I Am a Font of Biblical Knowledge

You know the Bible 98%!

 

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

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Do you want to know the craziest part? As far as I can tell, the only question I got wrong was the one about the talking donkey.

Technology and Crowds, or See, Here's the Gist

Snarkmarket's got a good discussion going about the iPhone. Well, it's not really about the iPhone; it's about Iraq. Or it might be about Alexander Hamilton, or Wikipedia. I'm not totally sure any more.

What it's really about is secrecy vs. openness, and the comparative appeal and danger of each. The iPhone was secret, ComputerWorld (convincingly, I think) argues it should have been secret longer, and despite some legitimate concerns and sad haters, looks totally awesome. This seems at least in part because it was designed in secret. As Robin Sloan says: "The iPhone was most definitely made by professionals. They were locked in a room. No one blogged."

iRaq, on the other hand (or as Matt Thompson calls it, "Desert W. Storm") was likewise cooked up in secret by a cabal of cooks, and it's a total disaster. And -- perhaps more tellingly -- many of us are troubled in principle by the idea of secrecy, even if the end result is something we would applaud. After all, even Mussolini claimed that he made the trains run on time.

Technology, I would argue, poses another problem, especially when it comes to design. We're pretty much willing to accept a certain amount of mystery when it comes to the production of art on the one hand and, in many cases, the workings of mechanical devices like cars or appliances on the other. But computers, and especially the information on computers, seems different. Information seems like it should be open to public scrutiny, or at least expert scrutiny. The greatest moral strength of open-source projects, whether they're encyclopedias or software, is that information is subject to review, critique, and revision. It's often their greatest practical strength as well, but I'd say its primary appeal is that it squares with our already-formed ideals as users about how information in general should work. I deliberately add "as users" because many people who produce or deal in information often think about this differently.

I was the first commentor on this thread at SM, but lots of other smarties have picked it up. (I secretly suspect Robin has edited his original post since I first commented on it -- I remember it being shorter and only slightly less awesome.) Since not everyone who reads Short Schrift also reads Snarkmarket, here's the gist of what I've already said about this topic over at that blog. I'll fill in some of the gaps with parenthetical commentary.

1. God, I'd have been willing to trade a little openness if the war in Iraq had been run monolithically and near-secretly but executed as well as an Apple product.

I'm serious. Not only was the war cooked up by some pretty misguided (and misguiding people), but the more you find out about it, the more it seems like an open-source project gone all wrong, dragged into too many directions by people with opposed goals, beliefs, principles.

Rumsfeld wants to win the war with a third of the troops; Bremer decides to dissolve the Iraqi army. The army can't decide (or figure out) whether it's on the way out or staying for good. Part of the government rushes to put Iraqis in charge of everything, while another wants to run the place like a colony and give all the jobs to Halliburton and Bechtel. Some misguided idealists decide to start the plumbing and oil infrastructure from scratch, bypassing the people who know the most about the system and blowing millions on software programs the Iraqis don't know how to use. I mean, the stories you hear are just crazy.

And now you hear people like Richard Perle or John McCain essentially arguing that if they war had been fought in their way -- if the software and the hardware had been designed to work together from the start -- then the situation would have been much better than it is today. I don't know whether that's true -- even if we'd gotten Colin Powell's war, or John Kerry's. (Both of which, paradoxically, involved bringing more people into the process.)

Maybe I'm confusing the transparency/secrecy distinction with a pluralistic/monolithic design scheme. There are plenty of hybrid forms. There's no reason why a group of people can't be secret about their activities even as their contradictions pull them apart, and no reason why a single designer can't be open and transparent about his/her actions, even while maintaining the unity of what's created. Likewise, a collective can be very restrictive on what end-users do with their product, and a single integrated design can allow for a lot more customization and alteration. It's all about what works, and to a certain extent about what you really value: efficiency, beauty, universality, a chance to contribute something yourself...

(Robin introduces a note about diffusion/unity, order/chaos, introduces the idea that what's important is leadership. Also note that Robin dropped the F-bomb in his original post -- that is, he quoted the Federalist papers.)

2. Come to think of it, Hamilton might be the perfect instantiation of a different model of transparency: the deliberative executive. For Hamilton, his best argument against executive-by-committee is that the ability to diffuse blame "tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility." (Fed 70) An executive needs to be able to explain what he thinks, the meaning of his actions, and to accept praise or blame for them. It might be a model of transparency more sympathetic to notions of noblesse oblige than say, the socialist hive mind -- but does that make it necessarily less transparent?

