If you ever want to backup your website (or any other internet-accessible files), and assuming you have access to the UNIX command line shell on the host machine, rsync is the way to go. According to it’s homepage, rsync is “an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer.” In other words, it is the perfect tool for quickly copying a large number of files from one place to another. It can tunnel its data through ssh, which is generally considered de rigueur for security on the net, and is quite fast (particularly when making backups, as it only [incrementally] transfers the data that has changed since the last transfer).

To use rsync, you will need to log in to the machine you are trying to preserve (preferably using ssh for safety’s sake). Then, type something like this:

rsync -avz -e ssh relative/path/to/dir user@11.11.11.111:/remote/target/folder

When typing this UNIX incantation to invoke rsync, you will need to have at hand

• the location of the files or folders you want to send [indicated here as "relative/path/to/dir"],
• your backup machine’s IP address (or domain name [for example: "11.11.11.111"]),
• a user account name on that machine ["user"],
• the appropriate password (which rsync will ask you in a few seconds after you hit “return”, assuming you do not have some better way of making the two computers trust each other over ssh),
• and the full path of where you want to put the backup files ["/remote/target/folder"].

(Replace the information in [brackets] with the real stuff or you will be out of luck!)

Remember to include that pesky at sign (@) between the remote username and remote machine address, as well as the even-easier-to-overlook colon (:) between that address and the data’s destination path. Also, don’t put any slashes (/) at the end of these locations, even if you are sending folders instead of files (rsync has no trouble with folders; you don’t have to compress the directory with zip or tar before sending it).

Here is the command line template as a (hopefully better annotated) flashcard, fully suitable for framing:

(My thanks to Greg for making this image suitable for public distribution and for contributing a good chunk of the explanatory language.)

One of the striking things about the packing was how many of the things which I had, in years gone by, thought absolutely essential, are now instead essentially (if not absolutely) obsolete. Like so many people, I have been assimilated into iTunes over the past few years, and almost never actually now listen to the physical CDs that have provided the high-quality source material for my computer’s digital library (almost none of the files in my iTunes collection are mp3s from the internet, and I have not yet purchased a song from the iTunes Music Store). Instead, these dusty discs are, in essence, archival masters for my real, working music library, which is interfaced exclusively virtually, i.e., through my computer and iPod.

As I am boxing up the CDs (over 700 of them, which is a lot of atoms, even if these discs are “compact”), I am thinking about how they used to sit in bookcases of their own in days gone by, proudly stored and displayed in the living room (except for those random ones that ended up scattered frustratingly around the house). Now the discs are packed away in boxes and will be sent, as it were, to the closed stacks; as I pack them up for the move, I know they will never need to be unpacked and re-shelved.¹

The same process of dematerialization is increasingly transforming my video collection. Over the past couple of years, I have gotten into the routine of carrying newly-purchased DVDs to my study (where the computer currently resides), ripping the discs into divx format, and storing the resultant files on hard disks (it costs about a quarter per movie right now, but has been dropping steadily since I started the process). Although I have, over the past couple of years, been burning these divx files onto DVD+RW discs that can be played in my DVD player, or, when on the road, viewed directly from my Powerbook’s own hard disk, I have been intending all this time to buy a cheap Mac to use as a media center, so I could bring the movies, along with the albums, back into my living room — but now in virtual (bits, not atoms) form. I will probably use this move as an excuse to do that. So, several bookcases of bulky, atom-rich CDs and DVDs, along with the ancient CD player and several even-more aged VCRs (both VHS and circa-1986 Betamax) will be replaced by the three pounds and 84 cubic inches of a Mac Mini.²

