Mass Persuasion - The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive

by Robert K Merton, 1946 

• This book is about one specific war bond drive, called "War Bond Day" and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System, as in CBS, yes that CBS, on September 21, 1943, and by broadcaster Kate Smith. Note - this radio station went off the air about March 19, 2026, the day I finished this book. 
• Merton and the Bureau of Applied Social Research conducted this study from hundreds of surveys and interviews of the radio-listening American public. 
• This war bond drive is considered "an extraordinary instance of mass persuasion"
• On Mass Persuasion, the Marathon Gestalt, and Compulsive Listening - "The idea that her voice, and energy might not endure was suggested by Smith herself ... and one listener ... noted in the evening 'The voice gave out. It was getting weaker. Her finish was 'will you buy a bond' and it was weaker and weaker," p31 [she is sacrificing herself, on-air]
• "The performer who is on the edge of failure evokes sustained interest. No one is interested in seeing a weight lifter toss up 10 pounds; there is no zest in watching him fail to budge a thousand pounds, but somewhere in between, where he might succeed or fail, the spectators hold their breath." p31
• "If ... I hoped a lot of people would rush in and revive her with the response of buying bonds." p32 [I'm thinking of Go Fund Me's success; it's a real-life version of this.]
• ... and the listeners "watch the sacrifice" of others (like Kate Smith) p40
• you appeal to the sacred, not the secular; patriotism, not sound financial investment, and you offer no incentives (gifts in return), because that negates the sacredness of the thing. p48
• Their data says it worked because they think she's sincere. Why?
• She sells products on other commercials just the same ... people like her more. Also , she wasn't getting paid for the extra 18 hours "so it must be genuine" p84-85
• But now, because of the marathon, it validates the sincerity that's already there. p89
• The marathon broadcast took on the attributes of a sacrificial ritual. p92
• She's also seen as patriotic (re selling war bonds), and moreso than the politicians; it's not actual service but dramatized events. That's what connects to regular people. p101
• Of those who were persuaded to buy, they fell into these groups:

1. The Predisposed - they didn't even pay attention since they were going to buy regardless
2. The Susceptible - they were guilted into it; she redefines the appropriate amount, modifying the norm. And she redefines by staying on the air all day; she's doing more, so you should do more. 
3. The Indifferent - they see the bonds as a practical investment. 
4. The Undisposed - they require little cumulative persuasion (only listening to 8 of the 30 broadcasts). But a lot of this group called thinking they would talk to Kate personally. They just like her. (and it's mentioned here that she's fat and that 'it's easier to trust someone who's fat')

• In opposition to what rich people would do in response to a request for bonds (they would be greedy and selfish of course) there was an aggressive attitude towards the rich and how they spend their money. "But characteristically, the aggression is directed towards the wealthy (I)people(I) not the (I)institutional(I) structure that permits of such seeming unhappiness and moral disintegration [of the rich, that is] p166
• "Mass persuasion is not manipulative when it provides access to the pertinent facts; it is manipulative when the appeal to sentiments is used to the exclusion of pertinent information." p186
• On the Moral Dilemma of Mass Persuasion - What are the effects upon personality of being subjected to virtual terrorization by advertisements which threaten the individual with social ostracization unless he uses the advertised defense against halitosis or B.O.? Or, more relevantly, what are the effects, in addition to increasing the sale of bonds, of terrorizing the parents of boys in the service by the threat that only through their purchase of war bonds can they ensure the safety of their sons and their ultimate return home? ... A society subjected ceaselessly to a flow of "effective" half-truths and the exploitation of mass anxieties may all the sooner lose that mutuality of confidence and reciprocal trust so essential to a stable social structure." p188-189 

Experiments on Mass Communication

Carl I Hovland, Arthur A Lumsdaine, Fred D Sheffield

Robert K Merton is Experimental Consultant

Princeton University Press, 1949 

Volume 3 of a 4 volume set on Studies in Social Psychology in World War II

I. The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life

II. The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath

III. Experiments on Mass Communication

IV. Measurement and Prediction 

Organized by the Research Branch of the Army's Information and Education Division

Surveyed by the Survey section of the Branch

Controlled experimentation by the Experimentation section

Their job was to make experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of various programs of the Information Education Division, including orientation and information films.