(Saheli says that I'm awesome, but gadgets, eh. I heart you too, Saheli.)

(Robin gives the example of Gmail as a especially well-executed form/function synthesis probably designed by a single user.)

(Howard distinguishes between great products and great experiences: Apple provides the latter even more so than the former.)

3. Gmail's a good example, because at least part of the success of Gmail has been in exceeding our expectations for what proprietary internet mail [can do]. This isn't just true in terms of storage and search, but also price and accessibility. The killer innovation of Gmail might be the fact that you can access your Gmail account from any mail reader, or forward your mail from the account for free (neither of which you could do w/most free web-based mail accounts). It's just that Gmail's interface is so perfect that the circumstances are rare in which you'd want to. If I could forward my Yahoo! mail to my Gmail account, I would never use my Yahoo mail again.

What we really want, I would say across the board, is for a single designer, or small group, to provide innovative and distinctive experiences and objects. Then we want the right to do whatever we want with them.

I think this last paragraph summarizes my position as well as I can state it. I would go further and argue that this is the position of most people whose idea of a sexy good time is not keeping people from knowing the history of the civil rights movement, drinking Mountain Dew while writing code for a killer disk management app, or preserving the virtue of the "Thundercats" entry on Wikipedia. (Virgo Intacta.) Am I wrong?

All the HTML and CSS I know...

... went, piece by piece, into this really quite modest redesign of the Short Schrift template.

And most people probably read it with feed readers anyways, if at all. But it makes me happy.

(And hey! I've got more posts in January than in the entire second half of last year. Let's hope this newfound productivity keeps going.)

A Prayer on the Sidewalks

If, today, you're looking for television footage of or about Martin Luther King, Jr., don't watch the History Channel. There's only two hours of MLK- or civil-rights-related programming on the channel today, and it already aired once this morning and again this afternoon. Just for a comparison, there's a full two-hour documentary about Harry Houdini that's also airing twice today, including in prime time. They spend more time covering The Da Vinci Code in a given week than they have ever spent on the civil rights movement or African-American history in a year, including February.

Last year, there was no King-related coverage on the holiday at all. My wife and I will never watch the History Channel, A&E, or Biography ever again.

PBS, by contrast, is a salvation. I don't know what they're broadcasting on any given channel, but you don't need to go anywhere on the web besides the PBS site for Eyes on the Prize, the seminal documentary on the civil rights movement. The original documentary aired in two parts in the late 1980s, and finally rebroadcast this fall. For years Eyes on the Prize had been held up due to copyright issues on the extensive archive footage used. Now it's finally available on DVD, but for nearly $400. To me at least, It's a clear case of copyright abuse. If you can get your local academic or public library to buy it, it's well worth watching. I hear it's surprisingly (and deliberately) widely available on filesharing networks too.

The Eyes on the Prize site is a genuine treasure. It features video clips from each of the 26 sections of the documentary, primary textual documents written by and about both major and minor historical figures and ordinary people (the letter from freedom rider John Dolan's father shows you just how far outside the mainstream the civil rights movement was held to be), and snappy profiles of a slew of the major figures featured in the documentary. As an example, here's a chunk of the profile of Ronald Reagan, who according to a horrifying Discovery Channel/AOL poll, beats both King and Abraham Lincoln as "the greatest American":

As governor of California (1967-1975), Reagan clashed with activists like the Black Panthers in Oakland, and encouraged the firing of University of California professor Angela Davis. In the presidential campaign of 1980, he invoked "states' rights" which some heard as a code phrase for racism. As America's 40th president (1981-1989), he tried to eliminate the Department of Education and cut back on loan and assistance programs that helped underprivileged students get a leg up. Throughout his political career, Reagan undercut anti-poverty programs and urban assistance while cutting taxes, widening the gap between rich and poor. In support of business, his administration failed to enforce the Community Reinvestment Act, which outlaws racial discrimination in home loans, and made many federal contractors exempt from Affirmative Action programs.

