THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, March 4, 2020 |A
Both Ends
Of the Telescope
Not to Scale
By Jamer Hunt
(Grand Central, 260 pages, $30)BOOKSHELF| By Frank Rose
‘D
oes it scale?” This is almost the first question
anyone asks about anything new—startups,
technologies, ideas. It’s OK to start small, but
bigger is almost always assumed to be better, or at least
more profitable. “Scale” comes from the Latin “scala,”
which means “ladder,” and we all know it’s better to climb
up than to move down in the world. Yet lost in this
formulation is a sense of what’s appropriate, of what
actually works. That feeling of balance is what Jamer Hunt
seeks to restore in “Not to Scale: How the Small Becomes
Large, the Large Becomes Unthinkable, and the Unthinkable
Becomes Possible.”
Mr. Hunt, a professor of design at the New School,
begins with a discussion of scale as a human construct.
The whole idea of measurement—of temperature, length,
size, time—stems from our need to impose some sense of
order on a chaotic world, both by locating ourselves
comfortably within it
and by quantifying it.
The former isinstinctive
behavior: Allanimals,
humans included,
gravitate toward places
that fit—witness the dog
curled up on its bed in a
corner of the room. The
ability to quantify may be
uniquely human, but it’s
still rooted in bodily
experience. They don’t call
it a foot for nothing.
We have gradually moved
away from bodily measures to
more abstract ones—starting
with the meter and the kilogram,
introduced during the French Revolution—
and now toward apps and devices that give us a measure
of the physical world yet themselves are digital and
electronic. Mr. Hunt says this shift is bound to affect us,
though he doesn’t quite specify how.
This is of a piece with a general vagueness that
permeates the first half of the book. These are chapters that
seek to show how scale works—in a word, weirdly. There’s
an amusing disquisition on ant life, which thanks to the
quirks of scale (among other things) is nothing like our own.
An ant can’t read because ant-scaled type would be almost
invisible; it can’t enjoy a cup ofcoffee because the surface
tension would be too great for it to be able to drink; it can’t
wear clothes because the forces of adhesion would be so
strong it could never get them off. The point, of course, is
to show that physics works very differently at themicro-
scale of an ant than it does at human scale.
But after dipping briefly into quantum mechanics, which
governs the world of the very, very small, Mr. Hunt goes
on to complain that an 8½-by-11-inch Microsoft Word
document on a computer screen isn’t really 8½-by-11—an
issue that he himself admits is “relatively unremarkable
and insignificant.” Likewise, I didn’t need to be told that
New York City is crowded while Greensboro, Vt., is not.
And when a later discussion of asymmetrical cyber-
warfare leads to a description of a basic distributed
denial-of-service attack—a tactic that, while still common
and still effective, dates to the 1990s—it’s hard not to feel
like you’re stuck playing checkers when you thought you’d
signed up for chess.Things pick up in later chapters, when Mr. Hunt turns to
strategies for dealing with the “phase changes” that occur
when shifts in scale lead to unpredictable, nonlinear
results. A key catalyst in the book’s own shift is “Powers
of Ten,” the 1977 film that the designers Charles and Ray
Eames made for IBM. Starting with an overhead view of a
couple lying on the grass in a Chicago park, an imaginary
camera pulls back in stages until we’re looking at a sea of
galaxies from 100 million light years away, then zooms in
to view the same couple-on-the-grass scene at the scale of
a single proton in the man’s hand. This leads to an idea
Mr. Hunt calls “scalar framing,” which borrows the
technique of the Eames film to consider policy issues
(how to get people out of cars and onto bikes, for
instance) at progressively higher levels, from the
individual to the neighborhood to the region and
ultimately the planet.
Problems shape-shift at every stage, he notes, and new
angles of attack emerge. But it’s at the macro level that
they often seem most intractable—resistant to top-down
solutions, which can scale quickly but rarely accept
feedback from those closest to the problem, and also to
bottom-up solutions, which can be slow and unpredictable
and seldom respond well to direction from above.
Bottom-up is no way to build a bridge, but top-down is
no guarantee it’ll be built where it’s needed. So Mr. Hunt
suggests a middle approach, one he calls scaffolding.
The scaffold is an analogy, an “intermediary frame-
work” that’s designed from above to encourage input
from below. It’s a systems approach, a way of exerting
direction in a post-command-and-control world. The main
example Mr. Hunt offers is Linux, the open-source
operating system introduced by Linus Torvalds when he
was a grad student in Helsinki in 1991. Linux may not
have made Mr. Torvalds a billionaire, but it has come to
dominate the business of Web servers and super-
computers even as it serves as the basis for Google’s
Android, the operating system used in most of the world’s
smartphones. There’s also Hans Monderman, a “Dutch
traffic savant” who transformed dangerous intersections
into walkable ones by thinking at the scale of the driver
rather than the car—which led him to remove most traffic
signs so that drivers would be forced to interact with
pedestrians rather than with the road.
