The weapon used by retailers to hurl the big manufacturers back on their heels is a small black-and-white symbol. Ever since the mid-sixties a little noticed committee of retailers, wholesalers, and grocery manufacturers had been meeting with companies like IMB, National Cash Register, and Sweda to discuss two common supermarket problems: long checkout lines and errors in accounting. Could not technology be used to overcomes these difficulties? It could—if product could somehow be coded, and if computers could automatically “read” the codes. Optical scanning technology was still in its infancy, but the computer companies, sensing a major new market, gladly worked with the retailers. On April 3, 1973, the “symbol selection committee” agreed on a single standard code for their industry. The result was the now familiar “Universal Product Code” or “bar code”—the shimmery black lines and numbers that appear on everything from detergent to cake mix—and the swift spread of optical scanning equipment to read them. Today, bar coding is becoming near universal in the United States of America, with fully 95 percent of all food items marked with the UPC. And the system is fast spreading abroad. By 1988 there were 3,470 supermarkets and specialty and department stores in France using it. In West Germany, at least 1,500 food stores and nearly 200 department stores employed scanners. All told, not counting the United States of America, there were 78,000 scanners at work from Brazil to Czechoslovakia and Papua New Guinea. In Japan, where the new retail technologies spread like fire in a high wind, 47 percent of all supermarkets and 72 percent of all convenience stores were already equipped by 1987. The bar code did more, however, than speed the checkout line for millions of customers or reduce errors in accounting. It transferred power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The average U.S.A supermarket now stocks 22,000 different times, with thousands of new products continually replacing old one, power has shifted to the retailer who can keep track of all these items—along with their sales, their profitability, the timing of advertising, costs, prices, discounts, location, special promotions, traffic flow, and so on. “Now,” say the late Pat Collins, former president of the 127 Ralph’s stores in southern California, “we know as much, if not more than, the manufacturer about his product.” Ralph’s scanners scoop up vast volumes of data, which then helps its managers decide how much shelf space to devote to what products, when. This is a crucial decision for competing manufacturers who are hammering at the doors, pleading for every available inch of shelf on which to display their products. Instead of the manufacturer telling the store how much to take, the store now compels manufacturers to pay what is known as “push money” for space, and staggering sums for particularly desirable location. The result [of such changes] is a war over turf: product makers battling grocers—and fighting each other—to win and keep their spots in supermarkets. And it is clear who is winning—at the moment. Say Kevin Moody, formerly corporate director of Management Information Systems at Gillette: “We want to control our own destiny…but the trade is getting more powerful….They are looking for smarter deals and cooperative relationships. They are looking for better prices, which squeeze our margins…They buyer used to be the flunky. Now he’s backed up by all kinds of sophisticated tools.” Retail data become a more potent weapon when computer-analyzed and run through models that permit one to manipulate different variables. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Thus, buyers use “direct product profitability” models to determine just how much they actually make on each product. These models examine such factors as how much shelf space is occupied by a square package as against a round one, what colours in the packaging work best for which products. A version of this software is provided to retailers, in fact, by Procter & Gamble, one of the biggest manufacturers, in the hope of ingratiating itself with them. Armed with this software, P&G’s sales force offers to help the store analyze its profitability if it, in turn, will share consumer information with P&G. Retailers also use “shelf management” software and “space models” to help them decide which manufacturer’s lines or good to carry and which to reject, which to display in prime eye-catching space and which to put elsewhere. “Plan-a-Grams” printed out by computer give shelf-by-shelf guidance. Having seized control of the main flow of data coming from the customer, retailers are also beginning to influence, if not control, the influence going to the consumer. According to Moody, “The buyer can control the fate of a promotion….To a large extent, they dictate what the consumer is going to see.” At both ends, therefore, the big food and package-goods companies have lost control of the information that once gave them power. Beginning in the supermarket, the high-tech battle for control of information has caught fire elsewhere, too. Scanners, lasers, hand-held computers, and other new technologies are pouring into drugstores, department stores, discount stores, bookstores, electrical appliance stores, hardware stores, clothing stores, specialty shops, and boutiques of all kinds. In these markets, too, manufacturers suddenly face antagonists who are keener, more confident, sometimes just short of arrogant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

