Society

A new way of living

Matt Haughey of Metafilter fame has started an interesting new blog called Fortuitous where he will be sharing tips on how to run your business online. He will be writing a new essay every Monday. It will no doubt be worth following.

The Internet is changing the way we live. Over the past couple of years web applications have matured and the Internet has expanded into every corner of our lives through smartphones and laptops, providing a new way to life for millions of people. A life where you can use technology to make yourself more efficient, more connected, and more mobile.

The great thing about technology is that is has benefited so many. In recent years, the number of one person businesses has exploded. With the use of the Internet, automation, and virtual assistants, one person can run a successful business anywhere in the world. As Timothy Ferriss says in his book, The 4-Hour Work Week: “Fun things happen when you earn dollars, live on pesos, and compensate in rupees, but that’s just the beginning.”

If you really want to be free of the grind, you can do it. You have everything you need. You just need to go for it.

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Thoughts on Virginia Tech and tragedy in general

The Virginia Tech massacre is upsetting on many levels.

One, it is troubling to think that there are people so deranged and miserable that their preferred solution to life’s suffering is to perpetuate mortal violence on others who have done them no actual harm. Insanity can be the only rationale behind such stupidity. Insanity is stupidity, in a sense, ie. being out of touch with Reality / Truth.

Two, we have no adequate solutions for the insane / dangerously stupid. We only do something about it after something bad happens. Virginia Tech should be a wake up call that we need to get more involved in detecting these people before they kill. On the other hand, there is no real way to prevent this sort of thing. The mass murderers of the world act by violating the most basic principles of Society. There is no way to legislate against someone who is willing to violate the very concept of morality, you can only make it more difficult to do so.

Three, I am glad to see the flags at half-mast for the victims of Virginia Tech. It is a heartening symbol of respect. However, it must be difficult for the families of the victims, not only for their terrible loss, but also because the world eventually moves on and forgets, leaving them to their grief, which can never be forgotten.

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The phone is the platform

In a few short years, the “smartphone” will be the de facto personal computer: connected, mobile, and fully integrated into Life. Desktops will never go away completely, but 90% of what you do will be done from your phone: email, photography, video, voice, instant messaging, music, gps and mapping, web surfing, etc. All of these things are currently possible with existing products such as the Blackberry and the Palm Treo. The smartphone platform will succeed because it frees you from your desk.

This will lead to a huge shift in business and in life. Already the boundaries are blurring between work and home life. With ready access to the Internet, workers are bringing life into the workplace and the workplace is bringing work into the rest of your life. Rules and custom will adapt to meet this new reality. Ultimately, I believe it will foster a flexibility and connectedness that will be good for both employees and business.

There is a war brewing to see who will ride the wave of society’s shift toward full mobile computing. It will be interesting to see how the landscape changes. In ten years, I think we will always be connected wirelessly through our personal communication device. It will likely still be called a ‘phone’, but it will do everything you need. It will integrate with various systems at work, in the car, at home, and everywhere else. Desktop computers may exist only as specialized devices to amplify computing power or display output. Your personal device will connect to larger screens, full keyboards and specialized input devices, as well as networked cameras, sensors, and storage. But, all your files will exist in one place and your phone will be your tether to the rest of the world.

The necessary conditions for this shift:

Ubiquitous high-speed Internet access: Wifi, EVDO, EDGE, Ultra Wide Band, etc. networks will eventually connect everyone.
Networked and online storage.
Mobile apps: web 2.0 stuff like Gmail, Flickr, etc. and specialized apps built for the smartphone.

Some businesses are in better position than others to benefit.

The businesses on offense:

Smartphone companies, primarily Research in Motion – The maker of the wildly successful Blackberry is in good position. They’re very competitive and have made it easier for developers to develop products for the Blackberry. They’ve also continued to add good features like built-in GPS, camera, and media capabilities. They’re the current 800-lb gorilla and their margins are superior since they build everything in house rather than outsourcing to third parties.
The cellular carriers: Verizon, Cingular (AT&T), and T-Mobile – Any mobile computing scenario will depend on the carriers. I think more people will move to broadband-over-cellular versus WiFi. A cellular Internet connection is persistent, more secure than WiFi, and personal. No need to find hotspots or worry about someone sniffing your WiFi traffic. It’s ideal for mobile computing and complements the current cellular voice network.
Microsoft – Windows Mobile is rapidly becoming the default OS for commodity level smartphones like the HTC handsets. This could be the entry point for many consumers.
Google / Yahoo! – Both Google and Yahoo! have been very supportive of mobile computing. Google has produced several applications especially for smartphones including versions of Google Maps, Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Talk. Any web company who caters to handhelds will stand to benefit.

