.
It was Science News tickling me again - here is the lead: Earth-sized moons in planetary systems trillions of miles away could be hotbeds for alien life, astronomers report in the January Astrobiology.
Fascinating article. I highly recommend it. Basically the question posed is whether - in galaxies far, far away - large rocky moons circling gas giant planets like Jupiter and Neptune might be habitable, might house environments that could sustain life. The discussion bounced back between yes, no and maybe. Perhaps the most interesting part was the complexities of radiation that would strike the moon from both the system's star and the radiation that would be reflected onto the moon from the planet it was orbiting.
The article concludes with this upbeat assertion: “Moons just improve the chances that life as we know it exists elsewhere," says Darren Williams, an astronomer at Penn State, “The diversity of environments that you can have is just amazing.” I was struck by the simultaneous optimism and provincialism of the statement. The optimism springs from the continual curiosity of every scientist worth his/her salt, the "Oh, goody! A new question!" perspective. The provincialism dwells in our obsession with "life as we know it." We are back to the "drunk and the lamppost" paradox: The midnight drunk searches vainly beneath a lamppost for the car keys he knows he dropped further down the street. Why search here? Because the light is better.
Interestingly, the space blogosphere was all abuzz this week about another issue. Seems that Fomalhaut b, a weird planet with a long erratic orbit that circles its star once every 2000 years has reappeared around its sun, also called Fomalhaut. Well, it turns out it never really went away. Rather, the astronomers who went looking for the planet assumed that it, like most planets, would really "pop" under the infrared "lamppost." So that is where they looked for it. It now appears that Fomalhaut b, unlike planets "as we know them," shuns the infrared, and likes the realm of the spectrum that is "visible" - to us. So Fomalhaut b was there all the time, ironically hiding under the lamppost with which we are most familiar. Is to laugh. Hah.
Why, then, do we insist upon searching for life as we know it when the far more tantalizing questions draw us to the consideration of life as we do not know it? It stuck me that, had I the necessary time and skills, it would be amusing to write a sci-fi piece in which the protagonist would be threatened with - oh, firing, denial of tenure, execution, something like that - for proposing that life could exist in the newly discovered, carbon-rich, and hence completely toxic to "life as they know it," galaxies. S/He would argue the case for "life as we do not know it." I have no idea if the piece would end in triumph or tragedy, or from whose perspective. My friends who write fiction for a living assure me that the story would dictate its own ending.
The nature of the ending is not all that important. Either way I would hope the tale would encourage us, next time we walk outside on a starry night, to think of each pinprick of light as its very own lamppost swarming with its own myriad planets and moons. I have no doubt that from many of them other eyes are staring back at us wondering where in the universe they might encounter "life as we know it."
.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Linus Lives!
For many of you it is ancient history, a wonderful old Peanut's cartoon from the 1960s - I believe I had it many years ago on an orange T-Shirt; Linus is remarking to someone outside the frame: "I love mankind, it's People I can't stand!" As with much of Schultz's work, the insight lingers long past the initial frame. So it is with Linus's wonderfully contradictory rant. None of us wants to see ourselves as misanthropic curmudgeons. We love mankind . . . . but. Ah yes, but, as always the devil is in the details. There is "us," the mankind we love, and there is "the other," the mankind we could love if only they didn't insist on [looking, talking, dressing, smelling, believing] the way they do!
I have always been fascinated by our defining and redefining of the notion of "we and them", of "us and the other," or as my father the sociologist would say, the "in-group" and the "out-group." He loves to tell the story of when he first brought my mother to the small cluster of farms in a Mennonite community in southeastern South Dakota, to meet his family. He was nervous because you see my mother was "nicht von unsere" - "not one of ours." She hailed from that strange land of Pennsylvania and was some kind of indeterminate Protestant. It all worked out but not without occasional bumps in the road, caused most often by sins of inadvertent omission rather than intentional commission.
It has not always been thus. Across the millennia a sometimes subtle, sometimes horrifically violent contest has raged contesting the right to define "mankind," that collective we love, and "people," the great unwashed herd we cannot stand. I would like to advance the notion that our media not only provide significant clues as to the current king of the "mankind" mountain, but are also important players in the coronation.
