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Conquest & Rule

I woke up disturbed; out of my bedroom window I always hear the white noise of the nearby 280... but this time I was almost certain I could hear people screaming beneath it.

Turns out it was the San Francisco Marathon, and a bunch of trainers from a fitness club had posted up around the block to cheer and encourage the runners. Tav and I went out and watched the runners pass for a while.

"I can do that," I thought to myself, but almost immediately changed my mind.

"I could do that," I corrected, "at one point. Maybe not that long ago. But not now."

And, of course, this made me ask myself: Why can't I do it now?

The short answer is that I'm not in shape; the long answer is that I've not maintained my shape. It's one thing to get fit; it's another to stay fit.

This was a way of thinking that I hadn't really explored before. We always think of leadership as pushing forward and addressing issues, discovering uncharted territory and looking to the future. We hardly consider the administrator as a leader--no more than we think of the traffic director in the same we do the movie director.

But I've done a terrible job at administrating. I've hopped from idea to idea to idea, travelling the world and looking at every thing I can for inspiration. But what about standardization? What in my life is the same as it has always been, and what steps have I made to ensure some things don't change/fade/die?

Now that I'm here in California--and not in DC or Korea or Delaware--and everything is new, my habit would be to embrace the present and abandon the past. But I'd like to do something different this time. Rather than letting my languages languish or my friendships falter, I want to try my hand at maintenance.

Doing so not only prevents the tremendous cost of starting anew on something I've already done but also forces me to address capacity and priority. What can I reasonably maintain, and what must be sacrificed?

Wrestling with Hipsterism

I've tossed around the word hipster quite frivolously, a term I've used to describe anyone proud of their awkwardness, running askew to the norm; the girl who liked all the bands before the were popular or the boy who insists on wearing suspenders and cuffed pants.

In retrospect, I guess it was a term I used with fondness--the equivalent of a sigh and a ruffling of their hair while I chuckle, "what am I going to do with you?" in that way that shows as much affection as it does reproach. Visiting NYC, I saw them en masse and certainly felt their community gave them more credibility.

Now, however, my opinion of the word has soured.

In thinking of the parasitic way of living I've accepted, I'm inclined to assume (from my experience only) that even the leech dreams of being a regular and vital organ of the host. I don't want to suck SF dry and walk away; I'd love to discover a true sense of understanding of the city, it's people, their history and composition.

But I am an aspirant from the East with no reason to be living here but for my job. I moved from a luxury apartment in one of the best neighborhoods in the DC Metro area. Add this to my abstention and other things, and I stand out and apart from the city I now call home.

So what does one do feel more authentic? He finds replicable elements in the things he considers real and dons them. The underground music scene, working class neighborhood bar, the sartorial sensibility of the service sector. Tats are real enough, and so is disdain for the appearance of affluence.

It is not uncommon to find the the strongest opinions from those with the weakest ties. Even I, having spent two posts now talking around these concepts am to blame. I yearn for the simplicity and honesty I see in my grandfather's generation, but were I to raid his closet and play his music, what would make me less fraudulent, more acceptable than the average hipster? What could I possibly do besides progress that would not make me an adherent to nostalgia? Hipsterism is non-progressive.

Zombies vs Androids

Four months ago I left my job, got rid of most of my possessions and moved from the DC Metro area to the San Francisco Bay area. I think I'm ready to share how I feel about these two cities.

First, it should be noted that I am a big fan of caution when making assessments. I generally say "keep your mouth shut for at least 90 days" when it comes to saying how I feel. Things are rarely as they seem at the start, and living in SF is no different.

Next, I want to show no ill will to either city. These are towns that are known more for their stereotypes than for what they really are; You can live a long time in a place and only then, suddenly, see what's going on beyond the front presentation. No city is perfect, and this analogy shows how both cities have inherent flaws.

So that being said... DC is a giant robot; SF is a soulless corpse.

And here's why: the District was never meant to be a lively neighborhood; it was built as an engine for a nation. Everything that makes a city is present in the city, but there is not algorithmic equation for a city's vibrancy and soul. For decades the city literally went to sleep at the end of the day, and only recently has DC come to have anything resembling a nightlife or a social scene.

For like any sentient robot, you design subordinate systems to fill the gaps between where you are, and where you need to be. Right now Washington, D.C., is developing peripherals that make it almost impossible to distinguish it from a real city. This is the thing we actually fear about real robots.

San Francisco, on the other hand, was a real city. A real city with real residents, real history, real tragedy and real triumph. It exuded confidence and soul and true independence from societal norms. And that was attractive to many, if not all.

Everyone knows that the ingredients for a zombie is one part parasite and one part host. That host is more useful if it willingly accepts the parasite's demands. In horror movies, most people are unwilling--so parasites often go for the dead, making them undead. But what if a host willingly allowed parasites in?