This is a list of other things they studied, other than the films mentioned in this book:

• "Yank", the Army weekly magazine
• library card records
• "the optimal phonetic representation of foreign language words"
• radio listening habits and program preferences of patients by direct observation in army hospitals
• unit orientation programs
• comparisons between commentator and documentary radio presentations
• comparisons between physical conditioning programs for the War Department
• veterans' reports of fear-producing effects of various kinds of enemy weapons and tactics for the Office of the Surgeon General
• optimal time for trainees first jump for the Paratroop School at Fort Benning
• redeployment interviews for for Air Corp

For this book, the topic is about morale, leadership, and training programs, and specifically military training films for the Military Training Division of the Armed Services Forces.

"The "Why We Fight" films constituted probably the largest scale attempt yet made in this century to use films as a means of influencing opinion" p21

On Recognition of Propaganda - of the minority who did criticize the films as propaganda, they were also more educated, and thus more articulate, and capable of influencing others p88

On the Meaning of Propaganda (according to those critical soldiers)

• untruthful or biased presentation, distortion of facts
• manipulative purpose or motive p88-89

Characteristics of Propaganda (again according to those critical soldiers)

• one-sidedness, ie only showing the strength of the enemy and not our strengths also, or how British losses were underplayed
• repetitious shots used in the film
• exaggeration, unrealistic, overdramatic presentation, aka the Hollywood Touch
• source of film materials; so actually people just don't know that "captured enemy footage" exists, so they think it's all fake, otherwise, how would we get shots from inside enemy territory
• close-up shots in combat; same thing, they don't know that was actually happening, and they definitely don't know that the cameras in fighter planes are synchronized with the guns to verify enemy loss

Findings on Propaganda

• This is the "most significant finding to emerge from the study"
• People opposed to the ideas in the film were more likely to accept those ideas if the film presented "both sides" p269
• Yet both one-sided and both-sided worked
• In "both sides" studies, introducing opposed arguments that can't be refuted can reduce aggressive tendencies in opposed viewers, but it needs to be done early, or it tends to weaken the conclusion
• And, refute only when an obviously compelling and strictly factual refutation is available; otherwise it's unnecessarily antagonizing; and it should come later, in the hopes the proceeding arguments have softened the opposition.

Notes

• They're using the word "especial" not "special"? 1949
• They are using the word "polygraph" to describe giving someone a like and dislike button to press during the film. The recorded responses are called a polygraph. p104 (204?)

Edward Bernays

I've always wanted to read Bernays. I first heard of him on WBAI 99.5FM, a public radio station in New York City and under Pacifica, during their fundraiser, where they would play a documentary about the mass manipulation of populations, and offer to give it to you for free if you donated some money to the station. At that time, Bernays sounded like the most diabolical person ever. Today, we're in an age of digital mass manipulation, with non-human algorithms and predatory platforms, and so I thought maybe it's time I read the Bernays, from the source, and so I did. 

Now I realize that he was not a diabolical mastermind who manipulated every person on the planet for greed and power. He was trying to help the people talk to their government and to their corporate overlords. Granted, he did work for entities like Phillip Morris, and granted, audacious plots like the Carbon Footprint propagandized by British Petroleum were crafted in his spirit. And then there's the quote from the back of the book jacket of his second book Propaganda (copied below), which is nothing short of the most ominous and conspiratorial provocation ever. But in his own books, he's saying he does all this because he wants to see people understand each other. He doesn't only want the business he works for to make more money, he wants the customers they serve to be more satisfied at the same time. He doesn't just want a government to come up with some new laws, he wants those laws to actually be just what the people need, no more and no less. "The goal of all public relations is good will" (Public Relations, Bernays, 1952, p5). 

Maybe there's another piece to all this, some criticism written 20 years after he dies, that shows how I was so easily misled, and how he was in fact the sinister mental criminal the WBAI documentary presented him as. Maybe; but I'm not there yet. So for now, here it is.

Crystallizing Public Opinion

Edward Bernays, 1923 

This is his first book.