A brief walk through history if you will. Prior to writing, it's guesswork, but fairly sophisticated guesswork. In an oral culture "mankind" were those who shared our story, those whose sages spoke the same epic narratives that defined who we were and how we came to be. "People" were those who had been led astray by other tales of existence. With writing and books the narrative spread beyond the range of the speaker's voice, but only as far as the intellectual, literate, and usually theocratic elite. They continued to spread the "legitimate" narrative to "mankind" while ever more clearly defining where "mankind" stopped and "people" began.
The Renaissance and the printing press began to fracture the walls of narrative fidelity. The stories began to breach the levies of authority and belief. An increasingly literate middle class could encounter the stories of "the other" as written in lands where the other was "mankind" and where the newly engaged reader was "the people." Movies banished forever the need for an elitist literacy. The social narrative was no longer hidden amidst arbitrary squiggles on a page. It moved and eventually spoke from the screen before our eyes like real folks, our folks. Radio and TV eventually drew the oracles of the modern age out of Delphi and gave them a celebrity's seat in the living room. "Mankind" watched our programs, the "people" attended to another channel - and it was becoming more difficult to tell them apart. Who among that growing chorus of media voices were the pillars of "mankind," who were the sirens of "the people" calling us to the rocks?
And who now? In a world where we carry a community of a billion members in pocket or purse, it is important that we again ask, who is "mankind" and who are merely "people?" There are those who would argue that social media have deposed the despots. That "like" makes right. I'm afraid it is not that simple. Consider where "like" leads us. According to "the Internet" [and as a popular Geico TV commercial reminds us, they can't say it on the Internet if it's not true] Rihanna has 61,617,468 friends or likes on Facebook, nudging out Eminem who has 61,269,210. In third place is Shakira with 54.8 million followers. Lady Gaga is fourth with 53.2 million and late singer Michael Jackson rounds out the top five celebrities on the site with 51.9 million fans.
If, as I assert above "mankind" are those who share our story, the sages who spoke the same epic narratives that defined who we were and how we came to be; then, for me anyhow, these millions of "likes" still don't make right. It is not that I would declare them the shunned "people" by virtue of their popularity. It is not that "I can't stand them." They are simply irrelevant in terms of an epic narrative that defines mankind. Epistemologically speaking, they are trivial - an assertion that may well offend a few hundred million folks.
So if "like" doesn't define "mankind" in the digital world, what does? I don't think we have figured that out yet. We haven't worked out how to distinguish popularity from quality in a world as porous and complex as the one enabled by the Internet. And I'm growing ever closer to the idea that this may be a lesson we will only learn from the passage of time. Consider your high school reunions. At your 5th - if you have reached it yet - there will probably be a fairly high correlation with the social reality of graduation. The popular kids will still be popular, the others not so much. Then at the 10th a shift occurs. Some of the geeks and nerds will have flowered into interesting people with unique lives, and some of the high school heros will just be marking time, reliving past glories. The trend continues, let me assure you, as the decades stretch out behind you. Some of the popular kids remain popular and interesting, but many of the "uncool" kids rise to fascinating folks with intriguing perspectives on life. The point is that when we were back in high school, we really didn't have any idea who would become "mankind" and who would get stuck just being "people."
The same seems to be true of the digital world in which we currently live so much of our lives. Regardless of our chronological ages, in terms of "digital world," we are all quite young - still in high school, maybe a year or two past graduation. We are still so young that we are probably unable to distinguish between "mankind" and the "people" with any certainty. So I would caution us, to remember that now as then, popularity is not the best predictor of quality, of those who will come to define "mankind," and that "like" isn't always "right."
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Monday, January 14, 2013
When Form Fractures Function
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"Form follows function" is, for me, one of those "truisms" the realization of which distinguishes between a merely "educated individual" and a more fully "cultured mind." As a matter of fact, I am confronted by that very distinction several times every semester when an otherwise bright and insightful student makes the heartfelt claim that s\he deserved a better grade on an assignment because "I put a great deal of effort into the assignment."
How do you explain that effort is only important to the extent that it produces results? I often fall back upon the parable of "the ladder and the wall." You can dress it up however you want. I tell a version that places two competing protagonists in a lane enclosed on both sides by tall walls. The Ruler has placed something of great value - again your choice - behind one wall. The task is to find the treasure, and the competitor who does so will win the treasure. Both competitors begin to build ladders. One builds a very strong and well-designed ladder, almost a stairwell, leaning against one wall. The other simply cuts notches into a slender tree trunk. The second competitor swiftly leans the tree trunk against the same wall as the slowly growing stairwell, scampers up, sees nothing, scampers down, shifts the tree trunk to the other wall, scampers up and claims the prize.
