more convinced that I needed to have this product.

I finally received these virtual fighting gladiators as a birthday present and couldn’t wait to open the box and set up the first match. It was probably 5 seconds after the package was opened that I realized that I had been had. The reality of the user experience was very far removed from how they appeared on TV. I learned a lesson that day that has stuck with me ever since. I developed a strong shell of skepticism that makes me almost impenetrable to advertising seduction.

Around the same time a friend of mine had ordered those sea monkeys from the comic book ad only to find months later that he had received a package of freeze-dried shrimp in the mail. Even the crack dealer knows not to kill his customer but those consumer experiences killed the consumer in me.

It’s interesting to note that Rock’em Sock’em Robots were made by a company named Marx.

Nostalgia for the Future

The Big Takeover

I was going to write something about the economic meltdown but it’s probably better if you just read this article by Matt Tabbi in the upcoming Rolling Stone Magazine.

Glass Houses

I live in an unusual house. It was originally one of the first Loblaws stores on a busy street in West Toronto Junction. It is unmistakably a retail storefront building. When I renovated it and turned it into my living space I wondered what to do with the front exposure. I toyed with the idea of leaving it uncovered and simply living my domestic life in full view. I was reminded of the 1921 novel “We” by the Russian Zamyatin. The world in which the protagonist D-503 lives is made mostly out of glass. People literally live in glass houses and everyone’s daily activities are visible to anyone passing by.

I decided against such a bold move and constructed a wall inside the storefront to separate my private space from public view. During the past 4 years in which I’ve lived behind that wall I’ve been engaged in another kind of exposure. I started blogging, signed up for Facebook and began using Twitter along with over a dozen other social networking platforms that essentially reveal more and more about what I’m doing when, where, and with who. It allows anyone willing to sort through the content to be able to develop a pretty good sense of who I am and what I stand for. People who choose to participate in this Panopticon are tearing down walls and replacing them with windows. We are moving closer to what D-503 must have experienced in his world.

It should be noted that George Orwell didn’t really hide the fact that his 1984 owed a great deal to Zamyatin’s novel. In Orwell’s dystopian world Winston Smith and all of its citizens are constantly monitored with a telescreen. This is a two-way communication device that allows for the mass distribution of information while also monitoring the activities of its viewers. Big Brother’s omnipresent omniscience of everyone’s activities is stifling and oppressive. Big Brother goes even further by trying through the activities of the Thought Police to monitor what each person is thinking. The irony in our world is that many of us are doing the job of the Thought Police by voluntarily posting everything about ourselves online.

Why are we so untroubled by so much exposure? It probably has to do with the general feeling that our governments are not so nefarious. Most people don’t seem to think that our governments are evil or corrupt enough to use this information against us. In short there is a trusting relationship between the parties involved. You have probably noticed that when you share private information with a close friend, a stronger bond and trust will often result. This will work as long as your friend is not a psychopath, in which case they will simply file it away and use it against you in the future to manipulate and control you.

Big Brother is not as evil and psychopathic as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe but perhaps it should be the cause for some concern that all of this information that we cast out into cyberspace is permanently available if, or when, an evil and nefarious government does take control. Even with that realization I’m still not very concerned simply because as we increasingly replace the walls around us with glass we make increasing demands on our governments to do the same. As we develop a taste for transparency and it’s transformative powers we insist that anyone or group that we elect to rule us will have to reciprocate the exposure. We are Little Brother and we insist that Big Brother also live in a glass house or we will simply refuse to support or elect them.

If you live your life afraid to express your inner fears and desires to your friends because you worry that you might not be able to trust them not to use it against you, then you might find yourself without any friends. By putting it all out there for everyone to see you’ll find that others will feel more comfortable doing the same and eventually a more open and transparent situation will result; in your personal life as well as your politics. But this will only work if you demand the same from your friends and leaders.

Yeti In Love (The Director’s Cut)

Yeti In Love

Acertain Ratio

hard pillow soft sheets
awake for hours

listening to Eno songs
about airplanes and flowers

my mind
wanders
to pi(e)

Melting

after the thaw
where once there was snow

what’s yet to be born
and what’s died below

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Memento Vivo

being is now

not is later

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Untitled 2.08.09

moving through rippled tunnels

linking meaning to words

through symbols

we transcend

this mortal

coil

long title for a short poem about the future of life on Earth

we’ll be grateful

if the robots

enjoy

antiques

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Economics of Scarcity

with a surplus of joy

each crack can be filled

with squandered beauty

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Terrain

not what you say
but how you say it

I ask for metaphors
you give me maps

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Almost Free Gallery Space for Artists

I have a storefront on Dundas St. West Junction in Toronto that would be very well suited for an art space.

25 ft wide window exposure.
12 ft ceilings with abundant track lighting.
800 sq.ft. bare bones gallery
+ 2000 sq.ft unfinished basement
+ another 2000 sq. ft. finely finished space with up to 16 ft. ceilings for an opening party.

Here’s what I suggest:

I would offer the space to an artist or collective of artists to use the space on a short term basis (nightly, weekly or monthly) to host art openings and/or to display their art for show or sale. I may ask only for works of art as payment in lieu of rent.

