Yet another interesting enviro article in todays NYT (Week In Review)
(go figure, two in a row):

click for larger graphic

graphic courtesy of NYT

here's an excerpt:

"PRISTINE lands, by the strictest definition, no longer exist. Atmospheric pollution has settled on every earthly surface; human-induced climate change is affecting ecosystems across the planet, scientists say.

The wolf's-eye view of American wilderness is not quite so stark, but today's untrammeled landscapes are fragmented and shrinking.

Where is the last of the truly wild? The Wildlife Conservation Society, with the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, assembled satellite and land-use data to plot the extent of the global human footprint. On its colorful maps, the zones closest to pristine pop out as patches of leafy green.

Worldwide, the society found that 17 percent of land is still virtually untouched -- mostly because it is inhospitable to humans. In areas capable of growing basic crops, and therefore most able to support people, untouched lands have diminished to just 2 percent of the total.

Alaska holds the vast majority of leastaltered lands in the United States. In the more settlement-friendly lower 48, the wildest areas have become islands ringed by interstates, farms, towns and cities, making up only 0.9 percent of land."

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Source:
Where the Human Footprint Is Lightest
BILL MARSH
NYTimes, July 31, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/weekinreview/31marsh.html

Posted at 12:33 PM in Politics, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

From the Sunday NYT (Long Island Section):

click for larger graphic

graphic courtesy of NYT
For an even bigger graphic, click here.

If you think that looks bad, check out this excerpt:

"For two decades, a dangerous and fast-moving gasoline additive called M.T.B.E. has been leaking from underground tanks at gas stations in Nassau and Suffolk Counties - including near the Plainview pump - and if left untreated, M.T.B.E. will remain in the aquifer for years, threatening the drinking water.

Hundreds of locations all over the Island have been identified as M.T.B.E. spill sites, and battles over who will clean them up - at a cost that could run into billions of dollars - are being fought in the courts. In even trace amounts, M.T.B.E., or methyl tertiary butyl ether, makes water smell and taste like turpentine, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency has reported that laboratory rats developed cancer when exposed to high doses.

M.T.B.E. has also been a factor in deliberations over national energy policy. A push in the House of Representatives to provide the oil industry with immunity from liability for M.T.B.E. contamination led to an impasse on the energy bill last year, and the immunity effort this year was abandoned only last weekend.

Water districts and communities across the Island have filed lawsuits seeking payment for cleaning up and monitoring water. And the spills are everywhere.

There are 349 active M.T.B.E. spills being cleaned up or under investigation on Long Island, said Peter A. Scully, the director of the State Department of Environmental Conservation's Long Island office. But according to Toxics Targeting Inc., which compiles environmental-spill data in the state for water suppliers, municipalities and lawyers, there are at least 615 gasoline spill sites or leaking gas tanks containing M.T.B.E. in Nassau County and at least 610 in Suffolk."

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Source:
What Seeps Beneath
VALERIE COTSALAS
NYTimes, July 31, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/31limtbe.html

Posted at 09:36 AM in Politics, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual."

-Dan McKay, Fargo, ND

Winner, Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

via C/Net

Dept. of English & Comparative Literature
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192
http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm

Posted at 01:47 PM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Source:
Happy 15th Birthday, Hubble 
Amit Asaravala
Wired, 02:00 AM Apr. 25, 2005 PT
http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67304,00.html

Posted at 05:24 PM in Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A terrible amusing WSJ story this week:  Captain Kirk vs. Captain Picard  -- regarding travelling on Earth:

In the online travel world, one of the biggest battles for new customers has come down to this: Captain Kirk vs. Captain Picard.

Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," is the new company spokesman for travel search engine SideStep. That's a direct challenge to rival Priceline.com, whose ads have long featured William Shatner, Captain Kirk on the original "Star Trek."

The celebrity showdown reflects the growing rift within online travel. Traditional online travel sites -- like Priceline, which invented "name-your-own-price" online travel bidding technology -- ruled the dot-com era. Newer travel search engines, like SideStep, now scan the Web and claim to retrieve the best deals with no surcharge to the user.

SideStep enlisted Mr. Stewart because "he literally represents the next big thing. We can play off Priceline and the original captain of the Enterprise," says Phil Carpenter, a SideStep spokesman.

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Date With the Captain: 
Unlike Priceline's traditional ad campaign, SideStep's ad is a contest. The winner gets a chance to hang out with Captain Picard as the prize.

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Source:
Travel Site Beams Up 'Next' Trekker
Campaign Features Patrick Stewart to Challenge Priceline Pitchman Shatner
By ANNELENA LOBB
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 26, 2005; Page A18
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112233199540095440,00.html

Posted at 11:10 AM in Humor, Television, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wow -- kottke and Metafilter, both in one day -- and on two different posts, also.

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Posted at 11:30 PM in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Way cool illustration of the shuttle, via the NYT, of the number of hits its taken over the years:

click for larger graphic

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Source:
Intense Hunt for Signs of Damage Could Raise Problems of Its Own
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: July 27, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/science/space/27damage.html

Posted at 03:43 PM in Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

via the Onion

Posted at 07:26 AM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Here's a list of the 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die, according to GQ/Details

The list is incomplete, missing as it is the Corner Bistro in Manhattan, and Taby's Burger House in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Here are the 20 best burgers in America