Well, that's San Francisco in a nutshell. A ton of people not from here pretending they know what SF is and fundamentally changing the city according to those ideas while accomplishing their own goals. Meanwhile the host city becomes ragged, more spastic, and--most importantly--less and less of what it was.

I've just become one of the horde that is sucking what life is left from San Francisco. Its corpse still functions, but its soul is largely gone. Where DC never had a heart (and is getting closer to creating one) SF offered up its life's essence to a flood of people who had no interest in seeing it work in the first place. I see it in the dirtiness of the streets, the casualness to rules and the marked absence of advocacy for the preservation of what once was.

So that's my opinion on SF, in comparison to DC.

How you live where you live

One of the benefits of shedding most of what you own and moving across the country is the opportunity to be deliberate about the new lifestyle you want to establish as you settle in. Whether you’d like to change your life completely, reorient yourself to an established intention, or reinforce a current course °, relocation provides a clean canvas to illustrate your ideals.

Having read Vatsayana’s depiction of the ideal life of a citizen in the Kama Sutra °, I was really excited to find our new residence blocks from the bay, relatively quiet yet convenient to the city, and even providing a small backyard with aromatic and fruit-bearing palntings. He’d certainly be pleased.

Still, his recommendation for daily living has a scent of conspicuous consumption about it. I’m not sure of my immunity against Affluenza ° so modification is necessary. I’ve always been interested in simple living °.

Reading on Epicureanism ° , I find that:

In the Epicurean view, the highest pleasure (tranquility and freedom from fear) was obtained by knowledge, friendship, and living a virtuous and temperate life. He lauded the simple life, and advocated reducing one’s desires […]

This highest pleasure is known as Ataraxia °. How can we use technology to promote and disperse ataraxia—tranquility and freedom from fear? I’ll be thinking about this as I develop the tone of my new life here in San Francisco.

Expectation

A few years ago, I was sitting on a low stool in my (possibly favorite) apartment when Fru called from the kitchen, “Would you like some cereal?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“You want Chex?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want me to add raisins?” And it was with this question that I attained enlightenment.

Time stopped, and I wondered about what I should say. If she had given me a bowl of cereal—with raisins or without—I would have been happy. But because she asked my selection would now establish expectations.

If I said “no thank you” but she brought my bowl with raisins added I’d be disappointed—even though a bowl with raisins would have been perfectly acceptable if she had never asked. The converse would yield the same result. In fact I had asked for raisins and she complied, the amount of raisins in my cereal could fall short of my expectations and leave me disappointed.

Thus I came to a conclusion:

I’m not saying don’t have standards. I’m not saying you’re stupid to have goals. I’m saying be careful the expectations you make because every expectation is an opportunity for disappointment. I’m not the first to discover this *.

When I had that realization, I worked for a long time to remove expectation (in the form of preference * ) from my life. I was unsuccessful. Only recently have I deliberately allowed myself to strive or to yearn for things, and the first feeling that wells up is fear—the fear of disappointment and failure.

Therefore I do not feel that my realization is false. Rather, I accept it as a truth which I cannot currently attain. Man is no more able to remove expectation and preference from his life than he is to remove disappointment and dissatisfaction. Accepting this reinforces my assertion.

Information of a Movable Type

Writing a letter or official document has always needed special attention and care. When proclamations needed to be sent out across dynastic-era China, however, the sheer volume of reproduction necessary required a system less time consuming. Woodblock printing became a norm for this kind of task, and was appropriate for the job as Chinese writing has a pictogram (based on drawing) and ideogram (representing a concept) character basis.

Even so, in the 11th century, Chinese commoner Bi Sheng developed a movable type printing technology using clay blocks. This was improved on by Wang Zhen who is credited with inventing in 1298 the first wooden movable type printing in the world. Metal blocks were developed in Korea in 1234 and the oldest surviving metal print book was printed in 1377, approximately 78 years before Johannes Gutenberg’s 42-Line Bibles were printed.

What’s special about movable type printing is its flexibility. Before, a printed page required a monolithic mirrored carving; that carving would only be useful for that one process and nothing more. Movable type was a carving of each character, and the arrangement of these characters could be reformulated—making the blocks reusable. Clearly this would have a greater impact in languages that use an alphabetic script, and Gutenberg’s press changed printing forever.

Much has been said about the impact that movable type has had on print culture, information sharing, market capacity and society in general. Gutenberg is listed as the most influential man in the last 1000 years on several rankings. But I’d like to stay focused on the flexible medium that allowed all this to happen. There we find some interesting clues to activities occurring in our own world today.

