Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Bigger Isn’t Better

Here’s the thing: I don’t complain about specifics that often here, so…indulge me for the end-of-week post, okay? Thanks.

I tend to be resistant to big businesses. I would much rather give my money to a local business, because I think that does more good for everyone. Often, I’m willing to sacrifice some convenience for that. For example, as super-convenient as it is to just purchase my comic books digitally, I still had a local shop that held physical copies of my issues for me, because I wanted to spend my money locally for them. I’m still looking for a shop since we’ve moved, but, in general, you get the idea.

Most often, I strike a balance between big and small businesses. My coffee addiction…er, habit…is a great example. I like to find local coffee shops in which to relax (I just discovered one this evening, in fact, much to my delight). For purchasing coffee at home, though, I often just go to a nearby Starbucks. There are several reasons for this: I know that they will always be open late (I never seem to realize I’m out of coffee until 8 p.m. or so), I just hold my phone up to their scanner to pay, and I get a free drink whenever I buy a pound of coffee because I’m a gold card holder.

Well, about that…

Before our move, my system went something like this: load the Starbucks card for the approximate amount of a pound of coffee, get my free drink, have some balance left over, drop by Starbucks later to treat myself with whatever that balance happened to be. I would also buy coffee from a local roaster, but I was rewarded for being a regular at Starbucks. Since moving to New England, I’ve noticed that I don’t have anything left on the card after the same purchases. At first blush, I just attributed this to the fact that the cost of living is higher in New England than in Virginia. Last week, though, I held my phone to the scanner, and was advised that I still owed a few cents. The barista handed me the receipt, and I observed that I had been charged for both the pound of coffee and the drink. I brought this to their attention, indicating that the drink should have been free because I have a gold card. I was advised that the reward program had changed, and that drinks were no longer free with coffee purchases. The trade-off (and this doesn’t compensate at all in my mind) is that you earn rewards more quickly.

So, for the past three months, I’ve been purchasing drinks that I thought I was getting for free without realizing that I was doing so.

The thing about a reward program is that it should keep me loyal to your store by giving me nifty and special advantages. You don’t just get a gold card with Starbucks, after all…you have to work up to it, and then maintain a certain level of purchases to keep it. The free drink with a coffee purchase was a huge perk for me, probably the biggest. Now, it’s suddenly removed.

Not coincidentally, it appears Starbucks is doing extremely well, of late.

There’s such a thing as getting too big. After reaching a certain point, many (if not most) companies start being confident enough in their financial success that they stop caring about their customers. Now, I know that I don’t have a head for business, but my perspective is that the point of business is to take care of the people who come to you, treat them with respect, and earn enough to make ends meet and perhaps a bit of a profit for doing so. When you become absorbed in the profits, you stop caring about the people, and your priorities are hopelessly inverted at that point.

This seems to happen to nearly all big businesses.

Fortunately, I’ve found a local shop that also roasts extremely high quality coffee. And, since Starbucks no longer rewards me for my business in a substantive way, I’ll be giving that local shop most, if not all, of my business now. I suppose Starbucks will still be handy in airports and on road trips, but they are now my second or third choice.

Because they got too big.

Didn’t the Doctor warn us about this?

Have a good weekend.

The Last Days of the Ponds

A Lack of Uniformity

On my commute to class this morning, I had the unfortunate task of navigating around several accidents on the post-Frankenstorm highways in Massachusetts. As I eased past one of these smash-ups, the state trooper standing watch over the epilogue looked over my vehicle with the scrutiny of one used to finding something wrong and acting on it.

I have a lot of friends who are in law enforcement. I’ve been on multiple ride-alongs with them in my life, in different states, both rural and urban areas, for personal interest and even for class projects. I’ve seen some of the action that makes you think of an episode of Cops first-hand (my only experience to-date of being in a vehicle traveling over 100 mph was on one of these ride-alongs). This small handful of experiences has left me with a profound appreciation for what these men and women deal with on a daily basis. They really are heroes, heading into situations that you or I run away from. They spend most of their day dealing with people that you or I really would not want to be around. They’re hypervigilant constantly because the most common of their job responsibilities can escalate into a violently dangerous situation at any time.

All that to say, I respect what these people do every day.

