Fix the Signal

<p>It often feels like optimism is an act of revenge, an act of spite or rebellion, because optimism requires diligence and effort whilst pessimism feels like the default, the thing requiring no energy or effort. Mike Monteiro wrote along similar lines in <a href="https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-stay-hopeful/">How to stay hopeful</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>The problem with dystopias is that dystopias are easy. You simply stop giving a shit about things or people that you should give a shit about, or things that don’t affect you directly, thinking they’re somebody else’s problem and boom—shit starts getting dystopian real quick.</p> </blockquote> <p>On the flip side: optimism is utopian. The world can be better! The world <em>is</em> better! Sure, there’s a kind of optimism that makes you blind to the suffering of others, there’s cruelty in it sometimes. But there’s nothing but misery to be found in endless snark, in womp-wompism, in all-things-must-be-sad-all-the-time-ism. I fear recently I’ve slipped into that other way of seeing the world — I worry I’ve become a true bummer — perhaps because I’ve been listening and reading to too much of the wrong things, perhaps encouraging all the wrong signals.</p> <p>So let’s talk about a few things that make me optimistic about the world right now. Let’s fix the signal!</p> <h2 id="1.-hummingbirds!" tabindex="-1">1. Hummingbirds! <a class="direct-link" href="https://robinrendle.com/notes/fix-the-signal/#1.-hummingbirds!" aria-hidden="true">#</a></h2> <p>Each morning, just outside my office, two hummingbirds dance and play above the redwoods. They are tiny and oscillating, endlessly wagging their little bodies because I like to believe that they’re happy to see me at work behind the glass. Whilst their wings beat back and forth the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroboscopic_effect">stroboscopic effect</a> kicks in, making them look like they’re hovering along the treetops without the help of their wings at all. At just the right angle it looks like these chaps have hacked the video game engine that powers our world and can now move in any direction with arms outstretched, as if they’ve both loaded incorrectly.</p> <p>These hummingbirds never fail to put me in a good mood, but I’m not entirely sure why. I suppose it’s the stark contrast from the world where I grew up — dreary, grey, pub-filled streets — and now there’s only the eternal blue of Cupertino skies above and the super-saturated trees flanking my office windows and now, here they are, they’ve come back to say hello.</p> <h2 id="2.-martyr!" tabindex="-1">2. Martyr! <a class="direct-link" href="https://robinrendle.com/notes/fix-the-signal/#2.-martyr!" aria-hidden="true">#</a></h2> <p>I know I’m late to the party but Kaveh Akbar’s <em>Martyr!</em> is great and I couldn’t put it down. The protagonist spends the whole novel fantasizing about a death worth living for, where he confronts and romanticizes his own suicide. Big portions of the book are taken up by his dreams:</p> <blockquote> <p>...the body offered you dreams. In exchange for a third of your living, you were offered sprawling feasts, exotic adventures, beautiful lovers, wings. Or at least the promise of them, made only slightly less intoxicating by the curious threat of nightmare. How sometimes, at random, your mind would decide to reduce you to a whimper, or a gasp, in the night.</p> </blockquote> <p>Kaveh snaps words together in a way that I find totally irresistible and un-put-downable. Whilst I was reading this book I had a terrible flu and each night I’d wake up in a cold sweat with the strangest dreams rolling around in my head. So it felt somewhat magic to finish the book and flu on the same day, with my dreams having then reset after the book’s spell had worn off.</p> <h2 id="3.-close-to-the-machine!" tabindex="-1">3. Close to the Machine! <a class="direct-link" href="https://robinrendle.com/notes/fix-the-signal/#3.-close-to-the-machine!" aria-hidden="true">#</a></h2> <p>It’s odd rereading Ellen Ullman’s <em>Close to the Machine</em> fifteen years later. On my first reading I honed in on the talk about computers, about software, about team work. I was lost in the rush of Ullman’s tale about living on the bleeding edge and fighting for great work to be done. I turned every page frantically as I hoped Ullman would find a problem worthy of her programming talents.</p> <p>Back then I wanted to <em>be</em> Ullman. I wanted to drive a convertible across a golden bridge, illuminated by magical software powers and money and the hard-earned wisdom that comes from struggling to smash computers and people together. I wanted to make something special.</p> <p>But now, after moving out to the Bay Area and a decade of failed relationships with startups and teams and endless software designs that never went anywhere, I see the underlying sadness of this little book. I see my own loneliness in there in ways I didn’t think could be put into words. I see my own failures and hopes and dreams in Ullman. I point at the book, DiCaprio style, when Ullman sells her soul, when she’s willing to start relationships with bitcoin boys despite knowing better, when she falls into the work in ways that’s difficult to pull herself back out again.</p> <p>Ullman is fallible in all the ways that I know I am, too. And that’s why I love this little book. It feels like something that shouldn’t be written down, something forbidden, something that upsets the natural order of software-as-a-job. And I still love it.</p> <h2 id="4.-herdling!" tabindex="-1">4. Herdling! <a class="direct-link" href="https://robinrendle.com/notes/fix-the-signal/#4.-herdling!" aria-hidden="true">#</a></h2> <p>I love <a href="https://herdling.game/">this little game</a>. I haven’t finished it yet, but already the music and storytelling-style have permanently etched itself into my noggin’. The game is about finding and traveling with a band of furry companions across a sad, flute-filled landscape. Rather unfortunately you can name each of your creatures and I decided to name them all after long-lost pets. This made the sweetness of this game extra sweet but at one point when we were all coming down a mountain together, all of them wagging their tales and shuffling their ridiculous bodies, I could see Lucy and Bob and Purdy and Crease and Lady, galloping together in formation. For the briefest moment I could see my little guys again.</p> <p>So: if anyone ever says that they caught me bawling my eyes out on my couch because of some big dumb videogame then I need you to know it’s all fake news, man. I never did any such thing. Now excuse me whilst I go find some big rocks to throw around and do ten thousand push ups. I have MAN things to do.</p>