Blog

  • Super (under)powered Cinema

    So I’ll be honest at the start of this: I was a huge fan of superhero films. Browsing Life in Pixels’ archives will testify my adoration of the genre. But recently, I’ve become tired of these films. They’re formulaic (which is sometimes not such a bad thing… but, you know). Netflix does a great job of producing some actual substance in this field, but for the most part the television side of the genre leaves much to be desired.

    I would watch, week in week out, the latest episodes of Arrow, The Flash, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., … until it all just got too much. How much of my life was I willing to invest in this? There comes a point where entertainment becomes a chore, and I think I’ve reached that. In its response to mass-consumption, itself a product of the success the genre has felt since the first Iron Man hit theatres, superhero films and television have since departed the gravitas that once underscored the category.

    Now, I’m not saying that I’m a voice with final-say in what people should be watching or consuming. We live in a free(ish) society; we can do what we want. But I’ve since become uninterested in this genre, a part of pop culture that at one time was a powerful critique on society, and that formed a big part of my own life.

    Take Nolan’s Batman films. Yes, I know. It’s a cop-out whenever a critic of contemporary superhero cinema brings out Mr Nolan and his work. But with this succinct trilogy, he crafted a piece of cinema that is both powerful as a work of art, a strong series of examinations on our society – a society that is plagued by fanaticism, crime, terror, rogue ideology and fear. The Batman becomes the lens through which we examine what it means to live in such a world. Tom Hardy’s Bane represents that strong, terrifying faction that can, at any moment, shake the very foundations of our civilisation. Ledger’s Joker, of course, just wants to see the world burn.

    The point is, these films carried substance. Gravitas. And Nolan knew when to stop. He set out to tell this legend, this mythos of the Batman, and he achieved it through those three films.

    Superheroes are, I believe, a potent vehicle for exploring very human issues: politics, race, culture, power… historically, they have been used as a critique on society. But in the commodification of the genre, as Hollywood’s prying fingers tear through the metaphor to mine the cashflow, I fear we’re losing that very essence. Yes, on the print side, things still seem to be alive and kicking. But I’m arguing from the cinematic perspective, and the state of things in that arena leaves much to be desired.

     

  • A Humanist Approach to Smart Cities

    This is an essay written for the honours-level course “Urban Infrastructure” (APG4021F) offered at the University of Cape Town’s School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics. The essay was written in 2016. Citations are provided at the bottom of the post. Please contact me should you require further information or re-use info.

    The idea of Smart Cities has permeated global discourse around contemporary city design. However, its core goals of improving the lives of denizens has been obscured as technology companies seek to manipulate the term for marketing purposes. This essay argues for an alternative approach: a human-centric way of re-looking at the idea of the “smart city”, where technology and urban design can work together for the benefit of urban life.

    (more…)

  • The Post-Truth Era

    To say we’re living in a complex world would perhaps be an understatement. Complexity and contradiction are the pervading forces of contemporary society. So it would come, perhaps, as no surprise that something rather peculiar, yet also seemingly fitting, would emerge from such a unique epoch as this.

    The ancient mathematician Pythagoras once said:

    Reason is immortal, all else mortal.

    Unfortunately, our era has somehow managed to kill rationality. In its place, we have inserted “feelings”. Welcome to the Post-Truth Era.

    Post-Truth is becoming the new buzzword in the world of politics – specifically the 2016 US Presidential election. Trump’s ability to use emotive language in passing known falsehoods off as facts has been at the core of his notorious rise in popularity. The Economist has a wonderful article that examines this phenomenon from a political angle.

    However, I feel that this idea of post-truth is infiltrating other parts of our society. I’m certainly not arguing for an abolishment of emotion, or for the cultivation of a generation of stone-faced, unemotional robots (although, let’s face it, robots would do a far better job at this civilisation thing than us humans have in the last few decades). But the replacement of all rational thought by pure emotionalism has brought into question our ability to think critically, to closely examine what’s being presented to us.

    Rationality doesn’t sound so fun. The word feels like it’s implying you to actually use that computer-thing encased in your skull to do a bit of intellectual work. Emotion, by contrast, triggers soft ideas of pure idealism, of hope and an essentially cleaner path to seeking truth. And yes, emotion is a crucial part of what makes us human, of what defines our character and our compassion to fellow humans. So it’s perfectly fine in some, more social situations.

    But when it comes to critical things that affect society – politics, but also ideas, debates, discussions around issues of epistemology, ontological arguments, education, the state of our nation – then it’s absolutely crucial that we still approach these topics from a critical, rational viewpoint. It’s inevitable that our emotional side will, to some extent, factor in our opinions and the reception of other’s opinions. The challenge comes in listening to the opposing or other view, then processing it with a critical sensibility. Or at the least, analyze it critically before passing any emotional judgements.

    A lot of what’s happening in our society – both global, and in the local context (South Africa, and the global south in my case) is a direct result of irrationality overtaking our sense of judgement on multifaceted and interlinked issues. It’s when we let our emotions take control that we become vulnerable to the Thought Police (which is another issue all of its own), who will then proceed to slice and dice our very language until it resembles a form that is emotionally sensitive to every single issue affected by every human being, thus emptying it of any credibility, logic or rationality.