Such examples are typical of Mr. Hunt’s approach to his
subject, which is practical and prosaic and designerlike.
Though he registers surprise at the vagaries of scale and
even quotes Jorge Luis Borges, he doesn’t convey a sense
of wonder—while I kept longing all along to be taken
through the looking-glass. “Not to Scale” won’t get you
there. But if it helps you figure out issues like the bike
problem, that might be better in the end.Mr. Rose is the author of “The Art of Immersion” and a
senior fellow at Columbia University School of the Arts.How to take massive problems and shrink
them down to size, as well as connect grass-
roots decisions to the grand scheme of things.How to Shop for a Pandemic
New YorkM
y wife, Sarah, and I
are discussing what
essentials to stock in
the event the coronavirus
scare turns into lockdowns,
shortages and bare super-
market shelves.
Already, we hear reports
of hoarding and hard-to-get
items, including medicines—
the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration has identified 20 ma-
jor drugs for which supplies
may be disrupted because of
ingredients sourced from
China. Forget about acquiring
hospital-grade respirator
masks—they’ve been out of
stock for weeks. The surgeon
general has begged the pub-
lic tostop buying them!
We haven’t been this on-
edge since 9/11. Back then it
wasn’t just the terror attacks
that spooked us but the wave
of anthrax mailings, which
sent us scrambling for Cipro,
an antibiotic. I remember
fleeing my gym because of a
spray spewing from a venti-
lation duct. It turned out to
be steam. We kept the Cipro
vials on hand for years.
Sarah ticks off canned
goods that can keep for
months—tuna, chickpeas,
soup, sardines. I had just bit-
ten into a tasty sardine sand-
wich in April 2011 when I
learned my mother had died.I haven’t been able to touch
sardines since. I wonder if
I’ll overcome my aversion in
the face of pandemic.
Thinking about canned
soup reminds me of the vari-
eties I enjoyed as a kid in the
1960s—split pea, tomato,
corn, vegetable, even beef
bouillon. It was the era of
air-raid shelters and duck-and-cover drills, yet my par-
ents never stocked up.
We’re luckier than many
New Yorkers. We have a
large pantry, now flush with
toilet paper, paper towels,
bottled water, bags of dog
food. We calculate a month’s
supply and consider doubling
it in case we can’t get to the
store or, worse, Amazon
stops home deliveries.
Even our pantry may not
be big enough. We’ll need
rice and pasta, soaps and
shampoos, aluminum foil and
garbage bags. Could we sur-
vive without A.1. sauce?
Sarah’s tea? Croutons? Don’t
forget asthma sprays and
surgical gloves for venturing
outside. Sarah draws the line
at butterscotch pudding
mix—I’ll have to wait for the
quarantine to pass.
We know we’re being irra-
tional, but it only took one
“when, not if” warning from
the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention to trigger
a stock-market free fall. It
could likewise take a singleconfirmed Covid-19 death in
Chelsea or Brooklyn to un-
leash an apocalyptic response
among jaded New Yorkers.
Sarah and I recently ordered
a furry dog bed for our
schnauzer. When we saw it
came from China, we imme-
diately bagged it, envisioning
spores spread throughout the
apartment. For many of us,
hysteria is just a headline
away.
A vigilant cook, Sarah has
already ensured that the
freezer is full. If there’s a Na-
tional Strategic Reserve for
kosher chicken breasts, it’s in
our kitchen. Still, there could
be trouble. Sarah called to
order extra canisters of non-
dairy whipped cream, her
one indulgence, which she
slathers nightly over a small
bowl of berries. The local
market tells us they’re out of
stock and don’t know when
they’ll get more. Now that’s
cause for alarm.Mr. Ripp runs a press re-
lations firm in New York.By Allan Ripp
We’re well-stocked,
but our local store
reports a run on
whipped cream.OPINION
Be afraid, be
very afraid—
of the flu,
not the coro-
navirus.
Actually
don’t be
afraid of ei-
ther. If
Americans
are as dili-
gent in
hand-washing, sneeze-smoth-
ering and crowd-avoiding as
the government and media
now are encouraging them to
be, guess what? The coronavi-
rus would have to be pretty
bad for the country not to ex-
perience an actual improve-
ment in the overall respira-
tory infection death rate
simply because of the routine
cold-and-flu cases that would
be avoided.
