http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/computer-jargon-baffles-users-hinders-security/
1. Great opportunity for a comm project.
2.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/politics/20justice.html?hpw
An article about the government's internal stuggles over the terror memos of the bush asdministration reminds me of my own worries and self-flagellation when I realize I've been stupidly pursuing a harmful goal. But more interesting is the use of the word "context", as some use it to refer to the state of mind the executive branch was in after the 9-11 attacks while it's clear that in some legal sense it should refer to the great experiment we've all been participating in since those guys wrote the constitution.
Much like the banking sector a few years later, the justice department appears to have lost sight of the bigger picture, probably because of high stress, little sleep, and that peculiar leadership style that gets people energized to work against their reigning paradigm rather than focusing on strengthening or building upon it. Perhaps that style can work well when the leader has a proper grasp on which level of abstraction of the reigning paradigm s/he wants to obliterate?
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
limits of science
"Moving from classical to quantum mechanics required scientists to ab andon their hopes for absolute measurement precision to gain much greater statistical predictive power."
Pg 278; north and macal- managing business complexity, 2007
Pg 278; north and macal- managing business complexity, 2007
Saturday, February 13, 2010
two new views of time
The timeline - instructive as it is - keeps us in the linear and thus teleological Western mindset. Try this instead.
china & the economy
http://www.artefactgroup.com/blog/2010/01/consumerism-in-the-wild-wild-east-what-to-know-about-designing-for-china/
This article - as enlightening and fascinating as it is - still seems to harbor a prejudice of the Aristotelian (i.e. black vs. white, with no in-betweens) worldview: it labors to convince us that China's rapid economic growth and inevitable GDP superiority are bearable challenges for the U.S. This is true, given the assumptions that the economy is the sole significant measure and goal of our two nations.
Gabe touches on - but doesn't carry to its joyous conclusion! - the idea that China has joined the West by agreeing to focus on economic growth. This is definitely present in the article, but the poignant reframe that it offers isn't made explicit: by choosing to devote itself sincerely to the consumerist value system, China is declaring that it's not a threat at all (at the level of endangering the very existence of the US, as Russia apparently did for much of the last century) - in fact, it's a partner in a (relatively) friendly game to see who can manufacture the most product.
This may still seem like a deadly serious game - what with hundreds of trillions of dollars at stake (whatever that means when we're borrowing them from the same China who's threatening to eventually earn more), but it's useful to view it for a moment as an artificial construct not too much different from last week's Superbowl. Sure, the Saints and the Patriots fans must have some hard feelings, but if the hard times were to come and leave no food or fuel to spend Sundays challenging each other with a ball on a field, those two groups would instantly bond together over that shared past ritual.
And just like the workers in America's heartland, the East and West will bond together over our shared values of manufactured glories. Because of our common goals of having enough energy to sustain vibrant experience economies, we'll make a common effort to stop polluting the atmosphere and ocean, and - perhaps - to stop corrupting the local order wherever our giant governments and corporations go to build mines and plants.
There still remains an exploration to be done of what adjustment the US will make (or has made?) to allow this new synthesis to bloom.
This article - as enlightening and fascinating as it is - still seems to harbor a prejudice of the Aristotelian (i.e. black vs. white, with no in-betweens) worldview: it labors to convince us that China's rapid economic growth and inevitable GDP superiority are bearable challenges for the U.S. This is true, given the assumptions that the economy is the sole significant measure and goal of our two nations.
Gabe touches on - but doesn't carry to its joyous conclusion! - the idea that China has joined the West by agreeing to focus on economic growth. This is definitely present in the article, but the poignant reframe that it offers isn't made explicit: by choosing to devote itself sincerely to the consumerist value system, China is declaring that it's not a threat at all (at the level of endangering the very existence of the US, as Russia apparently did for much of the last century) - in fact, it's a partner in a (relatively) friendly game to see who can manufacture the most product.
This may still seem like a deadly serious game - what with hundreds of trillions of dollars at stake (whatever that means when we're borrowing them from the same China who's threatening to eventually earn more), but it's useful to view it for a moment as an artificial construct not too much different from last week's Superbowl. Sure, the Saints and the Patriots fans must have some hard feelings, but if the hard times were to come and leave no food or fuel to spend Sundays challenging each other with a ball on a field, those two groups would instantly bond together over that shared past ritual.
And just like the workers in America's heartland, the East and West will bond together over our shared values of manufactured glories. Because of our common goals of having enough energy to sustain vibrant experience economies, we'll make a common effort to stop polluting the atmosphere and ocean, and - perhaps - to stop corrupting the local order wherever our giant governments and corporations go to build mines and plants.
There still remains an exploration to be done of what adjustment the US will make (or has made?) to allow this new synthesis to bloom.
rga interactive
"interactive designers aren't just telling one 30-second linear story—they're telling hundreds of interwoven stories as well as non-stories"
- from a story about R|GA on their website in comm arts magazine
This writer seems to have found another path to the understanding of a well-designed corporate identity as myriad paths starting from different perspectives, media, and expectations but converging on a central idea. I first saw this pattern in a video of Garett Lisi explaining quantum physics - he showed several different views of the way that fundamental particles can be clustered (i.e. by mass, color, flavor, spin, etc - I think), but he showed them with an animated transition to make it clear that the apparently different structures we saw through those several lenses are actually just one single structure.
I later learned that this idea is also the basis of the "levels of abstraction" metaphor (at least in some cases), and that a craftsperson generally needs significant mastery of the subject matter before s/he can present it this way.
For a good storyteller, it's fairly straightforward to see how to connect a thread (through a given medium) from an audience's starting point to the core idea (assuming one has a grasp on that core idea). But how can we tell when the core idea is big/strong/complete enough to hold together several such threads, versus simply that our mastery of storytelling is lacking?
- from a story about R|GA on their website in comm arts magazine
This writer seems to have found another path to the understanding of a well-designed corporate identity as myriad paths starting from different perspectives, media, and expectations but converging on a central idea. I first saw this pattern in a video of Garett Lisi explaining quantum physics - he showed several different views of the way that fundamental particles can be clustered (i.e. by mass, color, flavor, spin, etc - I think), but he showed them with an animated transition to make it clear that the apparently different structures we saw through those several lenses are actually just one single structure.
I later learned that this idea is also the basis of the "levels of abstraction" metaphor (at least in some cases), and that a craftsperson generally needs significant mastery of the subject matter before s/he can present it this way.
For a good storyteller, it's fairly straightforward to see how to connect a thread (through a given medium) from an audience's starting point to the core idea (assuming one has a grasp on that core idea). But how can we tell when the core idea is big/strong/complete enough to hold together several such threads, versus simply that our mastery of storytelling is lacking?
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