hans.gerwitz

Gerrymandering

2013-04-28T22:00:00Z

It’s inevitable that we carve up geography to group people. Political borders are usually the result of negotiations between land-hungry powers, or politicians seeking to tweak group distribution.

Julian Oliver’s Border Bumping project has me thinking again about alternate motivations, so I’ve assembled some of my favorite alternative approaches to US cultural cartography:

William C. Reynold’s slavery map was one of the first artifacts that piqued my schoolboy interest in cartography. It may be quite simplistic, but was (and remains) very effective in communicating the state of the nation in 1856.

Michael Baldwin’s Common Census is my modern favorite, built by voluntary association with named places. It should be no surprise that cities are highly influential.¹

Another favorite view is Robert Delaney’s dialect regions, or Rick Aschmann’s similar work.

Also using communication, MIT, AT&T, IBM, and probably some other TLAs have mapped socially connected regions based on mobile phone calls. Then with Vincent Blondel (of phone identification fame) they went meta.

Alan McConchie has an ongoing project to track what Americans call soft drinks that shows some pretty clear boundaries.²³

Dirk Brockmann got a lot of attention mapping areas of mobility using paper currency tracking as a proxy⁴ and points out it corresponds well to BEA Economic Areas.

Neil Freeman has drawn fifty states of equal population.

Finally, I wouldn’t be a proper citizen of Cascadia if I didn’t include ecoregions.

or that I consider this a more valid method of grouping than states.↩
Edwin Chen has mined Twitter for similar data.↩
See also the sweet tea divide.↩
Livehoods has similar goals using checkin data from Foursquare and operating at the city level.↩

Verb Smear

2012-10-12T22:00:00Z

I’m still catching up on the presentations from UIST 2012, but the capacitive fingerprinting has caught my attention.

As touch becomes a dominate interaction modality and large surfaces gain interactive features, multi-user scenarios must emerge. wallFour is leading the way with experiences that engage dozens of participants, by cleverly accomodating the confusion of many pointers.

But as we discovered at frog with a giant touchscreen we built in 2009¹ for experimentation, multiuser applications often run into difficulties discerning intention. Our dependance on modes in modern GUI is quickly apparent when more than one user is interacting and you cannot discern which user-selected modes apply to an action. We used a simplistic example of area selection–how can we independently choose a number of objects from a shared pool?

First considered was a Jef Raskin-approved modeless approach that gave us each a selection bucket, which we drag our selected object to. But this is tedious on a personal screen and fatiguing on a large one. Worse, by monopolizing individual “nouns” to drag them to our personal “verb”, we change the landscape for the other user. This might be fun for a competitive game, but is cognitively inefficient for cooperation. It was clear we needed to lead with verb selection.

Numerous verb approaches were spawned from gedankenexperiment, most involving unique gestures (e.g. I tap with two fingers, you use three) or lassos. I combined these for “action ink”: a user-specific gesture brings up a palette of verbs (like a pie menu) which can be spread to touch or encompass objects. This might be described as using continuous touch to enable quasimodes. This was flexible and worked well, but unconventional enough to require an uncomfortable amount of user training.

So methods to uniquely identify touches by person remain the holy grail of these experiences, and it’s exciting to see Disney finding some success with an approach that does not require augmentation with gloves or styluses.

engineered primarily by Jose using LLP ↩

Scared

2012-08-08T22:00:00Z

Herein, I offer a paragraph-by-paragraph translation of Lou Pritchett’s “You Scare Me” op-ed:

I was born in year two of the Great Depression (1931) and spent the first 10 years of my life influenced by the extreme hardships of the depression. By today’s standards my family was about a mile below today’s so-called ‘poverty level’ but if you never ‘had,’ doing without was not so ‘bad.’ Borrowing shoes to graduate from the 8th grade didn’t seem at all demeaning because most of the 8th graders did the same thing.

I’m old and was once very poor.

In June 1944, my only brother, Joe, was killed in action on Utah Beach in Normandy, France during the D-Day landings. Exactly one year later, my father died and left me, my mother and my sister to go it alone… and alone we went. My mother went to work at a department store, my sister dropped out of school and joined her and I went to work shining shoes on the streets of Memphis for a dime a shine. Government assistance was not available, and if it were, I am confident my mother would have refused it because she never wanted the government involved in our lives.

My brother died in war. Life was very hard for my family, but I like to imagine my mother preferred that to the horror of living with social support like the Canadians and Germans suffer with today.

I mention this bit of personal history to help you understand that millions of Americans, including your parents and grandparents, grew up like me during the Great Depression and never expected nor wanted the government to offer them anything other than an opportunity. And now to see what Obama is trying to do to our country, can make you crazy.

Your ancestors may also have been poor. I’m sure they felt the same way I imagine my mother did. This is why I dislike our President.