20. Hamburger Sandwich
Louis' Lunch
New Haven, CT

19. Our Famous Burger
Sidetrack Bar and Grill
Ypsilanti, MI

18. Hamburger
Poag Mahone's Carvery and Ale House
Chicago

17. Double Bacon Deluxe with Cheese
Red Mill Burgers
Seattle

16. Hamburger & Fries
Burger Joint
San Francisco

15. Build Your Own Burger
The Counter
Santa Monica

14. Hamburger
J. G. Melon
New York City

13. Cheeseburger
White Manna
Hackensack, NJ

12. Hamburger
Bobcat Bite
Sante Fe

11. Grilled Bistro Burger
Bistro Don Giovanni
Napa, CA

10. Number Five
Keller's Drive-in
Dallas

9. Cheeseburger
Burger Joint, le Parker Meridien Hotel
New York City

8. Hamburger
Miller's Bar
Dearborn, MI

7. Buckhorn Burger
Buckhorn
San Antonio, NM

6. California Burger
Houston's
Santa Monica

5. Kobe Sliders
Barclay Prime
Philadelphia

4. Rouge Burger
Rouge
Philadelphia

3. Not Just a Burger
Spiced Pear Restaurant at the Chanler Hotel
Newport, RI

2. Luger Burger
Peter Luger Steak House
Brooklyn

1. Sirloin Burger
Le Tub
Hollywood, FL

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via kottke
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Source:
The 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die
Alan Richman
Men.Style.com
http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_2526

Posted at 09:20 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Incredibly cool sculpture exhibit at the Nassau County Museum of Art, featuring the works of J. Seward Johnson, Jr titled Beyond the Frame: Impressionism Revisited.

What the artist did was take numerous famous impressionist paintings -- by Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Rousseau, Manet -- and recreate them as life-size sculptures. The really cool part -- you can interact with them -- indeed, you are encouraged "walk into" them and touch.

Here are a few samples:

Vincent Van Gogh's The Bedroom
click for larger photos

Henri Rousseau's The Dream
click for larger photos

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Many of the sculptures are cctv-ed into screens mounted on walls and framed. So what looks like a painting mounted on a wall suddenly has people walking in and out of them . . .

Other famous "walk-in" paintings include Manet's Olympia, and La Japonaise, Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day, and Renoir's Whispering Close, and Luncheon of the Boating Party.

The type of model casting used by the artist, J. Seward Johnson, was considered a lost art. Johnson (one of the disinherited J&J heirs) has made a career of resurrecting it; Most of these sculptures are constructed in several steps before being cast in Aluminum:

He founded the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, an educational, non-profit art casting and fabrication facility, in 1974.

Way more fun than you typically expect at an Art Museum . . .

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I ran off 100 digital snaps -- if readers want, I can post other sculptures of the show -- but the 2 above were the most recognizable to the casual art patron.

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UPDATE July 30, 2005 8:20 am

Int he comments, IDJ informs us that the Washington Post's art critic called this show "This is the worst museum exhibition I've ever seen."  And that may very well have been his experience -- but mine was that this was a whole lot of fun -- more fun than most people typically have in a museum.

If you have young kids, and you know how bored they can being dragged around a stuffy ole museum -- this is a terrific way to introduce them to art. Especially if you show them the paintings (in a book) before hand, and then let them run loose through each painting . . .

Posted at 06:43 AM in Art & Design | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
- - - Oscar Wilde

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
- - - Edith Sitwell

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.
- - - Benjamin Disraeli

Abstract art? A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
- - - Al Capp

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.
- - - Gene Fowler

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
- - - Mark Twain

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
- - - Fred Allen

I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.
- - - Groucho Marx

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all of the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake.
- - - John D. Rockefeller

If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn't be surprised.
- - - Dorothy Parker

If there's anything disgusting about the movie business, it's the whoredom of my peers.
- - - Sean Penn

In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.
- - - Spiro T. Agnew (about the press, 1970)

Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.
- - - Henry VanDyke

Modesty is the artifice of actors, similar to passion in call girls.
- - - Jackie Gleason

Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
- - - A. E. Housman

Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
- - - Mark Twain

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it.
- - - -Moses Hadas

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
- - - Lyndon Johnson

This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great force.
- - - Dorothy Parker

This is one of those big, fat paperbacks, intended to while away a monsoon or two, which, if thrown with a good overarm action, will bring a water buffalo to its knees.
- - - Nancy Banks-Smith (review of M.M. Kaye's "The Far Pavillions")

What is art? Prostitution.
Charles Baudelaire

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.
- - - Lillian Hellman

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
- - - Aristophanes

Posted at 08:39 AM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

way cool --

Mus computer mouse via GMSV

Posted at 09:23 AM in Design | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Ben Sargent on Honor and Integrity:

via Yahoo!

Posted at 10:14 AM in Humor, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

click for larger photos

Very cool Flickr photos tagged "Mansion"

via Thought Mechanics

Posted at 08:22 AM in Photo Caption Contest! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Legendary rockers The Rolling Stones are releasing their first studio album since 1997 later this year - and its title is believed to be critical of President George W. Bush.

'Neo-Con' is due for an early September release and is the Mick Jagger-fronted band's first new material since 'Bridges to Babylon' eight years ago.

The album was recorded in France in late 2004 and early 2005.

"Oh No, Not You Again" is thought likely to be the lead single from the record.

The Stones - Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood - recently announced a world tour, which kicks off in Boston on August 21.

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Source:
New Rolling Stones Album in Eight Years Confirmed
WOKR 13 TV
http://www.wokr13.tv/entertainment/music/story.aspx?content_id=390A1FF9-16F3-497D-8907-5A78C0606763

Posted at 03:07 PM in Music, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

With apologies to George Carlin:
(although I doubt he would mind!)

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click for movie:

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Why iMovie Should Be Classified as a Dual-Use Technology via rocketboom

Posted at 02:03 PM in Humor, Politics, Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Long Island Wineries getting into Champagne in a big way:

It's another muggy morning in Peconic, but Eric Fry moves through the cool back rooms of Lenz Winery with the quick step and eager narrative of a man on a mission: It's time to cork the bubbly.

Just outside Lenz's back-lot processing room, more than 800 dew-laced green bottles have been chilling upside-down in a 28-degree cooler for the past three days, the end of a five-year journey that infused them with effervescence and a taste prescribed in a centuries-old process.

