Memories

This famous image captures two figures of Western history, Plato and Aristotle, who are said to be gesturing to their different conceptions of the world.

Plato, on the left, gestures up to the heavens, pointing to the ethereal, timeless forms, which he believes everything we see to be imperfect manifestations of. Aristotle instead wanted to found knowledge on empirical observations and experience.

In the historical record, both have overshadowed their predecessor, Socrates. Most of our understanding of him comes from writings by Plato, for he did not leave any writings on his philosophies; indeed, we do know that he wasn't fond of writing and literacy. In their place he championed oral communication, as he felt the dependence on physical recordings would damage our memories.

From personal experience, we know that he had a point. If you have a phone book, or keep numbers recorded on your cell-phone, it will probably weaken your recall of phone numbers.

Many others don't see a problem here. They usually say that this leaves room for our mind to focus on more important problems.

Before sharing my own thoughts, I must preface them by saying that I haven't read widely on Socrates, and also acknowledge that we must always be careful to extrapolate from our limited understanding of past figures.

I can at least say that I hope we have been misunderstanding him.

I hope he wasn't that short-sighted.

Because we not only lose the fidelity of our memories; we also begin to forget to appreciate their adaptiveness. By championing oral communication, he - implicitly, at least - valued the changes and challenges of the present more highly than those of the past or future.

Any human-made physical recording, not just writings, pictures, photographs and audiovisual recordings but also buildings and monuments all bring a lasting quality to human activities that would be beyond our reach without those technologies. They capture moments in time, and make them timeless, they give them a degree of permanence.

We tend to like permanence. It has given rulers a sense of immortality, while those less fortunate are at least left with one of stability and predictability; as long as they remain in the ruler's favour, anyway.

There's a familiar saying that "nothing lasts forever." Perhaps Socrates just wished for people to take that idea more seriously.

Unfortunately, Western philosophical tradition hasn't. In asking "What Is?" it strives for the Platonic Form; it seeks a constant identity in the shifting shadows of the world. Written into the doctrines of Christianity is the permanence of death, in contrast to Eastern religions with ideas of reincarnation and the cycles of degeneration. I don't support either, I just wish to highlight the divergence of views; the West would gain by embracing a more Eastern acceptance of change.

Otherwise, we run into meaningless debates of whether, for example - since most of the cells in our bodies are completely replaced in a six month period - we are the same people now as six months ago. Definitions presume stability; defining something like who we are presumes constants that aren't there. Physicists have identified a few; human nature isn't one of them.

I attended a talk recently that had the premise of founding human behaviour on reciprocity and interdependence. Unfortunately, I had heard a quote from Gandhi earlier in the day:

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Although I have no doubt that the qualities of reciprocity and interdependence are essential to a community, they are not enough. Gandhi shares the more subtle view that sometimes our past experiences can lead us to wall ourselves off from others, regardless of those individual's circumstances at the time, and how they - and ourselves - may have changed since.

The Africans have a concept of 'Ubuntu,' which is usually translated as "I am, because we are." It not only conceives of our nature on an unstable basis - the security of our local or global community - it is a far more broad-minded and potentially much less selfish view than the bare notions of 'reciprocity' and 'interdependence.'

To the weak, all change is a potential insecurity, strength enables us to stand tall and confront it.

The importance that Socrates places on memory also supports - again, at least implicitly - a sense of personal value. Human-made recordings, once they arise from the mind of their creator, are social goods. Oral communication is also social, but it fosters a sense of community because only the immediate parties to it can benefit from it. Because of the ability to replicate and transmit recordings broadly, especially in the age of the Internet, they can easily be separated from their context and lose the meaning a community depends on.

When people invest themselves in the past as captured in a physical, human-made 'recording', they become vulnerable to the changes that others can inflict on those embodiments of an idea. Although there's no issue here in a society with a strong sense of community and values like ubuntu and reciprocity, when the individual becomes isolated they become further open to all sorts of abuse.


A capitalist economy can easily compound the problems. Depending on whether people place their values in other individuals or in services or material goods, different 'communities' are formed. If a community is founded more on material goods than individuals, then all of the individuals that are party in some way to those material goods are potential victims of those goods.


If the value of some physical recordings to a community, for example, is perceived by even a single individual to have become tarnished by the presence or actions of another person - possibly the original creator of the works - then that person could conceivably become more valuable dead than alive to the individual.


What is even worse, is that this individual's perceptions may be reinforced by the unwitting interests of consumers, expressing these interests through the anonymous media of markets and money. They don't pull the trigger, but they do pay for the gun.



The true value of memories is their capacity for helping build the future. There is worth in the broad dissemination that recordings afford, but only with the understanding that not all ideas can be transplanted without changing to meet the nature of their new time or place.


Traveling down the memory lane in our heads is far less riddled with potholes, but if we venture down it in any manner to hide from the changes of the present, we'll find that most of the paths end in ruin anyway.

Newspapers; worth their weight

[ Another TM speech; let's just say the writing flowed better than the delivery. Learned a lot more from the failures of this one than many successes of previous ones. ]

I'm sure we can all agree that knowing about the world we live in is useful. From a young age, we are instilled with certain values, some as simple as saying 'please' when we want something, or 'thank you' when we get it. We go through different stages of education; kindergarten, primary, secondary, perhaps tertiary education. All of these are supposed to give us what we need to function in the world.

Newspapers are a bit different. What we learn in schools is usually fairly time-tested, established knowledge. The news is there to tell us what is happening, or has happened recently.

Whatever the differences are, what all these have in common is that they give us knowledge about the world.

As may have become obvious, I like knowing stuff. Less obvious is that I don't read the newspaper, and I don't think most people should, either.

Although I don't read it for what I believe to be pretty good reasons, some people act as if this is tantamount to heresy.

When visiting some relatives for dinner one night, my uncle put it well:

“He doesn't read the newspaper. He likes to remain as blissfully ignorant about the world as possible.”

He's right, in one way. Ignorance can be blissful. The difference between my uncle and I is that we choose to be ignorant of different things.

We all realise that we can't know everything. Unfortunately, not everyone is blissful or happy. Ignorance, it seems, is not enough for happiness.

Someone else has remarked that “[h]appiness isn't having what you want, but wanting what you have.”

One problem with newspapers is that along with all the information you do want comes all that you don't want, and for a very simple reason. Newspapers - hello - aren't made for you. They're made to appeal to the widest audience, while being very careful to annoy as few as possible.

They're made - in other words - for Mr. and Mrs. Average. If the newspapers are any indication, this couple and their progeny are a little bit interested in everything and have a curious fondness for advertisments.

The best way to understand the Averages is to look at Economics. Economists like to think they understand people's motivations, but they only really have a solid grasp of averages.

