a cold and lonely street

Janine Allis and Boost Juice

2012-01-21T18:55:00.000+11:00

Janine Allis is the founder and Managing Director of ‘Boost Juice’. Incorporated in March 2001, as of December 2005 the Boost group employed 1 700 throughout the 83 stores of the franchise, 250 directly employed by Janine, with an annual turn over of forty million dollars through smoothie sales. Future plans include listing Boost Juice on the stock exchange and expanding internationally.

Janine, a lanky brunette who plays netball twice a week, dropped out of Knox Technical College in Year 11, age sixteen, to initially work as a media assistant for GMH. Her initial criterion for her work was what was the most glamorous, yet after stints in modelling and in nightclubs she saved enough money and travelled overseas. After working as a camp counsellor in the U.S., registering businesses and leasing people to time shares, and as a stewardess on a yacht owned by David Bowie for a couple of years, she returned to Australia. With the help of contacts she’d developed while in France, she got a job through Village Cinema CEO Graeme Bourke. Eventually she was transferred to run the Village cinemas in Singapore. She has also worked at United International Pictures.

Janine Allis’s own top five tips for succeeding in business

Don’t take yourself too seriously, and make sure you have at least one good laugh a day.
Be honest with yourself and with others. Otherwise you’ll lose their respect and be headed for disaster.
Create a friendly working environment. Love your staff. You’ll see them more than your family!
It’s okay if your house gets dirty. Rather than worrying about the housework spend time with the kids.
Remember to kiss your partner, and your kids, every day. They’ll always be there – your business might not.

Further reasons for her success

Branding - “We hit it day one with an email marketing campaign. We had a loyalty program day one. We did radio advertising straight away, which no small company does.”
Franchising - “The reason we went down the franchising path was people. We needed great people who believed in the concept to run the stores. That meant ownership.”
Love Life – “I have gained all my experience through living life … All of what you do in life does actually make you who you are today.”
Networking – “It is who you know. It is actually being in the right place at the right time. It’s not by accident that you make yourself in the right place at the right time.”
Persevering – “Everything I’ve done has led me to believing that there is no problem that can’t be solved … I can always learn … Sure, I haven’t done it before… how hard can it be? So, you don’t know how hard it is, you just do it. You don’t put limitations on yourself … To get to the journey, you’ve got to see what the end is … The thing is as long as you keep heading towards that goal you will get there. Dreams are made out of an amazing ability to relentlessly pursue a goal.”
Remaining authentic – “Some people think that as the CEO of a company they need to fit a particular vision - suit, high heels, hair in a tight bun. Life and success are not about playing roles. The number one lesson I’ve learned through all my life experience is the importance of being myself.”
Self-education – “I don’t go around thinking I know everything. I am a voracious reader and I try to read everything from customer revolution books other retailers’ manuals.”
Thinking Positively – “There have been so many ‘cannots’ that were converted to ‘can dos’”.

Image by laubarnes

This article originally appeared in the now defunct eZine Viva Uni.

Dragons, Starships and Video Game Postgenderism

2012-01-21T18:44:00.000+11:00

My top three PC games of 2010 were Mass Effect, its sequel, and Dragon Age - all of which happen to be Role Playing Games, or RPGs. For those not familiar with the genre, an RPG allows you to build an avatar, through which you experience the fictional universe of the game. You get to choose their name, sex, history, expertise, appearance, and in the case of games such as Dragon Age, even what species they are. It’s like picking what A-Team character you want to be in the school playground - just a lot less camp.

In Mass Effect, my avatar’s design was plain vanilla. He got my first name, a brave and altruistic back-story, a warrior’s biceps, and the default face - think Daniel Craig with a jarhead haircut. Not exactly what I want to be like in my next incarnation, but certainly what I want my great-great-great-grandchild to be like in the 22nd century when humanity has conquered space and is pitted against xenocidal killing machines.

My avatar’s choices were as predictably moral as he was heterosexual - he looks out for the little person, has D&M time with his emo shipmates, and initiates an onboard relationship with the only character biologically capable of bearing him children. He is half Captain Picard, half Aragorn. When I learn that letting an evil covert agency take over a space station and its entire stash of alien tech (it seemed like a good idea at the time) happened to lower my standing in the eyes of my crew, I simply reloaded and played things out a bit more to their liking.

In Dragon Age, however, I resolve to be a little more risky - and a little less puritan - so, early one morning in the forests of Ferelden, a female Elf comes into being with a clever knack for picking lock, stealing wallets, and kneeing her opponents in the groin. Her first executive decision is to slaughter a small band of humans that have trespassed into her ancestral land. When the human king is about to perform an epic fail, she does not hold hesitate telling him so. Soon my avatar is dealing with the flirtations of a horny warrior named Alistair (voiced by Steve Valentine). Alistair actually turns out to be a Nice Guy with a cute sense of humour - someone you’d be happy to introduce to your mum. As they court, Alistair’s ‘loyalty’ rating slides further into the positive, unlocking extra abilities that help him slice and dice the undead. Half way through the game and they get jiggy with it; he makes pledges of fidelity; and before long, he is spilling darkspawn blood with newfound vigour. There is even the hint that, he being the bastard son of the former king and all, he and his love interest - my avatar - are set to become royalty by game’s end.

Enter the Elf Zevran - think Spike from Buffy crossed with Puss-in-Boots - a womanising hit man with a mysterious past who is allergic to commitment and openly willing to shag the entire team, male and female alike; in short, a rake. Having already maxed out the benefits of Alistair’s loyalty - and nighttime action - my avatar becomes Zevran’s lone audience in lengthy campfire monologues on the joys of serial assassination. Zevran’s loyalty - and consequently his skills - grows steadily. Then one night (with Alistair standing on the opposite side of the campfire), Zevran suggests that they continue their conversation in his tent. As my avatar follows him inside, I figure - Surely if he suspected Alistair, his brothers in arms, would have a problem with this, he wouldn’t have suggested it, right? I quickly learn however that this Tolkienesque world is not very different from our own - for as my avatar emerges post-coital from the tent, a very nonplussed Alistair confronts her. Men, I groan, as his hard-earned loyalty and talents evaporate.

After reloading to a point preceding Alistair’s hissy fit, I opt instead to shower the assassin with gifts and help him out with his home troubles, while keeping things as ambiguous as possible. There is always the hint of a trip to first base together - but not even a walk eventuates. Meanwhile, Alistair’s ego remains constantly massaged, assured that Zevran and my avatar are ‘just a friend’. My men remain besotted, killing darkspawn is more fun than ever, and Queendom seems just around the corner.

Dozens of hours of game play later my nemesis is decapitated; the dragon is disembowelled; Alistair has been boosted to the throne; and my avatar is the hero of the land. I cannot help but feel a little betrayed, then, when Alistair proposes to his widowed sister-in-law instead, and tells my avatar that - for the sake of the kingdom and his own sense of propriety and all that horseshit - they should just be friends.

Well screw you too, Alistair.

Image by felicia.day

P.S. This article was originally published in the now-defunct eZine Viva Uni.

In praise of polyamory

2012-01-06T16:03:00.003+11:00

Prudishness – the combination of extreme modesty and propriety – is a dogma that denies the nuance intrinsic to personhood; the idea, for instance, that we can both be a teacher who inspires students to greatness, as well as a stripper – or both eager to put our life on the line for our country, and attracted to people of the same sex.

Infidelity is an assault on prudishness. It embodies the incongruity between the way that we publically think people can and should behave - and the covert, private reality of desire and authenticity. Marriage epitomizes social normality, while affairs give social norms the middle finger. Though the anti-prudishness of the polyamorous may come with a penalty, it is the penalty of revolutionaries.[1]

The false comfort of marriage

The benefits of marriage have been long touted – benefits that we cannot achieve simply from being in a de facto arrangement: married people “are happier, healthier, and better off financially.”

And yet, marriage does not even remotely guarantee fidelity.

Committing ourselves to a path of action that we have ordained in the here and now is certainly popular – just think of how many people get permanent, rather than temporary, tattoos, or get married, for instance – and yet we are condemned to be free. The man or woman who swims out into the ocean in order to drown controls neither the currents nor their instinct for survival, and cannot therefore guarantee the success of his or her own suicide. Similarly, a bride and groom cannot in all authenticity pledge their undying and singular love for the other. “Roughly 30 to 60% of all married individuals (in the United States) will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage” – so if you think that the institution of marriage helps limit the spread of STIs, think again.

Admit to committing infidelity in any relationship

% Men: 57
% Women: 54

Say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught

% Men: 74
% Women: 68

Incidentally, the above figure is only in reference to physical, and not emotional, affairs. Assuming that these emotional and intellectual affairs are more a phenomena of women than to men - and factoring that into the figures – it would appear that there is an insignificant differences in the rates of infidelity between men and women .

Why do affairs lead to divorce?

The fear of getting caught only stops a third of husbands and wives who would otherwise have an affair. Yet why do only 31 percent of marriages last post-revelation?

Most probably see infidelity as a sign of a marriage’s ‘failure’. After all, I would marry someone I thought would be the perfect person for me for the rest of my life (and that the feeling was mutual) – to then go ahead and have an affair means admitting a grand fallibility. More than anything, it would be the dissapointment in myself of having failed to be happy in an exclusive sexual and emotional relationship with that one person.

As the frequent mantra goes – the real pain of infidelity is not the actual having sex with other people part, but rather the deceit. Affairs – like any conspiracy – mock the limits of our certainty.[2] This deceit is far from limited to the betrayed. “If I get a divorce, it's a public act and everyone will know that my marriage failed, that I'm a failure.” An affair is not a lack of faith — it is a load of bad faith. “If I have an affair, I'm able to pretend that everything's O.K.”

Yet if we are to believe the statistics, people don’t hesitate having affairs out of fear of the sense of failure that an affair might engender. Rather, people are reluctant to have an affair out of the (justified) fear of putting the very marriage at risk. Yet considering that in 41% of marriages, one or both spouses admits to either physical or emotional infidelity, it seems that the risk of loosing their marriage is not enough to inhibit people from having affairs. Something seems seriously wrong here – and I suspect it comes down to prudishness.

The case for polyamory

Ironically, normalizing open and polyarmous relationships would probably be one of the best things ever done to halt the deterioration of marriages and nuclear families. The social obsession with monogamy clearly generates needless anxiety – and hypocrisy:

"Most people, in their heart of hearts, are ‘polyamoralists.’ That is, they are capable of loving more than one person at a time." – Tad

And

"A true polyamoralist is honest and open about his/her feelings and desires … I own a house with two women and live in a polyamorous relationship with both of them in a triad relationship. It never seems to astound me how many people will condemn the way I live, yet at the same time admit to an affair." - AJ Abrams

Considering that only a marginally greater percentage of men want to have affairs, polyamory[3] is not necessarily detrimental for women:

“The mistake that straight people made … was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitarian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.” - NY Times

Open relationships would undoubtedly be valuable when both spouses desire an extra-marital relationship, yet neither is confident to broach the subject, which reminds me of an article that discussed men faking orgasms – and the frightening scenario of both parties locked in an awkward sexual performance for the others’ perceived benefit:

“It’s funny to think that sometimes it ends up that the girl fakes it just so the guy can fake it. What a perfect representation of performative sex. Both partners are so strictly adhering to an expected script that they become outside observers to their own sexual encounter. Or, sometimes, it’s less an issue of performance and more an attempt to avoid one’s own, or one’s partner’s, embarrassment.”

‘So strictly adhering to an expected script that they become outside observers, in an attempt to avoid embarrassment’ – is there any better summary of what it must feel like in a dissatisfying marriage?

Image by I.M. Photo

Endnotes

[1] This might be why anarchists turned up in much of my earlier writing, while cuckoldry featured in quite a few of my more recent novellas and screenplays.

[2] Playing around with an ‘infidelity calculator’ - technically called a ‘potential for cheating index’ - I plugged in my partners’ values in order to determine the supposed liklihood of her being ‘unfaithful’. She weighed in at 51 - a “moderate risk” of cheating - and amusingly, I'm part of the above-average risk group, at 60%.

[3] Note here that I'm not talking about polygamy, which an adviser to the Canadian government has claimed would increase crime, lower the marriage age for women, further gender inequalities, and lead men to invest less in their existing family.

The long goodbye: ‘trial separations’ from our possessions

2012-01-06T12:15:00.000+11:00

Whenever I make an effort to get rid of stuff – whether it has been my paperbacks, compact disks, or notebooks – I start by viewing it as a logistical challenge:

How do I sort the wheat from the chaff?
How am I going to minimize the overall waste - someone else might want it, such as housemate, or a neighbor, or friend or the opportunity shop
How am I going to better store what I keep so that I don’t just have the same stress of decluttering again in x months.

Yet it turns out that the problem of decluttering is not so much a practical one, but an emotional one.

The following is typical of my decluterring routine:

I pull numerous original and burned CDs (that I have ripped onto my laptop), as well as numerous mis-burned CDs, out of storage.
I figure that I can sell the original CDs, give away the burned CDs, and use the mis-burned CDs as decorative mobiles.
I move them into the hallway to await their exciting futures.
After a week, I realize that no one buys CDs anymore; that I can just give my friends the mp3s; and those mobiles actually look rather kitsch come to think of it.
I throw them all out.

I am like a child whose obsession with their security blanket needs to be indulged by their parents, before they gently shelve it away into the linen cabinet (where their child will likely forget about it).

I now try to engineer such ‘long goodbyes’ in the disguise of a cooling-off periods, with the help of ‘protophysics’. For example, I will put an old but artistic poster on my wall above my desk, and after a day or two realize that it just does not ‘go’ with the room or with me anymore. I will then put it into the ‘out pile’ - maybe I will get around to taking them down to the op-shop, but if not, it will passively ‘fall’ in with the recycling as a matter of course.

Image by Kevin Spencer

Future-proofing with The Cloud

2012-01-06T11:32:00.000+11:00

I have not used a diskette for ten years. However, it took me that long to gather the psychic energy to be able to rid myself of the hundreds I had in my possession. In the mean time, I have been lugging them around from share house to share house, promising myself that I would copy all their content to a portable hard drive before I threw them out. I didn’t even look at them – I could not justify spending the money on an external diskette drive, and would not have been neither surprised nor disappointed if most did not even work anymore.

Such experiences illustrate a strange contradiction in my being: I love tech, but I can also become attached to particular incarnations of it. I grew up with computers - my family owned a Macintosh when I was eight; I hacked into the school’s system administrator when I was 10; I helped design a Trojan horse when I was 15; I created my own websites when I was 18. Yet I am occasionally slow on the uptake: I only got a mobile phone when one was given to me when I was 23; I came over to mp3s when I was 25; I bought my first off-the-shelf computer when I was 28; and I switched to Gmail when I was 31. I have a propensity for hoarding obsolete mediums such as VHS, disks, books, and hard-copy financial records – all of which I simply end up dumping. Thus, I am eager to avoid repeating history and instead future proof my virtual and physical possessions.

In an attempt to identify the trend of storage, I look to music. External hard drives are my current medium of choice: several terabytes store more music, movies, television series, and images than I could ever possibly consume, and I keep adding to it. Yet we are already at the point where people are throwing away hundred-gigabyte hard drives, or letting them collect dust in some shed. We have since moved on possessing no music, just a license to play a song that is stored using the cloud.

Cloud computing is but the latest stage of the transcendence of music from the analogy to digital,[1] and more generally, of the transcendence of intellectual property from the physical to the immaterial. Once, when I bought music, I felt like I was buying something tangible, real, worthy of the cost – for instance, I felt like I owned a portion of the band because I possessed a shiny wafer of polycarbonate plastic protected by a jewel case. Now I strive to embrace the non-physicality of products, and believe that fetishizing of the material indicates a failure of imagination[2]: while music may originate from static objects, it is an art form “whose medium is sound and silence.”

Network computing is obviously efficient: it is far better to have information stored centrally, and people ‘borrowing’ or ‘checking out’ that information, than to have it randomly scattered, reproduced, and replicated (with potential errors) elsewhere. However, before embracing the cloud in its entirety, there are a few concerns I need to put to rest. One is simply the technical reliability of the cloud - as the following xkcd comic illustrates:

Another concern is the larger trend to divest ourselves of autonomy for the sake of (temporary) convenience. We are taking our outsourcing[3] of the storage of our music, email, and photographs to the same extreme as Nike with its shoe manufacturing. Even the mobile devices that play that music, such as our smart phones, often still belong to a corporation – and we simply rent them via some elaborate ‘plan’.

Finally, as Jaron Lanier highlights, cloud computing puts an unsettling amount of power into the hands of a very select few. The benefits of such technology rely on the Lords of the Cloud – the owners of the hardware – not behaving evilly. Unfortunately, there is not much stopping them from doing so.

Image by Gary Hayes

Endnotes

[1] Music started as vinyl records on tall shelves - which had finite life spans as they wore away with use. Radio - which is what wireless technology most resembles – probably belongs in this sequence somewhere, as well as cinema and player pianos. Cassettes, which were mobile, popped onto the scene. Music then moved onto CDs, which were poorer quality than vinyl, but more compact; then to mp3s on mobile devices or computers, which had poorer quality again, but were space-efficient.

Yet while the storage of music seems to have evolved, IT seems to have come full circle: from giant computers, to networked computers, to standalones, to online computers, and now to web-only computers. I imagine that all computers will become like Chromebooks - with wireless web access guaranteed like mobile reception, you never need to store stuff anymore. So soon, maybe five or ten year’s time, we will start piling up our $300 multi-TB hard drives in the hard-rubbish collections.

[2] This might help illuminate why so many people are still fixated on a gold standard rather than electronic currency.

[3] As a kid, (though this did not last long) we would get books, music and toys through the community library. Now Google, Amazon and Apple have become the new subscription libraries. These are not the only services that offer, deliberately or inadvertently, that use the cloud, however - I listen to quite a bit of music at work through YouTube, and occasionally blip.fm.

Some selfish benefits of travel writing

2012-01-03T19:28:00.000+11:00

Out of a need for inspiration, or more likely just affirmation, I recently pulled out the copy of my novella, The Forty-Seventh Ronin.[1] Though the opening and closing chapters are in Melbourne and Portland, Victoria, respectively, I set Ronin predominantly in Tokyo. I wrote it (or at least this is what I argued in my Masters dissertation) as a way of “accessing” Japan. Much as an author might write in order to understand their own psychology, I was also writing to understand my experiences, and the culture that was the subject of those experiences.

I suspect now that the reasons for responding to my trip with a lengthy, semi-fictional account of my wanderings of Tokyo were both more nuanced, and less sophisticated. I think that what often drives me to write about a place that I am visiting, or about the feelings that I have had, is a need to create something that will last past the experience.[2] Some people travel to Provence and satisfy some Protestant work ethic by building a house on the hills among the olive groves or vineyards. I can travel anywhere, and achieve much the same by writing.

The novella that I ended up writing from my Tokyo trip was also an attempt to rewrite history - to pass my experience as being far more sexy, thoughtful, and concise than it really was. My actual experience was certainly all three of those things - but not as much as I passed it off as in the book. Furthermore, in cleaning up the jumble of events of my twelve months into a 24-hour period in less than 5 000 words, I tried to convince myself that my trip was orderly than it actually was.[3] To be a little gentler on myself, however, I suspect that much of the tradition of writing is about this act of convenient reorganisation and condensing of experience and thought.[4]

When I got back from Japan, I was very much in a funk: I had left behind plenty of good friends, a rich and intense city and the cheapest sushi I would ever have. Writing was one way of dealing with those post-holiday blues. Was it the best, however? Perhaps saving fiercely for a one-way ticket to Tokyo or Osaka - or at the least, enrolling in a Japanese language course - was a much more direct route to ‘getting back’ to Japan. After all, writing a story about my trip was just one more act of distancing myself from the tangible and the visceral, and living my life through fiction - albeit, fiction that I had written. Yet I had come to understood that it was just a matter of time before I left Japan and returned to the 'real world' - I could defer such a decision, but I could not avoid it. In returning to Melbourne to write my Masters thesis on my experiences, then, I had both confronted the reality of my situation, and found a way to console myself over it.

Writing was not the only way I consoled myself in the wake of leaving Japan: I scoured Melbourne’s izakaya restaurants and bars with fellow-Japanophile, Al, in the months following our mutual return from Tokyo. (In fact, work on my Japanese travelogue only really started in earnest when these izakaya expeditions stopped.) These festivals of beer and sashimi cost me dearly, yet they were vital in combating my reverse culture shock. Each shot of sake held off the wave of nostalgia and regret for having left Japan and returning to Melbourne, which suddenly felt like a backwater city. Such gastronomic adventures were also a much tastier and rewarding alternative to visiting a professional counsellor.

My working holiday might have taken twelve months - but trying to articulate what it meant to me took much longer. Two years after departing Narita International for Tullamarine Airport, the majority of which I spent researching and writing for The Forty-Seventh Ronin and the rest of my Masters thesis, titled An Existential Guide to Travel, I walked away from the University of Melbourne with first-class honours. That alone provided much post facto justification for my efforts. It also provided a good deal of closure.

I have a couple of mixes that I compiled while in Japan, sampling from the sounds that captured the feeling of being there and the musicians to whom I listened. I have also a wealth of photographs, first from a point-and-shoot camera, and then from a digital, some of which continue to feature on the walls of my lounge. These, and the novella, all make up my collection of Japanese artefacts – artefacts that feel far more personal than any souvenirs I might have brought while over there. Together, then, The Forty-Seventh Ronin and An Existential Guide to Travel are a take on a place that no longer exists, a design for future journeys, a silent album and mindscape in one.

The Forty-Seventh Ronin by Ash Hibbert | Make Your Own Book

Endnotes

[1] I remember reading in The Australian Writers’ Marketplace (aka ‘The Big Yellow Book’) that until you actually have your ‘novel’ published you should refer to it as a ‘manuscript’ when corresponding with prospective publishers and agents. In this case, however, Lambert Academic Publishers have it in their catalogue, and Wet Ink has published an excerpt. Moreover, I have the self-published copy lying on my desk. I think I can safely say that this is now a novella, not just a manuscript - which means that I can legitimately italicise the title, rather than just leave it in inverted commas.

[2] This might be because I do not normally engage with other people that much (or at least I do not know how positive an impression I do make), and so my impact on the social realm is much like an oar dipping into a lake. In other words, I certainly cause a ripple effect in the world that I move around in, but the waves are quick to dissipate. But even if I was a very social person, short of actually causing other people to write poetry or literature about me and my heroic endeavours, I don’t actually think that would leave anything significant in the land’s that I visit to mark my passing

[3] Even my motivation for going over there was random: my inability to find work locally, an older brother who had mentioned it as a fun thing to do, and my growing self-doubt at the wisdom of studying yet another undergraduate degree in a completely different field. Finally, there was a nagging sensation in the back of my mind that had been building for most of my first degree: that too much of my adult life to that point had been lived vicariously. This had been through the books I’d read for literature studies, the dualisms that I’d debated in philosophy, and the imaginary worlds I’d created myself for creative writing. Maybe, I thought, I was indeed due to go out and actually live life for myself.

[4] I expressed my amazement to my supervisor, for instance, of how we were whittling down together what had been tens of thousands of words of journal notes into a few pages of double-spaced A4. He nodded, and smiled compassionately - but he was a poet, and probably had it a lot worst.