As some of you know, my “Scare Me” letter went viral with millions of hits on the internet during the past three years. I have now written a follow-up letter which I will now share with you:

Last time I penned a rant, it was almost as popular as a reality TV star’s tweet. Popularity is important to me since I sell books, so here’s another one:

In April 2009, I sent President Obama and the New York Times a letter titled “You Scare Me” because, as a candidate, he promised to “fundamentally transform America.” Now, after observing his performance for over three years, he no longer scares me—he terrifies me for the following reasons:

I’m even escalating my language from “scare” to “terrify”.

FIRST: He has done more to damage America’s standing in the world, to lower the standard of living in America, to impoverish future generations and to shake our faith in the country’s future than any other American president in history.

The rest of the world hates us now. I miss the glowing respect the international community showered on George W Bush. As a poor child of the Great Depression who is now a millionaire, I can assure you life is harder than it’s ever been and will only get worse.

SECOND: With a compliant Democrat congress, a lapdog media and a weak, almost nonexistent Republican opposition, he has shattered the American dream of job security, home ownership and rugged individualism for millions of Americans and has poisoned and divided our civil society with his politics of envy, class warfare, race warfare, and religious warfare which he is using as fundamental building blocks for his ‘socialist’ agenda.

The Republicans are so weak to stop this menace that 193 Democrats and 242 Republicans makes the 112th House of Representatives a “compliant Democrat congress”. No one even bothers to dream of employment, home ownership, or growing up to be John Wayne anymore. It is the President’s fault that we must choose sides between Fox News and science, that the poor envy the rich, and that the races don’t get along as well as they once did. Also, ‘socialist’.

THIRD: Culturally, he remains totally out of touch with traditional American values. This has absolutely nothing to do with race or where he was born, rather it has everything to do with where, how and with whom he was raised, schooled, educated, trained and associates with still today.

He’s not the same as the old white men of the eastern seaboard we’re used to calling President.

FOURTH: He has surrounded himself with naive academicians, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and socialist-leaning czars who arrogantly think and behave exactly as he does. People who offer no balanced suggestions or devils advocate positions and think in lock-step with him that big government is the answer to all our problems.

He associates with educated and successful people who share his values. In particular, he’s staffing government with people that believe government can add value to our lives. Also, ‘socialist’.

FIFTH: He not only encourages but aids and abets in the unionization of all American industry, the albatross around the neck of the free market. In turn, they provide the money and muscle to intimidate his opponents.

Although the percentage of working Americans in unions has declined since 1954 to a new low of 12%, I’m still scared that he supports and benefits from them. As someone who had to negotiate with those uppity jerks on my way to becoming rich, I only support class warfare when aimed down the socioeconomic ladder.

SIXTH: He has increased the national debt by over 30% in just three years. If re-elected and this rate of increase continues, America will be burdened with an unsustainable $20 trillion dollar debt which will result in the country’s financial death. Recovery will be impossible - America will be the Greece of 2016.

Though he has reduced government spending even during a recession, he didn’t lay off enough workers, end Bush’s wars quickly enough, or raise taxes to offset declining tax revenues. I miss Clinton. This is just like what happened to that tourism-based country that’s smaller than New York.

SEVENTH: Given his fanatical adherence to the ‘environmental’ and ‘man-caused global warming’ fringe, he has deliberately discouraged U.S. fossil fuel exploration and production while wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on solar, wind and algae experiments. He refuses to accept that oil, gas and coal are not America’s enemies, they are America’s assets which, if properly managed, could make us energy independent within a generation.

I’m comfortable being thoroughly dependent on other, often untrustworthy nations and natural resources are meant to be consumed, so only ridiculous nonsense like “science” could explain spending anything at all on other options.

EIGHTH: He views the U.S. as a power in retreat which abused its World dominance. Therefore, he systematically apologizes round the world. Last March he whispered to Russian President Medvedev “… this is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Just what is the secret that Obama and Putin are concealing from the American people until after the election? With what other leaders has he made similar secret agreements?

He’s conspiring with those other people, who you might remember from my first point have no respect for him.

NINTH: And finally, after all his missteps, bad decision making, poor management, and zero leadership, the fact that he has the audacity to seek re-election should terrify every American.

I have nothing nice to say about our President and am offended he exists.

I predict that if re-elected, future historians and political interpreters will look back at the eight year period 2008-2016, and conclude “the 44th President of the U.S. allowed the takers to overpower the payers which resulted in the greatest economy in history vanishing from the face of the Earth.” Farewell, America. The World will really miss you!”

After I’m dead, you’ll all see I wasn’t the babbling lunatic I sound like today.

It is my hope and prayer that this letter will also go viral and serve as a ‘wake up’ call to Americans of all political leaning, convincing them that never before in U.S. history has so much depended on Americans understanding that we are facing one of the greatest crises in U.S. history. Convincing them that this election will be won not by letters to the editor, political speeches or radio and TV soundbites.

