adamyntium

Category: society

  • It’s (mostly) okay that everyone is everywhere all at once

    It’s (mostly) okay that everyone is everywhere all at once

    Brief thoughts about the fracturing of online communication

    tl;dr: I think a lot of folks are wrongly conflating personal messaging, topical communities, and general social networks (though I get there’s a bunch of overlap). And I think the increasing fracturing of these venues is actually fine, except for the first category… which is indeed quite annoying.

    PERSONAL MESSAGING

    iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Line, FB Messenger, etc. The apps we use to keep in touch with our family and friends, 1:1 and in small groups.

    It’s certainly a pain when the people we care about are spread across so many different services, because it means we have to keep a bunch of apps on our phone, remember which app so-and-so checks more often, etc. And a world where Apple opens up iMessage to the world or embraces RCS… seems, alas, unlikely.

    My personal favorite messaging app is currently Signal, from a non-profit org of the same name that’s created a well-made cross-platform, end-to-end-encrypted service. It supports the things most normal people want and expect from a messaging service, like sending your bestie a photo or short video that doesn’t look like a potato when received. Unless it actually is a potato, in which case… go Idaho farmers!

    TOPICAL COMMUNITIES

    This set includes Subreddits (groups) on Reddit, hobbyist forums, Facebook groups, etc.

    It’s fine that these are fractured! When one wants to talk about, say, Japan travel, it’s no problem that there are 4200 different places to learn and engage. Many of those communities are great and helpful and one doesn’t have to keep up with all of ’em on various phone apps 🙂

    GENERAL SOCIAL NETWORKING

    This describes services such as Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and of course Facebook’s ‘main feed’ (but it’s complicated!*), and so on.
    And it shouldn’t worry us that users are — and likely will remain — fractured across these services.

    After all, in real life we have a set of places where we like to hang out, and they all feature different groups of people, distinct vibes, and so on.

    Folks are understandably concerned about a perceived “winner takes all” scenario here, but the internet has gotten big enough that… that’s unlikely to be an issue.

    Maybe Post will stay small.
    Maybe Bluesky will take off or maybe it won’t.
    Hopefully Spill (a newer Black-centric social network) will grow and thrive.

    There’s room for ’em all!

    My only firm expectation (and hope) at this point is that Twitter finally dies

    I genuinely understand and appreciate that many people have quite fond memories of that place and will be sad to see it go to that great big bitbucket in the sky. But it’s like your cranky-but-beloved granny who got bit by a zombie. She’s not the same granny anymore. Let her go, friends, let her go.

    Image credit: Pieter Brueghel the Elder – bAGKOdJfvfAhYQ — Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22178101

    (* As you can see from the multiple mentions of Facebook in the lists above, it’s a confusing/confounding example because it’s at once so many different things! (messaging service, topical groups, generalized social network, etc.)

  • So THIS is a *tiny* glimpse into being a minority…

    So THIS is a *tiny* glimpse into being a minority…

    She walked into the class and noticed right away that no other students looked like her.

    All men.  Many seemed to already be acquainted, or in a few cases, fast friends.  Clearly they’d been through similar classes before.

    And halfway through the class, her fears were realized; everyone was more experienced than she was.  More skilled.  More at ease.  More confident.

    She stumbled again.  What was she doing here?  She didn’t belong, and of course everyone knew it.

    What were they thinking?  Were they amused at how out-of-her-element she was?  Annoyed that she was taking up space that could have been filled with someone more competent, someone that belonged here?

    Were they staring at her?    No, wait, they were pretty much ignoring her.  For a moment, she was unsure whether she wanted to blend in or be just wholly invisible.

    And yet she came back to the class again the following week.

    “Hi,” she stammered to a couple of the guys.  Hmm, had she just interrupted their conversation?  Did they even hear her?  No response.

    Others were immersed in their phones. Let’s see, greet the new girl or read more Facebook posts?  Clearly no contest.

     

    She thought about not going back.  All those guys probably would probably be happier anyway if a lone girl wasn’t invading their space.  They’d feel more free to be themselves, to make guy jokes, to share guy gossip.  And she just wasn’t doing very well in the class anyway; she wasn’t cut out for this.  Yes, it was interesting, yes, the subject matter was fun, yes, she had just as much right to be there as anyone else.  But why persist where she wasn’t wanted?

