New Cities/New Soviets

March 07, 2004

Two problems, one solution

I'm looking for collaboration on the pushcart.

Remember I said that the pushcart experiment was about collaboration? Well, call it foreshadowing. It is quite clear where the project needs to head if it was going to survive.

Cities are the product of massive collaboration -- the labor of many, intricately connected and layered, is what produces the space we live in. And to hold even a small piece of that space -- rent is expensive, remember -- takes cooperation.

How is this cooperation to be organized? Obviously, I am not looking for an employee. But if I need help even with my basic operation, how am I going to get it? Molly provides a pointer: "You have to let them do their own thing. You have a pushcart that they can use. You'll figure out how to help each other from there."

Equality. That is the beginning. Two problems, one solution.

Molly had a dream a few weeks ago. People had robotic dogs as pets. In the dream, Molly thought it was OK. A little weird maybe, but OK. Then she saw that people also had robotic babies, and it really started to creep her out.

We talked about it: why is an electronic baby creepy? Of course, Molly said, it could never grow up -- but that, in itself, doesn't make it monsterous. And if you didn't have to clean up all that shit and feed it too?

Where it really starts to get creepy is when you realize how perfectly a baby's attention could be simulated. It's doesn't take much more that a few simple motors to convincingly portray a baby's wide-eyed interest. Have you ever seen a beer commercial where the woman looks right at you? There was one in particular, on the subway I took to work, which for me, perfectly captured the thrill of being observed with that wide-eyed attention. It always made me start because I felt that hard-wired thrill -- biological response to a certain shape of eye. And that was a damn poster! And of a fully-grown woman, who would get pretty boring if she just goggled at you like an infant for more than a moment.

If that is enough we are over. If porn is enough we are over. There is something more than attention, there is involvement. An electronic baby will never be involved with you, which is to say you will never feed it, never clean up its shit. You may become involved with it, but it will never be involved with you. Where there is no mutual experience, there is no possibility of growth.

You have to clean up someone else's shit sometimes. You have to be prepared to take on someone else's problems if you want help with your own. Otherwise you got an "employee," which is just another way of saying "another problem."

Two problems, one solution.

Posted by Sam at March 7, 2004 06:46 PM

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