Monthy Archive: May 2005
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May 01, 2005

Thoughts : The right to control what you hear

I recently started to a think in depth about my political views and try and put together a consistent political philosophy of my own. This is largely driven by my disappointment in the candidates put forward by the various political parties (not just the Republicans and Democrats; but even the smaller parties). I decided that before I complain any more, I should have a clear idea of what I really believe and why.

There are a lot of issues that I have already settled in my own mind, and I think I have a set of consistent principles from which those opinions are derived; but my philosophy is not yet complete. There are issues I am still trying to figure out how to bring under control. Until I have them resolved, I fear that there may be some flaw in the edifice I am building which will result in its eventual collapse.

The issue I am currently struggling with is an individual's right to be free from exposure to those things they find objectionable. Now it is clear to me that as far as governments are concerned people should have the right to do whatever they want as long as it only affects other consenting adults. Readers will probably read into that statement issues of intimate behavior; but it applies just as well to religious practices, politics, and a great many other things. So, for instance, I feel I should be able to say anything I want in my blog. If people don't like it, they don't have to read it.

The problem comes with activities which people can not reasonably avoid being exposed to – activities in public places for instance. Things done in public affect more than consenting adults, so the rule above does not apply. Here are some of the questions for which I have no answer yet:

Does an atheist have a right to walk to work and not hear someone preaching on a street corner? Or does a Christian have a right to walk to work and not hear people swearing on a street corner? Do people have the right to walk to work and not see posters or bumper stickers that expression political views they find objectionable? Are those all equivalent rights? If not, why? If the criteria is that "as long as people can avoid it, then it does not impinge on their rights", does the amount of effort to avoid it matter? Is changing the channel on TV too much effort? Is having to cross the street? Is getting a different job? While it is clear to me that people have a right to express their opinions, does that right imply a right to have those opinion heard? What if people don't want to hear them? How does one balance the "right to be heard" with "the right to listen to what I want"?

And the bottom line question – what of any of these rights (assuming that some of them are rights) is it the government's role to protect? Are these merely moral ideals which good people in a civil society should aspire to, or should the government enforce that people should not be required to be exposed to some thing and be required to be exposed to others?

Rather than case by case answers, I am looking for a small set of consistent principles by which questions like this can be answered. I still haven't found a solution I like.

Posted by Steven at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 03, 2005

Movies : The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I've never heard the original radio drama which started this mess. However, I have read the books which were based on the radio drama, I have seen large parts of the BBC TV series which was based on the books, and now I have seen the movie.

It was... different.

Not necessarily bad, but different.

The books were amazing. They were a balanced mix of absurd British humor, amazing Sci-fi, and yes there was a point in there someplace (having, of course, to do with not having point).

The BBC miniseries, completely captured the absurd British humor; but the special effects were laughably bad and therefore it missed the mark on the sci-fi aspects, and I'm not really sure there was any sense of it saying anything.

The movie appears to be a compliment to the TV series. The special effects were wondrous (I loved the effects of the Infinite Improbability Drive), and it most definitely has a point to be made if you paid attention; but a lot of the humor seemed to have been lost. Don't get me wrong – it was quite funny, in an American Comedic Film kind of way; but the total absurdity of the books was, in my opinion, lost.

So my suggestion is – read the books; or if you can't read the books, watch the movie and the BCC TV series (available on DVDs for $30-ish) and shake your head well to mix them together.

Posted by Steven at 08:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 04, 2005

Introspection : Thinking on the edge

One observation I made about myself long ago was that I am drawn to subjects that examine the transitions between other fields of study. As an example:

On the one hand you have chemistry which deals with a small set of very simple mechanisms. On the other hand, you have biology which can involve with very complex systems and behaviors. Neither of these sciences has ever been of great interest to me in their own right. What I am however enthralled by is biochemistry – how in the world do you produce all of those complex biological systems using only chemistry. For instance, how does the ear transform the mechanical energy of sound into bioelectric impulses in nerves? Microphones do it using various techniques which use things like coils of wires or quartz crystals which I know we don't have in our ears. So how does it work? (The answer is kind of cool – to me at least.)

Similar questions which I have been drawn to are: How does "society" appear out of individual behavior? How do you get a computer's CPU out of Boolean logic? How do our bodies with various different organs form out of a single cell dividing itself? How does a "mind" (whatever that means) form out of a brain composed of nerve cells?

All that is "old news" in my quest for self-understanding.

What I have just recently begun to understand is that this is just another way in which my life revolves around translation (see my previous post). After all, what biochemistry provides is the "translation" from the language of biology to the language of chemistry. Sociology provides the translation from the language society to the language of the individual.

It is very satisfying to see the pieces come together like this.

Posted by Steven at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 06, 2005

Web : In Praise of Wikipedia

I am a moderate believer in the Open Source movement. I believe strongly that having many minds generating ideas and many eyes checking for errors has very real benefit. On the other hand, I also believe that there is also value for consistency of vision and style in many endeavors which moderates (but may not eliminate) the net benefit of many minds/eyes. The result is that, in my opinion, the value of Open Source depends a lot on the project in question.

As it turns out, writing an encyclopedia is one of those projects for which Open Source is so ideally suited that the results are astounding. What you want for an encyclopedia is the largest possible collection of experts you can get on a diverse variety of subjects, with as many people as you can get fact-checking the results. What you get when you apply the Open Source philosophy to this problem is the Wikipedia.

I have found the Wikipedia so useful that I doubt I will ever use another encyclopedia again. After all, why would I use the Encyclopedia Britannica with 120,000 entries written by 4000 contributors when I could look at the which has 550,000 entries written by over 13,000 regular contributors (and many times that number of single-article editors). I have yet to look something up and not find what I was looking for (and some of my queries are fairly obscure).

If you have never looked at the Wikipedia, I would strongly suggest giving it a try.

Posted by Steven at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 07, 2005

Thoughts : Saying Farewells

Being middle age now, those individuals who I appreciated for their contributions to culture and society when I was young, have begun to depart this realm with increasing frequency. This is just the nature of things.

What I noticed today however was my disparate reaction to the deaths of various kinds of people.

When a politician I admired passes away, I tend to summarize their contribution in my mind; but there is no sense of loss. Perhaps it is because most have (or should have) retired by the time they die, so there is no sense of "what they might have done"; but even with those who died young, there is gratefulness for what they did; but no emotions bound to what they left incomplete..

In much the same way, when an actor dies, it is a time for me to recall their great performances; but the fact that there will be no "next movie" or "next show" doesn't seem to effect me much.

