In response to these posts, reader Susan Self writes:
I enjoyed reading your prediction that Gen Y will eventually stop plastering their private life all over the internet once there are employment/financial/status penalities. BUT I don't think trend was a Gen Y creation. Instead I believe it had its seeds in the ghastly Boomer internet dating phenomena of the 90's. HERE'S WHY: My co-workers and I recently heard that our boss--age 45--had joined Match.com. Gleefully hoping for the worst, we logged onto Match.com and tried to find him via his zip code. (Santa Monica). I was shocked to see how many 50 year old guys in Santa Monica had posted ads for themselves (46 pages!!) and who also posted multiple pictures of the themselves (sound familiar?) in addition to writing overly revealing essays listing the most mundane aspects of their daily routine. Many of them gave the MySpace crowd a run for their money. So while Gen Y does go the extra mile, the Boomer's are right behind them.
Of course, the next step is media coaching.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 19, 2007 • Comments
As many readers already know, Cato Unbound, the Cato Institute webzine edited by Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson, is devoting its current issue to the questions raised by Brian Doherty's new book Radicals for Capitalism
: What was the American libertarian movement, and where does its future lie? After earlier responses from Brink Lindsey, Tyler Cowen, and Tom Palmer, I weigh in. Here's the opening:
As the editor of Reason, I used to be infuriated at the way the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream publications consistently capitalized Libertarian when referring to the magazine or its parent organization, the Reason Foundation. They wouldn't capitalize liberal or conservative, republican or democrat, unless they were referring to a political party. (Most Republicans are, after all, democrats, and I've never met a Democrat who wasn't a republican.) Why couldn't they understand that Reason was not a party organ but, like its liberal and conservative counterparts, a magazine of ideas? Were the copy editors just stupid?
After a decade of hearing me gripe, my husband cracked the code: Maybe newspapers don't think of Libertarian as a party label like Democratic or Republican, he suggested. Maybe they think of it as a religious description, like Catholic or Presbyterian.
Great.
Two things strike me about the essays. The first is an unexpected overlap between the concerns here and those of the designers I addressed in my new Print magazine article on DIY culture. Just as graphic designers worry way too much about who gets to be called a designer, movement libertarians have spent an absurd amount of time worrying about who was a real libertarian. That impulse was worst in the 1970s and early '80s--before my time--but it hasn't gone away.
The second is that intellectuals who have spent most of their careers working for libertarian organizations, including those like Brink and me who did not come up in "the movement," are probably unduly influenced by intramovement squabbles and purity tests, which get awfully tiresome after a while. I'd love to see a continuation of the discussion featuring libertarian writers who have spent their professional lives surrounded by mostly liberals or conservatives or both. (I suspect the contrarian side of Tyler Cowen would have come out differently if he hasn't spent all those years at George Mason.)
UPDATE: On Cato's blog, John Samples goes to great lengths to refute an argument I didn't even come close to making. Take it up with Brink, please.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 18, 2007 • Comments
Graphic designers seem to live in terror of amateurs with Pagemaker, as witnessed by Michael Bierut's famous post on Design Observer and the many, many comments that followed:
What stings here, I think, isn't just the specter of do-it-yourself. We're used to that. Some of us even applaud it. Once graphic designers possessed unique technical expertise: the names of fonts, the phone numbers of typesetters, the formula for calculating the precise length of a 200-word manuscript set on a 14 pica wide column of 12 on 14 point Bodoni Book. Today, anyone can do it. If some untrained-in-graphic-design parent wants to support Junior's political ambitions, out comes the Photoshop and some awful typeface and before you know it the printer is cranking away. (Of course, Junior, if he's got a brain in his head, has already launched his viral video and won't get around to hanging your pathetic old-skool posters. But it's the thought that counts!) For graphic designers, our craft is now a commodity.
It's a little depressing that there are some designers who can count on a little respect. Do you have to be a trained product designer to create a new sports car? Do you have to be a trained architect to design a new house? Despite Divine Design with Candace Olson and Pimp My Ride, the answer is still yes and yes. You don't see Business Week offering any fun courses in industrial design or architecture, at least not yet.
