Rants & Raves
Midnight Express
Before the Wired generation gets too excited by the prospect of living inside a space-protected cage ("Peace Is War," Wired 10.04, page 78), perhaps it should consider this: If you were a nation-state bent on destroying the US, would you (a) embark on a massive ICBM development program to launch an easily traceable, possibly destroyable warhead, or (b) send it by DHL? Smugglers don't need ICBMs to get kilotons of drugs into the US every year. The world might be impressed by the US's competence on the battlefield, but even now we wince when we go through your airport security. Perhaps some of the fine minds Bruce Sterling found developing space weapons could be better employed bringing your airlines up to first-world security standards.
Brian Millar
brian@myrtle.co.uk
The Art of the Long View
The article on Philo T. Farnsworth's invention of television and David Sarnoff's attempts to suppress it was fascinating ("Televisionary," Wired 10.04, page 68). You mentioned Sarnoff's announcement at the 1939 New York World's Fair of the "birth ... of a new art." The New York Times was not as enthusiastic, proclaiming in 1939 that television "will never be a serious competitor for radio because people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it."
Today, despite the growth of the Internet, the average American spends four hours a day watching, and keeps the set turned on for far longer
David Staples dstaples@tpc-lon.com
Memories of a Cynical Boyhood
There aren't many people on the planet as precious as Oliver Sacks, but until Steve Silberman's profile, "The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks" (Wired 10.04, page 90), no one has explained why. Hundreds of thousands of people read Sacks' books, and millions see the movies; Robin Williams has tried to inhabit him, but Silberman has tunneled in and lit a candle to illuminate the man.
Who knew Sacks was such a mystery? On the one hand, he is a fabulous listener; his case studies are transforming. There are lots of people who aren't scared when they see (or maybe have) Tourette's or autism, in part because Sacks has made such people familiar - variants of what's normal. He stitches his patients back into the weave of the world.
And yet, in Silberman's telling, Sacks was once a self-absorbed, nasty young smart-ass, who wrote profiles that were, said a friend, "horribly accurately sarcastic." What's more, even when Sacks had his epiphany and softened his heart, the medical establishment didn't want to hear him. Sacks had to publish outside traditional journals; he had to push, and Sacks is a painfully shy, very private man.
Thanks to Wired, this was all a revelation. We now know the man we honor for honoring others deserves, if possible, even greater respect.
Robert Krulwich New York, New York
Paved With Inattention
Concentrate on driving, not talking on the phone, reading the paper, or checking email ("You Are About to Crash," Wired 10.04, page 96)! If people want to be productive while commuting, they just shouldn't drive. There are many mass transit possibilities - Taxi 2000, SkyTran, the RUF system, to name a few - that could stand some much-needed publicity (and would make for good reading).
Asa Weinstein aweinstein@sympatico.ca
As if today's rollover-matic family-rooms-on-wheels aren't bad enough, the vehicles these engineers wish to design foster not merely a false sense of security but a false sense of immortality. Why bother to even care, then, if "you are about to crash"?
Dallas Eschenaue dallas7@qwest.net
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