Changing work

For a long time -- certainly the past 15 years or so -- one of the main filters through which I have passed notions about technology development and adoption is the very simple notion of work. what is being done -- the ontology of work. It seems that most analysis of technology somehow omits the important consideration of what peolpe actually do in a productive mode. There's a strange level of abstraction that occurs that fails to examine the elemental nature of work; the conversation that it represents at an individual and group level.
This assertion isn't based on any empirical observation -- it's more a function of intuition. But I have very good intuition, and I'm thinking about this as a prelude to constructing a more formal research plan. But I think it's imperative that designers pick up the mantle of understanding work at a more granular level, not work as a disaggregated set of functions.

Awash in social media

I've been reading Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch which confirms many of the ideas and insights about technology development and adoption that I've had over the past 20 years. Of course that's why I read it. On the book, Carr describes the homogenizing effect of the information filters that we're able to develop using the Internet and all the various social media tools that have emerged in the past 5 years. Specifically his cites Nobel Economics laureate Thomas Schelling's work about the segregative strategy that's often at play --- people prefer to be around others they perceive as being like them. We develop elaborate and rational filters for the world that reinforce our own biases and perceptions.
At one point Carr discusses a theoretical "friend" whose passion is Classic Mustangs. Initially the friend tried to build a site from scratch which he attempted to host on a server he'd bought. Fast forward a few years and the friend established a Wordpress blog, then uses a set of "web 2.0" tools (e.g., Flickr, last.fm. Mybloglog, AdSense, etc.) to build a veritable portal dedicated to his passion -- one that he can then "monetize." Carr makes the point that a suitably motivated individual could build this sophisticated infrastructure in a matter of hours.
Carr referred to MyBlogLog with which I was unfamiliar. I established an account -- through my Yahoo! ID -- and set about to build a profile. When I saw the page with all the various social tools on it, I was a bit taken aback -- there are about 50 services listed. Then filled in the user info for each of the sites at which I have an account -- down the list I went, Blogger, del.icio.us, eBay, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, Yelp, etc. I started to get the depth of my engagement with all these tools; my own willingness to jump in a try things as soon as I come across them is evidently quite high. I'm pulled inexorably toward these tools and places -- media if you will. I don't have a strategy for organizing them -- yet. And that's the key insight -- maybe there is no strategy. Maybe everything is miscellaneous, and the better strategy derives from movement, despite being apparently random-and generating all manner of social artifacts, some of which will prove more valuable than others.

What you need when you need it

I approach writing this post in a somewhat lightheaded and dissolute mood. I have been re-reading some of my old newsletter articles and I'm once again swept away in the soaring rhetoric and aching ambition they embody. These were tirades written by somebody who "wants to be somebody." At the same time, I'm faced with the 2008 reality of domain parking sites -- I looked at meek.com and had to chuckle at the odd juxtaposition of links -- 3D avatars and Christian Singles. I had to chuckle again at the circular logic at play in these sites -- you're never actually going to get anywhere, but somewhere, somebody has a meter running and is collecting micropennies from your confusion. The cognitive dissonance I'm experiencing has some universal resoenance, I think.

Scrutableness

I was just reading the local political and community discussion group for the town that I live in. I find that no matter my best intentions about being a good local citizen, I can't find the depth of interest that it seems to take in order to be fully engaged. When the individuals are close to the action weigh-in on school budgeting, for example, it simply defies a cursory reading. It takes something of an involved experts eye, and I don't have that to contribute.
In a recent post, in fact, someone referred to the local school budgeting process as being inscrutable. The municipal political leadership and the school board have constructed a process that remains opaque and leaves open the various back doors for unaccountable behavior that extracts a premium from everyone.
I think I'm fortunate -- I live in a place where the citizenry really value education. I was fortunate to be able to educate my son in the local public schools, and for most part that was positive although I'm sure he might argue otherwise. He certainly bore the brunt of the snobbishness and cliquishness that dominates school culture. But it would have been so no matter where he went. Us-versus-them culture is just another of the unfortunate cultural artifacts that we're convinced is a natural phenomenon, despite the fact that it's abundantly clear if you study it that it's entirely a learned behavior. But that's a story for another blog entry, and likely for an entire book.
At any rate, this remark about the school budgeting process being "inscrutable" brought to mind David Gelernter's vision in Mirror Worlds when he discussed the possibility of individuals having access to all the information processing systems iin the universe, such as the sensory systems at a hospital. On one hand theres a certain Orwellian cast to having this kind of global transparency. But at the same time, if we are to confront the deep and significant privacy issues we confront as a result of both government action (which dictate that the flow be one-way) and more open and transparent systems 9which by definition demand two-way observability.) I can better deal with the fact that I am so widely observed if I have the capability to track back to all the individuals and units observing me. The certainly is not the current paradigm. The point is that transparency and openness are certainly not built into our civic structures -- hence the "inscrutable" school budget. Addressing this issue is more than structural or procedural--it's cultural.

Continual conundrums on the personal tech front

I registered for Google apps/Google sites to get joeraimondo.com up and running. So far, I haven't achieved what I was looking to do. I went to the domain registrar (GoDaddy) to reset the CNAME Record, but the changes didn't take. There didn't seem to be a true step-by-step
All the tools are there, i suppose that what's missing is my resoluteness to make the thing work. Of course, at every turn there seems to be another tool, another approach. I downloaded HomeSite because that's what I used -- in 1998! That's when I had a website!