I believe in God. A lot of you share my poorly-defined hatred and I hope you share my words with each other again. Because words like the ones you are reading don’t work.

No!!! it will be won by those with a conviction, with a belief and with a willingness to pay the price in helping put the most enlightened voters in the polling booth on November 6.

What does work is putting more money into politics. Or violence.

Let me end on my favorite quote which I think is very appropriate for each of us today:

Now I’m going to quote a historic leader of another nation who supported international cooperation and liberal social policies:

“TO EVERY MAN THERE COMES IN HIS LIFETIME THAT SPECIAL MOMENT WHEN HE IS PHYSICALLY TAPPED ON THE SHOULDER AND OFFERED THE CHANCE TO DO A VERY SPECIAL THING, UNIQUE TO HIM AND FITTED TO HIS TALENT; WHAT A TRAGEDY IF THAT MOMENT FINDS HIM UNPREPARED OR UNQUALIFIED FOR THE WORK WHICH WOULD BE HIS FINEST HOUR.”

“I HAVE BEEN IN FULL HARMONY ALL MY LIFE WITH THE TIDES WHICH HAVE FLOWED ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC AGAINST PRIVILEGE AND MONOPOLY”

Those words, spoken by Winston Churchill over 70 years ago, are very appropriate for the Tea Party Movement today.

Oops, wrong quote.

For if each of us is prepared and is qualified then November 6, 2012, just might be our and our Country’s finest hour as we reclaim this “shining city on the hill” from the ravages of Obama Socialism.

I meant to say NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT and vote not for anything in particular, but against this President we hate. Also, ‘socialism’ with a capital ‘S’.

IT IS NOW OR NEVER FELLOW PATRIOTS –GOD HELP US IF WE FAIL!

I like patriotism and God.

Your (Facebook) friends are watching

2012-04-25T22:00:00Z

Recently at frog’s Seattle studio we put to test the well-studied phenomenon of images with eyes encouraging prosocial behavior. Our office admins report a 90% reduction in dirty dishes left carelessly in or around the sink after placing a sign with faces exhorting us to behave like responsible adults. Previous text-only signs had led to no detectable improvement.

It was long ago showed that even subtle exposure to very stylized images of eyes strongly increases prosocial behavior. Melissa Bateson, a zoologist interested in how starlings react to images eyes, recently established the effect works with humans even without an accompanying message. Adding credence to the conclusion that a sense of being “watched” is behind all this, it’s been discovered that even atheists can be similarly primed by invoking god.

But who needs god, the POTUS, or even Bieber? Certainly our buying behavior is also an indicator for feeling “watched” when we avoid making certain purchases in public. University of Miami research has recently shown that our in-public behavior mode can be triggered not by anything as direct as pictures of our Facebook friends, but simply by the logos of social sites.

I’d love to know if the incidence rate of trolling is reduced in commenting systems that display a Facebook login, even if they don’t require its use.

Retromining

2012-03-30T22:00:00Z

I want to start a VC fund for bringing old video games to modern app markets.
— hans.gerwitz (@gerwitz) March 1, 2012

Plenty of the video games of my youth have lived on, with or without their brand franchise. Zelda and Metroid were the only two TV-based titles I enjoyed, and both have persisted and been well-copied. In high school we played a lot of Mac Risk¹, and that genre has certainly flourished.

Solar Realms Elite and Trade Wars, though, still exist but have faded into obscurity. It could be said that some MMORPGs (in particular EVE Online) have taken up that torch, but I’m not convinced. The evolution has been towards greater UI complexity, and the soul of these turn-based builders was in the simple, rhythmic nature of the maintenance loop. The zen of cow clicking with the brain crack of territory expansion. I’m sure this genre lives on somewhere, but I cannot find a well-designed iPhone derivative for spare time² empire building.

Dan Gorlin’s Choplifter has been successfully revived, but Airheart is the one that blew me away in 1986. Not just because of it’s amazing pseudo-3D graphics (560x192 pixels! 16 colors!) and smooth gameplay with an analog joystick. It was one of those games that sucked you in and made you lean in your chair while you worried about completing your mission. Especially with the tunnels and islands Gorlin originally intended, this would be a great accelerometer-controlled game.

And I have to mention Bill Budge’s Pinball Construction Set. A fine example of simulation-building accessible enough to bring basic procedural literacy to many. It wasn’t my gateway to programming, but I knew others who picked up Applesoft BASIC to satisfy creative urges initated with PCS.

Heavily modified with ResEdit, of course↩
The pocket form factor is perfect for casual gaming.↩

Back to basics

2012-02-19T23:00:00Z

A coworker recently turned me on to Nanoc, a static site compliation tool that lets me output plain old HTML. I was going to write about why I’ve come full circle for my 6th publishing tool and assembled my thoughts with a bunch of references, but Simon Sigurdhsson has already said it best:

use the right tool for the right job — there’s no need to bring out the sledgehammer when you’re trying to put up a painting. Use the hammer. Or your shoe.