"The equipment is ridiculously expensive, and it's very time-consuming," says Fry, a winemaker since 1976 with a secret passion for sparkling wines, "but it's worth it."

Only seven of Long Island's 38 wineries make sparkling wines, but those that do are similarly passionate about it, and have developed equally passionate followings.

"We sell a lot of it, especially around the holidays," says Patricia Pugliese, owner of Pugliese Vineyards in Cutchogue, whose Blanc de Blanc was a double gold medal winner at the Los Angeles County Fair. It also offers rare sparkling Merlot.

A brand new name to the East End wine scene, Sparkling Pointe, will produce and sell only sparkling wines when it opens a tasting room next year.

Interesting article -- check it out

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Source:
Prepping the bottles of bubbly
It's corking time for Eric Fry and other East End winemakers developing a market for sparkling wines
MARK HARRINGTON
Newsday, July 18, 2005
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcov4348346jul18,0,102246.story

Posted at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

He's had a great career so far -- too bad the celebrity machine eats its own . . .

The Devil and Miss Holmes via Gallery of the Absurd

Posted at 08:57 PM in Humor | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"You want incredibly obvious proof of the divine feminine's re-emergence? That's easy. Just look at the current sociopolitical climate, the raging right-wing intolerance and sexual dread, the desperate clinging of the GOP to old, stagnant, misogynist roles. Notice the frantic machinations, the fear of nipples and dildos and gender fluctuations, the uptight homophobia of the Christian evangelical sects, the frantic refusal to let go of sexist, prehistoric '50s mentalities. This is the biggest sign of all. When the most morally rigid among us get scared, something divinely juicy is always afoot."

-Mark Morford
SF Gate Columnist
Beer & Porn & Guns & Manicures:  How can marketers sell crap to the new, elusive modern male? And just who is he, exactly?
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/07/13/notes071305.DTL&hw=morford&sn=004&sc=551

Posted at 09:14 AM in Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We last looked at some gorgeous Trompe L'Oeil Murals in June.

Here's some more spectacular outdoor Trump L'Oeil paintings, from the same artist:  Eric Grohe.
(These were circulating via email without any artist credit).

Here's a before and after photo of a mall exterior wall:
click for larger photo.

BEFORE:

'

AFTER:

Detail (center left)

Detail (far left)

Detail (as seen from right)

Be sure to see what he did in downtown Bucyrus, as well as his work at the Miller Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Oh, and the before and after photos of an outdoor parking garage

Way cool!

Posted at 10:56 AM in Art & Design | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion," casually, think about whether you want the politician spending your tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its releases.

       a.. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
       b.. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
       c.. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the StoneAge.
       d.. A billion days ago no-one walked on two feet on earth.
       e.. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government spends it.

Posted at 07:46 AM in Science | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

via MIT:

There's no way that gray squares marked A and B can be the same color, right?

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Wrong!  Here's the optical proof

Proof:

Posted at 07:37 AM in Design, Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

click for larger cartoon

via Yahoo!

Posted at 10:18 AM in Humor, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Very cool stuff from Tim Biskup:

click for larger graphic

Posted at 09:41 AM in Art & Design | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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"I did not have sexual relations with release the name of that woman...
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-Scott McClennan, White House Spokesperson, on Karl Rove

Posted at 02:59 PM in Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The four members of Led Zeppelin have been voted the UK's ideal supergroup, based upon polling of 3,500 music fans.

When asked to create their idela fantasy band, musician by musician, they accidentally "created" Led Zep. Robert Plant beating the late Freddie Mercury to best singer, Jimmy Page won best guitarist, John Paul Jones was named top bassist, and John Bonham, who died in 1980, winning best drummer.

Here are the lists in full:

Best singer

1. Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)
2. Freddie Mercury (Queen)
3. Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company)
4. David Coverdale (Deep Purple, Whitesnake)
5. Ian Gillan (Deep Purple)
6. Bon Scott (AC/DC)
7. Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow)
8. Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac)
9. Roger Daltrey (The Who)
10. Bono (U2)

Best guitarist

1. Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin)
2. Slash (Guns N' Roses)
3. Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple)
4. Jimi Hendrix
5. Angus Young (AC/DC)
6. Gary Moore
7. Brian May (Queen)
8. Joe Satriani
9. Steve Vai
10. David Gilmour (Pink Floyd)

Best bassist

1. John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin)
2. John Entwistle (The Who)
3. Chris Squire (Yes)
4. Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy)
5. Geddy Lee (Rush)
6. Jack Bruce (Cream)
7. Steve Harris (Iron Maiden)
8. Lemmy (Motorhead)
9. Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath)
10. Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)

Best drummer

1. John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)
2. Neil Peart (Rush)
3. Keith Moon (The Who)
4. Cozy Powell (Black Sabbath, Rainbow)
5. Phil Collins (Genesis)
6. Ginger Baker (Cream)
7. Ian Paice (Deep Purple)
8. Roger Taylor (Queen)
9. Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters)
10. Eric Carr (Kiss)

What, no keyboards? How is Yes, ELP, or Genesis supposed to compete with that?

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Source:
Zeppelin voted 'ideal supergroup'
BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4669597.stm

Posted at 06:51 AM in Music | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBack

click for larger graphic

Ben Sargent, via Yahoo.

