I started the In the Zeitgeist blog in 2017, and in one of the first posts I linked to an older blog I kept called Generation Watch. I started that one in 2002 and kept it up until, I think, 2007. Unfortunately I lost some of the content, so what I have up now stops abruptly in 2005. When I first referenced this older blog in that 2017 post, I had just moved it to a new domain, but the links were all broken so it was a mess and basically unusable. At long last, I have cleaned up all the internal links, so it is possible to navigate the site and access the content.
I only cleaned up the internal links, that is the links to other content I created on the blog, not the external links to other sites. I don’t plan to update those in any way, since my intention is to have an archived copy up. It’s the Wayback Machine version of my old blog. So you’ll have to pardon the occasional missing graphics and many dead links. Surprisingly, though, many of the external links still work, particularly the ones to major news sites that keep their articles up for a very long time.
One thing that’s interesting about the old site is how much of what I wrote looks like the same stuff I’m posting about today. The same old red zone vs. blue zone conflict is there, still unresolved today. Now the fault line is even deeper, even starker, as the generations have aged. Even though the post-elder Silent generation is still around and still in power, they aren’t so much the compromisers that they used to be (look at the last post on Generation Watch to see what I mean with that), as simply delayers of whatever final reckoning we are headed to as a society.
On the old blog you can see me struggling to understand what was going on around me in the 2000s. I was trying to wrap my mind around the changes happening and fit them into an understanding of cycles of history. I was also less partisan blue zone back then; you can even detect that 9/11 had brought out a bit of a patriotic red zoner in me. The train wreck that was the Bush administration put an end to that.
Back in the early 2000s blogging itself was relatively new. It was an exciting time when we bloggers felt like we were an army of Davids taking on the Goliaths of the old media. We linked to one another’s blogs in “blogrolls” and talked up the “blogosphere” like it was this groundbreaking new form of discourse. Now all the attention has moved on to social media platforms and blogging seems old-fashioned, like it belongs to an earlier phase in the history of the Internet. But either way you get that exciting sense of group participation – on the Internet everyone is a contributor as well as a consumer.
In psychology there is the concept of “loss aversion.” In essence, people experience losses more painfully than missing out on equivalent gains. In other words, they experience losing $5 as a worse outcome than failing to gain $5, although in some sense, either way you are out $5. Loss aversion has been affirmed in studies and controlled experiments.
I think it has to do with the perception of ownership, that somehow when something you “own” is taken from you, you lose a part of yourself. That’s what makes it more painful. It has to do with the ego and how the sense of self expands to incorporate the material goods which we consider to be our “property.” That’s what attachment to material goods means, and why losing a material thing feel like losing a piece of ourselves, and having someone take it without our consent (“steal” from us) feels like an attack on our person.
I only put some words in quotes to underscore how it’s all a matter of perception, not to deny or denigrate property rights. It’s OK to own things.
What prompted this musing is that, this summer, I helped to clean up a hoarder’s house. He is an elderly man who spends all day sitting in one chair, watching TV, and just lets stuff, including junk mail and packaging, accumulate all around him. It’s like he is sitting on a mountain of junk, a King on his throne. Over the years, much junk has accumulated and filled all the space in the house. What we were doing to help was going through piles of possessions and sorting them, organizing them and picking things to throw out. But trying to be discretionary about it, rather than rudely throw out everything (which would have been a lot easier).
Rather than dwell on this man and his hoarding, I want to think a little about my own habits of material accumulation. I’ve already blogged about that time the water spirits destroyed my house, and the effort it took for me to move everything I “own” into my partner’s home. “Why do I have so much stuff?” I wondered. I own a lot of books, board games, and discs of movies and music, and like to think I have a curated collection of the best of the best, all worth keeping. I’m loathe to lose any of it.