However, during his presidency, Ronald Reagan signed the bill that declared the third Monday in January a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There's one video that particularly stands out to me. It's from Albany, Georgia, widely held to be the civil rights' movement greatest defeat, where the nonviolent tactics of desegregation failed. The local police chief refused to combat the protestors directly with outright brutality, but relegated them to prisons outside of town so his jail never filled up. He paid King and Abernathy's bail so the two leaders could avoid being flash points. The SCLC and SNCC left town without desegregating the city. In the video, the protestors weep and pray on the sidewalks before they are arrested, carried off on stretchers. At the end, they clap and sing, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round." It is a truth machine that will not be stopped.

I got into an argument with my wife this morning over the content of my earlier post, and my feeling that most of the local events for MLK squandered the potential of a holiday devoted to a man like this. My wife's position is that the King holiday is the most important holiday we have, since it's the only nonreligious holiday where people are called on to help someone other than themselves or their families. I agree, but I'm frustrated by isolated charity, endless talk about the meaning of King's message, or empty two-block marches that only engage nostalgia, like recreations of George Washington crossing the Delaware. I'm usually the first person to get cynical about political marches or sit-ins or boycotts, but on MLK, I am ready to march anywhere, because I truly believe.

I don't like the normalization of King, or civil rights history: it's like it's been stuffed and mounted, turned into beautiful phrases that express what, it is obvious (isn't it obvious?) that we all think and believe, without having to confront the content of the message, its challenge, its not-yet. It's as though we can't bear to look at King directly, so we direct him to the out-of-town prisons of impoverished schools and afternoon television shows, carried off on the stretchers of empty tributes and hollow homages. Whether it's racial equality, crushing poverty, the deaths of scores of thousands in Iraq, civil rights for gays and lesbians, or the horrifying treatment of detainees in the war on terror, something must give. We may have left the mountaintop, but we haven't crossed Jordan yet.

The Noise of the Long Tail

I'm not always a fan of Joey Sweeney's hipster Philadelphia blog Philebrity, but this is pretty cool: YouTube clips of "50 Fabulous American Freaks." It's mostly musicians like David Byrne, Tom Waits, and Missy Elliot, but also includes people like Allen Ginsberg, Gilda Radner, John Waters, and Richard Pryor. It doesn't capitalize very well on the "Martin Luther King" was a nonconformist conceit -- where are all the other political freaks? -- and I think Sweeney had it in the bag before he decided to use it on MLK. It's a nice reminder that today isn't just about us all getting along, but about some of us having the courage to refuse to fit in. (More thoughts on MLK later.)

The Grey, Incomprehensible Powder

I accidentally found this Jorge Luis Borges poem while searching on my hard drive for something else. The poem was so beautiful, and the sentiment so appropriate to its discovery, that I had to share it. (The unraveling of that last paradox is left as an exercise for the reader.) The translation is by Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes.

Things

Book fallen back, now hidden by the others

In the deep recesses of the shelf and covered

Slowly and silently by the thick dust

Of many days and nights. Phoenician anchor

The seas of England in their blind abyss

Press hard in on. Looking glass that copies

Nobody's face now that the house is empty.

Fingernail parings that we leave behind

Along the road of time and space. The grey,

Incomprehensible powder that was Shakespeare.

The ever-changing figures of the clouds.

The rose, symmetrical and momentary,

That chance once flashed upon the inward glass

Of a boy's kaleidoscope. The sweating oars

Of Jason's Argo, the first ship. The footsteps

The sleepy, mortal wave washes the sand of.

The radiances of Turner when the lights

Go out in the long gallery one by one

And no step echoes in the lofty dark.

The back of the densely printed map of the world.

The gossamer cobweb in the pyramid.

The blind stone. The inquisitive, tactile hand.

Dreams I have had just before dawn, and lost

When daylight came, clearing it all away.

The beginning and the end of the epic poem

Of Finnesburh, now but a few precious lines

Of iron not worn away by the centuries.

The letter's mirror-image on the blotter.

The turtle lying in the cistern's depths.

What cannot ever be. The other horn

Of the unicorn. The Being both Three and One.

Triangular disc. Point the mind cannot grasp

When Zeno's arrow, motionless in air,

Arrives at last at the target. Flower pressed

Between the pages of a book by Becquer.

The pendulum whose swing time has arrested.

The sword that Odin drove into the tree.

The text on uncut pages. The resounding

Clatter of hoofs in the onslaught at Junin,

A battle which in some eternal way

Has not ended, is still part of the plot.