Taking a large item and breaking it into smaller parts is not new. A mason carves stones from a mountainside to create a wall miles away; items purchased from the market are divided into portions that can be transported in bags. What movable type offers, however, is fragmentation to the smallest size of common value. This greatest common denominator could then be implemented in any larger system which required it, and tremendously extended the value of something that originally was designed for single use. In fact, printing the word “pan” and the word “nap”—two words having completely different meanings altogether—use the exact same parts. Add an “e” and you’ve got “nape,” “pen,” “pea” and so on.

In “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” Clay Shirky explains how an increase quantity does not always have an equivalent increase in function. In this case, the increase in individually applicable characters increases quite dramatically. This seems obvious, but consider how much less useless your computer keyboard would be if your “e” and “w” keys were joined as one doubled sized key that output “we.” Even though you end up with just one less key, the keyboard would be largely unusable. You’d be likely to throw out that keyboard—provided it isn’t attached to your laptop.

In today’s world, our interaction with products yield a similar malaise. Because a product is designed to appease a target audience—and not a specific person—it may be uncommon to find commercially distributed goods that are designed to serve the greatest common factor; the basis of all needs. Instead, we are often given something of a least common denominator—the smallest thing under which all our collective problem fits. It is no different in the digital realm; something added (bloatware), something missing (crippleware) or something broken into sections (a template or model) rather than broken into elemental values, the keys to development.

But not all digital products have this problem. Digital products that have no commercial intent are less likely to be designed to meet the needs of many; as such they maybe be very useful to a select few. When combined with other products, they may contribute to a system that is dramatically more flexible specifically because it is constructed of pieces of small, common value.

Because digital products have a particular disposition to duplication and modification, they are much easier to adapt than tangible items. One digital tool applied to an audio file and another converting that audio file creates a ringtone that perhaps I should have purchased. While photoshopping, mashups and program cracks push the boundaries of ethics and integrity, not everything that the flexibility of modularity affords must border on the illicit. A positive (though presented in a way not immediately clear) example would be Yahoo pipes.

When we allow the consumer to participate in the creation of digital content as equals—ripping, modifying, remixing without reservation—we are seeing the digital version of the movable type: rapid reformulation, reusability of one-off tools, and dramatic expansion in opportunistic range. Which essentially is the basis of the revolution that changed everything.

Revisiting Supply and Demand

Man first produced for survival: necessary tools to build, food to eat, clothing for protection. It is only natural, then, that when products end up traded, purchased or sold we automatically think of the economic model of “supply and demand.” Why would someone sell something that they needed, and why would anyone purchase or trade for something of no personal use? Because of surplus and because of need this model has almost become synonymous with the marketplace. Consider, however, its shortcomings for a digital marketplace.

Let’s revisit Supply and Demand *. Demand remains constant in a purely digital market, but what is supply? When selling or trading a digital product, the product itself is both the minimum and maximum on-hand quantity necessary for distribution at any level. Downloading an application from a server does not require multiple copies in queue, like a candy dispenser—the speed by which a digital product is available is equivalent to the speed at which I can copy said file to my personal machine. Nor is there any known limit to how many times that original source file can make a duplicate of itself (though certain protections can be placed to prevent duplication).

In short, infinite/limitless quantity reduces cost to the compensation of effort to provide it. I do not pay for air ever; I do, however, pay for a way to get air into a certain location: a tire, a canister, a hot room and so on. We have seen that the margin of cost between mass produced and bespoke in providing digital products is diminished, so again we can assume the cost should be somewhat less than the consumer learning to create the product or service herself.

This does not mean that efficiency has become a moot point. The creation of a digital game would be much more resource-intensive for me than it would for Sony Computer Entertainment or Electronic Arts; both of these companies have developed considerable systems to streamline and optimize the game creation process that I do not possess. As it pertains to time and expertise, they have a clear advantage that will recuperate the cost of the several additionally involved hands.

Which leads to the second shortcoming: supply and demand in the traditional sense requires consistency. There is a demand for apples, so I provide apples. When an equal demand for oranges arises, I look to fulfill that request as well. Pears, bananas, kiwi come along and soon I am contemplating what I can provide and what I will provide. That I can provide boysenberries to my consumers—and that they will readily buy—does not mitigate the expense of providing several different types of fruits from several logistically distinct sources. I may ignore a cry for fruit pastries altogether.

In the same way, a digital provider must be mindful that provisions made for demand do not outstretch the revenue earned from providing. It may cost a digital artisan absolutely nothing to duplicate their product, but how much would it cost to create a version in English? Or in Hindi, which has nearly 80% as many speakers (according to Weber’s “The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages”)? In many cases it will depend on who your target audience is. This, again, takes a very monolithic approach to defining demand.

