Anglos who come to America are struck by the number of people who revel in describing their achievements. It deserves explanation. Here are some reasons why folk might insist on telling you all about the great things they've done.
1. It's the way they've been brought up. There's certainly a cultural component to talking about oneself. The English are taught to take a perverse pride in being excruciatingly humble. the same seems to be true in Japan and the Mid-west. I haven't discerned any regional patterns of American self-aggrandizement, though.
2. They're selling themselves to you. If people feel that they can prove themselves by describing their achievements, they'll do it. If it leads to increased respect, it's in their best interests.
3. They're selling themselves to themselves. This has always been my favorite explanation: people who revel in themselves have a low sense of self-worth. I'm not so sure any more. The very prevalence of the truism that blames all sorts of social ills on people's low self-esteem has made me increasingly skeptical of it. There's even evidence on the other side, now. It's often said that bullies have low self-esteem. However, New Scientist reports that bullying others has social value (Clare Wilson, 5 March 2004, "Teenagers special: Bully boys"). Anthony Pellgrini found in a study of 138 school children that bullying raised a perpetrator's social status (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol 85, p 257). These kids know what they're doing. According to Pellegrini in this story: "Boys have high status with their male peers if they're bullies, and girls like them"
4. They're just bubbling over with enthusiasm for their work, and they love telling you about it. People who are goal oriented achievers will frame their work in terms of accomplishments, and a litany of triumphs will pour out without any ulterior motive.
I'm beginning to think that enthusiasm (#4) accounts for quite a lot of pride expression, particularly in America. Overt enthusiasm is encouraged here, and so enthusiasts are more visible. Tie that to a culture of selling (reason #2), and one can begin to explain #1.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
What did people ever do before blogs?
They wrote letters to the editor. From NPR, a story about a man who's written letters to the newspapers around Chicago for thirty years.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Anti-rival and anti-excludable
I've been hearing for some time about rivalrous vs. non-rivalrous goods, and excludable vs. non-excludable ones. This is because physical property is excludable and rivalrous, while intellectual property -- something that's very important in my day job -- is non-excludable and non-rival. (Some definitions subsume "exhaustable" in "rival". The term "rival" is synonymous with "rivalrous", as are "exclusive" and "excludable". For a summary of terms see here.)
In simple terms, the more people share a rivalrous good, the less there is for anyone; when they share a non-rivalrous good, everyone gets the same amount, and the amount doesn't decrease with more users. Apples and seats on a plane are rivalrous; an idea, radio broadcasts and the common cold are non-rivalrous.
Goods are exclusive if producers can prevent people from consuming them if they haven't paid. I can prevent someone from using an exclusive good, but I can't prevent someone from passing on a non-exclusive good like an idea. It pretty easy to make tangible goods exclusive; I can lock up the apples. It's harder with intangibles, as the struggles over managing access to digital music have illustrated.
Some goods are both non-rival and non-excludable, like national defense, and non-DRM protected digital music. Public goods are non-rival and non-excludable. The rival/non-rival and excludable/non-excludable concepts can be shown as a 2x2 matrix:
These definitions, however, don't take into effect the network effects that have become so prevalent on the web. Social networks like amazon reviews and del.icio.us tags are not just non-rivalrous, as one would expect from knowledge; the more one uses them, the more value is created.
These goods are "anti-rivalrous". Their use increases the amount available for consumption by others.
One can play the same game with exclusiveness. An "anti-exclusive good" might be one where the my giving it to you actively encourages you to pass it along to others. Viruses are one example; another is peer-to-peer software which someone cannot use without becoming a server node for others.
Expanding the table above to a 3x3 gives:
Note that I haven't given names to the cells - that's left as an exercise to the economists...
In simple terms, the more people share a rivalrous good, the less there is for anyone; when they share a non-rivalrous good, everyone gets the same amount, and the amount doesn't decrease with more users. Apples and seats on a plane are rivalrous; an idea, radio broadcasts and the common cold are non-rivalrous.
Goods are exclusive if producers can prevent people from consuming them if they haven't paid. I can prevent someone from using an exclusive good, but I can't prevent someone from passing on a non-exclusive good like an idea. It pretty easy to make tangible goods exclusive; I can lock up the apples. It's harder with intangibles, as the struggles over managing access to digital music have illustrated.