On the other hand, when a songwriter I have liked dies, I do tend to feel some sense of loss – that there will never be another song by them. My strongest reactions however are reserved for when authors I have loved pass on. The sense that there will be no "next book" tends to weigh very heavily on me. I recall when I heard that Roger Zelazny (one of my youthful favorites) had died, that it brought me to tears. To never hear the end of the Madwand saga – that, for me, was loss. The death of Robert Forward, even though I knew he was failing, was also a sad moment for me.

I think the difference is in the uniqueness of individual voices in the different media. In politics, no cause moves forward unless there are many people speaking with a common voice, so the loss of one voice, however eloquent, does not end the cause. Actors, by the nature of their job, speak with someone else's voice, so their uniqueness is lost in the role. Songwriters do have their own voice; but so many songs get reinterpreted by different musicians that that uniqueness gets blurred somewhat.

Books however always remain the clear and unique voice of the author (or authors). While they may get adulterated in TV or film, the original book will always continue to speak clearly in a way that only that author could have produced; and when you have grown to love that voice, to know it has been silenced forever is difficult to process.

Or perhaps it is just that books are a more intimate form of interaction – Author to Page to Reader, which lull you into thinking of the author as a friend where more collaborative ventures, like film, keep their distance.

Posted by Steven at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 09, 2005

Web : Self-Referential Aptitude Test

I do not want this blog to become yet another list of interesting links to other things on the web (there are plenty of people already doing that very well – see Blues News or Boing Boing for two good examples). However, occasionally there is something which I find so compelling that I have to pass it on. This is one of those – a fascinating logic puzzle I ran across:

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~propp/srat-Q

I haven't solved it yet (I am at work and really shouldn't spend the time here); but have already spotted a few constraints just reading down the list.

Posted by Steven at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Introspection : Being vs. becoming successful

For large parts of my life the principle "For unto whom much is given, much will be required" was a curse. I won't spend time on examples here; but I clearly was among those to whom much had been given, and I felt pressure to achieve some great legacy with those gifts to justify my existence. The problem was that the pressure to achieve quite often sapped the very energy I needed to make those accomplishments by driving me into depression about how little I thought I had done.

I was someone who had desire to do a great many things, and I did have the ability to actually achieve them individually. As a result I often became overwhelmed by what a small percentage of all of those possibilities I had actually managed to accomplish. This however was unfair. A more realistic appraisal is that there just isn't enough time in one life to do all of the things I wanted to do, no matter how focused I was (and if I had tried to do it all, I would not have enjoyed any of it). When I compare what I have done with what I actually had the time to do, I fair much better.

Fortunately, I am getting beyond this now. My release from this bondage has come in two forms.

First, I can now recognize that:
1) Being granted 8 patents (with 6 more pending) for inventions I had made…
2) Serving as software architect for a fortune 500 company …
3) Teaching some of the classes I have taught to pass on what I have learned…
...would count as a successful legacy in any rational definition of that term. Sure, I "could" have done more; but I've done fairly well so far and I'm not done yet.

Second, I have begun to be more deliberate in thinking about what specifically I want to do with the rest of my life. To that end I have been thinking a lot about what I want to focus on doing, and what I will simply discard as good things but "not in this lifetime". For instance I love games, and love designing games. I have a folder full of game ideas that I have accumulated over the years. However, even if that was all I did, I would not be able to develop all of those games in a complete lifetime. So I have selected 2 game ideas to "keep", and have set the goal to develop one of them. The rest I am giving up on. I'm doing the same thing with every one of my other interests - deciding what subset I realistically think I can accomplish without burning myself out, and setting myself free of the burden of the rest.

Some people are burdened by the physical clutter they have accumulated in their lives - all of "stuff" they own imposes a psychological burden on them. The physical stuff in my life does not affect me that way. Instead I find myself burdened by the mental clutter of projects I have accumulated to do, and am finding cleaning my mental house to be quite a pleasant release.

Posted by Steven at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 10, 2005

Faith : Faith and Skepticism

There is a common belief in religious circles that faith and skepticism are opposing principles: That to question religious teachings or phenomena is the same as showing a lack of faith. The result is that many people choose to believe things simply because they think that questioning them is inherently wrong, and often do so to the detriment of themselves and others.

I have a slightly different take on this. My faith is in God. I do believe in him, and trust him implicitly. Conversely, my faith is not in people, including myself. I have no inherent trust in anyone's ability (including my own) to always accurately discern the intent and actions of God. I do not see being skeptical about people's claims about God as any kind of violation of my faith in God himself. In fact believe that my faith in God requires that I be very cautious about what other people claim about him. I believe questioning such things is the only way to ensure that my understanding of God and my faith in him is based on the truth and not misunderstandings (or worse, deceptions).

This applies to teaching - I try to be very open to hearing other points of view, but I also do extensive research before actually changing my own beliefs. It also applies to religious phenomena - things people claim are "acts of God" (healings, signs, miracles, etc.). The truth is that many "miracles" have other reasonable explanations as well. That isn't to say that that such events can't be the work of God; but I put less weight on a claim if I can also explain it by other means. A result is that I tend to categorize religious phenomena in one of three ways:

1) Events for which I have no other reasonable explanation and am comfortable attributing to God.
2) Events which have other reasonable explanations; but for various reasons (often context or consistency) I have decided to attribute to God regardless.
3) Events which have other reasonable explanation where I believe the other explanations are more compelling (often because the events are inconsistent with my understanding of God's character).

The last category is by far the largest; but the first category is by no means empty. I'll also note that I don't believe in God because of the things in the first category - I have faith in God for reasons unrelated to such proof. However, supporting evidence is always appreciated.

Posted by Steven at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 12, 2005

Thoughts : What type are you?

Given that I'm an introspective kind of person, I love personality tests and personality type systems. I'll love taking the tests and seeing if they provide any insight into who I am. And there are a whole lot of personality type systems out there. Most are developed by one institute or researcher, and tend to be used by a very small group of people. While I'll sample these, I'm always concerned that without independent verification of results, the chances of their being flawed are significant.

There are only three systems I have discovered which are sufficiently wide spread that there is extensive 3rd party literature to support them.

The first is the "four temperaments" model. The bottom line for me that with only 4 options, it is way to granular to be of much use. Too many people with too many variations get grouped together for it to be very interesting. I think it is a good system to simply teach someone that not everyone is alike, but beyond that I wouldn't bother.

