Although we just had an off-year election here, that's not what I'm referring to. Instead, I've been thinking about the recently revived interest in renewable energy, motivated by last year's high energy prices. While interest has fallen lately along with prices, due to reduced economic activity, there are plenty of reasons to continue pursuing these technologies, including the relationship between energy and national security, climate change, and flattening production.
Ronald Reagan famously declared that it was "morning in America" when he took office. I think he was right, in a way. He was really the morning-after pill that wiped away the renewable energy technologies that were gestating after the 1970s' energy crises. I wonder how much better off we'd be today had those efforts continued uninterrupted.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Fox News Viewers: Foot-Soldiers for Elite Special Interests
Fox News and right-wing talk radio position themselves as populists, championing the causes of their viewers, who are conservative, patriotic, and often middle- to low-income. They appeal to the conservative values of their audience, then get that audience to champion causes that primarily benefit wealthy people and special interests. Yet, if you suggested to a Fox News viewer that they were foot-soldiers for special interests and wealthy elite, they would never believe you.
Here's why they are, though. Consider the tax revolt "tea parties" last April, organized, led, then gleefully reported as a spontaneous "grass roots" effort by Fox News. Many of these protests took place in states with positive balances of payments (they receive more funding from the federal government, from the tax revenues of the country at large, than they contribute in tax payments). Should taxes be restrained or cut as the protesters wished, they themselves would likely have borne the brunt of reduced services, subsidies, roads, and other federal benefits. The primary beneficiaries of their efforts would have been the wealthy, who are the primary target of planned tax increases.
Now consider health care. Many people in Fox News's demographic have tenuous health insurance, and I suspect that many others have none at all. They would be the primary beneficiaries of real health reform. Yet wealthy Fox News and talk radio hosts have incited them to disrupt town hall meetings intended to advance the process of reform. They have taken on the mission of defeating reform as if it were a threat to democracy and the American way of life, when in fact it's primarily a threat to insurance companies, doctors, and others who may benefit disproportionately from the current payment structures. In other words, these protesters are working for powerful special interests, and against their own personal interests.
Thomas Frank dives deep into this topic in his book, What's the Matter with Kansas, which I admit that I haven't read. So this isn't an original idea. I do wonder, though, if the specific manipulative relationship that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have with their audience, inciting them to work against their own interests, has been sufficiently explored. And I wonder what it would take to get these people to understand how thoroughly they're being played by people they trust.
Here's why they are, though. Consider the tax revolt "tea parties" last April, organized, led, then gleefully reported as a spontaneous "grass roots" effort by Fox News. Many of these protests took place in states with positive balances of payments (they receive more funding from the federal government, from the tax revenues of the country at large, than they contribute in tax payments). Should taxes be restrained or cut as the protesters wished, they themselves would likely have borne the brunt of reduced services, subsidies, roads, and other federal benefits. The primary beneficiaries of their efforts would have been the wealthy, who are the primary target of planned tax increases.
Now consider health care. Many people in Fox News's demographic have tenuous health insurance, and I suspect that many others have none at all. They would be the primary beneficiaries of real health reform. Yet wealthy Fox News and talk radio hosts have incited them to disrupt town hall meetings intended to advance the process of reform. They have taken on the mission of defeating reform as if it were a threat to democracy and the American way of life, when in fact it's primarily a threat to insurance companies, doctors, and others who may benefit disproportionately from the current payment structures. In other words, these protesters are working for powerful special interests, and against their own personal interests.
Thomas Frank dives deep into this topic in his book, What's the Matter with Kansas, which I admit that I haven't read. So this isn't an original idea. I do wonder, though, if the specific manipulative relationship that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have with their audience, inciting them to work against their own interests, has been sufficiently explored. And I wonder what it would take to get these people to understand how thoroughly they're being played by people they trust.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Blurred Boundaries
According to ABC News Australia, two girls, 10 and 12 years old, got lost in a storm drain and were rescued after they updated their status on their Facebook page instead of using their cell phone to simply call for help. The story quotes Glenn Benham of the Metropolitan Fire Service in Adelaide as saying, "If they were able to access Facebook from their mobile phones, they could have called 000, so the point being they could have called us directly and we could have got there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us via 000 anyway."