The businesses on defense:

GPS device manufacturers – GPS is quickly becoming a commodity product. Soon GPS chips and software will be available on all phones, cameras, video cameras, etc. Grabbing GPS coordinates will just be another basic function, like a temperature reading. Why carry multiple devices when you can have one that integrates into everything else? Companies like Garmin and TomTom are already anticipating this shift and are trying desperately to enter the smartphone market. They are unlikely to be successful.
Apple – Apple created one of the first truly successful mobile devices, the iPod. The iPod did not succeed because it is the best device ever, it succeeded because Apple was the first serious company to really get behind downloadable music. They sensed the consumer appetite and they bet on it. I remember back in the old days when you had to find a CD player that would play mp3’s. No one really took it seriously even though people had been downloading mp3’s since 1996-1997. Apple saw the potential and moved in before anyone else. This is why they succeeded, not because they make the best products in the world. Everyone else was just asleep at the wheel after the fall of Napster. Apple is extremely vulnerable right now. They have the same problem the GPS companies have in that their bread and butter is quickly becoming just another application. When you can get your music and video on your phone or over the network why would you use Apple? The iPhone is pretty, but I think it will be a marginal success at best. Unlike with mp3 players, the smartphone market is very competitive. Apple had to ‘redefine’ the device to keep from looking like a late arrival, so they added a touch screen. While being a creative interface, it is nothing more than a gimmick. The iPhone is a toy aimed at consumers. At this point, it is not serious.
Low-end camera makers (point and shoot) – Like with GPS and media capabilities, photography and video are becoming just embedded capabilities. The camera will just be another sensory input on your phone. Already, the high-end smartphones provide 1.5-2 megapixel cameras built-in with flash and zoom. People are becoming accustomed to taking photos and shooting them to friends or across the web.
Handheld game makers – Most people want basic games. In a mobile setting, these games will be played on smartphones. Already several game companies like Magmic are specializing in developing games for the mobile environment.
Satellite anything – Satellite radio, satellite internet, satellite television is too expensive to launch and too difficult to upgrade to newer hardware. It’s much easier to just expand network coverage to where 90% of the people are. As soon as cars are connected to the wireless cellular networks with access to the Internet and media, they will replace satellite-based alternatives. Satellite radio is already starting to receive competition from terrestial broadcasters in the form of HD radio. The sound quality of satellite radio is notoriously bad. Add online radio to the mix and they’re doomed. I have a feeling satellite radio subscriber numbers are heavily inflated given that I cancelled my XM radio account over a year ago and yet it still miraculously works. In light of this shift to “connected media”, the recent royalty increases for online broadcasting make sense as barriers against non-commercial players.

In conclusion, any business that is not connected to the central personal communication device (the “phone”) and to the network is vulnerable. It’s very difficult to accurately predict the future, however I believe the trend to mobile computing that started with laptops and iPods will culminate in a fully portable, connected voice, media and data device.

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What we can learn from American Idol

Christopher Ames pinpoints the appeal of American Idol. Our narcissistic culture has has created a hunger for meaning. We all know that there is a larger world beyond ourselves, yet consumer culture constantly reassures us that we matter more than anything else and that our freedom (freedom to satisfy our desires) is important. I am reminded of the Frank Herbert quotation: “Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”

Chron of Higher ed.: Schooled by ‘American Idol’:

What lessons about popular attitudes toward grading and evaluation emerge from American Idol’s auditions? First, a belief in genuine standards: We may at times disagree about whether a performance is good or bad, but extreme examples remind us that those differences in taste exist within that shared context of what counts as “in tune,” an agreement about what ultimately is a credible performance. In fact, in one episode Cowell challenged an angry, spurned contestant to go into a local shopping mall and find three people who would testify that he sang well (the contestant didn’t succeed). It was as if a disgruntled student had shown his graded paper to a random assortment of his peers, only to find them endorsing his teacher’s assessment.

Second, the show reveals a respect for expertise. Along with the estimable pop credentials of the regular judges, celebrity guest judges demonstrate how skill and training inform good evaluation. A similar respect for professorial authority characterizes the academic landscape. Amid all the attacks on higher education today, America remains a culture that puts great stock in expert opinions.

