Elroy Jetson

List of English Speaking Countries to Visit

When I was younger I spent a number of years in the U.S. Marine Corps.  During that time I was able to travel to  a number of countries that most people never get a chance to go to, especially middle eastern countries.  I enjoyed the varied cultures a great deal.

I always had one issue when travelling - the language barrier.  I have never been great at picking up languages and I am mostly to lazy to work at it.  I can barely hold my own with english.  Despite this I would still like to visit other countries and enjoy their culture.

So I have come up with a way to enjoy other cultures and not have to work hard at learning another language.  The trick is to visit all the countries where english is an official language.  And here comes Wikipedia to the rescue.  They have already assembled a list.

U.S. Deadly Lifestyle

This week had the news reporting on two separate murder-suicides in the United States.  I had written about one taking place in California earlier in the week. According to Sampson Blair, a sociologist at the University of Buffalo, murder-suicides are relatively rare phenomena.   He does say that these two incidents are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Dr. Blair goes on to describe how financial and occupational stress can lead to increases in violent and dysfunctional behavior.  With the economic situation what it is in the United States these sorts of incidents are likely to continue and grow in frequency.

While Dr. Blair discusses all of the obvious stressors, loss of job, savings and homes, I think he didn’t talk about one underlying issue: no coping mechanisms.

The United States provides little in the way of assistance to those in financial crisis.  This is to include our culture of individualism.  Without the social support of government programs like that of European nations or a culture that is conducive to supporting each other; I suspect that we will likely see a rise in this sort of destructive behavior that is disproportionate to other similar times in history.

It would be interesting to find information on the number of murder-suicides that occurred during the Great Depression in comparison to today’s economic downturn.  How does the reaction of individuals in the United States compare to other countries and contrast that to those living in abject poverty in poor countries such as those in Africa.

This would truly be an interesting study.

Path-dependence

“Path-dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant.”

We are so saddled with path-dependence today that it seems as though technology is actually slowing us down.  New technology, however, does just the opposite of slowing us down – it makes the time consuming tasks easy for us.

The problem is hardware and software developers have been unable to overcome the problem of the technology consumer.  We do not like to change, even if the technology makes things faster and easier.  We simply will not give up old technology and ideas without a good strong immature fit, with kicking and screaming.

I find I am doing this with the Kindle.  I can get the books I want to read instantly, time saver.  I can get these books cheaper.  Looking up words on the page is a simple click away.  I can read faster because the screen shows slightly less than a page in a paperback, which means, with my short attention span, I re-read less.  Highlighting and taking notes is easier as is searching for keywords.  Despite all this it still seems more natural to read a traditional paper book.

Most of us treat things this way.  E-mail is meant to make communication easier.  How many of you still think it does?  This goes for mobile phones and the Internet.  But we still have libraries and mail delivery (at least for now).

The next time you think the technology is flawed you might want to take a step back and check to see you are not the real problem.

Mapping Intention Flows

On January 27, 2009, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society hosted a talk as part of their Luncheon Series titled Mapping Globalization presented by Ethan Zuckerman.

This was an incredibly thought provoking topic.  Simply thinking in the paradigm of flows instead of infrastruture was interesting.  Zuckerman presented many examples of mapping out of different patterns.  The question that was left with everyone was how to develop methods of mapping and visualizing intention?  That would be a valuable endeavor.

To understand why and how we move based on intentions and overlay that with actual flow and infrastructure maps would be very useful in a number of disciplines.

I would be excited to here more about this in the future.

A side note I took from this talk is just how unconnected Africa is from the rest of the world.  This seems wrong to me that it should be so disconnected in this day and age.  I am interested in understandanding the underlying reasons for this while I expect poverty to be on the list I do not think that can account for all of it.

Tragedy, Job Loss, and American Values

It often takes a stressful situation to arise before we can truly gauge what are the real values that people aspire.   Yesterday, on CNN, I was reading a story, which seems as though it is becoming a cliché.  A man loses his job, comes home despondent, and murders his wife and five children.

If you scrape away at the surface this tragedy is getting at the heart of the new class struggle in the United States.  The “Haves” are in an arms race, reminiscent of the Cold War in an effort to catch up to the “Have mores” as Dalton Conley describes it in his new book Elsewhere, USA.  We have become a culture that values more and not more of any one thing either.  Americans live well over the edge of credit, with little or no savings with spending far outpacing earnings.  Americans are more and more betting everything they have to obtain an SUV just a little bigger or a McMansion with just once more bathroom than their neighbors.