Commodity Fetishism

Oddly enough, there are several, very heavy, boxes of media that I do intend to re-shelve and store long-term in a prominent position in my new living room: the LPs. These ancient record albums may spin at a tenth the speed of the CDs, and are read with a rather primitive needle (at least on my twenty-year-old turntable) instead of a laser, but they definitely have fetish value. The packaging is neat, the objects themselves bring haptic pleasure, and the very obsoleteness itself is now a virtue. Of course, CDs occasionally have interesting booklets, but most of the time they feature just a track list and, perhaps, a couple of tiny pictures. DVDs are better; some of them have better packaging, but the digital add-ons really distinguish that particular medium. Neither of these compares to the old LPs, though. To my mind, this is the key to staying in business as an atom-purveyor in an increasingly bits-centric world. For several years now, Music For Dozens has tried to capitalize on the fetish value of the physical commodity. Admittedly, we could do a much better job of this (particularly if our artists were to help us provide a bit more distinctive pack-in content), but we have always been aware that the physicality of our CDs has a real, underdeveloped, value (in addition to being, even today, the most cost-effective way to transfer high-quality uncompressed digital audio content to the consumer). Businesses and artists that still wish to move atoms had better be aware at this late date that unadorned cartons for bits — bulky shells for content which is already, or could easily be, digitized — are on the way to obsolescence.

Only by adding some sort of aura to the container itself, and preferably by reanimating its fetish value, can atom-bound commodities retain some real value. Let me explain what I mean here.³ Generally speaking, things have use value (some things more than others!). Yet, if use value were all there was to modern life, the USSR would still be in business (so to speak).

Next time you are in a Target store, check out the combs. (Bear with me here.) Notice how many there are, and how they are all a bit different? Attend to the peculiarities and details of the design, the variations of handle and tines. Now, how many different styles of comb do you need to move your hair around your scalp? Yet stores are full of different combs and brushes, in a myriad of colors and styles and materials, some even tied in with mass-marketing campaigns (with name brands connoting fashion and High Style, or, particularly in children’s products, themed in accordance to some mass-marketed narrative). If use value were primary, there would not be this diversity within the hair comb ecosystem, and the basic plastic model would be the only one available, merely costing something like a dime (there is little R&D on the basic comb design to recover at this point, and mass production’s economies of scale would take care of the rest just like nineteenth century theorists like Marx or Bellamy thought it would). Instead, our stores are filled with an abundance of consumer choice, and most combs actually cost several dollars. When we make that choice, we are, in fact, purchasing not simply a comb, but a hybrid product instead. That modern comb is, in essence, 10% material value (basic utilitarian design [long since amortized], materials, labor, transport, etc. — i.e., all the mundane infrastructure which is necessary to lend the item its use value) and 90% industrial design and marketing (trendy packaging, branding costs, the shapes and styles into which the materials are formed, etc. — all the physical attributes surplus to the use value). A designer had to come up with a unique and distinctive design for each particular model of comb, and an artist had to handle its packaging. We are, in other words, spending a dime for the comb and a couple of bucks for art every time we buy a seemingly innocuous consumer commodity. To put it in a rather more contemporary idiom, that comb is 10% atoms and 90% bits.

That’s how commodities today have hitched their stars to the aura in order to satisfy consumers, who, through their everyday purchasing choices, demand more than use value in their everyday lives. Indeed, this is how most of us, however unconsciously, get much of our daily artistic nourishment — through the industrial design of basic commodities. We are willing to pay a little premium (a few hundred percent, perhaps) for this surplus fetish value incorporated into our ordinary, ubiquitous things.

This fact is particularly true of commodities that are essentially merely containers for information, or bits. And this is also why the record labels were so scared about mp3s until Apple saved their shareholders’ collective ass[ets]. What is not often enough acknowledged, though, is that the move from LP to CD had already begun the dematerialization process almost twenty years before. Once a commodity is revealed as a mere storage medium for bits, with little additional fetish value, the physical container is essentially obsolete, whether anyone knows it at the time or not.

The neat thing about information commodities is that, thanks to the aura of the author, they combine use and fetish values together within the information itself. Enough art is intrinsic to the information content, and not the industrial design of the physical packaging (the disc itself, along with the fragile jewel-case and tiny booklet, for instance), that most people will gladly forgo the atoms in favor of the bits alone. This is why mp3s have taken off so rapidly — they don’t leave that much of importance behind when they dematerialize the information commodity from atoms to bits.