“If you don’t have Universal Product Codes on your goods, don’t sit down, because we’re not going to write the order,” declares a peremptory sign in the buying office of Toys-R-Us, the 313-store chain. As power shifts, retailer demands grown aggressive. By-passing the country’s 100,000 independent manufacturers’ representatives, dealing direct with its suppliers. Wal-Mart, the United States’ fourth-biggest chain, insist that companies like Gillette change how they ship. Once more accommodating, Wal-Mart now demands that all its orders be filled 100 percent accurately—down to the numbers, sizes, and models of the products—and that deliveries be made to its schedule, not supplier’s. Failure to fill the order or deliver precisely on time could result in a supplier’s payments being held ransom or a “handling cost” being deducted. This puts manufacturers up against the wall: Either they increase inventories or they install new, more advanced technologies for de-massifying their factor output, moving to shorter rather than longer factory runs and faster turnaround times. Both are costly options. At the same time, retailers are imposing tighter quality standards—right down to the quality of the print on the packaging. This seemingly trivial matter is in fact critical, since much of the information on which retail power now increasingly depends is found on the bar code, and bad printing means that the scanners may not be able to read the code accurately. If the bar code on the package cannot be read properly by their scanning equipment, some retailers are threatening to hold the suppliers responsible. Millions of customers have waited at checkout lines while clerks have passed the same package over the electronic scanner again and again before the scanner picked up the print message properly. All too often the clerk is forces to ring the product price up manually on the cash register. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Some storekeepers, in effect, are now threatening, “If my scanner can’t read your code, it’s your problem. I’m not telling my clerk to try again and again, and keep the customer waiting. If it doesn’t scan, and we have to enter it manually, we’re going to toss the product into the customer’s bag and not charge for it. We’’ give the product away and stop payment to you!” Nobody ever talked back to the big companies that way. However, then nobody had the information that retailers now have. So vital is this information that some manufacturers are now paying the retailers for it—either directly, or in exchange for services, or through intermediary firms who buy the data from retailers and sell them to manufacturers. “The economies of the future are somewhat different. You see, money does not exit in the twenty-fourth century.” So said Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise in the science-fiction movie Star Trek: First Contact. Neither, perhaps, will capitalism exist by then—and its demise may arrive long before AD 2300. It is a strange new World we are entering as revolutionary wealth continues to unfold here on Earth, yet both enemies and defenders of capitalism still hurl centuries-old cliches at one another. If changes in the nature of property, capital and markets are not enough to shake their minds free of the past, perhaps a look at the future of money will. Like the other key elements of capitalism, money is undergoing the fastest, deepest revolution in centuries—one that will create radically new forms, new ways to pay and be paid, and more and more business opportunities that use no money at all. The invention of money clearly was one of the great World-changing events in human history, and all capitalist economies run on it. That indention, despite all its subsequent misuse, opened the path to tremendous advances in human well-being. However, running money, or more properly, the money system, imposes a heavy cost on society—and on each of our pocketbooks. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

We hardly notice this cost because it is usually embedded or bundled into the price we pay for goods, services, and other marketed items. Go to movie theater or a spots stadium. Part of the price you pay covers the cost of the person who takes your money and hands you the ticket. The same is true for the 3.5 million cashiers behind U.S. checkout counters at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, 7-Eleven, Office Depot and Office Max outlets; at supermarkets, department stores, and railroad stations. And this does not include the total number outside America. Then, too, at McDonald’s, Burger King, and other fast-food emporia, the person at the counter takes both your order and your money. It is true that taking your order and passing it to the kitchen is technically distinct from cashiering. That means that only part, rather than all, of his or her wages is attributable to time spent collecting money. However, collecting money is similarly part of the job for many other occupations—millions upon millions of waiters, barbers and salesclerks. All these costs, too, are passed along to the customer. And this is only the most visible expense of operating the World’s money system. Someone has to keep track of all the transactions. And that, too, costs money. So add at least part of these fees paid to bookkeepers and the World’s 2.5 million accountants. And someone has to actually print, store and transport the cash we use; protect it from theft and counterfeiting; authenticate documentation and so forth. These functions, too, cost money. Ultimately transferred to the