Technology 9 | unobtrusive lucidity

Collision of Worlds

I was spending part of my lunch break yesterday across the street from the building where I have classes, mentally adding to the ever-growing list of books that I would buy if had money (and will buy when I do…being a full-time student again has serious financial downsides).

The problem with being so passionate about an interdisciplinary perspective is that sometimes (or, in fact, often) you experience a collision of worlds. The subcultures of the disciplines that I’ve studied can be so wildly different that it’s difficult to reconcile them. Theatre culture and theological culture can be on opposite ends of the spectrum, for example. The literary world and the world of the Internet have critical disagreements on core ideas, such as how (or even if) we read.

I was struck by this yet again as I stood in the bookstore yesterday, lamenting the fact that I haven’t had time to read or write fiction at any substantive level in the last three months. And, while I am reading a great deal, Javascript or PHP manuals simply don’t create the same mental synergy, even though they are tools for creativity.

I liken it to my theatre experience in many ways (theatre has always been the lens through which I view the world). A great deal of my theatre experience during my undergrad days was as a designer. I acted very little, and only began directing within the last five years or so. Theatre design, whichever sub-genre you choose (I was mostly a sound designer, with occasional scenic or lighting flirtations) is very technical, but creative in its problem-solving. It creates a wonderful scaffold for the rest of the medium to do its work. Web development is much the same. I’m no visual artist, and, by extension, I’m no graphic designer, nor would I ever claim to be. The way that the web functions, though, requires similarly technical design and scaffolding, and its that area into which I’m (fingers crossed) making a career change.

I don’t think, either, that Internet culture has to be mutually exclusive of literary culture. The Internet is a communications medium, not a work of art in itself. It allows us to experience works of art more easily and even more fully, though, be it beautiful visual design (perhaps even of the website itself), or a wonderful work of contemporary literature, or anything in between.

That’s sort of how I reconcile the discord between the subcultures that I’m convinced only appears on the surface. When we dig deeper, we find, as always, that every discipline overlaps every other, and that we are always more alike than we are different.

Through a New Looking Glass?

The school that I attend is trying really hard to implement an email alert system for things like campus closures due to weather (like the random 8-12 inches of snow that came down last night, just before the first day of Spring…tell me again why we thought moving to New England was a good idea?). This afternoon, while grocery shopping, I received one such email advising that the campus would re-open in time for evening classes. This didn’t impact me, as my classes are all during the day, but it was one of those moments in which I notice similarities that amuse me: the last time I received such an email, I was also grocery shopping, and in the exact same grocery store.

Being as I’m of a certain age, I can remember when receiving email on the go was not perceived as commonplace. That was the era in which smart phones were only in the hands of executives. Of course, the computing power contained in the phone that I carry with me every day would astound the me of those few years ago, as I’m in constant touch with whomever needs to reach me by whichever method they may choose to do so.

The thing is, though, I don’t like being alerted to everything as it happens. I actually have very few audible alerts set on my phone. If I receive a call or a text message, I hear it. If I receive a “priority” email (like work, or Karen), that’s audible. Any other emails? No audible alerts. Social networking messages? Likewise silent. They will show up on my lock screen when I want to check it, but they won’t interrupt what I’m doing by dinging, chiming, or singing to me. I want the information when I want it, not when it wants me.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about Google’s Glass project, coming from all sides. I’m a futuristic, science-fiction-loving, forward-thinker, so I see this sort of “augmented reality” as a natural progression of where we’re going. I suspect, though, that it might also prove to be the moment in which we recognize where science fiction has warned that we might be going, and call a halt to it.

I actually sort of hope so.

You see, the Glass project raises all sorts of interesting concerns, such as the wearer’s ability to record what is going on around them without the people around them actually realizing it. Because of the ability to share what’s being recorded very quickly, both audio and video alike, this takes on a quite different flavor that what we’ve all experienced by ending up in the background of a stranger’s vacation photo. Most of us, I think, would feel very uncomfortable sitting at the dinner table with someone wearing Glass.

I think, too, that having your entire digital life constantly appear as a sort of heads-up display in front of your eyes just might be the information overload that stops us on our road to real-world cyberpunk. I think, also, that having a fixed barrier between us and those around us that is so visual just might prove to be more intrusive than a phone that we can quickly check and then put away.

Or, at least I hope so.

I wouldn’t change the advances we’ve made in the availability of information. I love it, I work in it, and I truly believe that it is for the greater good. I don’t, though, want our daughter to grow up with the expectation of being any more hyper-connected than we currently are. I think that placing data as a barrier between us and those around us de-humanizes us somehow, making us servants to our tools instead of making them servants to us.

Google may just have pushed us over a breaking point with this one. And, since I’m still quite irritated with them over killing Reader, as well as for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned, I can’t say that I’ll be sorry when Glass doesn’t take off.

And I sincerely hope that it never takes off.

Photo Attribution: dannysullivan under Creative Commons

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Program

During my travels and some of the unusual positions I’ve held in my professional life, I’ve gotten to spend a few years working inside of the public school system. One of the phrases I’ve heard repeated many times by educational professionals to their students is that “education is the one thing that no one can take away from you.” The goal, of course, is to assist students in recognizing the value of the education that they are receiving, which is sometimes a considerable challenge, especially in some areas of our country.