Posted at 11:08 AM in Media, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Android and The Human

Philip K. Dick, 1972

It is the tendency of the so-called primitive mind to animate its environment. Modern depth psychology has requested us for years to withdraw these anthropomorphic projections from what is actually inanimate reality, to introject -- that is, to bring back into our own heads -- the living quality which we, in ignorance, cast out onto the inert things surrounding us. Such introjection is said to be the mark of true maturity in the individual, and the authentic mark of civilization in contrast to mere social culture, such as one find in a tribe. A native of Africa is said to view his surroundings as pulsing with a purpose, a life, which is actually within himself; once these childish projections are withdrawn, he sees that the world is dead, and that life resides solely within himself. When he reaches this sophisticated point he is said to be either mature or sane. Or scientific. But one wonders: has he not also, in this process, reifed -- that is, made into a thing -- other people? Stones and rocks and trees may now be inanimate for him, but what about his friends? Has he not now made them into stones, too?

This is, really, a psychological problem. And its solution, I think, is of less importance in any case than one might think, because, within the last decade, we have seen a trend not anticipated by our earnest psychologists -- or by anyone else -- which dwarfs that issue: our environment, and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components -- all this is in fact beginning more and more to possess what the earnest psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment: animation. In a very real sense our environment is becoming alive, or at least quasi-alive, and in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves. Cybernetics, a valuable recent scientific discipline, articulated by the late Norbert Wiener, saw valid comparisons between the behavior of machines and humans -- with the view that a study of machines would yield valuable insights into the nature of our own behavior. By studying what goes wrong with a machine -- for example when two mutually exclusive tropisms function simultaneously in one of Grey Walter's synthetic turtles, producing fascinatingly intricate behavior in the befuddled turtles -- one learns, perhaps, a new, more fruitful insight into what in humans was previously called "neurotic" behavior. But suppose the use of this analogy is turned the other way? Suppose -- and I don't believe Wiener anticipated this -- suppose a study of ourselves, our own nature, enables us to gain insight into the now extraordinarily complex functioning and malfunctioning of mechanical and electronic constructs? In other words -- and this is what I wish to stress in what I am saying here -- it is now possible that we can learn about the artificial external environment around us, how it behaves, why, what it is up to, by analogizing from what we know about ourselves.

Machines are becoming more human, so to speak -- at least in the sense that, as Wiener indicated, some meaningful comparison exists between human and mechanical behavior. But is it not ourselves that we know first and foremost? Rather than learning about ourselves by studying our constructs, perhaps we should make the attempt to comprehend what our constructs are up to by looking into what we ourselves are up to.

Perhaps, really, what we are seeing is a gradual merging of the general nature of human activity and function into the activity and function of what we humans have built and surrounded ourselves with. A hundred years ago such a thought would have been absurd, rather than merely anthropomorphic. What could a man living in 1750 have learned about himself by observing the behavior of a donkey steam engine? Could he have watched it huffing and puffing and then extrapolated from its labor an insight into why he himself continually fell in love with one certain type of pretty young girl? This would not have been primitive thinking on his part; it would have been pathological. But now we find ourselves immersed in a world of our own making so intricate, so mysterious, that as Stanislaw Lem, the eminent Polish science fiction writer, theorizes, the time may come when for example a man may have to be restrained from attempting to rape a sewing machine. Let us hope, if that time comes, that it is a female sewing machine he fastens his intentions on. And one over the age of seventeen -- hopefully a very old treadle-operated Singer, although possibly regrettably past menopause.

I have, in some of my stories and novels, written about androids or robots or simulara -- the name doesn't matter; what is meant is artificial constructs masquerading as humans. Usually with a sinister purpose in mind. I suppose I took it for granted that if such a construct, a robot for example, had a benign or anyhow decent purpose in mind, it would not need to so disguise itself. Now, to me, that theme seems obsolete. The constructs do not mimic humans; they are, in many deep ways, actually human already. They are not trying to fool us, for a purpose of any sort; they merely follow lines we follow, in order that they, too, may overcome such common problems as the breakdown of vital parts, loss of power source, attack by such foes as storms, short circuits -- and I'm sure any one of us here can testify that a short circuit, especially in our power supply, can ruin our entire day and make us utterly unable to get to our daily job, or, once at the office, useless as far as doing the work set forth on our desk.

What would occur to me as a recasting of the robot-appearing-as-human theme would be a gleaming robot with a telescan-lens and a helium battery powerback, who, when jostled, bleeds. Underneath the metal hull is a heart, such as we ourselves have. Perhaps I will write that. Or, as in stories already in print, a computer, when asked some ultimate question such as, "Why is there water?", prints out First Corinthians. One story I wrote, which I'm afraid I failed to take seriously enough, dealt with a computer which, when able to answer a question put to it, ate the questioner. Presumably -- I failed to go into this -- had the computer been unable to answer a question, the human questioner would have eaten it. Anyhow, I inadvertently blended the human and the construct, and didn't notice that such a blend might, in time, actually begin to become part of our reality. Like Lem, I think this will be so, more and more. But to project past Lem's idea: a time may come when, if a man tries to rape a sewing machine, the sewing machine will have him arrested and testify perhaps even a little hysterically against him in court. This leads to all sorts of spinoff ideas: false testimony by suborned sewing machines who accuse innocent men unfairly, paternity tests, and, of course, abortions for sewing machines which have become pregnant against their will. And would there be birth control pills for sewing machines? Probably, like one of my previous wives, certain sewing machines would complain that the pills made them overweight -- or rather, in their case, that it made them sew irregular stitches. And there would be unreliable sewing machines that would forget to take birth control pills. And, last but not least, there would have to be Planned Parenthood Clinics at which sewing machines just off the assembly lines would be conseled as to the dangers of promiscuity, with severe warnings of venereal diseases visited on such immoral machines by an outraged God -- Himself, no doubt, able to sew buttonholes and fancy needlework at a rate that would dazzle the credulous merely metal and plastic sewing machines always ready, like ourselves, to kowtow before divine miracles.