Because of this odd fascination of mine with law enforcement (I suspect because they are everyday heroes in our urban mythology), I notice the police officers when I visit a new area, and especially when I move into a new area. I notice the colors of their vehicles and uniforms. The uniforms, specifically, convey a powerful visual rhetoric.

And, the Massachusetts State Police uniforms seem…well, overly authoritarian. What I’ve seen of them (primarily along the roadsides) has been triangular hats (many if not most state police organizations use circular brimmed hats), bandoliers, and pants tucked down inside of tall boots. I’ve read some less-than flattering historical comparisons of these uniforms in various corners of the Internet, and I’m not going there, but I do see these uniforms as being overly intimidating in nature. The most effective police professionals I know or have encountered approach situations from the launching point of being helpful and working to resolve a situation. In fact, I think that most of them approach situations this way. I’m not sure that any police officer begins the work day wanting to take someone to jail.

So, the issue that I have with these uniforms is that they go beyond conveying a demeanor of authority. They convey a demeanor of intimidation and fear. That’s not effective. What concerns me is that I see the non-verbal cues of these troopers match the demeanor that their uniforms display.

I suppose that I’m of the opinion that sworn peace officers are there to serve and protect. I recognize that this involves doing things that will make them unpopular with most of us at some point or another (typically this involves being on the wrong end of a radar gun in a moment of carelessness..I have most certainly been there). To carry an appearance of being distant, untouchable, and in the role of watchful enforcer, however, seems to be counter-intuitive to the roles of serving and protecting.

I suppose that the costume of a hero says something powerful.

And, now I have an entirely new post coming to mind about that whole hero thing, again…

My Computer has a First Name…

Because I’m a Mac user, I listened with interest to Apple’s recent iPad announcement, just as I do to all of their product announcements. I’m very loyal to that brand, and Apple’s tools are the tools with which I manage not only my workflow, but also my day-to-day life.

What’s interesting about listening to the discussions and analysis of these sort of announcements, though, is the quasi-religious fervor that they can cause. As much of a Mac lover as I am, I will never wait in line at an Apple store for hours just to be one of the first to get a new product. At the end of the day, the product is just a tool to help me do life. A very elegant, beautifully designed and functional tool, but a tool nonetheless. So, when I hear others begin to personify their devices, I find it interesting, and a bit concerning.

And, in the interest of self-disclosure, Karen and I name our computers, so its not like I’m removed from this phenomenon.

I think, though, that its a natural progression of our creative impulse. A few years ago, Karen and I put together and directed a workshop on the spiritual components of creativity. One of our basic starting points was that everyone is creative. I think that plays out in our technological developments, because it proves that collectively, as a culture, we are creative. We find creative solutions to manage our evolving lifestyles, to make our work easier, and to then solve the problems that those solutions create. Just as we were created, we in turn make things in our own image.

And that theology really begins to play out as we enter the realm of potentially self-aware artificial intelligence that science fiction authors have predicted for years. There begins to be a point when the technology we create begins to be something that we worship, at which point it stops being a tool that we use and begins to make us a tool at its disposal. In a sort of twisted progression, we have deified ourselves in our ability to make technological progress, only to lose our power to the technology that we’ve created.

A natural progression of this was discussed this morning in this NPR piece about how researchers are already considering a concept of “robot rights.” How will we treat the machines that do our dirty work if those machines are one day self-aware, feel something like emotion, and expect the same rights that other sentient beings hold?

Its easy to feel like technology has a life of its own, especially as it progresses so quickly. What I see to be almost universally true is that the technology outpaces the other cultural structures within which it is developed: the legal system cannot keep up with the Internet (i.e.: copyright law), philosophy and theology struggle to keep up with our explosions of creation (i.e.: can a robot have a soul?), and now sociology struggles to anticipate how we will incorporate the devices that become increasingly a part of us into our cultural structure (i.e.: how do we define personhood?).

This is something that is as almost as frightening as it is fascinating to watch unfold.

forsciencejohn:

when I say “I wish they would turn this book into a movie” what I really mean is “I wish they would turn this book into a 17-hour-long spectacle that includes every single solitary detail and doesn’t deviate at all from the storyline and has perfect casting”