     

    …

    Plot twist!  This was actually about a guy in a class that was otherwise 100% female-attended.  The class? A weekly ujam dance fitness workout.  The guy?  Me.

    Even crazier?  I was actually thinking and experiencing everything described above.

    Absolutely ridiculous, right?  I’m a white, middle-class guy who was taking a totally optional, pretty inconsequential group exercise class.  My livelihood wasn’t at stake.  This wasn’t about a college education or a job or anything else critical like that.  Not to mention that this was just a once-a-week thing.

    And as I thought about how embarrassingly ludicrous my feelings were, a lightbulb went on in my head:  Holy crap, these feelings… these worries… this discomfort… this was just an extremely tiny taste of what a lot of my black / Hispanic / female friends have faced regularly in their lives.  First day on the job as a software engineer.  At tryouts for a symphony orchestra position.  Attendee at a tech conference.  Faced with a sea of white faces–often predominantly male–wondering how others are judging them.  Oh, that Hispanic guy must be on the cleaning crew.  That woman is obviously booth babe, not a mechanical engineer.

    Every fricking week, maybe even every damn day they’re faced with crap like this.  And don’t even get me started about online harassment :\.

     

    On one hand, I laughed when I thought about how silly my “aw, poor Adam, feeling insecure in a gym class!” feelings were.  But then when I realized that this was just a very, very, very watered-down taste of what my friends regularly dealt with, it was no longer funny.  Just sad.

    Thankfully, I truly believe that–at least in the U.S.–the ‘younger generation’ is far more open-minded and embracing of diversity than the generations that came before it.  Interracial couples, close friends of different races, not just tolerance but full-on acceptance of gay marriage, and so on.

    But we shouldn’t have to wait for all of us old(er) farts to die off.  We should find a way to make more people feel welcome in every aspect of life, not only in hugely meaningful ways, but in small, mundane ways as well.  I’ve often winced when I’ve heard the phrase “check your privilege,” frankly, but perhaps we could all question our assumptions, force ourselves out of our comfort zones (in what we read, think, and do), and do our best to recognize how our preconceptions and fears can be hurting other people.  More positively, we could make more of a daily effort to be genuinely welcoming to individuals who don’t look like us.

    And yes, in the meantime, I’ve been continuing to go to ujam.  I still sometimes wonder whether people are secretly laughing at my body roll attempts (or my more literal body rolls), but now I smile when I consider how such trivial discomforts have sparked me to think a bit bigger… and to finally write another blog post here :).

    P.S. — Seeing the latest Disney movie, Zootopia, almost certainly played a role in spurring me to write this. What an amazing film in all respects, in no small part due to its sly, funny, and deeply thoughtful take on race relations, diversity, and related issues.  GO SEE IT!

    P.P.S. — My friend Rachel sent me a link to this cartoon which I think speaks volumes:

    racial-hurdles

     

    Anyone know where this is from? I’d love to link & give full credit (and yes, I Googled!)

  • Relishing those juicy leaked memos? Bad idea.

    Relishing those juicy leaked memos? Bad idea.

    Imagine you tell someone a secret, only to be betrayed.  Putting emotion aside for a moment, what happens next?

    Most likely, you’ll subsequently either communicate uselessly bland info, blatantly misleading info, or no info at all to them in the future.  At a personal level, that’s a bummer for both people.  At a corporate level, the damage ripples throughout society.

    *  *  *

    The leaking of corporate memos might seem either innocuous, societally useful, or both.  In reality, it is typically neither.

    1. It irreparably damages trust and valuable communications within institutions

      Recently, an apparently frank internal report written at the New York Times was leaked.  On principle, I refuse to read or link to it, but from the summaries I saw, it apparently focused on the newspaper’s struggles with digital distribution and declining readership numbers.  Undoubtedly in the future, that organization will blandify future memos and/or starkly curtail their internal distribution… bad for NY Times employees, but also unfortunate for those of us that are readers of that newspaper who depend upon its employment of skilled and motivated reporters.

    2. It hurts stockholders and is unhelpful to society at large

      Sure, it’s often fun — sometimes schaudenfreudically so — to learn of company’s struggles and to get insider info on its strategies, tactics, and so on.  One might even argue that this gives actionable information to stockholders of public companies, but IMHO any such advantage is offset by the likely loss of employee morale and productivity and/or damages to compromised competitive intelligence.  Of course, there should be moral exceptions for the leaking of information that is associated with real and immediate threats to safety and security, but beyond that… do we really benefit as a society knowing about changes in a corporate policy, partner realignments, and so on?