I am being facetious about this, I suppose, but -- the point is not merely a humorous one. Our electronic constructs are becoming so complex that to comprehend them we must now reverse the analogizing of cybernetics and try to reason from our own mentation and behavior to theirs -- although I suppose to assign motive or purpose to them would be to enter the realm of paranoia; what machines do may resemble what we do, but certainly they do not have intent in the sense that we have; they have tropisms, they have purpose in the sense that we build them to accomplish certain ends and to react to certain stimuli. A pistol, for example, is built with the purpose of firing a metal slug that will damage, incapacitate or kill someone, but this does not mean the pistol wants to do this. And yet here we are entering the philosophical realm of Spinoza when he saw, and I think with great profundity, that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, "I want to fall at the rate of 32 feet per second per second." Free will for us -- that is, when we feel desire, when we conscious of wanting to do what we do -- may be even for us an illusion; and depth psychology seems to substantiate this: many of our drives in life originate from an unconscious that is beyond our control. We are driven as are insects, although the term "instinct" is perhaps not applicable for us. Whatever the term, much of our behavior that we feel is the result of our will, may control us to the extent that for all practical purposes we falling stones, doomed to drop at a rate prescribed by nature, as rigid and predictable as the force that creates a crystal. Each of us may feel himself unique, with an intrinsic destiny never before seen in the universe... and yet to God we may be millions of crystals, identical in the eyes of the Cosmic Scientist.

And -- here is a thought not too pleasing -- as the external world becomes more animate, we may find that we -- the so-called humans -- are becoming, and may to a great extent always have been, inanimate in the sense that we are led, directed by built-in tropisms, rather than leading. So we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electrics factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And they dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White's beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.

I would like then to ask this: what is it, in our behavior, that we can call specifically human? That is special to us as a living species? And what is it that, at least up to now, we can consign as merely machine behavior, or, by extension, insect behavior, or reflex behavior? And I would include, in this, the kind of pseudo-human behavior exhibited by what were once living men -- creatures who have, in ways I wish to discuss next, become instruments, means, rather than ends, and hence to me analogs of machines in the bad sense, in the sense that although biological life continues, metabolism goes on, the soul -- for lack of a better term -- is no longer there or at least no longer active. And such does exist in our world -- it always did, but the production of such inauthentic human activity has become a science of government and such-like agencies, now. The reduction of humans to mere use -- men made into machines, serving a purpose which although "good" in an abstract sense has, for its accomplishment, employed what I regard as the greatest evil imaginable: the placing on what was a free man who laughed and cried and made mistakes and wandered off into foolishness and play a restriction that limits him, despite what he may imagine or think, to the fulfilling of an aim outside of his own personal -- however puny -- destiny. As if, so to speak, history has made him into its instrument. History, and men skilled in -- and trained in -- the use of manipulative techniques, equipped with devices, ideologically oriented, themselves, in such as way that the use of these devices strikes them as a necessary or at least desirable method of bringing about some ultimately desired goal.

I think, at this point, of Tom Paine's comment about or another party of the Europe of his time: "They admired the feathers and forgot the dying bird." And it is the "dying bird" that I am concerned with. The dying -- and yet, I think, beginning once again to revive in the hearts of the new generation of kids coming into maturity -- the dying bird of authentic humanness.

This is what I wish to say to you here, today. I wish to disclose my hope, my faith, in the kids who are emerging now. Their world, their values. And, simultaneously, their imperviousness to the false values, the false idols, the false hates, of the previous generations. The fact that they, these fine, good kids, cannot be reached or moved or even touched by the "gravity" -- to refer back to my previous metaphor -- that has made us older persons fall, against our knowledge or will, at 32 feet per second per second throughout our lives... while believing that we desired it.

It is as if these kids, or at least many of them, some of them, are falling at a different rate, or, really, not falling at all. Walt Whitman's "Marching to the sound of other drummers" might be rephrased this way: falling, not in response to unexamined, unchallenged alleged "verities," but in response to a new and inner -- and genuinely authentic -- human desire.

Youth, of course, has always tended toward this; in fact this is really a definition of youth. But right now it is so urgent, if, as I think, we are merging by degrees into homogeneity with our mechanical constructs, step by step, month by month, until a time will perhaps come when a writer, for example, will not stop writing because someone unplugged his electric typewriter but because some unplugged him. But there are kids now who cannot be unplugged because no electric cord links them to any external powersource. Their hearts beat with an interior, private meaning. Their energy doesn't come from a pacemaker; it comes from a stubborn, almost absurdly perverse, refusal to be "shucked," that is, to be taken in by the slogans, the ideology -- in fact by any and all ideology itself, of whatever sort -- that would reduce them to instruments of abstract causes, however "good." Back in California, where I come from, I have been living with such kids, participating, to the extent I can, in their emerging world. I would like to tell you about their world because -- if we are lucky -- something of that world, those values, that way of life, will shape the future of our total society, our utopia or anti-utopia of the future. As a science fiction writer, I must of course look continually ahead, always at the future. It is my hope -- and I'd like to communicate it to you in the tremendous spirit of optimism that I feel so urgently and strongly -- that our collective tomorrow exists in embryonic form in the heads, or rather in the hearts, of these kids who right now, at their young ages, are politically and sociologically powerless, unable even, by our Californian laws, to buy a bottle of beer or a cigarette, to vote, to in any way shape, be consulted about, or bring into existence the official laws that govern their and our society. I think, really, I am saying this: if you are interested in the world of tomorrow you may learn something about it, or at least read about possibilities that may emerge to fashion it, in the pages of Analog and F&SF and Amazing, but actually, to find it in its authentic form, you will discover it as you observe a 16- or 17-year-old kid as he goes about his natural peregrinations, his normal day. Or, as we say in the San Francisco Bay Area, as you observe him "cruising around town to check out the action." This is what I have found. These kids, that I have known, lived with, still know, in California, are my science fiction stories of tomorrow, my summation, at this point in my life as a person and a writer; they are what I look ahead to - and so keenly desire to see prevail. What, more than anything else I have ever encountered, I believe in. And would give my life for. My full measure of devotion, in this war we are fighting, to maintain, and augment, what is human about us, what is the core of ourselves, and the source of our destiny. Our flight must be not only to the stars but into the nature of our own beings. Because it is not merely where we go, to Alpha Centaurus or Betelgeuse, but what we are as we make our pilgrimages there. Our natures will be going there, too. "Ad astra" -- but "per hominem." And we must never lose sight of that.

