Articles 1999
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Raise your hand if you hate traffic
Forbes, May 21, 1999
THE 360.ALPHA SUMMIT was a big, flashy conference featuring the cream of the Austin, Tex. high-tech community—several hundred top executives and venture capitalists. Dedicated to the broad topic of improving Austin for technology business, the January gathering was well financed, well attended, and well intentioned.
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Looks matter
Forbes, May 02, 1999
KINKO'S HAS LAUNCHED a $40 million marketing effort to convince customers that everyday communication requires polished graphics. Its ads depict humorous applications—tell off the boss by leaving him a travel brochure for hell or pop the question with graphs of your increasing love and projected earnings—but the message is serious.
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Source Code
Al Gore says he invented the Internet. What does he mean?
Reason, May 1999
It was a gaffe worthy of Dan Quayle, but with Clinton-style grandiosity. In a March 10 interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN, Al Gore bragged about his record. "During my service in the United States Congress," he said, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
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Power Fantasies
The strange appeal of the Y2K bug.
Reason, April 1999
Wouldn't it be great if civilization as we know it collapsed? A lot of people seem to think so. The Y2K bug has become the latest hope for many people with a grievance against contemporary society--and not just the head-for-the-hills survivalists. The problem is real enough, of course, and computer and embedded-chip users are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make sure that when the calendar turns to 2000, their machines don't think it's the year 1900 and crash. But in the minds of many, the computer glitch isn't just a technical problem. It's a vehicle for reimagining, and potentially remaking, the world
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The Pleasantville Solution
The war on "sprawl" promises "livability" but delivers repression, intolerance--and more traffic.
Reason, March 1999
If Bill Clinton and Al Gore denounced soccer moms, told us everything was better in the good old days, and demanded that we let their friends redesign our lives to fit their sense of morality, you might think they'd thrown away their political ambitions and joined the religious right. You would, however, be wrong
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Misplacing the Blame for Our Troubles on 'Flat, Not Tall' Spaces
The anti-sprawl technocrats crave 'density,' which they believe is more efficient and more interesting.
Los Angeles Times, February 08, 1999
If Al Gore denounced soccer moms, told us everything was better in the good old days and demanded that we let his friends redesign our lives to fit their morality, you might think he'd gone over to the religious right. You'd be wrong, however. -
The Dilbert Doctrines: An Interview with Scott Adams
Reason, February 1999
Scott Adams is one of America's leading social critics: an astute observer of the follies and pains of corporate life in the age of the knowledge worker, downsizing, PowerPoint presentations, and endless management fads. Unlike most social commentators, however, Adams isn't looking to change government policy or re-engineer capitalism to suit his tastes. He's providing criticism from within--the sort of knowing commentary that can get stupid policies dropped before they're implemented. And, of course, he makes it funny
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Rumor Mongers
"Neutral" technocrats sign on to anti-technology smear campaigns.
Reason, February 1999
If you want to hurt an upstart product, one of the most effective techniques is to start an unfounded rumor--to play on public suspicions and force the maker to prove its innocence. You can start spreading the word, for instance, that urine got into the beer or that the soda pop makes black men sterile. You can taint your target even among people who don't quite believe the allegations. Why, after all, should they take a chance?
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How Has 'The Organization Man' Aged?
The New York Times, January 17, 1999
LOS ANGELES -- William H. Whyte, who died last week, lived long enough to achieve a paradoxical fate for a social critic: the world he once criticized had become the good old days.
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In Praise of Play
Bradley Lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, January 11, 1999
At the 1996 Republican National Convention, Newt Gingrich briefly ventured off-script. Before he started his formal remarks, he pulled Olympic gold medalist Kent Steffes on stage and celebrated Steffes' sport as an example of the unpredictable, inventive culture that makes America great.