    In a way, the leaking of corporate memos is a bit like the illicit drug world.  It takes someone to initiate (create the drug for resale, leak the memo), people to distribute (drug runners, bloggers, journalists), and an audience to eagerly consume and share that which provides short-term enjoyment but likely long-term harm.

    Given this, my advice is likely to be both unsurprising and yet controversial.  Quit enabling this damaging behavior.  Stop reading these leaked memos, and stop frequenting sites that regularly encourage and feature such leaks.

    With that said, I’m not optimistic.  In a firm of, say, 20,000 employees… it takes just one person to be a jerk (and violate their contract).  And we humans are notorious rubberneckers.  But hey, I can dream, right?

  • Thrice-weekly postal deliveries: Pound wise or pound foolish?

    I was reading a fascinating article in The Economist about the U.S. Postal Service, and a few things came to mind:

    • Hmm, the comments are delightfully civil and informative!
    • Can I count on one hand the number of postal items I receive quarterly — perhaps even yearly — that I actually want?  Why, yes, I probably can!
    • What would happen if the U.S. Postal Service delivered only three days per week (say, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)?
    This latter idea, then, prompted me to wonder the following:
    1. Would this pose an actual hardship on people, and if so, would it (I assume) most likely hit the economically-disadvantaged more heavily?  And if so, in what ways?  Could other factors/proposals mitigate the potential hardship?
    2. What if the U.S. Government got out of postal delivery altogether, perhaps in conjunction with some sort of requirement (stick) or deep incentives (carrot) prompting private delivery companies to continue delivering to loss-leaders (rural areas)?
    3. Is the postal service largely public in most, or even all other industrialized nations?
    4. What about a subsidy or other incentive for households or even apartment complexes which offered to accept minimized or even eliminated postal delivery services?
    Keep in mind, I’m not necessarily proposing that pickup from centralized locations be reduced or eliminated.
    Your thoughts?

  • How employment at prominent tech firms stymies open communication

    Let me first get the disclaimers out of the way:

    • I have worked at Google since March, 2006.
    • I do not speak on behalf of Google in this blog, nor do my views necessarily dovetail with those of other Googlers; I’ve historically held more of a public-facing role than most Googlers, so I have heightened sensitivities.
    • I believe prominent technology firms — certainly including Google — contribute many things to the world that improve communications and societal openness.
    *  *  *

    Do people who work at Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / Facebook resent the fact that they can’t genuinely speak up on the Internet and have to do so anonymously, in most cases?