Some goods are both non-rival and non-excludable, like national defense, and non-DRM protected digital music. Public goods are non-rival and non-excludable. The rival/non-rival and excludable/non-excludable concepts can be shown as a 2x2 matrix:
| Excludable | Non-excludable | |
| Rival | Tangible private goods (eg airline seats) | Commons (eg unlicensed spectrum) |
| Non-rival | Intangible private goods (eg patented inventions) | Public goods (eg national defence) |
These definitions, however, don't take into effect the network effects that have become so prevalent on the web. Social networks like amazon reviews and del.icio.us tags are not just non-rivalrous, as one would expect from knowledge; the more one uses them, the more value is created.
These goods are "anti-rivalrous". Their use increases the amount available for consumption by others.
One can play the same game with exclusiveness. An "anti-exclusive good" might be one where the my giving it to you actively encourages you to pass it along to others. Viruses are one example; another is peer-to-peer software which someone cannot use without becoming a server node for others.
Expanding the table above to a 3x3 gives:
| Excludable | Non-excludable | Anti-excludable | |
| Rival | ~ | ~ | ? |
| Non-rival | ~ | ~ | (eg viruses) |
| Anti-rival | (eg member-limited social networks) | (eg communal site tagging) | (eg P2P supernodes) |
Note that I haven't given names to the cells - that's left as an exercise to the economists...
Summing up wins
A friend of mine is trying to shift the perspective of someone who sees the world as a zero sum game. My friend is arguing for a new business model; his antagonist thinks of winners and losers.
The Economist's Lexington column in the February 26th, 2005 issue ruminates on America's love affair with success and failure. It makes an observation that speaks to the antagonist's motivation:
However, even dividing the cake up is only a zero-sum game for "rivalrous goods", that is, goods that can be "used up". A good is rivalrous if my use of it competes with yours. On the other hand, a non-rivalrous good does not cost more to give to additional people, and the use of it by additional people does not diminish the use of it by others. Rivalrous goods include tax money and the water supply. Knowledge -- knowing stories, for example -- is non-rivalrous, as are digital media.
An NPR story on fishermen poets this morning concludes with a poet who says that he'd rather have stories to tell than a bank account. "When you die, I think the winner's the guy that has the most stories".
The Economist's Lexington column in the February 26th, 2005 issue ruminates on America's love affair with success and failure. It makes an observation that speaks to the antagonist's motivation:
[You] can't have winners without losers (or how would you know how well you are doing?).One can counter, as my friend does, that economic growth has two steps: creating value and dividing value. First you make a bigger cake, which is a cooperative enterprise, and then you divide it up, which is competitive. (This begins to explain, by the way, why evolution hasn't only selected for competitive people. We aren't all hyper-competitive; many people prefer to play rather than win. A successful species (and business) needs both kinds.)
However, even dividing the cake up is only a zero-sum game for "rivalrous goods", that is, goods that can be "used up". A good is rivalrous if my use of it competes with yours. On the other hand, a non-rivalrous good does not cost more to give to additional people, and the use of it by additional people does not diminish the use of it by others. Rivalrous goods include tax money and the water supply. Knowledge -- knowing stories, for example -- is non-rivalrous, as are digital media.
An NPR story on fishermen poets this morning concludes with a poet who says that he'd rather have stories to tell than a bank account. "When you die, I think the winner's the guy that has the most stories".
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Ego and Intelligence
Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence lays out a fascinating theory of how the brain works. He presents a new synthesis of elements of congnition that he argues have been under-estimated to date: time-dependence, hierarchy, memory and prediction.
The main drawback is that this is very much a first-person narrative; on page 87, for example, the word "I" appears no fewer than ten times. An exception, perhaps? Let's try page 169: "I", "me" and "my" appear eight times.
The ideas are laid out very well, and the reader is eased into neuroscience with clever analogies and metaphors. There are thought-provoking passages on why AI and neural nets failed, on the likely nature of intelligent machines, and on the uses to which they could be put. He led me to stimulating speculations -- what greater compliment for a thought-provoking book? -- like possible explanations for the diversity of personality traits among individuals all endowed with essentially the same cognitive apparatus.
The prose is very readable, thanks largely I assume to the efforts of the co-author, science writer Sandra Blakeslee. The price paid for the collaboration, though, is that the writing doesn't have much character. In contrast, Malcolm Gladwell writes just as well, but one feels that you end up knowing him a little and would like to spend more time with him discussing his ideas.
As a scientist manqué I found Hawkins' lack of rigor faintly annoying. While he makes a good case, the phrases "it's true that" and "I firmly believe that" seem to be equivalent to him. This is a popular book written before the papers are published, rather than after; as far as I could tell (eg from the publications listed at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, f(o)unded by Hawkins) he has no peer-reviewed publications. This book seems to be more interested in establishing a claim in the public mind than advancing science, though its popularity among the digerati is likely to spur the professional scientists on, in spite of themselves.