Something about "the danger of interference by the public in the conduct of the industry"; but his tone overall is one of cooperation, consideration, conscientiousness, etc., and for the public good just as much as the interests of industry, government, etc. p21

On Paul Revere vs Longfellow, and Perception vs Reality - based on a story in a "New York newspaper", about public relations (which was a new concept at the time by the way). Two other people rode with Paul Revere that night. "There were three waiting to see the signal hung in the tower of the Old North Church. Everyone of them mounted and spurred just as Mr. Longfellow described Paul Revere. They all got the signal. They all rode and waked the farmers, spreading the warning. Afterward, one of them was an officer in Washington's army, another became governor of one of the States. Not one in twenty thousand Americans ever heard the names of the other two, and there is hardly a person in America who does not know all about Revere. Did Revere make history or did Longfellow?" p22-23

On Influencing Public Opinion - or even on correcting misinformation, as the advice sounds very familiar. "It is seldom effective to call names or to attempt to discredit the beliefs themselves. The council on public relations, after examination of the sources of established beliefs, must either discredit the old authorities or create new authorities by making articulate a mass opinion against the old belief or in favor of a new one." And because he says the beliefs of individuals come from authorities, like the President of the United States, the president of the local school board, or the director of a finance committee; authorities are where the belief comes from, and people have allegiance to them; the allegiance is to other people, not to ideas or beliefs, but it appears as allegiance to belief. And therefore, you can't discredit the belief but the authority where it comes from. p30

In a chapter titled "The Interaction of Public Opinion with the Forces That Help Make It", he talks about the back-and-forth of the public opinion and public will on other systems, which then influence them back, etc., and he says, "Give the people what they want" is only half sound. What they want and what they get are fused by some mysterious alchemy. The press, the lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other." p38

He mentions often "the crowd" and "crowd-mind" and Everett Dean Martin's the Behavior of Crowds.

He refers to Instincts of Herd by Trotter to explain the behaviors of the group vs the individual.

On Dull News Days - he is referencing an article by the editors of the New York Tribune, April 19, 1922, "What Else Happened That Day", which is about the news on the day Austria declared war on Serbia, and which started World War One. First Bernays says when there is no big news, real editing is needed to select the real news from the semi-news. Then he says, "What you read on dull news days is what fixes your opinion of your country and of your compatriots. It is from the non-sensational news that you see the world and assess, rightly or wrongly, the true value of persons and events." And so Bernays is saying it is in this way, small yet unending, that our ideas are shaped. Not the big, single incidents; the ones you notice. It's the million little things, and so small you don't notice. Little by little you build your ideas, your beliefs. p51

Here citing Lippmann's "Public Opinion", there are 3 ways to "obtain cohesive force" of the public:

1. Patronage and Pork - a member of one community will promise reciprocal support to the member from another community

2. Government by Terror and Obedience - [no explanation is given]

3. Governments based on such highly developed systems of information, analysis and self-consciousness that the 'knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state' is evident to all men. ... [T]he degree to which the material for a common consciousness exists determines how far cooperation will depend upon force, or upon the milder alternative to force, which is patronage and privilege. p56-57

On the Interlapping Group Formations in Society - let us examine for a moment the personnel of the Horseshoe at the Metropolitan Opera House. It is comprised of people who are rich, but this economic classification is only one, for the men and women who assemble there are presumably music lovers. But also ... art lovers ... sportsmen ... merchants and bankers ... philosophers ... motorists and amateur farmers. p63

And a silk firm trying to reach the public, targets women, propagandizing silk as fashion, as art, as the natural history of the silk worm ... p64

Citing Martin's "The Behavior of Crowds", "a debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture." p68

The first picture I wanted to use seemed very obviously artificially generated, so I chose this one instead. I didn't look at the words printed at the bottom, until I did, and then I decided to just leave it for everyone to see. This is how hard it's become to find an actual original photo from that day.

This seems a bit more authentic?

Propaganda

Edward Bernays, 1928 

This is his second book.

On the back jacket, "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." This sounds so ominous and conspiratorial, but not how he seemed to portray it? And so I might have to argue that even Bernays himself is saying that true power is part of the iterative creative force of a population acting on its governing bodies which then act back on the population which then act in response back on the governing bodies, ad infinitum; and so nobody rules anything, nobody ultimate controls anything.

His first book seems to be making the case for a public opinion expert, or public relations expert. Here, he's making the case for propaganda, which is the instrument of the public relations expert. 

The New Propagandists, a list: The President of the United States and the members of his Cabinet; the Senators and Representatives in Congress; the Governors of our forty-eight states; the presidents of the chambers of commerce in our hundred largest cities, the chairmen of the boards of directors of our hundred or more largest industrial corporations, the presidents of many of the labor unions affiliated in the American Federation of Labor, the national president of each of the national professional and fraternal organizations, the president of each of the racial or language societies in the country, the hundred leading newspaper and magazine editors, the fifty most popular authors, the presidents of the fifty leading charitable organizations, the twenty leading theatrical or cinema producers, the hundred recognized leaders of fashion, the most popular and influential clergymen in the hundred leadings cities, the presidents of our colleges and universities and the foremost members of their faculties, the most powerful financiers in Wall Street, the most noted amateurs of sport, and so on. p12

"Invisible government" and "mass psychology" - these are some mid-20th c. and early 21st c. buzzwords; were they buzzwords in 1920 when he wrote this?