Third, the auditions reveal that individuals are often not good judges of their own ability. Again and again, the judges mirror audience incredulity at poor performers who think they are great. The simple reality that professors encounter all the time emerges with clarity: People aren’t objective about themselves. But more than that, most people are not astutely self-critical or even open to constructive appraisal. Learning how to learn from coaching and criticism can be a challenge — and, ultimately, the most successful contestants (like successful students) do just that and improve notably in the course of the season or semester. We call it education.

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I don’t get Twitter

Twitter is this website where anyone can post what they’re doing right now. You can post to Twitter from your cell phone, computer, email, Wii, etc. It’s like a group MySpace page or something, which I don’t get either. The usual sorts are drinking the kool-aid and posting every time they get a coffee or do something at SXSW. Does anyone really want to know everything I think or do in the course of my daily life? Do you enjoy knowing what all your friends are doing? Maybe I’m the weird one.

It seems like Twitter is MySpace/Facebook/Bebo for the more sociable, blogging nerds. It’s new and it’s social. Those seem to be the important qualities.

One of the problems I have with the web is that novelty-seekers (or, as they proclaim themselves, “early adopters”) tend to talk a lot and often and thus seem to wield a strange influence by creating excitement about new, cool things. Often through sheer volume of activity, the novelty locusts latch onto something good and worthwhile. But, in the case of Twitter, I don’t think so.

In a way, it reminded me of the “cat in ur _____” meme, except twitter will not make you laugh. So, I did this image of cats using twitter, which makes just as much sense as people using it.

See also:

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Sensible Mass Transit

Sitting in traffic is aggravating because it frustrates freedom of movement. You sit with thousands of other people in an environment walled in by painted lines, concrete and exhaust; an environment where you must be vigilant enough to avoid an accident but are otherwise denied freedom except what is possible within the constraints of limited attention and movement. If you could divert your attention, it would be less frustrating, but you must face forward and wait in line. Traffic is life as tedium.

We should continue to improve mass transit and the highway system, to solve many of the problems with the usual mass transit paradigm:

The right target demographic: With the exception of trains and subways in the Northeast, mass transit is rarely designed with the middle-class in mind. This is why it is seldom successful or popular. It is almost always subsidized with taxes and fares targeted at low-income users. This is a recipe for mediocrity since you will never have an easy time with revenue, quality, or service. The working commuter should be the focus of mass transit. It is always more successful to bring the lower end consumer up than to force the higher end consumer down.
Support commuting, not a car-less lifestyle: Residential bus routes are inefficient and do not make sense for the average commuter. Even with residential routes, you have to walk from your house to the bus stop, which is often inconvenient to anyone but the most desperate or car-less. Greater emphasis should be placed on servicing common junctions where large numbers of residential drivers enter the highways because this is where traffic is congested. High-volume transit stations with adequate parking could be placed along major highways, especially closer to remote suburbs where traffic enters the funnel.
Partnerships with business: We need to get creative with how to fund mass transit, while at the same time adding value for the end-user. For example, take advantage of any wait time by sharing transit stations with businesses focused on the busy commuter. Get coffee or breakfast, leave your car to be washed and lubed while you’re at work, get new tires, buy a newspaper or an iPod, surf the Internet. With just a few businesses it could turn the commute into time well spent.
Demand-based tollways: I’m a big fan of toll roads provided they are managed properly. However, the purpose of the toll system should be convenience, not as a replacement for normal conduits through the city. If I’m on a toll road, I expect there to rarely be traffic. With automated payment systems already in place, tollways should increase tolls automatically as traffic becomes more congested. The goal should be to maintain a 50 mph flow. If this drops, the tolls should go up. Another alternative is to increase tolls during normal rush hours. This will create an added incentive for some people to travel outside these hours. It is silly to have a toll system that is empty most of the time and only heavily used during rush hours.
Promote central density: Tolls should also start out more expensive in the suburbs and decrease as you enter central city areas. This way you pay more the further away you are from the city since these commuters cause the most congestion as they are on the highway longer. This is a good check against the suburban sprawl that afflicts many areas.

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The business of life

As a society, have we become so busy and preoccupied that we have forgotten how to live? Have we lost sight of what matters most?

I live in a neighborhood infused with Mexican and Central American immigrants. It is commonplace to see cowboy-boot-wearing Norteños pushing strollers with their families. It would be no stretch to say that the Mexicans are the dominant demographic in my little slice of Dallas. In fact, last year Dallas had one of the largest pro-immigration protests in the country with several thousand people marching to city hall, which gives you some idea of the environment here. Like any frontier town, Dallas is very diverse in every respect but also strained because of it. It is a place boiling with activity and competition…life.

