Year of the Metal Ox
50 Years of Future Shock, A Deconstructed Western & Dinosaurs in the Sahara
Happy Year of the Metal Ox
It’s a few days into the Lunar New Year, and I hope this finds you warm, well, and full of dumplings. If you’re reading this on Thursday, it is technically the seventh day of the New Year, "Human Day" (人日), the day when in ancient Chinese mythology the creation goddess Nüwa (女娲) made the first humans out of yellow clay because she was lonely. During these times of increased isolation, I think many of us can relate. With travel on hold, I have felt particularly far away from my friends in greater China this entire year and a wave of nostalgia for CNY’s past has hit hard this week. I went digging for some photos of the *last* time the Year of the Ox rolled around, which was January 2009 when I lived in Beijing and experienced the full, explosive exuberance of nonstop fireworks throughout the city for 15 days. It was an especially pyromaniacal few weeks, as exemplified by the rooftop fireworks display that accidentally set the Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV tower ablaze (which I watched from the backseat of a taxi stalled on the third ring road). By the following holiday regulations were more strictly enforced, which was obviously a good idea, but I will always think back to the sheer hazardous joy of that holiday season’s omni-directional fireworks, the simultaneous terror and catharsis. (Perhaps what I'm really saying is that I miss youth.) Scroll down to the end for a sonic snapshot from those days.
Recent Writing
I wrote a piece for The Atlantic about the allure of "pop futurist" books, the way the genre has evolved, and how it reflects changes in the futures industry as a whole. This is one thread of a larger research project charting how the future became a cultural concept and a commercial industry, and all its complex feedback loops with capitalism and geopolitics.
Inspired in part by my love-hate relationship with Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" from 1970, which I first encountered at a garage sale in my 80s childhood, I wanted to revisit the book on its 50th anniversary and its far-reaching but sometimes invisible legacy. The massive success of "Future Shock" spawned a cottage industry which have continued to evolve along with the concerns of the time but for too long was the echo chamber of primarily white, Western, male voices, and the assumptions of a corporate, profit-driven world view. As the futures field transforms, that's changing, as is the "pop futurist" book and its concerns. Last year saw a record number of releases exploring the terrain in new ways & I survey some promising directions through just a few titles (there are many more!)
One of the unexpected delights of this piece finally coming out was that many friends sent me snapshots of vintage editions of “Future Shock” they had in their personal libraries! Scroll down for Nicolas Nova’s photo of his mother’s original French edition (merci Mme Nova!), Angie Baecker’s 1985 Chinese edition (and follow the amazing Pinyinist Instagram account for more vintage Chinese books), and the first Japanese edition (which I don’t own but someday would love to). There is much more to be said about the international spread of “Future Shock” and the Tofflers’ work, particularly in China (an excellent introduction is this 2019 article by Julian Gewirtz in the Journal of Asian Studies).
Etc:
Read my article here - if you hit the Atlantic paywall, let me know and I can send it to you
Listen to a short playlist I put together of “Future Shock”-related songs, including the Curtis Mayfield hit, the James Brown take, and some other more recent and random tracks
Watch the full “Future Shock” documentary from 1972, narrated by Orson Welles, which feels so quaint to revisit but also like a major unacknowledged influence on Adam Curtis.
There was *also* a short-lived James Brown-hosted Soul Train-esque dance TV show called “Future Shock” of which only a few recordings exist - this one luckily features James Brown in a shirtless/vest ensemble that’s pretty epic.
Also in the course of writing this I discovered that the fashion labels APC x Braindead collaborated on a Future Shock-inspired capsule collection in 2019 that claims to be an homage to the “movie” - not the book? As designer and appalling Sinophobe Jean Touitou said: “the general idea behind the Interaction line was not only to revisit the Brain Dead logo, but also to play with a movie entitled Future Shock.” I’m curious if this was licensed through the Toffler estate and/or if they care?