Two tenets of economics are the ideas of supply and demand; basically, 'giving people what they want.' If you take any kind of good or service; it could be music, clothing, groceries, or indeed 'information about the world', you can picture it along a curve like this.

[ Draw a demand/pareto curve ]

Along here [point to X axis], you have products, and here [point to Y axis] you have the demand for those products.

On this side [left of the curve] of the curve you have the hits, those products with the greatest sales; perhaps a Michael Jackson album in a music store, or staple foods in a supermarket; items purchased by large groups of people. Towards this side [pointing down the 'tail' end'] you could have a book by an unknown author, or an obscure kind of pasta like quinoa.

This curve says nothing about quality. Not all great books attract a broad audience, and some goods may have dedicated but small customer bases.

The problem is, when you have limited shelf space, or can practically print only so many pages, you have to decide what to include and what to leave out. To reach the greatest profits, a shopkeeper or a newspaper editor can't be selling goods, or providing news to only a niche group of customers or readers.

This isn't an issue of most of the world's media being controlled by a very small number of very large organisations, and the biased reporting that can result from that. It's not a problem of subtle philosophies of why reading newspapers can damage your reasoning, even when they certainly exist.

It is a question of why anyone should have to be bombarded with junk they don't want. Perhaps there's a certain clothing store that stocks some clothes you like. Perhaps another store sells some of the same items, but buried along aisles of unappealing trash. Which one are you going to choose to visit?

With the internet, the shelf-space is infinite, and with curators like Google, Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia, the niche can afford the same exposure as the mass-market. If people want it, well, they can find it almost instantly. Why should a newspaper editor decide what you learn about the world, when you can find exactly what you want to know?

Newspapers only have so many pages to fill, while the web has about as many pages as there is air for us to breathe. Sure, much of it may be trash, but newspapers don't have Google to filter it out.

The days aren't getting any longer, and I've got better things to do than find needles in haystacks. Don't you?

[ Just a little after-commentary:

Going in, I wasn't satisfied with the logic of the content; it's not watertight, but I believe the message is clear. Borrowing from Pascal, "I apologise for the length of this [speech], I didn't have time to make it shorter."

In the line, "All of these are supposed to give us what we need to function in the world." I tried not to put too much emphasis on 'give.' The symbiosis that has been so lacking in education in the past is ruinous.

During the preparation, I considered a cue of a subtly more crooked posture at the mentions of newspapers in the speech. Too much to think about at this stage...

Finally, I tried [but screwed up somewhat] to bridge the opening and closing both with word structure and gesture: "I'm sure we can all agree ..." with "I've got ... Don't you?" along with palms on chest, gesturing to myself on the "I" and moving my hands straight out, and extending them to the side to gesture to audience members. I liked this because the initial part is trying to open with agreement and the final part is trying to gain it. I guess it's easy to have that look over-rehearsed, so it would be nice to have a recording of deliveries. I know some clubs do them; ours doesn't. ]

Sautéed Onions, and a pinch of Sweet Technology

I've been doing a bit of cooking recently, and having a great time at it. Last night I tried a Mac'n'Cheese recipe, using Mozzarella and aged Cheddar melted in a Béchamel sauce, followed by tonight's meal of 'Lemony Quinoa and Asparagus with Shrimp Scampi.' Both were (fortunately) well received, and they tasted as good to me as it was enjoyable to make them.

On the technology side, during the research for my current project, I've been learning about the facilities offered by the XMPP protocol and its various server implementations. It offers some fascinating - and certainly untapped - possibilities for product development. What has intrigued me about it is that if you have any kind of need for remote control and response from various services, you can implement the service as a so-called 'component bot' and control it using a client application, which both exist as XMPP entities.

By doing this, and using server implementations that support clustering and appropriate implementations of the 'Jabber Component Protocol' (XEP-0114) and perhaps 'Component Connections,' then you get load balancing for that service almost automatically. On (likely) tested implementations, too. If you assume your service will need to scale - and it seems reckless to ignore the possibility - this is invaluable.

In the end, I've been left with less work to do, and at least two more meals in leftovers.

Bliss.

Lifetime's Authority Equals Death and Taxes

Life's Certainty

Since society is not self-supporting, it must be decided how best to maintain it. An obvious method is through taxes. The American political philosopher Robert Nozick had a compelling view against taxation. Taxes embody the right of society to take some of your earnings, the fruits of your labour. Nozick likened this to forced labour; tax – to him – is tantamount to slavery.

The alternative must be the willing contributions of the members of the society. These must be uncoerced: violators must not be punished, even by the most subtle kinds of social ostracism, or else it permits the same opposition as taxes.


In other words, society – whether grounded by a 'government' or other means – must be maintained by either slavery or altruism.

I think the comparison with slavery itself is a bit forced, as its 'victims' still enjoy some of its benefits; perhaps policing, or subsidised health care. But whether the members of a society can contribute to its upkeep by more altruistic or more forced behaviours, there will always be some individuals who somehow avoid doing so.

Ignoring the ethical dilemma of taxation with it's difficulty of whether people contribute – it is useful to consider how those that do, do so. In considering this, we confront the difficult notion of 'fairness,' and in discussing fairness, we meet the issue of scarcity.

The need to be 'fair' only arises with finite resources. These resources need not be goods and services produced and supplied by people, but also natural resources such as an individual's lifespan (which is partially determined by genetic factors), and the distribution of arable land suitable for farming, or the presence of species that may be domesticated.

Since fairness is ultimately a problem of availability, it must be solved by setting some standards for sharing or dividing resources amongst individuals. In areas where we have little control over how resources are divided - such as an individual's lifespan - it is not meaningful to talk of fairness. Whether life is fair or not is hardly a practical question.

It is remarkable that 'equal' sharing of resources is not always considered the 'right' way to divide them. We can see this in the famous principle of "the greatest good to the greatest number," often known by the name 'Utilitarianism.' This phrasing admits that the 'greatest' good may not be realised by everyone getting the same, but possibly also by providing things where they may be utilised most effectively.

Few would argue that there is merit in using resources effectively; the conflict arises in deciding how to do so.


I believe this classic phrasing of the principle of Utilitarianism provides an unstable platform on which to ground a society.

Firstly, it ignores the make-up of this 'greatest number' that it favours. Does it include the poorest members of society? Following it to the letter would permit a majority to exploit a minority for the majority's 'greatest good.'

It would be preferable to maximise the good available to those most in need, while allowing those above them whatever surplus they can afford. Adam Smith highlighted how important the right to this surplus is as an incentive to further production.

The other issue with it's phrasing is that it encourages broad distribution of wealth, but does not distinguish between a uniform or a skewed distribution. Following the findings of Pareto and many others, it is necessary to acknowledge that wealth becomes skewed by very natural processes, and to decide whether and how this should be redistributed.

