Getting past Coetzee. An essay by Hedley Twidle

In his life of VS Naipaul, Patrick French remarked that it might be “the last literary biography to be written from a complete paper archive”. I sense something similarly historical about Coetzee’s achievement, a power of pre-internet concentration and application that has now been eroded in Version 2.0 people. A mental discipline that can stay trained on things for longer than other minds, without flinching; that can push thoughts, or sentences, one step further than they would normally go.

A quality of, in a word, seriousness. Coetzee says somewhere or other that, for a certain kind of artist, seriousness is an ethical imperative. So why do I find myself wanting to be so unserious in his august presence? To dwell on all those things that cannot be related in the polite literary profile, or the rigorous academic paper. Such as: what does it mean to be obsessed, perhaps unhealthily obsessed, with an author? And: why don’t black South Africans read or talk about Coetzee? And: why am I beginning to think that his work should not be taught at the University of Cape Town – or at least that a 10-year moratorium on Coetzee studies should be declared?

While I was traveling in South Africa, I happened to read in the Financial Times the winning piece in the 2012 Bodley Head/FT Essay Prize, by South African author Hedley Twidle. It is in turn ironic (“Droves of students arrive from Wisconsin and Ohio to spend a term abroad, filling the Coetzee sign-up lists”), surprising (“Coetzee, the staff informed me, is a regularly shoplifted author”) and clever (“…a question that all literary scholars should put to themselves on a daily basis: “How can you know anything about literature if all you’ve done is read books?””). Read the full piece here: you won’t understand anything more about Coetzee than you already know, the unknowability of the subject being among the postulates underlying the essay. But you will learn a bit about literary obsessions, seriousness, unseriousness, and a country that is “as irresistible as it is unlovable”, South Africa.

Thoughts on South Africa

I saw a slice of South Africa, the one meant for tourists, and not even all of it. My vacation itinerary started in Cape Town, worked its way through the historic towns, wineries and game reserves of the Western Cape, and ended up at seaside resort Plettenberg Bay. It was beautiful, interesting, relaxing: the sort of vacation I like to have in order to unplug yet maintain the feeling that I’m learning something new about the world. Yet, it took place in a country that is not just wretched, but probably getting worse. From the recent Economist briefing:

South Africa’s Gini coefficient—the best-known measure of inequality, in which 0 is the most equal and 1 the least—was 0.63 in 2009. In 1993 it was 0.59. After 18 years of full democracy, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. [...]

In the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, South Africa ranks 132nd out of 144 countries for its primary education and 143rd for the quality of its science and maths. In the Department of Basic Education’s national literacy and numeracy tests last year, only 15% of 12-year-olds (sixth graders) scored at or above the minimum proficiency on the language test. In maths just 12% did.

Nelson Mandela, the universally revered 94-year-old “Father of the nation”, was released from hospital a few days ago and is reported to be recuperating at home. Yet, after his monumental achievements, how many opportunities has the country missed since then? How much of its potential has been lost to a dysfunctional political system, greedy politicians, and bogus theories about AIDS?

During my trip, I felt safe, as a tourist should be – just a bit unnerved by metal gates at the entrance to every little shop, reminding me that things can get occasionally dangerous. I did not feel I saw the new black ruling class: that has to be, I reckon, a Johannesburg (and Pretoria) phenomenon. Blacks and whites mixed at the popular tourist attractions, such as the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town and the Cango Caves in Oudtshoorn; but the wine country was very white, restaurant and hotel patrons were invariably blond and blue-eyed, and they mostly spoke Afrikaans. I do not recall seeing any mixed-race couples – apparently a more common sight in Paris more than in Cape Town. Being a tourist, I did not test people’s education nor witness the country’s incompetence and corruption. I left with mixed feelings: the place is beautiful, but hiding very deep wounds.

In the picture, a Cape Town view from Table Mountain.

The joys of editing

You’ve got to love the editors at The Economist. Merry Christmas!

No one can know for certain what future investment returns will be. If the writers at The Economist were sure of the answer, they would be lounging about on their luxury yachts instead of sweating over split infinitives.