So what's an embattled graphic designer to do? During my three-year term as president of AIGA, our members consistently ranked one priority above all others: proving the value of design to the general public, and specifically, the business community. To put it bluntly, we were all searching for some magic formula that would make clients predisposed to respect us, and to demonstrate that respect by paying us large fees. We wanted design to have "a place at the table." We yearned for a silver bullet that would slay our insecurities once and for all. The silver bullet took a variety of forms. Perhaps the process of design was too mysterious to be credible: would agreeing on a standard 12-step sequence reassure clients that there was valuable science behind the art? So many amateurs out there: shouldn't we be licensing graphic designers so clients could distinguish the professionals from the dabblers? And, oddly, so many credible firms participate in unpaid competitions: can we make it, if not against the law, than at least professionally embarassing?
Chill, I argued in the comments back then and in this new article in Print magazine. DIY is not only here to stay. It's not a long-term threat to good professional graphic design.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 14, 2007 • Comments
Guest-blogging at Organizations and Markets, Professor Postrel analyzes the policy choices for dealing with CO2 emissions" carbon taxes or "cap and trade"?
Business groups are plumping for permits. Economists are mostly talking about taxes. There are three important criteria to consider in choosing the correct instrument:
Find out what they are here.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 14, 2007 • Comments
My latest Atlantic column examines the new wave of loft living, amplifying and illustrating the discussion of authenticity in chapter four of The Substance of Style. (Link is good through Tuesday.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 11, 2007 • Comments
Tyler Cowen may seem like a nice, non-materialistic intellectual (and he is in fact both nice and intellectual), but he is a master of conspicuous consumption. What are all these posts about his travels, if not a way of demonstrating that he has ample free time, extra money, and refined taste? A lot of far richer people can't afford his relatively cheap adventures. Some people collect expensive handbags; he collects experiences. Experiences require less closet space but more leisure time. Expect to see more of Tyler's version of conspicuous consumption as intangibles account for more and more economic value. (Yeah, I'm jealous.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 11, 2007 • Comments
DMN columnist Steve Blow called my attention to the occasion with this piece on giving kidneys to strangers. It sounds like he's about to volunteer--and not just to get column material (though he'd get plenty).
Presumably thanks to the Walls-Springs transplant, it looks like the DMN will be giving more attention to the issue. A teaser promises another kidney-related story on Sunday.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 08, 2007 • Comments
Should writers take time out from other activities to appear on poor-production-value Internet TV? Since my Bloggingheads debut, which took two one-hour takes plus about three hours dealing with technical issues and running back and forth to stores in futile pursuit of a phone-plus-headset combination that would work, I have been pondering this question, which was most pointedly addressed in a classic Bloggingheads exchange between BH.TV founder Bob Wright and my old college friend Joel Achenbach. Since I can't get the comments to work here, please send me an email or post your comments on our Bloggingheads page. And if you would like to see more of me on Bloggingheads, please suggest partners from the Bloggingheads roster.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 07, 2007 • Comments
According to The Australian Aussie prime minister John Howard cited The Future and Its Enemies in a recent speech:
In a speech last week I talked about Australia becoming the best country in the world to live, to work, to start a business and to raise a family. This relies on unlocking the talent and potential in every home, every neighbourhood, every place of learning and every workplace.
It demands bold and energetic government. But it also requires a measure of humility. Getting this balance right is the essential art of modern government. Why do I say this? I say it because our future is open-ended, rather than a fixed, pre-determined destination. It relies as much on the local and the particular as on the bold, grand design. The American writer Virginia Postrel makes this point in her stimulating book The Future and its Enemies.
She writes how "the very nature of progress dictates an inherently open, and imperfect, future ... the future will be as grand and as particular as we are".
Our progress as a nation is not something that can be engineered top-down by Australia Inc. Or by technocratic design. It will arise, albeit imperfectly, from the creativity, dispersed knowledge and diverse choices of individual Australians. Those who crave predictability will be invariably disappointed. That's why the key to truly successful societies is what I've called in the past well-governed flexibility.
The Melbourne-based Institute for Public Affairs sponsored a speaking tour for me back in 2000 and has promoted the book's ideas from time to time. Since the book is not available in Australian stores (no publisher bought the Commonwealth publication rights), I can only assume that directly or indirectly that's how it came to Howard's attention.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 07, 2007 • Comments
I will be on CNBC's Business of Innovation Sunday night at 9:00 and midnight Eastern time, discussing innovation within existing organizations.
Sally Satel and I will be speaking at Davidson College's Frederick Womble Speas Symposium on March 23. So will Michele Goodwin. The theme of the day-long conference is "Altruism in Medicine and Health Care."
CORRECTION: Although the day-long conference requires a registration fee, our morning session and Michele Goodwin's plenary speech are free and open to the public. More information is here.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 07, 2007 • Comments