The defeated competitor claims the competition was unfair. S/he claims that s/he should have been declared the winner as s/he had produced a far superior ladder. A claim to which the Ruler responds "it doesn't matter how good your ladder is if you lean it up against the wrong wall." I hope the student can make the leap to the idea that effort is meaningless unless it is employed to accomplish the task. Once we reach the university level we no longer grade on "effort" or "intent," we evaluate results - who found the treasure? And finding the treasure is usually closely tied to a thoughtful application of the notion that "form follows function."
The last couple of weeks have reminded me how easy it is to let that vital relationship between form and function get out of balance. In our classroom relationship the function is education. My job is to provide you with the content germane to the course in a context that helps you absorb and understand the content. The form in which that pedagogical function unfolds is, and always has been, constantly shifting - from lectures under trees to slate tablets, to computers, to tablet computers and smartphones. But the idea is always that pedagogical form follows educational function.
In the 21st century, in countries whose communication systems are predominantly digital, education is increasingly being conducted in virtual environments. Those environments are commonly referred to as Learning Management Systems, or LMSs. You have probably experienced a number of them like Blackboard or Vista. Moodle is the most widely supported LMS here on our campus, and mediasite is one of several systems supported on campus that allow for the asynchronous capture and distribution of both video and audio content. I mention those two because, as you now know, they are the two systems upon which I depend most heavily - and both of which developed significant glitches over the semester break.
"Fixing" those glitches was complicated, in our classes, by medical issues that prevent me from coming to campus. Maybe it was that additional anomaly that distracted me, but I finally realized over the last few days that I had become obsessed with making the software and hardware work. I knew what the various LMSs were capable of and for some reason it became important to make them do what I knew they were capable of doing - even if that got in the way of actually teaching the content. I had fallen into the trap of trying to force a function into forms that were - for the moment at least - inappropriate for the pedagogical tasks for which I had always used them. I knew that Moodle and Mediasite were usually good ladders - and for some reason I insisted on slamming them up against a wall where they no longer fit.
I have no doubt that once I am allowed to again go visit my support folks over on campus, we will discover the new "improvements" that currently make my old tools more hamper than helper. We will figure how to once again manifest the notion that form follows function. Until then I need to remember that education is the function and I need to stretch the gray matter a bit more creatively to discover the form best suited to that function in my current situation. I need to remember that, no matter how awesome the ladder, you get no credit if you lean it up against the wrong wall.
.
"Form follows function" is, for me, one of those "truisms" the realization of which distinguishes between a merely "educated individual" and a more fully "cultured mind." As a matter of fact, I am confronted by that very distinction several times every semester when an otherwise bright and insightful student makes the heartfelt claim that s\he deserved a better grade on an assignment because "I put a great deal of effort into the assignment."
How do you explain that effort is only important to the extent that it produces results? I often fall back upon the parable of "the ladder and the wall." You can dress it up however you want. I tell a version that places two competing protagonists in a lane enclosed on both sides by tall walls. The Ruler has placed something of great value - again your choice - behind one wall. The task is to find the treasure, and the competitor who does so will win the treasure. Both competitors begin to build ladders. One builds a very strong and well-designed ladder, almost a stairwell, leaning against one wall. The other simply cuts notches into a slender tree trunk. The second competitor swiftly leans the tree trunk against the same wall as the slowly growing stairwell, scampers up, sees nothing, scampers down, shifts the tree trunk to the other wall, scampers up and claims the prize.
The defeated competitor claims the competition was unfair. S/he claims that s/he should have been declared the winner as s/he had produced a far superior ladder. A claim to which the Ruler responds "it doesn't matter how good your ladder is if you lean it up against the wrong wall." I hope the student can make the leap to the idea that effort is meaningless unless it is employed to accomplish the task. Once we reach the university level we no longer grade on "effort" or "intent," we evaluate results - who found the treasure? And finding the treasure is usually closely tied to a thoughtful application of the notion that "form follows function."
The last couple of weeks have reminded me how easy it is to let that vital relationship between form and function get out of balance. In our classroom relationship the function is education. My job is to provide you with the content germane to the course in a context that helps you absorb and understand the content. The form in which that pedagogical function unfolds is, and always has been, constantly shifting - from lectures under trees to slate tablets, to computers, to tablet computers and smartphones. But the idea is always that pedagogical form follows educational function.
