At 10:35 on an early summer's morning, John Lanchester sat down at his study desk, switched on his new Dell computer, opened up the word processing programme that the computer had come with and began

Furthermore, because transistors are switches that use one flow of current to control another, you can wire them into each other. By doing so you can create logic gates, which can for example produce an output current if two input currents are on (AND), if either input current is on (OR), or an output current if there is no input and vice versa (NOT). If you take an output current to be a 1 and no current to be a 0 then you can wire up logic gates in such a way as to perform binary arithmetic. And binary arithmetic is ultimately all that computers do.

Thanks Ledge for producing these descriptions.

Do you work in computer construction?

This reminds me that 10 years ago I tried to understand electricity. I think I learned that it had something to do with magnets - that electricity was generated between magnets. Unsure why, and perhaps that's not even true.

It is hard to see how human beings would discover electricity.

the usual explanation is that electricity was first observed as static electricity, as generated by rubbing amber (greek: elektrum) against cloth

the relationship between electric current and magnetism: if you pass a conducting metal through a magnetic field (viz basically past some magnets) it generates an electric current: this is because magnetism is the consequence of an excess of electrons moving towards a zone that lacks electrons, and the moving magnet (oversimplification alaert) "drags" the electrons in the conducting metal so that they push against other electrons and cause a current, like a river of electrons. magnets are made of high-resistance metals where the excess of electrons are gathered at one end and and the lack of them at the other; a conducting metal is a substance in which electrons move fairly easily (metals such as copper; also water, as a non-metallic conductor).

^^ a great deal of technology from the mid-19th century onwards uses this mechanism (often the magnets are caused to spin around wires in which you need a current)

the "field" is the larger region affected by the magnet (there's a mathematical definition, but i won't risk embarking on that)
"resistance" is (in this instance) a material quality of the substance that slows electrons down

actual real scientists can step in and slap me around when i start talking nonsense here

you can also generate electricity from potatoes.

I work in i.t. but strictly software. I've read about this stuff before but forgot it all so had to crib it again from various how stuff works articles.

magnets are made of high-resistance metals where the excess of electrons are gathered at one end and and the lack of them at the other

Isn't it that the magnetic field of all the magnet's atoms or molecules are lined up in the same direction?

Tatoes being full of water, I guess

salty water yes

xp lol probably

yes haha my "static electricity" theory of how magnets work is not in fact correct

(to be fair to me it is nearly 50 years since i learned this stuff; to be fair to the readers may be i shd look stuff up and check before i speak)

there was program on the radio where some boffin said magnets are sort of magic because they shouldn't actually work by the laws of metaphysics or summat like that.

lol I'm just remembering being taught Fleming's right-hand rule or the gener-righter method as our tutor called it during my electrical apprenticeship. Very handy thing to know, can barely remember a bloody thing about it.

Was this boffin a member of the Insane Clown Posse?

lol, quite possibly was

I wonder whether John Lanchester knows or understands these things.

The problem as a writer, very specifically, is the difference between knowing/understanding and making it clear to an audience that doesn't

^^^

(and it's an issue i've been obsessed with probably since i was editor at wire: how to translate and transmit the inner workings of music and music theory as they impact on what players do, the key issue at that magazine; and latterly in no particular order and as a more general conundrum for general-topic magazines, critical theory, economics, electronics and the levels of science where it's more than just just-so-stories about marble runs)

(the spillover into this thread being that lanchester has somehow been appointed the LRB's popular explainer of certain topics -- economics and finance, "the internet", now microchips and computers) and in my estimation he approaches this task quite wrongly (and as pertinently his line-editors are not allowed to scream at him bcz he's too high up the editorial order to have to listen)

Yeah it's clearly a difficult job - maybe elements of it are near impossible - but it's the job. If you don't make at least a thrust at achieving those goals then by definition you're terrible at your job

my favourite editors have always been the ones who stubbornly say "no mark i don't understand what you're getting at here" and make me dig out the idea some more

it's an aspect of editing i'm not terrific at myself bcz i'm too vain: i can very easily kid myself (re someone else's prose) that i *do* get it

mark, can you think of a really good example of writing about "the inner workings of music and music theory as they impact on what players do"?