Benefits and strategies of self-insurance

2012-01-03T19:21:00.001+11:00

I am proudly anti-insurance.[1] The only form of cover I have is ambulance membership; for the price of about $40 per year, it allows me to cycle around Melbourne with a little less anxiety. Those who use insurance pay for the privileges of (a) being able to access, if disaster strikes us, a huge reserve of money, and (b) expert risk assessments. In the past, I have simply relied on having a large reserve of my own available, and public health care, to cope with any emergency. Recently, however, I figured that we can also take advantage of insurance company’s risk assessment expertise by noting how insurance companies assess our risk profile, and budgeting accordingly.

Insurance companies are like bookies: they play the odds. Since their profit margin is in the space between likely liability - the chance of having to pay a customer who has broken their leg, for instance - and their actual revenue, it is in their interest to determine in considerable detail the financial cost of our various lifestyles and activities - whether they be smoking or snowboarding.

For instance, a standard insurance company might consider it worth their while to cover most of my potential health liabilities if I give them $1k each year (after all, I do not smoke, snowboard, and I am young).[2] I can safely assume then that, according to a risk assessment expert – the insurance company – my health-related liability is around $1k per year, or around $65000 until I retire. I would then budget for that amount myself, investing $1k inflation-adjusted dollars in a readily accessible account every year.

As I grow older and my lifestyle changes, insurance companies would probably quote me a year’s health cover at different rates. I would adjust my budget accordingly.

I would also enact measures that would reduce my own likely liability, health- or otherwise - buying a fire extinguisher for my house, a burglar alarm for my car, taking up yoga, buying and organic food. I could easily determine the monetary profit of such measures – and consequently, how much I should invest in them – simply by looking at the fine print of an insurance application form.

Image by 1f2frfbf

End notes

[1] I appreciate that shit happens – which is why I budget for it myself, rather than outsourcing such budgeting to a corporation. Being in Australia, one of the many developed countries in the world that has a free public healthcare system, probably contributes to this stance regarding insurance. Readers in countries without such safety net, like the United States, might have a different attitude – however, I think that the logic remains sound, even in such contexts.

[2] While I might end up costing more or less than that amount, if a thousand me’s joined up to that insurance company, we would on average cost a little under.

Why we should save up for things in the reverse order in which we plan to buy them

2012-01-03T19:10:00.002+11:00

I would like to propose a novel saving plan:

save for an emergency fund[1]
save for your ability to make money[2] and reduce expenses
save for long-term purchases
save for mid-term purchases
save for short-term purchases

The first half of this is established wisdom in the financial management circles – create a buffer for unforeseen circumstances such as losing your job; make large purchases that will pay-off in the end - not necessarily tertiary study, mind you; and max out your superannuation/401k.

The idea that we should save up for things in the reverse order that we plan to buy, however, requires elucidation.

Firstly, saving for our retirement before any other discretionary saving goals is important because (1) once we’ve retired we can’t earn near as much money as before, (2) the return on investment is the greatest, and (3) the tax benefits are difficult to beat.

One limitation of my idea is that since it defers when we are able to reap the benefit of our hard work and investing, we are likely to be less motivated to save up, compared to if every dollar we saved was for something we would buy that year. However, it also allows those with sufficient investment discipline to get vastly more bang for buck compared to saving up for things just on time – which, after all, is just a step away from living hand-to-mouth.

1) It is too late for voluntary contributions when you’ve already retired
Retiring compromises our ability to earn more money. Once we've retired, financial management is pretty much just damage control. Though there are exceptions, we cannot perform most types of work at the same pace for our entire lives, particularly once we have hit 60 or so. Age factors seriously into our earning capacity, both positively and negatively at various times in our lives; however, at retirement, by definition we are going to be making less money. We might retire with the flashiest car and the most luxurious holiday house. However, if we have retired without an income stream that will see us through thirty or forty years, our problems will not be which route we will take to the beach house this summer – they will be in the realm of wondering how we will pay the rent. Therefore, we need to ensure that we have invested in our retirement - before thinking, for instance, of luxuries such as a second home or car.

2) Greater return on investment
Thanks to compound interest and dividends, we get a disproportionately higher return on investment on longer-term investments than shorter-term investments. A retirement fund, for instance, is the cheapest investment you will ever make, for the greatest return.[3]

Example: In Australia at least, we start saving for our retirement early, through compulsory superannuation contributions. This could mean starting in our early 20s – and only cashing in when we hit our mid 60s.[4] The $1 that we put in to our super during our working life will equal, say, equal $1.50 in today’s dollars when I hit 65. For instance, if I leave my super to my employers (9%), I will save about $200k for retirement - but that will build $100k worth of interest on top of that.[5] Contrast that, to say, a short-term savings - I put $1 in a 6% term deposit for 12 months, and I get back $1.06 - substantially less than the $1.50 from my super fund.

In short, longer-term investments provide a greater rate of return on investment. If I save for a car, in the short term, even if I pay in cash in the end, the ‘saving up time’ will not result in a ‘cheaper’ car than if I bought it right away.

3) Kick-ass tax benefits
One final reason why saving for one’s retirement first is a good idea is that the government taxes it less when it goes in (15%), and does not tax it as it grows or once it has matured.

Scenario
Once we have our emergency fund together, invested in our earning capability (including safeguarding our health), and then invested in our retirement until we have an amount that, upon retiring, will have matured into an acceptable amount, we can simply stop contributing to our super,[6] and turn to our medium-term goals.

Example: we may need $500k upon our retirement to live off, but we only need to save $300k when we are 40 because, by that point, our retirement fund will keep on growing of its own accord, and cover the final $100k or approximately on its own.

Such medium-term goals can include a down payment on a house, a mini-retirement so that we can take read Ulysses or a working-holiday around the world, or seed money for our business venture. Such savings may take anywhere between five and ten years. The money will not ‘grow’ as much as our super – after all, we will be saving up for such goals for a shorter period, which means less compound interest and lower rates. However, it will grow at a faster rate than any short-term investments.

Saving for a long-term goal such as retirement, before more medium-term goals, such as providing your children with the opportunity to study for several more years (or the pleasure of being able to play in the back yard rather than the park down the street) will pay other dividends down the road. When your children are middle-aged and you are retired, they will appreciate not having to build an extension on their house so you can move in.

Image by urbandata

End notes
[1] The emergency fund is very important because it reduces the likelihood we will go into debt. Even short term debt will be screw up our overall return on investments, since credit-card debt (and even loans, and mortgages) are naturally going to be higher than anything we could safely earn with our investments. Think of it this way - your credit card debt, if you have one, is actually negating all of the interest that you earn on your super fund.

There are always jobs out there, even if they mean making coffees or pulling beers, and that is always enough to cover our basic living expenses. Subsequently, I do not see how anyone with even a few years of professional experience could reasonably go into debt. If we have liabilities that we must maintain - the mortgage on a house, for instance - that ‘emergency fund’ should be in the form of mortgage payments that we have made, but can call upon at a moment’s notice. This is because we should be pouring as much money, as quickly, to reduce the principle on such debts as early as possible, as well as all our liquid assets (for example, cash). The emergency fund, then, operates for the following reasons:

As one comedian has remarked, the mark of financial independence is when we do not have to move back in with your parents; that is exactly what can well happen if, for some strange reason, you cannot secure a hospitality job between losing your professional job, and having to pay rent.
The luxury of being able to pick and choose whether to stay in your current role, and which professional job to take, if you leave, or are fired, from your earlier job.

[2] I used to think of ‘investing in your earning potential’ as meaning that we should have the discipline and motivation to spend as long as we can at university before actually entering the job market in earnest. For instance, if circumstances allow, going from our Bachelor degree straight on to a PhD by the time we are in our mid 20s. However, now I am more of the opinion that the increase in salary diminishes around the Masters by coursework mark, and certainly before the PhD mark. Further education beyond that can be useful for a few reasons - getting very specific licenses or qualifications relating to our occupation, as well as laying the foundations, through study in a radically different area, for a career change. We might want to move sideways, inside or outside our current profession, just for some variety - or, it might be useful to diversify to reduce our risk, should our profession suddenly become in low demand for whatever reason. In any case, using university to increase our salary, rather than our professional flexibility, does not seem to make as much sense as it once did. However, I do still believe that taking the time to get at least one marketable undergraduate degree is a good idea.

[3] Since we can afford to ride out the fluctuations of the market, we can tolerate higher risk-profiles, and subsequently greater compound interest rates. Even for low risk-profile investments, such as term deposits, the longer you lock your money in for, the greater interest rate you will typically earn.

[4] This retirement age might even be further postponed in the future, considering that many developed countries, such as the UK, are increasing the retirement age for public-sector jobs, because people are living longer, are able to work longer - and, of course, the economy is going to shit and the government can’t afford to actually pay them their retirement benefits.

[5] Obviously that 50% growth applies to the retirement fund overall, across its lifetime. The first dollar that I put in, for instance, would have grown considerably greater, while the last dollar that I put in would return very little.

See Vanguard Retirement Calculator for reference.

[6] I have already determined that I can invest plenty into my retirement, and then when I have reached the critical mass that I will need, I can simply stop investing. For instance, I can invest the minimum untaxed amount until I’m 55, and even if I were to start taking money out then (which I can’t), I could spend a retirement income that’s 100% of my pre-retirement income until I’m 88. Otherwise, I save up until I am 65, but I would not likely live long enough to spend that in (certainly beyond 100). Therefore, it makes more sense to, say, work until I am 55, semi/unofficially retire on some other savings if I wanted to, and then officially retire at 65. Of course, I would want to keep on working in some capacity after 65, and I would like to be able to work less before I am 55.

Remembering Berlin

2012-01-03T19:03:00.000+11:00

“So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.” - Dr. Abraham Erskine

It is a good time to visit Germany. The Cold War is over, and the Holocaust is a memory shared only by great-grand parents and their peers. The statue of limitations, even on Nazi war criminals, has effectively passed. In the centre of Berlin - the Mitte - the Brandenburg Gate casts a shadow over the demarcation of the East-West divide, and the echo of the Berlin Wall.

Walking around a place so utterly transformed - the old Checkpoint-Charlie, the remnants of the Stasi interrogation building, a Starbucks in old-East Berlin – is exhilarating: proof of history’s power to surprise. Few foresaw the brevity of East Germany and its state security apparatus’ lifespan - so caught up in the nuclear and ideological-standoff of the superpowers.

It is easy to say that all is well that ends well, yet the thought that it might not have been this way stains my pleasure of passing from Pariser Platz to Ebertstrasse unhindered. I imagine another world in which the Wall never fell, or an atomic firestorm incinerated Europe, and endless other permutations. Parallel universes have spilled over into Berlin before: in the no man’s land where East and West Berlin met – particularly the gate, the old parliament building, and the GroBer Tiergarten – old photos depict a world where World War II never ended. More than East Berlin (which the Soviets cannibalized for their own desperate industrialization) Cold War bile blighted the old Mitte, scorching it with rhetoric and fear. Even Berlin’s heart – its Reichstag – remained empty; none passes freely beneath the archways of the Brandenburger Tor; none jogged carelessly through the garden; the Victory Column stood alone.

Now, of course, we can wander in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate; we can take the side-trip to the Holocaust Memorial and laze on its stylized tombstones as if picnicking in a cemetery; we can have our photo taken with faux Soviet guards beside a replica of the checkpoint police-box. Brandenberg Gate glows golden with its renovated sculpture of horses and chariot; the Reichstag, crowned with a glass beehive that looks like a Harman Kardon Soundticks’ subwoofer, is again the house of government. Life has returned to this, the most famous stretch of the death-strip. Like Hiroshima – crematorium for a hundred thousand souls beneath a bustling city – we see in Berlin the old mantra again in action: life goes on.

When gaming imitates life

2012-01-03T18:36:00.001+11:00

After spending more than a few hundred hours on role-playing games, I have finally come to accept that the person I most frequently play is ‘me’. I may have chosen a different race, gender, or class, yet I do not play actually play a different role.

Instead, the strategies I assume are an extension by how I play (or rather, how I try to play) my ‘real life’.[1]

1. Over-engineering for the long-run

I usually love over-qualifying myself for what I am doing. Before I take on the big guns I usually like to have all of my ‘soldiers’ lined up. This lets me assume an air of superiority (particularly in what might otherwise be degrading work) - be it in making coffees, or picking locks and pockets in Ferelden. It also allows me the luxury of ‘savouring’ the texture of my surrounds - be they wind-swept mountains, or a building’s rooftop in the CBD that I have to sweep. I have written drafts of thesis before enrolling in a postgraduate course, and executed eagle vision from every tower in northern Italy. Whether the big boss is a dragon or a two-year-long Masters by research degree, when I finally take them on, they are toast.

2. Guerrilla tactics for the quick wins

Other times, though, I like to bite off more than most people consider trying to chew. I seek out a ‘hack’, or a ‘rort’, to give myself an artificial advantage, pass myself off as having far more credit than I actually possess (‘Yes ... I know how to program’), and enter battles above my class. This can come down to a tactic known as kiting – using range-attacks to work away at the edges of my opponent or project. I might also use chemical enhancements to heighten and prolong my combat effectiveness, such as mana recharges, health potions – or, in the case of my workplace, copious amounts of refreshing and invigorating green tea.

3. Grinding for the relief

Like many a MMORPG player will relate, there are times at work when I just want to grind: carrying out often-repetitive tasks that require little or no higher-cognitive processes, such as culling critters in World of Warcraft, or changing lists to tables in Microsoft Word. Grinding usually guarantees advancement - albeit very, very slowly. However, the best part of grinding is that there is no risk of offending anyone: critters do not have alliances - hurt one, and another bunch will not take offence. Similarly, cleaning up code, or sorting out a CMS means that there is no risk of unearthing any hostile factions in a team meeting.

Image by squant

Endnotes

[1] At least, this is the case the first time around, when I am usually am a paragon of humanity – in the replay, I’m generally an ass.

The wisdom of the otaku

2012-01-03T18:28:00.000+11:00

I have always wondered about the ‘why’ of the things we do. A lot of it probably has to do with being the youngest in the family: my parents probably gave my older siblings the run-down on most things we did in our lives, and simply took it as read by the time I came along.

Either that or explaining stuff for the nth time had gotten old.

Consequently, I was the quintessential ‘why?’ child – I could never take ‘yes’ for an answer. I would constantly seek out the hidden agenda of my teachers – why did they schedule sports in the first hour of the day? - to exhaust us, so that we would be easier to deal with? I would sneak behind my teachers’ desk, looking at their colourful and creatively annotated schedule, searching for patterns, an agenda. Yet such details were not for the likes of us kids – we were just passengers in their eyes. Where we were heading, and what icebergs lay in our path, was on a need-to-know basis – we simply did not need to know.

Even by our final year of high school, our mathematics teacher ignored my questions about the practical applications of each new formula. Maybe their usefulness extended beyond getting better grades - yet it was just as likely an exercise in mindless dedication. If that was the case, why were we not simply memorizing the value of pi?

In Japan, there is a sub-culture of otaku – youths who literally live in their bedrooms, gathering and cataloguing the precious trivia of their anime and manga heroes. I suspect that they do this as a giant digitus impudicus towards an obsessive-compulsive culture that would have them instead memorize reams of context-free facts; they are simply choosing another, equally impractical, topic over which to obsess - but at least one of their choice.

Maybe they have the right idea.

Image by kid joe

Rogues, warriors and mages of the business world

2012-01-03T18:23:00.000+11:00

In role-playing games (RPGs) there are typically three character ‘classes’ from which to choose: these are rogue, warrior, and mage. Each has a unique, and critical, function in a squad: rogues scout out dangers and locate elusive treasures; warriors are the self-appointed punching bags for opponents; and mages support their squad mates from a distance. Each is equally important, yet the experience of being one or the other is incredibly different.

In games such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect,[1] I have played characters of each class, and lead squads who emphasise various battle styles. Striking the right balance for each quest and skirmish has been one of the greatest challenges and sources of enjoyment. However, I have also come to see that many of the same principles apply to my working life.

The squad
In the office, as with RPGs, individual specialization, and collective diversity, is essential. A well-rounded team is like a game of collaborative rock-paper-scissors, each player specializing in their particular hand - each covering their teammates for any contingency. In real life, we must be able to perform all three manoeuvres - in the business world however specialization is standard practice: consultants and freelancers benefit from taking a roguish approach; most permanent employees are warriors; team leaders and department heads are mages. For those who do not take the concerns and qualities of other squad mates into consideration, professional life tends to be brutish and short: head-to-head battles can leave mages and managers sliced and diced; uninterrupted enemy spells can paralyse even the most dedicated warrior or salarymen; and rogues and freelancers can and will flee when the going gets tough.

Each player constantly needs to prove why their teammates should take an arrow for them. While middle management is structurally immune to overt challenges from their inferiors, the importance of proving their value by serving and supporting the rest of their team is probably the greatest.[2] Rogues can ‘accidentally’ forget to warn their mage teammate about the booby trap in their path, and warriors have been known to turn on their superiors in miniature coup d'état.[3] A helpful model for office team leader or manager would be a sea captain, who functions more as one-one-one coaches and mentors for the individual bridge officers.

Rogues

“Rogues are crafty combatants who succeed in battle by combining speed, subterfuge, and a wide range of abilities to bring their opponents down in unexpected ways, sometimes before the enemy even perceives danger.” – Dragon Age Wiki

Soon after I graduated from uni, I started out working as a professional rogue – pursuing solo projects, collecting ‘cigar butts’ of discarded or misplaced resources and assimilating them into my own work, and asking for forgiveness rather than permission. While such an approach certainly meant that I crossed many a less-travelled path, and discovered numerous elusive gems, I also proved to be very elusive myself when it came to actually helping in a pitched battle.

Warriors

“Warriors are the front-line fighters, the backbone of any party under assault.” – Dragon Age Wiki

I have spent most of my working life as a warrior: doing the bulk of the hands-on work, and being the whipping boy when things go wrong. There are mixed benefits with being at the front line and in the trenches – you feel like you’re the one actually ‘creating value’, but with shells constantly exploding overhead and no real power to stop or understand them, the general confusion of battle can quickly get old.

Mages

“More altruistic Mages can use their powers to help and heal, or summon benevolent spirits in times of need. Though they are ostracized to the point of persecution for it, Mages are key for everyday life ... They serve as its healers, scholars, scientists, and weapons of war.” – Dragon Age Wiki

That is why my most recent professional incarnation has been as a mage. I do not directly contribute to the war effort – instead I help my teammates do so, by documenting and rationalizing processes, setting up dynamic job-tracking spreadsheets, collating useful resources, and scheduling activities. As a mage, I leave it to others to take the force of the blows, while I buff up their efficiency, debuff their opponents, and focus on the big picture. I do not see such an approach as management – at least, not in the traditional sense – but rather as assisting others in better managing themselves.

Image by Ran Yaniv Hartstein

Endnotes

[1] In ME, the equivalent of the rogue is the engineer, for warriors it is the soldier, while the ‘mage’ is a Jedi-styled Adept.

[2] In The Unconscious Civilization, for instance, John Saul discusses how corporations tend to get middle-management bloat, having rewarded all of their hard workers with promotions into positions where they actually don’t do real work, or aren’t allowed to. This is not necessarily the fault of such managers, but rather ‘up or out’ doctrines or the Peter Principle.

[3] “Rear-echelon misfits with anger management and substance issues who sulked after getting chewed out and decided to have their revenge” resulted in some 730 fragging incidents in the US military during the Vietnam War.

"Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?": Honesty, intimacy and sex in gay and straight relationships

2012-01-03T18:12:00.000+11:00

Intimacy is arguably the primary goal of any romantic relationship (if not of life) for both men and women. The difference, to speak in very general terms, is that men typically seek such intimacy corporally – for example, through sex – while women typically tend to seek it socially – for example, through deep and meaningful conversations.[1]

From the perspective of most guys, I presume, those who are not actively interested in sex are missing out a big part of what it is to be human.[2] As a friend recently remarked, “If you don’t like fireworks, you’re a little dead inside.” However, I imagine that from the perspective of most women, people who restrain themselves in their emotional expression are failing to reassure others that they are human.

The burden of proof falls on each of us to prove our emotional credentials to others - lest someone label us a monster.[3]

It don’t think that men and women differ that much in their capacity to benefit from each form of intimacy; rather, they have varying degrees of enthusiasm to pursue each, and different ways of expressing it. Men and women simply bring different ‘strengths’ to their relationship. Gay women can obviously be physically intimate, [5] and yet many heterocentric researchers and critics would argue that lesbian couples do not, and cannot, have ‘real sex’. Similarly, men obviously have feelings, but express those feelings in ways that are at odds with how women would like them displayed.[6]

Homosexual couples typically have an advantage in such regards – they are more able to empathise with their partner’s needs; in fact, they usually share those needs to the same degrees. Furthermore, gender roles amongst gay and lesbian partnerships are less pronounced than amongst their straight counterparts:[7]

“Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.” – Tara Parker-Pope

However, gay and lesbian partnerships also lack the (sometimes grating) checks-and-balances that more gendered partnerships have. In other words, while they distribute responsibilities more evenly, they are also likely to lose the balance in how they achieve intimacy.[8] Lesbian partnerships, for instance, help create the most nurturing environments, yet are subject to the notorious ‘lesbian bed death’.[9] Gay men, on the other hand, “are nicer than straight people during arguments with partners” yet possibly because their sex lives are less reliant on harmony in the relationship, they are “worse than straight or lesbian couples at ‘repairing’”. This is not to say that because of some idealistic notion of ‘balance’ and ‘harmony’, heterosexual relationships are innately superior – divorce rates are testimony to the significant lack thereof - rather, that a relationship’s strength can often lie in the flexibility and diversity of its constituents. Different is good.

In The Sex Diaries: Why Women go off Sex and other Bedroom Battles, Australian therapist Bettina Arndt argues (in a nutshell) that women should put out more if they seriously want their marriages to continue. Journalist Nina Funnell (and surely others) find such sentiment offensive – after all, one of the great milestones of feminism is having empowered women to have the freedom to say ‘No’ to sex whenever they want. Pressuring a woman to be physically available at all times – to have sex even when she is not interested, to be tactile even when it is uncomfortable, whatever – is unacceptable. It is each person’s prerogative as to when, how, and with whom he or she is intimate.

However, should men not have the same right in regards to verbal intimacy? Should men be entitled, for instance, to say ‘No’ to a conversation whenever they want, without fear or suffering a serious penalty in the relationship? After all - pressuring a person to ‘open up’ (to explore a touchy subject, to justify a decision that they have painfully made, to give up their own emotional space, whatever) does seem slightly akin to pressuring someone to ‘put out’. Telling a man to prove their love through conversation sounds a little similar to telling a woman to prove their love through sex.[10]

If we agree to such (albeit loose) parallel, how do we respond and remain consistent in our behaviours and values? Should we suggest that men and women are entitled to their own emotional and physical territory? Should each person in a relationship have the right of veto any incursions into his or her space – whether it involve talking about their childhood traumas, or having sexy time – without the risk of resentment from the other?

Maybe heterosexual relationships are an elaborate marketplace where each person barters one form of intimacy for another, and where both parties need to feel like they are getting a good deal to continue trading. If no one is putting anything on the market, the economy of the relationship slowly stops. Relationships are all about give and take, right? Most would agree that a healthy relationship requires a balance of both verbal and physical intimacy. Those without sufficient quantities of sex and discourse will be poorer for it, or simply not endure. To paraphrase Tim Ferris - the number of uncomfortable conversations they are willing to have can usually measure a couple’s success in the relationship. Additionally, as Bettina Arndt argues, couples should work to match the libido of the hornier partner.