The second and by far the most popular is the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). With 16 options (even though they are not evenly distributed in the population), the groups start getting small enough to actually be useful, and there is a multitude of books and web sites about MBTI. The problem I have had with MBTI is that it never seems to tell me anything about myself that I didn't already tell it. I'll answer questions like: I do A instead of B, I do C instead of D, and I do E instead of F. It will then tell me that I'm an "INTP", and when I look at the literature of what it means to be an INTP, it says "INTP's are people who do A, C, and D." Well, I already knew that – I told the system that much! As a means for personal insight, I have just never found MBTI to be very useful.

On the other hand, there is a lot of useful literature on how different MBTI types interact. If you are an INTP manager with an ENTF employee – what should you do to effectively manage them? If you are an ESTJ husband with an ISFP wife, what should you keep in mind? MBTI is excellent for that kind of insight.

The third system is the Enneagram model. Enneagrams have 9 main categories with 2 subcategories each, so there are really 18 different personality types (although if you look at the model closely, the personality types are actually in a continuum where any angle of a circle is actually a distinct type, but the testing methodology can only distinguish roughly 20-degree differences). Enneagrams also have extensive literature (although the system has been adopted by some new-age groups, so you may need to sift out the psychobabble). The fundamental difference between MBTI and Enneagrams is that MBTI is predominantly a model of different types of behavior – kind of an outside-in model; while Enneagrams is a model of different kinds of motivations that drive people – it models from the inside-out. The result is that it is very good for people who are trying to achieve self-knowledge since it goes a level deeper than MBTI. As with MBTI there is also extensive literature on how different Enneagrams interact at home and in the workplace.

The main problem with Enneagrams is that because the tests are trying to analyze not what you do but why you do it, it can be difficult to get a good reading on your Enneagrams type without professional help. Unless you understand yourself already, it is easy to mislead the tests. Some Enneagrams tests try to get around that by trying to derive your motivation from your actions, but that also is flawed. The first Enneagrams test I took ended up putting me in completely the wrong category. However, once I did identify my correct type, it was well worth it – the descriptions provided a lot of information I had never thought of before; but proved to be exceptionally accurate in hindsight.

A good place to start to learn about Enneagrams is the Enneagram Institute.

Oh, and by the way, I am a very balanced between a Four and a Five (in the terms of the system I am either a Four with a very strong Five wing, or a Five with a very strong Four wing.) Looking at myself either way has provided useful insights.

Posted by Steven at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : 2878 Negatives scannned and....

... finished! With the negatives at least. I have a small collection of prints for which there are no negatives that I need to scan; but I should be able to do that in a day or two. Then I will have my entire collection in digital, finally. Another week or two and I should be able to start putting up albums.

Posted by Steven at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 13, 2005

Introspection : Just how weird am I?

Was thinking last night about the manner in which I have always daydreamed. A typical scenario from my youth: I imagine myself to be the captain of a starship, I walk on to the bridge of my ship and… I start to wonder: what does the bridge look like? Who is on it? What are their jobs? How is the crew organized? What does the rest of the ship look like? How do the engines work? Often several days worth of daydreaming later I would have a clear picture in my mind of what the ship and crew are like; down to details of crew rotation, and how the controls are arranged at various stations, and then I pick up the story…. I walk on to the bridge of my ship and sit in the captain's chair and ask for a report on enemy ship positions….. Enemy ships? Who are they? Why are we at war? What kind of government am I serving? How did that government come to power? Do we have allies? If there are aliens, what are they like? How do they eat? Talk? Reproduce? Do they view the world differently from us? What other ways are there to view the world? Another several days worth of daydreaming later…. Well, you get the idea. My daydreaming, as far back as I can remember, has always been 5% story telling and 95% trying to understand the context in which the story is set.

Of course, this is just a reflection of how I think when I'm not daydreaming. I am driven to understand "the big picture". I constantly need that map in my head that says "you are here" and shows what is around me, and being in circumstance where I don't know the lay of the land is very uncomfortable to me. I think you can see how I ended up doing well as a software architect where the job is all about "the big picture".

Posted by Steven at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 14, 2005

Books : Courtship Rite

Most of the books I consider to be masterpieces of fantasy or science fiction – book like The Rings Trilogy, The Foundation Series, Dune, Fahrenheit 451, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Ringworld, Neuomancer, Ender's Game, etc. are well known and well appreciated. There is however one book I believe strongly is in the same categories as these but which seems to have slipped by the wayside, and in fact is currently out of print – "Courtship Rite", by Donald Kingsbury (published as "Geta" in the UK). It did get nominated for a Hugo Award, but lost to Azimov's Foundation's Edge, and seems to have been promptly forgotten despite all it has to offer.

The book starts out as a kind of fantasy story about primitive people who practice cannibalism and polygamy (which may in fact be why it has not done so well); but if you read past that you soon discover the story is more complicated and interesting, and a lot of what is going on is not as it seems at first.

What first attracted me to the story was that, despite being only about human beings, it presented one of the most alien societies I have ever seen depicted in fiction (certainly better than most "alien" societies shown is science fiction), and did so convincingly, providing by the end of the book a complete justification as to how this society came about.

This also provides a layer for mystery to the story - you quickly find yourself wondering how the author is going to explain a people who have not invented the wheel; but whose understanding of certain other sciences is superior to our own. (Hint: the characters use a lot of common words: god, priest, sacred, profane, etc.; but what they mean by them is a bit more involved then you might initially think).

But that's just the story. What has brought me back to re-read the book every 5-7 years are the ideas in it. If nothing else, it has some novel (and unfortunately impossible to implement in any society other than the one in the book) ideas about how to govern effectively. A representative government where a representative's voting strength is proportional to the number of people they represent, but a they can be called upon to recite the names of every one of their constituents from memory, and any they can not name are stricken from their tally. The chief executive is chosen by having the best record (carefully tracked) of accurately predicting the outcome of previous policy decisions. There's more; but I can't think of how to mention them without giving away plot points.

And then there is the books contribution to linguistics – the word "kalothi". When people talk about Darwinian evolution they talk about the "survival of the fittest". The book coins the word kalothi for the characteristic of fitness that makes one worthy of survival in that sense. To be of high kalothi is to say that society will benefit from your procreation, to be of low kalothi… well let just say we'd all be better off if people of low kalothi never had children (think of the annual Darwin Awards). I for one think kalothi is a rather useful word to have around.

By the way, Kingsbury is finally writing the sequel to Courtship Rite. Actually, the book he is writing now is the book he had wanted to write 25 years ago, and then decided to write the prequel - Courtship Rite - first instead.