It would, after all, be rather dismaying, if the first two-legged entity to emerge on the surface of Mars from a Terran spacecraft were to declare, "Thanks be to God for letting me, letting me, click, letting, click, click... this is a recording." And then catch fire and explode as a couple of wires got crossed somewhere within its plastic chest. And probably even more dismaying to this construct would be the discovery when it returned to Earth, to find that its "children" had been recycled along with the aluminum beer cans and Coca Cola bottles as fragments of the urban pollution problem. And, finally, when this astronaut made of plastic and wiring and relays went down to the City Hall officials to complain, it would discover that its three-year guarantee had run out, and, since parts were no longer available to keep it functioning, its birth certificate had been cancelled.

Of course, literally, we should not take this seriously. But as a metaphor -- in some broad sense maybe we should scrutinize more closely the two-legged entities we plan to send up, for example, to man the orbiting space station. We do not want to learn three years from now that the alleged human crew had all married portions of the space station and had settled down to whirr happily forever after in connubial bliss. As in Ray Bradbury's superb story in which a fear-haunted citizen of Los Angeles discovers that the police car trailing him has no driver, that it is tailing him on its own, we should be sure that one of us sits in the driver's seat; in Mr. Bradbury's story the real horror, at least to me, is not that the police car has its own tropism as it hounds the protagonist but that, within the car, there is a vacuum. A place unfilled. The absence of something vital -- that is the horrific part, the apocalyptic vision of a nightmare future. But, I, myself, foresee something more optimistic: had I written that story I would have had a teenager behind the wheel of the police car -- he had stolen it while the police officer is in a coffee shop on his lunch break, and the kid is going to resell it by tearing it down into parts. This may sound a little cynical on my part, but wouldn't this be preferable? As we say in California, where I live, when the police come to investigate a burglary of your house, they find, when they are leaving, that someone has stripped the tires and motor and transmission from their car, and the officers must hitchhike back to headquarters. This thought may strike fear in the hearts of the establishment people, but frankly it make me feel cheerful. Even the most base schemes of human beings are preferable to the most exalted tropisms of machines. I think this, right here, is one of the valid insights possessed by some of the new youth: cars, even police cars, are expendable, can be replaced. They are really all alike. It is the person inside who, when gone, cannot be duplicated, at any price. Even if we do not like him we cannot do without him. And once gone, he will never come back.

And then, too, if he is made into an android, he will never come back, never be again human. Or anyhow most likely will not.

As the children of our world fight to develop their new individuality, their almost surly disrespect for the verities we worship, they become for us -- and by "us" I mean the establishment -- a source of trouble. I do not necessarily mean politically active youth, those who organize into distinct societies with banners and slogans -- to me, that is a reduction into the past, however revolutionary those slogans may be. I refer to the intrinsic entities, the kids each of whom is on his own, doing what we call "his thing." He may, for example, not break the law by seating himself on the tracks before troop trains; his flouting of the law may consist of taking his car to a drive-in movie with four kids hidden in the trunk to avoid having to pay. Still, a law is being broken. The first transgression has political, theoretical overtones; the second, a mere lack of agreement that one must always do what one is ordered to do -- especially when the order comes from a posted, printed sign. In both cases there is disobedience. We might applaud the first as Meaningful. The second merely irresponsible. And yet it is in the second that I see a happier future. After all, there have always been in history movements of people in organized opposition to the governing powers. This is merely one group using force against another, the outs versus the ins. It has failed to produce a utopia so far. And I think always will.

Becoming what I call, for lack of a better term, an android, means as I said, to allow oneself to become a means, or to be pounded down, manipulated, made into a means without one's knowledge or consent -- the results are the same. But you cannot turn a human into an android if that human is going to break laws every chance he gets. Androidization requires obedience. And, most of all, predictability. It is precisely when a given person's response to any given situation can be predicted with scientific accuracy that the gates are open for the wholesale production of the android life form. What good is a flashlight if the buld lights up only now and then when you press the button? Any machine must always work, to be reliable. The android, like any other machine, must perform on cue. But our youth cannot be counted on to do this; it is unreliable. Either through laziness, short attention span, perversity, criminal tendencies -- whatever label you wish to pin on the kid to explain this unreliability is fine. Each merely means: we can tell him and tell him what to do, but when the time comes for him to perform, all the subliminal instrucion, all the ideological briefing, all the tranquilizing drugs, all the psychoterapy, are a waste. He just plain will not jump when the whip is cracked. And so he is of no use to us, the calcified, entrenched powers. He will not see to it that he acts as an instrument by which we both keep and augment those powers and the rewards -- for ourselves -- that go with them.

What has happened is that there has been too much persuasion. The television set, the newspapers -- all the so-called mass media, have overdone it. Words have ceased to mean much to these kids; they have had to listen too many. They cannot be taught, because there has been too great an eagerness, too conspicuous a motive, to make them learn. The anti-utopia science fiction writers of fifteen years ago, and I was one of them, foresaw the mass communications propaganda machinery grinding everyone down into mediocrity and uniformity. But it is not coming out this way. While the car radio dins out the official view on the war in Vietnam, the young boy is disconnecting the speaker so he can replace it with a tweeter and a woofer; in the middle of the government's harangue the speaker is unattached. And, as he expertly hooks up better audio components in his car, the boy fails even to notice that the voice on the radio is trying to tell him something. this skilled craftsman of a kid listens only to see whether there is distortion, interference, or a frequency curve that isn't fully compensated. HIs head is turned toward immediate realities, the speaker itself, not the flatuus voci dinning from it.