Americans value income more than life itself it would seem by this all to common story.  Is this simply an affliction of the wealthy or is this similar to issues that have affected the poor for ages?

Need Affluence?

Until recently, there were only two kinds of social classes when it came to online: Technology Haves and Technology Have Not’s.   The Technology Haves tend to be more highly educated, higher income, with fewer minorities, while the Technology Have Not’s were just the opposite.  The Internet became the field leveler for the Technology Haves.  Each person had equal access to information, while information itself became the social capital.

A new class of social network sites has emerged and their sole purpose is to re-establish the dominance of the wealthy in this new order.  These sites have attempted to winnow their membership by utilizing an invitation only system.  To date this has not been all that successful of a model.

Along comes affluence.org.  Affluence is changing the traditional invitation only model in hopes of connecting to more people.  Instead of each member sending an invitation to each of his or her connections, Affluence has drawn a line based on income.  If someone can simply prove that they have a net worth of $3 million or a minimum annual household income of $300,000 they can become members.

Is this really something that is necessary on the Internet?  Is this simply a natural re-segregation that was inevitable?

Anti-telecommute culture

Given the shift in the U.S. of labor from farm and manufacturing sectors to white-collar jobs (U.S. Labor Force Trends, 2008), one might expect to see more creative solutions during an economic down turn.

Employee’s and employee knowledge is key to today’s businesses.  Despite the most important equipment a business possesses being employee’s they still become the first target for elimination.

Today’s communication technology has put video teleconferencing into the homes of anyone with broadband capabilities.  All Apple laptops now come with video installed by default and for a minimal cost the same capabilities can be installed on a Windows PC.

The average employee spends nearly an hour commuting each day (U.S. Census).  This equates to around 74 hours lost per employee each year.

A more innovative solution to layoffs seems to be the reduction of office space and an increase in employee productivity.

Most employee’s, when provided the technology, will work longer hours for the same salary.  If an employer were to give 74 hours back to an employee, it seems reasonable that he could expect to see some of the time as increased productivity.

At the same time and employer is able to reduce costs by downsizing the office space that he must maintain.

More importantly, employee knowledge is not lost.

Despite the obvious benefits (more exist but that would make the post much to long) most employers would rather lose corporate knowledge to maintain a more traditional working environment.

iPhone Heretic Confesses

I admit it.  When the iPhone was first announced I was giddy as a schoolgirl.  I rushed out and purchased one as quickly as was possible considering the typical Apple supply problems.

Some time has passed by now and I use the iPhone daily and to be honest it’s a so-so phone.  Reception is not as good as my older phone had been (same cell provider by-the-way).  All the oohs and ahhs over the cool multi-touch interface are fading into more of “is this really necessary.”

Even the well known technologists and blogger Jason Calacanis has begun signing each photo blog post as “Sent from my iPhone, but I’d rather be using my blackberry.”

Let’s face it, in the end it’s about getting done what we want to accomplish on a mobile device.  Multi-touch is cool, but not very useful.

The big draw for me, once I got past the bells and whistles, had been the full copy of Safari.  Since applications have become available on the iPhone I find I don’t really use the browser much.

Frankly, I would give up all the technology candy on the iPhone just to have a nice tiny keyboard to bang out my tweets a little easier.

I guess with Steve Jobs departure leave of absence from Apple I have fallen out of the distortion bubble and am more concerned with practicality.

Does this make me an iPhone Heretic?  Yes, I confess.

Blog Reborn

It has been a long time coming. I have finally forced myself to update this blog. I have expunged the past, not because the posts were particulary bad, but more as a way to make a clean break from the way this blog, and hence me, had been defined. Over the past several years my interests have moved on from a strict pursuit of technology. I have always been more of a general technologist than say a programmer, so broadening the blog only seems natural.

I plan to pursue my interests in how technology effects our culture and adolescent maturation. At the same time I plan on pontificating on basically a wide range of other interests. For those looking for strictly technology posts, thanks for stopping by, but I am done with that now. Everyone else, welcome aboard for the new ride.