He talks about the new industrial economy and says the new business is not to make more stuff, because we got that with the industrial revolution, "To make customers is the new problem" and his greater context here is inter-industry and inter-commodity competition. p30

Ultimately he seems to see it as a cooperation, and a "bringing order from chaos"

He also says beliefs you agree with are education, and beliefs you disagree with are propaganda, but that propaganda is its own thing, and a good propagandist can use it to influence public opinion to the benefit of both. 

AI Art - Mind Control - via stablediffusion

Public Relations

Edward Bernays, 1952 

This is his last book. Much of it is taken from previously published material, either his own earlier books, or news, journals, etc., articles written by him and others. I get somewhat of a feeling that he's being defensive of propaganda; this is written in 1952, where the whole world knows what it means, and what it can do. At his first book, circa 1920, the world, and the concept of 'propaganda' were both much different. 

"The goal of all public relations is good will" p5 

On Publicity vs Public Relations - "Publicity is a one-way street; public relations, a two-way street. The modern public relations man owes his being to the destruction of the laissez-faire in the early twentieth century; he owes it to the muckrakers of the period, the Square Deal, the New Freedom, and the New Deal." p5

Propaganda - "The term 'propaganda' was introduced when Pope Gregory XIII established a Committee for the Propagation of the Faith to found seminars and print catechisms and other religious works in foreign countries. Subsequently, Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) founded the College of Propaganda to educate priests. In 1650 Pope Clement VII instituted the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to spread Catholicism the world over." p20

Public Opinion - the phrase is first used in the Enlightenment, which is after revolutions gave rights to public speech, freedom of presses, etc., and all as a result of literacy in the population. ... Rousseau's term volonte generale, or the "general will", and the German Volksgeist, or "spirit of the people", and Jeremy Bentham's "tribunal of public opinion" p22

"What is truly vicious is not propaganda but a monopoly of it." p24

PT Barnum would write letters to the editor of a newspaper, under pseudonyms, and both for and against PT Barnum. (This sounds like the Black Lives Matter movement circa 2018, and follows Bernays earlier advice that 'a debate is better than a lecture'; recall there were protests on both sides of the issue held at the same place and same time and started by the same organization but masquerading as two opposing organizations.) p38

During the period 1800-1865, slavery was the primary topic; he lists all the ways literature, magazines, etc. influenced public opinion, and that is where we see the first real reference to 'public relations', used by a rector in New York City, 1842 p46

Publicity vs Public Relations - it was called publicity, but in 1908, AT&T head used the word in the heading of the annual report. p70

Freud was the uncle of Bernays.

The Committee on Public Information of WWI (imagine that)

"The first use of "public relations counsel" was at the time of the Bernays wedding, "when the groom described himself by that phrase." Eric Goldman, Two-Way Street p91

"...separate proper from impropaganda" -Herbert Bayard Swope, executive manager of the New York World, 1922

[Relevant in Post-COVID 2025] Following the Great Depression, "Corporations and leaders had lost prestige simultaneously. From a market standpoint, the public was keenly sensitive, because of its feeling of insecurity, to everything about a corporation that it did not understand. ... sales of products fell off for the most improbably and unlikely reasons: false rumors, ... No possible subject that could be a matter of disagreement between groups of the public was too trivial to cause a wave of public disapproval or a falling off in buying. p92

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, started by the Boston merchant Edward A. Filene, 1937, and published Propaganda Analysis, a monthly newsletter "to help intelligent citizens detect and analyze propaganda"

Classifications: 

• the name-calling device
• glittering generalities
• transfer in terms of approved symbols and sanctions
• testimonial
• plain folks' device
• card-stacking
• bandwagon

A major distinction he makes is the one-way vs two-way streets; the one-way approach to public relations is what most people call sales. p122

The genius of radon watches - they were indispensable to soldiers on the front lines because they couldn't use lights to see their watches, so the radon watch was put on soldiers, and the soldiers were sold to the people, at a time when watches were still considered feminine. p129-130

"Engineering of Consent" is a chapter title, and pretty ominous sounding if you ask me.