The totalitarian society envisioned by George Orwell in 1984 should have arrived by now. The electronic gadgets are here. The government is here, ready to do what Orwell anticipated. So the power exists, the motive, and the electronic hardware. But these mean nothing, because, progressively more and more so, no one is listening. The new youth that I see is too stupid to read, too restless and bored to watch, too preoccupied to remember. The collective voice of the authorities is wasted on him; he rebels. But rebels not out of theoretical, ideological considerations, only out of what might be called pure selfishness. Plus a careless lack of regard for the dread consequences the authorities promise him if he fails to obey. He cannot be bribed because what he wants he can build, steal, or in some curious, intricate way acquire for himself. He cannot be intimidated because on the streets and in his home he has seen and participated in so much violence that it fails to cow him. He merely gets out of its way when it threatens, or, if he can't escape, he fights back. When the locked police van comes to carry him off to the concentration camp the guards will discover that while loading the van they have failed to note that another equally hopeless juvenile has slashed the tires. The van is out of commision. And while the tires are being replaced, the other youth siphons out all the gas from the gas tank for his souped-up Chevrolet Impala and has sped off long ago.

The absolutely horrible technological society -- that was our dream, our vision of the future. We could foresee nothing equipped with enough power, guile, or whatever, to impede the coming of that dreadful, nightmare society. It never occured to us that the delinquent kids might abort it out of the sheer perverse malice of their little individual souls, God bless them. Here, as a case in point, are two excerpts from the media; the first, quoted in that epitome of the nauseating, Time, is -- so help me -- what Time calls "the ultimate dream in telephone service" as described by Harold S. Osborne, former chief engineer of AT&T:

 

"Whenever a baby is born anywhere in the world, he is given at   birth a telephone number for life. As soon as he can talk, he is given a watch-like device   with ten little buttons on one side and a screen on the other. When he wishes to talk with   anyone in the world, he will pull out the device and punch on the keys the number. Then,   turning the device over, he will hear the voice of his friend and see his face on the   screen, in color and in three dimensions. If he does not see him and hear him, he will   know that his friend is dead."

I don't know; I really don't find this funny. It is really sad. It is heartbreaking. Anyhow; it is not going to happen. The kids have already seen to that. "Phone freaks," they are called, these particular kids. This is what the L.A. Times says, in an article dated earlier this year:

 

"They (the phone freaks) all arrived carrying customized MF'ers --   multi-frequency tone signals -- the phone freak term for a blue box. The homemade MF'ers   varied in size and design. One was a sophisticated pocket transistor built by a PhD in   engineering, another the size of a cigar box with an actual coupler attaching to the phone   receiver. So far, these phone freaks had devised 22 ways to make a free call without using   credit cards. In case of a slipup, the phone freaks also know how to detect 'supervision,'   phone company jargon for a nearly inaudible tone which comes on the line before anyone   answers to register calling charges. As soon as phone freaks detect the dreaded   'supervision,' they hang up fast.

 

"Captain Crunch was still in the phone booth pulling the red   switches on his fancy computerized box. He got his name from the whistle found in the   Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal box. Crunch discovered that the whistle has a frequency of   2600 cycles per second, the exact frequency the telephone company uses to indicate that a   line is idle, and of course, the first frequency phone freaks learn how to whistle to get   'disconnect,' which allows them to pass from one circuit to another. Crunch, intent,   hunched over his box to read a list of country code numbers. He impersonated to the   overseas operator, and called Italy. In less than a minute he reached a professor of   classical Greek writings at the University of Florence."

This is how the future has actually come ot. None of us science fiction writers foresaw phone freaks. Fortunately, neither did the phone company, which otherwise would have taken over by now. But this is the difference between dire myth and warm, merry reality. And it is the kids, unique, wonderful, unhampered by scruples in any traditional sense, that have made the difference.

Speaking in science fiction terms, I now foresee an anarchistic totalitarian state ahead. Ten years from now a TV street reporter will ask some kid who is president of the United States, and the kid will admit that he doesn't know. "But the President can have you executed," the reporter will protest. "Or beaten or thrown into prison or all your rights taken away, all your property -- everything." And the boy will reply, "Yeah, so could my father up to last month when he had his fatal coronary. He used to say the same thing." End of interview. And when the reporter goes to gather up his equipment he will find that one his color 3-D stereo microphone-vidlens systems is missing; the kid has swiped it from him while the reporter was blabbing on.

If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that'll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities. If the television screen is going to watch you, rewire it late at night when you're permitted to turn it off -- rewire it in such a way that the police flunky monitoring the transmission from your living room mirrors back his living room at his house. When you sign a confession under duress, forge the name of one of the political spies who's infiltrated your model airplane club. Pay your fines in counterfeit money or rubber checks or stolen credit cards. Give a false address. Arrive at the courthouse in a stolen car. Tell the judge that if he sentences you, you will substitute aspirin tablets for his daughter's birth control pills. Or put His Honor on a mailing list for pornographic magazines. Or, if all else fails, threaten him with your using his telephone credit card number to make unnecessary long distance calls to cities on other planets. It will not be necessary to blow up the courthouse any more. Simply find some way to defame the judge -- you saw him driving home one night on the wrong side of the road with his headlights off and a fifth of Seagram's VO propped up against his steering wheel. And his bumper sticker that night read: GRANT FULL RIGHTS TO US HOMOSEXUALS. He has of course torn the sticker off by now, but both you and ten of your friends witnessed it. And they are all at pay phones right now, ready to phone the news to the local papers. And, if he is still so foolish as to sentence you, at least ask him to give back the little tape recorder you inadvertently left in his bedroom. Since the off switch on it is broken, it has probably recorded its entire ten-day reel of tape by now. Results should be interesting. And if he tries to destroy the tape, you will have him arrested for vandalism, which, in the totalitarian state of tomorrow, will be the supreme crime. What is your life worth in his eyes compared with a three dollar reel of mylar tape? The tape is probably government property, like everything else, so to destroy it would be a crime against the state. The first step in a calculated, sinister insurrection.

