A Rhetoric of Ruins: Darvaza Gas Crater

Beware the reveries of desert travelers. In the same way that some tourists who wander the crowded quarters and narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City may confuse themselves with Christ dragging His cross down the Via Dolorosa, the traveler just back from the undulating sweep of sand dunes and juniper and sedge may be forgiven for boasting some deep and newfound understanding of things heretofore unknown when they stumble, perhaps mad from the heat, into civilization. After a recent trip into Central Asia’s Karakum Desert, I might have fallen prey to that same conceit. For it is here where I visited a place known previously to me only through strange and affecting photographs of a locale, termed a ruin, now transformed into a peculiar tourist site: Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Gas Crater.

~

Before we visit the crater, let me tell you a little more about the process of getting to this place. Like virtually every visitor to Turkmenistan, I employed an agency that, among other conveniences, secured me the all-important Letter of Invitation. Given the nation’s role as the world’s fourth largest producer of natural gas, Turkmenistan makes enough money from its natural resources to sustain its political leadership without joining fellow Central Asian nations who have gone into the international hospitality business. One local expert assured me that his country admits barely 20,000 tourists a year. [Understandably, the State Committee on Tourism reports higher numbers.]

One senses that the nation would just as soon avoid the hassle of too many strangers skipping across the borders with Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, bringing a little hard currency but also the threat of cultural contagion. Turkmenistan appears to have concluded that tourists are simply not worth the hassle. As a result, I was obligated to secure the services of a state-approved guide to enter the country. Indeed, I recall few words uttered more sternly upon my arrival at an international airport than when the officer, after surveying my passport and stamping my newly affixed tourist visa, offered his no-nonsense admonition:

“Welcome to Turkmenistan. Never travel without guide.”

Technically this rule does not apply to visitors who remain in the capital city of Ashgabat. And travelers who manage to score short-term transit-visas may also avoid this stricture altogether. But after nearly 24 hours of omnitopian flow produced by a structural and perceptual bubble of elevators, shuttles, pedways, buses, trains, and airplanes, departing from my previous abode in Finland to enter this marble and gold enclosure of Turkmenistan’s international airport, I was not inclined to quibble.

Exiting the airport, which is shaped like a falcon spreading its wings, I notice more and more the traditional clothing of local folks, particularly the long, colorful caftans and headgear worn by women – often sporting vibrant scarves that cover expansive skull caps to manifest an aristocratic bearing, while also providing insulation from the heat. Some younger women, recent brides, bite down on their scarves while in public, reflecting a pledge to stay silent until given permission by their in-laws. [One should add Turkmen women, stemming from a people whose traditions of pride and bravery recognize no barriers of gender, have no problem learning to speak through clenched teeth]. I also notice that men often wear colorful taqiyahs, or sometimes telpeks (also known by outsiders, not without some derision, as “big furry hats”). And among many women and men in this country, gold-capped teeth are still viewed as a sign of wealth. [Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s first post-Soviet president, a dentist before he rose to power, condemned this practice as a threat to personal and national hygiene. Still, some traditions remain stubbornly hard to eradicate.]

One discerns in Turkmenistan an ever-present sense of formality and decorum. Like Ashgabat’s march of cookie-cutter apartments that arouse visions of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City, this place is a monument to order. Still, as it does everywhere, the surveillance state leaks with humanity. People here are friendly and easy-going – although the overly enthusiastic smile of an earnest tourist may be met with bemusement, or even scorn. Again, this is a post-Soviet society, which means that unwarranted exuberance is often interpreted as foolishness, or deception. Even so, Turkmens are tolerant of strangers, a practical necessity given this nation’s historical position as a desert oasis. Thus, despite the rare appearance of dedicated taxis, most local folks hitch rides by standing alongside the road, hands stretched downward (though without the “patting the dog” maneuver practiced in other countries), awaiting a car driven by anyone looking to score a few Manats. A quick check of destination, a brief negotiation for price, and folks get where they want to go with minimum hassle.

Perhaps it’s the blazing sun that explains why local folks prefer not to draw unnecessary heat in their public lives. By admittedly playful illustration, I would note that beards are discouraged in Turkmenistan. Given my own stylistic choices, I am happy to report that they are technically allowed, though you can hardly expect to find any worn. President Niyazov condemned them as signs of religious excess against his secular state. Accordingly while most folks here adhere to the Sunni brand of Islam, and quite a few seek their own kind of solace in Russian Orthodoxy, one finds no condemnation for those who practice other faiths. This is, one should remember, the norm across most of the Islamic world; no one would confuse Turkmenistan with Saudi Arabia.

That being said, the government allows virtually nothing in the way of public dissent, political opposition, journalistic freedom, or disrespect toward its president. In fact Ashgabat is positively aglow with golden statues commemorating Niyazov, augmented by a growing number of portraits celebrating his successor, the current president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Instead one finds a multitude of advertisements for the state brand, typically projected on large video displays. On these electronic murals, the president may be shown surrounded by children, cupping his hands upward in piety, or occasionally sitting astride his horse, a symbol of pride among a people famed for their equestrian skills. And, yes, travelers on Turkmenistan’s national airline will find his portrait gracing each cabin, receiving assurance for a safe flight under his watchful eye. In this omnipresent reminder of Niyazov’s legacy and Berdimuhamedow’s benevolence, one gradually leans inward and toward the disciplinary contours of docility, the ever-fine tendrils of reverence, that perpetuate the performance of control.

Statue commemorating Ruhnama,
Saparmurat Niyazov's book of spiritual guidance for the Turkmen people

Beyond the airport, the nation’s surveillance structure expands ever more intricately along physical and digital pathways that connect cameras and other tools of observation nestled among lighting fixtures and inserted throughout other nodes of public life. I would also not be surprised if Turkmenistan has chosen to follow the authoritarian model advanced by China to employ facial recognition devices and algorithmic assessments to mark the movements of every person in the country’s larger cities – or at least hopes to do so in the near future. In the meantime, access to social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram is banned.

As for more surreptitious forms of surveillance, I can offer no specific experience. I would merely presume that all tourists, some surely more than others, receive their portion of special attention by the nation’s security apparatus. Augmenting this diffused brand of panopticism, one grows familiar with the sight of baton-twirling cops in blue uniforms and high-peaked hats who stand on seemingly every major street corner, sometimes chatting amiably with each other but seldom abandoning their alert gaze. Mirroring the eight-pointed star, the ubiquitous mark of the nation woven into carpets, etched along walls, and even used to shape the Turkmenistan’s Wedding Palace, this government does not shirk from its desire to maintain an environment of pleasantly total jurisdiction. The eye of state sees in all directions.

Nonetheless I did not come to Turkmenistan to study its surveillance practices. I simply took them for granted. Like the irksome blinking light found on smoke detectors in hotels around the world, this reality first vexed me before it became a less troubling feature of life. So with a healthy respect for my surveilled status, nodding politely at cops broiling in the heat, I toured the nation’s capital city – a Central Asian version of Las Vegas sprawling with gleaming programmatic architecture – as a cheerful tourist. 

So, yes, in fact and in spirit, I would marvel at the city’s blocks of white apartment buildings that stretch in geometric repetition along the city’s monumental boulevards. Naturally I would delight at the sight of splashing fountains that dance with gaudy excess amid the desert that covers about 80 percent of the country. Led by Murad Arrykov, my guide and translator, I would also tour the ruins of the Old Nissa fortress and visit the Silk Road “Wandering City” of Merv near the city of Mary, a short domestic hop away. And I did come to love those ancient ruins, drawn to the universal desire to trace some passageway between the hyper-present and the distant past. Of course, my trip was centered on that crater in the desert.