Posted by Steven at 06:51 PM | Permalink

May 15, 2005

Thoughts : America the fearful?

In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed that people were driver by a hierarchy of needs that ran (from bottom to top) physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and actualization. The idea being that if someone's physiological needs were not met (they were not fed, they couldn't sleep, etc.) the person would ignore their other needs until those most fundamental needs were met. If their physiological need were met, they would concern themselves with safety, if they had their physiological needs and their need for safety met, they would concern themselves with the need to belong (which often manifests itself as the need for love); and so on. Only people who feel secure in the realms of physiological, safety, belonging, and esteem spend their energies on self-actualization, including issues which are only matters of principle.

While the formalization of the hierarchy was new, the ideas behind it had been understood by governments and sales people from time immemorial. If you want to get someone's attention, make them believe their more fundamental needs were threatened. Convince someone their sense of belonging is threatened (because their breath smells, or they don't buy the same beer as all the cool people, or people are changing the traditional values of the country so they won't belong any more), and they will listen to you – at least until someone else convinces them that their sense of safety is threatened (because a burglar is going to break into their home, or they are going to fall and not be able to get up, or people are going to attack their country).

Governments have always been very good at using threats to people's needs to get popular support (and to distract them from ethical issues which are at the top of Maslow's hierarchy). Actually making the citizenry happy is quite difficult; but making them afraid is easy. Some will read this as an indictment of the current administration – it isn't. Yes, I believe the Bush administration has been very adept as using people's fears to gain support and to distract them from moral questions; but they are far from alone in that behavior. I am hard pressed to come up with an administration in my lifetime that didn't play "the fear card". Perhaps President Carter avoided that; which may explain why his administration was relatively ineffective – he tried to appeal to America at the level of self-actualization – abstract ideas of right and wrong – when too many people were already concerned with more fundamental issues.

The news media also understands this well. The way to get someone to tune into your new broadcast or buy your newspaper is to promise to inform them about threats to their needs; and the lower the need in Maslow's hierarchy, the more people you will attract (if you only present threats to someone's esteem, you won't attract people who are already focused on belonging and safety). The result is with a press that is free to publish what they want, but who needs to attract money to pay for that ability, the best stories are those that describe threats to people's safety – crime, war, product safety, terrorism.

The result is that for at least the last generation (and clearly longer than that), the American people have been fed a steady diet of communication from government and media that they are not safe, and information is like food – you become what you eat. American's have become a frightened people. We are no longer the proud country we once were (pride is a matter of esteem, and it has been at least 50 years since the national discourse has worked at that level). Michael Moore has put forward the hypothesis that this is why American has become such a violent country. While I disagree with Moore on a great number of topics, I think he is right on that point. To be afraid is to be ready to defend yourself at a moment's provocation – violence naturally follows.

I don't know how to fix this. Given a free press and democracy, this may be the inevitable outcome. Alexis De Tocqueville thought so. I am just concerned that my generation may be the last one to experience a proud America that hold its head up high, as opposed to a cowering America striking out at any perceived threat without regard to the consequences.

Posted by Steven at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 16, 2005

Thoughts : Self deception vs. Self Improvement

It is generally considered a bad thing when people pretend to be something they are not. Phrases like "living a lie" and "self deception" come up. On the other hand, it is generally considered to be a good thing when someone tries to improve themselves – changing who they are to become someone better. My question is – how do you draw the line? What makes one person "deceived" and another person "improved"? Is a shy person who tries to be outgoing denying their nature or enhancing themselves? How about an angry person who tries to be more peaceable?

My own answer is that it depends on two factors – self knowledge and motivation. First, for it to be a good thing to try and behave differently one must start with an understanding of you are. Simply acting in some manner because you believe (for whatever reason) "you should" without understanding how that relates to who you really are is deception because it does not recognize your current true nature. Second, for it to be a good thing to try and behave differently, you have to be motivated by your own choice, not someone else's preference. To act some way because your parents, or spouse, or friends, or co-workers think you should act that way is deceiving everyone as to who you are. It is only when you take a clear and honest assessment of yourself and choose to change for your own reasons does it become "Self Improvement".

Posted by Steven at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 18, 2005

Books : author Neal Stephenson

I have three categories into which I sort fiction authors: At the bottom are those great numbers of authors who I will only purchase if and when someone recommends a specific work. This is where all author's start, and where most stay. Above that are those authors who I have read and enjoyed, and am willing to purchase their books based only on the basis that they wrote them; but will do so only when those books are available in paperback. At the apex of my hierarchy are those select authors by whom I am willing to purchase hardback books – both based on my desire to read them as soon as I can, and based on the assumption that I am most likely to lend those books and want them to survive the inevitable mistreatment they will need to endure.

At various times in my life, there have been many different authors who have reached that top platform, although most have not stayed – either because they ceased to produce books I valued or because they simply cease to produce book (often because of their death). Currently there are only two authors who I purchase hardbacks by: Orson Scott Card, and Neal Stephenson. Perhaps someday I will comment on Orson Scott Card, but today I was thinking about Neal Stephenson.

I have grown to truly enjoy Neal Stephenson in large part because his books can be appreciated on so many levels.

First and foremost, they are "ripping yarns" – stories full of action and adventure that are sure to entertain. His last trilogy had pirates, harems, galley slaves, court intrigue, sword fights, assassinations, bombs, mad noblemen, hidden treasure, and so on. In terms of story, his works compare well to Alexandre Dumas (musketeers, et. al.)

Second, his is one of the finest pure wordsmiths working today. Most authors make art in the story they tell, in the characters they create, in the ideas they present; their words however only the means to present that art. They are clear and effective; but are not themselves to be admired beyond what they present. Stephenson however does all that and creates art with the words themselves. Some have compared him to Hemmingway, but Stephenson reminds me more of William Faulkner.

Third, I enjoy Stephenson for the volume of esoterica he manages to include in his novels. Whether it is the fine details of how public executions were conducted in the early 1700's in England, to how justice is served in a future earth when governments have all but disappeared. I'll note however in his historical novels, it is caveat lector – let the reader beware. While ninety percent of what he says is historically accurate, that ten percent which is pure fiction can be hard to sort out (particularly since the truth often is stranger than fiction). If you really want to know "did they really do that", I would suggest checking on the metaweb – a site dedicated to annotating Stephenson's books for what is real and what is fiction.

Finally, I enjoy Stephenson for his themes. Two examples:

"Snow Crash" is a Science Fiction novel which at a high level examines what would happen if the extreme elements of Libertarian Party got their way where government dissolved into the free market and everything was privatized and franchised (with, for instance, competing franchise jail companies competing to detain you when you got arrested). At a lower level it is about the question: is the human mind just a computer, and if so, what is its operating system like?