I think there's an interesting point to be made here about interaction design and the mental models of naive users. Consider times when you may have helped a naive user with their computer, and found that they didn't understand such basics as the distinction between the operating system and applications, and between applications and what they do. Email is email, internet is internet. You click on the envelope icon for email and you click on the big blue "e" for internet. More advanced users (whose friends or family have installed Firefox on their machines) may talk about starting Google (since that's the default Firefox home page). Talking to them about their email application or internet client is hopeless because they don't understand the concept. This may have made it difficult to communicate the concepts required to resolve whatever problem they were having.
The point for design is that designers are always the world's leading expert in their product, and they often assume that their users will share their mental models. So their interaction and interface designs often presume some basic understanding of an underlying framework: client/server architecture, application-specific preferences, the need for application updates, file formats, even the basic notion of files and operating system services, all of these may be presumed by the designer and escape the user. The consequence is products that are almost unusable by naive users. Typically, such users will learn a very limited path through the interaction logic to perform a very specific task, and become confused if they deviate from that path.
Two trends are conspiring to make this problem worse in the future, as demonstrated by the two girls lost in the storm drain. Technology is becoming more broadly used by less expert users, and the functional boundaries between applications are becoming more blurred as more and more of them add social networking features. It used to be that calling 911 (or 000 in Australia) was the way you called for help and email was how you kept up with friends. Now, whether you're lost in a storm drain or want to see what your friend is doing, you can call them, email them, Twitter it, update your Facebook page, IM it, blog it, ....
The more functional overlap there is between applications, the more likely it is that naive users will learn, and stick with, one preferred way of accomplishing a task, however inappropriate that may be for the situation at hand. I'm not suggesting that designers should limit application functionality to prevent over-burdening users with choices, but rather that they simply recognize that naive users often don't recognize the basic framework and context of systems and applications that designers take for granted.
I think there's an interesting point to be made here about interaction design and the mental models of naive users. Consider times when you may have helped a naive user with their computer, and found that they didn't understand such basics as the distinction between the operating system and applications, and between applications and what they do. Email is email, internet is internet. You click on the envelope icon for email and you click on the big blue "e" for internet. More advanced users (whose friends or family have installed Firefox on their machines) may talk about starting Google (since that's the default Firefox home page). Talking to them about their email application or internet client is hopeless because they don't understand the concept. This may have made it difficult to communicate the concepts required to resolve whatever problem they were having.
The point for design is that designers are always the world's leading expert in their product, and they often assume that their users will share their mental models. So their interaction and interface designs often presume some basic understanding of an underlying framework: client/server architecture, application-specific preferences, the need for application updates, file formats, even the basic notion of files and operating system services, all of these may be presumed by the designer and escape the user. The consequence is products that are almost unusable by naive users. Typically, such users will learn a very limited path through the interaction logic to perform a very specific task, and become confused if they deviate from that path.
Two trends are conspiring to make this problem worse in the future, as demonstrated by the two girls lost in the storm drain. Technology is becoming more broadly used by less expert users, and the functional boundaries between applications are becoming more blurred as more and more of them add social networking features. It used to be that calling 911 (or 000 in Australia) was the way you called for help and email was how you kept up with friends. Now, whether you're lost in a storm drain or want to see what your friend is doing, you can call them, email them, Twitter it, update your Facebook page, IM it, blog it, ....
The more functional overlap there is between applications, the more likely it is that naive users will learn, and stick with, one preferred way of accomplishing a task, however inappropriate that may be for the situation at hand. I'm not suggesting that designers should limit application functionality to prevent over-burdening users with choices, but rather that they simply recognize that naive users often don't recognize the basic framework and context of systems and applications that designers take for granted.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Iranian Democracy
So those terrible Iranian Muslims that we don't want to have anything to do with are taking to the streets to protest a stolen election and demand democratic justice. In contrast to us Americans, who sat on our hands after the Supreme Court gave the Presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.... I wonder if those terrible Iranian Muslims might have something to teach us patriotic Americans about Democracy.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
On Balance
Wednesday was tax day in the US, and Fox News took full advantage of the opportunity to stir up the masses with a series of "tea parties" across the country. Conservatives gathered to protest high taxes and government spending.
To which I say, "Amen".
You have to admire the generous, selfless spirit of the protesters. They undoubtedly realize that the red states, the ones in which conservative republicans are prevalent, are net recipients of tax money, while the democratic blue states are net contributors. Recognizing the unfairness of this arrangement, these protesters are willing to sacrifice the benefits of their positive balance of payments. As a resident of a blue state with a negative balance of payments, I welcome their endorsement of reducing tax revenues to their own states. I'm sure that's what they have in mind, aren't you?
To which I say, "Amen".