~

Driving north of Turkmenistan’s capital city of Ashgabat on a day that burned hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I figured AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was the right tune for the trip. The Aussies, after all, know something about deserts. The Red Center drive from Alice Springs to Uluru, the chance to barrel past hopping kangaroos and bounding wallabies remains one of the highlights of my life. But I trusted Murad who insisted that Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally, that ode to promiscuity and purgatory, the slippery divide between coming and going, was the perfect choice for the moment when we pulled off the main drag, just before the Daşoguz checkpoint, to see the pit.

Hopping over the rocky, rutted pathway toward our destination, we cranked Sally up loud enough to bang our heads, though our 4X4 made plenty of percussion on its own. Our driver, a taciturn dude whose eyes squinted sharply under the blazing blue sky, kept his focus on the road. No “да, да, да” of agreement here; if the driver dug the tune, I would never know. Nearing our destination, Murad pointed out details through the windshield, displaying his mastery of culture, history, archeology, flora, and fauna. Yet from time to time he too adopted the reserved pose of the driver. And I joined his silence. Just a few miles more, we would find what locals supposedly call the Door to Hell. And then, at that moment, Little Richard belted out a line from Long Tall Sally that made perfect sense: “He has the blues but he has a lot of fun.” This, as much as anything, is the mantra for a place that gathers people to reside between pleasure and despair. 

We arrived in late afternoon, after making stops at two nearby craters produced by failed gas mining efforts. One was filled by water; the other was filled with mud. At these initial stops, my guide and driver waited long enough for me to walk their perimeters. Ambling around the second crater, which bubbled and smelled faintly of sulfur, I recall feeling a similar vibe to the process one endures to circle the labyrinth in a cathedral like Chartres. Whether surrounded by fellow travelers or, in this case, alone, I could still sense a long-needed stillness, a reverential silence. Later, tracing our route from crater to crater, though playing a bit with the order of elements, Murad would remind me of a conversation we had the previous day, while visiting Nissa, concerning the Zoroastrian triangle of earth, water, and fire. Despite my tendency to overstate my perceptions of these experiences, I can confirm the existence of a primal, elemental feeling in this place.

After three and a half hours of banging along rugged terrain, dusty villages, ragged camels, and the occasional highway roamer pointing a hand downward in hopes for a ride, we arrived at the gas crater. The pit, about 230 feet across and more than 60 feet deep, marks a site where 70s-era Soviet geologists hoped to mine natural gas. Despite their best efforts, though, a vapor pocket exploded, wrecking the drilling rig, and collapsing the land into a crater. The immediate economic and human costs were bad enough. Worse still was the potential for poisonous gasses to kill nearby villagers. In response, engineers would eventually decide to set the chasm on fire, hoping that this operation would burn off the dangerous fumes. The plan would supposedly need only a few weeks to work. 

Decades later, the fires still burn.

I must confess that the crater did not impress me at first. In afternoon light, the pit was lit by small flickering bursts of flame that trickled from blackened, flinty surface below. Standing inside the protective rail, I saw gentle waves of heat that rippled like sand dunes, interesting but hardly a spectacle. All at once, I was blown back by a furnace of heat as the wind shifted in my direction. I began to picture the horror that would overcome anyone who might plummet below, caught between life and death just long enough to anticipate a fate they could not hope to avoid. I admit it: I also anticipated how easy it would be to jump to my death, to suffer that horror. The feeling passed, but not the guilt of such dismal musing.

I then lowered my shorts and pissed into the crater.

Since we had set up camp, I had all evening to practice Murad’s advice that I should return again and again to the pit. As the sky darkened and shadows lengthened, I began to notice that the black edges of the crater began to glow, subtly at first and then with an angrier hue. The flames did not change in any actual way, but they appeared to pop more fiercely from their torrents. Then I observed something that I had never seen before, except when studying the change of light through a camera viewfinder. As the spurts of conflagration broke through the surface, I could actually feel the irises of my eyes adjusting, producing a jerking response as vision compensated for rapid shifts from deep red to bright yellow and back again. And here, unlike the Chartres-memory summoned by the mud crater, I did indeed imagine a glimpse of hell – perhaps more closely akin to the "Doomsday Machine" that haunted the heroes, and one guilty survivor, of the eponymous Star Trek episode. Thinking about Commodore Decker piloting a stolen, doomed shuttle into the flaming center of a weapon “right out of hell,” I wondered more gravely what guilt would compel me to contemplate such a leap.

I had come a long way to see this place, to consider these questions, though I could hardly explain why. If Murad and our driver remained awed by the crater, they did not show it. They had completed this drive countless times, usually taking small caravans of tourists into the beautiful, brutal desert. They had learned to negotiate the jagged trail of broken stone with professional detachment. No doubt, they came to tolerate the standard questions posed in places like this, the typical fears and exaggerated responses. And surely, patiently, they waited for their doughy visitors to drift off to sleep in tents while guide and driver opted to rest under the stars (or sleep in the 4X4). This time, aside from some Japanese tourists who had come to rent yurts on the other side of the crater, we were alone. I figured this was as good a time as any to ask Murad his opinion: Why do people come here?

As his usual habit, Murad looked me directly in the eyes, forming words from a smile but with a no bullshit demeanor. His reply was poetic, and though memory does not serve to quote him directly, I was moved by his clarity of analysis. First, he said, the crater is unique. There is nothing quite like this place anywhere in the world – a sensible enough hypothesis. Then he paused, gazing solemnly as he chose his next words. At this point, the sun fully dipped below the horizon, setting forth a radiant band of blue and purple. The breeze had begun to pick up and a nearby hill had started to glow with reflected fire. It’s the flames, he concluded. That’s what attracts us all to places like this. And he makes a good point. Since the beginning of all civilization, people have been drawn around the campfire to share the safety of numbers, to tell stories.

Night had fallen and the cavern glowed in searing eruptions of red and orange, not quite belching but rather constantly streaming a hiss of natural gas set aflame. At first we sat on a carpet, offering some protection from the stony ground, an imaginary shield from jumping camel spiders and pinching scarab beetles. But then Murad stood up and took out a mobile phone and launched an astronomy application that employs augmented reality to layer digital constellations over the display. As soothing music rolled out of the device's speakers, he swung around in a wide arc to reveal a network of otherwise invisible lines. Aided by GPS, he could pick out stars and planets with precision that would have mystified the ancient travelers who relied upon celestial objects to chart their own paths across the unforgiving desert.

And then, fueled no doubt by a fulsome meal of chicken, lamb, tomatoes, and eggplant, and four cans of Turkmen Zip beer, Murad and I began reciting bits and pieces of Homer’s Iliad to each other. Murad began by asking if I had seen Troy, Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 epic starring Brad Pitt as Achilles and Eric Bana as Hector. We both share an affinity for movies, so, despite the middling nature of the film, I could affirm I had indeed seen it. “I like Hector,” Murad stated. “He died, but he died as a man.” I had to agree. While the Trojans are cast as antagonists to those fractious seafaring heroes who would later be called “Greeks,” I hoped that I too could face my fate with the courage mustered by Hector. 

Gradually our conversation turned to Homer’s original tale, which features gods who meddle in the affairs of human beings. I recalled how the poets sang of the tricks that Athena played upon Hector, using her supernatural powers to give the Achilles an unfair advantage. Hector, in noble contrast, stood alone, knowing that he would be slain this day. But, Murad emphasized, the Trojan hero would perish as a man. In turns, we recalled how Achilles heaved his spear at Hector who, by now, could rely only on his sword. Impaled and near death, Hector begged the wrathful Achilles not to spare his life but rather to spare the indignity of his body being ravaged by dogs. At this moment, Murad and I exclaimed in unison, “But he wouldn’t do it!” Then and now, I share my guide’s respect for Hector, but that is not quite the point. Like the Trojans who heretofore had awaited the coming of the Greeks where “a thousand camp-fires gleamed upon the plain,” we too sought ways to reckon with forces and powers beyond our control. There together, drinking and talking, we could imagine ourselves like those heroes who gathered under the stars to share stories of men and gods, lit only by firelight.