The main drawback is that this is very much a first-person narrative; on page 87, for example, the word "I" appears no fewer than ten times. An exception, perhaps? Let's try page 169: "I", "me" and "my" appear eight times.
The ideas are laid out very well, and the reader is eased into neuroscience with clever analogies and metaphors. There are thought-provoking passages on why AI and neural nets failed, on the likely nature of intelligent machines, and on the uses to which they could be put. He led me to stimulating speculations -- what greater compliment for a thought-provoking book? -- like possible explanations for the diversity of personality traits among individuals all endowed with essentially the same cognitive apparatus.
The prose is very readable, thanks largely I assume to the efforts of the co-author, science writer Sandra Blakeslee. The price paid for the collaboration, though, is that the writing doesn't have much character. In contrast, Malcolm Gladwell writes just as well, but one feels that you end up knowing him a little and would like to spend more time with him discussing his ideas.
As a scientist manqué I found Hawkins' lack of rigor faintly annoying. While he makes a good case, the phrases "it's true that" and "I firmly believe that" seem to be equivalent to him. This is a popular book written before the papers are published, rather than after; as far as I could tell (eg from the publications listed at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, f(o)unded by Hawkins) he has no peer-reviewed publications. This book seems to be more interested in establishing a claim in the public mind than advancing science, though its popularity among the digerati is likely to spur the professional scientists on, in spite of themselves.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Goldstein on Gödel
Rebecca Goldstein's Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel is a wonderful "life and work".
She successfully communicates both the context and essence of Gödel's contribution, and his opacity and paranoia. Goldstein provides a lucid outline of logical positivism; for the first time, I grasped the philosophical point of this movement, and it's relationship to Platonism. I began to get a handle on Wittgenstein, and, amazingly, I felt I understood the rudiments of the predicate calculus, the difference between truth and proof, and even the sketch of Godel's proof.
Goldstein also conjures up Gödel as an individual, and turns the fragments and glimpses of this very private man into a metaphor for his personality. One gets a sense of a how a few caring colleagues looked after him, in spite of his rebuffs and hypochondria. While a very different man, Gödel's eccentricity and circle of caring colleagues reminded me of another strnage mathematician evoked Paul Hoffman's fascinating book: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth.
The book is fluently written, and I'm tempted to explore her novels. The explanations of abstruse mathematics are well handled, and she skillfully evokes the many peripheral personalities. The only jarring notes are a handful of gratuituous trips to the thesaurus.
This life of Gödel reminded me fondly of a book I read and loved more than a decade ago: John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: A Dual Biography by Stephen J. Heims(Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1980). Sadly, it seems to be out of print; I found it at my local university library, and I look forward to reading it again.
She successfully communicates both the context and essence of Gödel's contribution, and his opacity and paranoia. Goldstein provides a lucid outline of logical positivism; for the first time, I grasped the philosophical point of this movement, and it's relationship to Platonism. I began to get a handle on Wittgenstein, and, amazingly, I felt I understood the rudiments of the predicate calculus, the difference between truth and proof, and even the sketch of Godel's proof.
Goldstein also conjures up Gödel as an individual, and turns the fragments and glimpses of this very private man into a metaphor for his personality. One gets a sense of a how a few caring colleagues looked after him, in spite of his rebuffs and hypochondria. While a very different man, Gödel's eccentricity and circle of caring colleagues reminded me of another strnage mathematician evoked Paul Hoffman's fascinating book: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth.
The book is fluently written, and I'm tempted to explore her novels. The explanations of abstruse mathematics are well handled, and she skillfully evokes the many peripheral personalities. The only jarring notes are a handful of gratuituous trips to the thesaurus.
This life of Gödel reminded me fondly of a book I read and loved more than a decade ago: John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: A Dual Biography by Stephen J. Heims(Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 1980). Sadly, it seems to be out of print; I found it at my local university library, and I look forward to reading it again.
Meaning: the lack of a knack
In the previous entry I referred to my fruitless, but not yet hopeless, search for meaning. On reflection, it may be hopeless; I may just not have the temperament for it.
According to tests like Seligman's Signature Strengths, my self-image is built around even-handedness and humility. I strongly value open-mindedness, good judgement, and modesty. One might expect that this kind of person would not have strong opinions, would be willing to entertain that any number of contradictory possibilities might be equally good, and wouldn't believe that they have any privileged insight into, say, what's worth doing and what isn't.
This would make it hard to experience meaning, given the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition of it as "importance, or significance". Both these terms suggest a relative judgment; something can be important or significant only relative to other, less important, things. Someone who is even-handed will find it difficult to experience one thing as much more significant than another. A leaning towards modesty makes it even harder, since there is a reluctance to believe that any judgment that is arrived at is important compared to that of other people.