In the 21st century, in countries whose communication systems are predominantly digital, education is increasingly being conducted in virtual environments. Those environments are commonly referred to as Learning Management Systems, or LMSs. You have probably experienced a number of them like Blackboard or Vista. Moodle is the most widely supported LMS here on our campus, and mediasite is one of several systems supported on campus that allow for the asynchronous capture and distribution of both video and audio content. I mention those two because, as you now know, they are the two systems upon which I depend most heavily - and both of which developed significant glitches over the semester break.
"Fixing" those glitches was complicated, in our classes, by medical issues that prevent me from coming to campus. Maybe it was that additional anomaly that distracted me, but I finally realized over the last few days that I had become obsessed with making the software and hardware work. I knew what the various LMSs were capable of and for some reason it became important to make them do what I knew they were capable of doing - even if that got in the way of actually teaching the content. I had fallen into the trap of trying to force a function into forms that were - for the moment at least - inappropriate for the pedagogical tasks for which I had always used them. I knew that Moodle and Mediasite were usually good ladders - and for some reason I insisted on slamming them up against a wall where they no longer fit.
I have no doubt that once I am allowed to again go visit my support folks over on campus, we will discover the new "improvements" that currently make my old tools more hamper than helper. We will figure how to once again manifest the notion that form follows function. Until then I need to remember that education is the function and I need to stretch the gray matter a bit more creatively to discover the form best suited to that function in my current situation. I need to remember that, no matter how awesome the ladder, you get no credit if you lean it up against the wrong wall.
.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Two Voices, One Family
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We went to see Clannad - an Irish folk, rock and jazz group - in the Carolina Theatre in Durham on Friday.
The group is made up of siblings Moya , Ciarán and Pól Brennan, and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan. The uncles are a couple of months my junior, born in January 1949. They look a bit older and play far younger. The siblings, born in the 1950s, are not much younger than their uncles and in their music you hear the rich tapestry of sound that can grow only out of decades of making music together - really together, sitting in pubs, and church basements, and in the kitchen or around the fire. Family making music together for the sheer love of it.
So this was old school pre-Internet, pre-synthesizer, Irish music. It traveled well to the Carolina Theater. That sort of makes sense since the acoustics in the venerable old structure do have a distinct pub/kitchen ring to them. And a couple of numbers into the evening, we ditched the seats we had been sold directly behind the speaker tower in the front corner of the theater and made our way to some unoccupied seats from which we could both see and hear the performers. Things were much better from that point on. Every member of the family moved smoothly from instrument to instrument on a pleasantly under-produced stage that allowed us - in the comparatively intimate venue - to see real smiles flashing between real people who loved making music together and who had swapped songs and instruments all their lives.
My Gaeilge being nonexistent, the first half of the concert was a pure, text-independent, musical experience; traditional music we shared with them without synthesized tracks, jumbo-trons, flashing lights, Twitter streams, or any other overt digital augmentation. Though I must admit, the keyboard guy hired for the tour was great, and Ciarán's electric, body-less, stand-up base did allow him to grab older acoustic and wind instruments far more easily than would the traditional version. The second set was even better when they shifted to both songs and a language I understood. Come the end of the concert, exhausted from clapping and singing along, we managed to drag these folks - our age and no doubt far more tired - back out for a couple of encores, before we tromped, nicely spent, through a cool Fall evening back to our car and home.
OK, so? Well, you see I am an unabashed Enya fan. And again, so? Ah, OK, Enya is the Brennan's baby sister - not the "baby-ist," but the sixth of the nine Brennan children. And Enya is about as teched-up as a performer gets. She uses as many as 80 different layers of her own voice to create a final version of a song. And then messes with the purely synthesized tracks that provide the instrumental bed for the vocals. An inclination that may explain her only brief affiliation with family Clannad. You can see how her approach to "making music" would not work in the Carolina Theatre - her electronics would probably blow out the entire circuitry of the aging building. And would we really be willing to wait for her to lay down 80 tracks? So, how did Enya Brennan come to this seemingly anti-Brennan type of music making?
Finding "truth" about any celebrity these days is probably a futile undertaking. Even if one can discern a "fact" or series of "facts" about someone in the public eye, those swiftly become data points to be woven into a tapestry for public consumption that may or may not bear at all upon the inner life of the individual. There are rumors that Enya suffers from extreme stage fright, and that drove her to her studio-bound oeuvre. It is a charge that she denies and is largely unsupported by her early touring work. More likely is the idea that she simply discovered a way of best manifesting her "voice" that largely precludes "concerts" or "performances."