The Baroque Cycle: "Quicksilver" "The Confusion" and "The System of the World" is a trilogy of historical novels set around the start of the 18th century. These days it is common to talk about "atoms vs. bits". How the world of delivering atoms (things like books, CDs, etc.) is giving way to the world of delivering bits (things like the web, MP3 files, etc.). We may be nearing the end of that transition now, but The Baroque Cycle is about the age when that transition started. This is when "value" first started to become virtualized: when paper money started to replace gold and silver, when knowledge started to be recognized as being more valuable than property.

I would also recommend "The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (a sequel of sorts to "Snow Crash") and "Cryptonomicon" (written before the Baroque cycle; but set in modern day with many of the decendants of the characters from the trilogy). I would, alas, not recommend "Zodiac" (one of his early books, written before "Snow Crash")

I've heard no rumor yet on what Stephenson's next project is; but I have every intention of buying it in hardback as soon as it comes out.

Posted by Steven at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 19, 2005

TV : Fall TV 2005, Part 1

The new Fall TV schedules from the main networks have come out, and I thought I'd comment

The dearly departed:

"Eyes" - It fell of my list after a few episodes, but I always thought it was good as pure entertainment. Actually surprised this wasn't a keeper as it seemed to have the kind of profile the networks look for.

"Joan of Arcadia" - I liked the start of the first season a lot – the way they presented God in the first few episodes matched my own experience fairly well (minus the little girl in deeley-boppers). By midseason it started to diverge, and in season 2 what they presented as god was unrecognizable to me.

"Jack and Bobby"- It fell off my list a while ago; but I had so hoped it would succeed. It was, at least, a new approach for a show. Too bad they made the characters themselves so boring.

"Tru Calling" – Dead mid-season; but I'll miss it. They managed to keep coming up with variations on the basic story to keep it interesting. Still, I decided not to pick up season DVDs, so it wasn't that good.

"Enterprise" – At its best it did fulfill the promise of giving us the back-story behind the well known franchise (just how did the federation start?). At its worst, it was drivel; but then again, what Star Trek series can you not say that of.

Staying:
ABC maintains control of my remote with Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy. West Wing moves to Sunday. My guess with a new president coming in, they want to move it out of the way of the "Lost" juggernaut. Medium and House are back.

I'll post some comments on the new shows later.

Posted by Steven at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TV : Fall TV 2005, Part 2

Here's my $0.02 on some of the new shows:

"E-Ring" – Drama about the inner workings of the Pentagon, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. This has been getting a lot of advance buzz about the quality of the writing. Plus it stars Benjamin Bratt and Dennis Hopper. This is near the top of my list of shows to try.

"Commander in Chief" – Dramedy about the first female President. Co-produced by the guys behind the series "Century city" (which I liked) and the outstanding move "The Contender". I'd be more optimistic if they were promoting it as a Drama (with humorous moments like West Wing) as opposed to a Drama-Comedy.

"Invasion" – the aliens are already here, being hidden by a conspiracy in a coastal town. While I almost always give new sci-fi at least a one episode try, the only reason I am even slightly optimistic about this one is that Tommy Schlamme (West Wing, Sports Night, Ally McBeal, Boston Public) is involved. If he thinks this is worth his time, perhaps it is.

"Threshold" – alien spaceship is found in the ocean and a team of experts is recruited to make first contact. This is actually getting some good buzz on dealing with real-world issues.

"Fathom" – strange new life forms start showing up in the oceans. What are they and where do they come from? Are they terrestrial or alien? Yet another series to mix aliens and oceans. It'll get my 1 episode; but I'm not optimistic.

"Kitchen Confidential" – a fictional sitcom loosely based on Anthony Bourdain. I liked Bourdain's non-fiction book about being a chef in New York, and it certainly had funny parts. I will give this a try, although sitcoms rarely stay on my watch list.

"Prison Break" – An engineer whose brother is wrongly imprisoned tries to break him out. Has my attention simply because it’s a novel idea for a show, and those are rare. Have no idea how they could keep this going for very long.

"Reunion" – A 20th high school reunion provides the frame for a series composed mostly of flashbacks about how a group of friends evolved as adults. The idea provides some real possibilities (but I thought the same thing about "Jack and Bobby"). The producer (Jon Harmon) has done some good work before (Tru Calling, American Dreams).

Posted by Steven at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

Thoughts : Political Theory and the right to travel

What reasonable limits should exit to someone's right to travel?

Imagine you were setting up a global federation which respected each country's right to govern itself, while at the same time recognized an individual's right to choose what government to live under. This question actually came from a story idea I worked on once. The situation there was a bit more complicated; but I think I can pose the questions without going into more detail.

I started with two principles:
1) A government should have the right to determine who can enter its territory
2) A government has no right to limit someone's ability to leave their territory

That sounded like a good start. Bad governments would be limited in their ability to survive, because people would just leave. People may not always be able to live where they want (the best government would likely need to impose access limits); but they should be able to find reasonable places to live.

Then I hit a problem – criminals. The simple statement of rule 2 implies that a government could not limit all of its criminals from simply leaving. OK, such people might find it hard to find another country to allow them in, so perhaps the solution is:

2) A government has no right to limit someone's ability to leave their territory as long as those individuals have a destination where they will be accepted.

If course, for this to be effective, there would also need to be rules prohibiting governments from interfering with someone's ability to seek asylum elsewhere. This was starting to get complicated; but not impossible.

Then I hit a bigger problem – spies and operatives supported by foreign governments. With the rules above, if a government arrested someone for performing an assassination on behalf of a foreign power, they couldn't hold them because the assassin would simply request and get asylum from their home government. That's not good.

The problem was to find a set of principles which would allow reasonable prosecution of foreign agents while at the same time not allowing a tyrannical government from simply declaring its whole population to be criminals and therefore ineligible to depart. Obviously you could do this by establishing a whole legal code at the federal level – defining what offenses were "legitimate" and which were not, but that would represent a significant limit to each governments own autonomy, and I was wanting to avoid that.

What I ended up planning to use in the story (and I was never happy with this) was that the federation actually maintained a "prison colony". Individuals could petition to serve whatever sentence they had been given at the federation's colony instead of in the country in which they were convicted. The federation could not change the sentence that had been given to an individual; but would ensure that the prisoners were humanely treated. I think it would have worked in the story (which I still have never written); but at a political philosophy level, I'm not happy that that's the best solution I could come up with.