Now, I cheated a bit. Another meaning of "meaning" is "worthwhile quality, or purpose"(Compact Oxford English Dictionary) . In that case, the search for meaning is a search for purpose, not the search for importance. And yet... "worthwhile" implies a value judgement, and a purpose entails selecting one direction over another. Humble open-mindedness isn't going to help much here, either.
If it's correct that some temperaments militate against finding meaning in life, then others must enhance it. Seligman, for example, lists one of 24 signature strengths as "Spirtuality, Sense of Purpose, Faith, Religiousness". At the risk of tautology, one might guess that people who have a strong sense of the Other will find meaning, since to them it is obvious that there's a greater reality beyond themselves that provides a compass, and a way to discern between alternatives. Other personality types that are likely to find meaning easily are those who are courageous (taking strong stands in face of opposition suggests the self-confidence required to discern one thing as more important than another), and those showing leadership (since leadership presupposes a sense of direction, which presumes the ability to feel a strong bias for one course of action over another).
According to tests like Seligman's Signature Strengths, my self-image is built around even-handedness and humility. I strongly value open-mindedness, good judgement, and modesty. One might expect that this kind of person would not have strong opinions, would be willing to entertain that any number of contradictory possibilities might be equally good, and wouldn't believe that they have any privileged insight into, say, what's worth doing and what isn't.
This would make it hard to experience meaning, given the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition of it as "importance, or significance". Both these terms suggest a relative judgment; something can be important or significant only relative to other, less important, things. Someone who is even-handed will find it difficult to experience one thing as much more significant than another. A leaning towards modesty makes it even harder, since there is a reluctance to believe that any judgment that is arrived at is important compared to that of other people.
Now, I cheated a bit. Another meaning of "meaning" is "worthwhile quality, or purpose"(Compact Oxford English Dictionary) . In that case, the search for meaning is a search for purpose, not the search for importance. And yet... "worthwhile" implies a value judgement, and a purpose entails selecting one direction over another. Humble open-mindedness isn't going to help much here, either.
If it's correct that some temperaments militate against finding meaning in life, then others must enhance it. Seligman, for example, lists one of 24 signature strengths as "Spirtuality, Sense of Purpose, Faith, Religiousness". At the risk of tautology, one might guess that people who have a strong sense of the Other will find meaning, since to them it is obvious that there's a greater reality beyond themselves that provides a compass, and a way to discern between alternatives. Other personality types that are likely to find meaning easily are those who are courageous (taking strong stands in face of opposition suggests the self-confidence required to discern one thing as more important than another), and those showing leadership (since leadership presupposes a sense of direction, which presumes the ability to feel a strong bias for one course of action over another).
Miscellany
The postmodernists say (said? are there still any out there?) that there's meaning in random jusxtaposition. Let's hope:
I've known for a long time that as men get older, their hair stops growing out their head and start coming out their ears and noses. I'm learning to live with it. But what I wasn't expecting were the bushy eyebrows. Long, straight, hard hairs that come out akimbo. Omigod, please, I don't want to become Dennis Healy! What does one do with them? Pulling one out seems like cutting off the Hydra's heads; two grow back in its place.
I dreamt the other night of Bill Gates doing stand-up. He was pretty darn good. He was enjoying himself, and the audience was with him. He ended his set with some hilarious impersonations of a few Microsoft VPs - that nobody in the audience got.
I saw a stage adaptation of Chaim Potok's Chosen last night. It is a coming-of-age story about people discovering what gives meaning to their lives, and then devoting themselves to it. I am still searching for meaning after all these years. I tell myself that I shouldn't expect to find it. If it weren't essentially impossible to find meaning, why would there be so much literature - and religion - about it? One could say the same thing about love. Which gives me hope: I didn't imagine I'd ever experience true love until the day I did.
Cheskin have done a wonderful piece about the meaning of color around the world. I first saw it just around the time when the 76 gas company started confusing me. I've always been fond of the orange livery of their filling stations, and I started seeing the orange as more and more red; was I beginning to lose my sense of color? And then one day I saw a tanker truck in the old orange delivering fuel to a station decked out in red. Side by side, orange and red; there could be no doubt. It must be a rather pathetic attempt to wrap themselves in the flag. In these days of patriotism, the board must have decided, red and blue was better than orange. What a pity. Red is already so overused, especially in the gas market (Conoco, Texaco), that it has no distinguishing meaning any more. I'll treasure my little orange 76 car antenna bobble even more now.
