J. D. Fielder

Digital Friction, Part III: Integrating Identities

2013-02-09T17:58:56+01:00

Who am I? Why am I here? Best phrased by Admiral Stockdale, but certainly not a patented statement.

Or perhaps Sherry Turkle's second self? But she applies the term in relation to how we present ourselves through technology.

Here, I assess who I am in both digital and analog.

I wear many hats, as I assess most of you do, too. Some hats have greater influence by design; others less influence, to my dismay.

Military officer is my primary identity. While I wish I could place husband/father first, military service has an extraordinary hydraulic effect on my time. On the one hand, it's an identity I'm comfortable with. I think I do well at my job and am confident in my day-to-day workflow. After 18+ years of service, the uniform has long been both a literal and figurative identity symbol. On the other hand, I struggle with the extent to which the uniform defines me. Arguably, to be truly successful in the military the uniform must be your primary identity. Read the biographies of the top officers and enlisted members of each service: they're like monks dedicated to a higher calling. Me? I do the best I can on duty, but I otherwise typically remove the identity when I hang up my uniform at the end of the day.

Husband/father is my second identity. Domestication suits me. I love coming home to the family, hanging out, going on adventures, cooking dinner in that cute little maid's outfit the wife bought me... indeed, my wife likes to say, "I love Jimmy! I don't quite get Maj Fielder, though..." When I retire, she doesn't want me to shave for a year. And she's going to replace my entire wardrobe with flannel shirts and utili-kilts. Decisions I make while wearing other identities influence the family, which weighs on my conscience: i.e. do I take that cool assignment, even though my family doesn't want to live there? Do I write a book at expense of family time?

Third? Academic; or aspiring academic, at least. I've done research in some form or another my entire military career, but am only a recently minted PhD. While doctoral-level training certainly improves my military research, the relationship doesn't reverse well. Sure, military-bred discipline helps, but intelligence analysis tools don't overlay well onto social science methodology. If I want to grow as a political scientist, then, I must find time to dedicate to the craft. Needless to say, there's a tug-of-war between work identities here. Thankfully, my military supervisors encourage me to keep up with academia. Nice fellows, they are! Of course, there's the practical side--the military invested much wampum into my graduate training, thus they want return on the investment. :-P

Fourth, creative. In what few hours I have to myself at the end of the day, I paint. I write. I plunk away at a bass guitar. At least, I try to do all three. I sorely wish I had more time in a day to give each outlet the attention it deserves. This is my greatest lamentation--competent and confident in my job, but I don't want my job to fully define me. But there's only so much time, and feeling like the Looney Tunes frog after a long day's work isn't the best foundation for right-brained pursuits. The urge to roost is strong.

Or, as the saying goes, "that moment when you have so much to do that you play video games instead."

Right. So what does this have to do with this website? In short, unifying my identity. Let me tell a little story first...

From 2005 to 2009, I ran a blog called "Diary of the Mad Pigeon." It was the complete antithesis of this site: policy and social commentary, satire, rants, music, culture, art... basically, everything I cared about in one succinct package. Gads, was it fun... I sold the Iranian government on eBay, got into a public row with an anti-military nutcase, publically embarrassed a company for copyright trolling... and so on. I posted at least once a day, and also had a coauthor who weighed on occasion. In social media speak, I had a brand.

I ultimately decided to shutter the blog in early 2009 because it ate an incredible amount of time that I figured I should be using to write "traditional" publishable material. Additionally, I was about to start my doctoral program, and that HAD to take precidence over distractions.

I sometimes regret my decision.

I started this site as a means to hang my CV shingle and curate my research interests: for a research junkie, a well-stocked bibliography is an incredible time saver. But here's the rub: this site only captures one of my identities. By creating a highly-focused site, I constrained the site's utility for other identities. I pigeonholed myself, if you will.

This isn't to say I know what to do at this point. The simplest solution is to change the byline and expand the site's portfolio. What I DON'T want are separate sites--for me, unified is the way to go.

We'll see. Any inputs would be much appreciated!

My Personal Reflection on 4-Year Degree Biases

2013-01-29T03:20:32+01:00

Our little mouse moves out in late March, off to school in Boulder, Colorado.

"Oh, is she going to UC-Boulder?" everyone asks.

"Nope," I reply. "Boulder College of Massage Therapy."

Long pause. There's ALWAYS a long pause.

Kyla. National Merit Scholar. 2000 on the SAT. Reads 300 pages an hour, word for word and not speed reading. Straight 4.0 from 7th grade onwards. Studied advanced calculus while her father never made it passed basic undergrad algebra (and I still count with my fingers). SURELY she should be going to a traditional 4-year university?

Unfortunately, we have a cultural bias towards 4-year college degrees as the sole paving material for the road of success. Yet, that isn't what she wants to do, and she's argued for a different life trajectory for years. Specifically, she sees no utility in a liberal arts education when many of the interests she considered pursuing don’t require degrees.

And interests that do require degrees? To paraphrase Kyla, she can’t imagine sitting through 4 years of broad curriculum for a BA in psychology… just so she can compete with all the other psychology BA’s for burger flipping jobs. She also has zero interest in business or STEM education, and I can't blame her since neither did I at her age (again, finger counting). Her preference would be a degree tailored entirely for depth rather than breadth.

Moreover, consider this dad as her case study: BA in History. What the hell does someone do with a BA in History? Yet, I took the degree because I had a passion for the topic. I didn't want to pursue a degree simply for earnings potential. But guess what? My almost pathological interest in "looking $h1t up" carried over into a successful military career. I chose work satisfaction over monetary reward, yet following my muse proved a successful strategy.