Around my neighborhood, I get the chance to observe my neighbors whose lives seem very different from mine. Where white America seems spoiled, isolated, and decadent, brown America seems eager, united, and vital. I drive past a park every day on my way home. Every day it is packed with families and kids playing. Friends playing basketball or soccer under the live oak trees. Women walking together with their babies. Life. I compare this to when I visit my Uncle who lives in the suburbs near Fort Worth. In his neighborhood, the homes are lovely, but you never see anyone. Everyone is inside somewhere. Inside watching 300 channels on their plasma televisions, inside their SUV’s with the kids zoned out to the Finding Nemo DVD, inside the Starbucks loading up on $4 triple Venti lattes. Everyone tricking themselves into thinking that they are happy with all this crap, but maybe their eyes say otherwise.

Our society is crumbling and it will not be held together by Starbucks. It will not be held together by self-deception. Our task is to remember what is important, who we are and who we want to be. To feel hunger not for more, more, more, but for better, better, better… for ourselves and, most importantly, for others.

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Alien abductions, sleep paralysis, and the sensory homunculous

I was thinking about alien abductions the other day while I was driving around. It has always puzzled me that abductees seem to report similar accounts, especially when it comes to physical descriptions of the aliens themselves. Basically, these nocturnal, body-snatchers are always strangely humanoid in appearance: laterally symmetrical, bipedal, possessing large craniums, large stereoscopic eyes, and slender limbs with articulated hands and fingers. This has always seemed strange. After all, why would a being from another world possess a similar appearance to our own? It could easily look like a giant crab or something. It seems unlikely. Yet, this common description also suggests that there is some shared dimension to each individual abduction story. Either the abductees are making up or remembering similar experiences, or, the aliens, if they exist in any fashion manufactured or otherwise, are humanoid in appearance. There are two basic possibilities: abductees are wrong (for whatever reason) or these abductions occurred in some sense.

If we break it down further, these abductions, if based on memories, could be explained in order of increasing strangeness or practical likelihood by different theories. The reasonability of each theory is determined by your particular world view. For example, assuming the abduction memory is based on an actual experience you could posit multiple scenarios:

Scientific explanations:

Psychological explanation: Repressed and recovered memory An alien abduction experience could be the outgrowth of a repressed memory of an actual physical molestation by a human being, either in sleep or during childhood. The abductee could be ‘remembering’ the repressed memory of the experience in a more psychologically comprehensible way. These memories could also be faulty as is the case in many instances of recovered memory. “An experiment conducted by Harvard psychologists suggests that people who believe they have been abducted by extraterrestrials, when they try to recall a word list, make the same kinds of errors as people with recovered memories of childhood sexual molestation. The psychologists conclude that these two experiences have common roots.”
Psychological explanation #3: Sleep paralysis One of the most prevalent and compelling theories for abduction narratives is the possibility that alien abductions are dream-like hallucinations induced by episodes of sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain is awakened from a REM state into essentially a normal fully awake state, but the bodily paralysis is still occurring:

In a typical sleep-paralysis episode, a person wakes up paralyzed, senses a presence in the room, feels fear or even terror, and may hear buzzing and humming noises or see strange lights. A visible or invisible entity may even sit on their chest, shaking, strangling, or prodding them. Attempts to fight the paralysis are usually unsuccessful. It is reputedly more effective to relax or try to move just the eyes or a single finger or toe.

Spanos et al. (1993) have pointed out the similarities between abductions and sleep paralysis. The majority of the abduction experiences they studied occurred at night, and almost 60 percent of the “intense” reports were sleep related. Of the intense experiences, nearly a quarter involved symptoms similar to sleep paralysis.

I found this especially interesting because I did experience an episode of sleep paralysis about ten years ago. The details here are very similar to my own experience. I did awake with fear into a semi-conscious dream state and did sense the presence of someone else, although in my case I thought someone was jiggling the handle of my front door and found myself unable to rise out of bed to investigate or fight them off. I struggled to move, but could only barely move my lips and a finger on my right hand. This inability to move while you think someone is breaking into your apartment is very disconcerting.

Since I’m reading Moby Dick, here’s an episode of sleep paralysis depicted in the book:

At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it – half steeped in dreams – I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, s%emed closely seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm – unlock his bridegroom clasp – yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.