customer, these costs are, in effect, part of the hidden “tax” we pay for the convenience of employing money. And they are only a small part. Which raises some important, mind-sparking questions. What if we could reduce or even eliminate this hidden “tax”? Is that possible? In fact, do we need money at all to run a knowledge-based wealth system? #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Now, when it comes to doing business, many companies, even if they are not owned by the person who does the hiring, use a form of nepotism. Nepotism is a form of favoritism shown to acquaintances and family members. It allows one to use one’s power or influence to get good jobs or unfair advantages for members of one’s own family. As favoritism is the broadest of the related terms, we will focus on this definition. Basically favoritism is just what it sounds like; it is favoring a person not because he or she is doing the best job but rather because of some extraneous feature-membership in a favored group, personal likes and dislikes, et cetera. Favoritism can be demonstrated in hiring, honoring, or awarding contracts. A related idea is patronage, giving public service jobs to those who may have helped elect the person who has the power of appointment. Favoritism has always been a complaint in government service. It was discovered that the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management believed that only 36.1 percent of federal workers promotions in their units were based on merit. They believed that connections, partisanship, and other factors played a role. Probably the biggest dilemma presented by favoritism is that, under various other names, few people see it as a problem. Connections, networking, family-almost everyone had drawn on these sources of support in job hunting in the private sphere. And everyone can point to instances where nepotism is an accepted fact of life in political sphere, as well. John F. Kenney, for example, appointed his brother Robert as attorney general. Every president and governor names close associates to key cabinet positions. Mayors put those they know and trust on citizens committees and commissions. Friends and family can usually be counted on for loyalty, and officeholders are in a good position to know their strengths. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

The first issue is competence. For cabinet level positions, an executive will probably be drawn to experienced, qualified candidates, but historically, the lower down the ladder, the more likely for someone’s brother-in-law to be slipped into a job for which he is not qualified. The American Civil Service Act was passed in 1883 in large part because so many patronage jobs, down to dogcatcher, were being filled by people whose only qualification for employment was their support for a particular party or candidate. Also, the appearance of favoritism weakens morale in government service, not to mention public faith in the integrity of government. Reasonable people will differ appointment of friends and family in high-level positions, but public officials should be aware that such choices can give the appearance of unfairness. According to the National Conference of State Legislature, 19 state legislatures have found the practice of nepotism troubling enough to enact laws against it. Others may restrict the hiring or relatives or friends in more general conflict-of-interest rules. Penalties for violating nepotism rules may be different depending on the state. A public official or employee violating a nepotism law may be required to reimburse the state for any payments made to relative by reason of the violation. Some states do not specify a penalty while others consider the act a misdemeanor punishable with fines, imprisonment, removal from office, or any combination thereof. In California, no explicit prohibition against nepotism in the legislative branch was located in the state’s statutes, although other rules or conflict of interest provisions may apply. An individual’s reputation is embodied in the beliefs of others about the strategy another person will use. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

A reputation is typically established through observing the actions of that individual when interacting with other individuals. For example, Britain’s reputation for being provocable was certainly enhanced by its decision to take back the Falkland Islands in response to the Argentine invasion. Other nations could observe Britain’s decisions and make inference about how it might react to their own actions in the future. Especially relevant would be Spanish inferences about the British commitment to Gibraltar, and Chinese inferences about the British commitment to Hong Kong. Whether these inferences would be correct is another matter. The point is than when third parties are watching, the stakes of the current situation expand from those immediately at hand to encompass the influence of the current choice on the reputation of the individuals. Knowing people’s reputations allows you to know something about what strategy they use even before you have to make your first choice. This possibility suggests that question of how valuable it would be to know for certain what strategy the other individual is about to use with you. A way to measure the value of any piece of information is to calculate how much better you could do with the information than without it. Thus, the better you can do without the information, the less you need the information, and the less it is worth. In instances of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, for example, TIT FOR TAT did well without know the strategy to be employed by the other individual. Knowing the other individual’s strategy were known to be TIT FOR TWO TATS (which defects only if the other defected on both of the previous moves), it would be possible to do better than TIT FOR TAT did by alternating defection with cooperation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