From our side of the speakers the issue is also selective, but need not be exclusive. I do not find Clannad all that interesting as recorded music. It is not something I would just sit and listen to as part of the constructed sound track of my life, the soundtrack that resides in my various digital devices, and that I call up to meet my almost continual need for music. It, like Cajun music, is magic in live performance, almost demanding that you get up and participate. There were very few "still bodies" in the theater last night. But the same genres are somehow flattened and repetitive when it is just me and the speakers. With Enya, performance never even enters consideration. Her work lives completely within the head, as though instead of the body trying to physically engage the music, the music penetrates the body - the experience is completely internalized, holding the body in a dream-trance. Our body freezes during dreaming so we do not injure ourselves as we take flight in the course of our dreams. For me Enya's music lives in that space - demanding frozen attention. I cannot play it as "background" music.
So where does this ramble take us? Just as a walk through any rose garden worth its name puts the lie to the old adage that "a rose, is a rose, is a rose," the Clannad concert, considered in the context of their younger sister's music, reveals the truth in the assertion that music is perhaps the most varied of art forms. And as with all modes of human expression that contain a message - carved stone, paint on a surface, text on a page, or a screen, movement and music on a stage, music through standing speakers or headphones - each container shapes and influences that which it contains. The same musical inclination, tradition, even the same musical family may enter the container, but it comes out the other side into our ears transformed by its journey through the medium. And we, if we listen closely, are similarly transformed.
.
We went to see Clannad - an Irish folk, rock and jazz group - in the Carolina Theatre in Durham on Friday.
The group is made up of siblings Moya , Ciarán and Pól Brennan, and their twin uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan. The uncles are a couple of months my junior, born in January 1949. They look a bit older and play far younger. The siblings, born in the 1950s, are not much younger than their uncles and in their music you hear the rich tapestry of sound that can grow only out of decades of making music together - really together, sitting in pubs, and church basements, and in the kitchen or around the fire. Family making music together for the sheer love of it.
So this was old school pre-Internet, pre-synthesizer, Irish music. It traveled well to the Carolina Theater. That sort of makes sense since the acoustics in the venerable old structure do have a distinct pub/kitchen ring to them. And a couple of numbers into the evening, we ditched the seats we had been sold directly behind the speaker tower in the front corner of the theater and made our way to some unoccupied seats from which we could both see and hear the performers. Things were much better from that point on. Every member of the family moved smoothly from instrument to instrument on a pleasantly under-produced stage that allowed us - in the comparatively intimate venue - to see real smiles flashing between real people who loved making music together and who had swapped songs and instruments all their lives.
My Gaeilge being nonexistent, the first half of the concert was a pure, text-independent, musical experience; traditional music we shared with them without synthesized tracks, jumbo-trons, flashing lights, Twitter streams, or any other overt digital augmentation. Though I must admit, the keyboard guy hired for the tour was great, and Ciarán's electric, body-less, stand-up base did allow him to grab older acoustic and wind instruments far more easily than would the traditional version. The second set was even better when they shifted to both songs and a language I understood. Come the end of the concert, exhausted from clapping and singing along, we managed to drag these folks - our age and no doubt far more tired - back out for a couple of encores, before we tromped, nicely spent, through a cool Fall evening back to our car and home.
OK, so? Well, you see I am an unabashed Enya fan. And again, so? Ah, OK, Enya is the Brennan's baby sister - not the "baby-ist," but the sixth of the nine Brennan children. And Enya is about as teched-up as a performer gets. She uses as many as 80 different layers of her own voice to create a final version of a song. And then messes with the purely synthesized tracks that provide the instrumental bed for the vocals. An inclination that may explain her only brief affiliation with family Clannad. You can see how her approach to "making music" would not work in the Carolina Theatre - her electronics would probably blow out the entire circuitry of the aging building. And would we really be willing to wait for her to lay down 80 tracks? So, how did Enya Brennan come to this seemingly anti-Brennan type of music making?
Finding "truth" about any celebrity these days is probably a futile undertaking. Even if one can discern a "fact" or series of "facts" about someone in the public eye, those swiftly become data points to be woven into a tapestry for public consumption that may or may not bear at all upon the inner life of the individual. There are rumors that Enya suffers from extreme stage fright, and that drove her to her studio-bound oeuvre. It is a charge that she denies and is largely unsupported by her early touring work. More likely is the idea that she simply discovered a way of best manifesting her "voice" that largely precludes "concerts" or "performances."