This is also, perhaps, why people will grudgingly accept having to spend some money for their mp3s. Both the record companies and the technocrati were surprised by the success of the iTunes Store in getting consumers to pay for use value they could still get pretty easily for free. The RIAA has certainly convinced themselves that it was their terrorism that brought the rabble into line, but in truth that crackdown was only a small part of the success.

Apple has simply sold the notion that iTunes digital tracks are themselves better than mp3s (another advantage of the proprietary format of the AAC DRM, despite the wrath of the Open Source community). Apple brought out the aura in the music file, recognizing that the use value has only negligible currency in a mass production society (which we have inhabited for more than a century).

In essence, Apple seems to have convinced a large segment of the public that some of the purchase price of their digital tracks goes not to basic use value — for which people are not, I think, willing to pay a premium in this day and age, and which the bootleg mp3 delivers fairly well for free — but to the artists themselves (whether that is indeed the case or not). For a long time consumers have been willing to pay a high price for art embedded within their commodities (otherwise generic black combs would dominate the store shelves). Apple merely provided their customers a way to tie the information-content back up with the artist’s aura encapsulated within a commodity. This is why iTunes looks like a consumer electronics interface instead of a computer program (which has always driven GUI experts mad, and justly so). Obviously, it is not just the little AAC file that we are talking about now; Apple found a much better way to ground the content’s aura into something truly tangible in the iTunes software experience. And, in turn, this virtual rematerialization is, of course, far surpassed in potency by the real rematerialization: The iPod. In all its sensuous material physicality, the iPod both contains and psychologically displaces the music file for consumers, transposing the simulated tactile interface of the iTunes software onto a device that really does fit perfectly in one’s hand. And, in so doing, Apple pulled off a miraculous sleight of hand as well. They magically transmuted the abstract (useful, but not inherently as valuable) digital file into a physical object which is positively oozing with surplus fetish value, and which can therefore be sold by the millions at a premium.

You can probably see now why I think the gradual transition from atoms to bits in our information-storage commodities — which, judging from my own house, apparently amount to perhaps half of our physical possessions (but maybe I have a higher proportion than most) — leaves the purveyors of atoms in something of a bind. Either they can themselves make the digital transition, and abandon all pretense of industrial design in favor of distributing unadorned use value (and collect perhaps a tenth the revenue), or they can find a way to gussy up their data and encapsulate it in some sort of container (or packaging) that consumers will buy as art (and for which they are only too willing, it seems, to pay the concomitant premium).

Dematerializing the Library

So, that still leaves the 108 boxes of books and their 31 heavy oak bookcases. These will definitely have to be unpacked and installed in the new place, and one nice feature of the Los Angeles loft is that it is sufficiently larger than my current house to actually hold all those books without feeling oppressively claustrophobic.

Now, some books certainly have intrinsic fetish value — not just in their design, layout, font choice, and cover art, but in and of themselves, as unique artifacts. My almost-complete collection of Philip K. Dick original first-edition pulps is a particularly nice example of that fact, as are all the historical artifacts of early twentieth century L.A. I have collected over the years. Still, these particular treasured volumes are exceptions. Most of the books are mass-produced trade paperbacks. Indeed, with the peculiar viewpoint that comes from trying to fit one’s world into cardboard boxes, I was easily able to perceive that the vast majority of academic books come in only three sizes. This fact certainly comes in handy when one is trying to arrange nice, compact piles that fit perfectly into those boxes. It does not do much, though, to enhance the fetish value, the impression of uniqueness, attached to those volumes.

In fact, my back would certainly appreciate the dematerialization of many of these books. Not their destruction, of course, as they are my stock in trade as a teacher and writer, but their transformation from (heavy, bulky) atoms into (svelte, virtually weightless) bits. Funny that, the very week I have endangered my spine in this act of atom-shuffling, Sony should finally offer (although not actually for immediate sale) their long-awaited e-book reader. Although perhaps not yet ready for prime-time, this e-ink based device points the way to a future where text content, like first music and now video, will be conveniently consumed in digital form. Details of markup/highlighting, navigation, and basic usability remain to be refined in these new devices, but the essential dematerialization of the book has begun.