Ours was a convivial party, even adding one more fellow for awhile, a young skinny fellow crossing nearby in search of his friends. Speaking not in Russian but in Turkmen, the guy apologized for his intrusion and asked us to share some water. We naturally shared a friendly portion and wished him well as returned to his path. Anyone who lives here knows the necessary ethic of such an act, and it felt good to share these moments. Yet ultimately I had come to the desert to stand a few moments alone. So I began to trudge up the hill that rose behind us for a God’s eye view of the crater. Under a nearly full moon, the valley was bathed in soft light. Still, I added an extra coat of protection with the beam of my phone’s lamp that rendered the ruts and rocks more navigable. I made my steps carefully, with the reverence one might imagine when climbing the stone steps of Teotihuacan toward the sun. At last I reached the summit and turned to face the panorama above and below. 

The small party of Japanese tourists were snapping pictures of the crater, posing with arms outstretched pointing toward the flame. Next to that yawning chasm of burning gas, buffeted by occasional gusts of wind that could char a person with frightening heat, they traced confident circles and laughed. This, I think, is something of that desert reverie that I mentioned earlier, that feeling that one comes to know in a place like this, and a giddy power to impose upon those forces that constrain us, that belittle us, that frighten us. I wonder if each of us who visit Turkmenistan’s Darvaza Gas Crater, and places like it, come to find a power to gaze into the abyss of our mortality and face it, perhaps even to inscribe upon it some markings of permanence. In this manner our stories, photographs, our etchings, our graffiti become totems of our power to confront the inevitability of ruin with a certainty that, no matter how ephemeral, bolsters our abilities to endure questions beyond answer.

~

These are the sorts of stories I hope to tell in my book, tentatively titled A Rhetoric of Ruins. I want to understand more thoroughly why people come to places like this – not to ancient structures suspended in a state of arrested decay such as those found in Angkor, Cambodia; Khajuraho, India; or the Acropolis in Greece, but rather to modern ruins: a more contemporary constellation of places such as industrial accident-sites, Soviet-era showplace relics, abandoned Olympic stadiums, economic ghost towns, and the like – those abandoned and sometimes fascinatingly repurposed locales that call forth ambivalence, despair, or even the guilty pleasure associated with the term “ruin porn." I hope to read those remnants that provide a medium through which we may interpret, resist, and potentially transform our encounters with late-modernity. In future iterations of this essay, I will trace more rigorously the intellectual underpinnings of my project. But for now I conclude this note, a first tentative draft, with thanks to Murad and our various drivers during a five-day visit, and hopes that I will return to Turkmenistan one day, to better understand this country’s ambivalence about tourism, to study its bold and increasingly sophisticated surveillance mechanisms, and, of course, to savor once more the strange and guilty pleasures of the Darvaza Gas Crater.

Everytown: 2036

This is a video I've wanted to edit for more than 20 years. Really. For even longer than that, I've had a love affair with retro-futurism. Things to Come. Metropolis. Streamlined moderne architecture. Teardrop-shaped cars... For as long as I can remember, I've been entranced by the wind tunnel efficiency and earnest optimism of yesterday's tomorrows. William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" reminded me also of the totalitarian underside to these fantasies, particularly those arising from the Great Depression. But I am drawn to their plucky can-do spirit all the same. So when I found myself in the middle of this semester's crush of projects, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the minutia of these days' obligations, I dug up hours of source material and cut this video. The song is by Donald Fagen. The scenes range from 1927 to 1968, the year I was born. The future, of course, is where it has always been: Just beyond today's fears.

Source Material

American Telephone and Telegraph (1961) Seeing the Digital Future

David Butler [Dir.] (1930) Just Imagine

Fritz Lang [Dir.] (1927) Metropolis

General Motors (1940) To New Horizons

General Motors (1956) Design for Dreaming

General Motors (1956) Keys to the Future

Peter Bogdanovich [Dir.] (1968) Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

Philco-Ford Corporation (1967) Year 1999 A.D.

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1956) Man and the Moon

Westinghouse Electric Company (1939) The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair

William Cameron Menzies [Dir.] (1936) Things to Come

Self[ie] Absorbed

Mona Lisa image from InOnIt

Even without a single Marshall McLuhan reference, a semi-recent Associated Press article manages to make some interesting points about our contemporary selfie craze, even quoting a "personal brand consultant" who channels the late media theorist: "In the era of the Kardashians, everyone has become their own paparazzi."

The article offers two perspectives. Carole Lieberman (Beverly Hills psychiatrist) represents the Narcissus Critique: "The rise of the selfie is a perfect metaphor for our increasingly narcissistic culture. We're desperately crying out: Look at me!" Pamela Rutledge (Media Psychology Research Center director) responds with an Historical Parallel Justification: "Albrecht Durer's self-portraiture is these incredible self-reflections and explorations of technique, and then when Rihanna snaps her picture it's just self-aggrandizement, or it's promotion, so you have a fairly interesting double standard based upon who's taking the self-portrait."

The article explains the "ie" at the end of selfie as a diminutive indicator, a "little self" that signifies an intentionally transitory, incomplete articulation of personhood, before concluding with a thoughtful reminder (quoting Rutledge) that while few folks critique school portraits, family snapshots, and other methods of self-presentation, "we don't know how to think about this mass production of self-reflection."

Read the whole piece: Associated Press: What did Narcissus say to Instagram? Selfie Time!

I Forgot My Phone

In his book Outside Lies Magic, John Stilgoe notes that many folks growing up in 19th century-America cultivated greater visual acuity than we do today. They actually developed and practiced the art of looking, discerning hues and shades both for the pleasure of aesthetic refinement and for the practicalities of daily life. Stilgoe offers a largely class-bound analysis, summoning notions of chromatics lectures offered during an afternoon tea. Yet he also calls forth images of farmers and drovers who read the clouds with wary appraisal, searching for storm-sign.

In our more media-saturated age, we seldom attune ourselves to the nuances of nature, choosing instead to distill the world into a stock of abstractions. We might adjust our flatscreen controls to "vivid" and crank the volume to "11," but only because our expectations overwhelm the subtle gradations of things. Presence, the experience of "being there," is harder and harder to recognize, or eventually to miss.

Charlene deGuzman knows something about this. Her video expresses the frustration I have felt in gatherings large and small when friends edit our interactions to check messages, to post comments, or maybe just to find something more interesting than the conversations that bind us. Of course I found myself doing the very same thing last night at home with my family, checking my phone while my daughter was sharing the news of her week. I stopped; I don't know if she noticed.

Shameless Media Plug: San Jose Mercury News

I enjoyed the opportunity to participate in an interview with Sue McAllister a few weeks back about the tendency for folks to adopt differing communication strategies for "text-friends" and "talk-friends." Some of our conversation found its way into a San Jose Mercury News article that appeared this week. Here are a couple relevant quotes:

"We've been developing these devices that allow us this ubiquitous communication, and on the one hand it is remarkable and exciting. But we haven't quite caught up with the problems this revolution has unleashed," said Andrew Wood, a professor of communication studies at San Jose State.

…

San Jose State's Wood says much of personal communication comes down to being courteous to the people you're interacting with and gauging which method will be the right choice for the situation. For example, "In certain contexts I'm an email person," he says. "When I'm answering a question, I like email because I have the time to reflect on an answer."

But when it comes to real discussion, he says, his favorite medium is a time-honored one that many people still crave in our digital society.

"It's one-on-one conversation, in a diner," he says, "just two people talking. That's when I'm at my best."

