The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 21
#67 LEVI’S
COMMUTER X
JACQUARD BY
GOOGLE JACKET
T
he abiding problem with writing
about digital technology is how
to avoid what the sociologist
Michael Mann calls “the
sociology of the last fi ve minutes”.
There’s something about the
technology that reduces our collective
attention span to that of newts.
This is how we wind up obsessing
over the next iPhone, the travails of
Uber, Facebook being weaponised
by Russia, Samsung’s new non-
combustible smartphone and so on.
It’s mostly a breathless search for what
Michael Lewis once called “ the new
new thing ”.
We have become mesmerised
by digital technology and by the
companies that control and exploit
it. Accordingly, we fi nd it genuinely
diffi cult to judge whether a particular
development is really something
new and unprecedented or just a
contemporary variant on something
that is much older.
As an example, consider Amazon,
which has gone from online bookseller
to “the everything store” (and a lot
more besides). In the process, it has put
a lot of bricks-and-mortar shops out of
business; it turned out that books were
just the gateway drug that got people
used to the idea of shopping online. But
in the last couple of years, Amazon has
been opening – shock, horror! – bricks-
and-mortar book stores. And now it has
gone and bought Whole Foods Market ,
an upscale grocery chain, for $13.4bn- and reduced some of its exorbitant
prices by up to 43% on its fi rst day
under new management.
What’s going on? Wasn’t the whole
idea behind Amazon that it could
be much more effi cient (and reduce
prices) by eliminating most of the costs
of running a physical store? But if one
takes a step back it’s possible to see
a pattern here. Amazon (founded in
1994 ) is a creature of the web, which
in turn is a creature of the internet.
Broadband technology, the thing
that brought high-speed connections
to almost everyone in western
countries, is a product of the fi rst
(1995-2000) internet boom, in which
a lot of companies went bust building
broadband infrastructure.
Spool back a century and you
fi nd that a similar boom-and-bust
cycle left the United States with a
transcontinental railway system. And
one of the early creatures of that new
Jeff has his shops, so now
Mark wants a whole town
Joh n Naug hton
THE NETWORKER
What we’re beginning to see,
in other words, is the revival of
another old capitalist idea: the
company town. Julianne Tveten , in
a splendidly acerbic article , calls it
Zucktown, after Facebook’s founder,
Mark Zuckerberg. It reminds her of
another eponymous town – Pullman
in Illinois, the town created in 1884
by the railroad mogul George Pullman
(and later absorbed into the city
of Chicago).
He saw his creation, Tveten writes,
as “a lucrative, pro-business utopia
fi lled with satisfi ed participants,
employee and investor alike. Its veneer
was indeed shiny: the amenities it
promised – yards [gardens], indoor
plumbing, gas, trash removal – were
rare for industrial workers of the
time, and its ultra-formal gardens and
shopping centre, which equipped them
with a barber shop, dentist’s offi ces, a
bank and a slew of overpriced retail,
off ered a vanguard capitalist’s dabbling
in luxury.”
And now it turns out that Google is
thinking along similar lines, as even its
well-paid employees fi nd Silicon Valley
housing unaff ordable. Marx was right
about history repeating itself: we’re
entering the farcical phase.infrastructure was a mail-order fi rm
called Sears Roebuck. From the start,
Sears marketed itself via its celebrated
mail-order catalogue as an “everything
store”. It used the same techniques
as Amazon – selling stuff at small
margins, building huge warehouses
to manage the formidable logistics of
the business, etc. But then, after “ one
of the most successful half-centuries
in US corporate history ” , Sears did
something extraordinary – it opened
a bricks-and-mortar store! The rest
is history. Except that that history is
sobering. At its peak, Sears had more
than 3,500 stores. Now it’s down to
fewer than 700. Once a world beater,
it’s now an ageing follower of the pack.