Sarmiento's shadow on the sunlit walls.

The voice the shepherd heard on the mountainside.

The pile of bones whitening in the desert.

The ball that shot Francisco Borges dead.

The reverse side of the tapestry. The things

That no one sees but Bishop Berkeley's God.

The Other Hague Convention

The NYT has a strong, heartbreaking article on international adoption programs. This article is about programs in the Ukraine where children visit with host families in the USA, then made to return before the families can adopt them. The families then have to travel to Ukraine to finalize adoption. The process is ripe with graft and misinformation, and neither the children nor their prospective adoptive families are guaranteed that they will ever see each other again.

The article as a throwaway mention to an international adoption treaty which would require accreditation of adoption agencies, so I looked it up. The US, after fifteen years, will probably ratify the Hague Convention on International Adoption and implement it in 2008.

The Suicidal Death March of Academic Writing

In this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas H. Benton writes on publishing and the ivory tower. It's a temp link only, but I'll give the highlights.

First, there's the call-to-arms:

It's time for most us -- and I am thinking in particular of younger academics -- to abandon the genteel pose of being aloof from the sordid marketplace. We should stop acting as if we were monks, destined for a lifetime of cloistered self-denial. Or romantic poets who die penniless and forgotten in their own time, but whose genius and poignant suffering will, one day, move the world to tears.

If we are going to avoid being blockheads, we are going to have to start writing books that more people will want to buy as something besides remainders.

Then there's the absurdist cautionary tale:

I have a colleague who is working on a visual-history project -- her first book -- and, apparently, few university presses can publish it in the kind of format that would do justice to the material. And few such presses are likely to invest much in promoting the book.

But after hearing my colleague give a lecture, a distinguished trade publisher jumped on the project immediately. It seems like an excellent opportunity for my colleague to produce a beautiful book that might reach a wide audience.

Yet my colleague wondered, "Is this respectable?"

At first I guffawed, but perhaps my colleague was right to worry, depending upon her career aspirations. A serious book, rigorously edited, that is read by 10,000 people rather than by 100 -- and that required no subvention -- is often discounted because it was published by a commercial publisher rather than a university press.

As a graduate student, I remember being warned that writing for mainstream audiences would become a red flag in my Google portfolio that I would never be able to escape. And Ph.D.'s who contribute to the blogosphere have been warned by the famous Ivan Tribble to watch their words. In many quarters -- particularly at research universities -- anything but scholarly articles in refereed journals and university press books indicates a lack of seriousness and commitment to the profession.

Then there's the personal confession:

I think becoming a columnist is the best thing I've done with my academic career. I'm sure it has frightened some prospective employers (pseudonymity seldom lasts), but it has also led to talks with agents and publishers. And, finally, it is beginning to lead to contracts to publish books that I think are as serious as my academic work but aimed at a much larger audience.

So far, the experience has been more rewarding and intellectually exciting than most of the crabbed, obscure writing I did when I was trying to prove I was a competent scholar. I find that thinking about a general audience makes me a better teacher than my academic writing ever did. My theory-soaked younger self must have sounded like a man from Mars to most undergraduates.

I no longer feel beholden to the petty rivalries and resentments that characterize academic life. It's like being born again. Imagine it for yourself: There are people out there -- possibly millions of them -- who are willing to pay for the pleasure of reading your work. Those people could give your ideas, expressed in a single mainstream book, the impact of a lifetime of scholarly writing. You can also earn the posthumous respect of Samuel Johnson, as well the relatives who warned you that professors tend to be paupers. Poverty and obscurity, as the world sees them, are not necessarily signifiers of academic virtue.

Yes, "Thomas H. Benton" is a pseudonym.

And what he says is true enough that some time ago, I removed anything on this blog that reveals my full name.

A Dish Of Effortless Purity

A witty, enthusiastic, wistful, and nearly perfect appreciation of Momofuku Ando, the recently deceased inventor of ramen noodles, and especially the fearfully salty, delicious noodles he gave us all. By Lawrence Downes, suburban metro editor for the New York Times.

Techno-lust Regained

Apple's new iPhone.

My goodness.

According to ZdNet: "The iPhone will be available in June for $499 with a 2-year contract (4GB model). The 8GB model will be $599. It will be sold through the Apple stores and Cingular stores."

And yet, somehow, I want it now.