When I moved into my partner’s home, it took some Tetris skills to fit all my junk stuff into her space. I fought to have a space for my games and books, but even then there was only so much room and some of it still boxed. Furnishings and utensils were sort of shoehorned into place amidst what she already owned, and a little bit of it even got donated to Goodwill. More probably could; there’s stuff we never use. And then there’s the weird thing with the clothing, where I have an entire wardrobe of business casual office wear that hasn’t seen use since March 2020. But I’m not sure if can get rid of it – what if the pandemic ends and I have to go back to the office?
I’ll say this about the stuff we never use: over time, the attachment fades. When I first moved it in, some random thing I brought was like a precious part of me. But now, if I discover something in a closet that hasn’t been used in a year, it feels less important. It’s just a piece of debris. But even then, to think of removing it from our lives feels like losing something of potential value. It’s painful, like picking off a scab. What King wants to lose even the smallest part of his Kingdom?
We all know from the Good Book that spiritual concerns should take precedence over material possessions. But in this consumerist age we can only forgive ourselves for our attachment to those material things which help define who we are.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Do you remember life before smart phones? I sometimes have a hard time imagining what it was like. I mean, I was there; I should know. We had to write down the directions to drive places, since we couldn’t just bring it up on our phones. We had to have our music collections in some sort of recorded format, like tapes or CDs, and keep them in the car. You couldn’t just look up any fact you wanted to know in an instant. But you did know a lot of other people’s telephone numbers.
My BFF tells me I’m too dependent on my phone now. My little pocket assistant. I get lost driving without it. I’ve tried to navigate on my own; to challenge myself to get somewhere without using Google maps. Usually that doesn’t work, and out comes the smart phone to rescue me.
It wasn’t always like this, but through the fog of time it’s hard for me to remember those ways of life, from even just fifteen years ago.
One thing I do remember is that back in the mid-2000s, when Web 2.0 was still new, I had a pretty good Internet presence, if I do say so myself. Granted, it was a Web 1.0 presence: a static vanity web site, a blog. I did a little bit of manual search engine optimization, editing the metadata on my static HTML pages in my text editor. It was good enough for us back in those days. A Google search of my name ca. 2006 would have had my pages on the top of the search results; I kid you not!
Today, that’s not likely. My Internet presence is lost in a sea of like named people, because everyone has a smart phone and multiple social media accounts now. I’m no microinfluencer, not even a nanoinfluencer. I never realized how many people with my name there are out there; I thought it was kind of unique. I was used to being the only “Barrera” in whatever social milieu I was in, outside of my family. Now that my social milieu is all of humanity on the Internet, I’m discovering that my name isn’t so unique after all.
It’s the same with usernames. Technically, I was on the Internet as far back as the 1980s, since I had user accounts and email addresses at Virginia Tech, where I went to college. I remember my email address was “[email protected].” For a long time after that, I was used to being “sbarrera” or “stevebarrera” whenever I signed up with a new account somewhere. But no more; those usernames are always taken on any major site. I have to come up with something clever, or settle for a username with a string of numbers at the end.
As the global population continues to soar and the Internet continues to gobble up civilization, how will we have usernames for everyone? We’ll all end up named with numbers at the end, like in a dystopian sci-fi society. Like THX 1138. The future is here, I guess.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the Internet. I spend most of my waking time there. I’ve been fascinated by computers since I was a teenager, and chose computer work for my professional life. I’ve been on the world wide web since the beginning, and always had fun with it. The Internet is where I live; it’s surely where I’ll die. It’s always in our pockets, part of the background of life.
We’re still watching “The Sopranos,” and are now into Season 3. This is the season that features the iconic “Pine Barrens” episode. It’s also the last pre-9/11 season, still containing a brief shot of the Twin Towers (in a sideview mirror of Tony’s SUV) during the opening credits. This shot was removed from the credits in the later seasons.
As we watch the episodes, it makes me feel nostalgic for old times. I can’t help but identify with these wise guys and their partying lifestyle. Their camaraderie and their gusto for life reminds me of my circles of friends back in the day, back when I was young and carefree. And a fool, no doubt, though not as dumb as some of the young men on this show who come to terrible ends. I knew the limits.
