Magical Thinking about Technology

We all know someone whose technology makes them suffer.  They may be an aging relative whose ADSL line mysteriously goes down every time they open the fridge door, or the programmer in the next cubicle who wraps every function they write in several layers of copy-pasta he saw once in some code he never really did understand.

I used to snigger at these people, Voodoo Coding and magical thinking are lazy and ineffective.  Any problem with technology can be solved by first understanding it, because technology is pure rational thought made into material, right?

I've just been given an account on an MicroSoft cloud email system.  I'm learning humility.

I can log into it on my tablet (Android chrome), but not on my laptop (Linux chrome).  I'm sure I used to be able to log on using both, but then something broke, and one side went away.  I've deleted all the cookies on the laptop, I've re-entered all the passwords, I've clicked all the boxes I can tick, and still the final login screen just blithely re-appears.

I'm sure there's someone somewhere who can explain this to me.  But I can't be arsed, and I'm sure it would take a lot longer than I want to spend for the simple convenience of being able to read email on the platform of my choice.  I could probably fire up a Windows VM, set up a VPN, and log in via a MicroSoft ecosystem, but ... that can't be arsed thing again.

Here's the thing: as I was ringing all the changes in the laptop GUI login, I had a terrifying thought ... what if, by altering something on the laptop, I lost my tablet access!?!?!!!!  I'd better be careful!

Then I realised the horrible truth:  I've been slowly waltzed into technological dependency and magical thinking by a vendor's stupid design, and by my own studied ignorance.

Now I've just got to find a dead chicken to wave at the screen, and I will surely be able to read my email.

Half Assery as a Strategy

One thing which has surprised me about the USA (surprised me most, I think) is how half-assed everything is. I never thought of Oz as a particularly efficient place, but it's comparatively a model of doing stuff right, by the book, it's pukka. May be the colonial heritage.

May also be a function of how much in Oz is done by government (which is at least theoretically accountable for the provision of services,) in contrast to the USA's reliance on private contract to accomplish the same kinds of function. Cutting corners seems to be regarded as the way contractors get their equivalent of a tip.

One example is that I've had to send 5 copies of a fax (yes, a fax, technology circa 1910) from three different locations before it (I hope) arrived.

Another example is the shambolic publication of information about the San Marcos wildfires. In Oz, I can go directly to a government website which gives me maps, loci (or foci) of activity, descriptive text. I can go to the ABC (a venerable institution recently defunded by a Tory madman) to get details, events, advice, and cross-links to other information sources.

Here ... it's a parade of blondes with big tits ("There's a 30% chance that it's already raining!") asking inane questions and interviewing feisty local residents who are standing to fight the fire in their own backyard, for the american way of life. Oh, and the traffic ... nothing can happen in SoCal unless it's related to a major road, with a minutely detailed analysis of how traffic conditions will be impacted. It's infotainment and blather.

One surmises this kind of thing goes from top to bottom in the USA. No wonder so much stuff doesn't work, and good luck running that empire, guys.

Third Base!

I went to a ritual event the locals call a 'ball game.' While there I partook of the sacred food (being a footlong dawg with mustard and ketchup.)

What I observed was interesting, and seemed to involve a lot of setup for a scant moment's energetic interaction between a ball and a randomising device called a bat. The purpose of this interaction was to distribute the ball among the gathered faithful sitting in the bleachers.

I captured some of this ritual here: http://goo.gl/FkG2Vm

At the conclusion of the event, apparently two bases were "loaded" at the bottom of the ninth, a base hit was achieved, with two strikes and one out to go, at this point the guy on second (whose name may or may not have been "Watt") decided to go home.

Those assembled erupted in joyous celebration, as their Padres had won. All agreed it was a good match.

There's also a sub-ritual called a 7th innings stretch, which entails the communal singing of a song celebrating the tribe's special relationship with their local deity. I attempted to video it, but didn't want to appear too interested, as such scrutiny may mark one as a tourist, and the tribe is at war on tourism.

Mockingbirds and Android Dreaming

The other day I heard, and identified, and subsequently saw and confirmed a mockingbird.

A Mockingbird

I heard a protracted sequence of birdsong, very clearly enunciated.  There was one significant fact that (I punted) meant it was a mockingbird:  all the songs were at the same (fairly loud) volume.

In this, the bird is like a lyrebird.  You often don't see a lyrebird but can tell it's there, because it runs through its repertoire at full volume.

I imagine this is due to sexual selection - the males attract mates according to the quality of their mimicry, and as with most woodland birds, territory is marked by the volume of space the caller(s) can fill with his/her/their calls.  Since the lyrebird is a pretty big critter, they really go up to 11, to attract the chicky-babes.