However, there are not many exploitable strategies in either round of the interaction, so knowing the other’s strategy in advance would not actually help you do much better than the all-purpose strategy of TIT FOR TAT. In fact, the smallness of the gain from knowing the other’s strategy is just another measure of the robustness of TIT FOR TAT. The question about the value of information can also be turned around: what is the value (or cost) of having other individuals know your strategy? The answer, of course, depends on exactly what strategy you are using. If you are using an exploitable strategy, such as TIT FOR TWO TATS, the cost can be substantial. On the other hand, if you are using a strategy that is best met with complete cooperation, then you might be glad to have your strategy known to the other. For example, if you were using TIT FOR TAT, you would be happy to have the other player appreciate this fact and adapt to it, provided, of course, that the shadow of the future is large enough so that the best response is a nice strategy. In fact, as has been said, one of the advantages of TIT FOR TAT is that it is easy for it to be recognized in the course of a game even if the individual using it has not yet established a reputation. Having a firm reputation for using TIT FOR TAT is advantageous to an individual, but it is not actually the best reputation to have. The best reputation to have is the reputation for being a bully. The best kind of bully to be is one who has a reputation for squeezing the most out of the other individual while not tolerating any defections at all from the other. They way to squeeze the most out of the other is to defect so often that the other player just barely prefers cooperating all the time to defecting all the time. And the best way to encourage cooperation from the other is to be know as someone who will never cooperate again if the other defects once. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Fortunately, it is not easy to establish a reputation as a bully. To become known as a bully one would have to defect a lot, which means that one is likely to provoke the other individual into retaliation. Until one’s reputation is well established, one is likely to have to get into a lot of very unrewarding contests of will. For example, if the other individual defects even once, you will be torn between acting as tough as the reputation you want to establish requires and attempting to restore amicable relations in the current interaction. What darkens the picture even more is that the other individual may also be truing to establish a reputation, and for this reason may be unforgiving of the defections you use to try to establish their reputation. When two parties are each trying to establish their reputations for use against other individuals in future deals, it is easy to see that their own interactions can spiral downward into a long series of mutual punishments. Each side has an incentive to pretend not to be noticing what the other is trying to do. Both sides want to appear to be untrainable so that the other will stop trying to bully them. The Prisoner’s Dilemma in business deals suggest that a good way for the individual to appear untrainable is for the individual to use the strategy of TIT FOR TAT. That utter simplicity of the strategy of TIT FOR TAT. The utter simplicity of the strategy makes it easy to asset as a fixed pattern of behavior. And the ease of recognition makes it hard for the other player to maintain an ignorance of it. Using TIT FOR TAT is an effective way of holding still and letting the other individual do the adaptation. It refuses to be bullied, but does not do any bullying of its own. If the other individual does adapt to it, the result is mutual cooperation. In fact, deterrence is achieved through the establishment of a reputation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

One purpose of having a reputation is to enable you to achieve deterrence by means of a credible threat. You try to commit yourself to a response that you really would not want to make if the occasion actually arose. The United States of America deters the Russians from taking West Berlin by threatening to start a major war in response to such a grab. To make such a threat credible, the United States of America seeks to establish a reputation as a country that actually does carry out such guarantees, despite the short-run costs. Vietnam had just such a meaning to the American government when the decision to commit major combat forces was being made in 1965. The dominance of the desire to maintain a reputation was expressed in a secret memo to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara from his Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara from his Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, John McNaughton, defining U.S. aims in South Vietnam: U.S.A aims: 70 percent—To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor). 20 percent—To keep SVN (and adjacent) territory from Chinese hands. 10 percent—To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better freer way of life. Maintaining deterrence through achieving a reputation for toughness is important not only in international politics, but also in many domestic functions of the government. The most effective governments cannot take the compliance of its citizens for granted. Instead, a government has strategic interactions with the governed, and these interactions often take the form of an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Social institutions of all kinds function as control mechanisms. This is important to say, because most writers on the subject of social institutions (especially sociologists) do not grasp the idea that any decline in the force of institutions makes people vulnerable to information chaos. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