He recommends all Public Relations Councils have a library of people and organizations, like the directory of newspapers, or the Congressional Directory...p162

He lists some of his processes

• Research - survey people, write them letters
• Appeal to Desire - aka "psychological raw materials", self preservation, ambition, pride, hunger, love of family and children, patriotism, imitativeness, the desire to be a leader, love of play
• Symbols - Horses are the symbol for both Marlboro and Budweiser (jesus yes they are)
• Do not think of tactics in segmented approaches; the problem is not to get articles into a newspaper or radio time or arrange for a motion-picture newsreel; it is rather to set in motion a broad activity, the success of which depends on interlocking all phases and elements of the proposed strategy, implemented by tactics that are tuned to the moment of maximum effectiveness
• "He must prepare copy written in simple language and sixteen-word sentences" p167

He recommends each business make notes on all things public about the business, government legislation, even newspaper clippings to see how they are viewed by the public 

"House Organs" - in-house company magazines ... don't mention strikes or labor issues in general, despite being of utmost interest to the readership (employees) p210

[But this is my opinion, it just occurs immediately when reading this] A business producing a "house organ" that continually educates its employees on its business, its economics, its hiring practices, seems it would have no choice over time but to accumulate bias, until it's no longer trusted, and thus can no longer serve its purpose of educating employees (because they don't trust it to read it). A separate entity would have to publish it, yet paid for by the company, and no company would do that on its own, at least not without being required by law?

"The hidden market in the human personality" p216 (this is where his legacy begins, because psychology was new at the time)

"Advertising is re-education" p249

"People must want cleanliness before they want soap." p328

The Camera

by Ansel Adams, New York Graphic Society, 1980 edition

These selections are not really about the camera so much as the artistic process. They were written in 1980, by a well-known photographer (an understatement), but their application to the current trend in the arts in response to the use of generative artificial intelligence to create artwork, or any technology that gets in between the artist and the art. 

On Automation of Equipment and Procedure: "The challenge to the photographer is to command the medium, to use whatever current equipment and technology further his creative objectives, without sacrificing the ability to make his own decisions." px 

On Technology and Utility: "Ideally, the photographer will choose basic equipment of adequate quality, with nothing that is inessential." pxiii (but I'm thinking bloated operating systems)

On Technological Automation: "The next time you pick up a camera think of it not as an inflexible and automatic robot, but as a flexible instrument which you must understand to properly use." pxiii (again thinking the new personal computer paradigm where you don't even own the computer anymore and have no idea what it's doing behind your back)

On Automation and Average Output: "The term automation is taken here in its broadest sense, to include not only automatic cameras, but any process we carry out automatically, including mindless adherence to manufacturers recommendations in such matters as film speed rating or processing of film. All such recommendations are based on an average of diverse conditions and can be expected to give only adequate results under "average" circumstances; they seldom yield optimum results, and then only by chance." p2 (ouch, ie ai and slop-homogenization)

Last thing - He's talking about viewfinders vs film plate shapes, and I'm thinking about what they call the "ideal" shape as not a square but matched to the paper which is rectangular and the evolution of image format as influenced by the rectangular-formatted paper industry (where a "sheet" has been the same shape and size rectangle since the press came out circa 1400), through photography, but then gives way to the square format with the Instagrammification of the image format of choice circa 2015, which is also around the same time all print media ceased operations and went straight to having websites instead. 

In the Midst of Things - The Social Life of Objects in Public Spaces

by Mike Owen Benediktsson, Princeton University Press, 2022 

First, there is a note, on the second to last page, on the typography used in the book, and that it's Adobe Text and Gotham, and that "Gotham, inspired by New York street signs, was designed by Tobias-Frere-Jones for Hoefler and Co.; something I've never seen before.