Read the entire article: Text, call, email, IM, Facebook, tweet and meet? Communication has become confusing

Origami Urbanism Update

Finally wrapping up my chapter for the Urban Communication Reader! Here's some of the new stuff...

To this post-place we now turn, learning to read the city that unfolds itself to our gaze. This is the modern city too, in a way; it is the perfection of modernity, no longer limited by the plane-truth. In this city, flat power is dispelled with a magic trick, a mediated fantasy of moving parts with no mechanism aside from consumer choice. Such power--strange, illusory, intoxicating--must first be recognized as such; its users must be trained to recognize themselves as its masters, to see themselves as artists, engineers, poets, creators. This is post-industrial power, when reality-television allows even the otherwise disadvantaged among us to become producers of icons, to brand themselves. This power is the child’s plaything, the personal totem, the solitary confidence. Easily crumbled, burst with merely a word, this pleasure transcends vast chasms between ideas and action, between self and other.

Origami urbanism reveals the sensual pleasure of this manipulation, our technological means of ascending to the summit of a God’s-eye view once more. Amid the flat city, origami urbanism recall’s Gatsby’s “constant flicker”: the flick of a finger upon an iPad, swiping the world into digital shape.  Such is the power and pleasure of mobile communication devices, the means to produce frames of reference that alter themselves according to our perpetually shifting positions, thickening homogeneity in an internal performance. With these new personal data, navigation, and entertainment devices, we need not be tied to fixed locations but may create new ones instead, building our own multidimensional worlds atop the flat screen.  We wander the boulevard, texting rather than speaking, posting rather than engaging, editing rather than experiencing, and our fantasy worlds appear to convulse with every stroke. The pleasures of origami urbanism appear, to the uninitiated at least, like an addiction.

Shameless Media Plug: Rome News Tribune

Still on my travel hiatus - just returned from an amazing week on the east coast [with plenty of pix to come]. But I wanted to share this plug from the Rome News-Tribune about my forthcoming Berry College presentation.

As part of the Oxbridge Lecture Series, Wood will speak at 7 p.m. in the Berry College Science Auditorium. The event, entitled “Seeking Public Life in a Mediated World,” is sponsored by the Berry College Honors Program and admission is free and open to the public. A reception sponsored by the Berry College Forensics Union will follow the event.

In the lecture, Wood will explore how today's communication practices reflect broader transformations in urban design. Tracing a path from the boulevards of 19th century Paris through the totalizing spectacle of 20th century world's fairs to the rise of today's surveillance society, the lecture examines the modern paradox that simultaneously converges and fragments people, that, as Wood explains, leaves “us tapping on cell phones and clicking on virtual corn crops to relieve anxieties we can barely name.”

Bridging scholarly research and pop culture fascination, Wood will lead a tour through digital footprints, iPod dogma, the death of Detroit and why the next Depression will be televised. This presentation, anchored in critique but motivated by hope, aims to get audience members talking.

Read More: Oxbridge Lecture Series Presents Professor Andrew Wood April 6

Dropped Calls

Pamela Paul writes in the New York Times about the declining role of the telephone in our lives, at least when it comes to its formerly singular purpose: talking.

"In the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years."

At this point I must invoke that most frustrating counter-example, homegrown anecdotal evidence. My spouse receives many phone calls per day. But these are generally associated with her various duties at church. Otherwise, neither one of us regularly receive calls - other than from longtime friends.

"For the most part, assiduous commenting on a friend’s Facebook updates and periodically e-mailing promises to “catch up by phone soon” substitute for actual conversation. With friends who merit face time, arrangements are carried out via electronic transmission."

Read the entire article: Don't call me, I won't call you

Coming Up For Air

As I prepare to present a lecture at Berry College this upcoming April, I find myself thinking about my topic, "Seeking the Public in a Mediated World," in the interstitial portions of my life - especially as I'm walking from place to place. So earlier today I was departing the Engineering Building and heading for Cafe Pomegranate for lunch when I started looking closely at students and their cell phones. I wasn't feeling creepy. Given my topic, this kind of attention felt safely like research. Understanding what students, digital natives, are doing with their phones in public life is an important source of insight as I prepare my remarks. At the same time, I found myself returning to my own years as a college student.

It's a frequent go-to image for me, comparing my undergraduate experience at Berry College, back when their slogan was "aspire to the top," and relating that vision to my current life here at SJSU. My romanticized recollection of those Berry years leads me to see students walking from place to place with their heads tilted slightly upward. That was the point of Berry architecture: all those spires built to draw our attentions toward the heavens. In contrast, despite some fairly monumental architecture here at SJSU, I see students predominantly tilting their heads down, their concentration pulled to their mobile phones. Such a clear distinction: up verses down.

Contemplating that image, I saw one young woman jerk her head upward. Just for a second. She snapped her gaze at my midsection and then, merely a half-beat of time elapsing, returned her focus to her tiny screen. All the while, her fingers jabbed at those buttons. Really, it looked precisely like she was surfacing from a deep ocean, gasping for air. What can I say? That moment gives me hope. The notion that we cannot survive in the digital depths without having to look at people - present, engaged, consequential - represents an essential humanity.

That is until we sprout gills. Then, maybe, we need never surface again.

Communicating with Millenials

I was just invited to submit an abstract for a potential panel about Millenials to be presented at our forthcoming National Communication Association conference. Here's the direction I might go:

Communicating with Millenials: Closing the Loop with the Always-On-But-Never-Quite-There Generation

This paper examines the pleasures and occasional frustrations of communicating with today's college students. The author begins with an analysis of how contemporary mobile media technologies intersect with the social needs of Millenial students, highlighting elements of anxiety and control that reflect broader cultural dimensions. The author continues by analyzing transcripts from a focus group of students invited to discuss and reflect upon their communication habits and expectations, especially those arising when they interact with faculty members. Finally the author proposes practical strategies for connecting with Millenials: an approach that starts with understanding and the presumption of mutual regard but also offers hope that some basic decorum need not become a lost art.

Shameless Media Plug: San Jose Mercury News

The Merc ran a story on how smartphone games lure folks who'd never look twice at an XBox into compulsive behaviors. Author Sue McAllster and I had a pleasant conversation on the topic last weekend, and she integrated some of our chat into the article.

"These (games) are sort of brief vacations that we can carry with us," says Andrew Wood, a professor of communications studies at San Jose State. "The idea of being able to get out of your work zone or transportation zone or even family zone and dive into a highly vivid, interactive medium is a real treat."

Wood calls mobile games such as "Angry Birds," "Fruit Ninja" or "F.A.S.T." -- a jet-flying game he was hooked on for a time -- "the high-fructose corn syrup of entertainment," providing delicious pastimes without much nutritional value, so to speak.

Read the entire piece: Games on smartphones snare a new breed of player

Social Media Addiction: Are You At Risk?

This YourTango video is 15 types of awesome: a satire of social media addiction done as a cheesy 70s-style after school special: "Did I just laugh out loud? Dan, I just laughed out loud!" Just watch out for the downer ending: "Ohhh, Daddy like Boing Boing!"

See how many app-refs you recognize!

Update: Here's another YourTango production: Online Dating in the 1950s

Kodak Picture Spot

Jenny follows the rules

Thinking ahead to next summer's European adventure, a grand tour we've been planning for years, I anticipate the kinds of photos we'll take. Yes, there will be towers, both Eiffel and Leaning (helpfully held up by our own hands, thanks to the trickery of forced perspective). You bet there will be Roman ruins and English pubs. Oh, and castles in Scotland? We'll see one or two.

Part of the fun for any trip is taking pictures. Part of the obligation, too. Susan Sontag once compared the ritual of tourist photography to the Puritan Work Ethic, in which leisure becomes an extension of labor. We "shoot" to capture, to fix, to consume, of course. Sometimes we shoot to mock, to violate, to hurt, too. But mostly we take pictures to make sure that we've "gotten it right." It's our duty to get that shot of Chartres, that frame of the Parthenon, that composition of Stonehenge. Photography is proof of life. One needn't trip into psychoanalysis to understand that, for me, snapping the shutter is an obsession (nearly so, at least).