And Kyla noticed. She knows I love my job--I thump my leg like a nervous dog knowing every day I get paid to read, write, drink coffee, and spout my mouth off. Gads, I can't imagine rotting away in some job I hated. That's what Kyla wants: a path to embrace rather than a path that simply greases a paycheck. Yet, she’s admitted repeatedly that no 4-year major rises to the same level of self-hugging for her as history did for me.

So, why massage therapy? She's felt for years that she'd follow a therapy route: massage, physical therapy, psychology, even veterinary. She wants to take care of people, but something a little quicker and less lab coat than a medical degree. Additionally, her words: watching me struggle for almost a decade with chronic pain was one of her deciding factors. Watching me bust my @$$ doing something I enjoy DESPITE chronic pain was another factor.

A parent's actions can truly speak louder than words--in this case, I'm glad it's not because I'm an international jewel thief, or something similarly dastardly (although I've told both kids repeatedly that I fund their allowances through a multinational Zimbabwe dollar laundering scheme).

She applied to one of the top therapy programs in the country, 1,320 hours of training that'll earn her an Associates in Massage Therapy and--per historic employment data--100% employment odds. But it gets better: after graduation, she's moving to Florida for an additional 6 months of training to become a Thai Yoga therapist. By the time she's done she'll likely be able to levitate and shoot lightning from her hands.

Moreover, her portion of my G.I. Bill will cover her entire tuition, room and board. She'll graduate with a marketable skill and zero debt. Not bad in the current economy.

Thinking big, she envisions long term owning a multi-therapist practice encompassing massage, acupuncture, yoga, physical therapy, chiropractic, counseling, and other forms of whole-body wellness. Frankly, I think it's a badass idea. Sure, plans change over time, and we had a long daddy-to-daughter talk about the perils of second guessing. But, given that my entire career has been a thinly-veiled accident, I'm proud and impressed that she's thinking ahead.

I've always told my kids that I don't care what they do, just as long as they try to be the best that they can at what they do.

As a parent, I want my kids to be happy and successful.

Their happiness and success are not trophies to hang on my wall.

Small wars Journal: Social Media Intelligence

2013-01-13T18:52:03+01:00

Via Small Wars Journal: "Given the importance of social media, even in countries with relatively low “digital indexes,” the State Department should continue to monitor social media on so it can alert embassies and nearby military units if something is afoot. Such a capability might not have prevented the Benghazi attack, but it might do so in the future."

CONTINUED
-

Digital Friction, Part II: To Tune in or Turn Off

2013-01-01T21:35:20+01:00

I have a bizarre relationship with the analog and the digital.

I arise at 0445 sharp every workday so I have enough time to read the paper before going to work--yes, a real, ink-on-fingers newspaper--and a chapter or two of nonfiction brain food. I've practiced this ritual for so long that my grandmother coined a phrase for it: "time to find myself in the morning."

I repeat the ritual before bed, but with fiction. To hell with the people who say reading in bed before sleeping is bad for you--I can't sleep without it!

What do both rituals have in common? Hard copy. Physical pages. The smell of newsprint, used book, magazine gloss, and coffee all mixing together into a heady mix I wish I could bottle.

But, for good or ill, I spend the rest of my day like most other knowledge workers: eyes glued to screen, mouse and keyboard caressed like an old lover. An endless deluge of electronic news, military reports, scholarly articles, email, and the occasional click on the Wikipedia "random article" link. For an information junkie, this should be paradise.

Then why am I so weary?

First, there's just. So. Much.

Being paid to read is fan-friggin'-tastic. That, and in my line of work there's nothing worse than answering "no" to the question, "did you read about...?" (my wife considers it a win when she outscoops me on the news). Yet, reading isn't the same as producing. One the one hand, I must step back and write my own work products. On the other hand, there's always that nagging suspicion I forgot something. That I didn't read just one more article. Alas, who really has time to read all day?

Second, I agree with the oft-cited Atlantic article that Google is making us stupid.

In Internet time, the article's a bit long in the tooth. However, it dovetails with the more recent publications The Tyranny of Email and The Shallows... which I read in hard copy, no less. The gist is that electronic content discourages deep reading and fosters skimming. I'm also not a ran of reading long articles on a backlit screen. In the era of the paperless office, I long for a pile of printed PDFs. (Study Hacks also recently posted a great piece on deep work).

Third, my rituals and 24/7 connectivity don't mix.

Facebook, Twitter, reddit, RSS feeds... there's only so much time in a day. Yet, Twitter appears to be some people's full time job. I can't imagine posting tweets all day and still having enough critical thinking reserves left over.

I've also no desire to spend all my free time in front of a screen. This, of course, is an ironic statement by a gentleman who claims to study how people use information technology to make political decisions. But when it comes down to it, when I die and my life flashes before my eyes, I'm not sure I want to see a lolcat or status update.

I'm posting a problem without a generalizable solution. I know that for me, I simply must disconnect on occasion, and that simply won't work for some people. Given a choice between tweeting or reading a book in my favorite chair, the chair often wins.

Happy Holidays and all that...

2012-12-25T01:03:58+01:00

Reminds me of some Former Students

2012-12-11T21:48:54+01:00

J.D. Fielder

Article: Apple Maps “Life Threatening,” Say Australian Police

2012-12-10T22:28:26+01:00

Apple Maps “Life Threatening,” Say Australian Police

http://allthingsd.com/20121210/apple-maps-life-threatening-say-australian-police/

Sent via Flipboard