The need for effective use should govern redistribution efforts, and as previously mentioned, this does not necessarily come through equal wealth between all members of a society.

As has been remarked by many others, we have often judged effectiveness by the metric of 'Gross Domestic Product,' or GDP. As remarked by a former U.S. president, this measures everything "except that which makes life worth living." Often these same people suggest GNH – Gross National Happiness – as a substitute.

While certainly not as easy to measure, it is a preferable bearing for guiding ways to improve the lives of members of society. I think it may also guide tax policy.

To have a product's contribution to GNH scale its sales tax would provide an indirect incentive to both producers and consumers. Any good or service which invariably degrades happiness has a corresponding increase in sales tax, while one which improves well-being and happiness receives lower taxes. The degree to which they affect happiness determines the amount to increase or decrease taxes.

A complimentary policy, this time directed at producers, would be to have what I'll term a 'progressive savings tax.' On savings below a decided threshold, there would be no taxes, but anything beyond it would be taxed at increasing rates. Since it is only a percentage claim, there is still Smith's incentive to further production, and coupled with the other policy it would mean the further incentive to contribute more to happiness-boosting goods and services (and charity, since this can be tax-free), lest that money be 'lost' to taxes. When people face loss, they are prone to take risks, and these risks may as well be directed toward the public good.

Death's Authority

As governments may try to shape our society, so authors may try to shape our minds. There has been one classic difference between the two groups: while authors have been occupied with attaining immortality through their creations, politicians have merely sought survival. Unfortunately, those who shape society exert greater influence on history than even the best painters, poets, or philosophers.

It is regrettable that the authors of history are therefore so present-minded. With the reactive nature of their policy decisions, we are led through story arcs with plot twists reminiscent of a best selling novel, rather than the timeless verse of Hamlet. Shakespeare could appeal to our hearts, politicians only understand our fight-or-flight response.

From our foray into taxes, I've already mentioned that those faced with loss are more inclined to take risks. Great for the fortunate entrepreneur; intolerable with so much more at stake.

Admittedly, in an arena where experiments would be so useful, it is so difficult to make them. While areas like system dynamics offer interesting prospects, their simulations are only as useful as the combinations of variables that they model, and – the hard part – model correctly.

Authors possess greater freedom; they face challenges, certainly, but ones that are far more tractable. Their works are usually solo efforts, but they do – unless world governments develop – have the potential to reach broader audiences.

A failed production is far more forgiving to its audience than poor social policy, which encourages authors to experiment.

The chief purpose of any authored work is to be understood, and this rests on more than their words, or strokes on a canvas, of it's creator(s). Modern literary criticism, or various forms of artistic appreciation, acknowledge that the meaning embodied by a work is a product of the context in which both its author and its audience is embedded.

An author's 'intention,' if it ever exists, becomes muddied by their own life- – and particularly, work- – history, and the individual life histories of their audience.

Pondering this raises a question: if the result is to permit a multiplicity of interpretations, does that mean that author must be willing to allow ambiguity in their intention to convey ideas, or just to have the tolerance that there will be diversity of outlooks?

The notions of ambiguity and clarity are easily confused. While a lack of clarity precludes understanding of even a single idea, ambiguity permits multiple understandings, even simultaneously by the same individual.

For an author to gain immortality in their works, it must either contain a single, timeless idea that all future generations can appreciate, or allow many interpretations; some of which may not persist, or even exist at the time of their creation.

Realising the warping effects that both time and imagination can have on meaning, authors should value ambiguity, but never shun clarity.

One measure of an author's talent should be how well they attain ambiguity without sacrificing clarity. As remarked by Antoine de Saint-Exupery,

You know you've attained perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing left to take away.

Although elaboration may solidify a single meaning, it may also stifle the imagination, or obscure a work's meaning to those of different backgrounds or times. Good authors are conscious of the effects their words may have.

As soon as pen is put to paper, brush to canvas, or – more often these days – bytes to a hard disk, the creator's thought-process is frozen in place. Personal connections between an author and their audience may assist understanding, but these are naturally limited to that author's life-span and those the author can reach during that time.

A few means for clarifying intent survive an author's death. The thought processes responsible for their works can be difficult to resolve through a single work alone, but may be adumbrated by their life-history of creations.

Consistencies between works can reveal meanings not contained in the individual works themselves, but our efforts at understanding may be frustrated by realising that an author's outlook is not static throughout their lifetime but may evolve in the course of their life experiences. The chronology of their works may themselves highlight these life experiences, which may also assist in interpreting them.

One should not only look at prior, but also subsequent works. While the past is the key to the future, with an incomplete history an understanding of an author's future can help us understand hidden details of their past.

Although it is meaningful to judge the quality of an individual work, independent of others, it makes little sense to value an author's contribution to culture by one, even if it is a magnum opus or recognised as seminal. Complete understanding requires complete information, and although that's never attainable, the whole can still be more than the sum of the parts, even when they're incomplete.

As remarked by Ferdinand de Saussure on the arbitrary nature of words,

The important thing in the word is not the sound alone but the phonic differences that make it possible to distinguish this word from all others

There is no meaning inherent in words; how else could there be different languages, for example. It is their distinctiveness from other words. Likewise, ambiguity embodies meaning, for figure cannot exist without ground, and the gift of imagination and time is that this ground is always shifting beneath us.

In everything ... uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.
    – Japanese Essays in Idleness

Maintaining One's Berings in Icy Waters

There's a very famous saying,

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.

That, far from enlightening, is even less memorable. But the second part will probably strike a chord:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
— George Santayana

As separated as these sentences may be in your memory, they are intimately linked. The first reaches to our past, the second looks to our future.

They remind us that one does not exist without the other.

Have you ever been frustrated when someone talks about something very familiar to you and thought "Well, I've heard all this before."

Although it's a thought that comes – quite naturally – more and more often with experience, this quote reminds us that frustration is the wrong response.

There are a few schools of thought about what forces shape history. It's useful here to look back to some ideas from the 18th and 19th centuries. There was a divide between a strain known as uniformitarianism and the other known as catastrophism.

The first long word underlines how gradual change can, over time, have remarkable effect. The second about how sudden, short-lived 'catastrophes' can change the world.

Looking back now, it seems ridiculous to think that such sensible, benign ideas could have drawn such heady debate. Actually, even now, people are still pondering the divide, albeit in slightly different guise.

Both ideas are important, and for much the same reason, and the quote beginning this conversation leads us to it.

Memory.

Memories reside within our tiny heads, and on the larger scale of the world as a whole. We combine old ideas to create new ones, organisms evolve and – like our ideas – may go on to prosper or to perish.