To say that life is destabilized by weakened institutions is merely to say that information loses its use and therefore becomes a source of confusion rather than coherence. Social institutions sometimes do their work simply by denying people access to information, but principally by directing how much weight and, therefore value one must give to information. Social institutions are concerned with the meaning of information and can be quite rigorous in enforcing standards of admission. Take as a simple example a court of law. Almost all rules for the presentation of evidence and for the conduct of those who participate in a trial are designed to limit the amount of information that is allowed entry into the system. In our system, a judge disallows “hearsay” or personal opinion as evidence except under strictly controlled circumstances, spectators are forbidden to express their feelings, a defendant’s previous convictions may not be mentioned, juries are not allowed to hear arguments over the admissibility of evidence—these are instances of information control. The rules on which such control is based derive from a theory of justice that defines what information may be considered relevant and, especially, what information must be considered irrelevant. The theory may be deemed flawed in some respects—lawyers, for example, may disagree over the rules governing the flow of information—but no one disputes that information must be regulated in some manner. In even the simplest law case, thousands of events may have had a bearing on the dispute, and it is well understood that, if they were all permitted entry, there could be no theory of due process, trials would have no end, law itself would be reduced to meaninglessness. In short, the rule of law is concerned with the “destruction” of information. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Although legal theory has been taxed to the limit by new information from diverse sources—biology, psychology, and sociology, among them—the rules governing relevance having remained fairly stable. This may account for Americans’ overuse of the courts as a means of finding coherence and stability. As other institutions become useable as mechanisms for the control of wanton information, the courts stand as a final arbiter of truth. For how long, no one knows. Many of us are still in the process of using the keys for unlocking the meanings of our dreams. Raw, physically unacceptable facts, inhabitants of the unconscious, express themselves in hidden ways, gaining covert satisfaction that way. They fasten themselves in hidden ways, gaining covert satisfaction that way. They fasten themselves on consciously acceptable material, which then no longer really means what it seems to mean. It now does and does not express the true meaning. Plato’s respectable dialogue is the intermediary between Aschenbach’s good conscience and his carnality. Plato found a way of expressing and beautifying, of sublimating, perverse pleasures of the flesh. So the story presents it. There is no indication that Mann thought that one could learn much directly from Plato about eros. One could learn something by applying Dr. Freud’s insights to Plato and seeing how desire finds rationalization for itself. Plato was vile body for scientific dissection. Mann was too caught up by the novelty of the Freudian teaching to doubt whether sublimation can really account for the psychic phenomena it claims to explain. He was doctrinaire, or he was sure we know better than did older thinkers. They are mythologists. Dr. Freud and Plato agree about the pervasiveness of eroticism in everything human. However, there the similarity ends. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Anyone who wished to lay aside his assurance about the superiority of modern psychology might find in Plato a richer explanation of the diversity of erotic expression, which so baffles us and has drive us to our present nonsense. He would see there a rewarding articulation of the possibilities and impossibilities of the fulfillment of erotic desires. Plato both enchants and disenchants eros, and we need both. At least in Mann the tradition in which we could refresh ourselves is present, if not exactly alive. With what he gives us we might  embark on our own journey and find more interesting prey than is an Aschenbach. However, in America that slender thread, which was already almost stretched to its limit in Mann, has broken. We have no more contact with the tradition. Eros is an obsession, but there is no thought about it, and no possibility of thought about it, because we now take what were only interpretations of our souls to be facts about them. Eros gradually becomes meaningless and low; and there is nothing good for man which is not informed by thought and affirmed by real choice, which