I really enjoy reading that type of thing, and I think it must be a pretty tricky balance to write about ...

anything by charles rosen (but he only writes about classical music)

max harrison on jazz tho many find him stylistically dry and old-school

i remember really enjoying robert walser's running with the devil: power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music -- tho it's 30-odd yrs since i read a borrowed copy and gave it back and i don't know if the power/gender stuff wd hold up well now (it seemed important and new and i was probably giving it loads of unlearned leeway)

i will try and scare up some other titles, maybe when more of my books are out of boxes (really i shd be unpacking and not discussing john fkn lanchester)

s/b unEARNED leeway

Thanks so much!
I will check 'em out... maybe start a new thread if I get really inspired...

"lanchester has somehow been appointed the LRB's popular explainer of certain topics"

Yes - Mark S OTM here. It's because Lanchester has this role, and thinks he's good at it, that he's fair game when he doesn't execute it properly.

Did a double take at Robert Walser heavy metal book but of course it’s a different guy

The top gun para in this article, oof marone - he is very bad at humour/bathos, unsurprisingly since he is fully tone deaf

Yeah, first google for R Walser was a little confusing, but now I've discovered two intersting writers off one recommendation....

Lanchester at end of 2nd page:

'American workers were expensive, not least because - boo! - they tended to belong to unions'.

Was that interjection necessary?

I imagine -- though it's not clear! -- that he's ventriloquising the opinion of the implausibly named "Charlie Sporck" (inventor of novel plastic cutlery iirc), and trying to do so in a spiffy and economical one-word manner. Once again the subs should be pulling him up and pointing out this ambiguity: "John, who is thinking this? Be clearer!"

Isn't it clear that the bargaining power of workers in chip factories meant that wages and conditions would decrease the profitability and therefore this was the drive toward manufacturing moving to East Asia, where (as the piece says) the majority of the chips are made?

the presence of the word "boo!" is extraneous to that point tho

The meaning of the sentence is clear enough. That's why I say the 'boo!' is unnecessary. The statement would be complete, and presumably accurate, without it. The 'ventriloquism' that Mark S quite accurately identifies is not needed, and is delivered in an infantile way that an article in the LRB should not require.

This infantile quality is, I realise, a feature of Lanchester. It doesn't generally feature in the LRB, though Runciman and Burrow have their own bad blokeish qualities.

Ah ok, sorry I am just catching up with the piece and the various complaints about this piece...which I am reading just now.

Finished most of it.

I can see why we all started on that first para because it doesn't come off in terms of setting the scene..."the writer's stuff" is pompous. It mentions the Tories to no effect (they didn't have any) to then go through a history of a technology that starts much before the 70s. Very clunky.

I get that I'd like to be conveyed the inner workings of music if I pick and regularly read about different types of music in a music magazine every month for years on end, as an avid consumer and enjoyer of music!

However with semiconductors it's just one of those things -- like 99% of human endeavour -- where I'm looking for things like: how does this impact me now, how it might impact me in future and what role does this have in shaping the world. Even if I was told a bit more about the inner workings of semiconductors it wouldn't go anywhere, but if I'm told that this made the US military more effective at killing that's conveying impact. That the US also lost in Vietnam is something he says, something we know so it tells me semiconductor use wasn't decisive (in the way that some people know about the decoder machines invented by British scientists in WWII). My issue is he doesn't work through this (what if technology will not have as much impact as he thinks) and yeah, then goes into Top Gun aside for a bit of colour. To be lazy.

This is all to say that the piece was mostly fine, jokes and manner aside. The background is told as much in terms of the people who invented bcz people can relate to that a bit more? It tells you how the tech impacts on the personal and the politics around you, goes into geopolitics from the Cold War to East Asia and China. It gives another dimension to the conflict over Taiwan.

I'm not sure how telling me about the science of this tech improves it. Other things would tho'.

Lanchester is such a 6/10 guy.

Lanchester at end of 2nd page:

'American workers were expensive, not least because - boo! - they tended to belong to unions'.

Was that interjection necessary?

