See them while you can
As I’ve been writing about at length on my Trunkline blog, broadcast towers are both a lifelong preoccupation of mine, and (like all of us) doomed in the long run. That’s because high-bandwidth wireless digital tech doesn’t require them. (Yes, over-the air broadcasting may be with us forever, but on the long tail of an asymptotic curve.)
But a few are beautiful enough to preserve. Specifically (and perhaps exclusively) deserving of preservation are Blaw-Knox “diamond” towers: ones that are wide in the middle and pointed at the ends. Designed and built in the 1930s, they are contemporaneous with, if not exemplary of, the art deco movement.
Tallest of the survivors is the Lakihegyi tower in Hungary. It is also preserved. The famous ones in the US transmit the signals of WSM/650 in Nashville, WLW/700 in Cincinnati, and WBT/1110 in Charlotte. WSM and WLW are both functioning stations, and their towers are too iconic to lose. But WBT is now just broadcasting music interrupted by announcements that its programming is now only on FM. The transmitter site is for sale, and presumably its three Blaw-Knox towers with it.
Preservation efforts are in the works. See here. I think it’s a long shot. The owners have made clear that the signal has no economic value. That it covers the whole east coast at night is interesting, but with AM being abandoned by listeners, no longer useful. The towers will need to be maintained (preservation isn’t cheap), and with no use other than standing as landmarks, a cost for whoever or whatever maintains them. Even if only one of them stands, the cost is still there. So I’m betting they will be gone not long after the land sells.
Others diamond towers still standing are WBNS/1460 in Columbus, Ohio, and WFEA/1370 in Manchester, New Hamphire. My guess is that neither will outlive their licenses.
My shots of WLW and WFEA are here and here.
On AI building us, and maybe killing us
I posted What does the Internet make of us? seven years and one day ago. I’d be inclined to write a new one about what AI is making of us if I could see AI’s full import better than I could see what the Internet was doing to us in 2019.
But I can’t. None of us can. We are boating on the AI tsunami and can’t see solid ground in any direction. But we can build bigger and better boats out of stuff we find floating on the surface. And some of what we can do is freaking miraculous.
For years I have put off rescuing eight years of writing on my old (1999-2007) blog, which would require turning it, by hand, into thousands of pages of static HTM. But yesterday Claude converted all of it in minutes, and together we’re standing it up again on my own server at Searls.com (which also needs work with which I am getting AI help).
In a similar way, I am standing up browser, server, and website products and services required to make what I have been waiting here since 2006 for others to build. (Many have tried. Hats off. Now it’s my turn.)
But maybe AI really is an apocalyptic threat, and we’ll never find solid ground if we’re always floating on it. The Daily podcast today is an interview with Jacob Coxon, who just got instant fame for posting a warning about the future of AI. If you want to skip forward gto the scary part, start listening at around 19 minutes in.
Oliver Willis has a good Q&A explaining what Coxon is talking about.
None of that visits who Coxon is, other than a young former employee of OpenAI and Anthropic. His accent sounds Oxbridge to me (but not “received pronunciation“), run through some kind of auto-tune. It’s interesting.
Anyway, his case is better than I expected. Worth a listen.
Catch it while you still can
Of likely interest only to Santa Barbarians is news that Roy is closing. For many years Roy has been the good restaurant that stays open to midnight. Food was good too. Still is.
Reason for smiling
A thousand Internet years ago, perhaps as far back as the last millennium, I was walking to my hotel room at an event (in Monterey, I think), when on the opposite sidewalk walked a young woman carrying a violin case and wearing a huge smile for no obvious reason. Later she performed, and knocked the audience out. she was Ann Marie Calhoun, and I recommend checking her out.
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