means choice instructed by deliberation. Saul Bellow has described his own intention as “the rediscovery of the magic of the World under the debris of modern ideas.” That gray net of abstraction, used to cover the World in order to simplify and explain it in a way that is pleasing to us, has become the World in our eyes. The only way to see the phenomena, rather than sterile distillations of them, to experience them in their ambiguity again, would be to have available alternate visions, a diversity of profound opinions. However, our ideas have made it difficult to have such experiences in practice, and impossible in theory. How does a youngster who sees sublimation where Plato saw divination learn from Plato, let alone think Plato can speak to one? Souls artificially constituted by a new kind of education live in a World transformed by man’s artifice and believe that all values are relative and determined by the private economic or drives for pleasures of the flesh of those who hold them. How are they to recover the primary natural experience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Usually depicted positively, as a revelation of truth free of the contingencies of time and place, the impossibility of such a formulation only illuminates another moment of falseness about art. Kierkegaard found the defining trait of the aesthetic outlook to be its hospitable reconciliation of all points of view and its evasion of choice. This can be seen in the perpetual compromise that at once valorizes art only to repudiate its intent and content with, “We,, after all, it is only art.” Today culture is commodity and art perhaps the star commodity. The situation is understood inadequately as the product of a centralized culture of industry, a la Horkheimer and Adorno. We witness rather, a mass diffusion of culture dependent on participation for its strength, not forgetting that the critique must be of culture itself, not of its alleged control. Daily life has become aestheticized by a saturation of images and music, largely through the electronic media, the representation of representation. Image and sound, in their every-presence, have become a void, ever more absent of meaning for the individual. Meanwhile, the distance between artist and spectator had diminished, a narrowing that only highlights the absolute distance between aesthetic experience and what is real. This perfectly duplicates the spectacle at large: separate and manipulating, perpetual aesthetic experience and a demonstration of political power. Reacting against the increasing mechanization of life, avant-garde movements have not, however, resisted the spectacular nature of art any more than orthodox tendencies have. In fact, one could argue that Aestheticism, or “art for art’s sake,” is  more radical than an attempt to engage alienation with its own devices. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The late nineteenth-century art pour l’art development was a self-reflective rejection of the World, as opposed to the avant-grade effort to somehow organize life around art. A valid moment of doubt lies behind Aestheticism, the realization that division of labor has diminished experience and turned art into just another specialization: art shed its illusory ambitions and became its own content. The avant-garde has generally staked out wider claims, projecting a leading rile denied it by modern capitalism. It is best understood as a social institution peculiar to technological society that so strongly prices novelty; it is predicated on the progressivist notion that reality must be constantly updated. However, avant-grade culture cannot compete with the modern World’s capacity to shock and transgress (and not just symbolically.) Its demise is another datum that the myth of progress is itself bankrupt. Dada was one of the last two major avant-garde moments, its negative image greatly enhanced by the sense of general historical collapse radiated by World War I. Its partisans claimed, at times, to be against all “isms,” including the idea of art. However, painting cannot negate painting, nor can sculpture invalidate sculpture, keeping in mind that all symbolic culture is the co-opting of perception, expression and communication. In fact, Dada was a quest for new artistic modes, its attack on the rigidities and irrelevancies of bourgeois art a factor in the advance of art; Hans Ricther’s memoirs referred to “the regeneration of visual art that Dada had begun.” If World War I almost killed art, the Dadaists reformed it. Many people are interested in nanotechnology. It is described as being a shotgun marriage of chemistry and mechanical engineering, with physics (as always) presiding. This makes a complete evaluation difficult for most of today’s specialists, because each of these fields is taught separately and usually practiced separately. Many specialists, having highly focused backgrounds, find themselves unequipped to evaluate proposals that overlap other disciplines. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