We didn’t live anything like the characters on The Sopranos, except maybe in our imaginations. I mean, we skirted the law in some ways, and we were rough around the edges. We surely used the same crass language. But some really awful stuff happens on this show; I get that this gangster lifestyle of extortion and murder is not to be celebrated. Yet somehow watching these guys evokes nostalgia for the smoke-filled dens of my wayward youth.
Maybe it’s just how well this show represents its social era, with its looser mores, and inevitably takes me back to life then, when I was younger and had different priorities. When I was a bachelor man and spent a lot of time hanging with the gang. Before mid-life hit and everyone moved on. The old groups have scattered; some of us got married and had kids and became responsible. Some of us moved to far away places to pursue new dreams. Some of us died. I sure miss them.
These episodes that we’re now watching were originally broadcast twenty years ago. Twenty freakin’ years ago! Where does the time go? All too quickly it passes by.
It hasn’t come up much on my blog, but I am actually really into board gaming. It’s odd that I don’t blog about it; maybe I don’t want to mix business and pleasure, I don’t know. But anyway, I have been blogging about these coronavirus times, and how life has changed so much this past year. And one way that it’s changed from my board gaming hobby perspective is that I have fewer opportunities to sit down for tabletop gaming sessions. I haven’t been to a gaming convention since January!
So one way to compensate for that lack of real life gaming is to play digital versions of favorite games. I don’t mean video games; I mean computer programs that simulate board games, and there are actually quite a few good ones. You can play online against other people, or you can play a “local” game – meaning no network required – against the computer itself. You play against simulated “A.I. player” opponents.
Which takes me to the topic of this post, which is the quality of the A.I. opponents. What I have found is that for some games they are very good, and for others – not so much. Some games I win against the A.I.s every time, and others it’s more 50/50. Now there are two possible explanations for this: 1) I am better at some games than at others or 2) the A.I.s are programmed better for some games than for others.
I stole this graphic from a book about A.I. game programming.
It seems obvious that it’s a bit of both. But then you have to wonder, in the case of both explanations: why?
Is there something about my cognitive psychology that makes some game designs or mechanics easier for me to figure out than others? It honestly seems that way to me. I generally do well at board games, but there are some that I struggle with compared to others. There are some that I have never won playing against other humans, even though I have won against those same people at other games. I’m sure that other board gamers understand the experience. So there must be some correlation between how my intellect works and what sorts of games I am good at.
As for the programmed A.I.s, well, there are two possibilities to consider. It could be that some games are inherently easier to program A.I. players for than others, and it could be that some programmers or programming teams made a better effort at the A.I. programming than others. Let’s face it, these projects have limited timelines and bugdgets, and if the programmers only made the A.I. so good before release day, that’s just the level of A.I. that everyone will have to live with.
A screenshot from Terraforming Mars, one of my favorite digital board games and one where I always beat the A.I.s.
If some games are easier to program A.I.s for than others, then the next question is – what are the parameters that make for a game that can be mastered by A.I.? Probably the most famous example of such a game is Chess: it’s common knowledge that a computer program beat a world Chess champion, back in 1997. And it just keeps getting worse for the humans. Another game that humans might as well retire from is Go.
Now, Chess and Go are both games that are simple in their rules, but strategically very deep. They also have no random elements, meaning all possible future paths of a game are determined, given the current game state. Computers have an innate advantage over humans in these sorts of games in that they have much more capacity for information storage, which allows for plotting ahead many moves – pretty much the key to winning these kinds of games.
The board games that I prefer have more complicated rules, generally because they are simulating some real life scenario like exploration and development, or world-building. They are what we call heavily thematic games. And they have some randomization to them – typically a deck of cards that are shuffled and dealt out, or drafted, to the players. This means the outcome isn’t deterministic, and there is some luck involved. You can have an advantage by chance, not just because of superior information processing ability.
