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A L S O__T O D A Y
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Should companies be permitted to monitor their employees' Net use? Weigh in on individual vs. corporate rights in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y America Online vs. the "Net nobility" Going once, going twice and growing like crazy Where's the rest of me? Showdown at the HTML corral The little operating system that could - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE - - - - - - - - - -
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THE BIG CHILLY | PAGE 1, 2
Certainly, air conditioning is crucial for some things. For instance, computer chips and pharmaceuticals, those linchpins of contemporary society, can't be produced without it. But do these loud, energy-hogging, atmosphere-warming machines need to be so ubiquitous, and so overused? In a country where "more" and "better" are synonymous, it seems the answer is yes. It makes one wonder if AC is addictive: Once a person is accustomed to a particular level of cool, anything else seems positively oppressive (in my apartment building, one window unit was roaring away on nights when the temperature dipped to 50). Even at its best -- that is, when used judiciously, to create a temperate environment -- AC is the great neutralizer, creating the same dull interior climate, 365 days a year. Thus, clothing gets neutralized, too. "Air-conditioning has made it so that people no longer dress for the season -- they dress for the occasion," observes Gail Cooper, a historian who recently published "Air-Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900-1960." In the workplace, this means suits year round, for those whose jobs require them -- and it's a common assumption that the heavier attire of higher-ups determines the office climate, leaving secretaries and others to do a reverse Mr. Rodgers and don cardigans when they get to work. Far be it for the Suits to doff their woolen armor, roll up their shirt-sleeves as in days of yore and actually look like they're working. Yet even if everyone dressed identically, some would still shiver while others sweltered. We have the technology but can't seem to get it adjusted right: According to Cooper, engineers' efforts to divine a heat-and-humidity index that represents universal "comfort" have been -- surprise -- fruitless. AC puts everyone on the same setting. That creates a lack of choice, which, as Cooper discovered, is the single most hated thing about air conditioning. Of course, if I were in charge, I'd please the thin-blooded people and let everyone else complain about the heat. It's summertime, I'd say. You're supposed to be hot. A pipe dream, I know. Because there are other reasons for the over-chill in American offices: For instance, some computer equipment needs extra-cold AC to run properly. Could it be that those who lord it over the thermostats also believe this to be true of their human resources? We are still meat, notwithstanding our increasingly intimate relations with technology, but is there perhaps an unspoken belief that a chilly environment keeps workers on their toes, running at maximum efficiency? After all, David Letterman, a control freak if there ever was one, must have a reason for keeping his TV studio notoriously frigid. Indeed, if cold equals peppy and perky, heat just breeds sluggishness. Nowadays, only a mega-blizzard can bring a city to its knees -- but things used to slow down some in the summer, and occasionally, they'd grind to a halt. Pre-AC office workers were sent home when the heat/humidity index reached a certain point; Washington lore says that governmental bureaucracy only blossomed when federal office buildings got air conditioning. Even in New England, factories shut down in August, giving workers the month for vacation. Europeans still do this -- Paris is famously empty in August -- but in the United States, only the soigné citizens of the art world adhere to this policy. In a recent issue of The New Yorker devoted to the supposed summer-reading tradition, Adam Gopnik dared to say what many have been thinking for years: The American summer is fabricated, fanciful and almost totally fake -- just like the American Christmas. Indeed, we wistfully base the ideal summer on our memories of having had three months' freedom from school as children; in the adult world, however, time is money, and two weeks' vacation is standard -- only academics and the wealthy get a real, ideal summer (and even among the latter, the breadwinner often stays home to work). The rest of us remain dependable drones year round. AC "helps improve our productivity by providing us with a better working environment," boasts a press release for ARI's "Air Conditioning Appreciation Days" (July 3 to August 15, in case you care). Ed Dooley, the institute's VP for communications and education, sounded even more fatuous in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "Thanks to air conditioning, you work 12-hour days," he said. "Isn't that great?" Yeah -- 'cause at least we're not sweating, Ed! The primary benefits of AC have insidiously turned out to be related to work, not comfort. By creating a world where we don't have to alter our lives with the seasons, air conditioning has effectively wiped out our last good excuse for doing nothing: being hot. (And as we all know, nothing is more reprehensible than doing nothing.) In this regard, AC was a forerunner of beepers, cell phones, faxes, laptops -- all those inventions that blur the line between making us more productive and simply making us work more. Cranked up on AC, the capitalist machine can function everywhere at a continuous, uniformly brisk clip, reinforcing the belief that the fate of the free world hinges on endlessly upward-spiraling economic indicators. Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer are long gone. Now there's just the crazy part: the same old workaholic stress, now seasonless, enveloped in climate-controlled "comfort." Which, for some of us, is crazy-making in itself. Julie Caniglia is a freelance writer in New York. |