Think he's tryna give it some of that Patricia Lockwood pizazz the editors like.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/salad-chain-that-thought-it-was-a-tech-firm-looks-wilted-f2696360?st=1lko4n6ldd4sgjv

One thing I wanted Lanchester to explain was a line around VCs. I quite like him to give 6/10 explainers on that and private equity.

quick update

Chip War the book is very clear and well-organised btw. It may have been worth reading even if it poorly written - the technology is central to our epoch, and the geopolitical consequences significant and of the moment - but it's well handled and informative, and yes, covers semi-conductor technology etc as part of the history of the technology etc.

i don't think he's a particular favourite of ilx, but ezra klein's podcast is occasionally worth listening to, and his recent interview with the author covers the main topics at play.

more importantly, i wanted to pick up on mark's post about haptics and related matters. it's something that's been nagging away at me for a long while - in fact i was several times on the verge of starting a thread, called something like Soyface Wojak in the Stavanger Cloudweb: The Aesthetics of Computing as a catch all for this sort of thing from memetics to the material layer. but the haptics post reminded me of it, as have some recent issues at work.

Roughly the problem as i see it, or rather the set of related problems, is the separation between the tactile and material layer of computing (plastics, wires, screens) and our experience of using computers (representations of information extremely abstracted from the physical layer) mean it's very difficult for one to inform the other in the way that metaphor has traditionally allowed. that is to say we have always clothed our feelings and thoughts in the cloth of nature or that experienced in our ambulatory and perceptual life - it's the thorn, the crack in the teacup.

this can be seen in a number of ways, for example the use of the word 'cloud' to represent what are in fact huge data centres kept freezing cold, in icy landscapes or embedded in a former nuclear bunker at the base of a granite cliffed stavanger fjord, cooled by the icy waves. or to take another example, me having to do a powerpoint presentation on the application of machine learning to my particular area of work, and asking a technology colleague whether he had any visual representations of the technology at work - no, but some command line stuff running gave the right 'vibe'.

'early' representations, like William Gibson's Cyberpunk, or the Matrix dripping digits, are in some ways the best, when the abstracted layers were more visible, more tangible (just think of the sound of a modem) but are of course incredibly cliched and outdated now. it amused me to read lines in The Crying of Lot 49 in 1966 and think of how small a jump it was to the world of the Matrix (in itself, like Gibson, based on phone lines but digital):

For it was now like walking among matrices of a great digital computer, the zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left, ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.

the hieroglyphic streets is perhaps right, like Calvino's Invisible Cities, architectural and social embodiments of algorithmic outcomes.

still, the point remains, the quality of aesthetic representation of modern computing seems thin and undernourished (please furnish me with counterexamples!).

ofc metaphorical schema (that is to say internally consistent - roses and lilies are always x and y) for abstract concepts have existed, but utlimately the appropriateness of their use for abstract concepts seems to me to relate to the fact that both abstract experience and 'natural' clothing both stem from God/creative being/s, or Nature or whatever points of motive authority you wish.

that layer - material and abstract - is somewhat separate, because abstracted, from the objects computing allows us to present and proliferate ie the aesthetics on and and presented on the internet (but not elsewhere). representations of things going wrong with the system, glitches, or grotesque collapses of aesthetics shown by many memes seem of particular interest, partly because they go against the grain of computing making it easier to do easier to do things you want - so do things that are ugly, or aesthetically worthless, or grotesque - and partly because they surface broken mechanics several layers down from what a common user will see.

On haptics...

at work, the transition from hardware and serial interfaces to IP workflows, software defined channels, metadata driven automation, and 'control surfaces' for human operators leads to a difficulty for those operations. when something goes wrong it's hard to understand where it's gone wrong. that's usually because control surfaces are driven by metadata that assumes the successful processing of the orchestration or workflow. if it goes wrong, the metadata won't always be available to be represented to the user what's gone wrong. put another way, problems like this can't be resolved by the person operating the tools, but by a software engineer. there is something of the 'haptic' even if it's not quite touch, it's that the information in the system was near enough the surface to enable an operator to fix the system. modern day haptics also come into it and help illustrate what i mean, perhaps - due to latency in the system a particular issue for some of our operators was that status changes after an on screen button press on the control surface did not appear rapidly enough after that button press, which led to people pressing the on screen button multiple times, even though the initial command was being acted upon.

perhaps this is only another way of saying that in a software world, your operations are more likely to be DevOps environments (doing the building and support of the tools with traditional operations increasingly automated) - this is after all a transition period. but the drama being played out is a submerging of the mechanics of the world into a space difficult to be rendered via useful metaphor, and difficult to comprehend and understand so that we may adapt it.

these all seem interrelated, so some order is needed, some layers, and maybe the OSI model in itself isn't a bad place to start for examining the problem.