The question however is how we can ensure that such constant trade-offs and compromises are not going to kill the romance by a thousand cuts. One solution might be for all couples, gay and straight, to keep in mind that it is only through the fusion of both expressions of intimacy that a relationship will be both enjoyable, and lasting. The respective, typical strengths of men and women can, and should, be a source not of tension but of pride. Furthermore, if straight guys and girls are to learn anything from the research into queer cohabitation, it’s that plenty of relationship mess can be avoided when each person is willing to look through the eyes of their significant other.[11]

In the classic science fiction film Blade Runner, there was a simple solution: use a Voight-Kampff machine – a futuristic device used to determine whether someone is a human or an automaton.[4]

Image by kaytaria

Endnotes

[1] You can cite as many exceptions to this summary as you want, including yourself – or give as many arguments for why it might be true but not fair – but this is how it is, now, for most people, most of the time.

[2] I would not go so far as to say that they are inhuman - it turns out, for instance, that Morrisey, a poet of outstanding calibre, is likely asexual.

[3] At least men are not as bad as the Elcor of ‘Mass Effect’ – a species that need to spell out their state of mind at the beginning of each utterance. Then again, maybe guys could learn a thing or two from them.

[4] Think of it as a futuristic CAPTCHA test – which, incidentally, stands for ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’.

[5] “Lesbian couples took more time having sex, with sexual interaction beginning with whole-body contact and proceeding with kissing, hugging, touching and holding before breast or genital contact was made. In heterosexual couples, "rarely more than 30 seconds to a minute were spent holding close or caressing the total body area before the breasts or genitals were directly stimulated." - Suzanne Iasenza

[6] “The problem is not that we [men] are insensitive. The problem is that we differ with women on what we need to be sensitive about. Some things just blatantly do not merit the amount of attention and energy our women demand of us. Some things are better left alone, only to slide off the back and slip away into oblivion.” (AskMen)

[7] “Straight couples often argue along gender lines: the men are at turns angry and distant, the women more prone to lugubrious bursts. Gays and lesbians may be less tetchy during quarrels because they aren't forced into a particular role.” – John Cloud

[8] Because of the relative egalitarianism of homosexual couples, I am inclined to believe that gay and lesbian relationships are a truer reflection of the desires of each respective gender. That is, men and women in heterosexual relationships want to behave like men and women in homosexual behave. Gay partners are more likely than their straight counterparts to get what they want – however, it’s debatable whether they are more likely get what they NEED.

[9] “The women themselves are (understandably) reluctant to say that it’s because they are not interested in sex. They do, however, often cite the difficulty of initiating it. They want it to happen “spontaneously,” which is perhaps a quaint way of saying that sex should occur without either of them having to make the first move or risk rejection by asking for it. Many researchers have interpreted this to mean that the sticking point with lesbian sex is that no one wants to take on the role of initiating sex, because that it typically a man’s role, and there is obviously no man in a lesbian relationship.” (Baumeister, Roy F., Is There Anything Good About Men? How cultures flourish by exploiting men. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, p.231)

[10] Obviously, there are differences - communication is a basic human skill, vital in almost all interaction, unlike touch, which is a lot more personal. It would be absurd to suggest that giving someone the third degree, even if is an actual interrogation, is anything remotely likely rape - however, I’m talking about pressure, and not coercion; a fine distinction, yes, but still an important one.

[11] “The findings suggest that heterosexual couples need to work harder to seek perspective. The ability to see the other person’s point of view appears to be more automatic in same-sex couples, but research shows that heterosexuals who can relate to their partner’s concerns and who are skilled at defusing arguments also have stronger relationships.” – Tara Parker-Pope

Ethics, dating, and The Social Network

2012-01-03T17:50:00.001+11:00

Watching a film with someone can often make for great ethical talking points. For instance, The Social Network allowed for a long discussion with my cinema-buddy about the action of the protagonist, evil-genius Mark Zuckerberg.

I would suggest taking a date to the movies at the earliest opportunity - not so much to help facilitate their wooing or any such bullshit, but rather to check your ideological and aesthetic compatibility. Think of it as social litmus test.

As John Cusack's character in High Fidelity remarks:

“What really matters is what you like, not what you are like … Books, records, films - these things matter. Call me shallow but it’s the fuckin’ truth.”

I, for one, found Zuckerberg rather easy to relate to[1] – though I kept this to myself when it turned out my friend found him deeply, and morally, repugnant. From my perspective, the people he supposedly ripped off were undeniably small thinkers: the twins were aiming for a ‘Facebook’ for Harvard students, while his best friend, the chief financial officer, wanted to turn it quickly into a moneymaking venture. Had Facebook gone the way they wanted, it would have been less profitable for them then if Zuckerberg had stolen their idea, been ruthless in his execution, and then thrown to them what for him was essentially chump change. In other words, I believe that he did them a favour.

I just won’t be telling my friend that.

Endnote

[1] In my first year of my undergrad, I lived at one of Monash University’s Clayton campus’ Richardson Hall. There, I tried for something similar to Zuckerberg’s project (this was in 1998, mind you.) I was able to collate - through a very long-winded, manual process that did not involve actually going to the students themselves - all of the names, possible email addresses, and dorm number of the people living at Richardson Hall. I published these to the web on an electronic ‘zine that I was building in the WYSIWYG web-editor, AOLpress. This list of email addresses severed as a mailing list as well for my promotion of the ezine. (The first release was a very successful launch that involved Passion Pop and cheddar cheese - the second rather fizzled.) Looking back at such endeavours, though, I think of how I had all of the characteristics of Mark Zuckerberg: slight outsider status, high geek ratings, highly motivated, with big picture ambition. (To make up for lack of coding ability, I resorted to brute force – though I have found that can only get you so far.) When it comes to the ‘evil genius’ part, however, I can only half relate.

Image by Laughing Squid

The politics of attire: or, for whom do women dress up?

2011-12-17T14:56:00.000+11:00

I recently wrote an article discussing how people use language, such as ‘whore’ or ‘slut’, to lay the ideological foundations to justify violence against women, and subsequently as a means of control. In the article, I wanted to go further than simply make incriminations against men - I also wanted to examine how patriarchal strategies can co-opt women, and turn them into collaborators. Women who dress up may do so with the intention either of ‘gaming the system’ of male libido, or simply to acquire the rights that they are otherwise entitled to, may be actually perpetrating the very system of heterosexual male favouritism that they are resentful towards. In other words, many women are playing - and benefiting from - the very game I thought they would resent.

Another way I find useful understanding this issue is by understanding it as a matter of semiotics. The tension around the politics of dressing up may simply be rooted in a misunderstanding – heterosexual men and women attach very different conscious signification to dress. From the perspective of many men, for instance, women dress up (the signifier) to appear sexually available and, indeed, promiscuous (the signified). Yet from the perspective of many women, I figure, they’re simply dressing up in order to elicit compliments from their girlfriends about their dress sense. Women say one thing, guys hear something different, and misunderstandings ensue.

However, I assume that for the vast majority of cases, women do not intentionally dress up to impersonate hookers. Part of this misunderstanding may be rooted in a lack of empathy: women may well enjoy sex as much as men, but women are generally not as horny as men are. As Stephen Fry observed -

"If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas. Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: 'God, I've got to get my fucking rocks off', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush. It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it."

Supposedly, the majority of the times that women dress up outside of going out – to work, to shop, to watch a film – they are not even doing so for the benefit of men, but for other women. If a woman dresses up for a bar or nightclub, she is not saying that she is ‘asking for it’. Rather, a large part of it is that she is trying to increase her standing amongst her peers.

Obviously, women who play on the abundance of a guy’s testosterone, and then rebuke them, can leave said guy feeling frustrated, even betrayed. This seems particularly unjust when said man happens to think of himself as a Nice Guy. However, obviously women “don't have to [agree to sex], and no force in the world can change that.” They are not mounting up a debt of sexual favours simply by dressing attractively, and acting comfortable around males.

By dressing seductively, however, women are signifying something. Maybe that ‘something’ is that they are going along with the aesthetic demands of heterosexual males – that is, spending not a small amount of time and money on preparing themselves for the male gaze – and thus their ‘subservience’ to the patriarchy. The flipside of that, however, might well be that they are indicating an expectation of better treatment, and thus engendering an air of entitlement. Of course, women frequently dress up for other women, particularly in the workplace. Even in a predominantly (or exclusively) female work environment, women still attend to their appearance. However, I am quite sure that sexual desirability still factors into this.

I suspect that heterosexual women base much of their behaviour and life choices not in order to seek approval from men, such as existing or hypothetical partners, but rather approval from other women. However, heterosexual women judge other heterosexual women ultimately on their ability to attract powerful, desirable men. Of course, a very gracious and dignifying collective-rationalization obscures all of this. No one wants to think of the time he or she spends on life projects as simply playing into the hands of existing power structures – to be “the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.” Thus, we have glossy magazines and glorious billboards proclaiming beauty as an ends unto itself – when really the end is primarily preferential mate selection.

Yet, there must be some understanding of the effect of dressing up. As Helen Garner writes in The First Stone in response to a young woman remarks that a man’s advances made her feel like a ‘worthless sexual object’:

“The phrase gave me the little shiver one gets when confronted with the disingenuous. Why would a young woman feel ‘worthless’ when a man makes an unwelcome sexual approach to her? She might not like it. She might want very much for it to stop. But why does it make her feel ‘worthless’? Would she feel ‘worthless’ if the man were younger, better-looking, more cool? Or is worthless sexual object just a rhetorical flourish, a bit of feminist sabre-rattling on behalf of a young woman who has not taken the responsibility of learning to handle the effects, on men, of her beauty and her erotic style of self-presentation?”

When a woman dresses up for a nightclub, she might actually be attempting to increase her ‘market value so that she can better negotiate with the alpha males in the room. Maybe she does not intend to hook up that night. She might not want to take someone particularly attractive home with her that night – but she wants to know she has that option. Maybe she just wants to flirt, and dressing up makes her feel empowered.

Wait a minute ... Empowered to do what? - rob a bank? - fly? No - empowered to hook up with alpha males if she so chose. Moreover, increase her standing amongst her peers in regards to what? –her superior buying power? - her Olympic-level athleticism? No – her standing as someone who is able to pick up hot men.

Ladies: if it is any consolation, I think that men do much the same. The (arguably petty) endeavours that men get caught up in - every one of those dumbbell lifts, all those unpaid hours on the job, each swing at someone in a bar – are not for our amusement.

They’re for yours.

Image by dhammza

An existential challenge of travel writing

2011-12-16T16:21:00.001+11:00

One parallel between travelling and drug taking, which I failed to catalogue in my thesis, is their respective literature’s failure rates. Regardless of whether we have just taken our first tab of LSD, or had our first Roman holiday, experiences that changed our lives are likely to appear trite and empty to others. It takes an incredible author indeed to deliver a travelogue that doesn’t come across as self-absorbed. Recounting our adventures – be they experienced in our head or on horseback - without sending our audience to sleep is equally difficult.

(For instance, I can sit in the departure lounge at Tullamarine waiting for my Thai Air flight to Bangkok and admiring the giant windowpanes, and their beautiful beams of light. I can try to capture the peace and relief of this place where the only thing left in getting to our destination is actually take the flight there. I could describe the child receiving a basic vocabulary lesson from his Southeast Asian mother, or the belly button of the attractive hippy doing a yoga routine in the afternoon light. Yet to anyone not about to take a holiday, this place is probably as romantic as a hospital Emergency Room waiting room. The exception, I think, is children, who are more often appreciative of the extraordinary. Like when eating in flight meal - this quasi space food, come jail food, come Jetsons food is actually cool because we are also eating it thousands of kilometres above, say, the Fricking Ocean!)

Maybe that is not true, however. The best travel writers I can think of - Donald Richie, Bill Bryson, and Alex Kerr to name a few - are deeply preoccupied with their own travel experiences. Richie inflicts us with the unfolding drama of his crumbling marriage in The Inland Sea, Bryson with his obesity while trekking the Appalachian Trail and Kerr’s disappointment in Japan’s fall from grace is palpable. These are not accounts of travels where the destination is in the forefront, unlike Ryszard Kapuściński’s Imperium and John Pilger’s Hidden Agendas, which are awesome. Yet while Imperium is a deeply personal memoir-travelogue, it does not normally come to mind when I think of travel writing. Rather, it is in a different category – one that we could possibly call ‘World writing’.

When we talk about travel writing, we really do seem to be focusing on the subject, much more than the object. Yet good travel writing can’t just be a matter of depicting oneself as a traveller who is worth emulating. I really don’t want to be a Japanese cinema buff with his marriage on the rocks such as Richie, or an overweight American like Byrson, or in love with a country that’s slowly destroying all that is beautiful about itself, as is Kerr.

Something else is happening that allows the above travelogues to be self-absorbed and yet still fraking good, and I think that ‘something’ is authenticity. Earnestness might be nauseating, but genuineness, combined with great writing, is indeed sexy.

Image by retro traveler

There are no answers, only choices: skirting the boundaries of cross-cultural understanding

2011-12-16T15:38:00.002+11:00

“Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now... unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on earth. I studied these gestures until they became reflexes again. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything.”

I included this excerpt from Steven Soderbergh’s version of the film Solaris at the beginning of a novella I wrote on my experiences in Japan. For me, the passage embodies the most powerful - and wonderful - aspects of the travel experience, both geographical and psychological: reverse culture shock - that amazing condition we can find ourselves in when we have travelled, where we have so immersed ourselves into another place or mind space that our very origins become strange to us. Reverse culture shock is testimony to the power of travel - that we can indeed be transformed by our experiences.

Distancing ourselves from our native culture is not, however, the focus of either of the Solaris films, and certainly not of Stanislaw Lem’s original novel. In fact, it is the opposite. Lem was trying to outline the actual limits of our ability to connect with the Other – a limitation not determined by technology, but rather by enthusiasm. As a species we are simply too narcissistic - we don’t care to know; instead, we are constantly trying to find ourselves in a mirror, and it is this mirror we have erected in front of us that blocks our view of others. Of course, we will never understand the ‘true Japan’, or the ‘true India’, when all we see is our reflection. Did Lem see this as a temporary condition of humanity, or something intrinsic? Who can say?

(Another great literary example is Michael Chrichton’s novel Sphere, which Barry Levinson made into a film with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone - and Samuel L. Jackson. The latter pretty much comes to the point of saying ‘Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking squids on this motherfucking spaceship. Everybody strap in - I'm about to open some fucking airlocks.’ The namesake ‘Sphere’, a mysterious artefact brought back from somewhere in space and the time, actually allows the characters to manifest their subconscious thoughts into reality. In other words, our first contact with an alien mind is one just more exercise in navel gazing.)

One of the most powerful moments in Soderbergh’s Solaris is between the protagonist, who is obsessed about understanding the sentient planet that they orbit, and the shade of his deceased friend:

Chris Kelvin: What does Solaris want from us?
Gibarian: Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there's a solution, you'll die here.
Chris Kelvin: I can't leave her. I'll figure it out.
Gibarian: Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? There are no answers, only choices.

“There are no answers, only choices.” This is the perfect antidote for travellers who have become, like Kevin, obsessed with understanding the essence of their host country. Alternatively, as Japanophile Donald Richie repeatedly says, ‘the ostensible is the real’ – what you see is what you get, and if that is not enough for you, then it’s time to leave.

Image by chop1in

Staying honest and in love in the social network orgy

2011-12-16T14:03:00.001+11:00

“And so the reddit orgy begins … self-fulfilling prophecy much?” a redditor recently commented on one of my blog posts, in which I was exploring how we consume information on the web in much the same way as we consume goods in RL. I suspect that he or she had caught onto the fact that I was in the process of submitting several of my other articles to various subreddits, and they were referring to how (by undertaking such mass-submission) I was falling into the exact routine that I was criticising.

They were right. I am a hypocrite. In other posts, for instance, I criticised the tendency we have online to aggregate rather than originate - using Jaron Lanier’s arguments as my basis. I was either exhibiting unintended irony - or simply bad faith. What I think is really going on, however, is that I’m blogging less to describe where I am at, but rather, where I want to be, and the ideas by which I hope to live.

It’s tough being honest on the web: I might mean what I say, but I don’t necessarily say what I think. Many of my blog posts, for instance, are exploratory – taking stabs in the dark, rather than shining a light into the darkness of my own ignorance (which is what I try doing with my academic writing). Consequently, I can come across as dogmatic and argumentative, though I like to think that I am just being a social critic, using intellectuals like sock puppets.

Then again, maybe I am their sock puppet.

I put a call out for reviews of one of my novellas recently – one that I am coming to realize is not as professional looking as I had thought. I am stressing out about being inundated by my Google+ followers, many of whom are literary minded (and probably better spellers than I) with remarks about my crap proof reading skills.

I have been in this situation before: shot down for making (admittedly) stupid online remarks. And I know that one response to that – and the one that I probably take more often than not – is to emotionally distance myself from my own work, and to play down in my own mind the enormous value of an intelligent online community. Each little criticism makes me fall a little more out of love with my own work.

I continue to plug away, posting articles of web-unfriendly length on my blog – however, I suspect that mine is now more a platonic relationship to writing than it was, say, ten years ago. That saw a much more intimate relationship between my work and I – in which my poetry and short stories didn’t get out that much. Some might even call it obsessive. I would very desperately like to believe that there is some middle ground – where I can expose my work to the light of the web, but not deprive it of the rich spring of my own ‘heart’.

Instead of cushioning myself behind a protective layer of irony, or other people’s authority, it would be good to ‘reconnect’ with my own creativity, and lay it bare. Yet it is difficult to do so amidst an online culture that encourages both intertextuality (linking to others’ work) and an emotional exhibitionism not far removed from sexting. We need to unplug our Ethernet cable and deactivate our wireless connections, as John Franzen recommends, if we hope to create anything honest and original.

Just don’t wait for me to be the first to do so :)

Splitting the world open: do we really want our Significant Other to be less gender-typical?

2011-12-15T16:44:00.000+11:00

Most of us have probably had to listen to friends of the opposite sex tell us that we should behave less gender-stereotypical. For instance, if we’re a guy, we’ve probably had women tell us that we should cry more; and I’m guessing more than a few women have heard guys tell them that they should be more assertive. However, I suspect that the first thought that comes to all of our minds at that point for both sexes is ‘No - you really don’t.’

Women will often ask men – ‘Be more in touch with your emotions; be more expressive.’ However, at risk of casting some enormous and erroneous generalizations, I believe there are few moments that a man is more ‘in touch with his emotions’ than when he is competing against another man – which is not always a pleasant sight. This might mean pelting along the road amidst a peloton of fellow cyclists, or wrestling with them in a bar. Yet our significant others – parents, employers, teachers, and partners - subject us to conflicting messages about such behavior. They tell us, ‘Participate, but don’t be competitive; stand up for what’s right, but don’t be violent; sing, don’t shout; show your emotions, but do so calmly; and talk about your passion, but only as long as it is relatable.’

Cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson explores this quite succinctly:

“The gravamen of the [Furious Muses’] complaints was Richard’s failure to be ‘emotionally available.’ The phrase had left him dumb with disbelief the first time a woman had gone upside his head with it. He guessed that many of his emotions were not really fit to be shared with anyone, much less someone, such as a girlfriend, he was supposed to be nice to, and associated ‘emotional availability’ with unguarded moments such as the one that had led to his getting the nickname Dodge. But several of his ex-girlfriends-to-be had insisted that they wanted it, and, in a Greek mythic sort of revenge, they had continued to be emotionally available to him long past their dates of expiration. And yet he reckoned he’d actually been emotionally available to Rosie Cardenas. Maybe even to the point of making her uncomfortable.”

I want all my female friends to be candid with me – or at least, I think I do. Yet as American poet and political activist Muriel Rukeyser wrote, if one woman told the truth about her life, “the world would split open.” I suspect she meant that women are afraid of being completely honest because they sense that such a pathos-filled outpouring – the outrage at generations of boys dying in wars, the craving for sensuality, whatever – would have social consequences of a similar magnitude to a natural disaster. If that is the case, then men and women have a lot more in common than we tend to think.

Image by Dena Flows

Toeing the party line in gender politics

2011-12-15T16:36:00.000+11:00

I have been writing quite a lot here about instructive topics such as why we should make ourselves redundant and compassionately detached, and why we do not need to love our jobs. I file these under life hacking – yet they are much broader in scope and instructive than tactics for greater productivity. Rather, they are 50 per cent lifestyle design, and 50 per cent makeshift life coaching. Such posts distill insights gleamed from blogs that I follow or books that I have read, often simply function as ‘notes to self’, and – as I’m starting to appreciate – present a running commentary of what someone who has had my upbringing would think.

I cannot exactly take credit or blame, for instance, for much of my arguments about attachment theory – or, as I would rather have it, compassionate detachment. Minds presumably smarter than mine have given it plenty of thought. In contrast to all that I have argued, dependence is supposedly a good thing; Bartholomew & Horowitz describe my attachment style as dismissive-avoidant, which I actually happen to find quite dismissive in itself. The powers responsible for shaping my views about how humans can, and should get along, are way beyond my control, and formed before I even came along – my culture, particularly my parents, my older brothers, and my earliest care givers. Furthermore, all the articles that I write about the subject are simply a matter of giving a theoretical respectability to my own practical, instinctive responses. Chances are that I ‘hard-wired’ myself with these responses before I left Primary school.

When I talk about what is a healthy response to, say, emotionally intense experiences, I cannot help but be aware that the fact that I am male largely determines my ideas of healthy behaviour. I might lean on my friends to behave more one way than another way – but it is probably because, some twenty+ years ago, that was how my parents and teachers were socializing me as ‘proper’ behavior. Either that, or I figured out that I had to form that kind of personality, and behave in that particular way, in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the world, and going mad; probably a combination of the two. I also figure that how other parents brought up their daughters, as girls, determine what behavior that they are in support of, or against, later in life, as women.

In discussing gendered behavior, then, I believe that we tend to toe the party line.

Image by Moyan_Brenn

This was supposed to be the future!

2011-12-15T14:39:00.001+11:00

“They lied to us. This was supposed to be the future. Where is my jetpack? Where is my robotic companion? Where is my dinner in pill form? Where is my hydrogen fuelled automobile? Where is my nuclear-powered levitating home? Where is my cure for this disease?” - John Slabyk

I think I had a significant advantage as a child over ‘grown ups’ when it came to dealing with the procession of time, and my place in it. At risk of sounding sentimental, as a child, I had a much greater imagination – which let me deal with the present – but I also had greater ambition, which let me mentally construct a much more colourful future. I might have been incredibly impatient with the status quo – yet it was the simplest of pleasures that provided the greatest amusement.

A chart I saw online recently illustrated this contrast well – it described our reaction when watching the sitcom ‘Married … with Children’ in the late 80s and 90s, compared to watching it now. As kids, we held washed-up father Al Bundi in complete contempt – though we lol’d deeply, for instance in the episode where it turns out aliens are stealing his smelly socks. Watching re-runs of the series, however, we envy Al: he holds down a relatively steady job, services his mortgage, and does not appear to have a massive student debt. We admire Al’s for all he has achieved - and not just because the GFC has forced a revaluation of our expectations - yet because the jokes are so close to home, none of them are particularly amusing.

