A simple exercise in comparison/contrast: could you mark an anniversary in the history of civilization by asking, "What's on your iPod?"
You don't have to, of course. Like Henry Bemis, the poor, befuddled protagonist of the classic Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last," I probably just read too much. Still, certain synchronicities rear their ugly heads:
On October 23, 1983, a smiling young man drove a Mercedes truck into a building and parked there. The building -- at four stories one of the largest at the Beirut International Airport -- housed the 2d Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, and served as the headquarters of the Battalion Landing Team of the American contingent of the Multi-National Force in Lebanon. We know of the smile on the young man's face because of the testimony of the young Marine on duty at the front entrance to the building, who managed to jump out of the way before the truck ran him down.
He was lucky, for once the Mercedes stopped inside the building, devices aboard the truck exploded: the single largest non-nuclear explosion since Nagasaki, according to experts. The explosion destroyed the building and took the lives of 241 American servicemen, almost all of them Marines. The young Marine sentry survived the incident. The smiling young man who drove the truck did not and, for the record, his confederates didn't trust him: the bombs were rigged to detonate by radio.
North of the airport, in west Beirut, the French element of the Multi-National Force was also attacked. Seventy-five Foreign Legionnaires died in that attack.
Quite a debut for a new name on the Middle East scene. They called themselves Hezbollah.
I have stood at both sites. The results were ugly.
On October 23, 2001, in northern California, Apple Computer introduced a new product. The teaser for it, to those tech writers receiving the announcement, was the line, "Hint: It's not a Mac." It wasn't.
It was the iPod.
Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, but then they hadn't invented the personal computer or graphical user interface (GUI) software, either. But they insisted on producing what their own internal culture referred to as "insanely great" products. The Macintosh line of computers, enjoying damn near cult-like loyalty since their introduction in 1984, have been outstanding products, especially since the successful grafting of their elegant GUI onto a version of the Unix operating system. They followed that philosophy with the iPod, which, while not the first digital music player, was functional, tied in well with music downloading software (such as Apple's own iTunes), and was easy to navigate and use.
And it was beautiful.
Quite a debut for a new name in the music business.
Both October 23 efforts took a lot of money and time, patience and practice, courage and creativity to put into effect.
The smiling young Mercedes truck driver of October 23, 1983 had the physical courage to put his life in service to his values. So did his September 11, 2001 spiritual descendants. The Apple employees, agents, contractors, and investors of October 23, 2001 risked their time -- the one unrenewable resource of one's life -- and their energy, their reputations, and their money. That takes considerable courage, too.
One enterprise resulted in the creation of yet more wealth and values, the other in the destruction of wealth and value. Beauty and ugliness.
That says a lot, right there, and in fact, in the context of this discussion it says everything. Everything. We are not engaged in a war of civilizations, as some would have it, for one side of this conflict abandoned civilization a long time ago.
It was Islamic scholars, yes, who preserved for us the invaluable works of Aristotle and Averroes, and from them we have the word "algebra," the idea of the number zero, and even the Hindu-Arabic number system itself, with its all-important concept of positional notation (which made possible easy calculations, accounting, and, ultimately, capitalism).
But I have mentioned that to students of mine in the Middle East, that "Hindu-Arabic" number system, and Saudis and Egyptians both mocked me for using that term. The numerals aren't exactly the same, you see, so it's ridiculous to draw any comparison at all (I invite you to judge that one for yourself). The term "concrete-bound" comes to mind.
What's on my iPod, then? This October 23, 2006, I find Maria Callas. Beethoven. The Rolling Stones. Language lessons: French, Russian, Arabic, Norwegian. Podcasts. Music created with GarageBand software, on my own Mac. More Beethoven. What's on your iPod?
Meanwhile the descendants of those who gave us the zero, who gave us algebra, who gave us the very numbers we use every day, now put their emphasis on censoring what they don't like. I was told, when I lived in Saudi Arabia, that cable television was illegal because it was difficult or impossible to censor such services. The skyline of Jeddah was therefore punctuated by satellite dishes everywhere. Some critics there -- as also here, in the United States -- call them ugly, ignoring those words of Keats:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Wonder how they feel about iPods.
Posted by Craig Ceely at October 22, 2006 11:21 PM