Even funnier, or more fortuitously, this very evening I stumbled across a wonderful feature available through the California Digital Library: The full content (text, illustrations, indices, etc.) of hundreds of University of California Press books available in digital form. Many of these texts are restricted to users at licensed universities (like the UCs themselves), but a good number are available to the public for free. Now, since my own manuscript, Toward Autopia: Envisioning the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Southern California is forthcoming from UC Press in about a year, I am especially interested in this particular dematerialization. How can the press extract all the intrinsic fetish value of these digital texts? To put it more directly, how can they deliver my considerable personal aura to paying customers? Does any potential e-text sale of my opus rely on Sony’s ability to sell the world on their likely insufficiently-sexy e-reader (I judge based on their iPod-“killer” mp3 players)? If my digital manuscript is not likely to piggyback on the commodity fetishism of its potential containers, how can I profit from its distribution (and just what did that contract say about royalty rates for electronic versions in the first place)?

Fortunately, none of this really matters to me as a performing artist. When someone (it probably won’t be Apple, but I notice that Amazon is thinking about selling an e-book reader) figures out how to make electronic books into fetish items, probably by following the iTunes/iPod model, I am sure my infinitesimal share of the resulting revenue will indeed trickle down. Yet, most musicians make just about all their money in the current system by touring, not by album sales. Why is this the case? Not for the reason the RIAA would tell you. Indeed, it is the piratical business practices of the major record labels that make the vast majority of recordings unprofitable, not the pirating of the recordings themselves by fans. And, I think it is safe to say, very few record executives pay to see a concert, or buy a T-shirt, while those same fans certainly do (rabidly, even fanatically, so!), and perhaps all the more readily if they have been exposed to the artist by listening to their mp3s for free (which certainly lowers, for all parties, the cost of connecting new fans to musical artists). Of course, I don’t myself do a whole lot of touring — although I have presented about thirty academic talks and papers over the last few years (some of which paid nice honoraria) — but I am currently looking for a tenure-track job, and the best way for me to get one (and to raise my status once I have one) is to get my intellectual product out there and build up my aura of expertise. What better way to do that than to distribute my book not just as rather pricey and exclusive atoms, but as cheap and ubiquitous bits as well?

The dematerialization of the library may be the best thing that could happen not only to us content-consumers, but us content-producers as well. It promises to increase the livable space in our houses, and to reduce our moving costs. Indeed, perhaps the next time I move houses, I will be able to box up most of my books and won’t have to unpack them again at all.

1. A fringe benefit of this transition from atoms to bits has been that, since I regularly back up my computer’s hard disks, I have not lost an album since the transition, nor have I wasted a frustrating minute trying to find a disc on the shelf, or much more infuriating hours ransacking the house for errant or misplaced CDs. [↩]
2. Of course, this is exactly what Steve Jobs has in mind with Apple’s newly announced iTV, but I think I will go with the Mini after I move. In the new house, at least at first, my DVDs will probably end up on some shelf in the living room and not join the boxes of videotapes already cached away in the garage, mostly because I have not taken the trouble to transfer the commentary tracks of the DVDs (and, once in a blue moon, one finds oneself in the mood to take a look at one of those special features), but also because of my next point… [↩]
3. I want to thank Eric Zimmerman for some of what comes next; I first formulated this basic understanding of commodities during a meandering conversation with Eric on the streets of Northampton MA about fifteen years ago, when the now-ubiquitous atoms to bits process was far less advanced. If he reads this, and remembers my somewhat disconnected musings then, I would like him to know that this here is what I was trying to get at all those years ago! [↩]

So, here is a relatively simple, but very annoying, problem: If you use gmail or some other web-based e-mail service with your web browser (say, Safari or Firefox, as opposed to a dedicated mail client like Apple Mail or Entourage, both of which take care of this problem for you automatically), and you try to attach a document to a message, you may well find that the browser will neither save nor send that message. Indeed, it may look like gmail is trying to send the file (with its little red javascript “saving” notice in the top right corner of the window), but it will never complete the task.