Had I caught a glimpse of future ‘me’ living a life much like Al’s, I would have probably shot myself; now, as an adult though, I suspect that – like Al himself – I am a lot more cynical, resigned, and fatalistic about my plight. I am also less able to ignore the risks and costs of adventuring. I chalk this up to the wisdom of age: I am smarter than I was, and my self-preservation instincts are better honed. However, when I look back at some of the day-trips that I undertook during a year in Japan, for instance, I find myself asking - How on Earth did I have the courage to do that? I admit that some of my solo walks into the mountains of the Kantō were particularly ambitious – was monolinguistic, had no mobile, and was going by a (potentially out of date) Lonely Planet guide. Yet I had a whole lot of fun - climbing mountains, meeting people, pushing my limits and seeing beautiful sights. Now I’m a lot less eager to attempt such trips, which seems to suggest that I have become more conservative in the last seven years. This is a worrying trend, especially because taking those risks almost always resulted in success, and only rarely ran unnecessarily risks. Cyberpunk writer Neal Stephenson captures this nicely in his speculative fiction novel Reamde, where Sokolov, a security consultant, theorizes:

“All the operations he had participated in during his career before today had been untertaken by a foolish boy, in over his head and surviving by dumb luck. Whereas any operation he might carry out in the future would be ill-advised excursions by a man who was over the hill, past his prime.”

Yet a significant part of my psyche remains a ‘die-hard child’. I have reached adulthood, yet I still recall the wonder from watching The Jetsons re-runs. I am both indignant at having arrived at a future that has fallen short of my hopes and dreams as well as holding out hope that Gene Roddenberry will turn out to have been right. I suspect that most fellow-game-players, whom TED-speaker Jane McGonigal describes as the forerunners of an ethical and collaborative lifestyle, fit this category: child-like, but not childish. We find ourselves in the role of Jim Caviezel’s character, Private Witt, in The Thin Red Line:

First Sgt. Edward Welsh: In this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain’t no world but this one.
Private Witt: I seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination.

William Gibson’s short story ‘The Gernsback Continuum’ explores this very tension between reconciling the hopes and dreams that we (or our predecessors) had for the future, with the reality that we have inherited.

“During the high point of the Downes Age, they put Ming the Merciless in charge of designing California gas stations. Favoring the architecture of his native Mongo, he cruised up and down the coast erecting raygun emplacements in white stucco. Lots of them featured superfluous central towers ringed with those strange radiator flanges that were a signature motif of the style, and made them look as though they might generate potent bursts of raw technological enthusiasm, if you could only find the switch that turned them on. I shot one in San Jose an hour before the bulldozers arrived and drove right through the structural truth of plaster and lathing and cheap concrete.

‘Think of it,’ Dialta Downes had said, ‘as a kind of alternate America: a 1980 that never happened. An architecture of broken dreams.’”

As a kid, I was preoccupied with the numerous (and often arbitrary) options that I might pick, or be asked to make – which is why I could never take ‘yes’ for an answer. By the age of fifteen or so, I was suffering from a severe case of analysis paralysis. Before that came to a head, though, I just saw it as a case of ‘thinking big’: I was deliberating my opening move, knowing that it might well decide the outcome of the game, like Frost’s narrator in ‘The Road Not Taken’. I wanted nothing less than to be able to future proof my personality. Now, however, I find myself increasingly resembling Nicholas Cage’s character in The Weather Man, as he imagines all of the different people that he had a chance to become - but never was:

“I remember once ...
... imagining what my life would be like, what I’d be like.
I pictured having all these qualities.
Strong, positive qualities ...
... that people could pick up on from across a room.
But as time passed ...
... few ever became any qualities I actually had.
And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be ...
... all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer ...
... until finally they got reduced to one...
... to who I am.
And that’s who I am: the Weather Man.”

To remain sane as adults, we are obliged to resolve the contradiction between what we want (or wanted) from and of the world, and what we have (or had) created. As Haruki Murakami writes, “There’s always only one reality.” We can make our minds fit the world – which often means become increasingly cynical.

On the other hand, we can make the world fit our minds - through either the force of our actions or the force of our will. As Matt Johnson sings, “If you can’t change the world, change yourself. And if you can’t change yourself … change the world.”

Image by pecooper98362

Why I embraced science fiction as a kid

2011-12-15T14:13:00.000+11:00

“Fantasy is the mother genre — e.g. Gilgamesh, the Illad, Odyssey and most religions. Sci Fi is the brash offshoot. All literature has deep roots in fantasy, which in turn emerges from the font of our dreams. Having said that, what is my definition of the separation? I think it is very basic, revolving around the notion of human improvability. ‘Do you believe it is possible for children to learn from the mistakes of their parents?’” – David Brin

As a sixteen and seventeen year-old, I would frequently debate about ‘youth rights’ with any adult who had the misfortune of being nearby. In spite of my penchant for sustained debate, I couldn’t get over their view that young people deserved little or no autonomy - that we were stupid, ugly caterpillars in a world run by (and for) butterflies. According to him or her, we possessed no moral agency or personal sovereignty until we hit 18. Consequently, they expected my peers and I to resign ourselves to enduring this unfortunate biological period called ‘youth’ before we had evolved into ‘real people’. This frustrated me to no end since this implied that in their eyes, I was a ‘non-person’.
I refused to privilege some future period over the present - regardless of how much my elders berated me to do so. Having witnessed the extent that adults failed to realize their own standards, I had lost faith in the wisdom of those elders; and having witnessed my fair share of depressed and disenchanted adults, I had lost optimism that things would automatically‘get better’ when I had ‘grown up’.

In spite of my stubbornness, however, some of that dismal view of the present still must have rubbed off me. My parents’ constant chastisements that I endure the short-term pain for the long-term gain, may have worn thin, yet I grew up in a town of 6 000 (where at last count the youth unemployment rate was almost 20 per cent) so it wasn’t as if there was that much to do as a sixteen year-old. Perhaps that is why I became so infatuated with science fiction when I was a kid - I held out for dear hope that the future would offer more fascinating things than were currently available in a small town in the 20th century. Replicators, transporter pads, and warp drives seemed like a fair pay-off for having survived the crushing boredom of packing dishwashers, painting fences, and taking notes. Reading - and often writing - science fiction was a way for me to explore different possibilities of being. As author David Brin argues, “Science fiction … considers the possibility of learning and change.” Yes, I could have explored different worlds vicariously through the juvenile protagonists of tame, ‘young-adult’ novels that were our suggested reading. Yet the social constraints of their family, schooling, and a legal system that saw them as second-class citizens, seriously curtailed their adventures. As David Brin also points out, “The implicit assumption in most fantasy is that the form of governance that ruled most human societies since the discovery of grain must always govern us. And when a fellow like Tim Powers resists that assumption, he is writing science fiction, whether or not there are pirates, or wizards or demons.”

As a teenager in the 90s, I wasn’t just thinking about how to appease my teachers, win the approval of my parents, or be accepted into the cool club. Rather, I was interested in how to be a better human being in a better world and to do so I needed something that would put more choices on the table. That is why I embraced science fiction as a kid.

Image by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

'Year of the Ronin' alternative book cover design

2011-11-24T10:16:00.001+11:00

In a case of accidental crowdsourcing, benevolent redditor Jacob Conway offered me his alternative cover design for my novella, Year of the Ronin (of which I'm giving away free copies for review). The fragmented, tilt shifted quality reminds me a bit of Enter the Void.

What do you think? Better or worst than the design I threw together? Don't worry - I can take it. :)

Gibran and LeGuin on compassionate detachment

2011-11-17T13:18:00.001+11:00

I attended my cousin Bindi's wedding a while back, and during the ceremony, her husband-to-be, Marc, read from The Prophet. The bridegroom used Gibran’s words to pledge that he and his new wife would have a relationship based on compassionate detachment with their children:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

For me, like Bindi and Marc, compassionate detachment rates quite highly in the qualities of ‘good parenting’. If I ever were to have any children, I too would strive to teach my son or daughter everything that they wish to know - not everything I wished to teach. I hope I would celebrate my child’s achievements - even those that resulted from tuition or training from other adults. (A recognized stage in a pupil’s learning curve in Japan is ‘ri’ - the point where their growth diverges from their prescribed teachings.) I would love to be able to take pride in my children’s achievements that exceed my own - and yet not take credit for those achievements. Science fiction author Ursula Le Guin illustrates this model in her utopian novel The Dispossessed (on which I happened to write my honors thesis) beautifully. In her novel, biological, economic and social relationships are designed so that that the characters are largely independent of one another, and yet prosper. She describes the 'substitute' in a culture without marriage in the following passage, though it could be used to describe any other relationship, platonic or professional -

“Partnership was a voluntarily constituted federation like any other. So long as it worked, it worked, and if it didn't work it stopped being. It was not an institution but a function. It had no sanction but that of private conscience. [...] Though it might seem that [the] insistence on freedom to change would invalidate the idea of a promise or a vow, in fact the freedom made the promise meaningful.”

Unfortunately, my life here on Earth is very much at odds with LeGuin’s science fiction and Gibran’s mysticism. My anxieties have caused me to sabotage my workplace to ensure my coworkers remain reliant on me. I easily lose sight of why it is that I bother going to work at all. I start to figure that if no one pays me for doing something, or rewards me in some material way, there is no good reason for me to do it. LeGuin, however, is conscious of these tensions - even in the post-scarcity civilization of the Hainish. Her fictions often portray people trying to reconcile their professional and personal selves, such as empathetic anthropologists who struggle to refrain from meddling in other species’ affairs. The Dispossessed portrays a world where people use their work as self-expression, and who see no difference between an affront to themselves in the workplace, and an affront to them in public:

“A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole.”

Bringing the principles of redundancy from the context of the workplace, into the rest of our lives, makes sense when the traps that I might fall into in my office are the same that I can fall into in my ‘normal’ life. For instance, the same resistance that arises within me at the thought of being professionally redundant can arise at the prospect of being socially redundant - as expressed by the fear that if my significant other can replace me, what incentive would my friends and family then have in keeping us around?

As a parent, I know that I would be tempted to keep my children emotionally dependent on me - even emotionally handicapped – as long as possible. That way, they would continue to rely on me for affirmation and advice even once they had gained all of the credentials of adulthood. I am no longer drawing from fiction here – this shit happens, and it is not pretty. (French Philosopher Blaise Pascal once remarked, "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.") As long as my own self-worth is not dependent on my role as parent, I would be able to view this kind of behavior for what it is - just a couple of steps down from Münchausen syndrome by proxy, which is the opposite of the nurturing model towards which I would hope any familial relationship would aspire.

Instead, the ideal adult relationship that a parent and child have in their adult life - when the increased opportunities of the child offset the seniority of the parent - is one of friends. Obviously this is optimistic, but it is a far more desirable than a relationship of continued deference and patronage - or worst yet, constantly struggling to win the approval of an aged patriarch or matriarch, and then punishing them for withholding that approval. Were I a parent, I would love it if my children, though grown, continued to seek my opinion on matters I knew little about – but I would rather them be confident about making their own decisions. The healthiest, and happiest, relationships are those where the members choose to be together, rather than have to be - who gather with mutual anticipation of the exciting things that they will do together, rather than out of fear of the alternative.

Image by romaryka

Interested in a free book? I’m giving away paperbacks for review

2011-11-10T16:43:00.001+11:00

Greetings r/books, !followers, in/connections, @friends, tumblrers and +People. I’m going to try something a little different today. I would like to give away copies of my novella Year of the Ronin to anyone who is interested in reviewing it. No strings attached – you do not have to give a five-star rating – and the review can go up wherever you like: as a blog post, a google+ post, an Amazon review, or a hard copy publication. My intention is to generate interest in my creative work, and I would like to make it as easy and fun for you as possible. To that end, if there are any other way(s) that I could sweeten the deal, please let me know.

Year of the Ronin follows an Australian photojournalist who is assigned to work in Japan. The bulk of the narrative chronicles a single day in his wanderings of Tokyo as he visits various temples, shrines, and festivals throughout the 30 million-strong metropolis, before visiting his hometown on the Victorian coast.

The Australian literary journal Wet Ink (featuring JM Coetzee) published 5 000 words of Year of the Ronin, making it the longest contribution to appear in that edition. Prominent writers Professor Kevin Brophy and Grant Caldwell supervised its development, and it received First-class honours at the University of Melbourne.

Year of the Ronin is 25 000 words, which equates to about a hundred nicely paced A4 pages, and about the same number of pocketbook paperback pages. At 200-250 words per minute, it will take you only a couple of hours or so (coffee breaks included) to read. One edition even has pretty pictures spread throughout.

Q: What is in it for me?
Firstly, I think that Year of the Ronin makes for a good read – otherwise I would be promoting some other title. So at the very least, you are going to be entertained. But wait, there's more:

If you would like to review Year of the Ronin and live in Australia, I will send you a paperback copy (and even autograph it for you, if you like).
If you would like to review Year of the Ronin but reside outside of Australia, I suggest you get yourself a soft copy through one of several sources (see below) - otherwise, I'll try to send you a hard copy, shipping budget permitting.
If you have your own title that you would like a review written for, we can swap books and I will write a review of yours.
If you are an agent, bookstore owner, prominent critic (for example, in the top 10 000 Amazon reviewers) or publisher, I will consider sending you a deluxe colour edition to wherever in the world you are (see caveat below).

You will also get my immense gratitude for helping out an indie writer :)

Q: How can I best give feedback?
As well as writing a review on your own blog, or elsewhere of your choice, your options include:

Writing a review on the corresponding Amazon page – click the 'Review this item' link.
Add a review on the Gooodreads page.
Adding a comment on the Scribd page – in the free-text field to the right of the document.
Adding a comment on the Blurb page – in the (Facebook plugin) at the bottom.

If your feedback relates to grammatical and spelling errors, please email me and I'll incorporate your changes as quickly as I can.

Q: How can I get a hard copy?

The simplest way to contact me is to visit my Google+ ‘About’ page and click the ‘Send an email’ button on the left-hand side.

The following procedures apply:

If you would like to review a hard copy, please send me your postal address, and details of where your review would go.
If you are a publisher/agent/critic, please send me your postal address and your proof of your credentials.

If you reside outside of Australia, simply want to get your hands on a copy right now, or want to conserve paper, you can access a soft copies yourself (see below).

Q: Will my personal information, such as my address, be shared in any other manner?
I hate spam as well, so you can be assured that your email and postal addresses will not be abused. I am a one-person operation, and I have no intention of distributing your details to any third parties. If you are still concerned about this, I understand, and am open to suggestions on how I might avail you of a hard copy without you having to share your address with me. For instance, I'd love to be able to send prospective reviewers a 'gift code' that they could redeem through the publisher, but it doesn't appear like blurb.com offers them in that price range. In the mean time, it may be best to source a soft copy, as described below.

Q: How can I get a soft copy?

The best place to read it is through scribd.com. From there, you can download it as a pdf, doc, or txt file. Since I'll be endeavoring to correct any mistakes, and take any suggestions on board as they come in, and I can update this version the easiest, it will be the most up-to-date.

Otherwise, you can view or download an electronic copy of Year of the Ronin through one of the following:

Preview it through blurb.com using Flash (a slow-connection version is also available).
Get a kindle edition on Amazon for less than a dollar.
Get an eBook for iPad, iPhone, iPod (.epub) through blurb.com for a couple of dollars – as soon as blurb makes this option available.
Get a pocketbook edition yourself through blurb.com for $6 + postage.
Check out the preview embedded below.
Send me your email address and I'll post you either a eBook for Kindle, or an .epub file - please specify which you would like.

Q: What other goodies do you have?
If that is not enough, and you happen to care for something a little more academic, I also have a couple of non-fiction titles:

You can download/order/read An Existential Guide to Travel:

on my blog for free
from scribd.com for free
as a Kindle eBook from amazon.com for less than a dollar
as a soft cover from blurb.com for $40.

Alternatively, you can download/order/read Better Travelling through Chemistry: New Adventures in High-Fi:

on my blog for free - where there is also a concise, hip edition
from scribd.com for free
as a soft cover from blurb.com for $32.

Q: Why should I pay for any of this if I can just read it online?
This is a very good question, about which I have thought long and hard. I have decided to offer my intellectual property on the tipping system – if you think it is worthwhile, fork out the dollar or two for the electronic copy (which isn’t much, btw); it will mean a lot to me.

Q: Any caveats you care to mention?
Yes, a lot of this depends on how many people show interest – the more requests for copies, the greater a discount that I can get, but the greater the total costs. I will be severely limited in how many premium editions that I can send out, so the bar will be high for copies of them. If, however, you can convince me that you can make good use of multiple copies, I will certainly consider sending them your way.

Q: I can has preview now?

Year of the Ronin by Ash Hibbert | Make Your Own Book

Bill Hicks and Tim Ferriss on making ourselves redundant

2011-11-10T12:00:00.000+11:00

“One of my big fears in life is that I'm gonna die and my parents are going to come to clean out my apartment and find that porno wing I've been adding on to for years,” the late comedian Bill Hicks confessed. The sad irony is that Hicks did die long before his time, from – as he jokingly anticipated – smoking-related illness, looked after by his parents in the last months of his life. Fate may well have realized Hicks’ fears about having his parents sort through his den of sin, yet he could have avoided such outcome. Not necessarily by avoiding porn, since this made up a good portion of his material, but by arranging his entire collection in a large box labeled ‘In case of my death, please shred and recycle.’

By storing his pornography collection more discretely and efficiently, Hicks would have made his parents’ lives, and his own his own life, a lot easier. He would not have needed to live afraid that his mum would lose her idealized vision of her son. Furthermore, though, it would have been easier for him to jettison his over-used stash to make way for any new material; and by avoiding a hoarding mentality, he could have saved on the costs of that new porn wing.

In the mid 2000s, lifestyle design guru Timothy Ferriss confronted a similar monster of his own creation: his sports-nutrition supplement business, BrainQUICKEN. In The Four Hour Work Week, Ferriss describes his struggles to sell BrainQUICKEN – first, however, he had to make sure it could work without him. This turned into a mammoth undertaking, and one that initially failed. He did manage to sell the business, but only after taking an impromptu vacation abroad. With very limited email and phone use during that time, he saw the feasibility and desirability of disengaging himself from the day-to-day logistics of his company. However, the first thing Ferris had to do was disinvest himself emotionally from his company: his experience revealed to him the ways in which his clients, and his employees, were capable of fending for themselves, but only if he was willing not to constantly supervise and mother them.

I have also found myself struggling with such emotional disinvestment whenever my manager, or myself, has encouraged (or forced) me to analyze how I do my job. When analyzing, mapping, and redesigning the business processes for clients, particularly as part of a major software system implementation, I have observed how stakeholders identify themselves so heavily in the very tasks that they perform that they cannot imagine such process analysis as anything less than an existential threat. In some regards, they are right to be wary – for there is more to a job than what any Microsoft Visio process map can ever hope to capture. Yet I suspect that the majority of the resistance when challenged to explain our methodology, in both stakeholders and me, has been out of fear.

For one thing, they – and myself - have been afraid that if my supervisors succeed in looking close enough at what we do all day, they might decide that our position does not deserve the salary that they have allocated – or that the Director’s Personal Assistant could probably fit our job in during his or her lunch break. After all, the natural and ultimate outcome of greater efficiency is redundancy. I like to think that I am the only person truly capable of performing my job, and it has offended my self-esteem when I have perceived that anyone with my qualifications could sit at my desk. For the sake of job security, I have tried to ensure that my employer can never easily replace me, and to achieve this ends, I have essentially sabotaged my own workflow: putting in place an informal process that is so convoluted, and so unintuitive, that my replacement might as well reinvest the entire role.

This reveals a big problem with having become too familiar with salaried employment – that I start to see the ‘purpose’ of my profession as sitting on a chair in front of a computer, rather than of creating, say, informative content. This is applicable to my personal life as well as my office job. I make a virtue of necessity. I structure my life around housekeeping. I look forward to being able to fine-tune the mechanics of my life. Life hacking becomes an ends unto itself. I think of this as the ‘house-spouse syndrome’: I become so wrapped up in the daily chores that I forget to engage in my own projects, and end up bitter and frustrated without even knowing why.

From the above experiences and observations, I understand why trying to make myself professionally disposable can seem counterintuitive. Yet I have come to appreciate the mantra that if my employer cannot replace me, they cannot promote me. Furthermore, by making it as easy as possible for anyone of similar qualifications to step in and do my work, I actually help isolate my singular expertise. I think of it this way – if I have gone to every effort to teach a willing coworker how to do my job, and they still struggle at it, I must be good.

I have worked to overcome some of the aforementioned anxieties by reminding myself, as Stephen Covey advises, to start, and progress, with the end in mind. For instance, it is too easy to sink into a paper shuffling, computer-face mentality – to be more concerned with appearing busy, or even being busy, rather than being productive. Some of my favorite jobs in the past have involved setting up websites, or laying out hard-copy marketing material – both involve a very high mouse-click-per-minute rate, but require very little mental effort, meaning that managers have tended to assume that I was doing an awesome job and have left me alone. However, I have come to realize that there are much better ways of designing websites and brochures – templates and styles, anyone? These might result in more visits by curious managers, but they also mean a whole lot less repetitive strain injury – and my managers tend to end up very tantalized once I have explained the benefits of approach.

Like Ferris, I have also come to appreciate the benefits of arranging my life so that the impact would not be catastrophic for my friends, family, and coworkers, should I suddenly have an urge to drop everything and travel. I want like to take this principle of voluntary redundancy a step further, however, and examine whether I should also aspire to make my entire life redundant. Can I engineer my life so that I could drop everything and leave - without needing to feel guilty for being irresponsible – and without a giant crater or death threats greeting me upon my return?

Some well-known and well-documented philosophies already lend themselves to this goal: automation, minimalism, and having a backup. This could include, for instance, ensuring that

My house’s utility bills would continue to be automatically paid. This means that my relationship with my co-inhabitants, and my our credit ratings, are going to survive even if I suddenly no longer have access to my snail mail.
I can easily pack away, and/or loan out, most of my belongings after a few phone calls and an hour of light lifting. (Loaning means that I will not have to worry about the cost of long-term storage, theft, or moths.)
Someone else in my work place knows how to do my job.

The above strategies would benefit my regular life even if I never caught the travel bug and wanted to hitchhike abroad for a year. Optimizing my professional tasks makes career even if I do not particularly feel like a more senior role (the proof of an efficient and intuitive machine is how well it will survive without the engineer that created it). Similarly, having less impractical stuff, and having intuitive systems in place, makes life easier and less stressful.

Image by Dan Correia

Supply and demand in higher education

2011-11-08T16:39:00.000+11:00

I was catching the tram into work this morning when I caught sight of an advertisement for Melbourne University’s Graduate School of Business and Economics. A full time year of study costs local students over $26k and international students $31k - for one of their two-year degrees, such as the Master of Management, that is a non-trifling total of $50k-60k.