From our side of the speakers the issue is also selective, but need not be exclusive. I do not find Clannad all that interesting as recorded music. It is not something I would just sit and listen to as part of the constructed sound track of my life, the soundtrack that resides in my various digital devices, and that I call up to meet my almost continual need for music. It, like Cajun music, is magic in live performance, almost demanding that you get up and participate. There were very few "still bodies" in the theater last night. But the same genres are somehow flattened and repetitive when it is just me and the speakers. With Enya, performance never even enters consideration. Her work lives completely within the head, as though instead of the body trying to physically engage the music, the music penetrates the body - the experience is completely internalized, holding the body in a dream-trance. Our body freezes during dreaming so we do not injure ourselves as we take flight in the course of our dreams. For me Enya's music lives in that space - demanding frozen attention. I cannot play it as "background" music.
So where does this ramble take us? Just as a walk through any rose garden worth its name puts the lie to the old adage that "a rose, is a rose, is a rose," the Clannad concert, considered in the context of their younger sister's music, reveals the truth in the assertion that music is perhaps the most varied of art forms. And as with all modes of human expression that contain a message - carved stone, paint on a surface, text on a page, or a screen, movement and music on a stage, music through standing speakers or headphones - each container shapes and influences that which it contains. The same musical inclination, tradition, even the same musical family may enter the container, but it comes out the other side into our ears transformed by its journey through the medium. And we, if we listen closely, are similarly transformed.
.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Working Without a Net[work].
.
We expect it, even demand it of The Flying Wallendas, the legendary circus act that, having lost its safety net in a luggage snafu just prior to a 1928 performance at Madison Square Gardens, opted to perform without it. They never strung it up again. In 1978, the troupe's 73 year-old founder, Karl Wallenda fell to his death from a wire stretched between the 10-stories high towers of Condado Plaza Hotel, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2011, his great-grandson Nik Wallenda, completed the walk accompanied by his mother. I mean these folks make NASCAR, the NFL and pro hockey look like "girlie games." We expect them to work without a net.
On the other hand, I have come to expect one. So imagine my surprise then, when last week I walked into class, fired up the digital projector, hooked up all the various inputs and outlets, hit start and got nothing. Turned out that the wireless network that seamlessly stitches together the 40,000-some faculty, staff and students that comprise this technology rich, research-1 university had stepped out for a latte. Well, that wasn't the reason given over on SYSNEWS, the website that tells us what is happening with All Things Tech on campus. Their message was:
Although the wireless system appears to stabilized, ComTech engineers will continue to troubleshoot the wireless issues on campus to determine root cause of these issues. We appreciate your patience as we work towards a resolution to these ongoing problems.
It hadn't "stabilized" and we went quietly nuts. We had grown accustomed to our net. Sure, many of us still have a computer wired to the wall in our offices, but it is sort of like the telephone on the desk. It's there, but how often do you use it? Far more often we tote our laptop or our tablet into the classroom, plug into the projector and wing our way wirelessly into our lectures and discussions. I can't remember the last faculty meeting when there weren't as many mobile devices around the table as warm bodies. We were wireless, and then we weren't. So we scurried madly finding "workarounds" shifting courses and lectures onto thumb drives, reacquainting themselves with those big clunky things that were tethered to the wall with ethernet cables, and running across the street to coffee shops to check email.
Well, the system did eventually stabilize, but not for several days, and with little or no explanation. It was very much a "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. . . . I am the great and powerful Wizard of Oz!" kind of experience.
It all reminded me of Grandfather Schrag and the horses. You see, my Grandfather Schrag was a Mennonite minister who farmed and preached out on the wide prairies of Southeastern South Dakota just as the 19th century was turning into the 20th. There was a thriving Mennonite community in the area, but Granddad's immediate neighbors were Catholics and Protestants of varying stripes - perhaps a Lutheran or two. In short, there were more than a few folk who were "nicht von unsere" - not one of ours. You see, our family was Mennonite - not Amish. No beards, no bonnets, - buttons and zippers were fine, modern folk in may ways. But Granddaddy was the minister and a bit of a theological conservative. "Earn your bread by the sweat of your brow," in his mind, eliminated a lot of "new fancy clap-trap." So while the neighbors were un-crating the noisy John Deeres, my father and his brothers were still hitching their horses to the four-bottom plow and heading out to turn the sod the old-fashioned way.