Corporate rights

2012-01-12T23:00:00Z

From Tim Cook’s internal email addressing Apple’s 2012 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report:

Our team has built an ambitious training program to educate workers about Apple’s code of conduct, workers’ rights, and occupational health and safety. More than one million people know about these rights because they went to work for an Apple supplier.

In 1791, when the United States ratified the Bill of Rights, the population of “free white males of 16 years and upward” was 807,094. (The total population was more than 3 million more.)

I don’t mean to draw any conclusions about the ascendancy of corporation as a governance institution, but do find it noteworthy that the scale of a single company’s global manufacturing network is comparable to the birth of its nation.

Shared problems

2011-12-01T23:00:00Z

Schaeffer warned that America’s descent into tyranny would not look like Hitler’s or Stalin’s; it would probably be guided stealthily, by “a manipulative, authoritarian élite.”

These words were written by Ryan Lizza in his August New Yorker article about Michele Bachmann. He was making the case, accurately, that Francis Schaeffer was a paranoid conspiracist.

But a month later, Zuccotti Park was filled with Americans who seem very unlikely to subscribe to Schaeffer’s ideology, but are likely to agree with that warning. Occupier or Tea Partier, at least Americans seem to agree about our shared manipulative, authoritarian élite. Eventually we may figure out that the Koch brothers and Fanjul brothers both represent social problems.

City rights

2011-10-19T22:00:00Z

Today I’ve learned that NYC tried to implement congestion pricing but was foiled by their state government, and that Washington state is considering “allowing” cities to set speed limits on the roads that those cities build, maintain, and patrol.

America’s cities are responsible for over 80% of the population and 90% of the nation’s GDP. ¹ Yet this is the United States, not the United Cities, and our atomic units of governance are large land areas that generally have capitols in sparsely-populated areas. They tend to overrepresent rural interests and prioritize highways and social conservative issues with a dismissive attitude toward the collectivist preferences of dense population centers. Rhetoric from the right often extolls the virtues of local decision making, but they generally mean to empower states.

Remaining competitive in an increasingly urban world is going to require more attention to the needs of cities. Our mayors need to fight for city rights.

Bruce Katz at Fast Company ↩

Just like the last time

2011-10-02T22:00:00Z

Five years ago, the Motorola Razr was the top-selling phone. Imagine trying to sell 6 million of them today. Jonathan Chaplin, quoted in the WSJ

This feels like a fair comparison. At its height in 2006, the RAZR held a 22% market share. The iPhone has recently been estimated at 27% among smartphones.¹

Yet consider how the RAZR’s popularity fell off. It was dominating the high end of a category (now called “feature phones”) that had its top end chopped off by the iPhone and the other pocket-tablet phones it spawned. It was designed as a skunkworks project within Motorola, and after launch the only innovation the Motorola product machine brought to it was new colors and sacrificing profit to address the mass market. Apple, in contrast, no longer needs irreproducible skunkworks to develop disruptive products. While Motorola had to lower their margins to drive RAZR sales, Apple is profiting handsomely from the iPhone and will remain motivated to develop it.

What’s most troublesome about this sort of analogy, though, is the framing. Among mobile telecommunications industry analysts, Jonathan Chaplin is rather astute², but is still a member of an old guard that has learned to analyze an industry that has undergone dramatic change. They are working with an obsolete model where consumers visit carrier-sponsored storefronts, find a phone that matches their coat, and then settle on a service contract under the guidance of sales staff.

Today’s market is quite different. Many consumers are choosing a device based on its own features and perceive the carrier as a service provider. Each carrier is struggling to preserve its status as a direct marketer of handsets, and they have all failed to establish themselves as a credible provider of services beyond wireless data and, for now, voice communications.³

Device choice is leading consumer choice⁴ and arguably the most compelling feature is application platform. Which is why I don’t advise much attention to analysts that are veterans of the telecom industry, who have only managed to add “OS” to their box of phone features. Listen, rather, to those who see platforms and understand, for example, that the Amazon app store is a platform that has some cross-benefit with Google’s but should not be simply confounded as “Android”.

Except even these voices are lazy and want to believe this market will be a repeat of the Mac vs. Wintel history, or the iPod vs. everyone else history. Better to just remain suspicious of historical analogies.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=28237↩
He’s one of very few who forecast Verizon’s iPhone sales growing from their own customer base, rather than AT&T; turnover.↩
Which is hard in a world where other business models support “free” services, and when your organization is built only for servicing a utility and reselling. But that’s another article.↩
Why else would Sprint attest that iPhone-seeking is their #1 attrition driver?↩