When we move to something more of a product’s functionality than simply the language it uses, we find that defining the audience requires some large-scale generalizations. There is no product in any market that is designed for one specific person; rather, products are designed to have a certain level of value to many people in a very approximate way. Again, consumers are then left to decide if they want something that works specifically for them or costs the same as it does everyone else. With the potential for custom digital products to be much less cost-prohibitive, we create an opportunity for the quantity of supply to be proportional to the quantity for demand at a level of 1:1—a product created for each purpose of each consumer.

Of course, this utopian vision is retarded by the “make do” mentality. Humans balance their daily lives through sundry-yet-intricate compromises, and for the majority of the earth’s population, “good enough” is much more reasonable than “exactly right.”

In fact, in many cases, we will see consumers combine objects to create or aid in the creation of the solutions they’re actually looking for. This brings us to the final shortcoming of supply and demand: it is based upon supply and demand being independent. The future of the digital world is one where the creator of an object may very well be the sole source of demand for an object, hence making a market pricing irrelevant. Having no intended monetary return, it can be squirreled away as a one-time digital application or can be “discarded” by placing it out where others may partake with no expectation of compensation.

It is in this latter option that we find the tremendous potential for digital growth.

The Curse of Adam and Eve

Lately I’ve been finding myself completely baffled by the sincere innocence of others. It is as if, despite their age, they have not seen the world for what it is; their actions and opinions carry hope in humanity that just seems downright unreasonable to me.

Perhaps I look with jaded eyes. It could be that what I have seen enough of to consider normal is actually closer to the basest of man than I perceive. But even if it is, how could I go back to living a life where these depths don’t even exist?

Perhaps this is the blight of sin Adam and Eve experienced. The Bible says that upon eating the fruit, their eyes were opened. Once eyes are opened, they have seen—even if they are shut again. I didn’t understand that when I was a kid; I understand now.

What I have seen means my eyes will never ever really be closed.

Responses to "Good Enough"

Thanks to longtime twitter pal @stuyparker * , who introduced me (via twitter) to @afg85 * , who I met in person last week and promptly started debating with. :)

In response to the bit of postulating * I posted last week, he kindly responded with an entry on his own blog *. He contends two things which conflict with what I wrote.

The first contradicts my premise that the industrial revolution changed the definition of quality from the valuation of usefulness to the gradation of production. Instead he argues that what the industrial revolution brought about was a change of focus from the wealthy to the commoner—who could now afford clothing at the factory-reduced prices. I disagree with this categorically: the life of the commoner did not improve during the time period * nor is there any indication I see of factories focusing on a different consumer market or even creating something different than what was generated in more traditional settings * . In fact, given the high startup cost of developing a factory, my guess is that outside of the (admittedly large) cotton industry most factories created products specifically for high cost.

Even so, is providing goods for common usage enough to change the concept of quality? or to develop an atmosphere of satisfaction? Would not the access to greater material goods eliminate the need to make do? Disposability would certainly persist but the two together are key to innovation.

The second argument he makes is to a comment I left. When he suggested that the beauty of digitization is that now we can “live like the rich,” without earnest care for the scarcity of goods, I said:

I really hope we don’t succumb to the idea that “we can live like the rich.” This encourages excess, graft, corruption and malevolence.

This, of course, is a strong statement, but one I feel is true. he argues:

All I can say is this: historically, the wealthy have contributed larger shares of their income to charity, and to patronage of the arts. It is difficult to imagine a renaissance without the generous patronage of the Medicis.

It would be foolish to argue that the affluent have not had a positive influence on society, or to say that all rich people are evil. I suggest neither. Instead, I repeat what I tweeted recently:

It is not the rich I consider worrisome, it is those who imagine what it means to be rich * that garner the greatest concern. As we learn to live digital, I hope we learn to live as efficiently as the medium. The examples of profit-over-humanity leave little to be desired of the live like the rich mentality. I’d much rather be persistent, be innovative* like those who must be as a means of their own survival * (paragraph 6).

Innovation is not a privilege, nor is it only afforded to the privileged. Innovation is driven by need, which is not the opposite of wealth. The digital revolution we currently are participating in is propelled as much by the poor as by the rich, as much by the amateur as by the professional * .

Learning from Icarus

Perhaps all dreams have an end—not just the ones we experience in our sleep but also the ones that we achieve in our waking hours. Perhaps the destination is truly just the end of a journey. If so, what next? Keep beating a dead horse? On to bigger, brighter things?

What propels us forward, and what are the limits/constraints that propulsion adheres to? It is fantasy to imagine that every person in the world is capable of every possible dream; thus it must mean that there are boundaries to where we should wander as we seek our fortune.

Like Icarus *, perhaps we find that striving too high (or for too long) leaves us depleted of the resources necessary to complete the journey. Perhaps by insisting upon doing/living/being more, we are setting ourselves up for a catastrophic fall from grace.

Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases. —Thomas Brooks

Embrace your dreams, but know your self.

The Enemy of Good (Enough)

For most of human civilization, the quality of a product was equivalent to its usefulness. As a hunter, the inferior bow or arrow meant less accuracy; a dull or brittle spearhead was not effective and thus would not be worth purchasing. As a gatherer, good fruit taken meant mouths fed while those rotten or unripe would have no purpose and could instead bring sickness. In all cases from the earliest of man forward, quality meant satisfaction.

That is, until industrialization hit us. Once production left the hands of the artisan and was placed in the steely arms of machinery, the quality of a product became less about the satisfaction it provided and more about production’s consistent output. In essence, it became a marker of the minimum effort and skill necessary for consumers to find a product useful; a whole science of quality control has been since developed *, ensuring the highest quality product at the lowest cost point—very useful to the manufacturer but only marginally to the user. When quality became a price point—by which people chose to accept products of mediocre build or spend the extra money for hand-crafted artisan work—it created the breeding ground for two strange phenomena: the idea of disposability and the sense of “good enough.”

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

The better is the enemy of the good. —Voltaire *

As we hurtle through the age of digitalization these things still matter but in different ways. Manufacturers still need to control their output so that it retains a quality that the consumer finds valuable, but the digital product can be duplicated with practically no cost (Consider: how much does it cost you to make a copy of a file on your computer? Two clicks and an allocation of space? How much more does it cost a software company?). As a result, the margin of cost (initial creation + duplication) between a bespoke digital object and a mass-produced one gets smaller every day. Disposability becomes both essential and irrelevant; with low expense, I can use a product for a one-off task (freeware/shareware thrives on this concept)—but why throw it away? The cost to keep it is equally miniscule. There have been times that I’ve downloaded an application, immediately used it, and just as quickly had no use for it whatsoever; many of those applications still reside on my computer because the effort in finding and deleting is greater than the resource it takes just staying there. relatively new concepts in commerce like the app stores for Android and Apple mobile devices cater specifically to this line of thinking.

This says a lot more about consumer satisfaction than the original industrial process ever did. It says, “if it works, I can do what I planned on doing—and that makes me happy.” In truth, a product’s usefulness never stopped providing satisfaction; we just lost quality as a tool to measure it. Instead, we chased quality unnecessarily to higher price points that, in many cases, did not really do much difference in the way we enjoyed the results but rather indicated status. Audiophiles may adequately justify their expensive equipment, but there’s a reason mainstream producers often take their work out of the studio and listen to it in a car or earbud headphones: when it comes to enjoying the music, often just hearing it is good enough.

Pick a song, any song. If it ever was popular at all, chances are you can find it on YouTube right now. If it had a music video, there’s a good chance that is there as well, though more often than not it will simply be a picture of the artist, an album cover, or a collage of marginally-related images that the uploader has put together. Hundreds of thousands of inferior quality audio files attached to inferior quality imagery online—an inferior medium—yet really obscure items like collaboration project Butter 08’s 1997 track “Butter of 69” * currently has over 30,000 views. Why would poor quality video or even a static image get hundreds of thousands of views? Because people just want to hear the music, and will often let it play in the background, ignoring the image completely. More importantly, there are scores of downloadable and web-based applications that will extract the audio and give it to you in mp3 form. It nearly guarantees that your audio will not be as good as what was originally recorded, but what does that matter? Just having may be good enough.

Growing up in a lower-income, rural environment, the term “good enough” is imprinted in my bones. With so many things economically and logistically out of reach, adults admonished children to make do with what was available. Today, it seems I wasn’t the only one given this advice. In addition to pulling sub-quality (in the industrial sense) audio from unlikely sources, people are using their computers to make phone calls, using their phones to take pictures, and using their photo cameras to record video *. Long gone are the days of “the right tool for the job,” if it will get it done, it’ll do.

This sets the basis for much of the work that many of us do. So very often we are swept up in the latest technology which pushes the boundaries of what is possible when, in reality, our work is much less bleeding edge and much more center of the bell curve. Forget what’s new; what’s most common to the user? In “About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design,” * Alan Cooper and team remind us that the center of the expertise scale is exactly where we should be aiming. The high end usually has a learning curve that is not worth the consumer’s investment; the low end is too simplistic for most and very few hope to remain clueless users. When we design for the “That’ll Do” generation, we bring a balance that humans already have a knack for implementing—through compromise—in their daily lives.

The result is a shift in the post-industrial mentality. The new, post-analogue, digital mentality is one in which the artisan resurfaces, incarnate in every person who creates, manipulates or modifies digitized data. That data itself is by its very nature open to change: edit, deconstruction and reconstruction are its strengths—an attribute never seen before the digital world. Finally, those who see the larger picture of data pervasiveness are given the opportunity to design the parameters by which human interaction with non-human objects is guided.