Though the stock market
remains flighty, and it’s a
fool’s errand trying to sort
out how much is Bernie Sand-
ers and how much is the cor-
onavirus, America ought to be
coming to its senses about
now.
So far, 2,900 people in
China have died from the
disease, concentrated in the
city of Wuhan. In the aver-
age year, 30,000 Americans
die of a very similar disease,
influenza. That’s the popula-
tion-related equivalent of
127,000 Chinese deaths. Yet
half of Americans don’t con-
sider it worth their trouble
to get a flu shot though their
chances of dying from the
flu remain a large multiple
of their chances of dying of
A Corona-Sanders Panic Ebbs?
the new coronavirus.
Looking for a more sophis-
ticated reason to panic, some
point to data suggesting each
person infected with the Wu-
han virus infects 2.2 others,
compared with 1.3 for the flu.
This supposedly portends a
far more dangerous disease
outbreak than even we’re see-
ing in China.
Reproduction rate, though,
is as much a property of hu-
man behavior as a property
of the virus. China is more
densely populated than the
U.S. New York, at 8.6 million
people, is America’s biggest
city. Wuhan, at 11 million, is
China’s ninth biggest. And
now even Wuhan’s infection
rate is falling so sharply that
China is starting to close the
makeshift hospitals it so im-
pressively built. Most of the
city’s people—well over
99%—are emerging little
scathed. This is especially
promising because the city,
as ground zero, couldn’t cut
itself off from an epidemic
that started elsewhere. Its
strategy necessarily con-
sisted of the same social mit-
igation (e.g., sneeze control)
and self-isolation techniques
that U.S. communities will
have to rely on to curb their
own outbreaks.
Much remains to be nailed
down about the virus but
worst-case speculation is not
more accurate than best-case
speculation. Donald Trump, it
may embarrass you to know,
was exactly right with his
“we’ll see” and “it is what it
is” attitude.Wewillsee. The govern-
ment can’t stop a flu-like vi-
rus from entering the country
but it can instruct us how to
avoid infection and help hos-
pitals prepare to treat the
small percentage who develop
severe symptoms.
Flu fatalities in the U.S. are
overwhelmingly concentrated
among the elderly. Flu man-
agement in long-term care fa-
cilities, where the sickest 5%of Americans over 65 live, al-
ready is covered by a large
literature. Hundreds of Amer-
icans a week in this cohort
die from influenza and pneu-
monia. Keep this in mind
when considering four re-
ported deaths from corona-
virus at a Kirkland, Wash.,
nursing home.
China was caught un-
awares by a disease that was
evidently spreading for a
month or more in Wuhan be-
fore anyone noticed; the
country’s frantic learning now
is helping save the lives ev-
erywhere of the sickest cases.
For good and not so good rea-
sons, Chinese data likely un-
derstate the true infection
rate and grossly overstate the
mortality rate, which China
puts at roughly 2%. Anthony
Fauci, the veteran U.S. gov-ernment infection fighter,
wrote in the New England
Journal of Medicine last week
that the U.S. outcome “may
ultimately be more akin to
those of a severe seasonal in-
fluenza (which has a case fa-
tality rate of approximately
0.1%).”
Mr. Trump is more correct
than he knows to link the
coronavirus hysteria to the vi-
ral Russia collusion myth. On
top of all the other tests the
new virus may be imposing
on our society, it ups the ante
as another test of how colos-
sally and flagrantly the cable
TV channels can get some-
thing wrong without conse-
quence. Will a sense of shame
and responsibility lead editors
and network executives finally
to clean house? Or is the les-
son going to be: “There’s rat-
ings gold in them thar lies.
Keep them coming”?
One solution seems irre-
sistible: Stop calling cable
news personalities “journal-
ists.” There’s a reason normal
journalism doesn’t pay as
well as TV journalism. Real
journalists are dependent on
reality to furnish their mate-
rial and reality just ain’t that
exciting. Ask yourself a ques-
tion: Was it even possible for
a highly paid MSNBC host to
evince normal evidentiary
caution about the Steele dos-
sier given the economics of
her show and the need to sus-
tain her ratings among a
Trump-hating target audi-
ence? No, it’s not realistic as
an economic matter and we
should understand as much.The epidemiology
of a new virus collides
with the economics
of cable news.BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.
Aweek,itis
often said, is
an eternity in
politics—
rarely more
so than for
Joe Biden in
the past
seven days. It
was only last
Wednesday
that Rep. Jim
Clyburn, respected throughout
the Democratic Party and re-
vered in his home state of
South Carolina, endorsed Mr.
Biden, setting the stage for
the former vice president’s
smashing victory Saturday in
the Palmetto State.
