Attention Economy - October 14, 2023

Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented collaboration of cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. Beginning October 2011, over 60 cultural institutions will make their contributions to this region-wide initiative encompassing every major L.A. art movement from 1945 to 1980. Celebrate the era that continues to inspire the world.

Over the past 10 years, the wealthy L.A.-based Getty Foundation has doled out about $10 million in grants to help launch Pacific Standard Time, an unprecedented collaboration between more than 60 cultural institutions with one grand theme in mind: the birth of the L.A. art scene from 1945 to 1980.

Matt Rutherford is sailing around North and South America. He wants to be the first person to do the 23,000-mile trip alone and without stopping. RUTHERFORD: It’s like “The Odyssey,” except I’m not getting laid at all. GUTIERREZ: We connected when he anchored up in the Aleutian Islands to get a new water purifier and some fuel for his stove. The rules for contact were so strict that I couldn’t get on his boat to interview him, and I had to shout out questions from the supply boat. Rutherford … was more excited for the hot pizza and the cold beer that we ferried over. RUTHERFORD: It’s almost so good and so strange that you can’t even wrap your mind around it. You know, it’s like you’re drinking beer, and it’s great to be drinking a beer, but it’s so great to be drinking a beer that it’s almost like you’re not drinking a beer? [Chesapeake Regional Accessible Boating a non-profit that works with people with disabilities, gave him the boat for the trip. His website: solotheamericas.org.]

After this inspiration, “Alibis” exhales into a pursuit of evanescence. Most of its chapters are travel essays, and Aciman is a spirited guide, sensitive to history but alive also to food, sunshine, art and aimless wandering. The pleasure of reading him resides in the pleasure of his company. He knows a lot, and often gets carried away, but he also knows how to doubt himself. If his destinations seem conventional — Paris, Barcelona, Rome — his engagement with them is idiosyncratic. His mission is to “unlock memory’s sluice gates,” and it is a mission he accomplishes through the art of the essay itself: “You write not after you’ve thought things through; you write to think things through.”

This week, Stephen Greenblatt on his new book “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern”; Andre Aciman discusses his new collection of travel essays called “Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere”; Jacques Steinberg profiles athletes who compete in the most grueling triathalons in “You Are An Ironman”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

Despite multibillion-dollar investments in cybersecurity, one of its root problems has been largely ignored: who are the people who write malicious code? Underworld investigator Misha Glenny profiles several convicted coders from around the world and reaches a startling conclusion.

Anchor Marco Werman talks about the borderless world of international cyber crime with Misha Glenny, whose new book is called “DarkMarker: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You.”

According to Ayesha Khanna, the end of the so-called “Information Age” is nigh. Ayesha is the the director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, and she says we’re starting to enter a new age — the “Hybrid Age” — which is characterized by pervasive computing, biotechnology and nanotechnology, and “the emergence of technologies as a social actor.” That is, a time defined by our social interactions with the machines around us. This week, Nora interviewed Ayesha Khanna about the hybrid age, and about another of Ayesha’s areas of expertise: smart cities. You can hear the full, uncut interview or download the MP3. [runs 32:15]

Psychology professor Jennifer Steeves of York University explains how human beings recognize one another compared to facial recognition software. And Alessandro Acquisti from Carnegie Mellon University reveals some surprising research into how regular recognition tech can identify “anonymous” people. | Jure Leskovec is an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford, and he analyses past human behaviour online to predict future outcomes. And he’s discovered he can correctly predict who your next friends on Facebook will be. | What happens when cities can monitor and respond to the people who live in them? There is no end to the Spark obsession with this question. Ayesha Khanna, director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, talks to Nora Young about the potential, and the challenges of smart cities, and what becomes possible when sensors are embedded everywhere.

Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs died this week at the age of 56. Bob remembers the tech giant, and discusses Apple’s iconic “1984″ Super Bowl commercial, which he says is one of the best advertisements ever made.

A recent study from the University of California, San Diego says that, despite what we might expect, spoilers don’t actually spoil our enjoyment of a story—at least not in books. In fact, knowing the ending might even make us enjoy stories more. Brooke spoke to Jonah Lehrer of Wired, who wrote about the study.

For years, health care reporters have employed a government database called the National Practitioner Data Bank, containing information on malpractice payouts. The public version of the database hides the names of physicians, but after a reporter was able to identify an anonymous doctor, the public database was taken offline. Bob talks to Charles Ornstein of the Association of Health Care Journalists about why the database is important, and attempts by journalists to regain access to it.

The world watches as Occupy Wall Street approaches its fourth week of protests in lower Manhattan and similar demonstrations pop up around the country—but this new-found media attention was slow to catch on. Brooke speaks with Bill Dobbs, a press representative for OWS about what they are doing to generate media coverage. Then Brooke speaks with Michael Kazin, author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, about what needs to happen before protests are transformed into a movement.