Web Trends 2013

This is one of my infrequent exercises as a futurologist. What’s a 2013 trend that you expect to have a major impact in the way we use the Internet in our lives?

I am trying to look beyond the established 2011/2012 trends, such as SoLoMo and Gamification.

Three come to mind:

• Crowdsourcing: over a decade after the Goldcorp challenge, it is entering its prime. Technology and engineering, product design, branding and creativity, repetitive tasks… more and more things can have a shot at crowdsourcing (although unequivocal success stories are still rare) . And, of course, crowdfunding is more and more of a reality. What do you expect next?
• A bigger role for voice. We have seen a dramatic progression over the past three decades from keyboard to mouse/touchpad to touchscreen as an input mechanism; voice has often failed, but is now (in part thanks to Siri) gaining mass market acceptance. Voice will also be important for biometric authentication via our vocal footprint and become a security device. What else will we do with our voice?
• The Makers’ movement. There has been no shortage of cover stories lately, and as always the hype will at some point backfire, but I am starting to think that, just like professional chef equipment is entering the mainstream domestic kitchen, 3D printers will quit being confined to labs and enter a lot of garages. The Economist this week speculates that design exchange sites may find themselves targeted by law enforcement against design piracy, in an eerie comeback of the DMCA battles of the past decade. When you get a 3D printer, what will be the first thing you make?

Below, two pics I snapped this past June at an event in Milan, courtesy of the WeFab collective.

The imperative for literary fiction. David Foster Wallace

… Many of out best-known C. Y. [Conspicuously Young] writers seem content merely to have reduced interpretation to whining. And what’s frustrating to me about the whiners is that precisely the state of general affairs that explains a nihilistic artistic outlook makes it imperative that art not be nihilistic.

It’s always a deep, deep pleasure to read David Foster Wallace, only colored with sadness at reading him posthumously.

I am honored

Dear Ms. Bonomo,

Congratulations! [...] You’ve been elected to membership in the Stanford Associates [...] an honorary organization founded in 1935 to recognize exceptional and sustained volunteer service to the University. Fewer than 1% of Stanford Alumni have earned this special distinction [...]

XXX and YYY nominated you for this honor because of your accomplished volunteer work and support of the University. [...] I’m delighted to help honor your continued effort on behalf of this great institution. [...]

Rich Jaroslovsky, ’75

Chair, Board of Governors

This is the letter I received this week, and I was pleased and humbled. It was totally unexpected.

You know I am very fond of Stanford and I admire the University leadership, as demonstrated multiple times in recent years (in the financial crisis, in its thought leadership on the future of university education, and even in having a “geek president”).

As a curiosity, along with two more of my classmates, this year’s intake of new members of Stanford Associates includes venture capitalist Peter A. Thiel, who has both a Stanford undergraduate degree in philosophy and a Stanford law school degree, and who made some waves recently for speaking out against the college education bubble. This will definitely make for interesting debate.

2012 Ada Lovelace Day: two Italian scientists

We honor Ada Lovelace this year by celebrating Ada Lovelace Day on October 16. Here are my two picks among women engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians.

Fabiola Gianotti is a particle physicist, Spokesperson (i.e., coordinator) for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland, which consists of 3000 scientists from 38 countries and is considered the world’s biggest scientific experiment. On July 4, 2012, Gianotti announced that ATLAS had detected a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson predicted by the Standard Model of physics.

Fabiola Gianotti holds a Ph.D. in experimental sub-nuclear physics from the Università Statale in Milan, Italy. A trained pianist, she also holds a professional music diploma from the Milan Conservatory.

(My notes from my recent visit at CERN – in Italian – are here; this video about the LHC is in English).

Carlotta Guiducci is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where she heads the Laboratory of Life Sciences Electronics.

Her laboratory team focuses on the design and application of electronic biosensors and are at the forefront of electronic engineering and bioengineering. The sensors address a wide range of applications, from nucleic acid, protein and drug detection to the measurements of bacterial metabolism. Carlotta holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bologna.

Is there a woman in science, technology, engineering or maths whose achievements you admire? Write about her and add your story to the directory at FindingAda.com.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!