It seemed terribly unfair, until the "chug, chug, chug" of the John Deere went "chug, chug, chug . . . clunk." And stopped. You see this was before any self-respecting farmer could fix any machine on the place with a pair of pliers and some bailing wire - heck it was even before bailing wire. But the neighbors had bought the idea of the mechanized farm. Sold off the horses and brought in the tractors - not realizing that they were working without a net. Much of farming is time dependent, time and weather. When there is rain coming in and hay is lying cut in the field - you can't wait for the John Deere guy to come out and fix the tractor. You bail right now or you lose the hay. It was times like that when the horses seemed a real good bet.
Sure, time moved on, and as I said, pretty soon my cousins could jury-rig any piece of machinery on the place. But there was that span of "in-between" time when the tractor-types were working without a net. When they had trusted their livelihood to a technology that had no support system, and a potential for disaster from which they had no real recourse.
As I repeatedly stood before my classes last week scrambling for ways to make "the normal" work, 50 or 60 faces peering curiously at my machinations, I wondered if we hadn't made some of those same errors in our current love affair with all things mobile and wireless. I switched madly from keyboard to keyboard, browser to browser, application to application. And all the while the rain was coming in, there was hay lying in the field, and the damn tractor wouldn't start.
.
We expect it, even demand it of The Flying Wallendas, the legendary circus act that, having lost its safety net in a luggage snafu just prior to a 1928 performance at Madison Square Gardens, opted to perform without it. They never strung it up again. In 1978, the troupe's 73 year-old founder, Karl Wallenda fell to his death from a wire stretched between the 10-stories high towers of Condado Plaza Hotel, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2011, his great-grandson Nik Wallenda, completed the walk accompanied by his mother. I mean these folks make NASCAR, the NFL and pro hockey look like "girlie games." We expect them to work without a net.
On the other hand, I have come to expect one. So imagine my surprise then, when last week I walked into class, fired up the digital projector, hooked up all the various inputs and outlets, hit start and got nothing. Turned out that the wireless network that seamlessly stitches together the 40,000-some faculty, staff and students that comprise this technology rich, research-1 university had stepped out for a latte. Well, that wasn't the reason given over on SYSNEWS, the website that tells us what is happening with All Things Tech on campus. Their message was:
Although the wireless system appears to stabilized, ComTech engineers will continue to troubleshoot the wireless issues on campus to determine root cause of these issues. We appreciate your patience as we work towards a resolution to these ongoing problems.
It hadn't "stabilized" and we went quietly nuts. We had grown accustomed to our net. Sure, many of us still have a computer wired to the wall in our offices, but it is sort of like the telephone on the desk. It's there, but how often do you use it? Far more often we tote our laptop or our tablet into the classroom, plug into the projector and wing our way wirelessly into our lectures and discussions. I can't remember the last faculty meeting when there weren't as many mobile devices around the table as warm bodies. We were wireless, and then we weren't. So we scurried madly finding "workarounds" shifting courses and lectures onto thumb drives, reacquainting themselves with those big clunky things that were tethered to the wall with ethernet cables, and running across the street to coffee shops to check email.
Well, the system did eventually stabilize, but not for several days, and with little or no explanation. It was very much a "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. . . . I am the great and powerful Wizard of Oz!" kind of experience.
It all reminded me of Grandfather Schrag and the horses. You see, my Grandfather Schrag was a Mennonite minister who farmed and preached out on the wide prairies of Southeastern South Dakota just as the 19th century was turning into the 20th. There was a thriving Mennonite community in the area, but Granddad's immediate neighbors were Catholics and Protestants of varying stripes - perhaps a Lutheran or two. In short, there were more than a few folk who were "nicht von unsere" - not one of ours. You see, our family was Mennonite - not Amish. No beards, no bonnets, - buttons and zippers were fine, modern folk in may ways. But Granddaddy was the minister and a bit of a theological conservative. "Earn your bread by the sweat of your brow," in his mind, eliminated a lot of "new fancy clap-trap." So while the neighbors were un-crating the noisy John Deeres, my father and his brothers were still hitching their horses to the four-bottom plow and heading out to turn the sod the old-fashioned way.