Once upon a time, I imagine, an undergraduate degree was sufficient for the majority of jobs I might have considered applying for –my prospective employers would have probably considered anything more to be excessive. Instead, I could have simply got an arts degree, and then taught myself my vocation of choice on the job. Now, however, the stakes are higher. While the Late-2000s financial crises are no longer affecting those of us in Australia anymore, the memory if 2009 is with us too strongly. I know people that have had to consider a career change after twenty years in the same industry. I remember my compatriots’ humiliation of having to buy sub-premium grade beef mince. I for one had to take on a job that was offering the same salary as my previous position - the horror. None of us wants to repeat that. Therefore, there is a growing market amongst the well-to-do for graduate degrees as a form of career insurance. Arguably, it is not going to be a game changer for the job you are in currently. However, a graduate degree allows for some differentiation - with an MBA, for instance, you are that bit ahead of everyone else, even by a token amount, which can be all that you need when your company starts to downsize.

As a graduate student, I am more likely to be holding down a regular professional job while I am studying. This means that I face less opportunity cost compared to when I was an undergraduate. A graduate degree can also provide me with an immediate benefit as it supplements my existing, and proven skill set. As an undergrad yet to enter the job market, on the other hand, my abilities in my chosen industry – professional writing and editing – was entirely theoretical (I had done plenty of creative and critical writing outside of university, but been paid for none). Furthermore, as a graduate student I was more at least capable of paying for my degree up-front (in different circumstances, I might even been able to have convinced my employer to subsidize my study). This meant that I would not have had to pay the interest on my student debt as well as the principle, which was a consideration I had to make with my undergraduate study. (This is particularly a problem outside of countries like Australia, where the commonwealth government will provide a CPI-adjusted loan to cover outstanding tuition fees).

In fact, I am tempted to argue that in places with very high unemployment rates, such as the United States, it would be pretty much a lost cause for me to study at an undergrad level, particularly at a rate greater than my ability to pay my own way. The real money - the smart money - is in getting an education when I already have a record of accomplishment: that is, with a job history. Sure, institutions will keep offering me increasingly expensive courses. However, those universities that care an iota about things like completion rates and research output are going to be investing in the graduate study market. In addition, if I do not wish to inflate the higher education bubble any further, and would instead actually like to prepare myself for the real life, I should remind myself of the following rather obvious truth:

“Today’s college students have way more fun and spend far more money than those of the past. Of the more than 2 million high school grads entering college on an annual basis, about one third drop out after the first year (amounting to a $9 billion waste). Moreover, a fifth of them can’t properly balance a checkbook, 50% can’t analyze the prose of news editorials, and more of their time is spent per week partying (10 hours) than studying (8 hours). Of those who actually graduate, more than half take 6 or more years, have an average of $3,173 in credit card debt, and go into careers completely unrelated to their studies. Basically, today’s college students are breaking all of the old rules, and blazing new trails on campus.” -- DegreeCentral

I admit that, were I a high-school graduate now, I would be in the most need of the 'foot up' that a tertiary qualification offers. However, I would like to think that I would recognize how, as a prospective undergraduate student, I would be negotiating from a position of weakness, and would consequently be at the greatest risk of exploitation by lenders and universities. The fact that the alternative to study – taking responsibility for my own financial, professional and mental development - seems so frightening is the very reason why (were I a prospective undergraduate in today’s economy, particularly in the US) I should turn away from university, and face my fears.

Image by Bugtom

NeoLuddite v. Technophile: making our gadgets work for us

2011-11-03T17:14:00.001+11:00

One of the direst warnings that I came away from Lanier’s ‘Local/Global flip’ with was how Globalism – for which the internet is one, very important tool – is allowing capitalism to become literally too efficient for its own good.

We seek advancements in technology, and markets, ostensibly for improves in our standard of living. Take, for example, the Kindle eBook reader, which - I can tell you from experience - is as easy to read off as the printed page.

Rather than constantly buying books (which, after being read, simply become wall decorations), I am now pirating eBooks online. This means that I am saving quite a bit of money – though even were I to spend the same amount of money each year on eBooks as I had on paperbacks, I would still get greater bang for buck than in the pre-Kindle era. This is just one example of how the internet has benefited my hip pocket: regardless of what it is that I am buying, I profit from new technologies - saving time and energy from automation, digital storage and instantaneous communication.

However, the Kindle and other eBook readers will probably ring the death toll for the majority of bookshops and publishing houses. This causes retailers and agents to lose their jobs and flood the labor market, and some of them start vying for my job. Suddenly, not just the ex-bookshop-retailers face a salary cut – I do as well. The Kindle thus lowers the price of my books - but it also lowers my book purchasing power.

With such a range of technologies emerging, such a pattern would be appearing across the board. After all, technology is ‘forcing’ virtually everyone, regardless of how they are earning a living, to adapt, as their job changes or becomes redundant.

As redditor Floatbox usefully summarizes:

Technology makes the economy more efficient
it costs less to buy things
workers are displaced
displaced workers flood the job market
everyone's wages go down
we all have less buying power.

Lanier notes this pattern in regards to Wal-Mart:

“With Wal-Mart, the consumer, or the ordinary person who was a shopper at Wal-Mart was confronted with these two pieces of news. One is, stuff they wanted to buy got cheaper, which of course is good, but the other thing is their own employment prospects were reduced, which is bad, and Wal-Mart’s rhetoric sometimes try to balance these things and say, “We cost a lot people their jobs, and we also save people a lot of money”, but the thing is you can’t equate the two.”

Maybe the descent in cost of living and salary is not at the same rate - in some cases, it could even be in inverse proportions. A lot depends on two factors: how I earn a living, and how well I control my expenses.

Certainly, there's the argument that the internet has empowered people - artists are now . However, while I suspect that the total number of people making money off the internet, as well as the total amount of money being made, has increased, I also suspect that amount of time and effort being put into the web (both in commercial ventures like writing apps and selling stuff thanks to regretsy, to voluntary efforts such as blogging) is grossly disproportional to those returns. In short, we're making more money from the web, but we are putting in even more time, so that our average returns have actually diminished.

It's not simply a matter of Luddites losing their jobs because technophiliacs have embraced a smarter way of doing things. Just look at the economic model around writing: we're not rewarding those who have deserted their community newspaper, or their zine, in favor of an online journal or blog. Instead, the technocrats seem to have destroyed the competition (quality broadsheet newspaper) and replaced it with crowd sourcing, and UGC-filled opinion pieces. Yes, we bloggers are now shamelessly pimping out our ideas to the web at large, and being noticed by a crowd that earlier would have lived off traditional media - but one of the few reasons that we are proving so successful at it is because we are undercutting our content.

Case study:

I have profited immensely from the Information Age - had electronic learning, wireless retail technology, and the web never taken off, I would probably be filing books in some community library basement at minimum wage. However, there is a risk of my line of work that is as dangerous as being a cashed-up Bogan with a love of big boats, and that is a love of tiny gadgets.

With the money that I am making, I could quite comfortably become a Steve Jobs fan boy and purchase every Apple-related device upon release. The internet may be essentially free, and, according to some, a human right; yet large IT companies are admirably skilled at ‘selling’ it to us through incredibly expensive devices. To put things in perspective, the iPhone 4S is $800, excluding ongoing costs. The Kindle Keyboard 3G, on the other hand, is $190, with a lifetime of internet access. However, it is very easy - too easy, in fact - for me to splash out on the status symbol instead. Furthermore, the time that I spend on sites such as Facebook and Reddit, helping aggregate content and write the moral equivalent of lol-cat captions, has an enormous opportunity cost attached: I am effectively holding down a second job but without any salary.

Making our gadgets work for us

To best benefit from technology, I have to make it work for me, rather than work for it. I have to constantly make sure that I keeping ahead of the game by remaining up skilled and open-minded, staying independent of the technology and idealism of the day. (Some more ideas on future-proofing our careers against technology are discussed in Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.) By all accounts, I should program apps for the latest iPad or iPhone. However, I should not be living my life on them. Put colloquially – I should never get high on my own supply.

For those interested in knowing how to to best use your gadgets for greater peace of mind and improvements of your life, I would suggest that you don't: leave your gadget turned off. If you are seeking greater peace of mind, it will not be found in a game of Angry Birds; if you want to improve your life, get out and exercise some. I know that this might come across as snarky, but your gadget is unlikely to make you a fitter, happier, person. One stand-out strategy suggested by William Powers, author of Hamlet's Blackberry, is of having an internet Sabbath. This involves taking a day (or two) off every week from online technology - or at least excluding it from one's house.

One of the particular problems with looking to technology to improve my productivity is that I can subject myself to the rebound effect: the more efficient that I make your life, the more unimportant tasks I will have time for. I can see a similar phenomena take place in regards to the energy efficient devices that we I like to think will reduce my carbon emissions - they just mean that I have more money to spend on other generators of greenhouse gases. I see it also in the effects that food and drinks labelled as 'Diet' have on me - 'Now,' I think, 'I can eat and drink twice as my much.' I can find better tools, hacks, and plug-ins to manage my RSS feeds, for instance - but unless I tackle my values, my appetites, and the underlying issues behind my online reading, I will keep spending the same time and mental energy on being connected and consuming information. And it is not like I will at least be smarter for all that reading, if the caliber of my reading is in fact a distraction from much more deserving, serious topics. Nor will it necessarily help me enhance my life, if my reading is just a form of procrastination.

My response to the quandary at hand is that, each business day, I sit at my workstation maintaining my employer’s website – and then, when the late afternoon sun starts to shine through my window above Port Philip Bay, I get on my bike, and I cycle alongside the river. For at least a couple of hours, I am off the Grid - and life is good.

Image by Toban Black

'What to be when I grow up?' Studying for jobs that don't exist

2011-11-03T17:14:00.000+11:00

This time, fourteen years ago, my similarly eighteen-year-old friends and I were in our second and final semester of high school, in a small public school a couple of hours east of Melbourne. We would have been studying our final exams, and there were some tough questions. However, none of those questions was as tough as the one our parents and teachers were asking us: ‘What were going to do with the rest of our lives?’

Many of us started putting in our preferences for which university degrees or TAFE courses we wanted to do. However, many also had plans to do an apprenticeship, and to enter a life as a laborer. I opted to continue my formal education for another three years in the form of a writing degree at Deakin University. It was mostly a stalling tactic – I hoped that by the time that I finished the degree I might actually know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and once I had figured that out, I could then start studying an appropriate degree.

I came to believe, however, that after VCE I should have started an apprenticeship, or done some hospitality course, or simply worked in an office for a couple of years. In doing so, I would have always had a secure means of income. If I then wished to, I could have gone on to do a university degree - but under my own stream: I would pay my own way through tertiary studies, and lived the life of the mind out of choice, rather than fall into it because I had no marketable skills.

Fortunately, however, I managed to teach myself a bit of web writing and design during my undergrad – not anything that I would have learned in class, by the way. This extracurricular experience allowed me to get an office job the week following my final exam, working for an e-learning solutions provider, and afterwards as a software developer, writing their instruction manuals and redoing their website.

Thus began my web career, which I am now six or so years into, and with all appearances of having steady work in the years to come. Meanwhile, in the U.S. at least, the traditionally male profession of construction is taking a dive: no one wants to, or can afford to, build housing estates or business districts anymore. (Though, in Australia where our mining economy seems to be big enough to be able to subsidize the rest of the economy, trade people are doing it okay).

At risk of taking too much credit for what was probably just luck and laziness, I bet on the right high-technology horse – but not because of the course that I chose to do. Everything in my undergraduate degree helped make me an intellectually richer person – yet it was only due to my interest in running an e-zine for my campus residence, and maintaining a home page for me, that made me a financially richer person.

In a way, my original stalling tactic worked. I did eventually figure out what I could do to earn myself a buck, and best of all, I was able to learn the necessary skills alone on a computer; which was fortunate, since there weren’t any subjects at my university on writing for the web at that time. My career adviser’s mantra turned to be correct: I had begun my study before my future profession even existed.

Image by lilDeMented

The Occupiers, the forgotten 1%, and the preoccupation with prestige

2011-11-03T17:13:00.003+11:00

The gravy train appears to have jettisoned a few rear carriages – particularly those carrying economy passengers – and a nation of people, many whom once had an almost religious faith in the tenant that anyone can become President, are starting to lose their faith in capitalism. The Occupy movement is one manifestation of this disenfranchisement. An outrage at having big business infiltrate their big government unites the Occupiers, who are starting to suspect that our governments are in Big Corperations' pockets.

Yet I am confused as to why, in the United States, there appears to be little or no mainstream protests anymore about the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. These are enormously expensive undertakings (on top of all the other related costs of maintaining a world police) that have netted little obvious returns, especially when compared to far more deserving causes. From this, I would deduce that the ‘99 percent’ cannot be protesting against their government simply for squandering so much of their tax dollars. Otherwise, they would be calling for an ‘Occupy the Pentagon’.

Instead, the present ire of the middle-class emerged when the US government started blatantly redistributing those tax dollars to large corporations. (This makes me think that most Americans would prefer their tax dollars spent on an endless and violent war than on keeping the upper class happy.) By giving corporations and the super-rich further tax breaks and bailouts, the US government does not necessarily impoverish the middle-class – yet it does make the disparity more tangible, and subsequently gives the middle class a sense of having had their comparative social standing reduced. It is completely reasonable to feel disrespected because of that – it just does not appear particularly objective.

Similarly, I am confused (well, not really) as to why the media should find interest in a group of middle-class people choosing to camp out in prominent inner-city locales, and yet pay little or no head to the tent-cities formed by the homeless. These permanent tent-cities represent the 3.5 million of Americans who experience homelessness in a given year - another ‘1 percent’ whose existence the middle-class about which should also be particularly enraged. Furthermore, there are some 43.6 million Americans living in poverty. This demographic has the dubious advantage of not having to worry about where their tax dollars are going. They are not the primary focus, or the appeal, of the Occupy movement, which seems to be more concerned with relative wealth than absolute wealth - after all, the mantra is not ‘We are living below the poverty line’, but rather, ‘We are the 99 percent’.

Were I one of the Occupiers, or a particularly strong sympathizer, I imagine that there is a good chance that I would also be one of the following:

an indebted homeowner
an indebted tertiary student
a middle-class investor who has lost money in the share market.

I would have bought a house, or a degree, or a share portfolios, because my friends, families, coworkers, and TV station anchors told me that ‘owning’ the roof over my head, or being able to seduce a corporation with a flashy resume, or being a ‘co-owner’ of such corporation, is necessary to be a worthwhile person. To impress people nowadays:

I need to have more than just wireless internet – I need to have 3G.
I can’t just have two masters degrees in the humanities – I need to have an MBA from HBS.
I can’t just live in the inner city, I have to ‘own’ my apartment.
I can’t even just offer my wealth to the needy– I have to be able to tell people what they need.

I would not buy a house that I lived in, or studied a graduate course for my professional passion, or bought a managed fund that sends me glossy annual reports, because I wanted to make a prudent investment of my time and energy. (If there were the case, I would have taken one look at the average return on investment of a property over the last ten or so years, or increases in employability and salary for graduate employment, or performance of shares – and I would promptly look elsewhere.) I would have instead been looking for something much more primal: status, prestige, and elevated social standing amongst my peers.

I believe that this is what the Occupiers are protesting about – at having had their dreams for greater social standing, to become ‘the next President’ of whatever, betrayed. People are revolting now because they realized that they over-leveraged themselves for kudos. Kudos, alone does not make people any smarter, nor does it help pay the rent. Kudos is a tradable luxury item – one that we have felt compelled to stockpile. Only now, we find that there is no one interested in buying.

Image by watchingfrogsboil

'Where did all the money go?' Being rich versus appearing rich

2011-11-03T17:12:00.002+11:00

Simply by living in a developed country, you are part of ‘the one per cent’. More precisely, those who are in the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Australia – about half a billion people, or fifteen percent of the global population – account for almost half the world’s purchasing power parity.

This is not to delegitimizing the frustrations of the ‘99%’ by the way – just to remind myself that I have it good. Yes, I have more student debt than I should have - yet it is a debt by choice. Yes, many jobs that I would love to have are requiring greater and greater levels of tertiary qualifications, yet even without the help of a university, I would be intellectually richer than I might ever have ever been in an earlier decade. This is thanks in great part to the distributive power of internet, yet it is also simply because I am part of a species that has produced more artistic and scientific work than previously existed.

In these regards at least, things are getting better. We live in a time of stupendous wealth, and - in spite of the fact that much of this wealth is form having passed environmental and social debt to foreign and future citizens - it is hard not to be in awe of the amazing resources that we have inherited merely by being born in a developed country.

The only thing that could overshadow our awe in that wealth, of course, is having so much of that wealth surround us, and yet to still find ourselves lacking. I would like to know why.

Most of my views on the matter serve to illustrate my deep-rooted biases in favor of

relative frugality and enjoying free time
staying out of debt
being autodidactic and informal learning
and not giving much of a toss about what other people think.

It is the last sentiment that most thoroughly pervades my writing. For at risk of over-simplifying an incredibly complex problem, I believe that the cause of most of my woes, economically and socially, online and off, is my preoccupation with APPEARING healthy, wealthy and wise - to the detriment of actually BEING so. I’m more concerned with having a narrow waistband than being able to sprint a hundred meters. To avoid appearing cheap to my friends, I will lash out on an expensive bottle of Grenache, rather than put the money to my superannuation fund. If I want to boost my intellectual credibility for my next job interview, I am more likely to do an MBA than sit down and read War and Peace. Efforts to keep up appearances have never been more costly – and it is towards these efforts that much of the money has gone. As ERE financial blogger Jacob Lund Fisker writes in his article ‘99 percenters, capitalism, and natural slaves’:

“It’s … pretty hard for most people to admit that they’re the cause of their own problems. If only they hadn’t bought a $400,000 house on a $80,000/year salary. If only they didn’t spend $3,000 per year or clothes and hairdressers, $20,000 on gas and car payments, $2,000 per year on entertainment, $100,000 on that degree in English literature from a small by trendy liberal arts college, and oh yeah, $118 on books to educate themselves, then maybe they’d be way better off financially speaking … People don’t want to hear that. They much prefer to blame someone else…”

We have the “potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice”. Yet social status is a positional good: something “whose value is mostly (if not exclusively) a function of their ranking.” This means that there is only ever going to be so much ‘social status’ to go around. The cost of social status simply rises as our collective buying power increases. I fear that much of our global and individual financial woes may find their origins in such a trend. For while we need to work less to live well, we need more to ‘dream big’.

Image by Renegade98

Technology, knowledge and conspicuous consumption

2011-11-03T17:12:00.001+11:00

The internet has become a giant free-subscription library, within the reach of the vast majority of people in the developed world regardless of their income level. This has resulted in incredibly cheap access to two-way information distribution. It is difficult to say what the internet’s value is, but for many people, the amount of money that they would accept to give up the internet would be substantial.

“In some ways, maybe we’re all millionaires and billionaires, if we have something that’s worth so much to us – something that lets us do so much. So think about it, how much is all of that worth to you, you might just be richer than you realize.” – psfk.com

However, the internet’s very affordability seems to have devalued it. Now that information and communication technology is virtually free, and the entry level to being knowledgeable and connected is so low, for it to have any prestige value, there seems to be a perverse social requirement to raise the bar. The cost of being ‘truly’ connected and ‘truly’ knowledgeable is now much more expensive.

While no one has deprived me of my internet connection or mobile phone, what has happened is both more insidious and arguably much more wasteful: I can no longer simply to BE connected and knowledgeable – I have to PROVE to others that I am, in the most conspicuous and costly ways possible.

Knowledge

Consider this in the context of higher education. What I can now learn via my home computer probably makes me a better informed person then what my parents’ university degrees made them – and probably better than my grandparents were from their entire lives. (There are of course a few other things life experience can imbue me with which an online connection cannot, but allow me to put that aside for now.)

Yet, amidst all of this accessible information, and online communities, universities continue to operate by much the same model, and with as much respectability. A degree, or two, is virtually essential for a professional position. Significantly, tertiary study has also become a lot more expensive: consider that, some twenty years ago, undergraduate study was free in Australia, while it is now possible to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars of tuition fees. Meanwhile, in the U.S. for instance, student debt is exceeding credit card debt.

Knowledge has become increasingly inexpensive– and yet, accreditation for possessing that knowledge have become increasingly expensive.

Employment, however, is largely a zero-sum game. In spite of having a smarter population, there are only ever so many jobs to go around. (Perhaps more appropriately, in order to keep salaries low, it is necessary to maintain an ‘economically healthy’ unemployment rate.) Consequently, employers are throwing increasingly absurd hurdles in the way of prospective and current employees. In order to be in the running for a job, I am expected take out a loan the size of a mortgage for a degree. This degree is unlikely to be helpful for the day-to-day performance of my future job, which I probably did at a university or school more for its networking facility than its expertise.

Graduate degrees, in other words, are great for my resume, but largely useless for my profession. However, they remain a pre-requisite if I want career advancement. Here are some theories as to why:

A case of the ‘handicap principle’ in action: if someone has spent several years at university and survived, then they must be hardy.
A ready-made golden handcuff: employers love having workers saddled with enormous mortgages because it makes them a lot less likely to do anything that would put their income at risk. Similarly, employers probably prefer graduate employees who are frantic to pay off enormous, high-interest student loans.
It simply seems a little less arbitrary than pulling numbers out of a barrel.

Many spend years of their lives and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars on a university degree in order to impress a prospective employer – and are now starting to find that employers were just throwing out increasingly absurd ‘home work assignments’ to see how many hoops they were willing to jump through.

Hardware

Much the same has happened with hardware.

Fifteen years ago, it was more than enough for me to be able to contact someone whenever and wherever I wanted to, through either text or a phone call. That was cool – and I could do so through any mobile phone. Now, I expect everyone to have a mobile number, and I find landlines a rarity – fair enough. However, I have to contend with the pressure to buy a mobile device such as an iPad, which would set me back nigh on a thousand dollars. My current mobile – the second I purchased myself – cost me around $100, since they no longer made the $40 one I had originally bought. Mp3 players are available for around $20 – yet in order to be part of the cool club, years ago I felt compelled to spend some $400 on an iPod Classic.

As with attending an expensive university for an impractical degree, buying branded hardware has become another means of social differentiation – which is much like brand differentiation, and equally as petty. For in spite of having a more empowered, connected population, there is still only so much social kudos to go around. We have to buy increasingly expensive gadgets to stand out - or fit in, as the case may be. (On the other hand, perhaps it is the same as employment – in order to have a ‘healthy society’, there needs to be a constant underclass who we can mock for not being able to afford the latest iPhone)

Like the degree, we have relegated the mobile device as a signifier of conspicuous consumption.

Online identities

Lanier describes how, if a business buys a keyword on Google, it looks like a straightforward win – but in the long term, that business is then compelled to keep on buying that keyword so that their competitors can’t get it:

“… Once you are a customer of Google’s ad network, the moment that you stop bidding for your keyword, you’re guaranteeing that your closest competitor will get it. It’s no longer just, “Well, I don’t know if I want this slot in the abstract, and who knows if a competitor or some entirely unrelated party will get it.” Instead, you have to hold on to your ground because suddenly every decision becomes strategic for you, and immediately. It creates a new kind of glue, or a new kind of stickiness.”

Something similar happens with social networking sites with individuals. By building up a presence in various social networking sites, we are trying to secure a kind of ‘digital personhood’, managing our global brand. Once upon a time, joining up to a social network was voluntary – a mutual win-win situation. However, now that having a presence on social media is a given, we need to create a believable profile for ourselves just to make sure that no one else tries to impersonate us. (For an extreme illustration, just look at how many tweeters there are claiming to be the Dalai Lama.) We have to stake our claim to our online identity, and defend that claim, against cyber-squatters and virtual-land grabbers, and Facebook wall vandals.