For Love, Not Profit

While reading Clay Shirky’s second book, “Cognitive Surplus * ,” I was reminded that source of the word amateur is the latin word “to love.” Professionals do things for compensation; amateurs do the same things without expectation simply because they’re passionate about them.

Lately I’ve resumed fretting about my loose association of lunchtime companions, who are now semi-officially known as GCYP-the GC’s Younger People. I worried before about potential stagnation and exclusivity * , but with those things fairly resolved I now have been faced with resisting political agenda. We’ve grown to the point that many expect us to champion a cause or push for some initiative or change. They want access to the “master list” so they can encourage the group participate or enlist their support.

But there is no master list. Every single person who associates with GCYP is a person I have eaten lunch with or have gotten to know personally. I don’t sell out my friends, and if you can’t contact them without GCYP endorsement maybe you should be a little more people-conscious and a little less goal-driven. GCYP is done because of a passion—not for gain. It is an amateur project, and I’d like it to stay that way.

While many seem to make the word amateur a negative word, it is something we should embrace rather than avoid. Amateur means there is no audience as much as potential collaborators. It means there is a much lower barrier to participation and contribution. And it reinforces the concept of doing for the right reasons.

In the Bible, Jesus hand-picked a loose group of associates who he travelled with and taught. His hope was for those people to do the same with others, and he was specific in calling out two brothers vying for top position and one associate whose aim for profit ultimately turned him traitor. The explosion of the Christian church after the death of Jesus happened largely through amateur avenues.

In sharp contrast, much of the negative reputation Christianity receives today is because of the callousness of its professionalism and the lack of amare in its amateur efforts. Everyone has an agenda or an end goal when there should be no intent of gain and simply a passion for others.

What are the ramifications for organizations who decide to do things for love, and specifically not for profit?

Starting with a Thesis

Instead of just talking about anime yesterday, I should have explained a little more of what I’ve been thinking about. I’m still working out specific nomenclature, but I hope my premise still makes sense.

I’m going to be examining, among other things, the cost and benefit of society’s shift from monolithic tp modular systems of organization—the organization of information, of people, and of resources. I’ll be frank and honest: a lot of this concept has been provoked by reading/listening to Clay Shirky, Adam Greenfield, and Jan Chipchase while being challenged by the non-theoretical applications of people like Anil Dash, Ev Williams and Jeffrey Veen. I’ll be pointing pretty heavily to these sources at first, but I hope to expand to new competent sources of information as a result of my research.

All said and done, my intention is to analyze and evaluate this burgeoning area to the extent that I can competently present and consult on the impact this will have for society and, occupationally, for existing organizations. I’d love to do this for my current organization, but ultimately at some point I’d really enjoy finding new cases for application of the principles I discover.

If you have any information you think may be relevant to this study, feel free to share.

A Hyperbolic Time Chamber Vacation

After a lot of interesting interactions, I’ve really craved for the time to sit down, think, and map out what’s next for me, for Leftsider, and for the world. Starting today, I’m taking off for a week, and my office is closed the following week, so I’ve got a nice long holiday opportunity to do just that.

There’s so much, though, to cover! So yesterday I brought my second haul of books home and readied myself for the Hyperbolic Time Chamber Vacation.

The Hyperbolic Time Chamber is a bit of deus ex machina used by the writers of the Dragonball Z animation series. A minute in the chamber felt as if it were six hours; as such, one day in the chamber would allow for a year of training. The protagonists, faced with a vastly stronger opponent and very little time, somehow stumbled upon the knowledge of the “room of spirit and time” (translated to hyperbolic time chamber in the english translation) and travelled to it for a week’s worth of preparation.

I’ve not yet figured out how to make a hyperbolic time chamber of my own, but during this holiday I’m going to squeeze as much reading, exercise, and contemplation in as his humanly possible. I’m not travelling anywhere. I’m avoiding calls. I intend to delve deep and come back revived.

After having a nice conversation with @stuyparker, I’ve been inspired to write daily. I’m hoping to use my HTCV as a springboard for this habit. Let’s see how it goes.

Confessions of the UX ex

Listen up kiddies; here’s where I step off the user experience (UX) bandwagon.

It seems like only yesterday: returning from the experience of life in Korea and having gone back to finish my degree with renewed vigor, I ran across Nathan Shedroff’s “Unified Theory of Design”. What a treasure! It explained things I never thought of but which made such sense. It was the first exposure to design that I intrinsically understood.

The year was 2006; the article was written in 1994.

