I'm not much of a science fiction fan. Somehow I missed out on that aspect of the geek formative experience. That said, I finished Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" this weekend, and it was just awesome. The parts were he predicts a social-capital driven future are prescient, no doubt. But the added bonus is that Doctorow is a great observer of the human animal. A taste:
Crowds were light until I got right up to Main Gate and the ticketing queues. Suppressing an initial instinct to dash for the farthest one, beating my ferrymates to what rule-of-thumb said would have the shortest wait, I stepped back and did a quick visual survey of the twenty kiosks and evaluated the queued-up huddle in front of each. Pre-Bitchun, I'd have been primarily interested in their ages, but that is less and less a measure of anything other than outlook, so instead I carefully examined their queuing styles, their dress, and more than anything, their burdens.
You can tell more about someone's ability to efficiently negotiate the complexities of a queue through what they carry than through any other means — if only more people realized it. The classic, of course, is the unladen citizen, a person naked of even a modest shoulderbag or marsupial pocket. To the layperson, such a specimen might be thought of as a sure bet for a fast transaction, but I'd done an informal study and come to the conclusion that these brave iconoclasts are often the flightiest of the lot, left smiling with bovine mystification, patting down their pockets in a fruitless search for a writing implement, a piece of ID, a keycard, a rabbit's foot, a rosary, a tuna sandwich.
No, for my money, I'll take what I call the Road Worrier anytime. Such a person is apt to be carefully slung with four or five carriers of one description or another, from bulging cargo pockets to clever military-grade strap-on pouches with biometrically keyed closures. The thing to watch for is the ergonomic consideration given to these conveyances: do they balance, are they slung for minimum interference and maximum ease of access? Someone who's given that much consideration to their gear is likely spending their time in line determining which bits and pieces they'll need when they reach its headwaters and is holding them at ready for fastest-possible processing.
This is a tricky call, since there are lookalike pretenders, gear-pigs who pack _everything_ because they lack the organizational smarts to figure out what they should pack — they're just as apt to be burdened with bags and pockets and pouches, but the telltale is the efficiency of that slinging. These pack mules will sag beneath their loads, juggling this and that while pushing overloose straps up on their shoulders.
Hi, I'm Nancy Scola. I’m a writer working to illuminate the intersections of tech, politics, science, culture, and food. I'm currently the associate editor at the Personal Democracy Forum's techPresident, and a contributing writer on the American Prospect's TAPPED blog.
techPresident Feed