Conclusion

In short, we have appropriated schooling and technology to the ongoing enterprise of showing off. Whenever we have the opportunity to take advantage of the free time enabled by advances in technology - to pursue our creative, recreational, or social projects - we instead opt to earn more money. Our ‘need’ to ‘keep up with the Joneses’, and our resulting insatiable appetite for more signifiers of conspicuous consumption, is why advances in technology and social wealth have failed to translate into shorter workweeks and greater financial independence.

No news there, of course – yet it is worth keeping in mind what we deprive ourselves of by turning new technology into a status signifier. Any society that encourages its citizens to compete against their peers in vying for the most prestigious purchase, and the most conspicuous consumption, plays a zero-sum game - each player is no longer basing their purchases on what will actually enrich their lives, but rather on what will win them the most kudos from their significant others. Since generating value ceases to guarantee kudos, it ceased to be an objective. I have more incentive to ‘keep up with the joneses’ than find a cure for their child’s cancer. I am more fascinated more by having a smartphone that can talk back to me than having a worthwhile conversation with another human being. I find myself more occupied with maintaining my online persona than my real life body. Rather than trying my hand with some stencil art in some backstreet, I am busy attending to my Facebook wall.

This is obviously not a new development – it is just an incredible shame that our desire to climb the social ladder has caused us waylay the incredible potentials of the internet. Rather than contributing to the marketplace of ideas, we are busy rehashing other people’s ideas, aggregating existing material, and hitting like/upvote/digg buttons. In spite of the apparent temples to the ego such as Facebook, anonymity seems to remain supreme on most online forums, with no one taking responsibility for their thoughts:

“In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as possible to simulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses the line into delusion … We now are reading what a collectivity algorithm derives from what other collectivity algorithms derived from what collectives chose from what a population of mostly amateur writers wrote anonymously ... The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we’re devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots.” (Lanier, ‘Digital Maoism‘)

However, I should not blame myself for my particular rules of engagement with technology. The problem is also in having taken such engagement as a necessary given. What I would like to see more of myself is a technological Epicureanism: concerned more with the elemental and refined pleasures of the web – creativity, individuality, originality - than in the hedonistic orgy of online self-sacrifice in which I find myself drowning.

Image by scatterbrained

'I buy, therefore I am': Jaron Lanier on the real world economy

2011-11-03T17:11:00.000+11:00

I tend to undervalue production in the digital realm. My online peers tell me that since information wants to be free, I should be giving away my life story to Google so that they can generate customized advertising. I continually strive to build my credibility by maintaining the most hip Facebook wall. I aggregated the most intriguing articles on Google Reader and yearn to be the first to tweet the next major meme – none of which are particularly noble pursuits.

I also tend to overvalue consumption. For 99 per cent of my time on the web – that is, when I’m not voluntarily creating articles – I’m furiously browsing the web for the latest LOLs, liking, plus one-ing, or upvoting aforementioned articles as if my life depends on it. I live in a consumerist society, and even when things are free and digitized, old habits are hard to kill: I am an insatiable consumers, albeit of online information and services.

The ferocity with which I seek out the latest meme, or the newest news, the most ‘meta’ remark, should serve to highlight how our late 20th Century appetite for mass-produced goods remains very much with me. The web is but one more cathedral of consumerism, little different from the largest shopping centers. While I may find refuge in the belief that, ‘well, at least I’m not paying to read that online newspaper,’ it is that very attitude that is the problem.

Such online trends mirror my behavior in Real Life. I understand my place in society by what I buy, rather than what I create. I tend not to value myself as much as I should as the creator of new ideas, but instead as someone who can afford to holiday in Europe for a month. Some explanations for this might be that:

While my friends and I tend to identify ourselves a lot by what kind of job we have, as with any office job, translating what I ‘do’ to ‘what I create’ can be a tough one. My profession has become so specialized that acquaintances can no longer really relate to me in terms of what I do between my nine and five. Moreover, I tend to translate their profession into ‘buying power and lifestyle’. We might not be able to understand another’s job description, but we can always bond over what brands we buy, what magazines we read, and what credit card that we use. As Naomi Klein argues, for instance, corporate logos have become the new universal language.
Powerful entities tend to measure and profile me in terms of my purchasing patterns – in economic downturns; my government tells me that the best way I can help my country is to buy more stuff, while Facebook’s primary expertise is being able to design customized advertising.

Just as I am selling myself short on the digital marketplace, at the cost of my dignity, so too am I selling myself short in the RL economy. By going into debt, for instance, I make a slave of myself. I might enter into such debt ostensibly as part of an investment strategy, for instance with property. However, much debt is also simply consumerism gone awry: credit card and vehicle purchases case in point. Student debt in the US has reached one trillion dollars to the benefit of no one but the banks. Thanks to how the Australian Commonwealth government manages tertiary education fees, I do not have to worry about high-interest loans. Yet my compatriots and I make up for it by having the highest household debt to disposable income ratio in the world. Such debt translates into an enormous, and unnecessary, expense, and these investments of time and energy amount to effectively paying corporations to take our money and personal information from us.

All of this means that instead of celebrating and rewarding the enormous capacity for human ingenuity and artistry, I am helping reinforce a culture that believes there is no problem that I cannot buy my way out of: I buy, therefore I am.

Image by Michael Holden

The web as cathedral of consumerism - why we create for free, and why we should pay

2011-11-03T17:10:00.002+11:00

I love how the web has streamlined information distribution: rather than scouring a bookstore for hours, I can now plug ‘You are not a gadget’ into The Pirate Bay and download Jaron Lanier’s eBook to my Kindle, all within a minute. Yet by doing so, I have robbed Lanier of his incentive as a professional writer. The fact that I am so flippant about doing this - even though I like to think of myself as a writer as well - is indicative of how much a consumerist mindset I have come to acquire even on the web. Even when the information is freely given, the consumerist nature of what I do remains the same.

The first explanation that comes to my mind for why I practice this morally dubious behavior is simply because I can. Another explanation is because, on the web, I am vastly more a user of content than I am a creator of content. To go by the 80/19/1 rule, ninety-nine per cent of my time on the web involves either picking apart the grammar and spelling of what I read, or simply lurking, while I only spend around one per cent of my time online actually contributing anything original. With that kind of internet-engagement ratio, it might be a little easier to understand why I value the unhindered consumption of content on the World Wide Web, even when it is at the expense of the producers of that content.

Why we create for free

I am not alone in refusing to pay people for what they create for the web. There is a long online tradition that privileges freebies. We believe that the subsequent exposure, wide distribution, and peer review of those freebies is its own reward. The web is a marketplace for ideas, where I sort through the ‘commodities’ like a wholesaler, while producers repackage the most upvoted/liked/dugg material for the retail market, and buyers that are more affluent.

Lanier, however, thinks that this is bullshit:

“We’ve been hypnotized in the last eleven or twelve years into thinking that we shouldn’t expect anything for what we do with our hearts or our minds online, we think that our own contributions aren’t worth money, very much like we think we shouldn’t be paid for parenting, or we shouldn’t be paid for raking our own yard. In those cases you are paid in a sense because there’s still something that becomes part of you in your life, for all that you did. ... But in this case we have this idea that we put all this stuff out there and what we get back are intangible or abstract benefits of reputation, or ego-boosting. Since we’re used to that bargain, we’re impoverished compared to the world that could have been and should have been when the Internet was initially conceived.” (Jaron Lanier, ‘The Local/Global Flip‘)

As a creator, I also take for granted that if I am popular enough on the web, I will eventually get a trickledown effect into the real world, in the form, say, of a book or record deal. At some point down the line, after a few hundred thousand netizens have enjoyed my content, I am going to be ‘discovered’ by someone who can help me monetize it. Like trickledown economics, however, those who do not depend on its validity have likely been the ones advancing it, and while it is a lovely idea, it tends to lack in empirical evidence:

“There’s the occasional person who builds a career by blogging, or getting on YouTube, or who can build a small business by selling ads on some of these services. Those people exist, but there’s a Horatio Alger quality where there just aren’t enough of them to create a middle class. They create a false hope rather than a real trend. And it’s plain as day that that’s the truth, that there aren’t hoards and hoards of these people, but just tokens.” (Lanier, ‘Local Global Flip’)

Corporations such as Apple, Google, and Amazon have encouraged the culture of expectation that I volunteer my time and creativity in either filtering through what I read, or writing new content. Yet my buy-in to this online ethic has helped ensure that the majority of people who create content for the web – as well as those who once benefited from the pre-web model - will not reap the full benefits of these technological advancements.

By maintaining online profiles replete with personal information or writing reviews of books, I have generated a steady flow of mostly free information. While I would like to think that contributing snippets of my life on google+ or Facebook is creating worthwhile content for the benefit of my friends, what I am really giving is away my time, and donating my identity. Facebook then converts these into a consumer profile, which they then convert into targeted advertising, so that businesses can sell me more stuff. The aforementioned companies now effectively own that information, and can resell it far more cost effectively than any sweatshop production line in some obscure developing country.

Why it’s important to pay for the web

Lanier suggests that we would best treat and distribute our intellectual property online by monetizing such online contributions. (One such approach would be microtipping, which lets “writers get rewarded directly for the quality of their content instead of their ability to pull in advertisers.” (ERE)) According to Lanier, if I were to sell my work instead of giving it away, I would not be expressing greed or self-indulgence. Rather, I would be signifying self-respect. For by putting a price tag on my content, I would be giving myself more credit for my achievements, and dignifying myself in the process.

Such commodification of web content is also necessary to create a sustainable and high-quality online marketplace of ideas. The web has the potential to liberate me from ignorance and repetition, yet by refusing to pay the musicians, writers, and bloggers whose quality content I enjoy, I am failing to incentivize the producers of that content. Such consumer habits make the current web economy unsustainable. To paraphrase the expression: ‘freedom (of information) ain’t free’. Yet by monetizing, and financing others, I would help build a new middle class for the digital era. As Lanier writes, and to which I can certainly relate:

“The question of new business models for content creators on the Internet is a profound and difficult topic in itself, but it must at least be pointed out that writing professionally and well takes time and that most authors need to be paid to take that time.”

As technology further advances, there is a good chance the only unique commodity I will have to contribute and use to my economic advantage will be my novels, photography, music, and articles. If I am to do unto others, I am obliged then to help promote a culture that shows an appreciation for quality, even if just with token financial contributions. The alterative is that I risk robbing myself of the one bargaining chip I may one day have left – my ideas. By monetizing my work, I also encourage others to take that work, and the online spaces I frequent, much more seriously.

Lanier’s argument - that we should put a price tag on all of our online output - horrifies the part of me that likes to think of the internet as largely a non-commercial space. This, however, probably just shows my idealism. For in spite of the utopianism that pervades most discussions surrounding the web, including my own, the internet remains subject to many of the same materialistic hang-ups that we hoped it would help us leave behind. People are making large sums of money off the web: big businesses that control advertising and information management. Personally, I find the idea that these are the only people that are really making a buck off the web - and not the Haruki Murakami’s or Noam Chomsky’s of the world - quite unsettling.

Image by Judson Collier

‘When the looms can operate themselves, all men will be free’: Aristotle versus Jaron Lanier

2011-11-03T17:09:00.001+11:00

Jaron Lanier argues that our collective response to emerging technologies determines the present and future shape of our society. Indeed, such responses determine whether we will even have a society. On the one hand, advancements like the printing press can empower people, yet advancements such as mass production are equally capable of centralizing power and enslaving.

In Politics, Aristotle writes that if “the shuttle would then weave, and the lyre play of itself; nor would the architect want servants, or the master slaves.” Alternatively, as Lanier paraphrases the Greek philosopher, ‘when the looms can operate themselves, all men will be free.’ Lanier thinks that such liberation is far from assured.

(Since we now have the technology of sewing machines and mp3 players, and yet we still have sweatshops and poor buskers, I tend to agree with him.)

Instead, he argues, once the means of production – particularly in regards to information technology - can operate itself, the following may well happen:

unemployment skyrockets
power becomes concentrated amongst the few techno elites
civilization ends shortly after.

I think that the risks implicit in such automation are ones worth taking – after all, we have been taking such risks for a long time. Whenever machinery becomes self-operating, there is less of an imperative that someone is constantly operating the machinery, and less of an imperative to enslave some underclass into carrying out menial tasks, like picking cotton or collecting trolleys. Sure, the slaves are then unemployed – but at least they are free to make their own employment. The key, of course, is to manage such risks – which is what Lanier is suggesting.

I try to think of it this way: if I were born fifty years ago, I would probably have to work a 9-5 from the age of 16 to the age of 65, and I would be probably compelled to raise numerous children on top of that to support me in my old age. Nowadays, however:

I can afford to dedicate the first 25 or so years of my life to academic pursuits.
I can afford to retire at 65 even though I will probably live much longer than my grand parents’ generation.
I can spend a proportion of my working life in states of mini-retirements, or working part-time.
I can remain childless without fear of dying a pauper.

Even were everyone in my generational cohort were to do this, things would still be okay. (In fact, things would probably be much better: to list just a couple of categorical imperatives, by not working as much, I allow the available work to be redistributed more evenly between the labor market, thus reducing unemployment; furthermore, by not having children, I reduce the strain placed on the environment.) In short, our society has reached an amazing level of automation that is only set to grow; technology like the internet has allowed that to happen, and we have adapted to its social effects, and - in some regards at least - we have become richer for it. (The problem is whether such wealth will continue, and whether such richness translates into happiness. This is where things get a lot trickier.)

On the other hand, of course, whenever new technology emerges, employment suddenly becomes much less reliable (see ‘Luddite’). Nowadays, as the old career mantra goes, people have to choose degrees so that they may learn how to perform jobs that do not yet exist. Again, this is not just about inventing ‘looms that can operate themselves’. It is also about changes in the means of distribution: online shopping and ‘free trade’ means that every market is now global, and competition is fierce.

Because of advances in technology, getting a reliable, future-proofed full time job is a lot more difficult than it once was. Yet, thanks also to technology, permanent, full-time work is also a lot less important.

Whether having more advanced technology is, overall, empowering or disempowering depends then on whether each of decides to shape that technology to enrich our lives, and to build financial and intellectual wealth – or whether we allow technology to use, shape, and exploit us. We can manage this correctly by being more selective in what we buy – but it may also be necessary, on a much larger scale, to be, as Lanier advocates, more generous in rewarding quality content.

Image by Sari Choche

The Lanier Effect: an introduction

2011-11-03T17:08:00.000+11:00

Jaron Lanier’s ideas about the intersection between society and technology, which challenge me to reevaluate how I manage my online life, are both timely and welcome. I have explored his depictions of how the web is conditioning me; making me increasingly preoccupied with metrics at the expense of what they’re supposed to measure; simultaneously pressuring me to confess and punished me for my confessions; encouraging me give up my creative input without a struggle; robbing me of the freedom of solitude.

In his August conversation with The Edge, ‘The Local/Global Flip‘, what captivated me were the descriptions of how the web can disempower and disenfranchise as well as inspire. Middle-class wealth, Lanier proposes, might be decreasing not only in conjunction with the rise of the internet, but in fact BECAUSE of the internet:

“It seems as though the middle classes have been having trouble all around the world, not just in the U.S., but in all developed societies at the same time that the Internet has been rising … I’m afraid the Internet, as we’ve conceived of it thus far, has been part of the problem. I’m also interested in the idea that if we conceive of it differently, it could be a solution.”

My following reflections on Lanier’s ideas are, I admit, convoluted. This is partially because of my enormous emotional investment in tech – but it is also because of the mind-blowing implications of what Lanier has to say.

While Lanier’s writing is concerned with interaction with technology, and the marketplace of ideas as traded on the web, the relevancy of his work also applies to the impact of information technology in general on how wealthy, both intellectually and monetarily, we feel:

“If you had talked to anyone involved in [the web] twenty years ago, everyone would have said that the ability for people to inexpensively have access to a tremendous global computation and networking facility ought to create wealth. This ought to create wellbeing; this ought to create this incredible expansion in just people living decently, and in personal liberty. And indeed, some of that’s happened. Yet if you look at the big picture, it obviously isn’t happening enough, if it’s happening at all.”

This series of blog posts are my own attempt to understand what went wrong; where did all the money go; and why has technology failed to make us feel richer and happier? By extension, why, in spite of our first world affluence, has such sincere disillusionment with our democratic capitalism emerged from amongst the middle-class?

Image by leeander

Forms and rates of violence against children, by gender of perpetrator

2011-10-26T17:14:00.000+11:00

I recently encountered one of the best articles to elucidate the proportion of female perpetrators of domestic violence:

“An estimated 56 percent of abusers of all kinds [of violence against children] are women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most common form, psychological abuse, can be as damaging as physical abuse.” - EZineWorm; also available under ‘Freud Was Right: Mean Mothers Scar for Life’

Straight from the source:

“Who abused and neglected children? For the analyses included in this report, a perpetrator is the person who is responsible for the abuse or neglect of a child. For 2008 … Women comprised a larger percentage of all perpetrators than men, 56.2 percent compared to 42.6 percent” – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ‘Child Maltreatment 2008’

Here are some of my assumptions:

The majority of domestic violence catalogued by Health and Human Services is non-physical violence - that is, intimidating, manipulating, and coercing people through psychological strategies, rather than direct physical force. This is because women’s expertise is in more ‘subtle’ social engagement, and that this psychological warfare is just those powers used for blatant evil.
The majority of violence committed by men is physical. This is because men engage with others - through sport, for example, a lot more tactilely, and more assertively - and so physical violence is just the extension of that tendency.
Men typically pick on people ‘their own size’ - specifically other men.
Women are more likely to pick on those that are much easier targets - children.

One simple reason that women are responsible for such a large proportion of domestic violence is that mothers are alone with children far more frequently than men are (that is, women do far more childcare than men) – meaning that there is less support in the children’s upbringing, and consequently greater stress levels (which in turn lead to violence), as well as less checks and balances.

Might it be also argued that the insidiousness of psychological violence means that it is actually much more damaging than physical violence - and that, all else being equal, it would in fact be less preferable to expose children to the risk of psychological violence than physical violence?

Image by ViV@MiViD@

Terrorism versus climate change

2011-10-26T17:04:00.000+11:00

I recently had a chance to interview Monash University academic Dr Luke Howie, who is studying the effects of September 11 upon our collective psyche, and how we should manage the perceived threats of terrorism.

While writing the bio-piece, I realized the enormous disparity between how our over-response to the infinitesimal risk of terrorism, and our miniscule response to the substantial risk of climate change.

The Precautionary Principle – that we should at least be on the safe-side, especially if there are no great costs involved in doing so – should be able to help guide us through the debate about climate change mitigation. However, many people perceive climate change mitigation to be overly cautious.

Either climate change is not real – in which case, we do not need to do anything.
Alternatively, climate change is real – but maybe we can do nothing to avert it.

In both cases, and all the money we poured into the problem would be a waste.

However, we do not think the same way about terrorism:

Cost of Afghan and Iraq invasion and occupation is over US$1.2 trillion.
In Australia, the War on terror cost us A$20 billion between September 2001 and November 2006 alone.
The War on Terror has cost the US anywhere between the US$700 Billion according to the Congressional Research Service, to US$4 Trillion according to some private analysts. (HSRC’s own analysts estimated a figure of US$2.4 Trillion.)

The US alone could have completely mitigated climate change had it used the trillions of dollars spent on the War on Terror. However, we have not, even though the threat of terrorism is (in Australia at least) small, and the threats posed by climate change are great.

The difference, then, is arguably the clear correlation that we can form between lax security measures, and hijacked planes destroying buildings, or trains blowing up. It is harder to make that same easy correlation between carbon emissions and, say, temperature increases that wipe out countless species, destroy agriculture, and flood coastal areas.

Another theory, though, is that there is a lot more incentive for a politician to respond to terrorism than climate change. This is not just because of the aforementioned bias, but because of the stakes - responding to climate change might mean alienating big oil. There is also the boost to their image that a war against an external enemy creates - contrast, say, to a war against our own greed, stupidity, and economic system, which is what climate change mitigation amounts to.

Graveyard humor
As Luke Howie remarks, on some level, we know that security is not secure. How many conversations do we have about how easy it would be to get weapons onto a plane? At work, my colleagues and I recently traded ideas on the best places to hide contraband and weapons: amongst female personal hygiene products, for example, or amongst dirty socks and underwear. I for one would put drugs amongst dog food, to create the appearance of a false positive when sniffer-dogs came around. We laugh about these gaping holes that we could exploit - yet at the same time, we do not want the customs officials to give up all pretences and let anyone through. We like to think that we are in on the joke, but we do not want our government to stop joking to us.

Image without permission from DDB Brasil

Helen Garner's True Stories and the old guard

2011-10-26T16:57:00.000+11:00

I recently began re-reading a few articles in Helen Garner’s collection of non-fiction, True Stories (1996). I originally bought the book in 2000 as my non-fiction writing lecturer had prescribed it to us.

Garner is, without a doubt, a good writer. One of the things that I strongly remember is her ability to take even seemingly incidental, or personal events - and then extrapolate such instances into general social commentaries.

I respect her writing, her honesty, and her bold willingness to go for society’s throat when she sees something that sufficiently upsets her. Probably the best example I can think of is not her books The First Stone, or Joe Cinque's Consolation, but rather her article about the 1990 murder of two-year-old Daniel Valerio in West Rosebud. Every conceivable check and balance - nurses, social workers, and neighbours - was in place to ensure Jaden’s wellbeing, Garner highlights. Yet comprehensive apathy and irresponsibility overrode all these safeguards, leading to his death. While Paul Leslie Aiton was charged, and convicted for Daniel’s murder, we cannot but help feel, reading Garner’s work, that we are all guilty.

Authors such as Helen Garner (and Andrea Goldsmith) are heir apparent of Virginia Woolf. Yet, a recent article by Mark Davis, author of Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism, puts Garner’s work into a new light: as one of the old guard who continues “setting agendas, demarcating standards, creating much of the intellectual and cultural climate. Whatever they breathe out becomes the oxygen of Australian cultural life.”

Garner was born in 1942 - which is not to discredit her work simply because she is no longer young and hip; rather, her work now reads like war stories - they are illuminating, yet they no longer feel relevant. Her writing style feels slower compared to a lot of contemporary writing. In ‘At Nine Darling Street’ for instance, she discusses her experience as a student in a Geelong Catholic school in the 1960s which, she acknowledges, ill prepared her or any of her peers for what the world was like, let alone what it was becoming. Moreover, her vague and problematic recollections support David Shields’ case in Reality Hunger that certainty is overrated.

As I have written earlier, Generation Y will have its day; I hope this will apply to the creative realm as much as the professional realm, because we certainly need more kid writers.

Image by The U.S. Army

Why we shouldn’t let school interfere with children’s education

2011-10-11T19:06:00.000+11:00

Is it possible that the biggest obstacle to improving state schools is our reliance on them?

I don’t just mean to repeat my old rant about how formal training can actually be a distraction to learning. Rather, it is that parents (and perhaps society in general) seem to be using schools to outsource the moral, social, and intellectual development of young people. We are not just overemphasizing formal education, but also underemphasizing the informal times and places that such young people are learning: everywhere, and all the time.