If you have been left hanging in this manner, I have an explanation for you (and, as a bonus, a really simple solution too!).

The problem is that the “file” you are trying to send is not in actuality a file at all but a “bundle”: a folder [or, for you PC/UNIX folks, a directory] full of files posing as a single file.

MacOSX frequently uses bundles for applications and, in rarer cases, documents in order to hide an array of little constituent files that make up a single program or document file. They do this so that you can double-click on the “file’s” icon and open the document and/or application you expect, instead of merely revealing the contents of a folder full of little constituent files and subfolders.¹ So, simply put, the bundle in MacOSX functions like the bindings on a book — enabling you to see at a glance at the spine what the text is called and, what’s more, handily pull a compact and unified volume off a shelf instead of ending up with a loose sheaf of separate and discrete sheets of paper.

Unfortunately, although your web browser will treat a bundles as a single file when you click the “attach file” button on gmail’s compose message webpage, gmail itself cannot upload or send whole folders, only individual files. What is happening is that Gmail is expecting a file here, and is really getting a whole directory full of files, so it gets confused and becomes unresponsive. You would think they could figure this problem out, either the geniuses at Google or the smart-but-human programmers behind the major web browsers, but they apparently can’t.

So, you are left to do what Safari or gmail should probably have figured out how to do automatically: Turn that pseudo file bundle into a real, honest, cross-platform unitary file. Fortunately, this is really easy to do yourself, assuming merely that you are using some version of MacOSX 10.4 (I cannot recall if this worked so easily in 10.3).

1. Before clicking that “attach file” button in gmail, select the troublesome bundle file in the Finder and evoke the contextual menu (right click or CTRL-click on it). In that context menu, you should find the option to “Create archive of [the file name]“. Do it.(This will make, without touching your original file bundle, a new file in that same folder. This new file, which will be a unitary, honest-to-goodness-file is a zip archive (it will have “.zip” at the end of its name). These files can later expanded on any computer, Mac, PC, or Linux, without any trouble.)
2. Since it is a real file, gmail will be happy to attach it, upload it, and mail it off for you after you select it with the “attach file” button. Make sure you choose the .zip archive in that file selection dialog box!
3. After you are done with that, and the message has been successfully sent, feel free to delete the .zip file (your original bundle file will be untouched).

Of course, this simple procedure works if you just want to e-mail a normal folder full of files as well! The bottom line is that zipping a file or folder (i.e., embedding it in a .zip archive) packs the data together and armors it for transit, helping it survive through e-mail or over the web. As a bonus, this process will also make the file/folder a bit smaller, which is nice too (and which was the original purpose for the .zip archive format). Enjoy.

1. There are also technical reasons for breaking up a file into multiple subfiles; OmniOutliner, for instance, stores the actual content of its data file in a standard .xml file within a compact looking OmniOutliner file bundle. In the old MacOS, prior to “X”, files often were packaged as binaries, with a “data fork” holding the text content and a “resource fork” containing miscellaneous metadata and formatting information. In essence, then, this folder-posing-as-a-file, the MacOSX bundle, was ginned up to simulate the old Mac binary fork technique while complying with UNIX file structures that were designed for directories/folders and files, and not these hermaphroditic/schizophrenic forked files.
   By the way, many programs leave their document files as simple files, particularly if they are interested in cross-platform portability, such as the Microsoft office .doc file, which can be e-mailed without any trouble at all. [↩]

Walking along the beach this morning here in Balboa, California (approximately six feet above the current sea level), I was thinking a bit about the Rapture — or, rather, about the extended millennialism that seems to have captured both the Red and Blue popular imaginations.¹ Obviously, 9/11 looms large in the contemporary American psyche. Is it that we are so fragile that the deaths of 2,986 people could shake us so? (We have lost 2,529 soldiers in Iraq alone so far.) Or was it just the shock of the assault itself, reviving deep-seated fears of sudden sneak attack that had been inculcated throughout the Cold War? Whatever the case, it certainly has had us all thinking about The Big Picture.