So I look forward to a journey arranged so that we can look back on the trip. I know it's silly and skewed to think that way. As much as possible I'll try to be present in this place I've yearned to visit since the late eighties, when we lived in Europe but hardly saw any of it. I'll try to look through my own eyes more than through the camera lens. There are conversations to be had and paths to be explored. There's a continent of experience that cannot be sussed out through even the most clever Photoshop simulacra. I want to see it all - for real.

And what if the camera were to break, or get lost or stolen? Wouldn't Europe still be worth visiting?

Draft Policy on Mobile Devices

Lately I've been thinking about how and why students use electronic gadgets in class. A fair amount of research and anecdotal evidence shows that students are using mobile phones (and other devices) far more than most faculty recognize. Quoting Wilkes University research:

"95 percent of students bring their phones to class every day and 91 percent have used their phones to text message during class time. Almost half of all respondents indicated that it is easy to text in class without their instructor being aware. In fact, students frequently commented on the survey that their professors would be 'shocked' if they knew how much texting went on in class."

I certainly remember taking a community college refresher course last year and observing that roughly one third of my fellow students seemed more interested in updating their Facebook pages than in focusing on the topic at hand.

My initial response to the notion of students fiddling with their machines in my classroom is to propose a draconian rule: no mobile devices, ever. I didn't use them in my college classes, I figure; students don't need them today. Upon reflection, though, that approach strikes me as being shortsighted.

So now I've developed a more nuanced response, one that affirms my basic respect for the autonomy of adults while trying to maintain a minimal standard of decorum and practicality.

My plan is to share a revised version of this note with my students this spring [here's the current draft]. It's over-written, I admit it, and it's crafted in a more legalistic tone than I'd prefer. But my written policy is merely a supporting document for a conversation I intend to conduct with my students.

Few students (if any) will actually read these words. I just want to have something written down. At a minimum, a message like this signals that I've considered the issue carefully. Better yet, this note might help us avoid frustration later on.

Here's a draft.

Any thoughts? Concerns? Recommendations? Please post a comment.

Also, fellow faculty members, do you have a mobile device policy that you'd like to share? I'd love to see it.

Mobile Devices in Class

You may use mobile devices (phones, laptops, etc.) in my class so long as you follow basic social and ethical guidelines.

To explain those guidelines, let me first explain why I created a mobile device policy at all. Like it or not, virtually all students bring electronic gadgets to class. And why not? You want to stay connected to friends and family, and sometimes important news just can't wait until the end of class. Moreover, these devices aren't toys; they're tools.

Today's mobile devices enable you to check notes, update your calendar, or perhaps get a second opinion on assertions I may offer. Additionally, mobile devices play an essential role in our university's emergency notification network. It therefore seems silly to mandate that you cannot access your phones, laptops, and other electronic tools in class.

That being said, there are three obvious exceptions to this policy, related to testing, privacy, and distraction. In these cases I must adopt a hard line.

1. You may not use any mobile device while any student is taking a quiz or test in the classroom. Restricting the use of mobile devices in a testing environment is a matter of integrity, both practical and perceptual. And I would be well within my rights to interpret any such usage (without my express permission) as a sign of cheating.

2. You may not use any mobile device to record sound or images in class without my consent. Why? Well, for starters, even though you are attending a public university, my classroom is not located in the "public domain." No one in this class has authorized you to record their images or voices. Doing so without gaining permission thus constitutes an invasion of privacy - and potentially a form of theft.

Let me explain: My lectures and other classroom activities are my intellectual property. And while I recognize that student fees help pay for the costs of this room (and for my services) I do not wave my right to create and distribute classroom content as I see fit. That's why you must ask my permission (ideally in written form) to photograph a slide, record a lecture, or distribute my likeness in any way.

3. You may not use any mobile device in a manner that distracts other people. If your use of a mobile device disturbs other folks (especially with ringtones or loud buzzing) - or if attention paid to your device means that you cannot participate meaningfully in our conversations - you may be required to leave the class.

That regrettable action may seem harsh. But ultimately it's a matter of respect. You deserve my full attention in the classroom; I ask for a reasonable portion of the same. If you want to send a quick text or perform a brief web search, feel free. Just be discrete. If you need a gentle reminder about this policy, I'll provide one. Thereafter my approach must become much more strict.

After all, our classroom is a community. What we do and say here matters. There's an anxious, busy world beyond our walls, I know. But that world can wait, at least for the brief time we share together. And when it can't, you can always quietly step outside. I merely ask you to remember that this class - indeed, your choice to seek a degree - is ultimately your choice. And with that choice comes certain responsibilities. One of them: contributing to a respectful learning environment.

Otherwise, there's really no point in coming to college at all.

Gamification

Lately I've been doing some preliminary research on gamification - the convergence of video game and social networking experiences that's entering domains not traditionally associated with gameplay. In her MSNBC piece, FarmVille invades the real world, Helen A.S. Popkin writes that Tim Chang coined the term, which has largely supplanted Gabe Zichermann's notion of "funware."

One of the most prevalent examples of gamification is Foursquare, a social-networking application that allows users to "check in" to physical places and earn badges [Learn more]. People who check in to places most frequently can become "mayors" of those environments. The twist is that companies like Starbucks are using Foursquare to make their businesses more "sticky" (by offering discounts to mayors, for example). They know that more frequent visits can yield increased revenue.

Another example of gamification is LinkedIn's use of a progress bar. Once more, we see a non-traditional use of the principle: getting users of a business-networking site to stay longer and do more, transforming the drowsy act of inputing information or writing a recommendation into a sort of game. The trick is the use of (frequently) graphical feedback to produce a positive stimulus upon the brain in a manner similar to that found in video games.

Gamification represents an expanding domain of opportunity, appearing in health, educational, and personal finance fields - even in applications designed to inspire people to reduce their energy consumption [Learn More]. Chris O'Brien's writes in the San Jose Mercury News that "gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in Silicon Valley" [Learn more].

The historically short shelf-life of buzzwords aside, I'm especially intrigued by potential uses for Gamification in pedagogy. This is not to say that game theory hasn't long been integrated into teaching - rather that emerging applications have more potential for success. Students raised on video games are likely to respond to experiences whose pleasures are similar to those with which they are familiar. Going on "quests," gathering tokens, and showing off their prowess with badges may seem silly to veteran educators, but it's serious business to Millennials.

Many faculty complain that today's students are unwilling or unable to work for their learning. At the same time we kvetch about students' willingness to devote hours upon hours to games. What if there's a way to harness that enthusiasm? In the perfectly titled article, Video games keep tricking us into doing things we loathe, Leigh Alexander writes, "we gamers demonstrate a fascinating willingness to apply ourselves tirelessly to any number of tedious tasks." In an article called Gamifying homework, Jason B. Jones adds, "people will do anything for a virtual badge."

I'm not sure if I like the direction this conversation is going. But I certainly want to know more. And I'm not alone. In fact a number of folks are embarking on ambitious research projects to make sense of this phenomenon. Jones describes Old Dominion University's Richard Landers's plan to seek National Science Foundation funding for a multi-campus interdisciplinary open-source gamification platform. I visited Professor Landers's call for participants and was impressed with his preliminary results. Here's a quote:

"We took advantage of many principles of casual gaming (sometimes called the [gamification] movement) to create a reward system for completing these quizzes. Several levels of “mastery” were created, with increasingly difficult bars to reach in order to achieve them. But when a student achieved a new rank (which they could never lose), a badge would appear next to their name in class discussion areas to provide a social reward for doing well. For example, if the aforementioned student completed the social psychology quiz enough times to reach Mastery Level 3, a little blue ribbon would appear next to their name when they chatted in that classroom. This system was ridiculously well-received. Across those 400 students, 113 (28%!) willingly chose to take optional multiple choice quizzes that would never have an effect on their grades." (emphasis in original)

Gotta follow up on this stuff...