Consider that it parental values, and their household’s ‘culture of learning’, determines the academic success of their children far more than anything a teacher can instill in some 45-minute block. However, it’s far easier for us to partition off our world, and have a designated space and time for learning. This way, we don’t have to think of how children learn every second, of every day, in every location. (This is not to say that adults should be super conscious of not being a bad influence on children and having to set a ‘good example’. Witnessing contrary examples of behavior, such as adults jaywalking, should give parents an excellent opportunity to provide their children with the rationale for stopping and waiting at lights, rather than just following whatever grown-ups do.) Consider also, how easy it is for parents to drop their children off at school on their way to work, and have their children learn sex education from a perceived professional, rather than to sit down with their children themselves. Moreover, more parents seem willing to sit passively in front of the television than beside their child’s bed reading stories together.

Think of it this way: every occasion is an opportunity for a parent to show, not just tell, their children how to live ethically conscious lives. At risk of putting it tritely, the world is our moral classroom. We don’t have to be the teachers, either. (In fact, if it’s a handholding, didactic ‘classroom of the world’, our charges are probably more likely to lose interest, build resistance, and miss the point.) Instead, we can make our children their own teachers, by turning our environment into a game room, and allowing them to learn self-directed and collaboratively.

It’s a big ask, I admit. However, if parents give one iota about the education of young people, than they should take some responsibility for it - rather than looking to their local primary school or high school to ‘do a better job’.

Hats-off to Mark Twain for title
Image by aftab

Entangled identities, the precautionary principle and gender profiling in ‘Schrödinger’s Rapist’

2011-10-11T19:02:00.001+11:00

In her post ‘Schrödinger’s Rapist’, Phaedra Starling argues that each man carries the burden of proof that he is not a rapist until they he can prove otherwise, and that in the mean time, it is correct for women to treat them as opportunistic. Specifically, she cites an anecdote where Stepchick blogger Rebecca Watson felt threatened after a man asked her out for coffee, while they were in an elevator together – and argues that doing so was a form of violence by the man. Richard Dawkins has weighed in on the debate with the following:

“The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.”

My take is that Starling and PZ Myers argument is analogous to racial profiling - for instance, by saying that all black men are responsible for proving that they are not violent drug dealers, or thieves – and that if we take a stance against such racial profiling, we should also do so against gender profiling.

Racial profiling
Imagine that I was in an elevator with a black person (male or female). Having grown up in a predominantly Anglo region, it would be easy for me feel intimidated when they initiated a conversation, asked for some change, or invited me to the rooftop to smoke some weed. Unlike Watson scenario, my fellow elevator-rider is less likely to be stronger than I am – however, some men are obviously stronger than other men are. (As Mister Miyagi says in The Karate Kid, “Someone always know more”.) Also, while my fellow elevator rider is less likely than Watson’s elevator rider is to be both interested, in and able ,to sexually assault me, I’m still a potential target of a mugging, knifing, or verbal abuse.

Collective punishment and responsibility
Men, like women, are wary of violence, with as good a reason. Males, for instance, are much more likely to be targets of murder, attempted murder, and robbery than females are. It’s easy to assume however that violence between men is an internal matter. This is a dangerous fallacy though, for it treats people of the same gender as a homogenous entity. Drivers can do the same with cyclists, Christians with Muslims, and ‘law abiding citizens’ with perceived criminals. This reasoning justifies collective punishment, as well as non-intervention – such as the sentiments, ‘who cares if Muslims are busy killing each other, that’s one less terrorist’, or, ‘who cares if there’s a gang-war – they’re just doing the police’s job.’ Try calling an emergency telephone number next time you see a fight – one question that will probably come up is whether a woman is involved.

It is also tempting to take the position that the ‘good guys’ are responsibility to keep the ‘bad guys’ in line – that while not all men cause violence against women, all men are able to prevent violence against women. This forces on me the rather unmanageable responsibility of being my brother’s keeper. An analogous situation to such peer-regulation would be how women ‘police’ other women in regards to proper (sexual) conduct, and calling promiscuous women ‘sluts’. As one Redditor has mentioned - as people have no right to consider women automatically ‘sluts’, similarly they have the right to automatically consider men rapists.

It is also arbitrary to hold me accountable for the crimes of some men just because I am also a male. For instance – I have black hair, so why not hold me accountable for the crimes of others with black hair? Alternatively, I was born in September, so why not hold me accountable for the crimes of those also born in September? Obviously, the violence, or potential of violence, of black haired people is unlikely to stem from the fact that they have black hair. However, we are not talking about my violence, or potential of violence, but rather presumed affinity, association, and solidarity with other males, which make me accountable for the violence of other males; what if I have none of those things?

Living our live by statistics

“In this age of sophisticated technology, we tend to judge a person's worth by statistical data. In business, it's the bottom line. In education, it's the test scores. Even in religion, it's some numbers game. How one stacks up with the average may be valuable information, but statistics alone do not always lead to the right conclusion.” -- Jack Brymer

In an ideal world, no one would need to endure gum chewers, or the possibility (however remote) of their elevator companion wanting to assault them. However, we live in this world, and all of us - male and female - have to be conscious of that. Profiling people, based on their pigmentation or chromosomes, is an unsophisticated tactic – we should profile people based on their actions and the context of those actions. Basing our interaction with the world purely on statistics might have some uncomfortable ramifications: we would then have to treat all single mothers as Schrödinger’s Child Abusers. Furthermore, no matter how much we manage to reduce the rate of violent crimes, it is virtually inevitable that as long as there is crime, one gender will commit more crimes than the other does - consequently, no matter how small rates of crime became, such mindset would require us to profile people, based on characteristics they have no control over, indefinitely.

Much like Richard Dawkins and his problem with people chewing gum, we constantly live with, and manage, possibilities of violence – however, lest we fall into the trap of typecasting and paranoia, we must resist holding all accountable for the acts of some.

Image by CR Artist

Web Cuttings - October 11th, 2011

2011-10-11T18:54:00.001+11:00

Web cuttings: a collection of ‘me too’ moments on the intertubes.

Brad Feld is similarly sceptical about the use of titles to flatter and bribe employees:

"I’ve never paid much attention to titles. This is especially true when I’m involved in helping recruit someone for a company. I’m much more focused on what the person is going to do and what they’ve done in the past than what their title is (or was). Every now and then an obsession with title is a positive trait as it drives an important discussion about roles; most of the time it’s an annoying obsession with title."

Alex Tabarrok points out women are riding out the GFC far better than men are in ‘The Great Male Stagnation’, reinforcing my argument that women are betters suited to the modern workplace:

“The big difference between female and males as far as jobs, of course, has been labor force participation rates, increasing strongly for the former and decreasing somewhat for the latter ... Other differences are that female education levels have increased dramatically and male levels have been relatively flat. Females are also more predominant in services and males in manufacturing: plumbers, car mechanics, carpenters, construction workers, electricians, and firefighters, for example are still 95%+ male.”

In ‘It’s Who You Know’, Tara Hunt reinforces my argument that Masters Degrees are primarily beneficial as a great hoop-jumping enterprise, and for their opportunities to network.

“Why do people go to university/college? The connections. Sure, you can learn stuff and grow your talent, but ... you can get access to all sorts of knowledge, talks, lectures and resources online, too. It’s not the content, it’s the connections. And when the barrier to entry is high ... it’s a signal that you now have access to those connections, too.”

Tiger Beatdown meanwhile explores how we even value and weigh the act of networking, in different contexts.

Reminiscent of my rant on ‘Education’s Forgotten Stakeholders,’ Michelle Rhee discusses how we have sidelined students in the debate about education reform:

“We’ve lost our competitive edge and our competitive spirit,” Michelle said. “If we continue to build a culture where we’re allowing kids to celebrate mediocrity, we’re going to lose overall as a nation.”

A Wikipedia Policy and Guideline page on tl;dr highlights one more danger of changing our writing to suit the web – oversimplification:

“As a label, it is sometimes used as a tactic to thwart the kinds of discussion which are essential in collaborative editing. TL;DR is a shorthand observation very much like the complaint that Mozart's music has too many notes. The label is used to end discussion rather than engaging it.”

Moral of the story: sometimes we really do have to sit down in a big, comfortable chair, and commit several hours of our lives to a single reading.

Reminiscent of my ‘Turning our workplace into our workbench’ article, J.C. Herz gives an excellent College Commencement Address at the Ringling College of Art and Design, reminding us to take ownership of our professional development:

“As a creative professional, you have to get over the idea that your employer or your client owes you a wide blue sky or a creative romper room. You are the one who’s responsible for your continued growth and development. Sometimes, you have to make your own fun, on your own time. The downside is, you don’t necessarily get paid for that. The upside is, you don’t need sponsorship or buy-in.”

Kudos to Mike Radivis, whose article about gamification takes my vague ideas about turning my creativity (and indeed life) into a game, and actually presents some concrete examples:

“My approach to personal development is to turn life into a game which consists of challenges and experiments. I call that new paradigm life gamification. Applying that paradigm helped me to get motivated and increase my productivity where all other techniques I tried before have failed miserably!”

Word of the day: circle jerking -

“Sometimes used to describe an internet forum thread where forum members all give each other kudos (Or rep where a rep system is present) for some non-event that has occurred.”

(Nicely fits my ‘Dangerous seduction of trophies’ philosophy.)

Relating to my article about how bad weather and depression makes us more focused on our work - there’s actually a term (though rather derogatory) for the large southern European countries (and some British isle ones): PIGS -

“Refers to the economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, and sometimes Ireland – often in regard to matters relating to sovereign debt markets. Some news and economic organisations have limited or banned its use because of criticism regarding perceived offensive connotations. The acronym has long been used by bank analysts and bond and currency traders dating back at least to the period of the ERM and is used by some analysts, academics and commentators as a concise way to refer to the Eurozone countries of southern Europe noted for similar economic environments.”

A smart-looking article on how to increase your desirability by being selectively tempted, which relates to my rant about how women risk being labelled as ‘sluts’ if they are sexual liberal (even though guys generally want women to be sexually liberal with them):

“Walster and her colleagues argue the most desirable woman is a selectively hard-to-get woman, i.e., a woman who is easy for the subject to get but hard for all other men to get. Such a woman incorporates the positive characteristics of a hard-to-get woman - "selective" and "popular" - with the positive characteristics of an easy-to-get woman - "friendly," "warm," and "flexible"; a woman with all of these characteristics is a selectively-hard-to-get woman. A woman can intensify her desirability if she acquires a reputation for being hard-to-get and then, by her behavior, makes it clear to a selected romantic partner that she is attracted to him.”

And delving into the realm of game theory:

“Showing selective interest is then the best strategy in both 'playing hard to get' and the 'in due course' policy. Both policies work when they signal selectivity. But for the person you are after, you should be easy to get because otherwise he may doubt your love for him.”

Reinforcing my philosophy that you do not need to love your job to have a creative outlet, one reviewer of Ken Robinson’s book The Element writes:

“It is never too late. Adults can find their passion, in spite of any past negative experiences. We can use our passions to do creative work of our choosing, even in the spare time left over after our main work is completed (such as a full-time job to earn a paycheck) while provides a feeling of fulfillment that impacts their entire life in a positive way. Sir Ken Robinson seems to hope that all people would find their passion in life (including in mid-life or in one's twilight years) and to not just focus on getting through life with a more basic survival mentality, bored and feeling empty inside but making ends meet (or living with large paychecks but still unhappy).”

Regarding the ‘slow train wreck’ of Europe’s economy, ‘Concerned of Italy’ comments:

“I'm curently touring in Europe and the media accross Europe clearly identify that the current bailout of Greece is only to allow time for the eurozone to brace for the impact of Greece & Ireland as they default. Instead of burdening our country with more debt (ie carbon tax) Gillard should be preparing it for the next GFC when the eurozone takes a body blow from the defaulting countries.”

And finally, a completely irreverent, and irrelevant, article about genital inferiority complex, translated (not too roughly) from Italy’s StyleIt :

“There is only an obsession comparable to that of men who would have a really big dick: that of women for the boobs. With the exception of the real plus - but I also met women with a 4 ‘measures more abundant that wanted “to have a circumference equal to that of my hips” - almost all women under the 4’, precisely, would like to have “a lot ‘more than boobs.” Even knowing, however, that no man despises a nice plus (no, not talking and arguing about those perfect cups of champagne), women can be unbearable in this too. While we humans, if we want it bigger, it is because we think that our partners could try a “more fun” to use, women dream of bigger breasts only for their personal gratification aesthetic for that moment when you look at the mirror after a shower and can say: “But what a nice pair of tits.””

Image by splityarm
Shout out to Erin for the idea :)

The great state of Vermont should apologize for its cheese

2011-10-09T23:23:00.000+11:00

In Australia today, our liberal, democratically elected government enforces laws that restrict us: for example, prohibiting advertising of cigarettes, and enforcing the use of seat belts in cars.

These interventionists, nanny-state laws go against our general libertarian bent. However, we accept such restrictive laws because most of us would like to inhabit a society where people are healthy and safe.

For instance, the above-mentioned laws ensure that our children do not take up dangerous practices just because their significant others do so as well. Subsequently, we also have TAC advertisements that drive home the life-saving aspects of seat belts, and Ben Lee warning that cigarettes will kill us.

Such regulation is not only for the benefit of under 18-year-olders. They are also so that we may have licensed venues where we do not have to suffer the effects of second-hand smoking, whether it assaults us physiologically or aesthetically.

There is another reason that we have anti-smoking and seat belt laws, however: we know that when everyone else in a room is smoking, lighting up can feels not only more acceptable, but also obligatory. We have laws to shape other people’s behaviour because we know how easily they can affect our own.

Speeding on the freeway not only puts others at risk as well, for example – but also creates a culture in which others feel more inclined, if not compelled, to speed. For while Formula 1 racers could argue that they should be allowed to drive at whatever speed that they want to in their free time, there’s the very real chance that other people on the road, not so skilled, will feel inclined to mimic them. A person who is exceeding the speed limit is responsible for their choice, but they are also partially responsible for every copycat.

I suggest that we extend the same kind of regulatory, interventionist policies that we currently apply to cigarettes, and alcohol, and driving, to food.

We already have Heart Foundation Ticks that accredit comparatively healthy food; I recommend that we have a sign that indicates unhealthy food.
Just as we have cadavers of deceased smokers on cigarette packs, so too should we have pictures of morbidly obese people and their crushed organs on take-away food.
Just as we promote the fact that lung-cancer is a leading cause of deaths in Australia, so too should we advertise how heart disease causes three times that number amongst Australian men.
Just as we heavily tax cigarettes, so too should we follow Denmark’s lead and introduce a ‘fat tax’.

What can explain the fact that obesity rates are growing in spite of healthy eating campaigns, easily accessible information on healthy living, and numerous gyms, health food shops, and runner-friendly parks? The answer lies in those around us. What they are doing is dictating our own choices more powerfully than any television advertisement or school class. We are much more likely to dig in to a bowl of steaming hot chips or order our own, for example, when someone else near us receives one.

There is another reason why fast food should be, if not outlawed then at least more heavily regulated: consistency with other laws. Consider that in order for a substance to achieve Schedule I status – completely prohibited - it must have no therapeutic value and have the potential for abuse. Next time you are at a food kiosk, check out the potato cakes and corn dogs; ask yourself the following:

What is the likelihood that people who enjoy such foods are going to over consume?
What are the health benefits from digging into such culinary creations?
Do you see any doctors recommending them?

If your answers are (a) high, (b) low, and (c) never, then it is fair to classify such foods in the same category as hard drugs like heroin. For that reason alone, we should be as inclined to post skulls and cross-bones on packets of cheese as we do on cigarette packets.

Image by Matt Lanham

“Beings are not things, they are processes” - Tim Flannery on climate change and the fate of the world

2011-10-09T23:17:00.000+11:00

On October 7, 2010, I had the chance to attend an evening with environmental scientist Tim Flannery and journalist Virginia Trioli at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre.

While his earlier work The Weather Makers: the History and Future Impact of Climate Change (2005) describes the problem, he has used his latest book, Here on Earth: An Argument for Hope (2010), as an opportunity to constructively, and optimistically, discusses the possibilities before us.

Flannery discussed the Copenhagen Summit and played-down the significance of the West’s failure to reach an environmental consensus. He instead highlighted the growing and progressive role of the People’s Republic of China, as illustrated through its environmentally-flavoured ‘moon shots’ that includes “$15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry.” He argued that we could safely credit this positive development in China - a country that was previously in the habit of placing the entire responsibility for climate change on the West - to the efforts of the Copenhagen Summit participants. He also played-down the importance of the Climategate by pointing out that only one piece of evidence mentioned (the glacier factoid) turned out to be faulty, and was not even applicable to the IPPC.

He commended former Australian president Kevin Rudd as an internationally recognized hero who was highly respected, but acknowledge that domestically, Rudd never managed to deliver ‘the goods’. He criticized the current admission by pointing out that it has handicapped its environmental protection agenda by separating the Minister for Resources and Energy and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. He also proposed that an independent federal group should set the immigration quota, just as Reserve Bank of Australia determines the interest rates. Flannery pointed out that the cost for Australia to reduce its carbon emissions to zero would cost less than the National Broadband Network. Whether we could get to that without conflict, Tim concedes, is the big question, but that the role of government is after all to manage structural transformations.

Flannery elucidated the theories of fellow environmental critic James Lovelock, whose Gaia Hypothesis - that the entire planet is a self-regulating organism - provides a useful counterpoint to Flannery’s own focus. While British-born Lovelock is concerned with the ‘biology’ of the earth, however, Australia’s Flannery is interested in its sentience. Flannery sees the development of the planet’s ecosystems as parallel to the development of an individual, and argues against Lovelock’s view that the earth is old. Instead, Tim proposes, we are only just entering puberty, on the verge of being able to reproduce – for instance, by carrying sustainable life systems to other planets or, through species resurrect a la Jurassic Park.

Tim suggested that we would very soon become Gaia’s brain: our observatories, satellites, and oceanic stations area already Gaia’s senses and we are becoming its nervous system, building a universal conscience with the help of the Internet. Rather than the solution to the world’s problems lying in community farming and getting to know our neighbours, Tim sees the real game changers as Facebook and text messaging. He acknowledges that all of this makes his new book a generational book, which pessimistic ‘tribals’ such as Lovelock will find themselves at odds with. New generations are, on the other hand, much more likely to embrace his latest work.

As demonstrations of our emerging role as the earth’s sentience, we are predicting danger, and furthering our awareness of the threats posed to the Earth – though it is we, by Flannery’s description, that appear to be the very source of that threat.

As for the source of his optimism:

“My children - my children and China, as paradoxical as that might sound.”

Image by MonashUniGippsland

SlutWalk and the violence of language

2011-10-09T23:12:00.000+11:00

The parade of SlutWalk has past, yet its thesis remains - verbal assault, whether by men or women, is the forerunner for physical violence; when people, including women, call others ‘sluts’, they are ‘tagging’ them as fair game for sexual assault.

“SlutWalk is a protest and subversion of the way in which the word ‘slut’ is used police women’s (and gay men’s, and trans people’s) sexualities - who we sleep with, how we sleep with them, what we wear, where we walk at night,” Rachel Hills comments. “In particular, it’s a protest of the way in which the word ‘slut’ is used to scare, shame and invalidate sexual assault victims.”

While the problem is clear, the responsibility lies with more than just a handful of chauvinistic cops. Women are not the only victims, and men are not the only perpetrators.
Our friends, family, co-workers, and strangers all reward and persecute us for what we wear: the wrong socks to a business meeting means no promotion, the wrong dress at a nightclub means we are ‘asking for it’.

The leer that we give someone on the tram, the pay rise that we refuse them in the work place, the rumours that we spread about them in school due to their clothing or hypersexuality, all make us co-conspirators to sexual violence against men and women.

Women using terms such as ‘slut’ is their attempt to enforce an artificial scarcity just as unionists use the term ‘scab’ in reference to strike-breakers. Yet the term ‘slut’ is no longer as effective in shaming people into changing their behaviour. Now, taking advantage of the open market of sexual expression actually makes sense. SlutWalk shows that there is an increasing confidence to talk about these issues.

If we are to be critical of the term ‘slut’, however, we must also be critical of the term ‘hot’. It may be that affirming a person for his or her stunningly good looks will leave everyone feeling warm and fuzzy, while calling someone sluttish probably bums everyone out. However, using insults or flattery regarding a person’s appearances are opposing sides of the same coin: language as a means of control. As a tool, language is incredibly effective, controlling what we wear, how we walk, and what we say.

Women can feel compelled to use every weapon in their arsenal, including their looks, simply to be getting on par with men. They may rationalize it with the argument that if men’s judgements are so subject to their sexual ‘tastes’, then let them be manipulated by those tastes:

“French women, indeed, have traditionally colluded with the opposite sex in an environment in which sexuality is ever present. They use seduction ‘as a weapon to defend themselves against the machismo of men.’” (Time Magazine)

Yet we should be critical towards such women who expect better treatment because of their looks, instead of feeling sympathy towards the woman who must act civilly in order to get service. Regardless of whether the ‘looker’ has done so with the intent of using clothing to vie for privileged treatment, or to offset the effects of sexual discrimination, they are doing themselves and gender equality a disservice.

While women who dress up in stunning clothing or behave flirtingly are not saying that they ‘deserve rape’, they are saying that they deserve something. “It’s not the face or the body we register as ‘hot,’” Rachel Hills suggest, “but the effort they put into dressing and grooming themselves in a manner that suggests ‘hotness.’” What is at play here is a shared sense of entitlement, and the expectation that we should reward women who dress up for having indicated their subservience to prescribed gender roles.

This is not to say that if a woman happens to be attractive, and dresses in a way that accentuates that attractiveness, then she is the enemy. Rather, it is to suggest that women who put effort "into dressing and grooming themselves in a manner that suggests 'hotness'" have been co-opted by the patriarchy, and is now doing their work for them. Women who use their sexuality as a weapon may indeed win the battle by securing the promotion in the office or the cocktail in the bar - yet in doing so, they will have ultimately lost the war.

Image by DayTripper15

Are we destined to become morally conservative in our old age?

2011-10-09T22:44:00.000+11:00

I was recently talking to some friends about our parents’ views towards gay and lesbian people. It turned out that we could not credit our respective parents with acceptance of homosexuality, so much as with tolerance: instead of internalizing current social norms, they have simply managed to mask their unfashionable prejudices.

Being a moral relativist, I asked everyone what each thought our own ‘ideological Achilles heel’ might be when we reached that age. One of our friends mentioned polygamy. All of those at the table were part of a monogamous couple, so it was a valid argument, albeit a delicate one – and not one that we were likely to explore in much depth, even over a few tequila cocktails (as the case was).

Yet I agreed that we would likely feel as threatened by those in polygamous, polyamorous, and sexually active singles, as our parents currently do with gay marriage:

“I think long-term singles make the coupled up, or the perpetually-boyfriended (jumping from one boyfriend to the next), nervous. We’re not “normal”, according to someone’s warped idea of what constitutes “normal”. We don’t conform to societal norms, and quite frankly, we’ve got more important things going on in our lives than who’s going to keep us warm at night. I keep my own damn self warm at night!” – Early Bird Catches the Worm

We can at least find some comfort in knowing that as much as Gen Zs will come to see Generation Xers and Yers as throwbacks, their successors will subject them to even greater ridicule.

