Helvetica is a product of the times because it is a deconstruction of pretense. In previous centuries the most popular fonts were those that exhibited fine detail and evident craftsmanship, and those were a reflection of the culture in which they were made. Helvetica’s success lies in its versatility of uses for a culture where people are bombarded by many different and competing images and styles.
Dunno if “time is for white people,” but lateness definitely is. The concept has wreaked so much more heart- and headache than it could ever be worth. Like so many late-modern strictures, no one would care if no one cared. (Of course it was around earlier, but it was tethered and hence limited by necessity: crops have to be harvested by a certain time or they’ll get eaten or rot. With paperwork, no one’s life is on the line—unless the relevant matters are already arranged so as to dangle real people over time’s arrow. Sympathizing with these people—the woman on welfare who needs her check, the prisoner whose appeal should be heard sooner than later—aligns us with time, and then against the equally real, if less fraught, people who would rather the clock stopped or even ran the other way.)
Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.
And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.
What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren’t told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they’re called misfits.
Source: paulgraham.com