Just as a tsunami can strike, volcanoes can erupt, earthquakes can shake and fissure, and all of them rapidly devastate environments and populations, people can join together to form movements, exhibit immense wisdom, and quickly go on to achieve things previously unimagined. The complexity of our technologies, the dense structure of our societies, and the speed that they allow us to spread information, all at the same time, bless us with delightful innovations, and (usually) curse us through stock market crashes that take everyone by surprise.

Some memories are more elusive than others; natural disasters can form based on processes we don't fully understand, and the ideas embodied in our technologies and carried by individuals can combine in ways difficult to see in advance.

To look to the future with certainty is to deceive ones-self, and uncertainty forbids intent. Although change has beginning and end, without clarity it can have no direction.

...memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.
— Isabelle Allende

While nature's memories persist for eternity in stone, it is human nature to forget.

What many in the West like to call 'progress' owes much to our increasing capacity to remember. Much has been ascribed to Gutenberg's development of movable type and the printing press, and more recently similar sentiments surround web video. Both provide accessible and, more importantly, durable ways to record ideas for later readers or viewers.

It's worth noticing that while we first had oral and graphic culture, followed by literacy, we have come full circle with print – a written medium – followed by video, a very graphic and oral medium.

But there is something much more fundamental grounding these two pillars of 'progress' – language. It is the common ground for all the ways we communicate ideas.

Just as land bridges have historically allowed the migration of peoples to now divided areas of the globe, language bridges our minds, and new technologies allow this exchange at ever greater speeds and distances.

The exchange of ideas is one of our most valuable assets, not only to allow them to combine together in innovative ways, but also to make them more durable. New minds bring new, more diverse backgrounds. Diversity breeds fresh ideas and fidelity of ideas. Ideas are only of value when they are remembered, and memories fade. Although time may displace old ideas, with the new taking center stage, it need not replace them. When reminded of past thoughts, reminiscence trumps recoil; bridges crossed, not burned.

"Why didn't I think of that?" is a too-common rejoinder to innovation for very good reason.

All the non-fiction material I have read, viewed, or heard over (at least) the past three years has been tightly intertwined, and not by any intent of mine. The works may be separated in time, but their ideas are always acutely connected. Each creation relating – in its own individual, unique ways – the thorough web connecting all that is. The more diversity I seek out, the more its strands draw me back.

The only relief I've found is fiction. It's not lack of connections, for its narrative binds more tightly than any other. Non-fiction has direction, it seeks our understanding and so must be reductive. The turbulent territory of fiction appeals to our inner explorers. It thrives on complexity. We don't understand, we must discover, we must imagine. Ignorance is bliss, for it demands that we imagine.

Everything is connected. You could wonder, with all this material, why we haven't got the message.

Maybe it's just important, and instead we should remember it.

The Unseen

[ My #8 speech from the CC manual - practicing visual aid use. I had a cardboard box and an orange (with a knife to cut it) for this one. I was pleased to find that I'm getting more comfortable ad-libbing some of it. I guess in the ideal case, a written post will be entirely inappropriate for conveying a speech; not there yet though. People did seem to find this one easier to follow than my previous ones - which I found interesting, since this isn't the most 'everyday' item of conversation. It must just be the lack of semi-sophisticated wordplay. Ripe food for thought. ]

“You've got to see it to believe it.”

I'm sure you've heard that before. For what I'm going to show you today though, your eyes won't be that important. Today, I want to engage your other sense of sight.

No, I don't mean hindsight. Today, I'm going to speak to your imaginations.

Let's start simple. Here, we have a box. No tricks, just a plain-ol' cardboard-box. There are three important things about this box. It's width, height, and depth.

Getting even simpler, here's a square. It only has two important qualities; a width, and a height.

Can anyone guess what's coming next? Yup, exactly, a line, and this only has a width. Ok, so the one I've drawn has a little thickness, but let's just imagine it to be infinitely thin.

A line, a square, and a box. Three shapes belonging to three different families. These families we're talking about here are called their 'dimension.'

Lines belong to dimension 1, squares to dimension two, and boxes to dimension three. The dimension we're most familiar with is the third. We move around in three dimensions; north-south, east-west, and up-down. We are all solid; well, some of us are more solid than others. Everything we touch has depth.

But why limit ourselves to three dimensions? Why not four, or even more?

This is less ridiculous than it might sound. There's another saying – that you don't really appreciate something until its taken away. So what happens when we take away dimension? What are we left with? What is dimension zero?

[Draw point]

There. A point; it has neither width, height, nor depth. If we stretch out a point giving it width, we're left with a line. If we stretch out a line, giving it height, we're left with a square, and if we stretch out a square, giving it depth, we're left with a box.

But what happens when we stretch out a box? The key to understanding this is to realise that we don't see in three dimensions. The brain uses a whole bunch of tricks to know about 'depth'. Objects appear smaller the further away they are, and the colour across the surface of objects varies depending on where you are in relation to them.

So, in our minds we know that we live in three dimensions, but our eyes only ever see two dimensions. Perhaps, by asking our minds to do a little more work, we can imagine four.

To do that, let's imagine a two-dimensional creature, living in a two-dimensional 'flatland' – like the surface of this whiteboard/table. Unlike us three dimensional people, who can see in two dimensions, flatlanders can only see in one – they see lines of varying lengths. Other flatlanders will appear as shorter lines depending on how far away they are, and the colour across those lines will vary depending on which direction they're facing.

This way, our flatlander can appreciate that it lives in a two-dimensional world, even though it can only see one dimension. How could it ever imagine three dimensions?

Say we were to take a sphere. For those of you not familiar with it, this is the shape of something like a beachball, or an orange. Imagine this spherical creature 'descending' into this flatland; what would our flatlanders see?

When the sphere (or ball) is just touching flatland, it would only be a point. As it descends further into flatland, it will grow into a larger and larger circle. Why? Imagine cutting an orange. The 'cross-section' you get when you cut it is approximately a circle. As you cut further up the orange, the cross section you get becomes larger.

So initially, our flatlanders would be shocked to see a point appearing out of nowhere, and even more shocked as they saw this point grow into a longer line. Eventually, although it might be difficult for them, they could be able to imagine that there must be something more than that which they can see in their flatland. They could imagine a third dimension.

If flatlanders see two-dimensional cross sections of a three dimensional being, then a four-dimensional being would present to us in three-dimensional cross-sections. As it turned around in four dimensions, we would see it grow into larger and smaller three-dimensional shapes. And, just as we can see the 'insides' of two-dimensional creatures, a four-dimensional being would be able to see all our insides.

Weird, huh.

You could fairly wonder what the point of all this is. Do we need to think about four dimensions? It was these kinds of thoughts that spurred the development of Einstein's famous theories, without which we would have difficulty creating things like CRT screens, and especially the Global Positioning System technology that some of you may have and even use in your cars or on your cell-phones.