Disconnect to Connect

A while back I was invited to present a talk about City Ubiquitous for SJSU alumni. It was one of those one-shot deals that gave me a chance to meet some cool folks but, presumably, was not a long-term-impact thing. I'm so glad I was wrong about that assumption. One lovely gift from that presentation was the chance to get to know our university director of alumni relations, Paul Richardson, a bit more. He really caught the vision of the omnitopia project and has shared his thoughts about the idea in occasional conversations and emails since that Phoenix presentation. Cool, right? But now Paul's outdone himself. He sent me a DTAC (Thai mobile phone company) video yesterday that just blew me away. It's called "Disconnect to Connect."

Normally this is the kind of video that calls for a shot by shot analysis, but the elegant beauty of this piece requires no highfalutin interpretation. Telling its story with images (until the end) this video conveys a sad dimension of our wireless lives, that we can connect with anyone around the world but find ourselves increasingly isolated from the people around us. Anyone who's read my blog knows that this is a constant hum of concern in the back of my mind. I see people standing together - friends, family members - who seem more interested in talking or tapping to disembodied folks far away than in being with persons close enough to touch. This video says what I've wanted to say with so much more power than any speech I've given. Check it out (and pay particular attention to the umbrella).

Halloween in Mobile-Land

Chris Ware, The New Yorker, November 2, 2009

Somehow I missed this New Yorker cover from last year: a literally perfect illustration of contemporary life, and least the life of middle class privilege in the United States. As I contemplate the next Halloween for the Wood Family in our own comfortable bedroom community, I am compelled to consider the worlds seen and unseen in this image.

I was sitting in a Starbucks this morning in downtown San Jose where buildings tower but are increasingly empty of residents, where storefronts are filled with artwork because business has died off and isn't coming back anytime soon. At the table next to me, four bedraggled folks were strategizing on how to move a TV left on a sidewalk somewhere to a storage container. Someone would want to buy it, one argued reasonably enough.

Yet somewhere - a world where folks get subscriptions to smart magazines like The New Yorker, I guess - this image also makes sense: a place where parents drag their costumed offspring from McMansion to McMansion (those tacky signs of conspicuous consumption are beginning to weigh heavy in an age of imminent double-dip recession, but the kids don't know) - only to gaggle on their phones the entire time. Chris Ware's cover image offers a glimpse of that privileged enclave.

His critique is soft. But the illustration's muted, autumnal colors say something important. The middle class world of mobile community, of dispersed community, exists today. It's anyone's guess how long it can endure.

Shanghai World's Fair: Day 2

Andy at the site of the NYWF

I opened the drapes and beheld a thick, dreary sky. Shanghai pulsed with cars and a hint of rain, and we were going to the World's Fair. As a scholar who writes about these things, it's strange to admit, this would be my first world's fair. All the others, I'd merely studied. Not that I hadn't come close to the real thing.

Looking out the window, I remembered another day, about a decade ago, when I was invited to present a speech in New York about the 1939-40 and 1964-65 World's Fairs. My talk would be part of a celebration for Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of those famed expos. For me, it was a chance to solidify my reputation as a serious researcher on world's fairs.

I spent months preparing that speech, and days memorizing it: the number of fake plants in Norman bel Geddes' Futurama exhibit, the amount of acreage claimed from land once described by F. Scott Fitzgerald as the "Valley of Ashes," the names and key pavilions of the fair's various "zones," stuff like that. I wanted to do well.

Over the phone, the person running the show described the set-up. There'd be a portable stage built near the stainless steel Unisphere (you know, that metal Earth that was blown up in Men in Black). There'd be no LCD projectors or other media-crutches, though. just me and a microphone - and an hour to talk about the world's fair as a global phantasmagorium of commerce.

I was terrified.

When I arrived, a little before midnight, I focused only on the next morning. I flowed from airport gate to taxi to hotel room, my eyes nearly shut the entire time. The speech filled my vision, each word a potential stumble into public humiliation. Being driven along the Grand Central Parkway, I barely noticed when we rode past the silvery Unisphere, lit up at night.

In my hotel room I shut the curtains and paced in the darkness, practicing and practicing. By about three in the morning I could do the entire speech without a glitch. A gentle tapping sound against the windows helped me drift to sleep. Two hours later I awoke and opened the curtains, ready to see the city at last.

The sky was blotted out with pouring rain.

The event organizers were packing up when I arrived. The celebration was canceled, with no backup plans. The visionary who booked my speech: nowhere to be found. One of the set-up guys looked sadly at me and fished out some t-shirts from the back of a van. "Thanks anyway, dude," he said, handing me souvenirs of a speech I would never give.

Ten years later, while our guide was driving us through Shanghai, I took comfort in private knowledge: For all my practicing, I wasn't ready for that speech. I didn't yet know enough. Heck, I'd never even seen a real world's fair; I'd merely read about them. I would have made a fool of myself.

Well, today I was going to see a world's fair. And not just any fair, but the largest and most expensive expo in the history of the world.

Merging into the convoluted stream of cars, buses, motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians, heading for Expo 2010, Jenny and I laughed at the site of googly-eyed Haibao dancing on an animated sign. The smiling blob and his cheesy blue pompadour is supposed to resemble the Chinese character for "human" (though he more closely mimics Gumby to American critics, and his name actually means "sea treasure"). In all sorts of media around town, Haibao is even being used to instill new rules of courtesy into Shanghai life.

In one cartoon, we see someone in a movie theater talking too loudly on a mobile phone while other folks are trying to watch the show. The patrons are getting surly when Haibao bounces to the rescue, gently reminding the social scofflaw to be more considerate. The cell-yeller's cheeks grow red; the lesson has sunk in.

Haibao is everywhere in Shanghai: as topiary, on manhole covers, in comic books: a constant presence reminding people to avoid abandoning bags in metro stations, to offer elderly people seats on crowded trains, and to stop wearing pajamas outside their homes (outdoor pajama-wearing is still a fashion amongst some of Shanghai's older residents). Haibao also reminds locals to see the Fair, of course.

Waiting to enter the world's fair

As the weight of Shanghai's humidity began to bear down on us, a morning scorcher promising a high that could exceed a hundred degrees, our guide dropped us off at the Fair's entrance. That's where we faced our first real sense of what was ahead. A swarm of people, thousands of them, were waiting for officials to open the gates to the security tent. This wasn't a line but a long collection of lines, row after row of sweating, jostling, chatting, laughing, arguing humanity.

Which line was the one for us? Our tickets offered no clue, so we just fell into one crowd and commenced to wait for the gates to open. I'd read somewhere that entrepreneurial folks were hawking fold-up stools, and right away I bought a couple. At ten Yuan a piece, these cheap plastic gimmicks would become two of our favorite and most practical world's fair souvenirs.

Over a half hour or so, the mass of people packed deeper and deeper. More lines would form with the logic of bird clusters splitting from a flock, and sometimes cops would tell a large group waiting in one queue to join another, inspiring groans but no apparent anger. These folks, it seems, know about lines, and they were generally homogenous in projecting a spirit of calm in the face of the potentially maddening crowd.

I should add that the population of this growing community of fairgoers was almost entirely Asian. Rarely did I see anyone who looked like they'd traveled from Europe or the Americas (though I got used to hearing an occasional crock of Aussie twang). Planners expect that 95 percent of all fairgoers will be from China, which means that Jenny and I were sure to stand out. We drew smiles and some awed looks, along with a few nods of encouragement, especially when we opened our folding chairs and joined the congregation.