But you would think that, even then, the A.I.’s would reign supreme. They just have to include the stochastic factor of the game in their algorithms. The only advantage humans should have might come from intuition – the old ‘gut feeling’ that might be able to predict, or even influence, random outcomes. This is a tantalizing possibility based on the idea of primacy of consciousness, but I won’t get into it any further in this post.
Now another thing about Chess and Go is that they are both games where you can be ranked compared to other players. If you are lower ranked than another player, you pretty much have no chance to beat them at the game. Improving your rank requires much practice. This is because of how strategically deep these games are.
The board games I like really aren’t as deep, despite being more complex in terms of total rules. I wonder if it would ever make sense to have rankings for such games; the closest thing to that would be win rates and high scores as tracked on the online gaming platforms. But those statistics alone don’t constitute a ranking in the Chess sense; they aren’t as strong a predictor of who would win a game, in part because of the random element.
Probably ranking systems for all these different board games won’t emerge, because there just isn’t as broad an interest in them as there is in classics like Chess and Go. And probably no A.I. will ever be programmed that plays them perfectly, to prove once and for all how inferior humans are. No one will bother to take the time, given how many of these board games there are and how niche they are.
Maybe when the Singularity comes, the A.I. net will finally get around to mastering every known board game, and put us humans in our place. Hopefully it will let us play against “dumbed down” A.I.s as we while away our pointless lives in our soylent green pods. It will help to pass the time.
Outside she goes, to explore the planet of the Covidiots. They volunteered her because she’s such a good observer.
***
I worry when she’s gone. The world is plague-ridden and full of hostiles. But at least I have a tracking device with which I can monitor her progress from headquarters.
***
The device in question is our Android smartphones running Trusted Contacts, which lets us always see one another in Google Maps.
***
I had long resisted getting any kind of tracking software for my phone, counting on loved ones to report their location if ever needed. But then my partner got a job as an enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau. Knowing that she was going out and knocking repeatedly on strangers’ doors, in a country that has suffered an implosion of trust (and never much trusted in government, ever), changed the equation. Suddenly getting tracking software became an imperative.
First we tried Waze, but found the interface difficult. Not to mention I couldn’t see her on the map even though I connected to my Facebook contacts. The app isn’t really made specifically for tracking individuals. But then her son suggested Google’s Trusted Contacts, which integrates easily with our Google accounts, as well as Google software like Maps. It requires mutual agreement between two account holders, and then one can see the location of the other in real time.
Now I can see her as she moves about the area. Since her profile picture on Google Accounts is a sunflower, I see her as a flower floating about town. It’s reassuring to watch her moving in the expected pattern, because I can take that to mean everything is fine.
To her, I would just be a floating head at home base, since I am a privileged stay-at-home worker, not an essential worker like she is. From where I sit, life is safe and comfortable. She is out braving the dangers of post-apocalyptic America, but at least I can keep an eye on her.
***
So I wait into the evening, watching her on my screen. And have dinner waiting for her return, to her one safe haven in this ravaged land.
The culmination of years of events has finally come to pass – I am now officially moved in with my BFF in Morgantown, PA. Depending on how much you have followed my blog and whether or not you know me IRL, you may have been watching the story unfold.
First, she came to visit me from Pennsylvania while I was living in North Carolina. Then we started visiting each other frequently and travelling together, and a new phase of our lives began. I went up and met her kids for the first time; they were boys age 10 and 13. She came down and met my tabletop gaming buddies. She even brought the kids with her sometimes, and they all joined me at gaming conventions.
Sometimes I would go up to see her, and sometimes she would come down to see me. And we went on a lot of fun trips together. She took me on my first trip to New York City, and to my first Broadway show. We’ve seen so many shows since then; I’ve basically become her theater buddy. And since she’s a director, I got to see a lot of her shows. I became her number one fan.