Before and after:
I copied out this quote from Thomas Merton's "The Love of Solitude, IV" ages ago:
(A longer excerpt here.)
Two epigrams:
I've known for a long time that as men get older, their hair stops growing out their head and start coming out their ears and noses. I'm learning to live with it. But what I wasn't expecting were the bushy eyebrows. Long, straight, hard hairs that come out akimbo. Omigod, please, I don't want to become Dennis Healy! What does one do with them? Pulling one out seems like cutting off the Hydra's heads; two grow back in its place.
I dreamt the other night of Bill Gates doing stand-up. He was pretty darn good. He was enjoying himself, and the audience was with him. He ended his set with some hilarious impersonations of a few Microsoft VPs - that nobody in the audience got.
I saw a stage adaptation of Chaim Potok's Chosen last night. It is a coming-of-age story about people discovering what gives meaning to their lives, and then devoting themselves to it. I am still searching for meaning after all these years. I tell myself that I shouldn't expect to find it. If it weren't essentially impossible to find meaning, why would there be so much literature - and religion - about it? One could say the same thing about love. Which gives me hope: I didn't imagine I'd ever experience true love until the day I did.
Cheskin have done a wonderful piece about the meaning of color around the world. I first saw it just around the time when the 76 gas company started confusing me. I've always been fond of the orange livery of their filling stations, and I started seeing the orange as more and more red; was I beginning to lose my sense of color? And then one day I saw a tanker truck in the old orange delivering fuel to a station decked out in red. Side by side, orange and red; there could be no doubt. It must be a rather pathetic attempt to wrap themselves in the flag. In these days of patriotism, the board must have decided, red and blue was better than orange. What a pity. Red is already so overused, especially in the gas market (Conoco, Texaco), that it has no distinguishing meaning any more. I'll treasure my little orange 76 car antenna bobble even more now.
Before and after:
I copied out this quote from Thomas Merton's "The Love of Solitude, IV" ages ago:
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to
live and begins to live.
(A longer excerpt here.)
Two epigrams:
If I can think of it, someone else is probably already doing it.
The least trustworthy person in the world is my future self.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Winning against a Big Ego (3)
Another in the occasional series (#1, #2) of musings on how we little people can survive in the shadow of the Big Egos -- and perhaps even win a bout or two.
The DISC model uses four character dimensions to come up with fifteen personality profiles. Each profile is a different mix of the four dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
Executive leaders tend to score high in Dominance and Influence. These are their strengths, but also their weakness.
The DISC model uses four character dimensions to come up with fifteen personality profiles. Each profile is a different mix of the four dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
Executive leaders tend to score high in Dominance and Influence. These are their strengths, but also their weakness.
- People with the "Inspirational" pattern, for example, set out to control their environment and audience. They're very high on Dominance, and also on Influence. They care about the projection of personal strength, character and social power. By the same token, they fear weak behavior, and loss of social status.
- Those with the "Persuader" pattern seek authority and prestige; they revel in growth, and like to sell and close. In this case, Influence is higher than Dominance, but both dwarf the other two dimensions. Persuaders fear a fixed environment, and complex relationships.
- Suggest that taking the course of action you oppose would make them look weak, or threaten their status.
- Present your proposal as leading to dynamic change, and their inclination as perpetuating the status quo.
- When on the defensive, draw them into the complexities of the topic. Beware, though; if they're intelligent and able to handle complex thinking, you may be outplayed unless you're at the core of your competence, and they're not.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Relax and don't-do it
Thanks to a post by Tayssir John Gabbour in a discussion on Larry Lessig's blog I came across Joel Sapolsky's 2002 post on "Fire And Motion". The title refers to the infantry tactic of constantly moving forward as a way to suppress enemy fire, which is a simile for the successful software business (and life) strategy of just keeping going, day by day. His comments on Microsoft's use of this approach, which sounds a lot like kaizen, gets most attention, but I was more taken by what triggered Joel's meditation: creative block, and creative productivity.
Sapolsky starts out from the observation that there are times when he just can't get anything done, which leads to the observation that most people only do two or three hours of productive creative work a day - which is more than enough, it turns out. The rest is filler. Perhaps it's filler; but perhaps the rest of the grind is the kaizen that yields the creativity.
Perhaps; but perhaps the grind dulls the creative edge. Joel tells the story of an intern that only worked noon-5 every day (including lunch), but was loved by the team because he still got more done than the average developer.
This sounds a lot like the taoist approach of doing by not-doing (see e.g. eftrc.com). It is easiest to perform an action when one is relaxed, when it's like not doing it. A hard task for the obsessively conscientious among us - particularly those who apply themselves diligently to the paradoxical work of non-work. A new year's resolution: every day I will strive to not strive, and work harder at not-doing more.