When asked to do so, they will state feelings of discomfort, because although they cannot identify any particular problems, they cannot verify the entire concept as sound. Scientists and engineers with multidisciplinary backgrounds, or with access to specialists from other fields, can evaluate the idea from side. Increased human abilities have routinely been used to damage the environment and to make war. Even the crude technologies of the twenty-first century have taken us to the brink. It is natural to feel exhilarated (or terrified) by a prospect that promises (or threatens) to extend human abilities beyond most past dreams (or nightmares). It is better to feel both, to meld and moderate these feelings, and to set out on a course of action that makes bad outcomes less likely. We are convinced that the best course is to focus on the potential good while warning of the potential evils. Those in failing health may be justified in saying this; others are expressing an opinion that may well be wrong. It would be optimistic to assume that benefits are around the corner, and prudent to assume that they will be long delayed Conversely, it would be optimistic to assume that dangers will be long delated, and prudent to assume that they will arrive promptly. Whatever good or ill may come of post-breakthrough capabilities, the turbulence of the coming transition will present a real danger. While we invite readers to take a “What if?” stance toward these technologies, it would be imprudent to listen to the lulling sound of the promise “not in our lifetimes.” Even today, public acceptance of man’s coming exploration of space is slow. It is considered an event we may all be able to experience in our lifetime, or that our children will surely experience. The opportunities of nanotechnology are enormous. The resulting changes will be disruptive, sweeping industries aside, upending military strategies, and transforming our ways of life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Thinking about advertisement, when it is not in bas taste? Do they mean that interrupting people’s lives to start hawking products is not rude and offensive behavior at any time? If someone came to your door every night to do that, you would soon call the police. Advertising is always in bad taste. What advertisers mean when they use the “bad taste” excuse is that when something really real happens on television, it may affect how well the ad works. In the context of concrete reality, advertising can be understood as vacuous, absurd, rude, outrageous. Advertising can succeed only in an environment in which the real merges with the fictional, and all become semireal with equal tone and undifferentiated meaning. In that context advertising can use its technical tricks to jump forward out of the medium, creating its artificial unusualness. The best environment for advertising is a dull and even one, where it can become the highlighted event. This explains the tendency to sponsor programs that have that quality of even tone, from Walter Cronkite to Archie Bunker to Jensen Ackles. They all merge with each other, making an appropriate backdrop for the advertising. In probably the most brilliant article that has ever been written on television (“Sixteen Notes on Television,” reprinted in Literature in Revolution), Todd Gitlin said: “The commercial is the purpose, the essence; the program is the package.” The program is only the excuse to get you to watch the advertising. Without the ads there would be no programs. Advertising is the true content of television, and if it does not remain so, then advertisers will cease to support the medium, and television will cease to exist as the popular entertainment it presently is. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

While sleep is healing, Adam and Eve found their second-born son Abel sleeping day and night. He was lying by his altar in his field, one morning, with his head crushed and his face and body drenched in blood. He said his eldest brother Kain struck him down. Then he spoke no more, and fell asleep. They laid him in his bed and washed the blood away, and they were glad to know that the hurt was light and that he had no pain; for if he had had pain he would not have spelt. In was in the early morning that Adam and Eve found Abel. All day he slept that sweet reposeful sleep, lying on his back, and never moving, never turning. It showed how tired he was, poor thing. He was so good, and worked so hard, rising with the dawn and laboring till the dark. And now he was overworked; it would be best the he tax himself less. Still, all the day he slept. And Eve made food for him which he never ate. And still Able slept with his eyes wide; a strange thing, and it made Eve think he was awake at first, but it was not so, for she spoke and he did not answer. Eve kissed him on his cheek and he was cold. Adam and Eve tried to warm him up with sacks of wool, but he was still cold. They could not wake him! With Eve’s arms clinging about him, she looked into his eyes, through the veil of her tears, and begged for one little word, and he would not answers. “Oh, is it that long sleep—is it Death? And will he wake no more?” Eve wandered. Death has entered the World, the creatures are perishing, one of the Family is fallen; the product of the Moral Sense is complete. The Family think ill of Death—they will change their mind. If one’s purpose good, bear it aloft, but if one does not purpose good—sin before the door, a beast lying in wait, unto thee his desire, but prevail one over him. The word which is absent from the tale of the Fall, the word “sin,” and it is apparently the name of a demon who, by nature a “beast the lies in wait,” at times lurks on watch at the entrance to a soul that does not purpose good, to see if it will fall pray to him, that soul within whose power it still lies to overpower him. “O Lord, wilt thou grant unto us that we my have success in bringing them again unto thee in Christ,” reports Alma 31.33 #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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