Unscientific explanations:

Science-fiction explanation: Real aliens Although prudence dictates otherwise, it is possible that aliens exist and, for reasons unknown, delight in kidnapping earthlings for a few hours of licentious and/or scientific probing. Never long enough for anyone else to notice.
From a “Kids in the Hall” skit: Alien: “We’ve been abducting and anally probing these humans for decades now, and the only thing we’ve learned is that one out of ten enjoys it.”
Science-fiction explanation #2: Hypersapiens My personal favorite (I swear I came up with this before The Tick episode: “Tick vs. Prehistory, The: (Episode 35 [34])). Alien abductions are being performed by evolved descendants of humanity who need something from modern humans. In The Tick, the hypersapiens need waiters for their restaurants, but if aliens are evolved humans maybe they seek ancestral DNA or something else they can only get by traveling to the past. This would explain why the aliens look humanoid. If we evolved along with our development and use of advanced technology we could become large-headed, skinny dudes due to the lack of intense physical exertion and interaction with the environment.
Conspiracy theory: Secret authoritarian plots. Conspiratorially-minded people sometimes attribute UFO sightings and abductions to secretive government programs. This seems more plausible for UFO sighting since these could be explained by secret test flights of new military technology.

One last thing, how do you reconcile the common alien descriptions with the sleep paralysis / recovered memory theories? One way is to attribute the common physical descriptions of the aliens to depictions in popular culture of alien lifeforms that may influence memory and recall in the group who report alien abduction memories. This is very plausible. However, what if another factor affecting these descriptions is related to how our own minds process the senses, especially vision. We know that our minds are attuned to faces and hands more so than other parts of the body like knees, etc. What if when we have to make up a person in our mind, we use a descriptive, visual shorthand: eyes, face, hands, and the rest that connects it all together?

What if when our minds are storing/creating these memories they focus mainly on information related to the face and hands? Human aspects that our brains are attuned to (see sensory homunculous). I don’t think most of us are internally creative enough to completely create a new type of creature completely foreign from experience. We use what’s nearby, our shared cultural / media experiences, and our normal shorthand for remembering people.

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Scanning the horizon

Life hasn’t changed so much over the millenia.

On the morning drive to work, I sometimes look around at my fellow travelers whizzing by and think about how we would have lived twenty thousand years ago. Instead of climbing into metal pods to get to work, we would have risen in the morning and set out with our families to hunt, fish, and scavenge for anything edible. Finding and preparing food would have made up the bulk of our day. As it got dark, we would have returned to our homes and went to bed. Most of what we do now is just a veil obscuring two powerful motives: socialization and survival.

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For the last 3500 years.

This past weekend, Jody and I went to see the Hatshepsut exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. It’s called: Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. Apparently, Hatshepsut (Say that five times fast) was regent for her son, but she later upgraded to full pharaoh. This was around 1500 BC, which is really only about 140 human generations ago. The older I get, the more a millenium seems rather short.

The exhibit was pretty interesting, although I found myself thinking more about “culture” and “history” as a business rather than enjoying the priceless antiquities. The exhibit was incredibly crowded. The tickets were around $15 a piece mainly for the privilege of admiring baubles looted from the crypts of long-since departed Egyptians. Most of the non-statuary exhibits were comprised of jewelry and amulets worn by the dead, although there were also many small containers used to store eye makeup and various balms. Things any normal, respectable Egyptian would need for their one-way trip to the afterlife. The commonplace nature of most of the stuff was striking. Human beings have not changed at all in 3500 years. For example, there was whip handle (kinda like this) given to some overseer with an inscription of praise for a job well done. It reminded me of the plastic plaudits most large corporations award in lieu of bonuses: “This whip handle awarded to Amon, the Harvest Manager of Senemut, for bringing in the barley harvest under budget and ahead of schedule.” Something about this is depressing, although I think the Egyptians had a really boring culture judging from the stuff they left behind. Much like the Babylonians, most of their residue is rather uninspiring, with the exception of the pyramids, sculpture, and palaces. Did the Egyptians have a Plato or a Socrates? Maybe they did and that’s the kind of stuff that was destroyed when those idiots razed the Library of Alexandria.

One of the other things I really enjoyed was a game set in a small wooden box meant to be buried with its owner, obviously a lover of games. It reminded me of how we buried my grandmother with a deck of playing cards when she died, because playing games like Shanghai Rummy and Hand and Foot was one of the things she loved doing most with her friends and family.

If you have a chance, spend some a little while gawking at these old dead and their junk. It will make you glad that you’re still alive in your little place and time.

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Society

the old stuff