It struck me as cool that this could be used to differentiate what is otherwise perfect mimicry ... a bit like the "Tell me about your mother" test in Bladerunner.

Hello, I Love You, Please Don't Tell Me Your Name

"Hi!  We haven't met before.  It is highly unlikely I will remember your name when we see one another again.  It's not because I don't like you, or don't remember you, it's that I'm a programmer and I'm a little bit special-needs onna-spectrum autistic.  Do not feel diminished.  I might remember your name better if it had a 2 digit numeral after it:  Craig23 would be memorable, Philip32 also, but plain old FRED, less so ... unless your wife's name is Wilma.

I have noticed I tend to store names using a cheap-assed hash, using the first and last phonemes of the name.  This is an old trick from interpreters in the 1970s, but you don't need to know that.

I will remember the key points of every conversation we'll ever have.  If you're really special, or your words were, I'll remember them verbatim, essentially forever (or until the problem you posed has been solved, or the insight you provided has been superseded.)

Here's the problem:  I'm a programmer.  I've written a million lines of code.  I remember most of the names of the important functions and variables (not that I use global variables) in most of the programs I've ever written.  I just have to look at the code, and the whole thing cascades back into my memory (as if it's being swapped from secondary store, but you don't need to know that.)

Another problem:  I'm a sysadmin for fun.  There are in the order of 10,000 commands in a unix system, although I probably only need to remember at most 1000 of them, and probably only regularly use 100 of them.

Another problem: There are hundreds of commands and functions in the programming languages I use, and I know about 20 programming languages, although to be fair I only regularly use about half a dozen of them.

So, if you see me and call out "Hey Colin!" and I say "Oh!  Hey!" please don't feel crestfallen because I don't remember your name.  I remember you're from Austin originally, and you're interested in turbulent flow in relatively viscous fluids.  Your name might be Phil, but it also might be Craig27 for all I know.  To me, what you're interested in, and what you're doing is far more important than what your Mum and Dad happened to call you.

Yours Apologetically,
Colin."

I want to get that printed on a card, at least until Google Glass comes out with a face-recognition->name app.  Is it too much to read on first meeting?

The Rum Rebellion v. The Tequila Uprising

Here's something of a leitmotif,

We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time. 

   T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, "Little Gidding," V, 26-29

 I am in a new place thousands of miles from home, late in my life, with a clear view of both places ... sepia memories of one, flickering momentary impressions of the other.

Above all, one is always immersed in people, people are the proper country of people, and the natural environment of people.  So what stands out, most, are the little inexplicable differences in how people seem to think in both places.

In this, I'm going to be crashing through a forest of sprouting platitudes.  I'm not giving up my membership of the People's Liberation Front of Judea, but am interested in why the Romans had power, big highways, and a system of production which seems to favour creative pursuit of interesting projects.  Forgive my generalisations, in the sure and certain knowledge that all generalisation is bad, always.

As a general observation, just to work into the topic:  people in Southern California are a lot nicer than people in Sydney.  More polite, more considerate, easier-going on the roads and in person, less censorious and judgemental.  I get the impression that a lot of this arises from their internal narrative, which posits their locus of control inside the narrator and not in some always-absent all-seeing all-judging omniscient third person colonial administration.  I'm not saying the narrative is accurate, just that it motivates people to behave differently.  Examples abound, just ask me.

Anyway, I want to talk about the world of work.  I've been a contractor for more than 30 years, and have met more than my fair share of managers in technical realms.  In all that time, out of the hundreds, I've met no more than a handful who were any good at all.  Part of that is down to the corporate culture in which they operated, part of it is the nature of the kind of person selected for that role, part is what motivates them to undertake that role.

I want to think and talk about what is different here, and why I think it has to do with something broader in our respective cultures, and what that is.  "History," is what I'm essaying at the moment as the root cause of the differences.

Checking my privilege for a moment:  I'm a white boy working in a field of ideas.  I'm not talking about the experiences of the guys who stack supermarket shelves, or take my money in the local petrol station.  My observations arise from the privilege I've always had, to be working with my mind and not my hands.  I spent a week working on bricks, and apart from the pain, and the fact that my boss was a fan of Bertrand Russell, I wasn't very good at it.  It seemed like toil, and toil is stupid.

"Each person is history and a project," I think Sartre said that.  I don't think that is the case, though, in Oz technical management, where the existential truth is "Each unit of production is a time-sheet and a procedure."  This cartoon-distinction seems to explain much of what I see as the difference between Oz and SoCal.

It's not that there are no timesheets here, or people aren't accountable, no.  It's that the orientation is toward something which does (or may) produce a result.  There is procedure, but it is always in the service of outcome, not the other way around.