Courtesy reminders are everywhere in the expo

Getting into the fair and seeing its most popular exhibits is a matter of waiting and walking and sitting. Wait for the group in front of you to move ahead. Walk into their section. Sit down (or stand if you need to stretch your legs). Then there's security, followed by more waiting, some jostling, and a little cutting. While I wouldn't presume to speak authoritatively about the Chinese people, I can say with confidence that folks in Shanghai have no problem taking some slowpoke's place in line. Leave an opening and you convey in universal terms: "I don't really care when I get there." Lacking any appearance of remorse, the faster, more determined local will snap up your spot and never look back. Jenny and I learned to smile in these moments, but also to zealously advance when space became available, lest we get turned in circles like slipstreams from a jet airplane. Around here things move fast, or not at all.

Security proved to be a perfunctory affair, with the guards doing as well as possible to move the crowd along without allowing gaping hazards onto the expo site. It didn't take long to get pushed out of the sweaty tent onto a concrete square. Riding that human current, our hearts gladdened to finally get started, we headed for the stairs. Just one quick pass through a metro station and then… Another line, this time to board the train that leads to the fairgrounds. This is Line 13, a newly built three-station stretch that conveys visitors to the east or west banks of the Huangpu River. Knowing the difference, we'd soon discover, is critical to enjoying the fair.

Water misters help manage the heat

Just ambling along the broad boulevards under those punishing temperatures leads to frustration, if not heat stroke. Extending over two square miles and packed with about a half million visitors on some peak days, the expo is just too big for browsing. Best to approach the fair somewhat more methodically, understanding first that it's built on both banks of the river. On the east side (the Pudong) lay most of the national pavilions; that's where most visitors start. On the west side (the Puxi), corporate and state exhibits command slightly less attention. The Puxi lines are still long - oh, yes - but not quite as long as those on the Pudong. Jenny and I agreed that we'd start slow and steel ourselves for the more crowded side later in the day.

Communication technologies are showcased throughout Expo 2010

Our first stops were practical: an ATM to get some cash and a souvenir stand to buy a "passport." By passport, I mean a booklet used by fair visitors to collect pavilion stamps, which are colored ink icons applied by hand. Perhaps the most popular collectible at the expo, the passport produces a sense of accomplishment, especially, observers note, for locals who may never travel outside of China. Colorful names from faraway places will do nicely instead. I'd heard tales of older folks (who supposedly love these things the most) walking from stamp-table to stamp-table, collecting inked proof of having gone somewhere while ignoring the pavilions themselves.

Expo 2010 passport

That's why when I read about how these trinkets get snapped up quickly each day, I insisted that we dive into a scrum of people shoving money at the poor young woman trying to get rid of the things. Once again I was amazed to see the disappearance of any sense of decorum (don't get Jenny started on the locals' propensity for outdoor loogie-hocking). Passports didn't go to those who waited longest; they went to those who shouted most loudly or pounded the counter most forcefully. Later I'd learn that the fair is stocked with passports; they're everywhere, and in lots of varieties. Nonetheless we got ours and commenced on our tour of civilization as imagined by Chinese planners and corporate PR-types.

We started, inevitably given my research passions, at the SAIC-GM Pavilion. SAIC refers to something called the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, but I was there for the GM side of the show. General Motors, after all, produced one of the most famous pavilions in world's fair history: the Futurama exhibit, back in the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.

Futurama was a demonstration of America's future, the thrillingly almost-here world of 1960, as it could be imagined by car manufacturers. A dark-ride through a diorama of modern planning, Futurama asked: Why should we suffer in crowded cities and rundown small towns when we could stretch out across a continent? Why poke about in packed buses when we could drive our own cars? All-weather interstate highways and reasonably priced autos would transform public life, allowing each worker to own a piece of the American dream: a suburban house far from work, a garden away from the machine! For years I'd imagined myself as a time traveler standing in one of Futurama's famously endless queues (I'd prefer the 1939 version, though I would have settled for the lamer 1964-65 model).


For 2010, GM and SAIC teamed up to produce a vision of Shanghai in the year 2030. OK, that's pretty cool too. Anyway, it's a line that leads to a "4-D" theater that leads to a set of interconnected stories told in Chinese language (and no subtitles). Something about how mobility and the spirit of "Xing!" connect us all. Whatever. The fun part is sitting in these cool moving seats that jerk with each motion of the film, immersing yourself in the Shanghai of Tomorrow: an urban fantasy of cartoon people, crazy architecture, and futuristic gadgets. And driving.

Cars of the Future

In the SAIC-GM future, everyone drives, even blind people. But no one worries about controlling their Future Cars. No, they're immersed in a colorful mediascape of heads-up displays and videoconferencing. Of course they experience drama in the world of tomorrow too. A young woman is set to give birth, a video game-obsessed boyfriend chases after the girl who dumps him, and an estranged father and daughter reconnect. The film presents hazy memories and near-death moments and a global concert witnessed by everyone, from space-borne Chinese astronauts and drunken American revelers. The film's got self-charging, self-driving, self-parking Bubble Cars! (and a piano that explodes into a burst of birds for some reason). The film is an unabashed celebration of corporate power to produce the greater good [Here's a YouTube video made by another fairgoer]. After the show, child performers cavort around real-life versions of the Car of Tomorrow, prancing around the techno-maypole.

Andy and Jenny at Pavilion of the Future

Afterward we walked by the Oil Pavilion, which has been reviewed as a must-see. But those lines already looked like they were stretching past the hour-mark. So we kept moving toward Pavilion of [the] Future, an exhibit dedicated to tomorrow's visions of urbanity that is incongruously located in a Rust Belt-era power plant building topped with a smokestack called the "Expo Harmony Tower." The pavilion starts with a long hallway showing cinema-sized clips of movies depicting tomorrow's cities. Then there's a room filled with stacks of oversized books that address utopian themes, and even larger books with digitally turning pages that rise above fairgoers' heads.

Toilet of the Future

And then there are the toilets of the future -- two of them! (both, western pedestal models). Tomorrow's toilets illustrate the promise of new technology, I guess. Then comes the darkened statue room lined by naked people watching videos of, well, I'm not sure. Best not to dwell too deeply here. Finally there's a 110 foot tall screen featuring five visions of future cities as they'd be imagined by children. It's the perfect world's fair pavilion. Crowded, complex, and confusing. I loved it [Oh, and Star Wars fans should look carefully for Y-Wing Fighters on the "Intelligence City" display].

Y-Wings over China

Outside, the temperature was nearly starting to melt the sidewalks. Happily the clouds that had been gathering all morning burst into a perfectly timed shower (maybe an example of China's cloud-seeding technology at work). Jogging into the Urban Best Practices Area, Jenny and I sauntered through "case buildings" that featured local examples of livable city-life. I was drawn immediately to the Malmö exhibit and its miniaturized version of the Swedish city, and we both enjoyed the chance to walk over an ersatz Charles Bridge in "Prague."

Jenny visits a tiny town

Other memorable moments from the UBPA include the long line for Osaka's 360-degree film about the role of water in the city's history, a Beijing Tiny Town reproducing the 2008 Olympic Village, and Hong Kong's animated floor that allowed us to present an impromptu remake of Michael Jackson's "Beat it" video. I got some good natured ribbing at a case focusing on Izmir, Turkey, when I failed to present my expo passport opened to the supposedly correct page. After directing me to the proper page for stamping, the woman smiled mischievously and pronounced her verdict: "You naughty" [Maybe she was still steamed that Izmir's proposal to host Expo 2015 was bested by Milan's sleep-inducing pitch]. Nearby fairgoers who'd packed their own lunches were sitting alongside walls, enjoying a break from the weather.

