March 2021

The More Things Change…

I’ve been immersed in the planning for a new streaming platform that will be the first 21^st century curated home for everything from live camera phone feeds to nontraditional shows and important archival video. Starting a new website, reveals how much has changed in the four years since we put up the site for my book, chasingthelostcity.com.*

The biggest challenge isn’t the program ideas or curating what they’ll watch.…it’s all about how to get people to notice it/use it..  SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means getting eyeballs…customers to websites.   It could be seen as the 21^st century equivalent of the newsboy on the corner shouting  “Extra Extra… Read All About it!”  

I understood that completely. SEO is more like the wizard behind the curtain.

Does it make me a fuddy-duddy to say I preferred it when actual humans were in charge, rather than the omnipresent algorithms.  If I wanted to see an ad for some new kind of underpants, I’d prefer to decide to find it by myself or probably only pay attention if I needed new ones and went to the store.

Not a total fuddy-duddy, but definitely a person who has lived most of his life in a different century.

_______________

*I was pleased with the way it represented the book, but the number of views on the site is unrelated to how good the site is or how the book impacted the readers. 

Actually, books can only be bestsellers with hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars in promotions and hype.

---

Somebody Had to Think of it First

I had never heard of him until a week ago when I was reading about algorithms, thinking about where’d they come from and how did they take us over. Turns out that Turing (1912-1952) was an undisputed genius, an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist.  

He invented the concepts that underlie modern computers and artificial intelligence. And he was a hero in World War II as a vital part of the British cryptographic team at Bletchley Park that cracked the German Enigma code. They did it with some machines nobody ever had before.

Turing was one of the first to know that computers would drastically change everyone’s life.  He conceived of  The “Logic Machine” in 1936 and when it was actually built and working years later, that pioneering hypothetical machine was called “The Universal Turing Machine.” His original ideas included an infinite store (Memory in today’s terminology) that contained both instructions and data (Programs). John von Neumann, who is generally recognized as the inventor of modern computers, knew Turing while he was a visiting professor at Cambridge in 1935, and also during Turing’s Ph.D. year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in  1936 – 1937. 

What he invented was basic (on the level of a Hangman Game) but it led the way for the first computers by Von Neuman in 1946. Turing was a pioneer and a believer, but always knew about limitations:

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.

Turing might have been thinking about himself when he wrote:

Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one could imagine.

Every one of us can relate to that: starting in grade school and continuing for our whole lives, it’s always somebody you wouldn’t expect.

---

It’s All About Social Media

At least that’s the way popularity and celebrity are measured.  About 45 percent of the world’s population uses social media. More than 60% are under 35.  This has led to the rise of influencers, social media users who persuade members of their audience to do something like buy a product or go to a particular place. Social media influencers acquire followers through celebrity, special skills and/or knowledge, and the most important influencers are those that have a wide base of support across several social media platforms.  Here are the top social influencers right now, each of whom has more than 200 million followers:

1. Christiano Ronaldo, 36, World’s greatest footballer. Portugal
2. Justin Bieber, 27, Singer-songwriter. Canada
3. Taylor Swift, 31, Singer-songwriter. USA
4. Ariana Grande, 27, Singer-Actress. USA
5. Selena Gomez, 28, Singer-Actress-Producer. USA
6. Katy Perry, Singer-songwriter, TV judge. USA
7. Kim Kardashian West, 40, Media celeb, model, producer, actress. USA
8. Beyonce, 39, Singer-songwriter, producer, actress. USA
9. Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie) YouTuber, Comedian. Gaming videos. Sweden
10. Kylie Jenner, 23, Media personality, socialite, model, businesswoman. USA

Like you, I can see that they’re all 40 or under; six of the top ten are female singer-performers; all but three are from the USA and none grew up in New York or Chicago.

Beyond that, I’m probably not the best guy to explain this phenomenon, since most of these people whose fame is derived from YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, are off my radar.  I invite you to comment and put it in perspective.

---

Perfect Storm

Elements:

1. It’s a depression—there’s almost no business and just a few shoppers. Very few tourists for about a year.  Even suburbanites don’t go downtown…even for work!
2. The former World’s Largest Retailer has been knocked out by our old pal Al Gorithm and Amazon which dominates sales by using never-before conceived of data manipulations and information, not real estate. 
3. Millions have stayed away from the biggest stores (other than Walmart and Home Depot)  for nearly a year of Covid-19 isolation.  
4. Macy’s can’t be making any money at 50% off…they’re just trying to get closer to even before they close the store forever.

---

Look, NO TRUMP!

Actually, like him, I’m not telling the whole truth.  

Here’s one last image I’ll ever want to show you about what 45^th Prez did after he left Washington:

---

This Month’s Wisdom

He died at 67 from a complicated suicide, 16 years ago last week.

---

Aren’t They Grand?

---

Valentine’s Day Forecast, Chicago, 2021

February was cold and snowy, the way it was when we were kids. March seems to be starting out a little better and I’m confident it’ll go out like the lamb it’s supposed to be.

Meanwhile, spring and White Sox baseball are just around the corner…hallelujah!  Enjoy it.