However, the most humbling lesson of the fourth dimension is that there can be more to the world than what we can see and, now, I hope you believe it.

Organisational versus Network Secrecy – Limits to the Wikileaks Model

I attended two fascinating public lectures yesterday, one on America's international relations in the lead-up to 9/11 and the other on animal welfare law, the second of which was delivered by a particularly powerful presenter. I'm no animal lover, but the principle that people can use ill-formed laws to argue that they're acting acceptably (equating acting legally with acting acceptably) when what the laws allow is really intolerable was intriguing.

Neither of these areas are that familiar to me, but there were a few messages from the first that I can't help reflect on. The session was also serving as a book launch, for “Strategic Shortfall – The Somalia Syndrome and the March to 9/11,” and the author's main thesis (as far as I understood it) was that the event was not nearly as much of a turning point as was publicised and that a number of individuals within the US government and intelligence communities were particularly concerned about a growing threat from Al-Qaeda for years (particularly since the US's pull out of Somalia in 1993) leading up to it (including former president Bill Clinton), but that entrenched skepticism that a non-state actor could possibly be a threat to the United States prevented many in the Bush administration from taking it as seriously as they should have. Their unwillingness to recognise the interconnected nature of the world we live in, and how it could facilitate the kind of coordination for such an attack in such an informal way.

After all the recent attention to Julian Assange and Wikileaks, I can't help but wonder how this all relates. I strongly believe in the power of systems like Wikileaks to shape the world in a positive way, but given the power of more informal clusters to coordinate events, we can't ignore its limitations either.

Because whereas organisations have to expend large amounts of effort (and thus capital) to conceal the information that they do, secrecy is a built-in part of the networks that these smaller groups use to direct their actions. Systems like Wikileaks have the power to unearth the artificial secrecy of large corporations and governments, but how can they hope to keep track of these highly-motivated but distributed agents using these networks that can leave so few traces?

I think a useful way to look at information is on two axes – transparency, and accessibility.

	Transparent	Opaque
Accessible	This is the main kind of information published by sources like Wikileaks. Once you have it it's easy to broadcast to the world.	The example that comes to mind here is the Enron case, where there was an enormous amount of revealing financial data publicly available, but you need Ph.D.'s to decipher it for the rest of us.
Inaccessible	Knowledge communicated by motivated but distributed agents, taking advantage of networks for the secrecy they can provide. This would be easily interpreted by people, if only it was available to them. Wikileaks powerless here.	By its very nature, no examples assert themselves, but this is the most potentially threatening kind of information. It really speaks to the importance of not locking up the ability to interpret kinds of information in a single institution.

Of course, these axes are over a continuous spectrum; I've specified the endpoints. The problem along the accessibility dimension is lack of whistleblowers; along transparency, it's interpreters. The Wikileaks model will always require journalistic volunteers, perhaps to procure, but mostly to interpret information. Here the main difficulty will be finding volunteers that have the skill to make important information – which may depend on a large amount of training or extensive knowledge to understand – accessible to a broader audience. The more opaque the information is, the more difficult it is to find interpreters.

It's worth elaborating that 'opaque' need not mean 'digitally encrypted,' as the Enron case demonstrates. I use it to mean 'requiring knowledge or expertise not common among all those who would share interest in the information were they able to make sense of it.'

Things like personal medical records are things we would like to only be accessible to ourselves and our doctors when needed, and (unless you understand medicine) typically require their expertise to distill for us.

While I recognise the disparity between perceived and actual likelihood of terror events due to the popular media, we can't deny that it's only getting easier for the embittered few to ruin everything for the rest of us.

Selling Your Sole Fillets

[A talk I delivered at my last TM meeting, the assignment being 'Research Your Topic' - it went over very well. ]

Credibility. Backing up my ideas with those of others I've researched. That's what this whole talk is supposed to be about, right?

Then surely, the worst thing I could do to establish my own credibility would be to question that of my sources, right?

Yeah, absolutely, no doubt about it. Eh, oh well. I'll accept that handicap. Questioning my sources, brazenness, we're off to a great start.

Yet I think that's entirely the right attitude to the kind of question I've asked. How do you succeed in business? Given the different responses to this question, and how contradictory they can be, there's only one clear answer.

No-one knows.

Let's be clear what I'm not saying here. I have no doubt business schools teach some valuable lessons, and I'm not questioning the talent of people like Richard Branson, or Donald Trump.

It's just that these people aren't following a script.

The best ice-hockey players like Wayne Gretzky don't go where the puck is, they only care where it's going to be. Physics can tell you where it's going to be, but you can drill someone on F = d/dt(mv) all day and it probably won't make them a better sportsperson very quickly. What do great businesses need to follow? What people want.

Aha! Market research! Focus groups!

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What who wants?

Well, consumers, obviously, right? Sure, but that's forgetting the other side of the coin. The producers – whoever they are, employees, volunteers, yourself. Fledging businesses often have a technically-minded person at the helm, too often overly focused on the consumers and what they're creating for them, that they neglect the very fabric of their business; the people in it and how they're organised.

As far as Psychology has come, it can't predict people as well as Physics can a puck. Great businesses can't tell the future any better than others – what do they have to teach us?

It's easy to think of expert athletes or entrepreneurs, or mature businesses as these troves of accumulated knowledge, but there's more beneath the surface. They know their limitations, they've seen their past performance and know how to compensate for their weaknesses – as individuals and as teams. This awareness is rarely conveyed or appreciated. Perhaps because they take it for granted, it doesn't apply to others, or even if it is communicated, others don't realise its importance.

Know thyself. I don't follow the bible much, but Jesus was on to something there.

We don't change much as individuals, but the world we live in is becoming more and more complex. Are our businesses shifting with it? McDonalds is famous for its business model, which is as finely tuned as any of its burgers. Most of its employees are only there to turn the cranks in the machine. Its standardised system is what has made it so successful.

Is this mechanistic, impersonal structure relevant to our modern technical world?

Look at Google's famous 20% time, where 20% of their engineer's time can be spent doing whatever they want, however they want. Half of their new products come out of this – such as GMail, or Google News. Or the so-called Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE, where people aren't kept to schedules, only results – coming to work when they want, and optionally attending meetings, has almost across-the-board resulted in increased productivity, worker satisfaction, and decreased turnover.

Maybe we haven't appreciated people enough. Conventional wisdom has been that financial rewards are an effective way of motivating people to do great work.

Nearly 40 years of research flies in the face of these beliefs. For example, studies funded by the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States found that for tasks requiring “even rudimentary cognitive skill,” larger rewards “led to poorer performance.”