Andy practices his LunchFu against Bruce Lee

Once the rain turned into light drizzle we headed to Kungfu for a Chinese version of fast food: steamed spareribs, vegetables, rice, and chicken quarters. We both thought the meal was pretty good, even the soup was tasty (though the viscous lumps of gunk floating in our pots of chicken broth gave me pause). Potty breaks introduced us to the delightful option of the traditional squat toilet. By now, lines to popular pavilions were snaking around the buildings. GM's had ballooned to epic size, and the community outside the Oil Pavilion had grown large enough to potentially elect a mayor (or Central Committee, I guess). I estimated, roughly, an hour-long wait, and some sections of the line seemed to shuffle along pretty fast. It couldn't be that bad.

Line outside the Oil Pavilion

Yes, it was worse. In fact the line was composed of three sections, each its own little sub-contained cell of long marches down one row and back up the next. The sun had returned, its heat only dissipated by misters that rained water drops down from the open-air roof. At one section, folks would dig through boxes containing hunks of ice. At other parts of the line, guys would hawk sodas and ice creams over the fences (Jenny and I sprung for cups that contained some sort of creamy pineapple concoction). One family even passed out vegetables, which contributed to a cooling sense of solidarity.

Andy enjoys a cucumber at the Oil Pavilion

Still, that line was annoying. One section would appear to race toward the entrance while ours wouldn't budge. Perhaps jumpers were crowding in somewhere? Later I understood that the dynamics of the line were similar to the whole "flapping butterfly in China causing a hurricane in America" phenomenon. Eventually we'd move too, rapidly, clearly on the wake of motions that took perhaps a half hour to filter to us.

Waiting outside the Oil Pavilion

Toward the end of our wait, which passed the two-hour mark, a couple of women broke into a screeching fight, much to the amusement of folks standing nearby. The scene of shouting and clinched fists was so remarkable because it was so unlike the rest of the experience. Indeed, after marching (mostly) patiently around fenceposts toward the yawning entrance of an air conditioned pavilion dedicated to oil production, sharing that time with a thousand other Chinese fairgoers, I found myself feeling downright philosophical. Thus I present…

Zen and the Art of Chinese Line Standing:

5. Trust your neighbors: It's OK to hang heavy stuff on a fencepost as long as your row will head this way back again. Everyone is watching, and no one will swipe your stuff.

4. Celebrate the success of strangers: If someone else is moving closer to the pavilion entrance, that means you're getting closer too.

3. De-stress: Just because you can fill a gap in the line, you don't have to (especially if that section is exposed to the sun). While disorganized lines can be sites of chaos, solid barriers and peer pressure can produce a community of people willing to follow the rules. So cop a squat and catch up once you can advance to the next shady spot.

2. Stay humble: It may take you hours to get from the rear to the front; It's OK to feel good at the finish line. But remember, in a tightly compacted line you're never that far from folks who are just starting out.

1. Be nice: When standing in a line that snakes back and forth, smile at folks on the other side of the railing. You'll see your neighbors again.

Oil Pavilion mascot gets fresh with Jenny

Was the Oil Pavilion worth the wait? Of course it was! I was thrilled by each nonsensical geegaw and every deceptive piece of pro-oil propaganda. A mannequin that vaguely resembles Marilyn Monroe? Sure! An inverted pyramid of, I dunno, grains fed by petrochemicals? Where's my camera! A corn-colored "oil-drop" mascot competing with our beloved Haibao for love and affection? Go get 'em, you golden bastard!

Yeah, I was a little punchy by this point. As a result I was perfectly primed for the 4-D film - you know, with bursts of air and hidden seat-mechanisms to produce that "You Are There" feeling in a movie that can't be somehow approximated by mere characterization and plot development. In one scene, an oil-hand produces and sets aloft a glorious airplane. In another scene, three-dimensional candy floats inches from our faces. The movie supposedly tells the story of oil in human affairs, how our lives revolve around each barrel. I loved every minute.

Jenny wasn't that impressed

Jenny, less enamored with the two-hour wait, quoted The Simpsons:

Lisa: "They can't seriously expect us to swallow that tripe."

Skinner: "Now as a special treat, courtesy of our friends at the Meat Council, please help yourself to this tripe."

Later I'd learn that our lengthy wait to enter the Oil Pavilion was actually quite short. In fact, the Shanghai Daily reported in an article entitled Heat Thrills Foreigners that century-mark temperatures had cut the crowds to a more manageable size, resulting in wait-times being halved at some pavilions. The locals, we were told, were too smart to brave the heat today.

By evening, we both were pooped. But I had to see the other side of the river, to get closer to some of those national pavilions we'd heard so much about. So we did a quick pass through the State Grid Pavilion, which offered a dazzling video presentation inside a giant cube called a "Magic Box," meant somehow to convey how energy is "everywhere" (even in video displays on the ceiling and beneath our feet). It was a total sensory experience, like standing in the center of the cosmos as stars wheeled around in all directions. We were tired, sweaty, and a bit cranky, and yet the show was undeniably cool.

Inside the "Magic Box"

Back outside, the buildings were now aglow with exterior light shows. The bubbled facade of the Oil Pavilion pulsated with saturated colors that radiated in complex patterns. The other pavilions danced to their own symphonies too. Jenny sat awhile to rest her feet while I shot some video. A few minutes later we agreed to head across the Huangpu. Our expo map was now thoroughly crumpled and drenched with sweat from being stuffed all day in the left pocket of my cargo shorts. Ever the patient navigator, Jenny surveyed the map and charted a course to the nearest dock. Before long we passed through the gates and boarded a ferry that would take us across the river to the fair's Pudong Side.

Jenny navigates Expo 2010

Disembarking about 15 minute later, we wandered through a dimly lit park. The crowds dissipated as folks followed their own directions, and we enjoyed the sound of waves lapping against the shore. In the distance, China's massive inverted pyramid, a sky-filling display of national might dwarfing every other pavilion, seemed a million miles of walking away. Jenny and I drifted toward a collection of European exhibits, knowing that we'd only have time to sample one before our legs gave out entirely. For me there was no other choice: I had to see that Spanish exhibit. Jenny was ready to call it a night, but she kindly relented to my pleading and allowed us to join the queue that crawled along the building's wicker basket exterior. Even past 9 p.m. a long line still circled the building.

Video displays at the Spanish Pavilion

Getting inside the Spain Pavilion, much to our delight, didn't take as long as we feared. Once more we were transported to a multimedia explosion of sounds and images. At one point, Pamplona bulls tore through the building, such that even the floors seemed to shake from the tumult. Elsewhere, scenes of Spanish culture and urban life, photographs without names, dripped with anonymous pathos. We walked under a video display of people looking down upon us - we visitors now exhibits - unsure just what it all had to do with Spain, lit by all those random synapses firing at once. But we'd come to see one thing and one thing only: the big baby.


Sitting nearly 21 feet tall, "Miguelín" is an animatronic colossus of cooing, blinking, nodding infantile gigantism built, it turns out, by the same experts who produced the nightmarish aliens in the Alien vs. Predator and Starship Troopers movies. I've read about tensions arising from Spain's choice to focus its culminating moment on babies in a country with a (semi)strict one-child-per-family policy, leading me to wonder just what was Miguelín's creator Isabel Coixet thinking when she designed this monstrous robo-sapien.

Unfortunately her explanation suffers both from the limits of translation and the bland politics of diplomacy: "All our actions have direct consequences on our children's future… [We] have to react to this." OK, then. We saw the Big Baby. We had to see her, to photograph her, and to take some guess at her deeper meanings. Thereafter we grabbed a quick and regrettable meal before making our way toward the exits, through Shanghai's subway system, and finally to our hotel for the night.

See More: Check out my 2010 Expo Video!

Day 1 | Day 3