It seemed terribly unfair, until the "chug, chug, chug" of the John Deere went "chug, chug, chug . . . clunk." And stopped. You see this was before any self-respecting farmer could fix any machine on the place with a pair of pliers and some bailing wire - heck it was even before bailing wire. But the neighbors had bought the idea of the mechanized farm. Sold off the horses and brought in the tractors - not realizing that they were working without a net. Much of farming is time dependent, time and weather. When there is rain coming in and hay is lying cut in the field - you can't wait for the John Deere guy to come out and fix the tractor. You bail right now or you lose the hay. It was times like that when the horses seemed a real good bet.
Sure, time moved on, and as I said, pretty soon my cousins could jury-rig any piece of machinery on the place. But there was that span of "in-between" time when the tractor-types were working without a net. When they had trusted their livelihood to a technology that had no support system, and a potential for disaster from which they had no real recourse.
As I repeatedly stood before my classes last week scrambling for ways to make "the normal" work, 50 or 60 faces peering curiously at my machinations, I wondered if we hadn't made some of those same errors in our current love affair with all things mobile and wireless. I switched madly from keyboard to keyboard, browser to browser, application to application. And all the while the rain was coming in, there was hay lying in the field, and the damn tractor wouldn't start.
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Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Saving Face[book]?
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I had to sit down and take a deep breath when I realized that I was feeling sorry for Mark Zuckerberg. On the surface he's sitting in the catbird seat. I mean the kid has more money than he'll ever be able to spend. He'll never have to worry about paying for health care. He doesn't care what his tax rate is, because it will never affect his lifestyle. He'll be first in line for the newest Tesla. He can fly to Florence for the weekend whenever he wants. Why feel sorry for him?
I guess I feel sorry for him because they stole his company.
When Facebook launched in February of 2004 it announced that its mission was simple: to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
Between February of 2004 and May of 2012 Facebook remade much of the world in pursuit of that mission. 900 million people rambling online, sharing thoughts, posting pictures - OK mainly cats and babies - but still sharing something. A new social norm evolves, a reconstruction of the notion of "friend"ship. Heady stuff for a kid still shy of 30.
And then social went public. Facebook pulled up a chair to the adults' table, and the stock market pulled the chair out from under Zuckerberg. Picture Charlie Brown and Lucy jerking the football away: Splat!!
I guess I feel sorry for him because they stole his company.
When Facebook launched in February of 2004 it announced that its mission was simple: to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
Between February of 2004 and May of 2012 Facebook remade much of the world in pursuit of that mission. 900 million people rambling online, sharing thoughts, posting pictures - OK mainly cats and babies - but still sharing something. A new social norm evolves, a reconstruction of the notion of "friend"ship. Heady stuff for a kid still shy of 30.
And then social went public. Facebook pulled up a chair to the adults' table, and the stock market pulled the chair out from under Zuckerberg. Picture Charlie Brown and Lucy jerking the football away: Splat!!
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How does a company go from being the darling of the world one day to being a punchline the next? It's really not all that hard to understand: you change the rules - you evaluate the company using criteria that have nothing to do with Facebook's original mission statement. Facebook's new mission statement, whether it wants it or not, is to generate revenue for its shareholders by selling advertising to Facebook users on cell phones and tablet computers. In short, Facebook's new mission is to make money.
I understand that it is sophisticated in these "working out of recession" days to assert that the bottom line is the bottom line. We grow quickly blind to the notion that the whole "greed is good" mentality of bankers and hedge-funders is what got us into trouble in the first place. And I suppose that it would be naive to take exception to that "belief in the bottom line" assertion, to posit instead that product, not simply profit, could be the driving force behind a business endeavor. That someone might actually be motivated by a desire to build a better mousetrap. Instead we assume that one should start a company designed to build mousetraps, but keep a firm eye on the exit strategy of selling the company to one of the "le"s - Apple or Google. Then you take your megabucks and buy an island. The island turns out to have a severe mouse problem. "Damn," you think, "somebody ought to . . . ."
The point is that as businesses converge around the Internet, they seem to morph into the same business - the advertising business. Even stranger is the fact that many of the ads that are pushed onto our cell phones and tablets are ads for businesses that are themselves businesses in the business of pushing more ads, and so on and so on. Pretty soon we find ourselves trapped in a cybercycle, haunted by the realization that there is no "there" there - just another link to another ad. Whoa. Digital vertigo.
And that's why I feel sorry for Zuckerberg. I mean the guy just wanted to meet girls. So he built this website. He met girls. Got married. Got rich. But now the bankers and the beancounters control the site. Oh, not up front. Mark is still the man. But unless the stock turns around, the guy in the hoodie will eventually bow to the dudes in suits.
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