Rewards have the effect of narrowly focusing the mind. For the requirements of factory-like chores, narrow focus works wonders, but in tasks requiring out-of-the-box thinking typical of the modern era it actually does harm.

Traditional management is fine if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-direction is the way to go. Intrinsic motivators, like autonomy – directing our own actions – and purpose – the feeling that what we're doing matters. Hey, even road-kill picker-uppers whistle on the job.

Surely both McDonalds and Google have lessons to teach us, but their difference speaks to a larger principle: There is no sure path to success in business. Questioning not just what they've done, but why they've done it, seems a good place to start though.

Taming Anthropocentrism, Embracing Symbiosis

[I think this will be my next talk, though I would have liked to do a poem - since the main goal of my next assignment is body language, and the evocative nature of poetic language lends itself well to that (I think the talent of someone like Rives is something to aspire to). I am quite pleased with this one though. Enjoy. Edit: On second thought/reading, it comes across as a highly refined stream-of-consciousness - a collection of disjointed dribble shamelessly strung together. Oh well.]

Climbing Mount Everest. Landing on the Moon. Building the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

Three events that are hallmarks of history. Three feats that inspire similar sentiments in all of us. Achievement. Triumph. Three trials with a common enemy. Nature.

The overcoming of nature's challenges has long been our yardstick for measuring progress. Look at how far we've come. We should be proud. But I can't escape feeling guilty that our pride may be blinding us to how much we have forgotten along the way.

A divide has formed in our minds between a chaotic nature, where life is nasty, brutish, and short, and an ordered civilisation, where we enjoy prosperous, full lives. We celebrate accomplishment at overcoming nature, innovation by taming it, and relief when we escape its wild fangs. It appears to us as a barbaric foe, when it really deserves our reverence as a learned, wise teacher.

Over thousands of years, we've accumulated the ore of knowledge, whereas billions of years have beaten nature's wisdom to a well-tempered tip. It has conceived designs blindfolded that our best engineers have not only failed to notice, but have produced markedly inferior solutions.

Our cities are the perfect exhibit of taking this separation between nature and humanity too far. Early attempts at broad-scale city living - like the cesspit that London originally was - have taught us the importance of sanitation; but even now, the pollution emitted by our largest metropolises is damaging both the people in them, and our world as a whole.

We have been polluted with pride, its smokescreen veiling our ignorance. We've been like a three-year-old seeking emancipation from its parents. We too easily forget that there is no human at the root of our family tree (though some religions will disagree with me there). We are rooted in nature, it provides the foundation upon which we can all grow. It is our common parent.

You could argue that we've quickly developed solutions to problems that nature took much longer to solve, but then you'd be forgetting that we couldn't even think of solving them had nature not provided our mental machinery to begin with. I mean, you could say that a bird performs fantastic feats of differential calculus before it swoops down to collect it's prey, or marvel at an ant colony taking advantage of network effects to increase its efficiency as it scales in population. The birds and the ants are just doing their business, but we should be humbled at our own abilities, given the pieces nature has already laid in place.

From nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies living in temporary huts we've come to the bastion of our modern cities, laden with skyscrapers. We don't need to look at the changes in our ways of life or the facades of our buildings to see our separation from nature, the history of our ideas also presents it in clear relief. In ancient Greece and Rome, people were thought to have a genius – as a guiding spirit – in their accomplishments, whereas now we refer to people as geniuses. People now own their successes, but of course the flipside of this is that they also own their failures. Ever wonder at our increasing rates of depression and suicide? In England during the Middle Ages, when you met a poor person, they would be described as an 'unfortunate' – someone not blessed by fortune, whereas now they would often be referred to as a 'loser.'

By losing touch with nature, we part with ourselves - both physically and mentally. The naïve, and extreme response to this would be to forsake technology. We need only appreciate the value inherent in both ourselves and nature. Taking inspiration from its successes, and repairing its flaws. It knows how to build sustainably – it has lasted this long. It knows how to delight our senses with its pleasing symmetries. Let us not lose that balance.

There is a method to nature's madness. We can't attain order by renouncing chaos. This is important. We can't attain order by renouncing chaos. To hope for the 'perfect' is to delude ourselves that nothing changes. Time is change, and nothing is timeless. A farmer with no diversity in their crops will lose their entire yield if some pathogen comes along that they lack resistance to. To survive, we must embrace change. I was quite struck by a quote from the 14^th century Japanese Essays on Idleness – “In everything … uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth … Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished.”

Nature and humanity aren't at odds. It has been said that if we were to vanish from the face of the earth, all forms of life would prosper. Nature would go on without us, but if we want to stay around, we need to embrace the natural order, not displace it. Let us keep the scales in our favour.

Values trump Ideas

I paid a visit to the doctor today. He confirmed for me that peace of mind is certainly worth forty plus travel expenses – I'm just relieved that their fees aren't higher. We're fortunate that nature so often leaves obvious evidence of our afflictions, whether they're benign or not.

Even in the seemingly blank slate of our nascent minds we find its many traces, a flexibility that allows us as many professionals to interpret them. It's out-of-character that our scientific elite are so late to this lesson that our prodigious quacks learned long ago – and have been practising ever since.

The latest flame these charlatans have been fanning for our great moth circus of a media is of course the immunisation debauchery; it's too generous to call it a 'debate.' Merely by commenting I join the audience, but surely there are creative ways to show dissent.

For one, we have bigger flames – heck, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. What cheek the religious establishment show when they call us arrogant for advertising our achievements. You can't hide hypocrisy by preaching a disembodied creator of the universe. They only got a reformation, we attained enlightenment.

We can't expect them to be perturbed by the recent creation of artificial life; after all, we haven't been able to sidestep that law of thermodynamics and create something out of nothing. Although our ancestors – by their inventions – helped make their ideas impregnable, we can still make ours shine brighter.

The Dream of Non-Violence

Identity

Identity,
Oh, how you seduce,
Filling that gap.

You know my scars, you are my scars,
Tear them open, revel in my pain.

Time does not change you, cruel mistress,
Perpetually in youth.

You lead on, you lead astray.
Clinging; can't get away.

Justice, hah. There is no reform.
Corrupt at your conception.

Calling for help, they stare, they stare.
Your reflection colluding them,
Seizing their air.

Breathe.

In, out.
Your life force, your power.
Enchanting; exhausting.

The ruse of weakness, you put on with mastery,
No knight, but slave, stumbling to your aid;
No chivalry, but pride, marking the way

Slave, drugged by your presence,
Wake up.
Wake up.






The weakness of our notions of 'self' and 'other' is not their contrast, but their reflection. Words have no inherent meaning, they gain it by their distinctiveness from other words. The coins and notes we use to convey wealth have little value on their own.

Just like our language and our values evolve over time, we ourselves do not remain fixed. Even a statue is battered by the elements. Yet how often we try to cast ourselves in a mold that we call 'identity.' We are deluding ourselves.