Event on Clubhouse
Tomorrow (2/19) I will also be on Clubhouse to chat about the article and the weird legacy of “Future Shock”! I’ll be joining Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith of Changeist (whose book “How to Future” I covered in my piece) for their semi-regular meetup of some very thoughtful futures-leaning folk. **If you want to join but aren’t on Clubhouse, email me and I can share an invite code**
Friday, Feb 19, 9am PST / 12pm EST / 6pm CET
Perhaps like many people, I am still fairly agnostic about Clubhouse. I think it’s no better or worse perhaps than any other for-profit platform, and was genuinely moved by the (extremely brief) window it provided for some cross-Great Firewall dialogue among diverse Chinese and diaspora speakers a few weeks ago (see this nice thread of reflections by Lokman Tsui). Whether it’s Clubhouse or something else, I think there is interesting potential value in the grey area between “conference call”, “Zoom lecture/panel”, and “podcast/radio”. An ephemeral audio, low-stakes, high-serendipity-of-discovery, participation-optional experience that is mobile-first so that it’s easy to set it playing while you're walking or cooking or whatever (*which is something I’ve recently discovered even Instagram Live doesn’t allow; it turns off if you put your phone in your pocket or the screen goes dark, etc). I also liked the more conceptual observations by Zeynep Tufekci in her latest newsletter about apps like Clubhouse as a throwback to much older traditions of human oral culture: “The shift from orality—the basic human condition—to literacy changed everything about our epistemology and our culture.” Personally, I will also be intrigued to see if/when Clubhouse develops its own “weird” uses, a la Weird Twitter or Amalia Ulman’s Instagram performances. If you see any emergent examples of “Weird Clubhouse”, do let me know!
Reading/Watching/Listening
🎥 I loved my friend Anna Kerrigan’s new film “Cowboys”, which just released on streaming platforms for rental. The tale of a father and his child (who is trans) on the run, it’s a beautiful, textured Western that deconstructs the genre and the complex codes of masculinity, all within the stunning landscape of Montana’s Glacier National Park. Watch the trailer here, and read an interview with Anna about the film’s inspiration and her process here.
🎨 I hope to write much more soon about the Hong Kong based multi-hyphenate Tiffany Sia’s incredible new book “Too Salty Too Wet 更咸更濕” ; in the meantime, she has a related exhibition “Slippery When Wet” that just opened at Artists’ Space. View it in person in NYC or online here (one of the nicest “browser-based” approximations of a show I have seen in a while)
📚 📚📚 “Nomads are also keeping an eye on the dinosaurs, periodically texting [the paleontologist] with updates." Of all the strange ripple effects of the coronavirus, one I can safely say I never thought about until just now is the huge treasure-trove of dinosaur bones stranded in the Sahara due to the pandemic. This is a fantastic story by Danielle Paquette for Washington Post about what’s at stake for Niger with this priceless find, ie. where paleontology meets postcolonialism, and also how scientists keep dinosaur bones safe in the middle of the desert. [Note: I would so watch the movie of this. Why aren’t there more postcolonial archaeology movies/series? I also read this 2013 article recently about the controversial Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass that got me thinking about this woefully underexplored genre]
A wonderful thread about Denis Johnson’s writing guidance from one of his former students, including this PDF of quotes he would share with his classes. Some are
An appreciation of the Japanese photobook by photographer Leo Rubinfien: “I was fascinated by their grainy black and searing white, their howling angles and resolute honesty. I somehow knew that they meant to say what Japan really was, and were making cameras, which had once arrived on Western ships, yield a profoundly Japanese poetry.”
My favorite tea expert Charlene Wang was on KCRW discussing colonialism and tea, branching off of her reflective piece for Whetstone Magazine.
Critic Stephen Kearse gives a terrific overview of N.K. Jemisin’s worldmaking in speculative fiction. Kearse also wrote “Retriever”, one of my favorite short stories of last year - imagining a near-future America where gun-buyback legislation has come to pass, and the individuals that risk their lives to carry it out. Read “Retriever” on Plotter Magazine.
The great Joanne McNeil profiles the great Patricia Lockwood. There are so many good details in here that only Joanne could pick up (eg. that Lockwood used to mark her dream publications to write for with a *bloody fingerprint* in her copy of the Market Guide for Young Writers)
An investigation of Apple Beige, the color of the computers of my childhood
Listening
🎧 A New (Niu) Year mixtape by old pal Josh Feola w Krish Raghav of indie sounds from around China
Wishing you a healthy, bright, expansive, regenerative Year of the Metal Ox 🐂 full of laughter, love, and dazzling light. Let the fireworks sweep away all bad luck (without actually setting anything on fire),
shc
(Sound on for video: 💥💥💥 ringing in the Year of the Earth Ox in Beijing, January 2009)