There have been many studies of late that reveal that the United States is not doing so well in our educational pursuits…that is, our students perform below students in several other countries in critical areas. Now, let me push aside for a moment the interwoven issues of the unreliability of objective test scores, and the fact that our press for education seems to rely solely on math and science and not on literature or the arts. Permit me to just focus on the fact that, legislative titles notwithstanding, we are, in fact, leaving our children behind.

I’ve seen technology used to great effect in the realm of education, and I’m a huge fan of using whatever means are available to assist students in learning and educators in doing their jobs. Still, with the education of our children and their futures at stake (an especially important consideration for me in my new adventure as a father), I think that placing education dominantly in the hands of technology is a huge mistake.

And letting the students simply see to that education themselves? That sounds like a train wreck.

Yet, apparently that idea seems to be all the rage at this year’s TED conference.

Permit to avoid a long and verbose diatribe about how many ways I see this going wrong, and simply reinforce a lesson that America seems intent upon avoiding, but that I witness to be undeniably true over and over again, both professionally and as a father: We are the adults, and our children are just that: our children. Taking care of them…an endeavor of which their education is only one small but critical component…is our responsibility. Let us use all of the tools at our disposal, but let us make certain that we do it instead of letting our tools attempt to do it for us, and make certain that our children aren’t attempting to do something themselves that they aren’t capable of, nor prepared, to do.

Ten Minutes? That’s Crazy Talk!

I tweet a lot.

Granted, I was a late-comer to Twitter, but I fell in love with it immediately. It’s simple. It’s not cluttered, it’s real-time, and it doesn’t try to be what it isn’t (which, incidentally, are all the same reasons why I hate Facebook). I think that I love Tumblr for the same reason…it’s not a maze to navigate, it’s just a simple, inspiring stream of creative synergy.

Every morning, though, I log into Google Reader and peruse the many blogs that I follow. I read the posts, and I comment as often as time permits, although I concede that I don’t comment nearly as often as I should. If I follow your blog, then I’m a loyal reader, and I’m grateful in turn to all of the loyal readers that follow me here.

I wonder at times, though, if I’m becoming outdated in my blog habits. What I mean by that is that I what I write here is more of a traditional blog…it’s not bite-sized, it takes a few moments to read. Most of the blogs that I follow are the same. Twitter, a so-called microblog, or even Tumblr, aren’t that way…they’re more easily followed in a few spare moments here and there, while the types of blogs that are plugged into my RSS feed are the types that require 5-10 minutes each to read. That doesn’t make either better or worse, they’re just different sorts of thoughts, and I read and contribute to all three.

Still, I imagine that some of you read that last paragraph and thought something to the effect of, “Ten minutes! That’s crazy talk!” And, perhaps, in a progressively mobile world, it is.

I sometimes think of an aunt and uncle who still take the local paper where they live, and I’ve commented to them several times that the newspaper is less than one generation from extinction in its print form. Still, they read it daily, and dutifully place it in recycling afterward. I wonder if, in my blog reading habits, I’m a bit like that…insisting on continuing with something that is close to extinction (ironically, I’ve written for a few newspapers in the past).

I’ve gotten involved in some discussion here before about why I think blogging is so important, why it fills a niche, why it contributes such value to the public exchange of ideas. Yet, just this week I read another consideration of how blogging could be dying as a medium, or at least evolving into something different, just as Twitter moves to condense video lengths as they have text lengths in the interest of driving further creativity.

I really hope that this wonderful medium of blogging as it has evolved continues to walk alongside microblogs, and isn’t replaced by them. There’s something great that each can do that the other can’t, and if we let either of them go, I think that we would be losing something of great value. I would really be missing something if I was unable to consider the thoughts of those I follow, both their quick, rapid-fire thoughts as well as their longer, more considered thoughts. Both are important.

It’s good, in any case, to pause and take some time with things, and I think that’s something that traditional blogs force us to do when we read them, just as a book does, but on a smaller scale.

And slowing down is always, always a good thing in an environment that is constantly speeding up.

Ten minutes really shouldn’t sound so crazy.

Fuzzy Predictions

Science fiction has always had that annoying way of predicting this sort of thing.

To prove my point, I need go no further than directing you to this post that I read this morning talking about computer algorithms being used to predict which parolees are most likely to re-offend once they are out of prison, and thus used to direct which parolees receive extra supervision.

Scary stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate of people incarcerated for violent crimes being treated with delicacy. Nor, though, am I an advocate for anyone being stripped of their basic human dignity, and that includes those behind bars. They are still human, and I find it tragic that our system doesn’t treat them as such.

I think, in fact, that that’s the core of my problem with this: the removal of the human factor. I love technology. I love what it does for us. I’ve said before, though, that there’s a line where it stops doing things for us, and starts to make us do things for it. If the tool assumes the role of the person using the tool, where does this leave the person?

I don’t think that human behavior can be reduced and quantified into mathematical formulae. We are way, way too complex for that. Our unpredictability, in fact, is part of what makes us endearingly human.

And what really concerns me about the topic at hand is that the software’s predictions are being used in place of the human parole officer’s instincts. Those people have been doing this for a while. They develop good instincts, the same as any of us do in our respective fields. Those instincts, I would argue, are far more valuable than a computer’s prediction.

To say nothing of the fact that I would rather our country’s parolees’ re-integration into society not be supervised by computer software in lieu of a person.

Talk about recidivism…