In retrospect, we were foolish to assume that just because the COBOL programmers came out of retirement to get us through y2k without much harm, all our own millennial fears would swiftly fade into hibernation for another 1,000 years or that, unlike the cultists, we were ourselves immune to End Of Days thinking.

Now, in his slideshow Al Gore famously presents maps of a hypothetical United States under the influence of dramatically higher sea levels.²

So, this got me wondering: What would the country look like after the Rapture?

For this experiment, I decided to go with the winner-take-all Electoral College system, which results in a simple dialectic: Red states = Apotheosis, Blue states = Left Behind (sure, it’s not fair, but it’s in the Constitution).

Admittedly, after the Second Coming, you’d have to gas up your hybrid car before you left on that cross-country trip, since there would be a long way between service stations. Otherwise, it doesn’t look that bad. The post-Rapture US population drops by (you guessed it) almost exactly half, to 140 million,³ and, needless to say, there is a lot of elbow room in the Great Plains states. After the Last Judgment, the percentage of Americans with High School degrees increases by one and with BA degrees by two. The median household income goes up by about 10% and the poverty rate drops from 13% to 12%. Perhaps the best news is that the Final Reckoning is disproportionately favorable for the Federal budget (and not just because the Bush cabinet is gone): total transfer payments to the states decline by more than the expected half (Red states currently receive about $8000 per capita, while folks in the Blue get only $7250 back from their tax bill). So, if those of us Left Behind can just mosey on up to higher ground (the Rockies should be pretty empty), we might make it through the ongoing millennium in fine shape indeed.

1. Let’s not forget to include here the prospect of the President’s seemingly imminent destruction of the American experiment in democracy and limited government. [↩]
2. As Jon Stewart recently pointed out to Gore, this would have taken care of the Florida problem back in 2000… Gore replied, “I won Florida”. [↩]
3. I decided to use 2000 figures for this, since that matches up with the original Red/Blue divide and, of course, the census data was much easier to calculate. [↩]

Criminal Code B+
Fascinating early Depression jailhouse drama heavily invested in a lost emotional world of empathy for the reprobate. The incestuous shades in the relationship between the warden (the former DA who put most of the men in the joint, played by Walter Huston) and his devoted daughter makes one think Robert Towne might have seen this small Howard Hawks B-feature before ginning up his part for Huston’s son in Chinatown.

Night World A-
A wonderful, very short, pre-code masterpiece.¹ Superb direction makes one forget that this gem is set entirely within a single New York nightclub. Rarely has pure classical B-movie formula looked so assured and provided escapist pleasure so effortlessly. And the best thing about this 1931 jewel is that it features a slew of peripheral African American characters (including one with a serious minor part) and yet it is not painful or embarrassing to watch.

Turn Left At The End Of The World B
Israel’s Negev desert circa 1969 where immigrants (drawn to the wasteland by unfulfilled promises) endure mindless industrial work (until they strike), an utterly desolate environment, and the vicious intrigues and transgressions of a too-small community. The vision of [English-speaking] Indian and [French-speaking] Moroccan Jews forced to merge their very different styles of propriety, as seen through the eyes of two teenaged young women who become fast friends, lends this film its interest (along with a Cricket sub-plot, which never fails with me).

An Inconvenient Truth B+
Al Gore’s Keynote presentation works surprisingly well as a movie. My criticism would be with the slide show itself, which is chillingly effective, yet flattens its dramatic arc more than one might expect. The narrative is one of mounting evidence more than compelling emotional setup and payoff. In fact, this is remarkably unpropagandistic, abjuring so many of the 20th century’s refined techniques of audience manipulation in favor of a style more like Current TV than Leni Riefenstahl.

The Proposition B+
Nick Cave’s “Vegemite Western”² set in a very desolate Outback Australia. Compelling performances amidst a dark and dusty frontier universe of betrayal and violence between stiff British Empire lawmen who look like they stepped over from Jackie Chan’s Project A and ruthless criminals straight out of Sergio Leone. You know that born-again Cave has written the script when you look around and realize that you can’t find any unambiguous Christian redemption for anyone in this moral universe.