Image by romana klee

Project management hack #3: Getting good, prompt feedback, and using it

2011-10-06T23:24:00.002+11:00

The rapport that can build between a research candidate and their supervisor(s) can result in the best mentoring experience you will ever have. However, regardless of how well you get on with your supervisor(s), it is not a good idea to rely on them as your only reality check, especially over a three-year long project. For one thing, the feedback you get from someone on tenure might not be a good indication of how the wider public will receive our work.

(This may be an unfounded prejudice of mine, and not a general rule. However, while sometimes I have had supervisors who have come straight out and said that I am crazy - bless them - I have also had some that have been too diplomatic.)

It is useful then to continue putting yourself under scrutiny at every stage of the project: for instance, periodically releasing drafts of sections and soliciting feedback from a varied online community (i.e. crowd sourcing). You may end up feeling that a committee has designed your product, yet committees are a reality. Even a doctoral thesis, while you will be subject only to your supervisor’s whims for a year, you will also be accountable to the panel who agrees to renew your scholarship. Moreover, if you do not listen to a variety of voices, you might end up with a reviewer suggesting you run more experiments after you have had your dissertation proofed.

Keep in mind though that, after a point, regular feedback will probably be detrimental to your enterprise, since members of the crowd can often cancel out their collective wisdom.

Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration
In lean startups, every team of programmers always has a client representative available throughout their project’s life. This ensures that they remain on target at all times, and minimizes at least some causes of scope creep. (I imagine that it also keeps the programmers a little more honest - for instance, I have seen graphic designers who have flown off on creative tangents when they their managers have given them too much time and too little guidance.)

Academic-audience accountability
Being able to dump a thick stack of printed pages on your assessor’s desk after three years of self-enforced solitary confinement is presumably one of the greatest attractions of doing a major project such as a PhD. Therefore, publishing samples of your work might seem to take away from this grand attraction, yet in doing so you at least avail yourself of one of the most useful resources that a PhD candidate has available: the non-academic world.

It is worth remembering that our target audience, or client, is our ‘friend’ – even if a friend of convenience. For one thing, they help pay our bills. We do not have to karma whore ourselves for their approval - just keep in mind that we can sustain virtually no activity for very long in our lives unless we have a sense of community associated with it, even if it is a virtual community.

For example, Rachel Hill, blogger of Musings of an Inappropriate Woman, appears to be balancing the separate responsibilities towards her academic study, professional publications, online community, and creativity. The comments that she receives on her blog would provide her with both material for her extra-internet writing, and a sounding board to develop her idea further.

Creative writing
Many might argue that a purely creative endeavor demands the protection, and ‘cushioning’, of isolation and solitude. The reasoning behind this is probably so that authors can shield themselves from the otherwise-demoralizing criticism that the world seems constantly ready to dispense. However, the principle of actively seeking out good, prompt feedback applies to writing a novel as much as a PhD. Science fiction and fantasy writers for instance will regularly workshops so that they can identify weaknesses in their plots before fleshing them out into full-blown narratives. Novel writing usually takes years, and no one wants to waste that time writing a story about time travel without having considered ontological paradoxes.

Image credit: Lalo Martins

Project management hack #2: Setting specific goals

2011-10-06T23:20:00.001+11:00

Just as with prototypes after testing, goals invariably change mid game. Pennies can drop; light bulbs can flash only when we have come to a particular point in a project. New technologies, literature, or requirements can emerge – even while adapting initial technology, responding to a client’s initial requirements. There will often be discovery – and we should be receptive to it.

Working our way through as many scenarios as possible on paper, before starting the project proper, will never the less save us plenty of heartache afterwards. This means talking to those who have gone through the same thing, and not just those who are the ‘center folds’ of that particular project. (This is so that we factor for survival bias, and because project partners will tend to hold up only the best case studies as demonstrations of prior performance.) We should also talk to lots of people who have tried what we are planning to do – and many of whom have, even with the best intentions, still failed.

Once you have plotted out as many moves as possible in advance, it is time to start work on the project - but not to stop planning.

Example: China
At one point in second year, I was considering whether to travel to the People’s Republic of China and teach English at a polytechnic university for a year. Initially, my parents were aghast at the idea - until they happened to go to a seminar where a participant in the same program spoke of her awesome experiences. They came back to me won over - in fact, more so than I as I eventually abandoned the idea when I figured that it would mean pushing my graduation date, and financial independence, back a year. Yet while, to their credit they had certainly done more independent, real life research than my online searches, talking to one person still would not have been enough.

Example: Japan
Before travelling to Japan to work as a Nova instructor, I had a couple of friends who had also taught there - one as a JET instructor, and one as an independent tutored. Both had very different experiences, and their stories prepared me for the potential sense of isolation, the genkiness of young students, and the counter-culture shock upon returning to Australia. Again, not a big sample size, but at least they were independent of the organisation that wanted to hire me.

Example: Graduate study
I have spent five years at the University of Melbourne as a graduate student, which has meant that, whether as honors, graduate diploma, or masters student, I’ve had quite a few opportunities to mingle with students at levels above me, outside of University-held seminars featuring centre-fold students. Chatting with PhD candidates has brought home how isolating an experience it can be to dedicate three or more years of your life to an intentionally obscure topic. From them I have seen the value of staying engaged - for instance, getting your work out there in bits and pieces, through a blog, articles, or presentations at seminars. As tempting as it might be to go insane while studying a PhD, one should resist that lure.

Kill switches
While planning, we should be willing to entertain some extreme ‘what ifs’. We should, for instance, be willing to define ‘failure’ as well as ‘success’. We should know when, and how, to stop. Think about whether you depend more on the accelerator on your car or your break. In any situation where we are not in complete control – that is to say, all situations - there are elements of risk we cannot completely mitigate. Just as we should never go into a casino with more money than we are willing to lose, so too should we determine how many years of our life we are willing to spend on a PhD before accepting that it’s a dead horse.

Redeeming failure
Since failure is always a possibility, it should always be redeemable: for instance, we should always be able to come away from a failed project with something tangible. We need, in other words, to be able to both upgrade AND downgrade a project, rather than be constrained to rigid success/failure outcomes. Rather than saying that our goal is to succeed, it might be healthier to say that our goal is to fail as gloriously as possible.

Example: New Zealand
At the beginning of my exchange program to New Zealand, one of the Rotarians remarked that out of the 30 people in my cohort, the chances were that they would send at least one of us back to Australia before our four months were up.

My oldest brother had gone on the same exchange program, even living in the same Auckland suburb, and had been one such premature returner. I knew all too well that this study-holiday abroad could go south (or west, as they case was). Yet I knew that when my brother returned prematurely from his exchange program, he still came away with many long lasting friends and life-changing experiences. This reassured me that even under such ‘worst case scenario’, the exchange was still worth it.

(In spite of the Rotarian’s and my brother’s warnings, I still came very close to being sent back to Australia before my tour was up. I was only able to see out my entire four months from a combination of luck, and a couple of very accommodating Rotarians who became my second host parents.)

Example: Process mapping
Last year I worked with a group of business process analysts and technical writers to map out the organization’s existing as-is business processes relating to their legacy database. We then moved on to design ‘to-be’ processes that would accommodate their new system.

We faced a daunting due-date for our work. As a result, we had to make it clear to stakeholders we were not there to improve their processes; all we wanted was to figure out how they needed to change their jobs to fit the new system.

It would have been a lot better, though, if we had been able to optimize those processes, even though neither the business buy-in, nor the time, that would have been necessary to do so seemed available. Yet if we had have optimized those processes, even if the organisation aborted the project and did not implement the new system, the project would not have been entirely a waste of time.

Example: NASA
NASA is a pioneer in project management and quality control as much as they are in space exploration. It is telling then that in the decision to launch a shuttle, the burden of proof was always on the advocates of launching. Yet even had they never fired the main engines of any of their shuttles, the space program generated a wealth of technologies, many of which have spun off beyond NASA, and into the private sector.

Image credit: angietorres

Project management hack #1: Focusing on technique (as opposed to outcome)

2011-10-06T23:12:00.000+11:00

In life, there is no endgame.

Even the grandest crises are a chance to learn, adapt, try different techniques, and improvise. The latitude we have for developing and refining new techniques in a project – whether we are writing an 80 000-word thesis or rolling out a student management system – is truly enormous. Obviously, we do not always want to be experimenting wildly. For instance, if we want to develop our ambidextrous abilities by writing with our inferior hand, and so better channel our creativity, a literature studies exam is probably the worst time to start. Moreover, if we have a proven method available when saving a life, we should probably defer to tradition. Otherwise, however, we can apply deliberate practice to the performance – not just the dress rehearsal.

Prototyping

We can capitalize on this by producing work while we experiment – that is, prototyping.

Many professional writers would already be familiar with the routine of learning to write something as we are writing it. For instance, in instructional writing, we often debug the precise steps needed to write instructions, as we are writing them. To put it in rather Zen terms: we discover through the creation.

Whether we are writing a chapter of a thesis, or a module of user documentation, we should constantly perfect our process; only having done so can we move confidently onto the next chapter or module. We must also give ourselves the time to test out our prototype and determine its weaknesses and strengths, debugging through reiterated testing.

For example, often the mass of documentation I am producing can become so large that the only way I can keep track of what I have done (and what I haven’t) is by referring to a tracker document (which may not be up to date) or running an automated search. Never the less, I will occasionally find myself having written a page of instructions that I later find out I already wrote. However, when I compare the two documents together, I will tend to find that they match each other with unnerving accuracy. Some might read this as showing how technical writing can become sterile and devoid of personality. However, I see it as awesome proof that my process is near-perfect; the conventions and style guides are so comprehensive, and I have internalized them so thoroughly, that writing documentation had become like running an ideal science experiment: perfectly reproducible.

Always be learning

Thus, it is important to ensure that we have our technique down pat, before taking on the bulk of the actual work set before us. Obviously, exceptions to our rules will emerge - we will have to add to and adapt our style guides to accommodate things we encounter along the way; indeed, the body of work that our initial prototype belonged to can itself become a prototype in itself.

We can also transfer lessons learned between contexts – for instance, sharing principles of efficient and productive work within our lives, and between individuals, teams, and organizations. Case in point: applying what we learn from our favorite sport to our workplace.

Some projects, whether they are writing a PhD or rolling out a software system, can take years. It is a disservice to us to focus only ever on the product, and not the process.

Image credit: criggy1

Project management hacks: an introduction

2011-10-06T23:06:00.000+11:00

I recently finished a ten-month stint on a project implementing a new software system, where I picked up more than a few lessons about how not to run a successful project.

Applying these lessons right back into a project context scares me though: I have no ambitions for leading other professionals, managing a project, giving pep talks, or pontificating with generic sound bites of project management wisdom. However, I am interested in how I might apply some of these lessons to a somewhat more ‘academic’ project: a Doctor of Philosophy candidature.

Good lessons are scalable – so it should not come as any surprise that project management can learn much from the principles of deliberate practice:

All of these values were lacking from the software-system implementation project of which I was a part.

In the following series of articles, I will examine each of these principles of deliberate practice as we can apply them; drawing from my experiences on corporate projects, preparing for living overseas, and my own graduate study. I will do so with managing a PhD candidature specifically in mind, however, I have composed them so that they are applicable to any project: big, small, artistic, professional, and academic.

Image credit: kenfagerdotcom

Benefits of hiring ‘bums’, job hoppers and mini-retirees

2011-10-06T22:48:00.000+11:00

Employers are like romantic partners – each is different. Just as in a relationship, colleagues can get sick of us constantly comparing our current role to previously held roles, or namedropping prominent clients. Being single for a while and out of a relationship, whether it is romantic or corporate, can help us to approach a new date, or a new client, with a fresh perspective. The problem is, however, that employers - much like serial home breakers with a thing for married men or women - tend to exhibit a preference for hiring from the ranks of the employed.

Employers have always tended to pass over single professionals, yet in the U.S., if not elsewhere this has moved from favoritism to outright and overt discrimination; even if efforts to outlaw such practices succeed, they will likely continue to exist unofficially just as they did pre the late-2000s financial crisis.

Corporate discrimination against the unemployed, however, is unjustified as well as unfair: there are many good reasons to believe that unemployed people can prove to be as good as, if not better than, those already employed.

Imagine someone who has been working non-stop, save for the occasional high-pace holiday, in a permanent role for most their working lives. Their job lets them service a mortgage, pay the bills, and maintain a comfortable lifestyle - without having to update their resume constantly. For whatever reason, they apply for a role at a different organisation. As a hirer, I would be very skeptical about their motives for changing roles: what, for instance, do they expect to get out of a new position that they cannot get out of their current one? Furthermore, is there enough novelty in the new role to counterbalance their likely career weariness?

Consider that the long-term involuntarily unemployed candidate: they are more likely than their long-term employed counterpart to appreciate the opportunity to work. After all, the memory of inactivity and financial insecurity would be fresh in their minds and they will be less likely to risk their much-needed income. (This may offend our notion of the dignity of professionalism to imagine such workers being in a state of constant uncertainty – let us at least be open and honest on the matter, though.)

There are also the voluntarily unemployed – job hoppers – of which contractors and independent consultants make up a big portion. Such professionals rarely receive paid leave such as public holidays, annual leave, long-service leave, and professional development leave. Subsequently, they must create their own breaks, perhaps using Timothy Ferriss’ concept of the mini-retirement as a model. When they are ready to go back to word, they will be fresh, unjaded, in possession of a diverse skill set, and able to provide much needed objectivity to their new workplace.

Case study: a tale of three candidates

Imagine you are on the interview panel to select from three candidates, all of whom satisfy the basic selection criteria, and each of which fit in one of the following three categories:

Has been with current employer for twenty-five years
Held last contract role six months ago, and has since been backpacking the globe
Has been job-hunting ever since previous employer made their role redundant six months ago.

If the objectives of the job were challenging, clearly defined, and required great creativity and forethought in achieving those means, consider offering it to the voluntarily unemployed candidates with the successful record of accomplishment. Give them broad discretion and support to fulfill their jobs. They will be like elite military – hired to execute novel strategies in taking tactically advantageous grounds, and then leaving the regular forces to hold the position.

If the objective of the job was ill defined, difficult to measure, and required some creativity, consider giving it to the currently employed candidate. Give such employer large timeframe to design their role, and introduce their own KPIs, with the intention that they would be in for the long haul – securing the gains made by contractors and consultants.

If the objective of the job was easily measurably, and required little or no creativity, consider giving it to the involuntarily unemployed. They would be the conscripted soldiers; they would have little or no ambiguity about the priorities of their role, no responsibility to use their initiative, yet provided opportunities to ‘rise above their station’.

Personal anecdotes and caveats

Earlier this year I ended a ten-month stint at Victoria University and began working at Monash University. I finished on Friday, and then started the following Monday. It was the first time that I have gone straight from one professional job to another, and it was a tough choice – besides a brief trip over Christmas, I had not had more than a few days off for almost a year, and it had been a tough year. In the end, however, it was an offer that I could not refuse – I was getting to the point that I was starting to wonder whether I was ‘done’ with technical writing, and the Monash media and web writing role was a lot closer to my original vision of what my career would be. That and they wanted me in ASAP. I accepted, and four months later and I have since been headhunted by a different manager, and given even greater scope to write for the web. In short, the variety of my new role keeps me engaged, and it is sufficiently different from previous jobs to keep be unjaded.

Previously, however, I have taken study breaks between stints at full-time professional work. These study breaks have been from a semester to a couple of years long. I have also taken a year off from work and study for a sabbatical. Both types of intermissions have allowed me to toy with my ‘enthusiasm thresholds’ by breaking up the type of work I am doing, much like interval cycling or varied resistance training circuits.

The intermissions that I have taken from full-time professional work have yielded benefits for my employers and clients beyond the job-hopping component of those intermissions:

I took time out from work to study a difficult occupational course – which gave me skills that I was instantly able to apply to my subsequent roles.
A month-long backpacking holiday to Europe gave me plenty of conversational material during coffee breaks.
Working as a casual web officer at Monash, while I held down a couple of other jobs and studied a research degree, allowed my colleagues and I to ‘suss’ each other out before I accepted a full-time role in their documentation and training team.

A disadvantage of such intermissions, however, is the risk that you will lose professional momentum, and fall out of practice with the routines of office life. Then again, this can be a good thing if you are moving from one organisation to another, as it means that you the habits that may have been useful in your old job, but may be irrelevant to your new workplace, no longer burden you.

Image credits:

chrishimself
Matthew Burpee

Scott Beale

Education's forgotten stakeholder

2011-10-06T22:11:00.000+11:00

Between scholarships for college-drop-outs, and commencement addresses at art and design colleges, the issue of the value of tertiary education has been getting plenty of airtime.

Yet it is important to keep in mind that there are significant differences between the U.S. - where most of the online commentary is originating from - and other countries, particularly Australian, in terms of the relevance of tertiary study and employment rates. After all, the U.S. is in the throes of what some online commentators are calling a higher education bubble and a jobs depression.

Highlighting the differences in the quality of education around the world, a recent New York Times column discusses the superior scores for high-school science and technology students in Germany compared to the United States. The article he links to explains that “Maintaining our productivity as a nation depends importantly on developing a highly qualified cadre of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals.” If generating a sense of nationalistic indignation is necessary to increase the social valuation of education, then so be it.

However, one voice seems to be largely absent from the social discourses surrounding further education: the students themselves. What is most frightening however is that no one seems to care.

Divided loyalties and captive audiences

One of the reasons why this has happened is that in spite of being the ostensible beneficiaries of education, students have little choice over whether or not to attend school. Parents force their children to go to primary and high school for several reasons:

the government requires them to do so
they have their own day jobs to attend
they unquestioned believe in the value of social skills acquired through communal schooling.

This arrangement is possible thanks to a corpus of teachers who need to earn a living themselves - and have some vague notions of changing the world (by, well, telling their students to change the world themselves).

Undergraduate study is not exempt from this problem either – though in this case, future employers are the ones leaning on the students, rather than their parents.

Consequently, formal education institutions force participants – the students - to divide and misplace their loyalties. For instance, teenagers do not go to high school to develop some rudimentary schools, and experiment with a variety of different subjects to find out what tickles their fantasy. Rather, they attend in order placate their parents.

Furthermore, young adults rarely attend University for a liberal education so that they may develop critical thinking, and cultural capital. Rather, they attend to gain a piece of paper that will give them social and professional kudos. We like to think of Universities as being temples of learning and wisdom, yet they exist largely to help fulfill very different imperatives.

This may well be the source of the woes regarding education: we continue to pretend that it is all about the student. However, they are but a peripheral concern – in reality, we just want to be better than Germany.

Photo credit: Mark Brannan

Lessons on blogging from Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’

2011-06-09T21:51:00.000+10:00

Because I understand, all too well, how powerful an appeal games possess, I am sold by Jane McGonigal’s philosophy that we should apply the lessons of gaming to much of our daily life. This is why my new goal is to turn my real life projects so that they are more like my computer games.

I really do want to spend my time productively. I love writing, cycling and hanging out with friends – especially compared to my nine-to-five job. However, whenever I have a computer game installed on my laptop, my real life projects tend to take second place.
Thus, the question arises: how do I transform daily activities so that they can compete?
How can I design them to provide the same incentive, reward, and vigour? To paraphrase Jane McGonigal, how do I make it as exciting to write for my blog, as it is to play computer games?

To some extent, my online writing has already become like a game before I had even heard of McGonigal[1], through:

Character customisation: selecting photos from Flickr’s open source collection, prettying up of the site design, and tweaking the widgets that I use
Community building: promoting the site on social network and news sites (such as Facebook and Twitter), and then tracking hit metrics on Google Analytics and upvotes on reddit[2]

After reading Reality is Broken, some further ideas came to mind:

Brag

Maintaining and updating graphs showing everything from

the kilometres that I have cycled on my bike
to the number of words that I have written for my blog.

Build a team

Engaging with people more through sites such as Twitter, to solicit information and opinions;
Modelling my writing site on a wiki, so that people can comment to specific parts, and view works in progress
Getting people involved, like through the auto-tagging of faces, making a mass library of all my photos, tagged with keywords maybe, geographical location, building a map of places I have been, with photos from there.
Encourage people to vote for my work, so I can put together a ‘best of’ list.
Attracting reader participation with encouraging games[3]
Show that their contributions have a tangible and immediate impact.[4]

Create a codex

Collate a directory of places to publish - profiling my targets and custom-building work for them.
Photograph everything.

However, more I think of it, more it seems just a little selfish (and small-minded) to read Reality is Broken only in terms of how I can apply those principles to my own blog.

Furthermore, it is important to remember that people have a lot better reason to participate in websites such as Wikipedia[5], than a cold and lonely street.

Yet this leads me to approach my blog a little lighter - not to be so preoccupied with just increasing my hit rate, or participation rate. Because really, I started blogging in the first place as a space to develop my own creativity and to ‘host’ resources that I think are of public value, especially my academic stuff. Thus, it is actually against the spirit of my blog that I encourage vast swaths of user generate content - though it has been very rewarding to start dialogues with my readership.

As xkcd puts it: “You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.” Alternatively, to adapt the Star Trek: First Contact line: “Don’t try to make a great blog. Just make a blog - and let the internet decide the rest.”

Image by redmaxwell

Endnotes

[1] Though, admittedly with my significant other’s moral support and encouragement.

[2] “And this faster, tighter feedback loop allowed for more reliable hits of the emotional reward fiero: each microlevel of difficulty you survived prompted a split-second emotional high.”

[3] ““Any time that you’re trying to get people to give you stuff, to do stuff for you, the most important thing is that people know that what they’re doing is having an effect. If you’re not giving people the ‘I rock’ vibe, you’re not getting people to stick around.” -- Simon Willison, p.258

[4] “Perhaps most importantly, the website also featured a section labeled “Data: What we’ve learned from your work so far.” This page put the individual players’ efforts into a much bigger context—and guaranteed that contributors would see the real results of their efforts.” (260)

[5] ‘Wikipedia, like all of the most engaging multiplayer game worlds, is an epic built environment. It invites participants to explore, act, and spend large amounts of time there.” (266)

The dangers of turning your hobby into your career

2011-06-09T21:20:00.000+10:00

The voluntary nature of gaming is, curiously, one of its biggest advantages over paid work – consequently, Reality is Broken author Jane McGonigal warns us against integrating a financial reward system into the games that we design, for ourselves or for others.[1]

Does this suggest that we should avoid turning our hobby into our career? Plenty of articles on the web that describe how we can turn our interests into a revenue source and very few provide an opposing viewpoint.
However, some bloggers, including myself, warn of the dangers of trying to synchronize our happiness sources with our income source: our argument being that these are two very distinct resources, and expecting them to flow from the same origins will probably cause us to be poorer both emotionally and financially. The old maxim that I heard as a kid – if you turn your hobby into a job, you will lose your hobby – could easily be adapted to the following: If you start earning RL prizes from your games, they will cease being games.

This caution is relevant not only to earning revenue from our hobbies, however. In several of my recent blog posts, I have try to show how focusing on the metrics can cause us to miss the ‘point’, whatever that might be for us. For instance, if we look to external forces to reward us for our writing (rather than gaining an intrinsic pleasure from our craft) we may well end up producing populist work that encourage upvotes instead of contentious and sophisticated pieces that encourage debate.

Image by wizzer2801

Endnote

[1] “Like money or prizes, the opportunity to earn points and level up could potentially distract us from the initial reasons we like to do an activity.” (186)