I was a little behind; sure. I made up for lost time, telling everyone I knew about this new thing I found. I read voraciously, making Cooper’s About Face 3—my second bible (the Bible being my first bible, of course). I talked night and day about this. I quit my job and started freelancing as an experience designer part time while finishing my degree (UX had given me a reason to). I got an offer to be the web manager for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which I accepted.

And then I went to San Francisco.

I’d been once before, but this was for an Adaptive Path seminar. It was a utopia: everyone knew what I was talking about! What’s more, most of them could tell me a thing or two! I chatted with Sarah, who I had met before at An Event Apart, and met Teresa, who’d later help me define my “UX Mantra.”

Over the past two years, I’ve struggled professionally to put the principles I’ve learned about user experience design (UXd) into practice for an organization that desperately needs it. Part of that is due to the structure of the org itself, but a lot more of it is due to ignoring change management—that which creates the motivation, skills and knowledge required for people to adopt new systems and procedures.

It seems a lot easier to do when you’re a cool, respected UX agency being paid to come in and make change, but even then there’s no guarantee. I see a lot of talk about UX from the venerable halls Adaptive Path and Hot Studios, Ideo and Cooper—but where is the change? More than just a portfolio of novel ideas, are we seeing a new consciousness that’s being developed in people?

Without change management, it’s a lot like herding cats. And when you’re in the business of herding cats, you’re not in the business of change management—at best you’re making cat-herding specialists.

And then competing against them for cats.

All expressed hilariously in the above tweet. Funny but sad; sad but true. I want to opt out of this unnecessary phase of experience design.

Today’s world is ubiquitoUX, and tomorrow is closer than you think.

When our goal is to out-design the other “UXer,” we get to novelty rather than repeatable innovation. I’m not a novel guy; if we’re going to see who’s cooler, I’m sure I’ll lose. But that’s not why I got excited about UX—I was drawn by the opportunity to be part of creating a ubiquitous practice.

I recently seized a great opportunity to sit down with Adam, whose book was also insightful early on. After that conversation I found myself considering the logical progression of UXd as a field of employment. At worst, a tight rein is placed around the study, and design is doled out at a internally-adjusted cost. This would make user experience design a luxury item—available only to those who could afford it.

At best, and generally in response to such worst-case systems, more and more people will desire to strike gold in the UX rush. I believe this is happening already. From the scribe, to the webmaster, and to the journalist, we can just look around us and see where that market saturation will lead—to a common user with the motivation, skills and knowledge to design user experience themselves. Society manages its own change.

I for one am ready to kill the cult of cool that prevents this social development. I’m not interested in clutching onto proprietary pursestrings or milking things until they’re no longer personally profitable. I’m interested in three things:

• Honesty: a faithful delivery system for accurate information
• Craftsmanship: the zenith of development in every detail
• Good Intent: perpetual gain to the common user and consideration for perspectives

Today’s world is user-created. My world is different from yours precisely because I can design my experience for myself, and the world is changing as I contribute content that I create. Why wouldn’t it make sense for me, the common user to understand the principles of designing for user experiences? What part of tomorrow’s world makes sense with a UX specialist? Let the common user practice experience design and build a world where its principles are truly universal.

Back at Zero

Today I am broke. Very broke. It is a very temporary broke, and it is due to a reliance upon others to accomplish duties—and that is all that I will say about that. I am personally back on the task and shall remain on the task until a more suitable solution is found.

What frustrates me so intensely about being broke is how it feels: so foreign yet so familiar. I grew up poor and I remember not having money as being the norm. I didn’t have an allowance; we did occasionally not pay one bill in order to pay another. It wasn’t until being on my own for a couple years that I came to experience a life where life itself was not dictated by what I owed. I was not rich, but I was not under.

I cherished that feeling. I promised myself that my goal would be to feel this way forever. I didn’t need wealth; I just needed to not think about money. What started as a simple solution (getting paid $1000/mo; using $1500-limit card to pay all $800 of monthly expenses; paying off card in full each month) grew to literally create a padding around me, shielding me from that past reality of have-nots.

That seems like ages ago. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not know which card to use, to wonder if the ATM will give you cash. It burns to feel myself in the red, no longer fireproof. It infuriates me; turns me from the calm philosophical idealist I’m known for into the analytical taskmaster asshole that I am intrinsically. Not only am I broke; I’m miserable.

Regarding the silver lining, I am reminded that there are no perpetual machines. Craftsmanship extends beyond release date and into the extended warranty. I am given a chance to improve the original system—as well as a motivation to apply myself passionately. The holidays may be dimmer than usual, but the new year holds promise of a phoenix-like rebirth of honesty, craftsmanship, and good intent.