You have to admire the generous, selfless spirit of the protesters. They undoubtedly realize that the red states, the ones in which conservative republicans are prevalent, are net recipients of tax money, while the democratic blue states are net contributors. Recognizing the unfairness of this arrangement, these protesters are willing to sacrifice the benefits of their positive balance of payments. As a resident of a blue state with a negative balance of payments, I welcome their endorsement of reducing tax revenues to their own states. I'm sure that's what they have in mind, aren't you?
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Self Reference
I recently read an article in Fortune ("GM and Me", December 8, 2008) describing the gradual decline of GM. While reading it, I thought of Microsoft, and of the US as a whole. Why?
One of the themes of the article is how insular and self-referential the culture at GM is. They seem to hold themselves to their own standards rather than measuring themselves against competitors. Having captured so much of the market for so long, they apparently continued playing to that market. Meanwhile, over the years, the market gradually shifted out from under them, and they failed to either lead it (as Toyota has done) or follow it. The consequence of this has been a gradual decline over several decades. Perhaps the most telling part of the article: "Ask Rick Wagoner why GM isn't more like Toyota, and he'll tell you, 'We're playing our own game - taking advantage of our own unique heritage and strengths.' Turns out GM should have forgotten that and become more like Toyota. Toyota's market cap is now $103.6 billion; GM's is $1.8 billion."
So why did I think of Microsoft, which is still minting money on the strengths of Windows and Office? Perhaps it's because I heard a podcast (Windows Weekly) several months ago in which Paul Thurrott, a Windows expert, was asked by Microsoft PR how he liked Windows Mobile 6, which had just been released, and they were surprised when Thurrott asked them if they had even seen an iPhone, which is lightyears ahead of WM6 in just about every way. Perhaps it's because of the insistence, from Steve Ballmer on down, that Microsoft executives' kids shouldn't be allowed to have iPods. Both of these behaviors suggest the same kind of self referential, insular culture that caused GM to stall out.
Microsoft these days is a strange combination of competitiveness without inspiration, inward-looking but imitative. When Vista was released, the list of features apparently copied from OS X was striking. Apple releases the iPod, and Microsoft releases the Zune. Google has Google maps, and Microsoft has their own satellite mapping site. Google has Google Earth, and Microsoft has Virtual Earth. Adobe has Flash and AIR, and Microsoft follows with Silverlight. Even Microsoft's development environment, Visual Studio, has its roots in Apple's Hypercard and Interface Builder tools. Now, Ray Ozzie wants to lead Microsoft into the world of cloud computing and online apps, but Google and Adobe are already there. And Microsoft is trying to follow Google into the world of ad-supported search.
I think that Microsoft is at that point where GM was around 1980. At that point, GM employed about 853,000 people and dominated the largest automotive market in the world. Today, Microsoft claims about 90% of the world's desktop operating systems and provides software to most major businesses. But where GM's market moved to higher quality, more efficient Japanese cars, Microsoft's market is moving to Linux, Apple, and web apps. As GM struggled to design cars that people wanted to buy, Microsoft is struggling to gain traction online. Despite claiming to lead and innovate, GM continued to fall farther and farther behind, continually shifting strategies in the process. Same with Microsoft.
The lesson here, I think, is that the biggest mistake any organization can make is to start believing it's the best. That belief establishes the foundation for using oneself as one's own standard, which in turn leads to insularity and self-reference. At that point, you listen more to yourself than to your customers and competitors.
If I were running Microsoft, the first thing I'd do is let anyone buy and use an iPhone, iPods, Macs, Linux, Google, anything, to make sure that everyone understands the competitive environment that the company is operating in. Their customers understand that world - why shouldn't Microsoft? The next thing I'd do is ask whether the world really needs Microsoft to keep providing late, less compelling counterparts to every new big product, and whether continuing to follow the market leaders is a recipe for long term success. Finally, I'd ask the bright, creative, and entrepreneurial people in the organization to ask themselves where Microsoft could be leading instead of following, and how it can leverage the advantages it has in business platforms, Exchange, .NET, and so forth, to do something that no one else is doing yet.
I've left out one part of this story. Another thing I thought of while reading about GM is the US itself. Like me, many of you (Americans, at least) have probably been told countless times that we're the "greatest nation in the world". Americans have believed that for a long time, and the pitfalls of self-reference apply there as well. Like GM, we've become inward looking, unaware of the advantages that other nations may have. As a consequence, we're losing ground in life expectancy, education, quality of life, and productivity. I guess the old saying is true: as GM goes, so goes the country.
