The way Salima found out that Boulangism had gone bankrupt: her toaster wouldnt accept her bread. She held the slice in front of it and waited for the screen to show her a thumbs-up emoji, but instead, it showed her the head-scratching face and made a soft brrt. She waved the bread again. Brrt.
Come on. Brrt.
She turned the toaster off and on. Then she unplugged it, counted to ten, and plugged it in. Then she menued through the screens until she found RESET TO FACTORY DEFAULT, waited three minutes, and punched her Wi-Fi password in again.
Brrt.
. . .
The toaster wasnt the first appliance to go (that honor went to the dishwasher, which stopped being able to validate third-party dishes the week before when Disher went under), but it was the last straw. She could wash dishes in the sink but how the hell was she supposed to make toastover a candle?
Just to be sure, she asked the fridge for headlines about Boulangism, and there it was, their cloud had burst in the night. Socials crawling with people furious about their daily bread. She prodded a headline and learned that Boulangism had been a ghost ship for at least six months because thats how long security researchers had been contacting the company to tell it that all its user datapasswords, log-ins, ordering and billing detailshad been hanging out there on the public internet with no password or encryption. There were ransom notes in the database, records inserted by hackers demanding cryptocurrency payouts in exchange for keeping the dirty secret of Boulangisms ****ty data handling. No one had even seen them.
The Boulangism cloud had burst and that meant that there was no one answering Salimas toaster when it asked if the bread she was about to toast had come from an authorized Boulangism baker, which it had. In the absence of a reply, the paranoid little gadget would assume that Salima was in that class of nefarious fraudsters who bought a discounted Boulangism toaster and then tried to renege on her end of the bargain by inserting unauthorized bread, which had consequences ranging from kitchen fires to suboptimal toast (Boulangism was able to adjust its toasting routine in realtime to adjust for relative kitchen humidity and the age of the bread, and of course it would refuse to toast bread that had become unsalvageably stale), to say nothing of the loss of profits for the company and its shareholders. Without those profits, thered be no surplus capital to divert to R&D, creating the continuous improvement that meant that hardly a day went by without Salima and millions of other Boulangism stakeholders (never just customers) waking up with exciting new firmware for their beloved toasters.
-- Edited by dorian on Saturday 12th of June 2021 08:05:29 AM
Woody Allen is brilliant. I must buy his ebooks. These look like good reads -- Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Mere Anarchy.
Santa said
09:16 AM Jun 12, 2021
Art, ethics and philosophy, an interesting area, should an artists morals/ethics be taken into account when considering their work or are they two separate aspects of life that have little or no bearing on each other?
dorian said
09:42 AM Jun 12, 2021
Santa wrote:
Art, ethics and philosophy, an interesting area, should an artists morals/ethics be taken into account when considering their work or are they two separate aspects of life that have little or no bearing on each other?
That's a can of worms. Sometimes I can accept the person's work without being influenced by their morals/ethics, but other times I can't. Ideally the work should be evaluated on its own merits.
Santa said
06:32 PM Jun 12, 2021
I suspect moral outrage diminishes as the value/popularity of the artists/performers work increases.
Many of the impressionists were far from paragons of virtue, similar with pop music stars, seems the more outrageous/immoral the personal life the greater the popularity.
My feelings are similar to yours Dorian, an artists work and personal life are separate entities and should be treated as such.
dorian said
04:16 AM Jun 13, 2021
Actually, I'm now testing myself by reading Mein Kampf.
Mike Harding said
02:36 PM Jun 13, 2021
Unless one can define "art" then unarguably beauty and art are in the eye of the beholder and the moral values of the individual who produced it are totally irrelevant.
Would we decry the output of a Chippendale cabinet maker because he beat his wife? I'll answer my question: no we would not.
Many times over the years have I had this discussion/argument with people of artistic persuasion: I can define engineering and science but they are never able to define "art".
Bob Dylan was recently, and very properly, awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature but, if one is to believe reports, he is an unlike-able individual.
My understanding is that Gandhi was most unreasonable with his wife and family yet his humanitarian value is undeniable.
The deed and the person should be subject to separate judgements.
peter67 said
05:23 PM Jun 13, 2021
Or not judged at all, as is the case.
bgt said
06:57 PM Jun 13, 2021
Art is full of double standards. Moral or subjective.