We travelled to Chicago every summer for G-Fest along with the boys’ Dad, who is also my friend. This was a tradition with them since the boys were even younger, and my joining them was part of the process of being enfolded into their family. But I wasn’t completely enfolded yet, since I was still living in North Carolina. The distance between us was kind of fun at first, since it was exciting to see each other again after an absence of a couple of weeks. But the travelling got tedious. It was a seven hour drive between our houses. Flying was an option, too, since we could get cheap tickets on Frontier Airlines, but even that has its inconveniences.
Then, a few years ago, some Water Spirits came and trashed my house, teaching me a lesson about the relative importance of material things, but also helping me to realize what a spoiled bear I am. Some months later my job in North Carolina came to an end. It was starting to look like the Universe was sending me a message. I went up into the mountains to watch a solar eclipse and ponder my next course in life.
I started looking for work in Pennsylvania, so that I could move closer to my BFF and her family. I enjoyed my last months in North Carolina boardgaming with my buddies and performing with my choir. Then I landed a position in Wilmington, DE and in a whirlwind five weeks got an apartment in West Chester, PA and moved on up. My recently renovated house quickly sold, and I’m pretty sure the buyer re-did all the work that the insurance company paid for.
The apartment was expensive and the commute to Wilmington was a pain. It made sense for me to eventually move in with her family, though I would have to find a new job first that would put me closer to her house. I have to admit I was dragging my feet. I have a lot of stuff and I like to control my personal space. It would be a big change for me to move in with someone for good, after more than a decade of living alone.
I did get a new job, which took care of the commuting problem. And then along came a little thing called the novel coronavirus. Suddenly I was working from home, and it only made sense for me to be doing this from my BFF’s house. I brought my essential things over and hunkered down with her. The apartment languished, unused.
As we got used to the routine of living together and sharing her house, it was obvious that I should just complete the move. There was a little wrangling over how we would use the space and where my stuff would end up. I mostly fought to have a place to shelve all my books and boardgames – that carefully curated collection I’ve built up over my many years. Figuring out how to share space is just part of the hard work of building a lasting relationship.
The big move happened last week, and all that’s left now is to clean up the apartment and collect a few final possessions. The lease expires soon. As for my new commute – well, I’m not sure when that will start up. Pennsylvania is loosening coronavirus restrictions, but I haven’t heard anything about going back to the office. So I’ll be here in Morgantown for the foreseeable future.
It’s been a long trip to get to this stage of my life. Along the way I’ve done a lot with my BFF, and our relationship has bloomed. I’ve joined her family and I’ve watched her boys grow up – her eldest is in college now, and has a car, a job, and a girlfriend! And it’s good that I’m living with her now, considering that she needs support at a time when her industry – theater – is so troubled.
It’s also good that we got so much travelling done during the past six years, considering that we’re likely to be homebound for a long while to come. I’m just glad that home is here now, with my girl.
Books and games waiting to be unpacked in the office.
It’s been six weeks in lockdown. Except for cashiers at the grocery store and a few curbside pickups of take out food, I haven’t interacted face-to-face in real life with anyone other than family. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t socialized. Like many of us shuttered in at home, I have videoconferenced – both for business and pleasure – using the software that has suddenly taken over our lives: Zoom.
So far I’ve attended a couple of hangouts with old friends, one of which was a surprise birthday party. I’ve been to happy hours with my work colleagues – and yes, we are welcome to have a drink. It’s nice to see the faces of my coworkers after a week of working online from home. I’ve also particicpated in a couple of script-readings for the eldest son’s script analysis class (put together by his attentive mother), including one where we were Zoombombed by professional actors.
Ok, we weren’t really Zoombombed, because the participants were invited. Ok, at work we actually use different software. I just mean to stick a label on this phenomenon where our socializing has abruptly moved into the digital space, as the Internet proceeds to the next phase of its complete takeover of our lives. We’re all Zoomers now.