Why?  I would say because there is a narrative belief in outcome.  Yank internal narratives always have a happy ending, the good guys get the girl, the bad guys their come-uppance.  Even their high literature has endings ... Holden Caulfield discovers that everything goes 'round and 'round, Gatsby fails, but the narrator gets to moralise, Tom Joad will always be there.

Oz, I always come back to Voss.  Man organises a venture, man heads off into desert, man wanders helplessly lost, man becomes part of the landscape.  All the best Oz lit is about despair.  All the paintings are lost children, or Ned Kelly as a postbox, with the bush peeking out through the slit.  No one goes out back: that's that.

What we have is otherness, and estrangement from the real source of power.  And it's because we were a slave colony.  There was never a point in striking out alone, or with a small group ... you'd end up dead, and cannibalising your companions, not end up having a state named after you.  Every time a bunch of colonial Americans struck out for new places, they found a richer and better place (I explicitly except Utah from this.)  Every time explorers in Oz did the same, they ended up with "Dig" carved into a tree.  And the destinations in Oz: they always promised so richly and delivered only sand and bleached bones.

An internal locus of control, and a goal worth winning.  These are the first differences.

The second difference is the subjective narrative role of disruption.  The yanks had the Boston tea party, which they invest with values like casting off the yoke of oppression (although of course it was not just that) and with clearing a space for improvement.  The only truly successful uprising we ever had was the Rum Rebellion, which merely served to enrich the already wealthy, further oppress the already enslaved.

Disruption to structure and established process can be seen to have positive outcomes in Unistater narrative, but not in Oz.  That's the next difference.  Perhaps it's a difference in time scale, as in the long run we are all dead, Ozymandius and all that stone.

What I have found, and I can't say too much right now, is that working here is good.  Much better than Oz.  Here, I feel like what I do has value, what I'm good at has inherent merit, and my issues and concerns, my itches, are not merely the annoying ravings of a guy who's too lazy to fill in his timesheet, and get to work before 9am.

I dare to think that's because I found a place which shares my values, and so can be happy and among mental kin.  Shame it's so far from home.

I haven't changed.  I just changed where I plug in my laptop, and with whom I associate in daylight hours.  Whether this is an Ugly Duckling story, or a Flowers for Algernon, time will tell.

Current sound track:  Steely Dan, Aja.  Some guys moved from NYC to LA because the quality of musicianship was so much higher in LA, and proceeded to do an album of songs about homesickness for NYC.  Here's the story of its making ... a striving for perfection and realised vision in a context of alienation.  My kind of narrative!

Torrey Pines

Torrey Pine, Del Mar

Today I visited Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve in Del Mar/La Jolla.  I drove past/through/around it a couple of times, because the entrance was cleverly hidden behind a car park giving access to the beach.  People had been telling me it's the #1 nature spot in San Diego, and I well believe it.  Somewhere I read the word 'wilderness,' and brought a full pack, thinking I might get some hiking done.  Once I got there, it was apparent that this was not that place, so I repacked a litre of water into the 20 litre day pack I carry for emergencies (it packs down into about 10cc, and would carry water nicely) and joined a volunteer-guided walk focusing on the vegetation and ecosystem of maritime chaparral.

Adobe house C.1923 v. Yucca and Chaparral

I saw the plant Hollywood was named for, saw and smelled more kinds of sage than I knew existed, and saw some yucca close-up.

I was befriended by a trainee guide, a small German lady who's been living in SoCal for 20 years, but "longs for a grey day."  It is true, the relentless blue skies and bright sunlight can become oppressive.  Sometimes you just do not want to "have a nice day."

I saw the Torrey Pine, a very rare plant named for a botanist who never saw one growing, dependent on fog for water, hardy, long-growing, gnarled and sea-dwarfed.  They hang on here, and only one other place.  Good for them, I say.

My photography was hampered, somewhat, by the presence of others, so I only got a couple in, and in any case no serious study of the pine for which all the fuss is being made.  I got to name, and maybe begin to recognise, and in some furtive and illegal moments *smell* some of the vegetation.

I enjoyed the couple of hours walking slowly and the companionship of the small crew of tourists.

Where is the solitude, though?  I asked the guide, and he said, for his, Sequoia NP was the place.  So ... maybe I'll set my sights on that.

Here's a gallery of the few photos I took.  The beauty of this place is subtle, and hard to find.  It's in the small things.

The guide told us that there's only one native species of ant here, the red harvester ant, and its population is collapsing because of the incursion of argentine ants.  We observed a little battle in the unremitting war.  It really doesn't look good for the locals, though:  as this radiolab ep explains.

So, if you look at the Oz bush ecosystems, they have really poor biodiversity, until you look at the scale of ants - all the biodiversity is there.  It was all I could do to stop myself mentioning this to the guide.  You can walk 50 metres in Oz, and you will cross the range of a dozen different species of ants.