    Post-truth operates through a series of logical fallacies that inject emotive propaganda, aimed directly at inciting one to make decisions with their heart and not their head. In our constant effort to seek truth, to understand our world and the complexities and intricacies of our society, we need to actually think first. In this era of digital noise, where we are susceptible to a swarm of emotion, of mindless chatter and the sharing of the minutiae of every person’s daily life, have we become so intellectually drained through technology that we’ve forgotten this very primal human trait?

    Truth lies in the world around us.

    – Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

  • Platform Wars are a Waste of Time

    Mac vs PC. iOS vs Android. Automatic Transmission vs. Manual Transmission.

    Since the dawn of technology, the platform wars have raged. The decision to use one system over another has somehow become suggestive of the character of a person. If you’re a Mac user, you’re suddenly labelled an “Apple sheep”. If you’re a diehard Windows person, then you’re associated with someone who does “real computing”, is “uncreative”, and a “numbers person.”

    These labels serve no purpose other than to perpetuate a divide within technological circles, oft exploited by marketing teams to propagate one platform over another. They’ve been used to attack not just the flaws of a platform, but the people using these tools. Most frustratingly, they obscure the fact that no matter the characteristics of a particular platform, technology today has become so advanced that it is sometimes indeed indistinguishable from magic.

    Here’s the thing: technological progress has been so dramatic over the past few years that it really doesn’t matter what platform you use. Especially in creative fields like design, cinema and photography: most applications are cross-platform, and the platforms themselves proffer enticing options no matter whether you’re macOS or Windows.

    I grew up on Windows, and have programmed some significant (well, significant for me) projects. My prefered platform for the past 8 years has been macOS. I have very personal reasons – as many people do regarding their tools of choice to get the job done or to unwind with. These range from certain intricacies with macOS: the way applications are managed, the overall user interface, window management, the robust industrial design of Mac hardware, a trackpad that has yet to let me down and means I don’t have to always rely on an external mouse to get most design-related tasks done (and that even augments my mouse when designing on macOS). There’s also the comfort factor: I’ve grown very used to the Mac way of doing things. The list goes on, but it is indeed very specific to my own use case. The beauty is that I’ve been able to install the “best of both worlds” on my MacBook: I can experience the things I love about macOS like the Finder and the Alfred search extension, whilst simultaneously using Visual Studio on a Windows installation through VMWare to develop Windows desktop apps critical to the operation of SKKSA.

    Look, we’re all entitled to our own opinions. And technology is as opinionated a field as you can get. Our lives are intricately entwined with the devices and platforms we use daily to live, to exist. So it makes sense that one becomes vehemently passionate about their platform of choice. But when that passion extends to bashing others for their choice of platform, especially without having a reasonable experience of said platform to base opinions upon, then it becomes a serious problem. In fact, it may say more about that person than their attacks and scorn of their target’s platform and by extension, the character attack associated with the choice of platform. If anything, it represents a juvenile, immature mindset; a rather closed, small-minded viewpoint of the vastness that is modern technology.

    We should be excited and grateful that we have choice. More than one platform means that the developers of these tools are constantly competing to make their product better. This only benefits us, the end users.

    Platform wars are a waste of time because they detract us from the beauty that is our modern, advanced systems. They detract us from actually focussing on collaborating, on creating and on using our incredible tools to help make the world a little bit better.

  • Utopian Illusion

    “The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”

    ― Plato, The Republic

    There are many illusions that exist like a thin veil obscuring the reality of society. Political correctness is just another layer that serves as a distraction from the bleak truths we are sometimes afraid to confront. Chief amongst those illusions is the notion that freedom, equality, liberty – these ideals we hold so dear to our sacred conception of “democracy” – can bring about a utopian society where everyone’s needs are satisfied.

    Utopia cannot exist because it is the product of human creation. We are a flawed species, and thus any system we invent will inherently have its problems. Like there is no ideal form of government or any singular, perfect philosophy, there can only exist the pursuit of the utopian ideal, but never any true attainment of the ideal.

    Things in nature exist in duality; for there to be good, bad must exist as its counter-balance. For there to be day, there must also be night to give it meaning. It’s a sentiment best captured in the ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching:

    “Everyone recognizes beauty

    only because of ugliness

    Everyone recognizes virtue

    only because of sin”

    – Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (Verse 2)

    We would only seek to fool ourselves further if we were to believe in the illusion of a utopian society. Plato himself, the paragon of Western philosophy, denounced the notion that the democratic state is the apogee of government. Our society is far more complex, nuanced, multifaceted to be easily controlled by a single system.

    Once we can accept these limitations, and embrace the complexity of modern society, understanding that nothing will be perfect, and nothing can be perfect, we will truly begin to move forward. The stagnation felt by many as we struggle to enter a world that is seemingly wrought with inequality, despair, hoplessness, with unfair economic systems that only further the class gaps, leads to this yearning for the antithesis of the dim present – that is, the utopian dream.

    Utopia, and its sibling, perfection, are ideals to strive toward, not something we can ever truly grasp. It’s like that notion of design as being a function of infinity: it’s something that has no end to it in and of itself. It’s a system that will forever be held just beyond our grasp, as we progress towards it.

    “One may look for fulfillment in this world

    but his longings will never be exhausted

    The only thing he ever finds

    is that he himself is exhausted.”

    – Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (Verse 2)