It’s been fun figuring out the finer points of Zoom. Gallery view is best for a general conversation, but active speaker is good for the script reading. If you have a lot of participants, you can scroll through them to catch late arrivals, and make sure they get welcomed. And don’t forget about the chat option!
I do find that an online video hangout satisfies the need for social interaction. It feels like a change of scenery, and it alleviates the cabin fever. Good thing, because we don’t want this Sim’s mood to drop too low. Now if I could just get my virtual background to work…
I remember back when 2019 was coming to an end, and everyone on social media was posting retrospectives of the 2010s. There was this exciting sense of being there for the end of an era. I even participated by Tweeting a list of my favorite streaming shows, since I saw the rise of streaming on-demand television as the decade’s big story in the media and entertainment space.
When 2020 began, I had plans already lined up to hit the many travel destinations I like to visit periodically. I don’t know why, but I felt this compulsion to do it all as soon as I could. It was like I wanted to start the new decade right.
I went down to North Carolina, where I used to live, and attended a gaming convention with my BFF. That was in January. In February, we went to Washington, D.C. and visited my mother and sister. We also went to New York and saw two shows, as well her best friend from high school days. By then, the novel coronavirus was in the headlines.
At the very end of the month, I went down to Virginia to play Magic: The Gathering with old friends that I have been playing with since the 1990s. It was a fun get together after a year apart. We were making jokes about the coronavirus.
As March began, I looked forward to the high school theater season starting up, since my BFF and I attend performances as part of the Philadelphia Independence Awards. By then, the severity of the novel coronavirus contagion was becoming apparent. There was talk of shutdowns. The company where I work had a WFH day as a drill.
We ended up seeing one Independence Award show, and it was a dress rehearsal because the actual performances were cancelled. The last large gathering we attended was a funeral. We thought about maybe not going, but we wanted to pay our respects to a friend who had died tragically at too young an age. The funeral was attended by hundreds of people.
Since then we’ve been in lockdown, only leaving the house for grocery runs, or to go on walks in the neighborhood. Everyone at my office is working from home. I know that I am very lucky to have that opportunity, because many others are out of work and with no prospects.
All that travel and activity in the recent past seems like it might have been too risky. Especially the trip to New York. We actually came down with colds when we got back from there. Did we have it? I don’t think so, but we can’t be sure.
What now? The future looks ominous. I had all these ideas for blog posts lined up, but now they don’t seem relevant. Everything changed so fast. I’m glad I got all that travelling in at the start of the year, since it looks like that might be the last of it for the year. Personal, private life will be slower for awhile, even as events in the outside world move faster and faster.
I’ve finished another book, a relatively quick read, taking me to 2 out of 20 books completed in my 2020 reading challenge. I just might get it done!
The book was Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson, a brief treatise on innovation. I left a short review on Goodreads. but wanted to blog about something interesting I learned during my read.
A commonplace book from the mid 17th century
As part of the history of genius inventors, and of how information is organized and shared among them, Johnson covers the history of the commonplace book. This was a way for private individuals to compile knowledge, particularly popular in the early modern period. It was basically a loosely organized collection of notes. Typically it would be one volume, but it might take a lifetime to fill it, becoming a kind of jumbled encyclopedia with a personal touch.
There were even methods devised for the best way to organize the information, so that it could be found easily, but wasn’t too restrictively compartmentalized. The idea was that a freer arrangement could help reveal connections between different subject matters, allowing new concepts to emerge.
I realized that I have actually been following this practice my whole life. I’ve just been keeping smaller notebooks, to the point that I have piles of them now. Inside there are notes from reading books, as well as ideas for stories and games and world settings, all jumbled together. Sometimes I go back through them to revisit old ideas and ruminate more on them.
Some of my “commonplace” notebooks.
So that was a cool thing to get out of this read, the knowledge that I have been following a time-honored practice shared by scholarly types of centuries past. In fact, nowadays, most of us probably do, if only in the form of bookmarked web pages! So much to know about the world, and yet so much that remains undiscovered.