We often desire a sense of completeness, but how can such a thing exist in a world that's constantly changing? The media exploit this desire to no end, and it is the basis of advertising. Our life wouldn't be complete without product X, they say. You haven't lived until you've experienced product Y.

We give ourselves names, we wear certain brands of clothing, and some of us follow a kind of religion. It seems kind of ironic that we have the so-called 'world-renouncing religions' like Buddhism and Jainism, but it's not surprising that they have come about. Henry Thoreau was on to something too. Exclusion is a necessary consequence of identity. And war has been a very common result of exclusion throughout our history.

Am I endorsing homogeneity? Not at all, I just think it's damaging to think so much on difference. Thinking on difference is reflecting on the past, and why expend so much effort on something you can't change?

Yesterday I attended a lecture entitled “Is Non-Violence Politically Viable?” The presenter showed great experience and a wealth of thought in the areas of peace and human rights, and it was on the whole a thought-provoking, fascinating session.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing unless I had an itch to scratch. Here was a man who was involved in an organisation pursuing the elimination of war, the thrust of his thesis however was that we should be trying to rid our society of the things that dispose us toward violence. Admirable, for sure, but it came across as both quixotic and dissonant.

We cannot compound our thinking on global conflicts with that on national and domestic conflicts; they all require different strategies. The decision-makers in all of these conflicts differ. Considering western democracy, since it's most familiar to me, we must remember that this means 'representative democracy;' it is not the public making the decision to go to war – even though their sentiments may support the idea. Different governments will respond to public in their own ways; some will wage violence, some will find peaceful resolutions. To reduce global conflicts, it seems sensible that we should promote leaders of educated, cosmopolitan backgrounds; a problem that seems much more soluble than trying to bring all of society up to that level.

During question time, I asked him “given the advances in technology that are always making it easier for individuals to kill larger numbers of people, do you think that makes the ideal of reducing conflicts on a global scale less significant.” He said that basically supports his thesis. Well, sure; it would have been nice to know his thoughts on the other half of the question.

We live in troubling times. I can't help but wonder whether the problems of global warming are going to eclipse those of violent conflict; no doubt the former could lead to the other.

!*@#->%

[A talk I'll be giving in a few weeks - I doubt any attendees will read this...]

I decided that I'd make an effort to be unoriginal this-morning. For the next few minutes, I'm going to do quite a lot of complaining. We're probably all pretty used to this, quality is the norm. When served a tasty meal, many of us won't send our compliments to the chef, or lavish a partner or spouse with praise, but when that meat or fish is overcooked, boy, can we let them know it.

We could use more compliments, but that's not what I want to complain about. No, my problem is that people just aren't very good at complaining. Do I want more of it? Absolutely, but not if people keep doing it the way they have been.

At the moment, I'm not doing much better, in fact, probably worse, so let's step it up a bit. There were two things that drove me to do this, the first was a seminar I went to, the other was a talk from Tony Robbins. The first guy was talking about his research into policy decisions to try and make our society more healthy, Tony was giving me content for my next points.

This researcher deserves some praise. Making society healthy is a great idea – not very original, but in this age of obesity you could wonder. There's the first point – finding something worthwhile to fix. We all know someone who can find something wrong with everything. Maybe some have a point, but thanks to our short lifespans – we have to prioritise, right?

He also hit the second nail on the head. He shared thoughts on how to fix it. Alan Kay once said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. I heard more recently that the second best way is to invest in it, but anyway... This is where a lot of people fall short. We live in a society that says anyone can do anything they want, as long as they work hard – the great American Dream, right? Unfortunately, there are some people – who for all sorts of reasons – can't invent the future. There's wisdom in the old saying “Those who can't do, teach” - inspiring others can be valuable too.

But I'm supposed to be complaining, right? Where the researcher – and many others like him – fail, are their proposed solutions. We heard from Rhys a while ago how often we don't try to solve the right problems, more recently I was reminded by Jocelyn - from her talk on violence – how Walmart will happily sell automatic weapons, and at the same time ban violent video games.

It's important to mention that this isn't entirely the researcher's – or even Walmart's – fault. Researchers get their funding by following the whims of policy makers, and Walmart gets harassed more by vocal activists against violent video games than proponents of free speech or good parenting.

Ultimately, we have to blame someone. I'm going to blame everyone. We are generally pretty poor at reasoning about the future. The further into the future you go, the worse we are. People respond to this in different ways, some will follow the way of the ostrich, and bury their head in the sand, and those more out-spoken will lead others to make bad decisions.

Tony Robbins made the point that we live in a therapy culture. People react to problems when they occur, they don't try to shape situations so they won't happen. The history of medicine has mostly been 'how can we cure?,' not 'how can we prevent?' Psychiatrists quell depression, they don't promote happiness.

History has left us with more inventions than we have inventive ways to use them. The goal of science has always been to figure out cause and effect. What happens when you do this? Here we have a tool to predict the results of our actions. Sure, it won't always get the answer right, but evidence is a better bet than superstition. The more evidence we get, the more guilty we are for making poor decisions.

The more evidence we get, the more guilty those in-the-know are for not raising awareness; for not letting younger generations know their actions have consequences, and what those could be when they are old enough to take them. What happens in schools? We grade people on their ability to solve problems – we pose them a question, and supply a small box to enter an answer, when instead we should be testing their ability to ask their own questions, giving them a box to think outside of, rather than within. To develop a culture of creation, not reaction. We can appreciate our thermostats being reactive, we should expect more from our leaders.

The financial crisis is showing many of us the results of our actions – how much cheaper it can be to prevent rather than cure. The dangerous effects of the climate crisis aren't yet visible enough to give most people a sense of urgency, but unless massive changes occur soon, we could be stripped of far more than wealth.

New generations are being left with ever greater power to change the world, and all the responsibility that goes along with that. But we have a responsibility too. We have no right to decide what the future of these new generations will be, but it's up to us to ensure that they can ask the right questions, and are able to wield that power to shape a world they can be proud of. Science won't always give them the right answers, but hey, that's why we need more complaining.

In Formation

[Another TM talk ... You can find more about synaesthesia & the referred Bouba/Kiki effect at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect, and the other figure I had was the popular Gestalt figure on the top left at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reification.jpg ... as for the magic trick, there's a TED talk from Eric Mead from which I learnt it]

Okay, time for a very short quiz; don't worry, for most people it's very easy. I've got three figures behind me. Let's focus on the bottom two for now. One of them is called 'Bouba,' and the other one is called 'Kiki.'

By show of hands, who thinks the one on the left is 'Bouba'?