Let me know what you think and pass this on to whomever you think might be interested.

jake@jake2universe.com

Still Looking

what you lost can’t be found here

but this is where you search

because you think there’s more light

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Unititled 2.3.09

I told you
before the ship went down

that I was
already drowning

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Untitled 2.2.09

I climb the pillars
and undo the heavenly hatch

let’s pretend
it’s not too late

to die young
and leave a beautiful corpse

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

Drifting

i am a river

you are a pond

i wish

we were

an ocean

*Each day in February I will try to post a poem to take part in A Month of Poetry.

This Art is Shit

I Miss My Dog

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/comedy/I_Miss_My_Dog_Comic’;

Moniker

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/comedy/Moniker_Comic’;

Art and Mortality

digg_url = ‘http://jakejakob.blogspot.com/2009/01/blog-post.html’;

Filler Blog Posting

This is the end of my third full year of blogging. During 2006 and 2007 I averaged about 1 blog posting every 3 days. In 2008 I averaged a miserable 1 posting every 13 days. I can’t promise I’ll post any more frequently next year to this blog but my creative output should increase through some other projects that are underway for the new year.

Film:
I’m working with director Andy Keen to produce and write a basketball-related feature length documentary film called DUNK! You might be hearing more about this as the project progresses. It is now in production and slated for completion in early 2010.

Visual Art:
I’ve teamed up with long-time friend Robert Anthony to produce a regular web comic strip that doesn’t yet have a name. You will see the first of them in January 2009 and probably on a weekly basis thereafter.

Literary:
I plan on finishing one and possibly 2 novels during the next year. One novel is a sci-fi-psy-phi love story about a physicist while the other is written as a memoir/bio by a philosopher about his troubled childhood artist friend.

Music:
I’ve got nothing here besides a few Garage Band mixes that I’ve created on my iMac, but I would be willing to play drums with anyone who’d be interested in jamming.

Plus there’s some talk of a podcast with a broadcaster friend of mine and also that screenplay that’s been half finished for over 5 years.

If I blog one more filler posting before the year is over I could get my average up closer to once every 12 days.

jake2universe.com

www.jake2universe.com

Circling the Drain?

What if a billion people were suddenly removed from our Planet? I had a conversation recently at a family gathering in which it was suggested that this was our only hope if we were to avoid an upcoming environmental and economic collapse.

I’m not going to even consider the residual environmental effects of what would be a massively unbalancing event. Let’s assume that one billion people in Asia (only because that’s where it’s most densely populated) were removed in a magical way without any radiation, toxicity, or similar side-effect. Because our global economy is so interconnected I would contend that such an occurrence would probably wipe out at least another billion people and probably more in other parts of the world. Think of how many industries rely on products, parts or services made in China, Japan and India. Most global industries would grind to a halt. Food production would be affected, trade routes would be disrupted and the resulting starvation and geopolitical chaos would likely sink the world into another dark age. It would probably take at least a generation to recover from such a radical depopulating of the Earth.

I’ve heard some others say that things are probably not as bad as it seems. Citing historical situations in which it seemed hopeless until things changed in ways that were not anticipated. They seem to have immense faith in our capacity for technological innovation and count on these kinds of developments to save us.

I believe that the solution to the upcoming environmental and economic crisis does not require us to radically and rapidly depopulate the Earth. Nor must it rely on future technological innovations to save us. It requires another kind of innovation to help us to make necessary decisions in a way that overcomes our paralysis. I feel strongly that we already have all of the technological tools necessary to avert the collapse and that we are already aware of what needs to be done. The problem is that we are stuck in a kind of Prisoner’s Dilemma.

1. If we all fail to do the right thing then we all suffer economic and environmental collapse in the future.
2. If you do the right thing but others don’t then you end up suffering the collapse in the future anyway, but worse, you have the added indignity of losing out economically to your competitors and being poor until the collapse arrives.
3. If we all act to do the right thing then the worst of the collapse could be avoided.

But nobody is inclined to be the first to voluntarily take the appropriate steps to avoid collapse because they can’t rely on the others to do the same. This applies inter-personally as well as internationally. Why should I sacrifice or why should Canada sacrifice when others with whom we are competing won’t do the same? This is why it becomes much like what’s called a Mexican Stand-Off in gangster films. Imagine a scene in which several people have guns pointed at someone else in the room. If any one of them shoots their gun then it will likely trigger a cascade of bullets and all of them will probably die. If one of them does the right thing and lowers his gun then he risks being killed by the person pointing at him who may not act as honourably. So they’re all frozen in indecision until someone takes the initiative to fire or somehow convince everyone to lower their guns simultaneously.

The social innovation required is to find a way in which we can all lower the gun at the same time. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is only a dilemma because each prisoner is not allowed to consult the other and to act in concert. If they were allowed to collaborate and cooperate they would arrive at the best result for both of them. We can perhaps subvert the prisoner’s dilemma by communicating to each other that we will simultaneously do the right thing in order to arrive at the best possible result for everyone. The innovation which is required is social innovation and effective cooperation. Perhaps our ever-expanding access to ubiquitous media could help us to achieve this.