Honesty Returns

A lot of interesting things have happened in the last few months, particularly since the trip to England, yet I’ve written little about them. For many things, it seemed inappropriate to divulge; perhaps it was the timing, or the potential for change, or the sensitive nature of the topic. I just felt it better if I wrote about these things later, if at all.

It has happened with my tweeting as well. I started slowing down, then I realized I was close to my 10,000th tweet and suddenly screeched to a halt, trying to find something novel to do with that milestone. But even after I finally passed that record number, I found myself reticent to share my thoughts as readily. Part of it was that I was in a particular sour mood, part of it was related to confidentiality and industry secret (ha!), while part of it was just finding the best things to say rather than anything.

It dawned on me that I was caught in self-repression. I was holding my tongue in fear of something—but what was it? Unsurprisingly, it largely was fear of offending my employer—which says two things: I don’t think my employer values when I have differing ideas and that I am reliant upon my employer for my well-being.

This is a recipe for unhappiness. While it may not be instantaneous, I’m committing to a return to honesty, transparency; freedom to speak and to disagree. I’ll also be working to provide a way that I can continue to live and act honestly no matter the cost. It might sound like I’m saying I’m saving up in case I get fired, but really I’m saying I’m preparing for what’s possible; the sky is the limit and the worst thing that could happen to me right now is that I deny an opportunity for fear of being heard.

Counterpoint

I think of counterpoint nearly every time I find myself unintentionally groovin’ to Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” at some gas station or shopping mall or wherever they play music like that. It was a popular song when it released, but no one ever noted the wonderful (and quite rare for our time) polyphony found in its bridge. I’m not even sure if the girl who sang the other half) is still singing, let alone better off due to the song’s fame.

But I digress; we’re talking about counterpoint—where two (or more) distinct melodies operate simultaneously, relying on each other’s presence to bring harmonic effect. Wikipedia considers Bach to be the greatest practitioner, and it seems that it becomes more rare in music as you move forward in history.

I think counterpoint is evidenced in other aspects of life, and can even be considered an ideal outcome for many of our societal problems. What would happen if two opposing points of view positioned themselves to balance the other rather than to assault or defend? What if tools like consideration and empathy were strategically implemented instead of victory and profit? Perhaps even these more aggressive tactics could be paired with more compassionate perspectives to create a third layer—and a clear objective presentation for those looking on.

Counterpoint represents harmony without dependence, collaboration without compulsion; the sum of a positive and negative being greater than its individual parts. is this something we could find useful in our human development?

Looking good

This is a picture of yours truly, taken during a trip to NYC this summer. Despite the very nice composition by @imnotmok, All I see when looking at this pic is bad form. Haggard eyes, poor posture—and that awful gut.

I know I’m getting old. I’m never going to look as good as I did when I was young (and even less than I thought I looked). But even in aging, one hopes they can grow gracefully rather than ungraciously.

The problem is finding the reason for looking good.

When I look at this photo, what is offended is my pride and self-esteem. I do not see a guy particularly unhealthy or at risk of any sort. I do not feel this person is closer to death than they might assume. I feel, quite frankly, unsexy.

But why do I need to feel sexy? I am past my prime, happily married to a woman who has probably always been a much better looker than yours truly. I’m a lucky man; not a man trying to get lucky. And it would seem that my only concern is that other people find me as attractive as possible.

The fact that this pic makes me want to immediately engage in crunches and pull-ups is so that the young (and not-so-young) pretty females (and let’s be honest; even a little from teh gays) of the city will consider me one of their own, who has gone boldly and attractively into the next phase of life. That vision is about as superficial and philosophically vapid as I can imagine.

So do I turn away and become a virtuous Quasimoto or embrace and become the Dilf of my vain dreams? Is there some other reason why a reasonably healthy, non-competitive man would want to take on the added cost of moving from average to chiseled?

A Herb in the Garden

I mentioned my colleague Daryl who took me all around England during my week there; what I haven’t mentioned is how infectious he is. There are several other things besides admiration for the queen which he planted in my head while there—the first of which is a curiosity for home gardening.

I grew up in the country and my father had a rather large garden. It eventually just became a large strawberry patch and, ultimately, a half-court space for a basketball hoop I received after finishing 8th grade. Since then, I’ve never even thought of gardening—though I have consistently had a plant or two in the house over the last decade.

My first full day in, Daryl had me over for lunch with his family. A cute house they recently moved into, they’d done some extensive gardening in the backyard. Of particular interest to me was a little box of herbs and leafy things from which we picked ingredients for salad. I thought to myself, “I should do this on my little balcony!”

So I started hunting up information to learn how to grow my own salad. Also, I’m thinking of seasonal plants and crops to potentially make this a year-round activity.

I know it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to grow enough really replace grocery produce, but perhaps it will lead to an interesting activity that will only expand—perhaps to a place with a bigger balcony?