Another interesting historical
parallel is evoked by the news that
Facebook plans to create a new urban
settlement , described as “an integrated,
mixed-use village that will provide
much needed services, housing and
transit solutions as well as offi ce
space. Part of our vision is to create a
neighbourhood centre that provides
long-needed community services. We
plan to build 125,000 square feet of
new retail space, including a grocery
store, pharmacy and additional
community-facing retail.”Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, discusses his plans for a new company town with
architect Frank Gehry. Is history repeating itself as farce? AFPBETA TESTING: INNOVATIONS INSPECTED
What is it?
A jacket made from “smart”
denim fabric, which enables you to
control your phone by stroking the
jacket’s cuff.Good points
Pretty stylish for wearable
technology; turns your wrist into a
touchscreen.Bad points
Th e hi-tech features will only
survive 10 washes, after which it
becomes just a $350 denim jacket.sadfvsTHREE WAY
“Bus bunching”
is whe n three
buses arrive at
the same time.
Th e National
Autonomous
University of
Mexico found
that bunching
occurs during
traffi c delays;
with more
people at the bus
stop, boarding
takes longer and
the bus behind
catches up.DOUBLING UP
Esther Kim of
Yale University
coined the term
“nonsocial
transient
behaviour” for
when bus users
place bags on
seats, pretend
to be asleep
or avoid eye
contact to stop
anyone sitting
next to them.TOXIC SHOCK
Transport for
London’s buses
carry 6.2 million
passengers
daily. Estimates
suggest that
buses are the
source of 16%
of the city’s
nitrogen oxide
emissions. A
King’s College
London report
found that each
year about
9,500 deaths in
London result
from car and
bus emissions.SIT DOWNER
A 2016 study by
Loughborough
University
revealed that
bus drivers
spend up to 12
hours a day
sitting, with
74% defi ned
as obese or
overweight and
at increased risk
of developing
cardiovascular
disease.
Felix PeckhamTHE SCIENCE
OF...BUSES
John Akomfrah,
who grew
up in south
London close
to Battersea
power station,
says childhood
experience
has been a key
influence on his
work.
Portrait by
David Levenewith the experience of generations of
migrants who crossed the sea out of
necessity in search of a better life, he
was struck, he says, “by the realisation
that everything overlaps at some
profound level, that the great shifts in
human progress that are made possible
by technology can also cause the
profoundest destruction and suff ering ”.
All these big themes are embedded
in Purple, but may remain elusive to
those unfamiliar with the tropes of
conceptual art and experimental, non-
narrative fi lm-making. I was baffl ed,
for instance, by recurring appearances
of those mysterious silent fi gures who
stand mute before often elemental
landscapes on Alaska, Greenland
and Skye. “In a very real way, I’m
present in the fi lm. I’m the fi gure in
the brown shirt who gets rained on ,”
says Akomfrah, laughing. “It sounds
a bit mystical, but for me everything
starts with place. Wherever we fi lmed,
it began with me asking the landscape
the same question: ‘ What can you
tell me about the nature of climate
change?’ As an artist and fi lm-maker,
I’m dependent on the responses I get
from the environment.”
Is he aware, given the often bitterly
contested nature of the public climate
change debate, that a multiscreen,
non-narrative conceptual art fi lm that
provides no answers may be greeted by
a degree of scepticism, if not outright
dismissal, from those on both sides
demanding hard facts and evidence?
“Well, I’m an artist. I make work for a
gallery. I’m not attempting to make a
science documentary. I’m coming at it
from a diff erent perspective by asking
the question: what is philosophically,
ethically and morally at stake here if
we continue on this course? I don’t
think you need to be licensed by the
scientifi c community to ask that sort of
question about the times we live in or
to refl ect on the anxiety many of us feel
about the future of the planet. My son
is old enough to become a father. On a
purely personal level, it certainly felt
like the right time for me as an artist to
be asking these questions.”
Purple is exhibited from 6 Oct to 7 Jan at
the Curve, Barbican, London
next to them.