Looking at the top figure now...is it just me or is there a....what shape do you see there? A triangle? [filler]

Okay, as unscientific as that little experiment was, we've revealed something interesting. Actually, lots of interesting things.

You'll notice I've got a few labels beside these figures. We're all familiar with both of these words. Beside the triangle thing I've got 'structure.' We live and breathe structure. Gravity keeps us all planted to the ground, morality keeps most of us out of jail, and for those it doesn't, cells and the courts keep people in. These are all structures. As speaker's you'll recognise it in that we help people understand us by speaking the same language, and arranging sentences in a certain way.

Beside the Bouba & Kiki figures I've got 'association.' Everything we learn builds on what we already know. Knowledge is cumulative. Association is the bridge connecting the familiar and the new. It's what makes pacing, pitch, and bodily gestures to hilight points such great aids.

There's one other word that captures this whole example perfectly. Caricature.

When I use the word caricature, many of you probably think of 'cartoons,' but something that should serve as a better example is a magic trick. I'm going to show you a very simple trick – it's been in every children's magic book since at least the 1950s. It has two parts; my hand, which you can examine, and a knife, which you can examine.

… Present trick, and then explain it …

So what does that have to do with caricature? Like all caricature, magic is about directing attention. You can think of this as structuring ideas in such a way so as to highlight something important. When you consider it this way, you see caricature everywhere.

Caricature is familiar to speakers, cartoonists, magicians, game designers, advertisers, con-artists, dancers, cinematographers, architects. Anyone who communicates ideas. All of us. We don't always reflect upon it, but it's always around.

We begin learning from a very early age how people respond to our different actions. Upon entering the fields you work in, you will have soon become familiar with whatever 'vocabulary' is used to efficiently communicate with colleagues, or customers, or captivated audiences. We are, you could say, all intuitive psychologists.

Of course, at the centre of psychology is the human mind. Central to understanding how we should communicate ideas is to appreciate how we think. We need to appreciate not just how versatile the mind is, but also its limitations. The key to that magic trick was not noticing the missing finger because of how the mind groups the rest.

Similarly, the key to competent communication is caricature - drawing out the details that are important, so we aren't overloaded with everything that's not. Good designers know they are done not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away.

We all know the importance of structure. We live and breathe it. Fortnately, we live in a democracy. Without structure, you have anarchy. Knowledge is cumulative; association allows us to discover the new, based on what we already know. And there all along, as our guiding light in this journey of discovery?






The biggest criticism of my previous speeches was their lack of the 'personal' touch. No use in speaking if you're just going to alienate your audience - so I tried simplifying a little. It's funny, I can't help but feel presumptuous simplifying as I feel the potential for talking about something overly obvious, but also feeling presumptuous talking about something complicated in the worry that I could come off as bigoted...I guess getting over (in multiple senses) the struggle for that balance is going to be one of the valuable lessons of all this.

Shaped by our own Creations

I delivered this speech at a Toastmasters meeting this-morning; enjoy.




We often hear about how humans can and have caused damage to the environment, we have global warming currently the most prominent thing on the public conscience; we've heard about the potential of a so-called 'nuclear winter.'

Often the largest barrier to solving problems of this scale isn't technological, it's human. Us. For all our ingenuity, what these issues highlight is the darker side of our character; the side that will see crises like these, and tell us to look for scapegoats, when instead what we should be looking at is a mirror.

If we did that more often, we would see plenty of reason for hope. It's easy to look at technology and see putty in our hands, but forget to consider how readily it can shape us too. Fortunately, history is there to remind us. Time has graced us with more than immense improvements in technology; many technological developments have brought humans closer together.

10000 years ago, all humans lived as hunter gatherers. The dawn of agriculture basically coincided with the coming of the city. The discovery of grain brought for the first time a large and stable enough food to support permanent settlements. Later developments in transportation – like the railway - would quickly bolster cities to fantastic scales, by enabling the transfer of food over large distances.

This shows that our biological need for food has exerted enormous influence over our organisation as a species. More important, however, is that these and other innovations continue to separate us from our biology. Advances in medicine and standards of hygeine have ballooned life expectancies, and we now have more control than ever before over the quality of our own lives, and those of our descendants.

This control inevitably brings with it ever greater responsibilities. For millenia, various political systems have been guiding development of societies, but every day, individuals and businesses must also make decisions about how to conduct their activities.

Our increasing responsibilities make it very important that we scrutinise these decisions carefully. Despite significant precedent for highly profitable sustainable and fair business ventures, exploitation of vulnerable communities is still disturbingly prevalent. Satisfying shareholders is no excuse.

Now, I'm not here to condemn capitalism. There is nothing wrong with being answerable to a group of interested individuals – it is the foundation of modern democracy after all. The law in many countries has provisions against rent-seeking behaviours and monopolies – which while directly beneficial to the parties involved, are recognised as damaging to society as a whole. We should recognise the same thing in the exploitation of the vulnerable.

Being accountable isn't the issue, it's who we're accountable to. In order to meet the interests of a group, people in positions of influence must empathise with the group's situation. So, either outsiders must understand the group, or self-interested members of the group must be in these positions. History tells us this is rare; look at how long it took before women were able to vote, and how much further gender equity still has to go. We need more Martin Luther King Jr.s, more Mohadmas Ghandi's.

Technology, again, can help. Statistics abound that demonstrate declines in violence over millenia, century, and decade scales, which many believe to be partly due to how much closer cities have brought people together. It is also reasonably well known that racial stereotypes are far less prevalent with those exposed to more ethnic diversity in their daily lives. People in merchant classes for instance have traditionally been recognised as leading a so-called 'cosmopolitan' lifestyle – being bound to no particular culture and instead just citizens of the cosmos. I've heard one person sum this all up nicely; “Don't bomb Japan, they build my minivan.”

Most of us are oblivious to the labour and manufacturing processes that go into the goods and services we consume every day. New technologies can provide this information at point of purchase. For instance, the ability to scan a barcode and get information telling us whether a product is of virtuous origins – then being able to make purchasing decisions based on such information – serves as a powerful, and immensely feasible way to let the consumer be heard – to extend shareholder interest to consumer interest. Helping customers vote with their wallets, rather than have them emptied by corporate bullies.

Recent decades have been popularly classified as the 'information age.' Information has a very unique quality. Economists like the phrase 'non-rival good,' but I think Thomas Jefferson put it wonderfully when he said: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” Information, however – like most things – is useless on its own. If humanity is to continue – I hope that over the next centuries we come to enter an 'empowerment age,' one in which people of all backgrounds can look at this information that has become so democratised, and see opportunity – the potential to take their unique perspectives and skills to make the world a better place.

Winston Churchill once said that “we shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us.” We need to build in such a way that we cultivate a desireable future for later generations. Who are the architects of this future? I'd like to help; would you?