E.g.. Rolf Harris was proclaimed an artist. Now no one will touch his art. So what changed? The art? The person? Or was it a double standard where we can judge both art and/or artist to suit our mood? Harris isn't the only artist to wander off the rails. So why was he judged as he has been?
I'm a semi pro photographer. I follow various forums and groups. "What is art" has been asked for centuries.
Mike Harding said
07:22 PM Jun 13, 2021
bgt wrote:
"What is art" has been asked for centuries.
And that inability to define, I argue, proves my point.
This looks like a really thought provoking book, a beacon of our times (Cory Doctorow's "Radicalized"):
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/
The way Salima found out that Boulangism had gone bankrupt: her toaster wouldnt accept her bread. She held the slice in front of it and waited for the screen to show her a thumbs-up emoji, but instead, it showed her the head-scratching face and made a soft brrt. She waved the bread again. Brrt.
Come on. Brrt.
She turned the toaster off and on. Then she unplugged it, counted to ten, and plugged it in. Then she menued through the screens until she found RESET TO FACTORY DEFAULT, waited three minutes, and punched her Wi-Fi password in again.
Brrt.
. . .
The toaster wasnt the first appliance to go (that honor went to the dishwasher, which stopped being able to validate third-party dishes the week before when Disher went under), but it was the last straw. She could wash dishes in the sink but how the hell was she supposed to make toastover a candle?
Just to be sure, she asked the fridge for headlines about Boulangism, and there it was, their cloud had burst in the night. Socials crawling with people furious about their daily bread. She prodded a headline and learned that Boulangism had been a ghost ship for at least six months because thats how long security researchers had been contacting the company to tell it that all its user datapasswords, log-ins, ordering and billing detailshad been hanging out there on the public internet with no password or encryption. There were ransom notes in the database, records inserted by hackers demanding cryptocurrency payouts in exchange for keeping the dirty secret of Boulangisms ****ty data handling. No one had even seen them.
The Boulangism cloud had burst and that meant that there was no one answering Salimas toaster when it asked if the bread she was about to toast had come from an authorized Boulangism baker, which it had. In the absence of a reply, the paranoid little gadget would assume that Salima was in that class of nefarious fraudsters who bought a discounted Boulangism toaster and then tried to renege on her end of the bargain by inserting unauthorized bread, which had consequences ranging from kitchen fires to suboptimal toast (Boulangism was able to adjust its toasting routine in realtime to adjust for relative kitchen humidity and the age of the bread, and of course it would refuse to toast bread that had become unsalvageably stale), to say nothing of the loss of profits for the company and its shareholders. Without those profits, thered be no surplus capital to divert to R&D, creating the continuous improvement that meant that hardly a day went by without Salima and millions of other Boulangism stakeholders (never just customers) waking up with exciting new firmware for their beloved toasters.
-- Edited by dorian on Saturday 12th of June 2021 08:05:29 AM
Woody Allen doing stand-up in the 1960s - he has the right attitude to difficult appliances...
Art, ethics and philosophy, an interesting area, should an artists morals/ethics be taken into account when considering their work or are they two separate aspects of life that have little or no bearing on each other?
That's a can of worms. Sometimes I can accept the person's work without being influenced by their morals/ethics, but other times I can't. Ideally the work should be evaluated on its own merits.
I suspect moral outrage diminishes as the value/popularity of the artists/performers work increases.
Many of the impressionists were far from paragons of virtue, similar with pop music stars, seems the more outrageous/immoral the personal life the greater the popularity.
My feelings are similar to yours Dorian, an artists work and personal life are separate entities and should be treated as such.
Unless one can define "art" then unarguably beauty and art are in the
eye of the beholder and the moral values of the individual who
produced it are totally irrelevant.
Would we decry the output of a Chippendale cabinet maker because he
beat his wife? I'll answer my question: no we would not.
Many times over the years have I had this discussion/argument with
people of artistic persuasion: I can define engineering and science
but they are never able to define "art".
Bob Dylan was recently, and very properly, awarded a Nobel Prize for
Literature but, if one is to believe reports, he is an unlike-able
individual.
My understanding is that Gandhi was most unreasonable with his wife
and family yet his humanitarian value is undeniable.
The deed and the person should be subject to separate judgements.
And that inability to define, I argue, proves my point.