I wonder if you recall the so-called "brain mapping" developed by Penfield recently; he was able to locate the exact centers in the brain from which each sensation, emotion, and response came. By stimulating one minute area with an electrode, a laboratory rat was transfigured into a state of perpetual bliss. "They'll be doing that to all of us, too, soon," a pessimistic friend said to me, regarding that. "Once the electrodes have been implanted, They can get us to feel, think, do anything They want." Well, to do this, the government would have to let out a contract for the manufacture of a billion sets of electrodes, and, in their customary way, they would award the contract to the lowest bidder, who would build substandard electrodes out of secondhand parts... the technicians implanting the electrodes in the brains of millions upon millions of people would become bored and careless, and, when the switch would be pressed for the total population to feel profound grief at the death of some government official -- probably the minister of the interior, in charge of the slave labor rehabilitation camps -- it would all get fouled up, and the population, like that laboratory rat, would go into collective seizures of merriment. Or the substandard wiring connecting the brains of the population with the Washington D.C. Thought Control Center would overload, and a surge of electricity would roll backward over the lines and set fire to the White House.

Or is this just wishful thinking on my part? A little fantasy about a future society we should really feel apprehensive toward?

The continued elaboration of state tyranny such as we in science fiction circles anticipate in the world of tomorrow -- our whole preoccupation with what we call the "anti-utopian" society -- this growth of state invasion into the privacy of the individual, its knowing too much about him, and then, when it knows, or thinks it knows, something it frowns on, its power and capacity to squash the individual -- as we thoroughly comprehend, this evil process utilizes technology as its instrument. The inventions of applied science, such as the almost miraculously sophisticated sensor devices right now traveling back from war use in Vietnam for adaptation to civilian use here -- these passive infrared scanners, sniperscopes, these chrome boxes with dials and gauges that can penetrate brick and stone, can tell the user what is being said and done a mile away within a tightly sealed building, be it concrete bunker or apartment building, can, like the weapons before them, fall into what the authorities would call "the wrong hands" -- that is, into the hands of the very people being monitored. Like all machines, these universal transmitters, recording devices, heatpattern discriminators, don't in themselves care who they're being use by or against. The scene of a street fracas where, for example, some juvenile has dropped a water-filled balloon into the sportscar of a wealthy taxpayer -- this vehicle, however fast, however well-armed and animated by the spirit of righteous vengeance, can be spotted by the same lens by which its superiors became aware of the disturbance in the first place... and notification of its impending arrival on the scene can be flashed by the same walkie-talkie Army surplus gadget by which crowd control is maintained when black gather to protest for their just rights. Before the absolute power of the absolute state of tomorrow can achieve its victory it may find such things as this: when the police show up at your door to arrest you for thinking unapproved thoughts, a scanning sensor which you've bought and built into your door discriminates the intruders from customary friends, and alerts you to your peril.

Let me give you an example. At the enormous civic center building in my county, a fantastic Buck Rogers type of plastic and chrome backdrop to a bad science fiction film, each visitor must pass through an electronic field that sets off an alarm if he has on him too much metal, be it keys, a watch, pair of scissors, bomb, .308 Winchester rifle. When the hoop pings -- and it always pings for me -- a uniformed policeman immediately fully searches the visitor. A sign warns that if any weapon is discovered on a visitor, it's all over for him -- and the sign also warns that if any illegal drugs are found on a visitor, during this weapons search, he's done for, too. Now, I think even you people up here in Canada are aware of the reason for this methodical weapons search of each visitor to the Marin County Civic Center -- it has to do with the tragic shootout a year or so ago. But, and they have officially posted notice of this, the visitor will be inspected for narcotics possession, too, and this has nothing to do with either the shootout or with any danger to the building itself or the persons within it. An electronic checkpoint, legitimately set up to abort a situation in which explosives or weapons are brought into the Civic Center, has been assigned an added police function connected with the authentic issue only by the common thread of penal code violation. To visit the county library, which is in that building, you are subject to search -- must in fact yield absolutely and unconditionally -- for possession without juridical protection, built into the very basis of our American civil rights system, that some clear and evident indication exist that you may be carrying narcotics before a search can be carried against you. During this search I've even had the uniformed officer at the entrance examine the books and papers I was carrying, to see if they were acceptable. The next step, in the months to come, would be to have such mandatory checkpoints at busy intersections and at all public buildings -- including banks and so forth. Once it has been established that the authorities can search you for illegal drugs because you're returning a book to the library, I think you can see just how far the tyranny of the state can go -- once it has provided itself with an electronic hoop that registers the presence of something we all carry on us: keys, a pair of fingernail clippers, coins. The blip, rather a quaint little sound, which you set off, opens a door not leading to the county library but to possible imprisonment. It is that blip that ushers in all the rest. And how many other blips are we setting off, or our children will be setting off, in context that we know nothing about yet? But my optimistic point: the kids of today, having been born into this all-pervasive society, are fully aware of and take for granted the activity of such devices. One afternoon when I was parking my car on the lot before a grocery store, I started, as usual, to lock all the car doors to keep the parcels in the back seat from being stolen. "Oh, you don't have to lock up the car," the girl with me said. "This parking lot is under constant closed-circuit TV scan. Every car here and everyone is being watched all the time; nothing can happen." So we went inside the store leaving the car unlocked.