• "We shape our buildings, and after, our buildings shape us." -Winston Churchill
• The "informal proxemics" of the street vs Covid lockdown (on his writing this book during covid) pxi
• "What we generally do not see, is that [manmade] objects have ideas in them ... Sometimes, the ideas that are designed into objects are oriented on individual human users. Other times, they involve social norms or relationships ... ." p1
• public objects vs private possessions p2

This book is so beautifully organized:

1. Appearance - Public Lawn, Folding Chair

2. Disruption - Traffic Divider, Subway Door

3. Disappearance - Newsstand, Bench

• This book seems to be (or I want it to be) about the trans-substantiation of material objects into ideas, policies, laws, etc., something about dematerialization and "the objects as intermediary" between the physical and the social ~p3
• "Material Sociology" which he says "is not really a thing" p3
• Objects "fix the contents" of society, George Simmel p4
• "Obviously, objects enter into our social consciousness practically every day. They are useful metaphors - they make abstract social processes more concrete. We communicate using an everyday poetry that links material things in our social world, without thinking about why these linguistic shortcuts work. We know that the "white collar worker" or "pencil-pusher" is different from the "blue-collar worker" or "hardhat." The "latte-sipping elitist" is different from "Joe sixpack." The "white tablecloth banquet" is different from the "brown bag lunch." Social structure is not something we can easily see or feel, so we refer to its material correlates, in a form of metonymy." p4
• "Affordances" are "the ideas objects have about us" [this sounds much like Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants and Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene, aka We Don't Wear Earrings. Earrings Wear Us]; "the behavioral possibilities that are endorsed by an object or places." "Affordances do not exist inside of an object, but in the relationship between an object and a person" p4-5
• "Programming" is the act of embedding affordances in an object or place ... used to suggest what should be done (or not done). p5
• Once programmed into the material surfaces of an object or a place, affordances can become physically coercive in their control over human behavior p5
• "Symbolic Programming" are signs and labels that reinforce intended behavior. p5
• "Institutional Programming" is typically invisible; they may be written down, but most likely are simply known by users. ... it implies a third party who provides incentives and sanctions, such as a property owner, an anonymous stranger, a neighbor, or the government. "Sidewalks because they are public, are institutionally programmed, or regulated, in a way that one's living room is not." ... when they're effective, they're invisible. p6
• When public objects fail, they disrupt the social order (repurposing Harold Garfunkel) p6
• All blueprints are blueprints for human behavior (from Thomas Gieryn)
• Design professionals translate social context into material form. p7
• In the real world, after a thing is built, and real people show up: The "potential environment" envisioned by the designers and planners is supplanted by the "effective environment" created through human use. (these terms invented by sociologist Herbert Gans) p8
• Home telephones were initially intrusive. p8
• The real test is when an object enters the sociological wilderness of unpredictable, everyday life. p9
• Entropy! footnote 22
• Some public objects reveal their broader importance to a community when threatened or removed. p11
• The subway pole is the fireman's pole is the stripper pole. Things are given meaning by the place in which they're found. p13
• Public objects are Rosetta stones, decoding the sociology of urban life. p16
• "The social role of material objects is invisible under most circumstances." p16
• On the Traffic Divider (the Social Divider!) p18
• On the Subway Door - "informal infrastructure," i.e., passenger etiquette: disruptions beget behavioral engineering [nice word], like turnstyles. p18-19
• "These spaces are physically open, but sociologically closed, earmaked for certain kinds of rituals." p24
• Olmstead on public lawns and the single most important benefit provided by an urban park, "escape from the cramped, confined and controlling circumstances of the streets of the town: in other words, a sense of enlarged freedom." He wanted no fences and no walls around his parks, so you could see right through them from one side to the other. (Olmstead, 1866) p24
• The lawn, originally represented exclusivity and privilege, costly to maintain, and visible from outside the house ... "grass externalizes and manifests socioeconomic status" p33
• Ownership vs Usership - this is where the condos in the park of One Brooklyn Bridge Park were advertised to a specific sub-population who would use it in a specific way. They won't own the property, but they do, sort-of, because what it affords is accessible to and desired by them. p36