Sapolsky starts out from the observation that there are times when he just can't get anything done, which leads to the observation that most people only do two or three hours of productive creative work a day - which is more than enough, it turns out. The rest is filler. Perhaps it's filler; but perhaps the rest of the grind is the kaizen that yields the creativity.
Perhaps; but perhaps the grind dulls the creative edge. Joel tells the story of an intern that only worked noon-5 every day (including lunch), but was loved by the team because he still got more done than the average developer.
This sounds a lot like the taoist approach of doing by not-doing (see e.g. eftrc.com). It is easiest to perform an action when one is relaxed, when it's like not doing it. A hard task for the obsessively conscientious among us - particularly those who apply themselves diligently to the paradoxical work of non-work. A new year's resolution: every day I will strive to not strive, and work harder at not-doing more.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
It's in the mail
The angel and the old man were yelling at each other.
The old man was leaning forward in his chair on the porch, his hand cupped to his ear. “What?!” he bellowed. “Speak up!”
The angel shouted, “Your vocation! I’ve got your vocation for you!”
“What?!”
“It got lost, and didn’t get delivered when it should’ve been! But we can tell you now!”
“Speak up!” The old man squinted into the light. “What?!”
“It’s the vocation you’ve always wanted! Don’t you want to hear it?”
“What?!”
The old man was leaning forward in his chair on the porch, his hand cupped to his ear. “What?!” he bellowed. “Speak up!”
The angel shouted, “Your vocation! I’ve got your vocation for you!”
“What?!”
“It got lost, and didn’t get delivered when it should’ve been! But we can tell you now!”
“Speak up!” The old man squinted into the light. “What?!”
“It’s the vocation you’ve always wanted! Don’t you want to hear it?”
“What?!”
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Dirt world meets digital world
Are we on the verge of -- or already in the middle of? -- a war between nation states and global organizations? Do we have the makings of a conflict between the dirt world and the digital world?
Electronic communications and strong global trade networks are creating a global production/consumption system where nation states seem to be accidents of history. On the other hand, nation states are the ones with guns and taxes; national leaders and their constituents live in a particular place and are still tied together by physical proximity.
A wonderful book recommended by Marc Smith bears on this topic: The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1, A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760 by Michael Mann. The Mann outlines a theory of social power, and then tests it through a masterful analysis of innumerable historical examples. For him, societies can be explained by the interactions among four power sources: ideological, economic, military and political relationships. The relative influence of these power sources varies. Cultures of conquest like the Assyrians and Incas were based on military power. The ideological power of the Catholic Church was key during the Middle Ages. Political power became more visible during the rise of the European monarchies, and was joined by economic power in the run-up to the Industrial Revolution.
Mann's other key claim is that "a society" as a well-defined unit of analysis is a fiction. Societies are shot through with power networks that have wildly different physical scales; in the Middle Ages, for example, political power was limited to the feudal manor and its immediate environs, while the ideological power of the Church reached in a uniform way across Western Europe. The constituent parts of notionally distinct "societies" thus overlap and intersect with each other in complex ways.
Mann's thinking applied to current conditions suggests that globalization and territoriality are not at odds. They are, in fact, power sources operating at different scales. Nation states have political and military power which is based on physical contiguity. Globalization is, so far, an economic phenomenon. (Ideology doesn't play much of a role - yet.) This is not unlike the situation Mann describes in the Middle East around 900 - 400 BC. A number of quite distinct power centers around the Mediterranean, from Egypt to Persia, were stitched together by Phoenician and Greek trade.
I therefore think that my fears of "vertical" conflict between national and global power players are overblown.
A much more likely fight is a "horizontal" one between nation states on the basis of the globalization enabled by digital technology.
I was told yesterday that business leaders in major companies are frustrated by inability of their CIOs to deliver the business system interconnection they need; outsourcing would be much more common than it is today if Service Oriented Architectures actually worked.
Another straw in the wind: some researchers suggest that demand for university places in India will rise to 9 million places in 2015, and 20 million places in China in 2025. The NCES projects that just over 2 million bachelor's and master's degrees will be conferred in the US in 2013. In other words: in less than ten years, there will be more than ten times as many qualified knowledge workers in Asia as in the US.
At this point interpretation becomes a matter of temperament and bias. Some people believe that the rise in international trade and the shift to a knowledge economy will lead to a happy world where everybody becomes more affluent. Richard Rosecrance argues from this corner in The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century.