    This really hit home for me, and I decided that I’d outline the many ways in which I (and presumably many others) are forbidden from communicating in some ways and — more commonly — feel uncomfortable expressing ourselves in specific ways or on a variety of topics.
    Stuff I am not allowed to discuss…
    This is perhaps the most obvious category, the list of what employees like me are typically forbidden from communicating. 
    • Confidential information on products and services my company is working on.
      And this isn’t just due to obvious competitive-market issues, but also for reasons of strategic public communications.  Due to events in the news, something we’re working on (and have been working on for well before these events transpired) might be seen as insensitive or inappropriate… and we know that after things die down a bit, the public will embrace rather than resent this new product or service.  Other considerations:  we might want to release with a bigger splash, we’re required to be silent due to third-party agreements (hardware partners, etc.), we don’t want a ton of public pontificating based upon a very rough alpha, and so on.
    • Issues my company is currently involved with in a legal context or is likely to become involved with in the future
      For Googlers, this means no comments about “search neutrality,” or intellectual property issues with regards to YouTube, and so on.
    • Private user information we’re entrusted with
      Such information is quite stringently controlled at my company (and I’d presume at other companies as well), but aside from the technical and legal (not to mention ethical!) safeguards, I think all of us know that it’d be long-term career suicide to even be perceived as engaging in untoward behavior in this area.  
    Topics that I’m allowed to discuss, but could result (or have resulted) in unpleasant situations
    • Competitors’ products and services
      If I suggest a limitation of iPhones, for instance, I may be accused of being brainwashed by my company (which works on the Android operating system)… or, at minimum, I may simply worry that I’ll be perceived in negative ways (catty, manipulative, etc.).  On the flip side, if I profess love for a competitor’s product, it’s a pretty sure bet someone will retort, “See?  Even Googlers avoid [Google’s product in this space]!” which can then, I kidd you not, snowball into headlines like, “Googlers snub [Google productname] in favor of [non-Google productname].”  Aside from the ridiculous assumption that because I am not using and enjoying both products, there’s the equally-stupid one outspoken Googler = all Googlers.
    • Hot button societal issues that my company is associated with.
      Like Privacy. Net neutrality.  Not only are there often legal circumstances surrounding these issues which make talking about them verboten anyway, it’d be just a minefield to jump into online or offline conversations on such heated topics.  I could be mistaken for someone speaking on behalf of the company (especially since I’ve appeared in Google-official videos about Privacy in the past), or simply harangued as a Google shill.
    • Frustration over my own company’s products
      As much as I love a lot of the stuff that comes out of my company, there are also products and services we provide that, well, I don’t really like or I like but am dying to see improved.  But what could I possibly gain by criticizing them in public?
      • If I feel that the only way to see changes I’m hoping for internally is to apply external pressure, then it’s probably time for me to consider changing employers.
      • If I don’t think many people will even notice my criticisms, why am I even bothering to express them?  Even if just one person sees it — someone who works on that product — I’ve at minimum made someone really sad, and probably just burned a bridge.  Who knows?  That person might be a future teammate, and — depending on the fierceness of my criticisms — that relationship could be mighty uncomfortable!
    And, as someone who may again in the future speak on behalf of my company to the press or at conferences:
    • Controversial views (e.g., anything on religion, politics, sexuality…)
      By articulating such views, especially if forcefully, I could negatively affect the comfort of interactions with or even treatment from journalists, conference attendees, bloggers, etc.
    • Specific blogs, media outlets, bloggers, journalists, etc.
      Whether it’s highlighting certain outlets’ lack of ethics or professionalism, or schaudenfreudically giggling over sophomoric online slugfests, it’d be all fun and games until I was asked to interview with one of these news networks / blogs / newspapers.
    *  *  *
    So what’s the loss here for you and society?
    • You get a less nuanced, less comprehensive view of how and what specific people think.
    • You get less information and fewer (potential useful) opinions from specific people than you otherwise would.  On a related note, more misinformation on the internet remains uncorrected.  In some cases (e.g., minor misconception of a product’s specs), the damage is pretty insignificant.  In other cases, the misinformation is pretty harmful, causing users to do unnecessary work or politicians to make unnecessary or even harmful laws.
    • Causes (political, societal) which could use the open support will often not receive it.
    But we can’t blame Corporate Communications policies
    At least at Google there’s no required pre-screening of our external communications.  We have a pleasantly enlightened group of Corporate Communications folks; they get social media, and they have never to my knowledge discouraged us from blogging, tweeting, etc.  The vast majority of the speech-limits I’ve described above are self-imposed, and certainly cannot be blamed on company policies.
    Anonymity?
    Sure, I and others could write under nom de plumes, though of course we’d still be forbidden from disclosing company secrets and the like.  But in addition to running the risk of being uncovered, I feel that this’d be a slippery slope emotionally; if I started criticizing or defending Google products as someone other than myself, I’d probably feel sucked in to the ensuing debates, and I’d become more and more uncomfortable “living a lie” so to speak.  So, at least for me, writing under something that’s not my real name or dominant internet nickname (“ThatAdamGuy”) isn’t a good choice.
    And on the whole, these big companies are still a net gain for societal communication and openness
    Look at the information shared around the world with Twitter, or YouTube or spread through large networks of friends (and often then ultimately the world) via Facebook.  I may feel occasionally muzzled and frustratingly so, but in the grand scheme of things, I remain convinced it’s for the greater good.

  • Fashion vs. fit

    A friend of mine recently posted a note (sorry, not publicly accessible) asking people what they thought about fashion.  She’s quite the fashionista… and sadly, I am not.  Here, for your reading pleasure, is the comment I wrote in response to her note:

    *  *  *

    Sorry, but I pretty much think negatively of “fashion.”  I see the stuff people wear on catwalks, for instance, and I want to laugh or gag or both.  I see what “fashionable” people wear, particularly ones who push the envelope, and I think… gah, if my friend/family-member wore something like that, I’d hide in embarrassment.

    Now in contrast, there’s the concept of fit, which I think is very important (and is something I darn well should be paying better attention to).  Often times, I see what would otherwise be very attractive folks, for instance, wearing clothes that either accentuate a body flaw or failing to wear clothes that accentuate their body strengths.

    As a personal example:  I’m pretty short for a guy, so I should apparently not be wearing flashy belts or horizontally striped shirts or other stuff that separate the visual vertical flow of my body, causing me to look shorter.  On a related note, hats and haircuts and glasses and such really ought to be selected according to fit rather than according to the latest fashion to account for differently shaped faces and so on.

    These fit considerations, IMHO, are enduring, whereas fashion (or at least my perception of it) is less based in aethetical science and more based upon, ZOMG, [insert name of horrendously overrated actor] is wearing [article of clothing or accessory], so I MUST wear that!!!!!!!!1

    In fact, if anything, I find that a slavish attention to fashion results in far too many people looking really awful whereas if these same folks instead focused on better fitting clothing (a custom tailored suit, for instance), they’d look 100x better.

  • Where is the artistic passion? Thoughts on passion in society

    On my blog post yesterday, my friend Righini had commented in part:

    […] i notice how much love you put in everything you do from writings to music, and i’m amazed and my heart feels warmed! What’s your secret root? Where do you take all this strength?

    I started to write a really, really long reply in the comments, and then realized… hmm, perhaps I should just make this into a post, so here I am! 🙂

    *  *  *

    I truly believe that everyone has enormous passion inside, but this too often gets stifled due to fear, ignorance, lack of inspiration and role models, and lastly, distraction (“SQUIRREL!” :p). Some examples:


    Fear of being different
    Drawing from Hollywood (eeep!)… on “Glee” there’s an athlete who had tons of music in his soul, but was afraid to let it out for fears of being ostracized by peers.

    There’s a reason in the U.S. that kids playing instruments in band are (usually derisively) called “Band Geeks” or “Choir Fags.”  Maybe now it’s more cool to be in choir or band, but back when I was in high school, it generally wasn’t.  I think kids often repress the expressive depths of their passion (in all forms) because they’re afraid of being different, and — in the case of guys — quite possibly afraid of being perceived as feminine or even gay.


    Ignorance
    My best friend in high school was a fellow geek (imagine that!).  Couldn’t sing a note.  That is, until he somehow ended up in choir and also my singing telegram group after a bit of arm twisting.  Here’s someone that never thought he could really sing, and by the end of the year, he had excellent relative pitch (and even blips of perfect pitch) and was a truly valuable member of our ensemble.
    And more importantly, it wasn’t until these experiences that he discovered a love of making music.  Got the darned biggest smile on his face when voices blissfully converged, just like the rest of us grinning fools.

    This was undiscovered passion, and I doubt I’m exaggerating when I note it likely changed his life.

    Lack of inspiration and role models
    I think tons of kids (and I focus on kids, because by the time you’re an adult, you’re often set in your ways)… I think most kids don’t realize the beauty of really listening to and making music. Their role models are (typically) highly paid athletes, pop or rap stars. How can they fall in love with choral music, with classic jazz, with quiet beauty and clever complex rhythms much less the idea of making this music themselves when they aren’t exposed to potential role models? Each time I go to the symphony, I become more and more depressed at seeing an audience on the cusp of dying (in a way, literally, to be morbid).  How many kids go to orchestra or jazz concerts? How many kids can even afford to go see musicals nowadays? How many kids are watching “Billy Elliott” vs. movies-that-bang-or-bite?  Few.

    And on a related note, with writing nowadays people are bombarded with short-form (e.g., Twitter, Facebook Updates, etc.), so when it comes time to express themselves, they follow the pack and mimic what they see.  Sure, there are folks writing detailed essays, even people still writing books (!), but when one asks oneself, “Could I really do this?” the gut answer is no.  Too much time to write a book and get it published.  Too much effort to write a detailed blog post (I’m sure this one of mine — hardly supremely artful, really — will take at least an hour to write and lightly edit).

    Ironically, the “could I do this?” answer is technically moving towards “yes” (with cheap videocams, easy blogging platforms, even free music notation software online!) but the emotional roadblocks are still high and the societal inspiration is still low.

    At least in America, our society doesn’t seem geared towards collaborative or deep individual expression for the “common person” anymore.  For example, in the 1930s-50s, Harlem was covered by massive ballrooms where the cool kids (not just accomplished dancers) would go regularly to not only find love (hey, some things never change :D), but also passionately express themselves artistically on the bandstand or the dance floor.  Take the Savoy Ballroom, which spanned a full city block, had two big bands on tap every night, and was crammed full with well-dressed folks young and old, black and white, dancing the night away together.  Today, we have “clubs” but — while some might disagree — I just don’t think it’s the same.  And the Savoy and most of the massive ballrooms of its time no longer exist.

    Distraction

    Despite working for a pretty awesome company, I cannot help but think how much I could accomplish in my life if I didn’t have to work, and yes, I realize that’s hardly an original thought ;-).
    BRB.  Gotta go check my e-mail and Twitter and Facebook and… ah, another IM.  And here’s another text message.  And…
    Oh, sorry.  Got distracted.  By work (is the ability to work from home liberating or shackling?), by home stuff (searching, furnishing, cleaning, repairing, hosting…), by boring-life-stuff (license renewal, money management, sleeping), and by online stimulus (oh look, another IM!) and so on.
    I’ve largely turned off IM, I don’t watch TV, I’m trying to read tech news and gossip less often, and I’ve finally mostly-beaten my college-uber-frugality-mentality (oh, look, I can save $5 if I spend 30 minutes searching for a better bargain online!), and so on.  But still, after the day’s minutes are totaled up, it’s sobering and depressing to see how little free time is left.  And then there’s the second guessing; what if I had spent an hour composing music instead of writing this whining blog post? 😉
    *  *  *
    Then there’s the distinction between talent and passion.  As noted above, I believe everyone’s got passion deep in their soul, but not everyone (yet) has talent. Of course, not everyone cares, but that’s a different issue 🙂
    Or is it?  I touched upon fear earlier as one blocker of passion, and perhaps that’s more central than I initially assumed.  How many people suppress potential passions because, talentwise, they’re “not good enough.”  And in this situation, I wonder if those now-ubiquitous talent competitions on TV help or hurt.  On one hand, they could be providing inspiration (“Wow, look at that awesomeness!”), but often I worry that they deepen the divide between those who express passion and those who resign themselves to witness it.  “Oh, I could never do that!”  Passion becomes something that is intensively, often expensively cultivated, practiced, refined, and — particularly disturbing to me — judged.  Whereas in the olden days people routinely sang and danced in a communal way, now the passion has become glitzified, rarefied, something other people do, people who are better than you.
    *  *  *
    The answer:  less talk, more action 🙂
    I sometimes worry that I’m becoming too much of an old soul.  Too nostalgic, often for a life I never lived, experiences I never experienced.    Too disdainful — often hypocritically so — of popular culture, of frenetic multitasking, of Likes rather than Loves.
    It’s easy to be critical, to be wistful, even to be angry.  It is much harder to re-channel that into productive passion rather than indignation.  So my advice to my future self is this:  create rather than lament.  Passion is still around us, and it speaks for itself.

  • Games, sex, funerals just taking too long nowadays

    This is an oldie-but-goodie and previously unpublished AdamRant that I drafted, oh, about five years ago.  Neither the trends described nor my indignant stances on the matter seem to have changed all that much, though 🙂

    *  *  *

    […] “A lot of people are strapped for time, and they don’t want to pull out a game if they know it’s going to be an hour or more,” said Reyne Rice, toy trends specialist at the Toy Industry Association.

    Faster games are easier for families to fit into their hectic lives, she said.

    “What we call ‘time compression’ is becoming an overbearing trend in our industry,” said Richard Tait, co-founder of board game company Cranium.

    With kids’ schedules packed with afterschool activities and homework, and the rise in both dual-income and single-parent families, Tait said it is hard for families to find time to play board games — especially new ones they haven’t played before. […] 

    – AP Newswire article, “The games are getting faster“

    Well, folks, in light of this change in our culture, I have invented a surefire winner of a game!  My game — which I’m so kindly sharing with all of you for free — is…
    – Simple… no rulebook needed!
    – Fast… can be done in literally under a minute!
    – Cheap… costs only pennies!
    – Easy… you don’t even have to be in the same room as your competitors!

    Ready?  Okay, here goes…
    – Each player takes a penny.
    – Before flipping it in the air, they call tails or heads.
    – If they are correct, they win.  If not, they lose.

    If you’re feeling really extravagant and have lots of extra time, you can actually do a best two-out-of-three.  And if it’s not high tech enough for you, hire someone in India to do a randomized Flash movie of this, so you don’t even have to touch a real penny… you can press a button and have it flipped for you!

    *  *  *

    Okay, on a serious note, this article bummed me out.

    The quotes — almost Onioneque in a way — are so pathetic, they’d be laughable if they weren’t, well, said in earnest.

    “We ended up playing for 30 minutes or 40 minutes. It whizzed by.”

    Oh.  My.  God.  People actually playing something together for over half an hour?  What is this world coming to?  Tell me, dear, did you feel just as guilty about watching inane TV programs for 31.5 hours a week?

    But clearly anything more than an hour of entertainment with friends or family is clearly pushing it.

    “A lot of people are strapped for time, and they don’t want to pull out a game if they know it’s going to be an hour or more”

     It’s a race to the bottom.

    “Our games are designed so that you don’t have to read the rules…and then they’re all designed to be played in less than 20 minutes”

    Less than 20 minutes.  And mind you, no distractions during the game… no joking around, no spontaneous stories or sipping of wine or eating of popcorn.  This, folks, is SERIOUS, COMPRESSED FUN!  Did I say fun?  Er, I mean, flashy entertainment.  Fun just sounds too, well, you know, wasteful!

    *  *  *

    It’s bad enough that most kids are no longer permitted, much less encouraged, to engage in idle play with non-electronic things… hands-on building with wooden blocks or even making treehouses, etc.  But our everything-in-under-60-seconds microwavable culture has just gone too far.  AND YOU, YES YOU, GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

    *  *  *

    UP NEXT:  Sex and romance taking too long?  Stay tuned to learn how you can compress your foreplay AND lovemaking into 7 minutes or less!

    AND THIS JUST IN: In an era where everyone’s on the go, many people are finding they just don’t have the time to attend funerals for people who have, well, gone up and went.  “There’s a need and demand for — how shall I put this? — more efficient funerals” noted Mack from Moron and Associates Research Firm.  “I think we’ll start seeing more of the ‘quickie funerals’… you know, respectfully requesting guests to keep their eulogies at 60 seconds or less, that sort of thing.”

    “Look,” he added, “Grandma Mabel’s dead, okay, and we’re not.  And we’re busy people.  So let’s just get on with things.  We’ve got quarterly earnings to meet…”

  • Photos and the physical, nostalgia, and the why

    I’m getting ready to move.

    Hmm, that sounded more philosophical / metaphysical than I may have intended.

    I’m getting ready to move bodies to a new apartment.  Not exactly sure when or where, but already I’m inventory’ing my things, realizing just how little I own (no furniture aside from a bed, dresser, desk, and some bookshelves) and yet how much crap I’ve accumulated, including both boxes of amorphous stuff and things that, well, should be valuable to me.

    A plethora of photo albums.  Yearbooks.  And yet more boxes filled with an assemblage of handwritten letters, high school newspapers and term papers, and the like.

    These take up space, the physical, to be frank, more than the mental or emotional.  I don’t really think about the distant past all that much, for better or worse.  Don’t really have close friends from high school (my fault more than theirs), and — as a card-carrying geek then as now– let me just bluntly admit that school days were not necessarily my best of days.

    I’ve already scanned thousands of my old photos, probably close to 100% of them in fact, with the very awesome ScanCafe service.  But these new digital files supplement, rather than replace the physical incarnations.

    Or do they?  I was just realizing that — except for doublechecking that all my pics got appropriately scanned — I haven’t spent more than a handful of minutes over the last years perusing my hardcopy photos.  Have you?  And how about those high school yearbooks?  Ten years after high school, have you given them more than a passing glance?

    And whether you answer yes or no… I think a more interesting question is why.  If you still lasciviously / lovingly / longingly linger over your old photos and yearbooks, why?  If not, why not?… and would you actually consider junking them? (or perhaps you already have?)

    Very curious to hear your thoughts… 🙂

  • Fall from grace – inevitable?

    We create, we destroy.  We build up, we tear town.

    People, companies, and relationships amongst them all.

    Perhaps on a small and personal scale, it may be possible to maintain strength and joy.  I believe it is.  But can this work on a bigger, louder canvas?  I am not so sure.

    How many greats have escaped a fall?  Whose big names or brands have soared to great heights, never to have their wings melted and the fall begin?

    If you agree that this trajectory is inevitable, should it be? If you disagree, name names 😀

    In the meantime, here are two songs—one more serious, one quite humorous—to set the mood.