• The folding chair "is an expression of trust in the urban society itself'. p61
• The Wiley-Smartz NYC DOT Public Space Unit put maintenance under local partners, not the city, to avoid a race to the bottom. p61
• 2013 "desnudas" in Times Square (naked women with painted-on bikinis). Totally legal btw. By 2015 he says it was being called a strip club without walls because men would line up their chairs and watch for hours. ... also considering "Times Square as a mecca of tourism and unrestrained commercialism", it was hard to avoid. p65-66
• Single men are limited in their use fo public space; in playgrounds and ball fields they look like predators. p70
• When La Plaza de las Americas in Washington Heights was opened, "They knew what to do here" [says a park inhabitant when interviewed] because they had plazas in the countries where they came from. p73
• Social activity itself discourages disorder and encourages informal social control (like Jane Jacobs' eyes on the street) p81
• [I see "White" people capitalized for the first time (2022)] p85
• "Flexible public space is an expression of trust in urban society. But not all communities trust themselves." p90
• There's a great and illustrative picture on p 102 that shows the walking path along Black and White Horse Pike in South Jersey, with a 55 MPH speed limit sign, mangled by an 18-wheeler probably going a lot faster than 55. He also uses the word "fear lines" in opposition to "desire lines" ~p106
• "There exists an entire world of inconvenience and humiliation for the pedestrian users of this space." p108
• And he makes reference to upstairs/downstairs and front/back of the house "vibrating w programmatic conflict" 
• Infrastructure becomes visible when it breaks. p109 ft 25 SL Star...
• Signs and symbols act to clarify the program embedded in a materials object, or to specify a legally endorsed pattern of behavior. They act as a stopgap in cases where the built environment is deemed insufficiently legible by the people or institutions who are responding to programmatic conflict. p114
• [We domesticate technology, through recursion from raw tech to normative infst] ~p126
• "feral technology" p131
• He's talking about sociothermodynamics, the space and the mental organization of behavior in it, by it, is what causes altercations; it's not the personalities of the people, it's the space they're in and how it's designed (like people waiting for a train that's late, or trying to fit on a train that's crowded), and he says one of the causes is "temporal ambiguity" in the breakdown of normative infrastructure. p150-152
• [personal thought] graffiti on buses (and subways) pre-dated advertisements on buses
•  (I didn't jux these, it was him, but I think its cool)
• The newsstand - more than just an amenity for anonymous pedestrians - an integral part of the social fabric of a block. p183
• ...a city loses something when people stop asking for directions. 
• The "benevolent friction" of the newsstand p186

The Bench - this is why I bought the book. I inhabit New York City often, and use mass transit infrastructure, which includes the stations, but which themselves do not include places to sit, and I've often wondered about how treating homeless people like shit actually leads to treating just about everyone like shit, because I'm not homeless, but after working on my feet for 14 hours, and facing a possible 2-hour commute home, I'd really like to sit down in the train station while I wait for my delayed or cancelled train.

• The Bench at Trump Tower - Which brings us to the matter of the bench. Public spaces are subject to a set of design provisions - among them, a stipulation that they contain ample public seating. Originally, the atrium contained a large marble bench, where the black metal benches currently sit; in order to satisfy this requirement. However, once he had benefitted from the bonus plaza provision, Trump began to undercut the public function of the space, repeatedly closing the atrium for private events and instructing his private security guards to deny public access, a pattern that drew the attention of city regulators. In 1984, Philip Schneider, of the New York City Planning Department, paid an unannounced visit to the atrium of Trump Tower and found the large marble bench covered with flowerpots that prevented its intended use. ... Eventually, after thousands of dollars in fines, Trump removed the flowerpots. Later, however, the marble bench disappeared entirely. In its place a massive kiosk of wood and glass labeled "Trump Store" appeared ... [Commercial structures in privately owned public space require permitting.] After the court ruled against Trump, the kiosk vanished. ... The black bench appeared in its place. p192-194
• Why bother thinking about everyday objects? The bench offers an answer: it suggests that there are no social forces, no crosscurrents of political or cultural upheaval so lofty and so remote that they do not produce telling reverberations in the material world. p194-195
• Reframed this way, the story of the bench does not just embody a broader drama pitting private interest against public well being. It illustrates the ability of materials objects to translate such drama into something far less grand, but also more tangible and more immediate. ... social control, inequality, unpredictability of material things in public spaces, interactions between the social and the material. p195
• When we engage with public objects, we typically make small decisions, or no decisions at all. p196 [that's why it can be called invisible]
• Things Exert Social Control - it's a section title, but my reason for reading a book like this. p197
• Power emerges more clearly into view via the aggregation of small-scale everyday encounters between people and things. p197
• He uses the word polysemic (p199), and that's the only time I've ever seen it written. 

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

by William H Whyte, The Conservation Foundation, 1980 

Note: This guy sat there for days just watching people use the space and taking notes and even made statistical charts about it, measured the height and width of ledges and benches, you name it. This comes from first-hand observation and data; this is not theory.