I'm not convinced; for my money, Prof. Rosecrance under-estimates the negative impact the rise of knowledge economies in Asia will have on earning potential and life-style of Americans and Europeans. The standard of living in Asia will certainly rise; the question is whether economic growth is enough of a non-zero sum game for US/EU living standards not to decline. Rosecrance argues that the rise of virtual economies will make military conquest obsolete. Even if this were true, it addresses only one of the four sources of power that Michael Mann uses.
Organizations with global aspirations, from international NGOs to multi-national companies, play a crucial role in accelerating the development of a world where such conflicts arise. They can also play a key role in defusing tensions. Countries go to war where there is no commonly accepted authority to resolve their differences. Global organizations can create the conditions where there is a common set of values within which conflicts can be worked out.
This does not necessarily imply a global government. Government is just one of Mann's four sources of power, ie political power. Ideology can play a similar role without the creation of a black helicopter brigade. But what ideology? I'm still thinking about that... Fifty years ago one might have proposed communism or capitalism. These days the most obvious candidate is neoliberalism. However, there's a more interesting possibility: the emergence of a ideology based on the synthesis of neoliberalism and socialist activism. One can see the makings of such a fusion in many technology companies whose employees are predominantly Left on social issues and Right on commercial ones.
Electronic communications and strong global trade networks are creating a global production/consumption system where nation states seem to be accidents of history. On the other hand, nation states are the ones with guns and taxes; national leaders and their constituents live in a particular place and are still tied together by physical proximity.
A wonderful book recommended by Marc Smith bears on this topic: The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1, A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760 by Michael Mann. The Mann outlines a theory of social power, and then tests it through a masterful analysis of innumerable historical examples. For him, societies can be explained by the interactions among four power sources: ideological, economic, military and political relationships. The relative influence of these power sources varies. Cultures of conquest like the Assyrians and Incas were based on military power. The ideological power of the Catholic Church was key during the Middle Ages. Political power became more visible during the rise of the European monarchies, and was joined by economic power in the run-up to the Industrial Revolution.
Mann's other key claim is that "a society" as a well-defined unit of analysis is a fiction. Societies are shot through with power networks that have wildly different physical scales; in the Middle Ages, for example, political power was limited to the feudal manor and its immediate environs, while the ideological power of the Church reached in a uniform way across Western Europe. The constituent parts of notionally distinct "societies" thus overlap and intersect with each other in complex ways.
Mann's thinking applied to current conditions suggests that globalization and territoriality are not at odds. They are, in fact, power sources operating at different scales. Nation states have political and military power which is based on physical contiguity. Globalization is, so far, an economic phenomenon. (Ideology doesn't play much of a role - yet.) This is not unlike the situation Mann describes in the Middle East around 900 - 400 BC. A number of quite distinct power centers around the Mediterranean, from Egypt to Persia, were stitched together by Phoenician and Greek trade.
I therefore think that my fears of "vertical" conflict between national and global power players are overblown.
A much more likely fight is a "horizontal" one between nation states on the basis of the globalization enabled by digital technology.
I was told yesterday that business leaders in major companies are frustrated by inability of their CIOs to deliver the business system interconnection they need; outsourcing would be much more common than it is today if Service Oriented Architectures actually worked.
Another straw in the wind: some researchers suggest that demand for university places in India will rise to 9 million places in 2015, and 20 million places in China in 2025. The NCES projects that just over 2 million bachelor's and master's degrees will be conferred in the US in 2013. In other words: in less than ten years, there will be more than ten times as many qualified knowledge workers in Asia as in the US.
At this point interpretation becomes a matter of temperament and bias. Some people believe that the rise in international trade and the shift to a knowledge economy will lead to a happy world where everybody becomes more affluent. Richard Rosecrance argues from this corner in The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century.
I'm not convinced; for my money, Prof. Rosecrance under-estimates the negative impact the rise of knowledge economies in Asia will have on earning potential and life-style of Americans and Europeans. The standard of living in Asia will certainly rise; the question is whether economic growth is enough of a non-zero sum game for US/EU living standards not to decline. Rosecrance argues that the rise of virtual economies will make military conquest obsolete. Even if this were true, it addresses only one of the four sources of power that Michael Mann uses.
Organizations with global aspirations, from international NGOs to multi-national companies, play a crucial role in accelerating the development of a world where such conflicts arise. They can also play a key role in defusing tensions. Countries go to war where there is no commonly accepted authority to resolve their differences. Global organizations can create the conditions where there is a common set of values within which conflicts can be worked out.