In rapid succession, Tom
Steyer, Pete Buttigieg and
Amy Klobuchar dropped out
of the race. Mr. Buttigieg and
Sen. Klobuchar endorsed Mr.
Biden in Texas, home to the
second-largest cache of Super
Tuesday delegates, as did
Beto O’Rourke, a former rep-
resentative from Texas who
left the presidential race in
November. All three delivered
effective, often passionate,
speeches explaining their de-
cisions. The two days before
Super Tuesday were probably
the best 48 hours of Joe Bi-
den’s political career.
A week ago, Democrats
who fear the nomination of
Bernie Sanders were analogiz-
ing their party’s plight to the
2016 Republican contest,
when the refusal of Donald
Trump’s opponents to co-
alesce around a single candi-
date paved the way to his se-
lection as their party’s
standard-bearer.
It turns out, however, that
Joe Biden Gets Back in the Ring
important Democratic candi-
dates this year were willing to
evaluate their prospects real-
istically and leave the race in
time to make a difference. The
relative weight of concern for
the country and enlightened
self-interest in their choice is
hard to assess, of course. But
if Mr. Biden goes on to win
the nomination, Ms. Klobu-
char has done nothing to di-
minish her chances of ending
up on the ticket, and Messrs.
Buttigieg and O’Rourke have
done nothing to damage their
futures.
In the past week, Joe Biden
finally found his voice, sum-
marizing his case simply and
straightforwardly. As presi-
dent, Mr. Biden says, he would
focus his efforts on practical,
achievable steps to improve
people’s lives. He would work
to repair America’s tattered
alliances and renew its moral
authority in the world. He
would restore dignity and de-
cency to the Oval Office.
Most important, Mr. Biden
would do everything in his
power to heal our divided
country. The Republicans, he
said on Monday night, are
Democrats’ opponents, not
their enemies. He believes
that Mr. Trump has intimi-
dated but not converted them.
He will treat them with re-
spect, as potential partners in
a common enterprise. Within
his own party, he has been
mocked for raising the possi-
bility that a measure of bipar-
tisanship in still possible. No
matter. As president, he
would act as though it is and
by so doing increase the pos-
sibility of its restoration.Bipartisanship is essential,
because little of what our
country needs can be accom-
plished through executive or-
ders and unilateral acts. We
cannot possibly rebuild roads
and bridges, or extend health
insurance to all Americans, or
reduce the burden of prescrip-
tion drug costs, or reform the
immigration system, unless
Congress rediscovers the
nearly lost art of legislation.Barring a surprise landslide
this November, neither party
will be able to impose its will
on the country. Mr. Sanders’s
vision of a “political revolu-
tion” that sweeps all before it
is a fantasy. This year is not
1932, and 2021 will not be- Voters’ choice in 2020 is
between cooperation and
stagnation. Joe Biden under-
stands this reality; Mr. Sand-
ers and Mr. Trump do not.
As this column goes to
press, polling stations are
starting to close across the
Super Tuesday states, and the
Democratic Party is holding
its collective breath. A week
ago, Mr. Biden was on the
ropes, awaiting the knockout
blow. Now he’s back in the
center of the ring, still stand-
ing, with a chance to prevail
in the final rounds of the
fight. Mr. Biden’s South Caro-
lina victory had a larger-than-
anticipated effect on the final
Super Tuesday polls, increas-
ing the odds that when the
dust settles, his delegate haul
from this frantic day of vot-
ing across the country will
meet or exceed that of Mr.
Sanders.
By Wednesday morning,
readers will know whether
Mike Bloomberg’s more than
$620 million bet on Super
Tuesday paid off. If he fin-
ishes no better than third
place in most states and ends
up with fewer than 150 dele-
gates, the rationale for his
candidacy will collapse, and
he will come under intense
pressure to withdraw. As for
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, she
seems determined to perse-
vere, whatever the results,
hoping like Dickens’s Mr. Mi-
cawber that something will
turn up.
Between now and July,
Democrats are likely to face a
rerun of the 2016 nomination
contest between Mr. Sanders
and Hillary Clinton, with
white progressives and young
people in one camp and older
African-Americans joining
forces with suburban moder-
ates in the other. Based on the
early contests, it appears that
the latter coalition enjoys a
narrow edge, as it did four
years ago.
Mr. Biden would probably
win a one-on-one contest
against Mr. Sanders, which
would be good news for Dem-
ocrats, because only the
party’s moderate wing is ca-
pable of putting forward a
Democratic nominee in touch
with the majority of the
American people.He is swinging with
vigor as votes from
the Super Tuesday
contests are tallied.POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston