tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1527333795229124192024-03-14T02:45:55.370-07:00Consummate VsBringing you divergent rants since 2006.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140007823552946722noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-72082150527092296792013-05-16T15:00:00.000-07:002013-05-16T17:01:23.436-07:00Prosie, the RivetingHi folks!<br />
<br />
You might have found this blog because you've read a write-up about the <a href="http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/50432219744/special-guest-edition-the-hawkeye-initiative-irl">Brosie the Riveter</a> joke that my buddy <a href="http://therealsamkirk.com/">Sam Kirk</a> and I played at our company, the write-up of which was originally hosted on <a href="http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/">The Hawkeye Initiative</a>. To our surprise and pleasure, it went viral. :) It wound up on sites like <a href="http://kotaku.com/how-a-poster-of-a-sexy-dude-helped-one-game-developer-m-505969550">Kotaku</a>, <a href="http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/05/15/hawken-developer-levels-the-gender-playing-field-with-bro-sie-the-riveter/">PC Gamer</a>, and <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/05/gender-swap-hawken-picture/">Wired</a>. There's an interview with me up on Wired, too, <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/05/hawken-brosie-meteor-k2/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
This is a blog I've used from time to time in the past. It has been mostly for data science rants, sometimes for silly things. The Hawkeye Initiative blog post was my first posting about gender issues. You can follow me on twitter, where I also post rarely, here: <a href="https://twitter.com/K2_said">@K2_said</a>. If you want to contact Sam or myself, you can do so through Twitter, through Sam Kirk's site, or through the Hawkeye Initiative.<br />
<br />
I might blog/tweet more now! But man it takes up hella time.*, ** So we shall see. <br />
<br />
--K2<br />
<br />
* Including troubleshooting why some of the older formatting on this blog is hosed.<br />
** Oh, you heard me right. I said: "hella."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140007823552946722noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-20865219372387681992013-05-16T14:00:00.000-07:002013-05-16T16:59:40.328-07:00Artist/collaborator Sam Kirk on (ahem) Brosie the Riveter :)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Possibly
the most positive thing about <a href="http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/50432219744/special-guest-edition-the-hawkeye-initiative-irl">this Brosie experiment</a> – right up there with Mark
Long’s amazing response, and the internet’s equally positive response – has been
working with <a href="http://therealsamkirk.com/">Sam Kirk</a>. For the first few months after I had the idea, I didn’t
think I’d find an artist with the talent and the sense of humor to make it work.
But when I asked around, there he was, right in my own company! And Sam’s
involvement fundamentally changed the idea for the better. Beyond his raw
talent, Sam had this marvelous instinct for making the satire warm and friendly.
It was Sam who suggested the Meteor Entertainment cultural in-jokes that are
hidden in the picture. (For example, Brosie’s face is from one of our beloved
co-workers.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And better yet, Sam is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fucking hilarious</i>. For about a month
(late nights and weekends for Sam, which he did totally pro bono), we passed
proofs back and forth, drunk on funny. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Sam
and I share a lot of values, not only on gender politics (which is remarkable enough),
but also on the importance of collaboration. As such, I’d like to hand Sam the microphone
for a bit to respond to some of the same questions that WIRED asked me. Take it
away, Sam:</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">I'd love to hear your
thoughts about the reaction to the piece so far. Why do you think it's gotten
such a positive and viral response? </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">SK: I’m shocked by the scope and velocity of the reaction, but I’m
not surprised by the tone. We’ve seen this topic bring out the worst in people,
especially in venues that house cowardice the way comment streams can. Discussions
break down quickly when people’s sensitivities are threatened. But in this case,
we introduced a typically charged subject in an absurdly disarming way. When
the discussion must pause for the chuckles, it’s a lot easier to take the
parallelism of the two posters at face value and question how someone could be
so caught off guard by one, and not by the nearly identical one.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Have you experienced
any backlash because of the story (or the prank) online or in real life?</span></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">SK: Meteor is full of reasonable people; I’ve not experienced any
backlash. Online you can see the occasional pseudonymous flame, but most of the
exchange has been encouraging. Even stalwart opposition to the prank has been
spoken with some stint of tact.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">What I’m curious about is the conversation that isn’t documented. Throughout
most of the online comments, preconceptions persist and there’s a dearth of flipped
bits. But we don’t know what unfolds once readers turn from their screens and
interact with people in person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll
have to punk Mark again next year and compare the chatter to measure the change.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">What would you say to
other video game companies that want to do better with their approach to
gender, both in terms of their games and their female employees/office
environment?</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">SK: I think it comes down to individuals as much as the
company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In working with K2 I was
reminded that it’s worth speaking up in the face of some heinous imbalance,
even I don’t feel personally affected by it. It’s embarrassingly rudimentary in
hindsight, but this process has been a welcome nudge. Coercion often comes in a
trickle, not a downpour. By remaining active consumers of our environment and
influences we can take a whole lot more from them, and dish a whole lot more
back.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">One thing Meteor does exceedingly well is foster a lively
environment for healthy discourse. From top to bottom, idiosyncrasies are
appreciated, if not nurtured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the
most part, people don’t take themselves too seriously. I think that’s really
important. We only accomplish anything together, so it pays to let your guard
down and listen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">That said, I think my best advice would be to hire outspoken women. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[K2] Sam and guys like him have changed my perspective on feminism. May they always join us behind the podium. </span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01140007823552946722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-40072550130746150292012-04-16T13:21:00.000-07:002013-05-16T12:43:11.516-07:00Oliver’s Twist: Has the SPD pawn shop sting reduced property crime?<i>Note: I wrote this a year ago, when I decided to commit to a career in data science. I did it to refresh some skills, and to give potential employers a sense of how I approach problems. It worked really well. If you are a data science newbie, I recommend doing stuff like this. -- K2 -- 2013-04-01</i><br />
<br />
Here’s an example of how easy it can be to explore a data set when you combine powerful, user-friendly tools like Socrata (which publishes public sector data), and the free version of Tableau (a great visualization tool). To try this analysis out yourself, check out the Seattle <b>Socrata</b> data sets <a href="https://data.seattle.gov/">here</a>, and the free public version of <b>Tableau</b>, <a href="http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/community">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Property crime</b> is Seattle’s biggest crime sector. When you combine vehicle theft, burglary, and larceny, you get 92% of Seattle’s criminal incidents. <br />
<blockquote>
<i>“In 2010, Seattle bucked a </i><i>national trend</i><i> of declining property crime rates, with burglary and theft rates here increasing 3.2% in contrast to a 1.3% decrease across the country, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Crime in the United States” report.” (article <a href="http://mayormcginn.seattle.gov/operation-olivers-twist/">here</a>)</i></blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfbc5abrMz0xxqErDbWu7vTZ9bSvmDWZZMWrnS1oLsMutsCUtOvo1wr67cVbadEwDopL28Gn2-PcrECcSVvdSSnvSHwTGFFDDR5I0j6fgx0nlr8eGJKJ3K43bnwzx7SQb6ZjF8l2YqiQzi/s1600-h/image42.png"><img alt="image" border="0" height="516" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQKHWGOeUcngBrHxtoIeKH_9ARa9Be9UeRJAplRVcZ2adwsxZZpi2wEC2fdDp5ntZAWLBnBiOy6DCRQ8Sqoq0YVzj4U8OfjUt1-R-ehQI14_3XSKzfDqOI0dQTBxmPM7UipuU32oo5BVP/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="478" /></a><br />
(Data set: <a href="https://data.seattle.gov/Public-Safety/Seattle-Crime-Stats-by-Police-Precinct-2008-Presen/3xqu-vnum">Crime stats by precinct</a>, 2008-2011)<br />
<br />
This struck me as rather a lot of property crime for an area with such low levels of violent crime, so I tracked down a local Seattle beat cop to get some perspective on it. He told me about an interesting pawn shop sting the Seattle PD ran over the last year to attempt to address the rising property crime levels, named <i>Operation Oliver’s Twist</i>.<br />
<br />
Mayor McGinn described Oliver’s Twist in a <a href="http://mayormcginn.seattle.gov/operation-olivers-twist/">press conference</a> on 3/6/2012:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>[D]etectives from the Seattle Police Department’s Major Crimes Task Force and the Pawn Shop/Property Recovery Unit, working with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) and the FBI, set up a storefront fencing operation – a tactic not used by SPD since 1979 – where undercover officers spent 11 months buying stolen goods from suspects for pennies on the dollar, with no questions asked.</i> </blockquote>
With initial results:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>As a result of the operation, detectives identified 102 suspects involved in 314 separate criminal cases. Dozens of suspects were arrested and booked into jail over the last 24 hours on their outstanding cases. </i></blockquote>
The question is: <b>has this operation shown immediate results in reducing Seattle’s property crime?</b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi073nwVCysckJbs90NaeM7tc8K-BLi-z2f7uT-d3VishH1NDWCPVxhLFkietgL1HjIs_TFivvlLkQ4-sw4Sc8lMeN2U6LEue7V4Enteg42HyEbNgXWsCxHlJ1YEVLBe-P4bmjFnMKN0Hlz/s1600-h/image77.png"><img alt="image" border="0" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXraJt5-lcVC7Lj_-m2GTonvwjB-_DRT_WMLZ6JbqEH5Bs7pdPyMcnYe-_IUO5mpxcvk6HKY8vPywsbGg9moPqNqLZrvtYGm5HM-_Hb74r71nstSQubfwuSesK__B5l4NK8YHbZnWtSPEo/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="531" /></a><br />
(Data set: <a href="https://data.seattle.gov/Public-Safety/Seattle-Police-Department-Police-Report-Incident/7ais-f98f">Police report incident</a>, used for the rest of this blog entry) <br />
(Data transformations: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpublic.tableausoftware.com%2Fviews%2FPoliceReportIncident%2FPropertycrimetrends%3F%253Aembed%3Dy&h=oAQE900ux">here</a>, you can see how I’ve defined Seattle property crime.)<br />
<br />
Overall, property crime in Seattle hasn’t decreased since the sting arrests began in (assumed) Feb-March of 2012. In fact, from the regression line, you can see the total number of Seattle property crime incidents has actually increased a little.<br />
<br />
Let’s break it down by district to see if we can see decreases in crime closest to the sting pawn shop. I used my data set to cobble together a basic Police District map of Seattle. The SPD pawn shop was located in Georgetown, which is in the light pink “O” district below.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQJegvqVINcNp_yWwzayEkohxD_G21l813cLZJ116t4285dcPuE-YTb4bj9TZtEVzHcgzayzfnDKan70fKLbphlfaHVGVh2oHNnuOosudEmozTmT9k9mnM_yRAlXi2KG5-m8mN4fZS9cY/s1600-h/image73.png"><img alt="image" border="0" height="637" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9qgo1rNmT9lwF6qbuc5tlk4EwbWWSxl7Og96xK-osJe3ov6-Z6X9pYnCHDz69ZUbaHCdRkPU2rpxuAhEhfu_5v82fLep6-Twd4puVbguxCkjOF8QbtCSiP-VoS5UI9c1McYT94DJ64BBY/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="502" /></a><br />
<br />
Now we know that districts F, K, M, O, R and W are closest to the SPD pawn shop sting. We might (theory) expect to see property crime decrease most dramatically in those districts. To see the difference, I compared the number of property crime instances in the months of February and March in 2011, to the same period in 2012 (the estimated time of the arrests), in each district.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjOEMDz5bGZsqQSiYB8BhobZZdwK4nQl5iY7d7cMlryoNKZlEfl6rCmqP_LOeIUoBUUEYhllzc-aLBSfaiFKSdyK8EpWoqNt0w3yY6_gFTo5Cy47w0m9BYVefbNJF6uR8p1rFv3MKkFrS0/s1600-h/image81.png"><img alt="image" border="0" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNc3gXCqDQcsvprrdzZZX0SQYurUiZAopsdAfeqj1xnlDcpE_gApZl_a1h_iSxb8tPfd5jQyYXXSCcJyxAmnvRnMRweb16sUAenUKZG-Rr06IiF9avaPir2ZgIXHo6Vajja4U0yKBa_Qf4/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="462" /></a><br />
<br />
To make these stats a little clearer, let’s graph the change by district on our original district map. The blue circle describes the neighborhood of Georgetown, the location of the sting. Red indicates an increase in property crime incidents, green a decrease. From this map, we can see that the pawn shop location is surrounded by a lot of red – a lot of districts for whom property crime instances actually <i>increased </i>between 2011 and 2012.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWmYkCH1taQ8ItiVda2h9Snhs6rYPrNvMDiFKIgvz4SjYgoCWfDMMrW1W7TRIXl8CKw1EIgdg8qn0ZJWRmC3zxlL6lW8A6yJghnYY0xjXEWL9EPZ9Zl-hhw56XjANfNjR0_o4b8iwZ3fat/s1600-h/image61.png"><img alt="image" border="0" height="546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjefRmOTa5M-zdWqMVhdTvJFB4nNpIXmNlk3ihqvd8XIeljPqLPGVkynZwrXpMudrI8m6KU08bHnnwOCo-TsBNWRLampB26xfCdndJLGPeJ_LB5NRE2UPDqv6J1FnWMDYsinKwW8Fgug_UC/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="494" /></a><br />
<br />
So, working from this data alone, it looks like the “Oliver’s Twist” sting in the O police district has not yet caused a decrease in property crime in neighboring districts.<br />
<br />
It’s still possible that arrests are still ongoing, and the positive impact of the sting has yet to fully manifest itself. Looking at a rolling average since the beginning of February, we see that there has been a steady decrease in property crime in Seattle over the last few weeks (though levels still remain higher than this time last year). It’s interesting to note that the drop is substantially more pronounced in districts farther away from our Georgetown pawn shop.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguuhJk-pSIQ72IKWXdPeHdvzTdHI756b59_OVMQjK7QfKZShcdtkEjphKau4lD5Qdkn7OQNv1Bs04fpDK764Fk2pwK89epRHpPhBVokHQFivXE8etGTwRd_Sc-3BBUT2Z2l0NE__YORbxE/s1600-h/image%25255B8%25255D.png"><img alt="image" border="0" height="501" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnnX746K3b_mnuu235YhB-BsZVTxESzYF4vChQnbkXvBr_a2eJI9gl5R7EivDknZ0HchPxJgk95Id7cT5QitTfGUGEid_bdc6AYLZA_CEaxKn6-4rtf1llgYi5oq73XvK_2v1kBdNe00sP/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="508" /></a> <br />
<br />
There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to measuring crime rates. How much might property crime rates have grown without this intervention? How have previous large-scale stings in Seattle and other areas impacted overall crime rates? Is it possible that there is a negative relationship between location and property predation? Perhaps criminals fence stolen goods intentionally far from where they grabbed them, and the “Other Districts” category is really the one that contains our signal. All interesting questions for the next intrepid analyst who wants to play in this space. <br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Remember: all data sets are quirky, and no analyst infallible. Please have your own team confirm these results before basing any big changes on it.</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-84219983518850862322012-04-16T10:16:00.000-07:002013-05-15T13:28:18.326-07:00Studying data science is a lot like being a data scientist<i>Note: Last year I decided to commit to data science as a career. I did this analysis to brush up on some skills, and to show potential employers how I solve problems. It worked like a charm, and I recommend it to new data science people. - K2 - 2013-04-01</i><br />
<br />
Data science is like anything else: the best way to learn to do it is to do it. This is challenging if you’re winging it, because there isn’t a clear path laid out for newbies. There are lots of free / low cost resources out there, but most of them assume some previous knowledge from the other resources. It’s unclear what comes first, which data philosophy an author / instructor is operating on (there are several), or which techniques are most practical in the real world. Thus, learning data science is a lot like <em>doing </em>data science: you start with some half-formed questions, search and slice until you have some half-formed answers, organize them somehow, refine your questions and start again. Making it work curiosity, and a knack for sorting through giant piles of unsorted information and turning it into categories. The good news is: you’re probably already good at that, which is why you’re interested in data in the first place. <br />
<br />
The other good news is that I’m going to lay out some of those steps & terms for you here. Personally, it drives me nuts when things are made to seem harder or more forbidding than they have to be. While data science isn’t for everybody, there are way more people out there who would be great at it, than there are people who know they would. The industry is going to need all of us: the ones who know they can do it and the ones who don’t. So, I figure, let’s lower the bar of entry. If each newbie works to make it easier on the next newbie, before we know it there’s an army of us well-poised to ask and answer fascinating new questions about human behavior. <br />
<br />
The flip side is that since I’m just getting oriented myself. Collaboration is the steam that makes data science go: if you want to add a resource, step in the process, or advice to this ground-up tutorial series, let me know. <br />
<br />
Next: we start by doing. I’ll set you up with a couple of user friendly tools that let you circumvent some (though not all) of the initial technical hurdles, so you can get directly into the fun part: data analysis.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-20704196186420551362012-03-27T18:49:00.000-07:002013-03-24T03:49:00.610-07:00No, you’re weird<p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">Ever noticed how most behavioral research is based on studies of Western, upper-middle-class, undergraduate university students? If you, like me, are American, it might never occur to you to wonder whether those results can really be generalized to describe the behavior of "people." After reading </font><a href="http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf"><font size="2">The weirdest people in the world? (<span style="background-color: white; background-clip: initial; background-origin: initial">Western, Educated, <font size="2"><font size="2"><img style="display: inline; float: right" border="0" align="right" src="http://www.ci.desoto.tx.us/images/pages/N1178/college%20kids%201.gif" width="200" height="160"></font></font>Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD)</span>)</font></a><font size="2">, you may want to go back through your favorite studies on decision-making, collaboration, cognition, and symbol interpretation and question your first read. </font></span></p> <div style="margin: 0in"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">This paper also has pretty much the best opening paragraph of any academic paper ever. Fair warning: it's not SFW. </font></span></div> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-30679783176505732692012-03-22T18:10:00.000-07:002013-03-24T03:49:00.701-07:00Where’s Gringo?<div style="margin: 0in; font-family: arial; font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">Because Americans are so geographically isolated, we are often less aware of the signature quirks of our own culture and perspective than are (say) people from patchwork continents like Africa, South America, Europe, The Artist Formerly Known as the Soviet <font size="2"><img style="display: inline; float: right" border="0" align="right" src="http://images.wikia.com/waldo/images/e/e7/Waldo.1987.jpg" width="113" height="200"></font>Union, etc. Our biases hide in plain sight. For a dose of cultural perspective from the comfort of your own beanbag chair, do not miss </font><a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Cultural-Patterns-Cross-Cultural-Perspective/dp/1877864013"><font size="2">American Cultural Patterns</font></a><font size="2">. I’m told this tiny little book was written as culture-shock prep for undergraduates who were entering the Peace Corps, and were traveling overseas for the first time. It delves deeply into kernel-level cultural assumptions about communication, values, morality, the perception of time and causality - the list goes on. In my experience, reading any three pages of this book provokes an hour of fascinated discussion over the late-night-coffee of your choice.</font></span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></div></span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-56747234872119553332012-03-22T17:13:00.000-07:002013-03-24T03:49:00.706-07:00Statistics in Plain English<div class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">Yesterday I picked up </font><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/041587291X/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img"><font size="2">Statistics in Plain English</font></a><font size="2">, by Timothy C. Urdan, and I tell ya I can't put it down. From my review:</font></span></div> <blockquote><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="background-color: white"><font size="2">I think I can say, without fear of hyperbole, that this is the best math book in the history of the entire universe. The fact that there are only six reviews of the book so far, instead of six hundred, hints at the fundamental problem I personally see in math education: it looks harder than it is because we communicate so poorly about it. Urdan communicates clearly and naturally, so the chilly math textbook mystique drops away, and you are left with a functional vocabulary of basic stats techniques.</font></span></span></blockquote> <blockquote><a style="margin-bottom: 1em; float: right; margin-left: 1em; clear: right" href="http://boycj.com/files/KNLC7Knr4f.jpg" imageanchor="1"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2"><img border="0" src="http://boycj.com/files/KNLC7Knr4f.jpg" width="150" height="200"></font></span></a><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="background-color: white">Urdan starts with the assumption that all humans can understand and benefit from statistical techniques. By assuming that, he makes it true. He not only defines every term and every symbol he uses -- which is already amazing -- but the new terms and definitions are summarized at the end of each chapter. He lays out lots of context and many straightforward and interesting examples. The chapters are short, which gives you a nice feeling of accomplishment and plenty of breaks to think. He even humanizes the experience by speaking in the first person, expressing personal preferences, and even cracking the occasional joke. It's like talking about math over tea with a good friend.</span> </font></span></blockquote> <blockquote><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="background-color: white">In the modern data space, there's a great shortage of people who have a comfortable intuition for stats. If this book were in every undergraduate class, I'd wager that shortage would just go away.</span> </font></span></blockquote> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-36794449785434882632012-03-19T17:09:00.000-07:002013-03-24T03:49:00.711-07:00Perception of self-efficacy, and technology for developing countries<p><font size="2"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Kentaro Toyama, assistant director of Microsoft Research India, has spent a lot of time thinking about <b>how to use technology to change social systems</b>. He's focused on using technology to further development in rural India (ICT4D, or Information & Communications Technology for Developing Countries). He published a very cool set of essays in The Atlantic in 2011 about the topic. I've been thinking about them ever since. Check 'em out.</span></font><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></span><br><font size="2"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Kentaro talks about technology as basically an amplifier for people's will. Don't let the "virtue" language deter you; fully unpacked, it's a pretty loaded concept.</span><br></p></font> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/technology-is-not-the-answer/73065/"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">Technology is not the answer</font></span></a> <li><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/the-enduring-power-of-virtue/73149/"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">The enduring power of virtue</font></span></a> <li><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/the-white-lie-of-the-self-made-person/73207/"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">The white lie of the self-made person</font></span></a> <li><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/why-cant-we-talk-about-virtue-entrenched-cynicism/73281/"><font size="2">Entrenched cynicism</font></a><font size="2"> </font></span> <li><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/04/fostering-virtue/73308/"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font size="2">Fostering virtue</font></span></a></li></ul> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-74723240834749134462012-03-18T22:52:00.000-07:002013-05-15T13:29:37.087-07:00Why you need an excellent data scientist<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">The data science hiring space in a nutshell:</span><span style="line-height: 19px;"><i></i></span></span><br />
<blockquote style="border-bottom-style: none; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="line-height: 20px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333;">Remember, the driver is as important as the car. If you want to make the best use of your BI application, your organization needs the right people to exploit it. BI is not just about reporting and visualization anymore. It involves intensive and creative analysis, along with data management, to create value for an organization. </span></i>- <a href="http://blog.technologyevaluation.com/blog/2011/06/06/got-bi-now-you-need-to-hire-a-data-geek-heres-what-to-look-for/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">Got BI? Now You Need to Hire a Data Geek. Here’s What to Look For.</a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, was interviewed a few months ago, and said the following in</span> <a href="http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: #006699; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">the McKinsey Quarterly</a><span style="color: #333333; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">: </span><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: italic; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">“The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians… The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill.”</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> - </span><a href="http://www.dataspora.com/2009/05/sexy-data-geeks/" style="color: #1155cc; font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The Three Sexy Skills of Data Geeks</a> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Data geeks are a hot commodity</b>. Why?<br /><br /><b>Data is piling up around the industry's ears.</b> We humans are suddenly generating <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/service-oriented/size-of-the-data-universe-12-zettabytes-and-growing-fast/4750" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">a mountainous drift of accumulating data</a>, growing exponentially, that nobody anticipated having. That mountain is filled with profitable, scientific gems that we are just beginning to learn how to mine out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The market is unprepared for the demand. </b>Even with the rush to train data miners, the market isn't coming close to keeping up with the pace of the data mountain's growth. Folks like me are hounded by recruiters; folks with +5 years data mining experience/ education are actively stalked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/06/data-scientist-the-hot-new-gig-in-tech/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">CNN coverage</a>: <i><span style="border-width: 0px; color: #333333; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">Companies that want to make sense of all their bits and bytes are hiring so-called data scientists - if they can find any.</span> [...] <span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute says that by 2018 the U.S. could face a shortage of up to 190,000 workers with analytical skills.</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Data science salaries are growing</b>. The supply/demand disparity is driving up salaries. According to <a href="http://www.kdnuggets.com/polls/2011/data-mining-salary-income.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">one survey</a>, in 2010, the average data miner salary in the US was $103k; in 2011, it was $113k.<br /><br />So if professional data miners are so hard to get, why do you need one of us?<br /><br /><b>[Your Company Here] needs an excellent data scientist</b>. If humans use your digital product, your company is already generating an enormous quantity of ultra-rich data. Based on that fact alone, I can make the following safe bets:<br /><br /><b>Your data is buggy. </b>No matter how good your testing is, there will be bugs. The bigger the data, the badder the bugs. You are going to need a data analyst who can identify dirty data, scope the damage, and prescribe a solution. Skip that, and risk spending months acting on an interesting data trend that, in the end, describes nothing but a broken javascript call. I've seen it happen over and over.</span><br />
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong style="border-width: 0px; color: #333333; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Skill #2: Data Munging (Suffering). </strong></i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">The second critical skill mentioned above is “data munging.” Among data geek circles</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">, this refers to the painful process of cleaning, parsing, and proofing one’s data before it’s suitable for analysis. Real world data is messy.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - </span><a href="http://www.dataspora.com/2009/05/sexy-data-geeks/" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">The Three Sexy Skills of Data Geeks</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Your data has a fluid architecture. </b>As time moves on, your product evolves. Add a new option? Remove a feature? Need to view user behavior through a whole new lens? Like it or not, you have to change your data architecture while it is live. Every time that happens, you add more complexity. You need an analyst who can keep up with that.<br /><br /><b>Your data has, or should have, journeyman-level richness</b>. If you send an apprentice-level data-miner into that trove, you're going to come out with a handful of iron ore. You can hire an apprentice analyst to run the queries you specify and graph them. You<i> can't</i> hire a apprentice to ask big, hot, actionable, counter-intuitive <wbr></wbr>questions. Those questions grow out of an elbows-deep daily dialogue with your data set, composed of statistics and good old-fashioned nerdly zeal. If you want the gems out of that mine, you need a real industry-level data miner.<br /><br />With big data comes big headaches; also big, big opportunity for a reputation for genius product development. If your analyst can't handle the big hairy real-world data mess, or doesn't know statistical relevance from a hole in the wall, you get bunk analysis. If your analyst just plain isn't that into it, you will get shallow, token inquiry. If your analyst is a passionate data/social science geek, you get game-changing analysis, and stand to score media-worthy customer relationship coups.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-87416974436808468522008-05-21T16:50:00.001-07:002013-05-15T13:32:55.109-07:00Ruthbert<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em>Note: If you are looking at this blog for serious professional reasons, and only want to see the <strong>non-silly entries</strong>, skip this one</em><em>. </em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Welcome to the next episode of Ruthbert, wherein two non-colocated sardonic female information workers search for life, love, meaning, and original puns about bears. </em><br /><strong>K2: </strong>I spelled "for example" as "for exmaple"<br />this particular field goes out to all of you ex maples out there<br />don't ever go back, man<br /><strong>Ruth:</strong> snort</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>Oh god, I'm sorry for this:<br />"I know you're <em>pining </em>away.... but don't fall off the <em>wagon</em>"<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>NO</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>"I'm not ON the wagon, man. I AM the wagon"<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>NO K2 that's a BAD K2</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>HA<br />HA HA<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>now you go to your room and THINK about what you did<br /><br /><strong>Ruth's statuses for April 08:</strong></span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">One two three o'clock four o'clock BARACK</span> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">Solid as Barack</span> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">Barack-a-bye baby, in the treetop, when the wind blows the cradle will Barack</span> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">We built this city on Barack and roll</span> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">Hush little baby don't say a word, Obama's gonna buy you a Barackingbird</span> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;">Walk this way, Barack this way</span> </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Barack me Amadeus</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>His travel doctor ALSO suggested he get the same blood test I suggested he get.<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>travel doctor? is that like a miniature version of a doctor, that comes in a plastic carrying case?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>it's nice because he's magnetic on the bottom and doesn't tip over<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>makes it harder to lose him under the seat, too</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>sometimes you drop him and find him sticking perpendicular out of the gearshift<br /><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: #666666;"><strong>Ruth status: </strong>"whipped topping" is a phrase disturbing in its vagueness</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2 </strong><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: #666666;"><strong>status:</strong> Officemate: What would you do without me? Me: I don’t know! Probably become a Pollyanna optimist with nothing but hope for the future and respect for Microsoft products. Officemate: I doubt that.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>:</strong> crashed<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>oh, that's no good</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>I would like to drive a requirement into today's Ruth Release<br />it's a pry 2, but will support many other releases<br />it's called: More Talking<br />you'll note if you take a look at the process workflows that we would like at least 15 Funny Jokes included in this piece of functionality<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>I don't know if 15 Funny Jokes is a realistic expectation of deliverables this late in the Release<br />what are your KPIs for the jokes?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>well<br />we're measuring them by funny sounds<br />like "ingers" and "oogle"<br />that's going to have the greatest customer satisfaction impact<br />"eezle"<br />also references to bears<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>Those success metrics sound reasonable<br />here is my counter-proposal:<br />I should be able to get you 10 Funny Jokes by EOD<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>we can push the remaining 5 out to tomorrow's release</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>hmm<br /><strong>Ruth:</strong> and supplement in the meantime with Talking About Boys</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>iiiinteresting<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>my research has shown that customers respond almost as well to Talking About Boys<br />but admittedly, the sample size is small</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>that may be bad news to our Future Humor Writers of America division, but the 13 Year Old Girl stakeholder group has been trying to push that change request through forever<br />I think we can ship this one<br />I crashed again<br /><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>my midday lonesomes are hitting<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>you are not alone<br />you are at Microsoft<br />Steve Ballmer is probably spying on you right now<br /><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>it's going to be cloudy all weekend<br />but warm<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>it better not hail</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>I screwed up and scheduled a bunch of meetings for Memorial Day because nobody had blocked it off<br />including me<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>oopsie</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>this is how I covered my tracks: "On second thought, I'm going to declare Monday Memorial Day and give all of you guys the day off. No need to thank me. "<br />I have godlike powers<br />this is why it's valid and useful for you to bring your concerns about hail straight to me<br /><br /><strong>Ruth:</strong> cows<br />I am wearing jeans yay!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>ME TOO<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>yay</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>that's why we're friends<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>does that mean we're only friends on fridays?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>K2</strong><strong>: </strong>yes<br />UNLESS<br />you are ALSO usually wearing something that I also am usually wearing<br />like shoes<br />we could base our friendship on shoes<br /><strong>Ruth: </strong>or a bra<br />or an air of superiority</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-90478722272523990772008-05-05T19:13:00.000-07:002013-04-01T21:39:23.012-07:00Gina Neff: Work and Power<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Note: I have resolved to: (1) make my posts shorter so they stop eating my life, and (2) swerve, with a deft flick of the steering wheel, from my <a href="http://consummatev.blogspot.com/2008/02/platform-9-34-train-to-academia.html">former outline</a> of stuff that I was going to cover, to concentrating on my "Technology as Social Intervention: Discuss" topic, where I hope to learn more and rant less. It's all the same basic subject, though, so you may not even notice the difference. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">That said, I went out a few weeks ago and </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">interviewed </span><a href="http://lis810-labor.blogspot.com/2007/04/guest-speaker-gina-neff.html"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Gina Neff</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">, who is </span><a href="http://www.com.washington.edu/Program/Faculty/Faculty/neff.html"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">faculty at the UW Department of Communication</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. Gina is very taken with the concept of "work and power," and I wanted to ask her: what's the connection between the two? How do organizational structures dictate how power gets allocated to its members? And what happens to those power structures-- or to the communication dynamics of the org as a whole-- when you introduce new problem-solving technologies? If you are also geeky enough to find these topics interesting, you will find some of Gina's answers to those questions in the following few blog entries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><strong>Information, Power and Tools</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Gina has been studying these type of questions for years, and she has seen organizations' implicit power structures change radically with the addition of new technological tools, "magnifying existing power disparities," she says, "or breaking them down." The power-holders in an org may try to restrict how a tool is distributed or employed, or might even rally against it, if it seems like it has the potential to redistribute the power to make things happen. Alternatively (as in the following example), it might level the playing field, causing an initial chaos that leads to large changes to the org's workflows and the way its members define their own roles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Gina is currently undertaking a study about the adoption of building information modeling tools in the construction industry. She explains:</span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Historically, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_contractor">contractors</a> (the folks who build the buildings</span></em><em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">) and </span></em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect"><em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">architects</span></em></a><em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"> have lived on opposite sides of the organizational divide. They spoke different languages and had different goal sets; they communicated via blueprints. This mutual organizational isolation allowed each group a lot of control over their spheres, but frequently made collaboration a painful, contentious mess. Each group guards its information and works at cross-purposes to the other, with miscommunications leading to mutual stereotyping, which itself helps reinforce the divide. </span></em></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Gina is studying a transition that's taking place right now, before her eyes as she studies it: Today, builders and architects are beginning to share their visions via 3-D computer graphic tools and databases that represent the building being built. In other words, these groups are adopting a communications- and design- based technological innovation, and it is creating dramatic changes in the way they work together. The stereotypes are being put to the test as the groups are forced into proximity with one another, and each silo's private language is being opened up to the other. As Gina describes: "Their entire communications infrastructure has been channeled into different visual symbols, and is hardwired through different network pathways." Each group is also, in the process, losing some of the autonomy that came with that defended isolation. </span></em></span></em></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><strong>Heterophily: Difference and Group Intelligence</strong> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It's not far-fetched to imagine that switching the wiring in an organization's communication structure could lead to huge changes. Cultures large and small, since the civilization of man, have kept themselves alive by employing one or another form of isolation: a mountain range, a separate language, secrecy, stereotyping, a forbidding initiation rite; Jews, for example, have kept Jewish culture alive, despite the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora">diaspora</a>, with the aid of lengthy and complex conversion processes, services conducted entirely in Hebrew, and dietary restrictions that can help limit who Jews eat with. If you move a culture's boundary devices, you change the way the culture lives. Build a highway, raise children bilingual, install a phone system, the internet: suddenly you find cultures blending, changing, and questioning the way they do things. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijO6t54bsTEoUh8PW3dqK0cSfW4GJtvUacBp4JxIMJv066iepGW805X5l7To3MGR5hi8uJuy5tZZGHEYfssUKMBZc-YOxMBlF0J93lsMkiY4t3otTkJm3Cn11HY4VSOZPkV7JqU4FHqZs/s1600-h/Construction_Arguing.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197090937546760802" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijO6t54bsTEoUh8PW3dqK0cSfW4GJtvUacBp4JxIMJv066iepGW805X5l7To3MGR5hi8uJuy5tZZGHEYfssUKMBZc-YOxMBlF0J93lsMkiY4t3otTkJm3Cn11HY4VSOZPkV7JqU4FHqZs/s320/Construction_Arguing.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The contractors and architects in the system Gina is studying have historically been heterophilious. "Heterophily" is an amusingly polysyallabic term for "different in a way that makes communication between them hard." The words </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">heterophily</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> and </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">homophily</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> describe two ends of a spectrum: on the one side, you have two groups (or individuals) who are different to the point where they can't communicate at all (an American economist and a Bolivian witch woman); on the other side, you have groups who are so similar that communication between them is easy, but totally uninteresting (an American economist and an American economist ;) ). They have nothing to say to one another that they don't already know. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />Want More of This Stuff? Check out: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The next blog entry and maybe the one after it, where we talk about the consequences of these sorts of changes </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The stuff coming out of the </span><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/WTO/cgi-bin/index.php"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Center for Work, Technology and Organization</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> at Stanford. </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And four "easily accessible" books Gina suggests everyone read: </span><br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sorting-Things-Out-Classification-Consequences/dp/0262522950/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204250118&sr=8-1"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Sorting things out: Classification and its Consequences</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> (Bawker and Star) </span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Talking-About-Machines-Ethnography-Collection/dp/0801483905/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204250241&sr=1-1"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Talking about Machines</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> (Julian Orr) </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Human-Machine-Reconfigurations-Plans-Situated-Actions/dp/052167588X/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209567424&sr=8-1">Human Machine Configurations: Plans and Situated Actions</a> </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">(Suchman) </span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Bradford-Books-Edwin-Hutchins/dp/0262581469/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204250385&sr=1-1"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Cognition in the Wild</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> (Hutchins) </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">... Gina recommends all of the above except, technically, the following blog entry. :)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Image pulled from <a href="http://www.jupiterimages.com/popup2.aspx?navigationSubType=itemdetails&itemID=23244326">here</a>. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-26623616012671107002008-04-01T20:02:00.001-07:002013-04-01T21:44:24.878-07:001.2 No I in Meme: Culture (White People are White)<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Though it is a step further away from my basic focus on social systems and technology, I would be remiss in my duties as a lister-of-social-structures if I did not list the most pervasive and unconscious structure of all: culture.<br /><br />I write this entry with a mild, throbbing pain in my left Heresy Lobe, an old sports injury incurred from climbing too many times up onto my </span><a href="http://www.moselle.com/kim/social_dynamics/Individualism_in_Culture.html"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">old soapbox</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> about individualism in American culture. I threw a tarp over it when I graduated from grad school, but I am formally breaking out my carnie barker voice and bowtie as we speak.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">What, you ask, is my hangup about individualism and American culture? (Watch my friends dive into bushes and roll off screen as I respond.) </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Recall that my basic point here is that structure determines behavior: it affects our actions, belief systems, perception of ourselves, and our conception of our options in the world. If you know about the structure, you have a little more free will; if you don't, you run a high risk of unthinkingly incorporating its mandates. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">We Americans are particularly susceptible to this, and particularly blind to that susceptibility. </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Perhaps you have heard the joke:<br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Q: What do you call someone who speaks three languages?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A: Trilingual.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A: Bilingual.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A: American!</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The USA hosts one of the most geographically and linguistically isolated urban cultures in the world. That makes us Americans very different than (for example) European, Latin American or Asian cultures when it comes down to knowing that we have a culture at all. Even when we do travel, we rarely stay long or become fluent in the local language, and thus we miss volumes about what culture really is: arbitrary, powerful, silly or objectionable. We are convinced that everything we do as Americans is "just human nature" or "the same all over the world."<br /><br /><blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<em>Living overseas for a year is a great way to recognize that what you are, and how you do things, is not "the default way." Most of us, though, can discover this bias in ourselves from our desk chairs. Give it a shot: if you are Black, say out loud "I am Black." If you're Chinese, Japanese or Korean, say so. If you are White, say "I am White."<br /><br />So, the first two may come easily. But most White people will become very uncomfortable openly stating we are White. To us, we are not White: we are </em>normal<em>. We do not behave like White people; we behave normally, while Black people behave like black people and Japanese people behave like Asians. </em><br />
<em>I, the writer of this blog, am a White American person, and mostly I behave just like one. I am a consumer, I'm highly innovative, very individualistic, stuffy about sex, outgoing; I wait patiently in lines; I have a large "personal space" envelope, and get antsy when all but specific people touch me at all but agreed-upon times; I am more standoffish and disingenuous than the most uptight Latin American, and my friendships are usually shallower and more transient than the most cynical European (though I am working hard to shake those two).<br /><br />Are you a White American? In what ways do you behave just like a White American, and in what ways do you behave differently? Does this whole section make you wince and hold your breath? If so, why?</em></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">We Americans have, by and large, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid#.22Drinking_the_Kool-Aid.22">drunk the Kool-Aid</a>" of American culture, and so we take the nourishment and the carcinogens together and call them "humanity." We are highly susceptible to the negative societal and psychological side-effects of our quirks. Where we are <em>individualistic </em>by culture, we fall prey to <em>loneliness </em>or <em>rudeness</em>; where we are <em>materialistic</em>, we fall prey to the <em>existential vacuum</em>. Etc etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The question of "what is human nature" vs "what is American culture" has always fascinated me, and so I learned some foreign languages, </span><a href="http://www.moselle.com/yggdrasil/Writing/bolivia.html"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">spent a non-small portion of my life living in third-world countries</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">, and focused my undergraduate thesis on social-cultural constructs and how they affect self-perception and relationships.** I only suggest you also do this if you, too, want to contract the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette%27s">Tourette's Syndrome</a>-esque tendency to rant uncontrollably. If you would instead prefer a more moderate and salmonella-free immersion in the topic of the great spectrum of cultural structures, I strongly recommend the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Cultural-Patterns-Cross-Cultural-Perspective/dp/1877864013">American Cultural Patterns</a>. It was written some 20 years ago to prepare first-time Peace Corps workers for culture shock. It is short and highly readable and will completely mess up your mind. It is one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read; I can't go five pages without bolting up from my chair to discuss it with someone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Allowing yourself to question your own deep, foundational assumptions about human beings, relationships, success, time, reason and language can be a seriously unsettling experience. It can lead to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance">cognitive dissonance</a>, the discomfort that arises from a stark contradiction between what one believes to be so and what appears to be true; human beings are typically so extremely averse to that discomfort that they will usually become angry, or contstruct elaborate and transparent untruths, to avoid feeling it (a fascinating cognitive bias which I'll talk about sometime later). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This cognitive dissonance is sometimes fun for insensitve counterculturalists like to me to play with...<br /><br />Next: >> I thought I could rant about this in one entry, but I was oh so very wrong. >></span><br />
**My web page is really really outdated. It's going to stay like that for a while. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-64235922251658759842008-03-25T18:10:00.000-07:002013-05-16T12:51:16.622-07:00Ruthbert<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>My hilarious friend Ruth and I have been keeping each other company from our disparate, cross-city desk-jockey gigs for going on three years now. She works in search optimization. <br /><br />Here, for posterity, are some of my recent conversations with her: </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Ruth: </b>I just accidentally sent an email asking someone for an "estimeat"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><b>Ruth:</b> :'(\<br />mr. stabby-face feels your pain<br /><b>Ruth:</b> he is sad because he has been stabbed in the face <br /><br /><b>K2:</b> oh I hate getting lunch<br />I always feel guilty that I did not prepare my own<b><b> </b></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><b>K2</b>: </b>I currently do all my cooking at D's on the weekends<br />weeknights I live on prayer and the non-kosher noodle bowls I keep in my bedroom<br /><b>Ruth:</b> you should prepare your own lunch then!<br />[<b>Ruth</b> delivers office lunch recipe]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><b>K2</b>:</b> I have noted your recipe and will take it up with my manager for possible inclusion in a future release<br />however this week's release is full, I'm sorry<br /><b>Ruth:</b> mission statement: to increase lunch-eater value by improving lunch efficiency and reducing lunch spend, while maintaining current levels of lunch deliciousness<b><b> </b></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><b>K2</b>:</b> of course you realize you're going to have to get signoff from the downstairs cafeteria lady, she's a stakeholder in this<br />and they're veeeery preoccupied with their chicken parmesean release right now, so good luck getting on THEIR radar<br /><b>Ruth:</b> I'm confident that the impact to downstairs cafeteria lady will be within acceptable bounds to her organization, and will be more than offset by the increased value offered by the new K2 lunch plan<b><b> </b></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><b>K2</b>: </b>Have you consulted EMEA? I'm sure that the Latin regions will buy in to the tortillas, but I don't know if you're aware of this, EMEA's servers are all allergic to gluten<br /><b>Ruth:</b> it wouldnt' be stored on EMEA's servers, it would be stored directly on K2's work fridge servers<br />and tortillas can be desk-hosted for several days before losing optimum freshness<br /><br /><b>Ruth: </b>I am gradually accumulating Buffy seasons, when sale prices coincide with coupon-having on my part. M calls the shelf where I store them the "Garden of Whedon."<br /><b><b>K2</b>: </b>7 more bottles of meetings on the wall, 7 more bottles of meetings<br />cancel one down, send it around, 6 more bottles of meetings on the wall<br /><b>Ruth: </b>I hope that someone gets my<br />meeting in a bottle yeah</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><b>K2</b>: </b>I wrote a song on the way in to the tune of that "Shorty got low" song.<br />Here it is:<br />She had the powerpoint deck<br />And the laser poin-ter<br />The whole conference call was lookin' at her<br /><b>Ruth: </b>She hit her visio<br />next thing you know<br />spending got low, low, low, low low low<br />she had the Excel spreadsheet<br />and that ThinkPad in her lap<br />she turned around and gave that big budget a slap<br />Hey! She hit her visio<br />next thing you know<br />spending got low low low low low low</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Ruth: </b>in the last 6 weeks there have been 133 searches for the phrase "nose bidet"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-62226039984875009062008-03-13T19:57:00.000-07:002013-05-16T12:37:28.188-07:001.2 There is no "I" in "Meme": Language<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><b><br />The language we use, whether it beongs to our culture, subculture, technical tool or organization, affects our fundamental perceptions, choices, and behavior (and we rarely notice).</b> </span><br />
<blockquote>
[T]he <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language" title="Language">language</a> a person speaks [affects] how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. [...] <span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Different language patterns yield different patterns of thought.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">-- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis">Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, Wikipedia</a></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The world, and the process of living, are inherently continuous and nameless. To communicate about them, we humans use our amazing minds to interpret them down into structures, finite bits with ends, beginnings and apparent affinities with other bits. We come up with those structures by drawing from our history, our cultural biases, our priorities, which themselves are created by language in an ongoing feedback loop. There is no "accurate" way of describing the world, and thus there is no objective way. There's just the way that you happen to be using.<br /><br />A language is a very heavily biased cultural description of the parts of the world that it cares about, and its own priorities. For example:</span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i>In American culture (and some, but not all, other cultures), words about sex and sexual organs are used as the strongest forms of insults. It would be ridiculous for me to insult you by calling you a "stupid arm," but we find the word [cxxx] so offensive that I can't even directly reference it in this blog. This use of language reflects, and perpetuates, certain cultural assumptions about sex.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />The languages of subcultures and organizations also codify, teach and perpetuate, unconscious cultural values and expectations.</span><br />
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';">A close friend of mine just became a cop. He is a deep and thoughtful person with a strong protective instinct. I was thus surprised, in recent conversations, to hear him talking about apprehending and charging people as "contacting" his "clients."</span><br />
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';">For me, "contacting a client" means calling someone who has voluntarily hired you and maybe leaving them, say, a voicemail, or perhaps a nice fruit basket. For his unit, "contacting" someone might mean chasing a guy four blocks, fighting him to the ground with the help of three other officers, finding a gun and a gram of coke on him, and taking him to jail where he will develop his first criminal record, permanently changing the course of his life.</span><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Contrast this linguistic convention to some other options: instead of "Today I contacted four clients," make it "Today I handled, then made life-changing decisions towards, four human beings." Or, alternately: "Today, I wiped the floor with four more scumbags." The neutral language employed by my friend's unit serves two instructive purposes: it facilitates the emotional detachment that makes policework possible, and it restricts that detachment to the universe of professionalism and service.<br /><br />So, yes: the linguistic structure you use effects how you think and act. But while changing a language is often a <i>part </i>of changing a social system's rules and behavior, it is rarely the <i>direct route</i>. If you had a goal, for example, to make all police highly sensitive to the human realities of the people they are arresting,* you might think it would be smart to change the institutional language from "contacting clients" to "Making Choices to affect Human Beings." But if your police still (for example) (1) have to fill an ambitious weekly quota of arrests to succeed at your unit, and (2) only see the perp at the time of the arrest (no exposure to context or after effects), your new language won't change their approach to the job. It will just irritate them as phony polish on top of the job's harsh reality.<br /><br />I don't know about you, but I see <a href="http://www.lavarnd.org/cgi-bin/corpspeak.cgi">surface-level language "fixes" in the industry all the time, and they drive me directly to drink</a>.<br /><br />To learn more about this fascinatng topic, you may want to read this highly-recommended book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sorting-Things-Out-Classification-Consequences/dp/0262522950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205464755&sr=8-1">Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences</a>.**<br /><br />* And I hope you do not<br />** Lord knows <i>I</i> want to read it. It's on my short list.<br /><br />Stay tuned for: 1.3 There is No "I" in "Meme": Culture </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-75465261691654734692008-03-04T18:37:00.001-08:002013-05-16T12:36:32.269-07:001.1 How to Build Horrible Social Systems by Accident: Incentives<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />In the last entry, I proposed that tools and organizations, often (make that usually-- actually make that almost always) unintentionally bake into their very structures a set of implicit instructions for their members / users about what behavior is appropriate, rewarded, or discouraged.<br /><br />How, exactly, do they do that? Here are some of many possible answers.</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Incentive Systems</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. <b>Behaviors rewarded by your system or tool will grow in emphasis and frequency; behaviors that are punished will become less frequent. </b>This statement may seem obvious; people are always trying to leverage positive or negative incentives to get one another to do things. Unfortunately, those conscious incentive programs are usually laid on top of preexisting incentive systems that are deeper, more subtle, more ubiquitous, and far less intentional. In other words, they are much more convincing to the people involved, and are impossible to casually override. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i><b>Example: </b>You have a new software company, and you have to hire some people and then give them employee reviews of some kind. Like many orgs, you base your employee review system on whether or not an employee succeeds at his projects. If he succeeds at all of them, he gets a raise; if he fails at his projects, he gets a poor review and a lower bonus. If he gets three poor reviews in a row, he gets fired. </i></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">While this seems like a simple and obvious incentive system, you are literally incenting your average employee (let's call her Martha Generic) to succeed at her <i>own </i>projects… even if that messes up <i>everyone else's</i>. If she sacrifices her own project, one quarter, to enable four other projects to succeed, she will still be punished by your system. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><b>Example, Cont'd: </b>Five years down the line (after every manager in your company has worked your incentive system into dozens of mini-processes and deliverables), you discover your employees aren't collaborating. You say to yourself: "These poor geeks just don't know how to collaborate. I've got to get them thinking like a team…" </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">You start publishing some weekly articles on the importance of collaboration. You deliver a motivational speech to the whole company about how software development is really about putting "people first." You offer a trophy for the "most collaborative team member."</span></i></span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Will it work?<br /><br />What would happen if you created an online community (let's say, a "resource group for workaholics") and let your members give each other public ratings (1-5 stars) on two things: "Humor" and "Best Vocabulary"? … What if it were an automated system that gave privileges based on "Most Links Contributed"?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Next up: 1.2 There is no I in Meme: Language and Messaging</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-5621285233506875962008-03-04T18:37:00.000-08:002013-04-01T21:47:46.892-07:001.1 How to Build Horrible Social Systems by Accident: Incentives<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />In the last entry, I proposed that tools and organizations, often (make that usually-- actually make that almost always) unintentionally bake into their very structures a set of implicit instructions for their members / users about what behavior is appropriate, rewarded, or discouraged.<br /><br />How, exactly, do they do that? Here are some of many possible answers.<br /></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Incentive Systems</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. <strong>Behaviors rewarded by your system or tool will grow in emphasis and frequency; behaviors that are punished will become less frequent. </strong>This statement may seem obvious; people are always trying to leverage positive or negative incentives to get one another to do things. Unfortunately, those conscious incentive programs are usually laid on top of preexisting incentive systems that are deeper, more subtle, more ubiquitous, and far less intentional. In other words, they are much more convincing to the people involved, and are impossible to casually override. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><em><strong>Example: </strong>You have a new software company, and you have to hire some people and then give them employee reviews of some kind. Like many orgs, you base your employee review system on whether or not an employee succeeds at his projects. If he succeeds at all of them, he gets a raise; if he fails at his projects, he gets a poor review and a lower bonus. If he gets three poor reviews in a row, he gets fired. </em></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">While this seems like a simple and obvious incentive system, you are literally incenting your average employee (let's call her Martha Generic) to succeed at her <em>own </em>projects… even if that messes up <em>everyone else's</em>. If she sacrifices her own project, one quarter, to enable four other projects to succeed, she will still be punished by your system. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><em><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong>Example, Cont'd: </strong>Five years down the line (after every manager in your company has worked your incentive system into dozens of mini-processes and deliverables), you discover your employees aren't collaborating. You say to yourself: "These poor geeks just don't know how to collaborate. I've got to get them thinking like a team…" </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">You start publishing some weekly articles on the importance of collaboration. You deliver a motivational speech to the whole company about how software development is really about putting "people first." You offer a trophy for the "most collaborative team member."</span></em></span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Will it work?<br /><br />What would happen if you created an online community (let's say, a "resource group for workaholics") and let your members give each other public ratings (1-5 stars) on two things: "Humor" and "Best Vocabulary"? … What if it were an automated system that gave privileges based on "Most Links Contributed"?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Next up: 1.2 There is no I in Meme: Language and Messaging</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-44282499299886085402008-02-25T20:16:00.001-08:002013-04-01T21:48:05.333-07:001 of 4: Structure Influences People<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong>Premise #1.0: The structure of a tool influences the people who use it, and the structure of an organization influences the people who belong to it. </strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong><strong>Premise #1.1: We don't act nearly as independently as we think we do. </strong></strong></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">All day long, we are listening for cues about what behavior is appropriate in each context. We also broadcast cues as to what behavior is rewarded, acceptable, or inappropriate. </span><br />
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><em><strong>Example A: </strong>You're invited to an acquaintance's house; he's "having some cool people over." He has spiky hair and a nose ring. So, you grab your Immortal Technique CDs and take a cab out to his place, expecting to tie one on and get loose. You get there and discover that, (1) the table is set with a white tablecloth and matching silverware, and (2) there are wine glasses. You instantly realize this is a Grownup Party. Chagrined, you start greeting the other guests with conversation about work while privately lamenting your wasted $30 on cabfare.<br /><br /><em><strong>Example B: </strong>Usually, the lady checker with the orange hair at the Red Apple asks "How are you?" in a monotone while she's typing your produce codes with one hand and checking her watch with the other. You respond: "Fine, thanks, and you?" But today, she notices you look kinda off. You come up to the counter, and she sets her pen down and places both hands on the counter. She looks into your eyes, and says: "How are you?" You say: "Pretty lousy. I'm just not sleeping well. I stress too much."</em></em></span></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
</span></span><br />
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</div>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><br />This is our symbolic, implicit, fantastically complex language of human aggregation: we tell each other what to do all day long without saying a word.</span><br />
<div align="left">
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Organizations and tools bake these messages into formal structures that tell people what behavior is desirable and what is unacceptable. When we successfully and ritually use the tool or belong to the organization, we adopt those behaviors. Usually, we adopt them unknowingly; often, we do it involuntarily. </span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong></strong></span></div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong>Premise #1.2: </strong>It's important to set up tools and systems to encourage the behaviors that you want, and discourage the behaviors that you don't. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The more unconscious those behavioral handshakes between us and our org/tool, the more likely they are to affect our perception of ourselves, and our ability to see a broad set of options and to make decisions. <strong></strong></span></div>
<blockquote>
<div align="left">
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"><strong>Premise #1.3: </strong>If you have a system where a group of people are doing the same odious thing over and over again no matter how often you try to get them to stop, look at the rules of the system they belong to.</span></div>
</blockquote>
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</div>
<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Next up: 1.5: <a href="http://consummatev.blogspot.com/2008/03/11-how-to-build-horrible-social-systems.html">How to Build Horrible Social Systems by Accident: Incentives</a>. This is one of several entries fleshing out the theme of "Structure Influences People." It will be the first in, time willing, a </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">short list of tools I learned about in academia that aim to analyze structure and its influences. </span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-82887812006826883612008-02-03T15:41:00.001-08:002013-05-16T12:59:17.313-07:00Like a PimpSo I'm walking near my house and ahead of me is this very animated Black guy, mid-50s, talking exuberantly alongside his long-suffering, fat, disenfranchised girlfriend.<br />
<br />
"You know, you know!" He's saying. "Like a <i>pimp</i>." He's faking a big hitch in his step. "<i>You </i>know."<br />
<br />
I am highly amused by this. He looks over at me, catches my eyes/smirk, and, thrilled, re-directs his story to me. "<i>YOU </i>know," he calls, with a huge grin, exaggerating the hitch in his step. "Like a, like a <i>pimp</i>!"<br />
<br />
I nod at him in empathy, continuing on my way. He calls back to me: "They said-- They said I couldn't <i>be </i>a pimp." I laugh, and his excitement redoubles. His fat long-suffering girlfriend pretends not to notice.<br />
<br />
"See, I can't <i>be </i>a pimp," he yells down the block at me. "Mm-mm, yep! See I filled out, I filled out the <i>paperwork </i>to be a pimp, but they said I couldn't <i>be </i>a pimp. They said I couldn't be a pimp because I fall in <i>LOVE </i>too easy!"<br />
<br />
I am trying to control my amusement as I enter my building. "See," he shouts after me, just delighted with himself: "You can't be a <i>pimp </i>if you fall in <i>love!</i>"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-3699509851874076562007-06-18T10:53:00.000-07:002013-05-16T12:46:26.576-07:00Bullet Points are a Privilege, Not a RightFrom a recruiter email that wound its way to my inbox:<br />
<i>Requirements:</i><br />
<ul>
<li><i>Must have worked with "Infopath 2003" and a Project exp on Infopath 2007</i></li>
<li><i>or at least very good understanding of Infopath 2007</i></li>
<li><i>Infopath is the main Skill.</i></li>
</ul>
<i>(Unless you are Louis Borges. If you are Louis Borges, <a href="http://learninator.blogspot.com/2007/02/and-now-for-something-completely.html">lists</a>, bulleted or otherwise, </i>are <i>in fact a right.) </i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-86440775011796243722007-02-06T11:04:00.000-08:002013-05-16T13:00:02.848-07:00Ways to Die in Your Home-- The Musical<b><i>Rules: </i></b><br />
<ul>
<li><i>must be a song title (or band name, or album name); may include surrounding lyrics</i></li>
<li><i>must be a way to die -in your home- (So "in the jungle / the mighty jungle / the lion sleeps tonight" does't count)</i></li>
<li><i>must be a primary, not secondary, cause of death (so no "slipped while putting on Blue Suede Shoes"-- rule can be broken if justification is funny enough).</i> </li>
</ul>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Ways to Die in Your Home, General</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Zombie</li>
<li><i>(if diabetic) </i>Pour some sugar on me</li>
<li>Take my breath away</li>
<li>Maneater</li>
<li><i>(bitten by) </i>Karma chameleon</li>
<li>You dropped a bomb on me</li>
<li>I'm too sexy <i>(for my pulse)</i></li>
<li>Be still my beating heart</li>
<li>Winona's Big Brown Beaver</li>
<li>She's a maniac!</li>
<li>Smoke gets in your eyes</li>
<li>Jump</li>
<li>Love bites</li>
<li>Tainted love <i>("if only there was a song called 'tainted meat'")</i></li>
<li>Hunka hunka burnin' love</li>
<li>Sabotage</li>
<li>Barracuda</li>
<li>Magic Man </li>
<li>That old black magic</li>
<li>Love will tear us apart (again)</li>
<li>I've got my love to keep me warm <i>(ineffective!)</i></li>
<li>Worldwide suicide</li>
<li>The macarena</li>
<li>The... <i>Larch</i></li>
<li>Rock lobster</li>
<li>The boxer <i>(picture "Pulp Fiction")</i></li>
<li>Peace train</li>
<li>Lightning striking again</li>
<li>Criminal <i>(Fiona Apple)</i></li>
<li>Killing me softly with his song</li>
<li>Crash <i>(Dave Matthews)</i></li>
<li>Walking on broken glass</li>
<li>Fast car</li>
<li>That girl is poison</li>
<li>Cats in the cradle <i>(they kill babies)</i></li>
<li>Everybody was Kung Fu fighting</li>
<li>Pachebel's Canon </li>
<li>Rock me <i>(as in Biblical stoning; let he who has no sin cast the first power chord)</i></li>
<li>Rock me, Amadeus</li>
<li>Go, Go Godzilla<br /><b></b></li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Natural Disaster / Plague</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Great Balls of Fire</li>
<li>Millions of peaches </li>
<li>Ice, Ice, baby. </li>
<li>The tide is high</li>
<li>Chariots of fire</li>
<li>Heat Wave</li>
<li>Rapture</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Illnesses</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>He gives me fever</li>
<li>Cat scratch fever</li>
<li>Saturday Nigh Fever</li>
<li>Heart of glass</li>
<li>Achey breaky heart</li>
<li>Lump <i>(think: oncology)</i></li>
<li>Groove is in the heart <i>(how tragic... they say it's hereditary)</i></li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">AAAAIIIiiiieeeeeee <crash><crash></crash></crash></span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Walking on sunshine </li>
<li>Walking on a thin line </li>
<li>Hangin' 'round</li>
<li>He ain't heavy, he's my brother "Oh, wait-- he IS heavy!"<i>(AAAAIIIiiiieeeeeee tumble tumble tumble CRUNCH) </i></li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">"Clue" Version</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Sledgehammer</li>
<li>Brass Monkey </li>
<li>Monkey Wrench</li>
<li>She bop</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Death by Trogdor</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Burning down the house</li>
<li>Beds are burning</li>
<li>Disco inferno</li>
<li>Burnin' for you</li>
<li>She's on fire, my baby's on fire</li>
<li>Doctor, Doctor, can't you see I'm burning, burning?</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Darwin Awards</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Why don't we do it in the road </li>
<li>All she wants to do is dance <i>(and doesn't eat) </i></li>
<li>One burbon, one scotch, one beer <i>(repeat)</i></li>
<li>Highway to Hell </li>
<li>Highway to the Danger Zone</li>
<li>Cocaine</li>
<li>One toke over the line, sweet jesus </li>
<li><i>(Died while) </i>Fighting for my Right to Party </li>
<li>Tripping on a hole in paper heart </li>
<li>Learning to fly</li>
<li>Dancing on the Ceiling</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Not Politically Correct</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Baby hit me one more time </li>
<li>Hit me with your best shot</li>
<li>Little red corvette <i>(picture baby + matchbox car)</i></li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Situations Which, if Not Carefully Monitored, <i>May </i>Cause You to Die in Your Home:</span></b> <br />
<ol>
<li>Celebrate good times, come on</li>
<li>Hurts so good</li>
<li>She's so heavy</li>
<li>Do that to me one more time</li>
<li>Blister in the sun</li>
<li>Everybody hurts</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Things Which will Make You <i>Wish </i>You had Died in Your Home:</span></b><br />
<ol>
<li>Losing my religion</li>
<li>Shiny happy people</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;">Most Existential way to Die in Your Home:</span> </b><br />
<ol>
<li>Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></b><br />
<hr width="50%" />
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br />Band Names: Ways to Die in Your Home</span></b> <ol>
<li>Fine Young Cannibals</li>
<li>Sting (<i>saved by: </i>The Cure) </li>
<li>The Beatles</li>
<li>The Rolling Stones </li>
<li><i>(comic book style) </i>Wham! </li>
<li>The Scorpions</li>
<li>The Cranberries</li>
<li>AC/DC </li>
<li>Bjork</li>
</ol>
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;"></span></b><br />
<hr width="50%" />
<b><span style="font-size: 130%;"><br />Album Titles: Ways to Die in Your Home</span></b> <ol>
<li>Jagged little pill</li>
<li>Automatic for the people</li>
</ol>
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-50654142969798087532007-01-20T11:22:00.000-08:002007-12-02T11:22:51.720-08:00If Your Software Won't Let me Lie (Pt II): Lying to Your ParentsWouldn’t it be great if you could know exactly where your kids are all the time? All day, every day? Wouldn’t it be great to be sure they’re not ever getting up to anything you wouldn’t do, and they’re never in any danger… ever?<br /><br />Really?<br /><br /><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SmartMobs/~3/71346659/watching_kids_i....html">Here</a> is an article about how parents in Japan will soon be able to monitor their kids’ whereabouts by tracking them with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS">GPS (Global Positioning System)</a> device on their cellphones.<br /><br /><strong>The Customer is Not Always Right</strong><br /><br />There is often a chasm of difference between what the customer thinks he wants, and what he actually wants. It’s the designer’s job to trace the customer’s expression of his needs (“I want the software to do these 25 things and be colored blue”) back to the premises, or root needs, that underlie them (“I want the software to be profitable, keep a 75% returning customer base, and look professional”).<br /><br />At face value, it probably sounds like an excellent idea to most parents to be able to track the exact location of their kids 24 hours a day; they might, for example, imagine thwarting a kidnapping or a burgeoning drug addiction. Imagine a world, though, where this technology really worked and was adopted widely and used constantly. When you were a kid, did you ever sneak out? Lie about where you were spending the night? Did you go on a road-trip adventure that your parents never knew about? A disreputable party? What if you hadn’t been able to do any of those things, ever? What if you had spent your entire teenage years never once able to lie to your parents about your whereabouts? What if you yourself had to <em>live </em>with an entire generation of people who had never been allowed to break the rules?<br /><br />That’s an exaggeration, of course. I'm just illustrating that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation">individuation</a> (the process by which children break from the mold of their parents’ social conditioning and experiment their way towards developing a unique self) is contingent in no small measure upon screwing up (and madly brainstorming your way out of it), breaking rules, and lying. Any software that seriously impedes kids (or anyone else) from doing these things will damage their ability to become full people who make meaningful and interesting contributions to society.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Fortunately, We’re All Brilliant Liars </strong><br /><br />The good news for kids, with respect to control technologies, is that any assortment of kids will always be smarter, quicker, and more resourceful than their parents; and they will always have access to more cutting-edge technology.<br /><br />Likewise, the general human masses (kids or adults) will always find clever ways around any roadblocks that official technology produces… within weeks, usually, of the general adoption of that official technology. Any new control technology (e.g. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management">Digital Rights Management [DRM]</a>) takes about 1-3 year’s turnaround to move from inception to market. It takes, on the other hand, 2-4 weeks for a distributed team of 500 of the world’s bored hackers to come up with a workaround, distribute it on the net, and break the control. Is sharing protection (DRM) on copyrighted iTunes tracks bugging you? Go online and download one of a dozen third-party, free pieces of software to strip the protection from them. There are so many iTunes-hacks out there, they’re in competition with one another for sleekest user interface. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing; it just is. Distributed groups of hackers are smarter, and exponentially faster, than companies or government organizations who move through formalized processes to market.<br /><br />So if we can crack DRM within a month, kids will have no trouble whatsoever in getting around more intrusive control technologies. They're better with technology, and their motivation to override anything that seriously restricts their freedom is greater than our idle need to share our copyrighted iTunes tracks. This is easy to illustrate. I recently read a story about how some middle and high schools are trying to staunch the overwhelming tide of collective technology by instituting “no cellphones in school” rules; kids are already thinking of <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SmartMobs/~3/69881880/lockers_for_cel....html">innovative ways around that</a>. Also, I'll link again to the story about Spanish high school kids <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SmartMobs/~3/50837941/control_of_the_....html">hacking each others’ cellphones</a> to gather blackmail material on other students. Over Thanksgiving I spent a long plane ride chatting up a fairly average, hip young middle school kid who could out-talk me in processor configuration and out-code me in Visual Basic. Think that kid is going to put up with his parents (who are Luddites by comparison) tracking him with the GPS device on his cellphone?<br /><br />The likely scenario is that kids will hack together a half dozen little apps you can upload to your cellphone to make your GPS broadcast coordinates of your own choosing… making it twice as easy to lie to your parents about where you are than it was before you got the GPS phone in the first place.<br /><br />So, to recap: people have to be able to lie to each other, at least sometimes and under some circumstances. If you produce software that doesn’t let people lie, they’ll either not use it (e.g. <a href="http://learninator.blogspot.com/2007/01/if-your-software-wont-let-me-lie-im-not.html">presence</a>, where we block anyone from IM who we don’t want to have full access to our daily rhythms), or they’ll hack it to pieces so that all of the validity of the data is ruined/corrupted. In other words, if you ask for too much control, and you get none; you get a wobbly system, overcompensating for the original overcompensation.<br /><br /><br /><strong>How Much Information is too Much?<br /></strong><br />Let’s break personal status information down into three categories that might be projected by social software:<br /><br /><ol><li><strong>Time Grain: </strong>frequency with which status information is updated <p></p></li><li><strong>Detail:</strong> specificity of information (“at school” –vs- “In the janitor’s closet with young attractive French teacher”) <p></p></li><li><strong>Level of Aggregation: </strong>high aggregation would refer to status information that reflects the status of a large group of people (“Flight 714 is over Albuquerque (and my mother is on that flight”); low aggregation information refers to three or fewer individuals (“My mother is the gift shop in the C wing of the Huston airport.”)<br /></li></ol><p>To create status-broadcasting tools that won’t cause overcompensation, you can only emphasize two of those variables at once. The more specific you get with those, the less specific you must be about the third. Some examples: </p><ul><li>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasley_clock#Weasley_Clock">Weasley’s clock</a> in the Harry Potter series, which had a hand for each family member, pointing to one of several wide, vague categories: home, school, work, in mortal peril, etc. (Note: a few years back, Microsoft research created an <a href="http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?HeadlineIndex=28471">actual workable manifestation of this clock</a>.) (<strong>+Aggregation </strong>[by individual], <strong>+Time Grain </strong>[updated instantly], <strong>- Detail </strong>[five broad categories]) <p></p></li><li>A technology which uses GPS to <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SmartMobs/~3/74494473/using_sprint_ne....html">track the location of school busses</a> (<strong>+Detail</strong> [exact location], <strong>+Time Grain</strong> [updated instantly], <strong>-Aggregation</strong> [tracks a formal group]) <p></p></li><li>Dodgeball (see <a href="http://learninator.blogspot.com/2006/12/smess.html">previous blog entry</a>). (<strong>+Aggregation</strong> [individual], <strong>+Detail</strong> [exact location], <strong>-Time Grain</strong> [user rarely broadcasts information, and at her own discretion])<br /></li></ul><p>The bigger or more formalized the group you’re paying attention to, the more constantly and specifically you can broadcast information about it without major sociological backlash. The more individual or personal the information, though, the more vital it becomes to allow people to obscure the truth about themselves—to whom they chose, and when they chose. </p><p>If parents demand GPS tracking for their kids, companies will produce the functionality and it will sell. It just won't last or work very well; it will send the social system into a couple of wild swings, and then die out. Digital solutions that are actually going to last and incorporate themselves into the fibre of social life just have to incorporate themselves into our prexisting social patterns. As before: the nature of our relationships has to define the interface, not the other way around. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-52527151466546429242007-01-09T11:20:00.000-08:002013-05-16T12:54:24.914-07:00If Your Software Won't Let me Lie, I'm Not Going to Use It (Pt I)<ul>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presence_information">Presence Information</a>: Typically, presence data takes the form of a little icon next to your name in IM and some email programs/web services. It tells other users when you are <i>online, offline, away</i>, or <i>busy</i>.</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Penetration_Theory">Social Penetration Theory</a>: A fairly simplistic model of intimacy, and how it evolves. A personal graduates their level of intimacy with another person (which is irritatingly, but accurately, summarized by the catch-phrase “Into-Me-See”) like peeling an onion: by adjusting the type, frequency, and privacy level of information that they share with him/her. </li>
</ul>
Argh, finally. <a href="http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2007/01/09/the_swarm_.html">This</a> new piece of mobile software, “The Swarm” (still in development), proposes a presence model which starts to jive with how people negotiate social boundaries per-person, and over time (see: Social Penetration Theory).<br />
<br />
The thing is, we define our relationships on a daily basis by the degree, consistency, and nature of information that we share with one another. We make distinctions: <br />
<ul>
<li><b>by time grain: </b>I tell my employer (in July) that my cat was hit by a car (in June). I tell my mother on Thursday that it happened on Monday. I call my sweetie the minute it happens. </li>
<li><b>by detail:</b> I tell my employer I had a nice time in Cancun. I tell my mother about the lovely hotel and the awful prices. I tell my sweetie, at comedic length, about trying not to gawk at the giant, disfiguring mole on the nose of the maître d'. </li>
<li><b>by sensitivity</b>: I tell my employer my meeting with the new client was "awkward." I tell my mother that the client turned out to be an "old friend" from "those shady years." I tell my sweetie that the client was "that guy who was nice enough not to press charges." </li>