This does not necessarily imply a global government. Government is just one of Mann's four sources of power, ie political power. Ideology can play a similar role without the creation of a black helicopter brigade. But what ideology? I'm still thinking about that... Fifty years ago one might have proposed communism or capitalism. These days the most obvious candidate is neoliberalism. However, there's a more interesting possibility: the emergence of a ideology based on the synthesis of neoliberalism and socialist activism. One can see the makings of such a fusion in many technology companies whose employees are predominantly Left on social issues and Right on commercial ones.
Miranda Murphy
One of the scary things about digital life is that one can't depend on stuff fading into dust any more, the way analog media do. It's a variation of Miranda:
I have had to think long and hard about whether I'm willing to continue to take the risk of blogging under my own name. For now, I've decided to keep going. Somebody will probably use my writing against me (and my employer) again, but the pressure of exposing myself to criticism is invaluable in improving the quality and clarity of my thinking. If it were anonymous, I might as well just write a private journal.
The Lesson for the reader? If you write a blog, remember that you don't just have the Muse floating over your left shoulder; Miranda Murphy is on your right, as well.
Everything you say digitally will be remembered, and can be used against you.This didn't worry me much until I ran into this corollary of Murphy's Law:
If something you say can be misinterpreted, it will.All this came together in a rather unfortunate series of events that led directly to the intermittent posting of the last few months. I learned the hard way that quotes on a semi-public blog concerned entirely with private thoughts ("semi" given the minute readership of this blog, but "public" given the existence of search engines) can bleed over into one's work life.
I have had to think long and hard about whether I'm willing to continue to take the risk of blogging under my own name. For now, I've decided to keep going. Somebody will probably use my writing against me (and my employer) again, but the pressure of exposing myself to criticism is invaluable in improving the quality and clarity of my thinking. If it were anonymous, I might as well just write a private journal.
The Lesson for the reader? If you write a blog, remember that you don't just have the Muse floating over your left shoulder; Miranda Murphy is on your right, as well.
Sunday, December 26, 2004
No sex, lots of violence: the Grimm roots of American media
A guest post from S. -- the first time I've been able to blog-capture one of her wonderful insights:
It’s a commonplace that the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales are now considered excessively violent. Birds peck out the eyes of Cinderella’s stepsisters; Snow White’s stepmother is made to wear red-hot iron slippers and dance to the death; and Rumpelstiltskin literally rips himself in two in his anger.
The Brothers modified the oral tradition to expunge sexual elements, tighten the narrative structure, and introduce a moral element (see Jack Zipes’ translation and introduction to the tales). For example, in the 1812 edition, Rapunzel’s liaison with the prince is discovered through her remark:
“Tell me, Mother Gothel, why do you think my clothes have become too tight for me and no longer fit?”
By 1857, this is revised to:
“Mother Gothel, how is it that you’re much heavier than the prince?”
Now consider the norms for US television:
· No sex.
· High levels of violence.
· Every 30-minute show finishes with a neat moral.
Not much that I can see has changed from the 19th-century bourgeois temperament.
It’s a commonplace that the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales are now considered excessively violent. Birds peck out the eyes of Cinderella’s stepsisters; Snow White’s stepmother is made to wear red-hot iron slippers and dance to the death; and Rumpelstiltskin literally rips himself in two in his anger.
The Brothers modified the oral tradition to expunge sexual elements, tighten the narrative structure, and introduce a moral element (see Jack Zipes’ translation and introduction to the tales). For example, in the 1812 edition, Rapunzel’s liaison with the prince is discovered through her remark:
“Tell me, Mother Gothel, why do you think my clothes have become too tight for me and no longer fit?”
By 1857, this is revised to:
“Mother Gothel, how is it that you’re much heavier than the prince?”
Now consider the norms for US television:
· No sex.
· High levels of violence.
· Every 30-minute show finishes with a neat moral.
Not much that I can see has changed from the 19th-century bourgeois temperament.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Patron saints
While looking for some gods of unintended consequences, I found a wonderful site offered by the Catholic Forum: the Patron Saints Index. There is a saint for every need and occasion. Selecting almost at random from the alphabetical topic list, you will find saints to intercede on your behalf:-
- against ulcers
- against vanity
- against vermin
- against vertigo
- against whooping cough
- against wild beasts
- against witchcraft
Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of air travel, since he had the gift of levitation. Just the kind of person to have around when that second engine conks out…
Even the Internet has a patron saint: Isidore of Seville. He’s also the patron computer technicians and schoolchildren. I imagine the association derives from his prolific writing, which includes “a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a history of Goths, and a history of the world beginning with creation”. Some associations are entirely obscure to me, though; Philip Neri, for example, is the patron saint of the US Special Forces
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