Posted by Steven at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 21, 2005

Life : My Fiftieth post

This is my 50th post to this blog (not counting comments)! Time for a look back and a mini-celebration.

My goal was to average one post a day. I reached 50 posts in 55 days. I'm comfortable with that. What surprises me is that the word-count on those posts totals about 20,000 words. At that rate I'll be producing a reasonable sized book every year!

For those who may wonder, I really do think about all these things on a normal basis (as well as many more subjects that never come together well enough to write about). Most of the time my post is about something I thought about that day. Occasionally I'll have multiple topics to write about and too little time to write, and I'll hold over a topic for a later day. I also try and mix up my posts so if someone starts reading they have a variety of recent posts to look at. That also can result in a post being delayed if I've done too many similar posts recently. As a result I currently have a back-log of 3 ideas for posts I have not written. The days I miss making a post are almost always because of lack of time to write as opposed to lack of things to write about.

There are many reasons I started this blog. One of them was just to provide some kind of outlet for all the random thinking I do. It feels good to get it down on bits, regardless of who may read it. Of course, I also want people to read it. My hope is that at least occasionally I get someone else thinking too. From the comments I have received, I feel comfortable that I am being successful in that regard as well.

Thank you all for your support, particularly Anne, my patient wife.
(BTW – she too has a blog: "Midlife Memoirs: A Middle-Aged Midwesterner in Exile")

Posted by Steven at 08:23 AM | Permalink

Faith : The pleasure of service

Today my church held a free car wash. We didn't do it to raise money - we refused when people offered to make a donation (and some people tried very hard to give us money). We really didn't even do it to promote the church - we did tell people who we were (mostly so they wouldn't be afraid to let us touch their cars); but other than that said nothing unless they asked specific questions. We didn't want people to feel that the "price" of the free car wash was listening to us. The goal was just to be nice to people – to show God's love in a practical way independent of trying to get anything out of it.

I had a great time.

It brought back memories from when I was in university and was a member (brother) of Alpha Phi Omega – a national service fraternity. APO is organized around doing service projects through the school year, and I was a member of one of the most active chapters (Alpha Chi at MIT), which was quite proud of its record of holding a service project every week. Not ever brother participated in every event; but the chapter always managed to do something every week.

I always enjoyed those projects I joined - just doing something for someone else, with no strings attached. Also, given that I was "in my head" all week doing classes, studies, homework, labs, going out on the weekend for what was usually some mindless physical labor was a nice contrast (we are particularly enjoyed "destruction projects" where we need to tear something down for someone).

Of course, my service via APO was secular in nature – just reflecting my own desire to be of service, while this weekend's project added to that a desire to express my understanding of God's desire to bless people. I think some Christian churches get too "religious" and forgets how much time Jesus spent just helping people out. On the other hand I have also visited churches where everything was about helping people and words like "sin" and "redemption" are never heard. A balance needs to be found between loving people and telling them the truth. I like the balance the congregation I am part of has found.

Posted by Steven at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 23, 2005

Thoughts : A message on the medium

This weekend, the local newspaper left copies of their Sunday edition on everyone's doorstep in our neighborhood, regardless of whether they were subscribers. I assume this was a promotion mechanism, trolling for new subscribers.

I used to be an avid newspaper reader – reading every issue of both the Wall Street Journal and the local paper. I did this to the exclusion of watching new programs on the TV (although there was a time when I would watch Headline News over breakfast). The newspapers provided me with something which was at one point unique – a high volume of information that I could access on demand. TV news provided a much smaller amount of information, and I had to watch it when and in what order they chose to provide it.

Of course, what changed my newspaper-reading habits was the internet. I now get all of my news from web sites that aggregate news stories form other sources (like news.yahoo.com), and I ignore both TV and paper news. The Internet provides an even greater volume of information, and finding those few stories I want to read is even easier. For me, print news media is dead.

That got me thinking about other media.

Radio is still very much alive to me; and despite one threat, I expect it to remain so for a long time. What radio provides is background. I can listen to the radio while I am engaged in some other activity, such as driving. It does not demand my attention; but provides stimulus to the exact degree to which I am willing and able to pay attention. There is a clear place for such a medium in my life.

The one threat to radio is my iPod, which provides a similar experience profile. When Anne and I drove across the US a couple years ago, the soundtrack of that experience came almost entirely from Anne's iPod as it allowed us to drive without constantly having to find new stations (we do not have an XM satellite radio system). Yet even though I own an iPod, I still use the radio. I think the reason is because radio provides access to new content, while my iPod is full of content that I already know I like, and in simple terms, there are times I want to rest in the comfort of the known and there are times I want to experiment with the new. I am also aware of the existence of "pod casting" (new content created to be downloaded into an iPod and listened to at your leisure); but I just find it easier to turn on a radio when I am looking for something new.

This brings us to TV, which anyone who reads this blog knows is certainly "alive" for me. TV is where I go for dramatic presentations. I think however that this is just a matter of production economics and not any inherent superiority of the medium. I already watch DVDs on my computer, and have enjoyed watching dramatic presentations on the internet when they are available (see Atom Films for a great source). However, people are still working out how to make real money publishing dramatic content on the web, and until that is clear, most content will still be available only (initially?) on TV. This will however inevitably change – someday people will find a good model for funding real productions to be distributed on the web, and when that happens, TV may well go the way of newspapers.

I also realized while writing this entry that just as Radio and my iPod serve related but complimentary purposes, TV is complimented by… DVDs. I have a fair collection of DVDs of both movies and TV series, and I do watch them when I want something "comfortable" – something I already know I enjoy. I also pull out DVDs when I want to re-experience an emotion that I know a show inspired in me – very much like playing an album on my iPod that matches my mood. TV of course is where I go to look for new content (some of which will inevitably be added to my DVD collection in time).

Posted by Steven at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 24, 2005

Life : Announcing "Gallery SZY"

I now have the start of my photo gallery up and running: "Gallery SZY". The first exhibition is my collection of photos related to GCC. If you are an former employee of GCC, please help me add names to faces here. Thanks.

Posted by Steven at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 25, 2005

Web : Fresh Links

OK, 2 links I have run across recently:

Here's a site with some really cool furniture – the kind Theodore Geisel would have designed:

Straight Line Designs

I particularly like "bad table" under "furniture" and "melting 2" under "cabinets".

Also if you have a half hour to burn, check out this flash movie. It’s a dead-pan presentation by (fictional) drug company on their latest research. Lots of subtle humor at the expense of drug companies and the state of Texas.