</ul>
Presence information is just that: it's information about what you're up to, right as it happens. As such, it is a very intimate handshake to be making with someone who you've just met at a party and casually invites you "to IM sometime." Combine this with the growing ubiquity of presence data in mobile/social digital tools, and you have a problem.<br />
<br />
I just finished a gig doing usability research & surveys with a presence-based communications product.Some presence models are much more granular than <i>here, gone, away, busy</i>: some interfaces pull detail about what you're up to out of other programs (Outlook, for example); some let you write your own status messages.<br />
<br />
They also allow for a tiny bit of individual regulation. When you add someone to your IM contact list, they see your presence information; if you don't want them to see it anymore, you block them or remove them from your list. This leaves you with binary options per individual: you give someone all of your information, or none of it. That's polar and awkward. Do I really want my old workmates seeing the status messages I write into Google Chat to make my friends laugh? (<i>“Luke, I am your Puff Daddy.” – Puff Darth</i>) Do I want the guy I met at the conference see what time I get home at night (status icon changes from <i>away </i>to <i>online</i>)? Would I rather, instead, block them from chatting with me entirely? How does sharing, or explicity blocking, this information change my relationships with these people?<br />
<br />
The point is, we human beings like to, er, <i>temper</i> reality to degrees when we allow individuals into our personal information space. In other words, we like to <i>lie</i>. Lying, or at least <i>withholding lots of things</i> as we see fit, is an <a href="http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/Red%20Dwarf/Camille.htm">essential part of social functionality</a>. In a sustainable presence model, the nature of the user's relationships dictate these intimacy-defining information exchanges-- not vice versa.<br />
<br />
The presence model in The Swarm is (from what I can see in the <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SmartMobs/~3/73167031/the_swarm_.html">full, brief article</a>) one cognitive step closer to aligning presence with relationship onion-layers. It allows you to customize your status information <i>per individual</i>. Your boss sees you're <i>home sick</i>; you mom sees you're <i>taking the afternoon off; </i>your friends see you're p<i>laying "Brazilian Nurses' MudWrestling Deathmatch IV</i>." <br />
<i>Stay tuned for: If Your Software Wont' Let me Lie (Pt II): Lying to Your Parents</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-54242685480388646712006-12-29T21:21:00.001-08:002013-03-24T03:49:01.932-07:00Norman L. Johnson: Remember his Name (Fame!)<p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Terms:</span></p><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Agent</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">: one entity in a collective group of entities that are doing something together. Agent-based models attempt to simulate how entities with (maybe) unique characteristics (like individuals in a crowd) move and make decisions together to produce unexpected collective results (like rioting). </span></li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resilience"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Resilience</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> or </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Robustness</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">: the ability of a system to spring back from external disturbances (e.g. a city design is robust if the city can continue to function even after a bomb destroys 15% of the central streets and buildings). </span></li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">System</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">: A group of components working together in an organically-organized way (maybe) to operate as a collective entity with its own unique nature. Examples: the body of a bird, or a public school. This is a larger topic which I’ll address in a future post. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Ok, this is </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">really disturbing</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Lots of people do not seem to know about </span><a href="http://ishi.lanl.gov/"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Norman L. Johnson</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Even my friend who arguably knows </span><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/~danyelf/"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">way more than me</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> about social systems has, reportedly, not heard of him. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Inconceivable! Norman L. Johnson produces fantastic stuff. He’s a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Even intermediate-level readers can get usable fundamental conceptual building blocks r.e. </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">systems theory</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> and </span><a href="http://learninator.blogspot.com/2006/12/this-post-is-klein-bottle.html"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">collective intelligence</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> from his papers. </span></p><p><a href="http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/diversity.htm"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Here</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, for example is a reference to his work on the uses of diversity in social systems. (The following explanation refers to an article that I’m pulling out of my memory, not specifically to what’s in that link, so there may be some incongruencies.) Johnson shows that systems move through three lifestyle phases, where they show varying degrees of productivity and robustness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">When I reference these concepts in conversation (which I do a lot); I typically use the example of a social system of house builders. Here is how that system might evolve: </span></p><ol><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Formative </strong>(infant) stage: </span></li></ol><blockquote><p><em><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">You pluck 30 house builders out of the ether, throw them together in the woods, and tell them to start building 2-bedroom, 1-story houses. </span></em></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">These individuals (or "agents") haven’t worked together before. Their roles aren’t defined (What are my duties?), their relationships aren’t defined (Who do I like? Who do I take orders from?), and the process itself isn’t defined (What materials? What layout?). This system of people will build fairly mediocre houses (poor productivity), but will be highly creative (everything is experimentation until something works), and very robust (change the circumstances, change the goals, and they can easily switch gears). </span></p></blockquote><strong><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></strong></p><ol start="2"><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Mature </strong>stage: </span></li></ol><blockquote><p><em><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The same builders have been working together for six months. </span></em></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">They’ve done this enough that they’ve established some processes that work. Joe mans the nailgun. Mary monitors the resources. Barry lifts the heavy stuff. Alice and Bill don’t work together or they bicker. However, not all of the combinations of roles, relationships, and system processes have been tried yet, so experimentation is still taking place. Thus, this system of agents is now fairly productive (but not <em>maximally </em>productive), but still pretty robust. If you suddenly swap out 30% of the workers with new people, the group can still shuffle itself around and adapt. </span></p></blockquote><ol start="3"><li><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>Senescent</strong> (geriatric) stage: </span></li></ol><blockquote><p><em><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The same builders have been working together on the same project, in the same environment, for ten years. </span></em></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This group is incredibly efficient. They have tried everything, and they now know the optimal, maximally-productive way of producing 2-bedroom, 1-story houses in the woods. They know exactly what their roles are when they show up to work without thinking about it at all; they haven’t had to experiment in years. The tradeoff for this productivity is a sore deficiency in robustness. If you up and airlift this crew to New Mexico and tell them "Now build me 4-bedroom, 2-story houses in the desert," they will just plain fail. The system will break. </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">You can use these simple concepts to extraordinary effect in interpreting the behavior of, for example, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">neural nets</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, agent-based models, or your local PTA meetings. </span></p><p><a href="http://ishi.lanl.gov/publications.html"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Here</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> are lots of Norman L. Johnson's publications. His credentials are scary-impressive, but his writing is sublimely intelligible and accessible to Even Normal People Like You. I’ll probably be cracking some of his articles back open and overviewing them here (eventually). </span></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So that's who Norman L. Johnson is. All right? All right. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152733379522912419.post-84600700815716434172006-12-07T11:17:00.000-08:002007-12-02T11:18:55.992-08:00Metacognition: Helping People be Stupid in Public ForumsAs of this entry, I’ll be kicking off posts by summarizing any new vocab words up front for newbies; other folks can scan past them.<br /><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N00b">Newbie</a> (or n00b): a newcomer to a field. Internet lingo term used sometimes amiably, sometimes as a pejorative. : )</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta">Meta</a>: a tricky concept. A “meta” idea is, roughly, an idea that is about a subset of itself. For example, “How Joe writes blogs” is meta to its subset, which is “how Joe’s Dec 11, 2006 blog entry is written.” The first sentence in this entry (about putting term definitions in blog entries) is meta to this list.</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition">Metacognition</a>: the study of how we think (i.e. thinking about how you think about things). When you take classes on how to study, or meditate to observe and silence your thoughts, that’s a metacognitive process.</li></ul><p>Metacognition is particularly interesting to social systems folks, because we treat crowds as a kind of semi-thinking organism which may be influenced and eventually trained. When an individual learns how to learn (i.e. gets meta to learning), he greatly magnifies his operational intelligence. When an individual learns how people learn, or how they reason or make decisions, she becomes able to create very influential (even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellian">Machiavellian</a>) political policy, for example, or social software.<br /><a id="more-16"></a><br />I recently stumbled on an excellent, highly intelligible blog called <a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/">Creating Passionate Users</a>. It focuses on metacognition, with an emphasis on using metacognitive tools to achieve goals in various computer/network applications.<br /><br />Last week (Dec 3) featured an interesting post is called <a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/how_to_build_a_.html">How to Build a User Community (pt 1)</a> by Kathy Sierra. Sierra proposes a way to encourage participants to stay active, learn, and feel needed in online user forums as those people move slowly up the ranks of expertise. It could, though, just as easily be applied in a number of other organizational situations.<br /><br />Her suggestions focus around encouraging late-beginner-to-intermediate users to try to answer (the inevitable flood of) newbie questions in public forums, without fear of being looked at as foolish if their answers are wrong. I like this: it’s an approach that encourages smooth and circular information flow, while capitalizing on some inherent human drives (to not look stupid or be irritating, to participate, to be useful.)<br /><br />Here are her main points; <a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/how_to_build_a_.html">see the blog</a> for a full explanation. There’s also a lengthy scroll of reader discussion at the bottom.</p><ol><li>Encourage newer users–especially those who’ve been active askers–to start trying to answer questions</li><li>Give tips on how to answer questions</li><li>Tell them it’s OK to guess a little, as long as they ADMIT they’re guessing</li><li>Adopt a near-zero-tolerance “Be Nice” policy when people answer questions</li><li>Teach and encourage the more advanced users (including moderators) how to correct a wrong answer while maintaining the original answerer’s dignity.</li><li>Re-examine your reward/levels strategy for your community</li></ol>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0