1. It lasts only an hour, although there is far more here than in most 2½ hour Hollywood Summer fx commodities. [↩]
2. Greg and I collaboratively came up with this one. [↩]

Sitting nearby, I silently hope she is right (I am not sure I would take the word of a tattoo artist on something like that). Then I realize just how remarkably unremarkable that little decoration of hers really seems now.

In 1982, when the movie Blade Runner came out, one of the uncanny aspects of it was the vivid depiction of a future dystopian Los Angeles where a mongrel populace scurried along crowded, rainy streets, speaking a babel of Japanese and Portuguese “streetspeak”. The brilliance of that imagery in the movie lies in the sense of a seemingly familiar American landscape turned profoundly alien (unceasing rain falling over sunny LA being a crucial part of that uneasy juxtaposition). The film’s protagonist, Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard, oozes a palpable aloofness and disconnection that reinforces his noir persona and, at the same time, binds us to him in a shared, visceral sense of alienation from this miscegenated ground-level culture. And this racial and cultural foreignness must be attributed to the vision of Ridley Scott, himself a recent émigré in Los Angeles at the time, because it isn’t really in Philip K. Dick’s original novel. Indeed, the overarching theme of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep is empathy (evoked through the discipline of “Mercerism”), and Scott’s cinematic representation of 2019 Southern California (the original 1968 novel was set in the SF Bay Area in 2021) substitutes for a religion of empathy a powerful mise en scène of alterity and alienation.

Yet, in the movie, it is Edward James Olmos’s character, Gaff, the really fluent, and racially ambiguous local, who fits right in to this bizarre (or bazar) heterogeneous mixture of Asian and Latin American cultural elements. Olmos’s part is small, but his performance is memorable — he seems at home in this crowd. And this is the striking thing about the setting of that film more generally: the recognition that, amidst all the rain and chaos, there are many people who not only feel comfortable in this odd world, but that they take it for natural. This alien Los Angeles is, to them, home.

I suppose that little overheard conversation in Long Beach, circa 2006, is merely a mark of larger cultural changes in greater Los Angeles and elsewhere, unfolding in the quarter century since that film’s release, where we all take for granted the hybridity of globalized culture, assimilating it into our own sense of the familiar. In a sense, then, we are those strange, scurrying figures in the crowds animating Blade Runner’s Los Angeles.

The uncanny and alien, it seems, indeed has come to us like in Science Fiction, but the catch is that it does not come as an outsider, but from within. The alien in the form of the myriad manifestations of our own personal choices, our own slightly exotic styles or fashions, as pleasant tidbits of unthreatening Orientalism, and as the ordinary, unremarkable accessorizing of everyday life.

P.S. A bit later, on the A320, I spotted these three again. The young black man had gotten on the plane after all — “I was the first one they called.” I congratulate him for having made the cut and observe, as he turns away to take his seat, that his blue windbreaker sports a Japanese character as part of some unidentifiable brand logo on the back.

That said, I have installed some of this software before, the old fashioned way, and the hardest part is remembering how to use all the UNIX commands that allow one to manipulate the files (I imagine even there it is not that terrible anymore, what with all the packaging systems the Debian clones have brought to Linux – I had to compile phpBB the traditional UNIX way the last time I did it). These commands are, for the most part, simply combinations of “wget”, “mv”, “cd”, “ls -la “, “chmod”, “chown”, “unzip “,”tar -xvzf”, and, if things go really wrong, “rm -R”…

Although I spent more time than I should have configuring WordPress (its plethora of options makes such tinkering irresistible — and Dreamhost’s php and apache installs seem to be very restrictive, which might explain why some of the backend plugins I was playing with don’t work right now), everything seems to be working right now. The pain to come seems to involve trying to figure out basic policies for everything, like where files go, how to handle new contributors to our network, permissions, and all that administrative minutae.