• metaphorical layer ('cloud', 'web' - the control layer if you like - how we represent the *processes* of computing and information flow, the data available to do so)
• material layers (cold data centres, mountains of chips and electronic waste in slums in Guiyu and Agbogbloshie, mining of precious metals) - how does the material layer inform the metaphorical and representative landscape
• representation (how we render the world of superprocessing, data and information flowsto make it *aesthetically* tangible) and loop back to the metaphorical layer

anyway, apologies for the digression, it just seemed an opportunity to get some of this down on a rainy bank holiday.

I love it :)

v low indeed even on the scale of things that are currently consequential but this (excerpted from twitter so the refuseniks can also enjoy):

Oliver Rivers @maxrothbarth: John Lanchester don’t get really basic quantitative ideas hopelessly wrong challenge
[context: lanchester has written abt SBF-FTX in the LRB; @maxrothbarth is actually economically and financially literate and works in the fraud-reporting field]
Jay Owens @hautepop; Write us a pithy letter?
[context: as @hautepop was a Good Thing back in the blogging era; she is the new and evidently activist "readers' editor" at LRB, which I think is also quite likely a Good Thing]
Oliver Rivers @maxrothbarth: If you look back through the archive you’ll see that of the three letters I’ve so far had published, two of them are variations on the theme “John Lanchester is wrong”, and I don’t want to come over as obsessive

!!

ps I vented a while ago to my sister abt how bad WHOOPS was and she said "look i read it and learned a lot from it, yr standards are too high bcz you already know too much" -- well this is not the worst put-down i have ever taken (and rivers/rothbarth knows way more than me; like actually what he is talking abt for example) but feedback noted for balance like

lol, i still retain a mild neutrality towards Whoops, based on knowing less then than i do now (but then i guess that is in part due to Whoops), and being a lot less tolerant of the 'lanchester summarises' mode and manner these days.

ble an operator to fix the system. modern day haptics also come into it and help illustrate what i mean, perhaps - due to latency in the system a particular issue for some of our operators was that status changes after an on screen button press on the control surface did not appear rapidly enough after that button press, which led to people pressing the on screen button multiple times, even though the initial command was being acted upon.

Of course you could say, "Everybody is an operator," but---

Already, the day felt long. When he looked back at his screen, it was 14:27. He wished, now, that he had gone out at lunchtime and walked as far as the canal. He could have sat on one of the benches there for a while and watched the swans and the cygnets gobbling up the crusts and other bits and pieces people threw down for them on the water. Not meaning to, he closed the budget-distribution file he’d been working on without saving it. A flash of something not unlike contempt charged through him then, and he got up and walked down the corridor to the men’s room, where there was no one, and pushed into a stall. For a while he sat looking at the back of the door, on which nothing was written or scrawled. When he felt a bit steadier, he went to the basin and splashed water on his face, and slowly dried his face and hands on the paper towel that fed, automatically, from the dispenser.

On the way back to his desk, he stopped for a coffee, pressed the Americano option on the machine, and waited for it to spill down into the cup.

I was going to defend that until I got to "budget-distribution file"

I'd be interested to know what you felt was defensible up until that point. I feel the whole thing is turgid inanity.

"crusts and other bits and pieces" although innocuous looking, for long time lanchester heads, indicates the open-ended material leakage of his prose... what other bits and pieces? not crusts? the crumb too? or.... specifically bought bird food As We're Told... bits and pieces sounds like people are ransacking their sheds.

i'm with plax here, i think, you might defend the first sentences as a fusion of style and content, but it toils so.

budget-distribution file is pure chef kiss of course. absolute a-grade, inject-it-into-my-veins lanchester.