The Next Big Thing

Posted by Steven at 09:29 AM | Permalink

Thoughts : Passion: Virtue of Vice?

I saw Star Wars, Episode III recently.

Short review: good film. I haven't seen Empire Strikes Back recently, so it is hard to say which is better; but they are at least in the same league. The only problem with Revenge of the Sith is that you need to watch Episodes I and II to set it up.

It did however get me thinking (what doesn't?). One of the main subtexts of the movie is that "Passion" inevitably leads to "Evil". The Sith gain their power by drawing on their passion, and this leads them to the "dark side". The Jedi however guard against all kinds of passion and therefore stay on the path of the light side. In all three of the prequel episodes, Anakin is cautioned against passion – even love – as those kinds of attachments lead to fear and anger which lead to evil. We see this with his mother in Episode II, and with Padme in Episode III.

I'm old enough to have seen the original Star Wars in the theatre, and I remember one reviewer (I think it was someone at the New York Times) who commented that this was a film where "the humans talked like robots and the robots talked like humans". While I have always chalked that up to bad writing and acting, I'm starting to wonder now. If "passion" leads to evil, then it would follow that our heroes in the film would need to be relatively passionless. Unfortunately, "passionless" is very close to "boring". I note that the two films which stand out as superior are those in which the protagonist, at least temporarily, gives in to passion: Luke abandoning his training to save his friends, and Anakin to try and save Padme.

So, what's so wrong with passion anyway? I have served as a manager for much of my career, and hired many people. I have always been very explicit about trying to hire "passionate" people. I want to be surrounded by people who are emotionally involved in their work. I'll admit that one result of this is that one should not bring flammable materials to a design meeting of a team I built (and having sound proof rooms is an advantage); but I stand by my belief that once we do all agree on a design, the result is amazing and well worth all of the effort.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if I lived in a "galaxy far far away", I would be a sith and not a jedi.

Posted by Steven at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 26, 2005

TV : "Dude, you've got some Arzt on you"

Watched the season finale of Lost last night. As usual, Hurley gets all of the best lines (see title of this post). In general - entertaining episode.

My original feeling was that they really needed to provide an answer to at least one of the questions pending on the show, while adding a few more for next season (see the season finale for "Desperate Housewives" for what I was expecting). They took a different route - providing additional information on each question, but not really answering any of them, and then leaving big cliffhangers for next season. I'm not sure I'm quite satisfied; but I am certainly planning to watch next season.

Warning - spoilers follow. Don't read further unless you have seen the show.




The Hatch
Well, they have it open, it goes _way_ down, and the ladder is broken. While that plot has certainly moved ahead, I don't think we really know anything more than we did.

Danielle Russo (the French woman)
I don't think she was the one who kidnapped Claire to begin with (that was Ethan and The Others as originally presented). My guess is that she actually helped Claire escape from The Others; but then wanted Claire to stay with her instead of returning to our gang, and that was when Claire scratched Danielle. Danielle's plan all along was to keep Claire away from The Others so that Danielle could offer the baby in trade for her Alex.

The Others
I think The Others believe for some reason ("the island" told them?) that a child will save them. That's why they kidnapped Alex (Danielle's child) long ago, why they kidnapped Claire, and why they have now kidnapped Walt. I think Walt (being "special") is the one they are looking for.

Jin, Sawyer, & Michael
Their fate is definitely left undetermined at the end of the episode. My guess - Jin and Michael end up washing ashore clinging to wreckage of the raft at the start of next season. Sawyer is MIA (perhaps seen in flashbacks, so the actor gets paid); but we later discover that he was not shot (as it appears); but rather he shot the light out and deliberately dove in the water, and ended up clinging to The Others' boat to rescue Walt. I say that in part because of the conversation earlier in the episode about if Sawyer "is a hero or just wants to kill himself". My guess is a little of both and my theory above accomplishes that.

The "Monster"
Well, what we saw was certainly not what I expected. I think we have a whole lot more data now about The Monster (a.k.a. the island's "security system"); but no clearer idea of what exactly it is. Yes, that was a face (actually 2 faces I think) in the black cloud. The trees were not being knocked down; but blown up out of the ground. The Monster lives underground.

Also, there was something someone said after the pilot that I originally discounted; but went back and checked for myself and it turns out to be true. Look at the scene at about 5 minutes into the first episode. The guy gets sucked into the airplane engine, and then we get a shot from another angle of the engine blowing up. In the reverse angle shot, just before it blows up you can see two dark objects fly by the engine on non-ballistic (i.e. controlled) trajectories. One swoops down from above and then flies up, and another approaches the engine from the right and then flies away. The movement is definitely not debris flowing Newton's law of motion - it changes in direction in ways that imply powered flight.

Bottom line
I'm still waiting to see of JJ Abrams knows where this is headed or not. Nothing in the finale made me think he is making all this up as he goes along; but there was also no great revelation that made it clear that this is well planned. I'm still hanging on; but there better be a sign soon that this is all going to pay off.

Posted by Steven at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : Separation of Work and Home

Someone asked me Wednesday why I don't have a collection of pictures from other employers like I do from GCC. A good question, and not one for which I had a ready answer. There are certainly a lot of minor reasons:

- Photography as a hobby went on to my back burner after I met Anne... but that doesn't explain why I don't have pictures of Interleaf from before I met her.

- GCC was more photogenic than most of my employers (you can take only so many different pictures of generic cube farms).... But that doesn't explain why I don't have pictures from Apple, which was an even more visually interesting place.

- I liked working at GCC more so I took more pictures... but again, that doesn't explain why I don't have more pictures of Apple, which I also enjoyed a lot.

The conclusion I eventually came to was that I don't take pictures around the office these days because I tend to maintain a distinct separation between "work" and "home", and that in my mind I view photography as part of my "home" life and not a part of "work". GCC was however a special case. I had no life separate from work when I was at GCC. Even when I was away from the office doing "fun" things, I tended to do them with other people from GCC, so it all blended together. Since there was no distinction between "work" and "home", it was natural that I would take pictures in and out of the office with equal frequency.

Posted by Steven at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 28, 2005

Life : What is worth writing?

I have always aspired to write fiction.

I can recall at the age of 7 starting to write a novel (I was a precocious child). I even remember the first line, typed on an old manual typewriter that I kept on a makeshift desk in my closet (as with most writers, I craved solitude to work): "It was a stormy day in Eastport when the Martians came…." Not a prize winner (unless you count the Bulwer-Lytton prize); but I remain proud of the attempt.