• Women are more selective. A high proportion of women to men in a space is a good sign. A low proportion means something is wrong. p18
• Erwin Goffman's "civil inattention" p19
• On trying to figure out why some plazas work and others don't, "People tend to sit where there are places to sit" p28; and "Even though benches and chairs can be added, the best course is to maximize the sitability of inherent features (ledges, walls, stairs)', i.e, "integral seating" p28
• People will sit anywhere with a height of 1 foot to 3 feet p31
• Ledges 2 backsides deep seat more people comfortably (when used on both sides), and so make them 30  inches deep (36 is better) p31
• Designing for the handicapped makes things better for everyone. p33
• Benches are actually no good; they're too small to satisfy the nature of group behavior (my words) p33
• Again on benches - by the second day, the basic use patterns will be established p33
• On moving chairs (but could applied anywhere) - people want the *perception* of choice, hence the paradox, "If you know can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put." p34
• Moving a chair this way and that before sitting is about a "declaration of autonomy". And when others are present, it's an exercise in civility. p35
• On building glare and F-stops - "In eight years of filming, I have found that several streets have become photographically a half-stop faster" p43
• "Now we come to the key space for a plaza. It is not on the plaza. It is on the street." p54
• Imagine, in 2025 as I write this, "New York's Bryant Park is dangerous...dope dealers and muggers" p58 (fyi Bryant Park in 2025 is swanky as hell, has coffee and food vendors, benches and chairs everywhere, and hosts movie nights in the summers for families to lay out a blanket on the grass) 
• A slight elevation can be beckoning, but not more than one foot, and never sunken. p58-59
• Undesireables - "They are not themselves much of a problem. It is the measures taken to combat them that is the problem." p60
• "Plaza Mayors" p63
• The effective carrying capacity of a park is the linear feet of seating space divide by 3 (which is the size of a person's ass; not really but the size of a person's personal space, at 3ft) 
• The unconscious social intelligence described here is perfect: For 2 hours during lunch, a person either gets up or sits down every minute, yet the number stays at 18-21 people. "Whenever it reaches 21, almost immediately someone will get up and leave. If it drops to 18, someone will sit down. ... A self-regulating factor seems to be at work ... There are enough spaces to take care of another half-dozen people easily. But they do not appear. It's as if people had some instinctive sense..." p69
• He calls New York the most sittable city in the country (in 1980) p75
• He mentions toilets as an essential ingredient for good interior spaces p78
• Some people are natural door openers. Some are not. (Hence crowds move faster during the rush, because more people are forced to open more doors, speeding the flow) p81
• "Triangulation" he calls it, but I call it social triangulation: When some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not. ... Casually they exchange comments, in a tone of voice usually reserved for close friends. 

Notes section

• According to their studies, the distribution of group sizes in public spaces has a group of 3 at 21%, always. Two's, four's and more's change 
• On Seagram's Plaza "I never dreamt people would sit there" -Cook and Klotz, Conversations w Architects, 1973
• On Noise: it's all perception. He's asked to measure near 42nd and Grand Central. Looks noisy; very moderate noise measured. He speculates that two years hence, it will be redesigned and look different, and it will sound different too (but only subjectively).

Caribbean

by James Michener, 1989 

• Mysteriously, these ball courts of the ancient Arawaks and their cousins the Maya to he west were similar in size to the fields that Europeans and Americans continue later would choose for their soccer, football rugby, and lacrosse fields, some eighty yards long by thirty wide, as if some inner measuring system for the human body had cried through all the centuries: 'A man can run when others are hammering at him, about this far and no farther,' and the fields in all these heavy sports confirmed to these dimensions. p15
• On priests, astronomy, prediction, and power: "Next month the sun will disappear, and unless you help us build that new room in the temple, the sun will not reappear, and we shall all die. The threat is useful, because when the sun actually disappears as we predicted, they listen, even the rulers. 
• Because of the Isthmus of Panama, the Pacific was called the South Sea, and the Caribbean the North
• He mentions an economists pamphlet title, with the following being the title, and all in italics: "A computation of the money that hath been exorbitantly raised upon the people of Great Britain by the sugar planters in one year, from January 1759 to January 1960; showing how much money a family of each rank, degree or class hath lost by that rapacious monopoly having continued so long, after I laid it open, in my State of British Sugar-Colony, which was published last winter" p340
• On the Control of Information Back in the Day Before the Internet or Even Radio: "Who allowed copies of that Underhill letter to reach these shores?" ... it's instructive to hear how serious it was to spread information, via "high tech" means of printed pamphlets, on an island (or anywhere else for that matter, but especially because an island can be so easily controlled) p489