One of the themes of the article is how insular and self-referential the culture at GM is. They seem to hold themselves to their own standards rather than measuring themselves against competitors. Having captured so much of the market for so long, they apparently continued playing to that market. Meanwhile, over the years, the market gradually shifted out from under them, and they failed to either lead it (as Toyota has done) or follow it. The consequence of this has been a gradual decline over several decades. Perhaps the most telling part of the article: "Ask Rick Wagoner why GM isn't more like Toyota, and he'll tell you, 'We're playing our own game - taking advantage of our own unique heritage and strengths.' Turns out GM should have forgotten that and become more like Toyota. Toyota's market cap is now $103.6 billion; GM's is $1.8 billion."
So why did I think of Microsoft, which is still minting money on the strengths of Windows and Office? Perhaps it's because I heard a podcast (Windows Weekly) several months ago in which Paul Thurrott, a Windows expert, was asked by Microsoft PR how he liked Windows Mobile 6, which had just been released, and they were surprised when Thurrott asked them if they had even seen an iPhone, which is lightyears ahead of WM6 in just about every way. Perhaps it's because of the insistence, from Steve Ballmer on down, that Microsoft executives' kids shouldn't be allowed to have iPods. Both of these behaviors suggest the same kind of self referential, insular culture that caused GM to stall out.
Microsoft these days is a strange combination of competitiveness without inspiration, inward-looking but imitative. When Vista was released, the list of features apparently copied from OS X was striking. Apple releases the iPod, and Microsoft releases the Zune. Google has Google maps, and Microsoft has their own satellite mapping site. Google has Google Earth, and Microsoft has Virtual Earth. Adobe has Flash and AIR, and Microsoft follows with Silverlight. Even Microsoft's development environment, Visual Studio, has its roots in Apple's Hypercard and Interface Builder tools. Now, Ray Ozzie wants to lead Microsoft into the world of cloud computing and online apps, but Google and Adobe are already there. And Microsoft is trying to follow Google into the world of ad-supported search.
I think that Microsoft is at that point where GM was around 1980. At that point, GM employed about 853,000 people and dominated the largest automotive market in the world. Today, Microsoft claims about 90% of the world's desktop operating systems and provides software to most major businesses. But where GM's market moved to higher quality, more efficient Japanese cars, Microsoft's market is moving to Linux, Apple, and web apps. As GM struggled to design cars that people wanted to buy, Microsoft is struggling to gain traction online. Despite claiming to lead and innovate, GM continued to fall farther and farther behind, continually shifting strategies in the process. Same with Microsoft.
The lesson here, I think, is that the biggest mistake any organization can make is to start believing it's the best. That belief establishes the foundation for using oneself as one's own standard, which in turn leads to insularity and self-reference. At that point, you listen more to yourself than to your customers and competitors.
If I were running Microsoft, the first thing I'd do is let anyone buy and use an iPhone, iPods, Macs, Linux, Google, anything, to make sure that everyone understands the competitive environment that the company is operating in. Their customers understand that world - why shouldn't Microsoft? The next thing I'd do is ask whether the world really needs Microsoft to keep providing late, less compelling counterparts to every new big product, and whether continuing to follow the market leaders is a recipe for long term success. Finally, I'd ask the bright, creative, and entrepreneurial people in the organization to ask themselves where Microsoft could be leading instead of following, and how it can leverage the advantages it has in business platforms, Exchange, .NET, and so forth, to do something that no one else is doing yet.
I've left out one part of this story. Another thing I thought of while reading about GM is the US itself. Like me, many of you (Americans, at least) have probably been told countless times that we're the "greatest nation in the world". Americans have believed that for a long time, and the pitfalls of self-reference apply there as well. Like GM, we've become inward looking, unaware of the advantages that other nations may have. As a consequence, we're losing ground in life expectancy, education, quality of life, and productivity. I guess the old saying is true: as GM goes, so goes the country.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
A Few Minutes of Calm
I have started a video blog at A Few Minutes of Calm. I've been writing music since I was a kid, and I've always been interested in the combination of music, visuals, writing, movement, and so forth. The videos are all of local scenery here in Point Roberts, Washington, which is a small piece of the US attached to the bottom of British Columbia, south of Vancouver. All scenes are taken with a still camera on a tripod, and all music is original. The intent is to capture a moment in time and a sense of place, in such a way that someone can check in any time they need a few minutes of calm, a break from a stressful day, or some time to relax or reflect. I hope you enjoy it.
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