Since then I have produced a fair collection of half finished (or less) stories; and a few, mostly done for school, which I actually finished. Before the computer, the volume of this unfinished effort was never apparent as eventually the older scraps of paper would scamper off to some hiding place, never to be seen again; but since my first computer, it has continued to grow unabated in the digital confines of my hard disk, faithfully transferred from host to host as I upgraded my system.

This is all in contrast to the equally growing stack of completed (and that's the key word) non-fiction essays I have collected. So why is it that I have such ease at finishing essays on complex subjects like quantum physics, religion, ethics and the like, yet seem unable to finish even short fiction works.

Recently I have been putting a lot of energy into cleaning out the clutter in my life. Not so much the physical clutter of possessions; but the psychological clutter of all of the things I want to do with my time. As part of that I have established standards for what kinds of games I am willing to spend my time playing, what kinds of books I will read, what kinds of TV shows I will watch, what kinds of movies I will attend. I'm not talking about moral standards (which I like to think I have always applied); but rather a recognition that I don't have time to do everything I want and therefore have to make some choices as to which things provide the greatest value for me.

In the process, what I have realized is that the kind of fiction I have tended to start to write was not the kind of fiction I would now be willing to invest my time to read. My stories tended to be entertaining fiction (either sci-fi or fantasy); but when you scratched the surface there was nothing underneath. I had nothing I was trying to say with my fiction beyond pure entertainment. When I did have something to say, I would tend to write a non-fiction essay on the subject, so all that was left for my fiction was providing a few hours distraction to people.

I think at some deep level, this is why I have had such a hard time finishing my fiction. I was not driven by some deep desire to say anything in particular, merely a desire to tell a good story; and therefore when I stumbled there was nothing within me that demanded that I get up and continue. This is not to say that the kinds of stories I was writing were bad, or not worth reading (I still believe many of them would have been quite enjoyable); just that I did not have the same passion driving me to produce them that I had when I wrote essays.

So I'm trying to decide now: am I content with only producing non-fiction? Or is there something I want to say which demands to be told in fiction? I think there is at least one story – one of the most challenging I have conceived – which stays something worth writing. It exists only in outline so far. I have always been too afraid to even start it as I was unsure I was up to the challenge. I had always hoped that after I had a few other books under my belt I would tackle this story.

I'm going to have to think about this more.

Posted by Steven at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

May 29, 2005

Thoughts : Rushing Union

So, the French people have rejected the EU constitution with 55% of the vote. The Netherlands are expected to follow suite on Wednesday with an even greater margin. Germany has approved it; but they never asked their people what they thought – Germany's "yes" vote was a purely legislative action.

Personally, I think a united, federal Europe is inevitable; but the leaders of the European Union are in too much of a rush and the current plans are doomed to failure.

When thirteen separate colonies in American decided to unite under a federal government, things were quite different. None had more than 200 years of independent existence. None had actually waged war against another. At least half the people spoke a common language.

In contrast, Europe has nations which have an independent history stretching over 1000 years; European countries have fought wars against each other within the lifetime of current citizens, and there is no common language. These are in my opinion significant barriers to overcome in a single generation.

Economic union is proving to be enough of a challenge for the time being. European leaders should focus on perfecting that before moving towards further political unity. Let the next generation, who will grow up with an economically united Europe, take the next steps toward a true federal Europe. I believe if people are patient, this fruit will fall when the time is right. Rushing it will only build resentment which will slow down the process.

Posted by Steven at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 30, 2005

Books : The Fourth Turning

The Fourth Turning By William Strauss and Neil Howe

I intentionally avoid books that propose to predict future trends as I have found them to be so useless as to be laughable. So I ignored the "The Fourth Turning", subtitled "An American Prophesy" when it was a best-seller in 1998. However, I recently had the book recommended to me, and I started reading it last night…. and I have been loath to put it down (I'm glad today was a holiday).

The bulk of the book (256 out of 333 pages), puts forth a thesis that history (and specifically Anglo-American history) is cyclical. That there are 4 kinds of generations that occur in a specific sequence (which the book refers to as Artists, Prophets, Nomads, and Heroes), and that there is a cycle of 4 periods of time (which the book refers to as High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis "Turnings") which correspond to each generation reaching a certain level of maturity: childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elder. So, the Hero generation is born in an unraveling, serve as adults in a crisis, reach midlife in the high, and are elders in an awakening, and then die off just as the next hero generation is born in the subsequent unraveling, so the whole cycle last approximately a "human lifetime".

The authors provide extensive research on this model, showing first the long history of cyclical models of history, going back to the Etruscans in 800BC; showing is detail how their theory relates to previous ones. Then they demonstrate quite admirably how it applies to Anglo-American history from 1430's to now. They even do one thing that raised my admiration significantly – they admit that there is a glitch around the American Civil War – that the war started 10-15 years earlier than they would have predicted, and therefore only half the expected actors were actually "on stage" when it occurred. As part of this explanation they acknowledge that while this cyclic pattern represents a tidal force in history, it can be temporarily diverted by events.

I also appreciate their answer to the question "Do historical events cause these transitions, or do the transitions cause the historical events?" Their answer is that generational transitions set up an environment for change; but that a catalytic event is often required to make the transition. The same event at other times would have less significant consequence on the society, and a many kinds of events can catalyze the transitions. Still, they recognize, the need for a catalytic event is one thing that make it impossible to predict exact years when changes will occur.

The final quarter of the book is by far the most interesting (and is hinted at throughout to keep the reader's interest). According to the authors' theory, about the year 2004 America should enter a new Crisis Turning, when the Hero generation born after 1982 will be led by the Boomer generation in government through some crisis which will reshape American society and set the stage for a new High turning to start in 2025 or so.

Now, keeping in mind that this book was written in 1997, back before the 2000 elections even started. Given that, some comments from the book:

"[an example of a crisis catalyst might be] A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft. ... The US and allies launch a preemptive strike [to prevent the deployment of nuclear weapons by terrorists]. Congress declares war and authorized unlimited house-to-house searches. Opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes."

Or

"What makes a crisis special is the public's willingness to let leaders lead even when they falter and let authorities be authoritative even when they make mistakes. Amid civic solidarity, mediocre leaders can gain immense popular followings; bad policies can be made to work (or at least be perceived to be working) and even a spectacular failure… does not undermine public support."

Or

" debates will commence on laws that radically shift the balance between individual rights and duties"

Or

"Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a sweeping political realignment as one faction capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action."

Or

"Criminal Justice will become swift and rough, trampling on some innocents to protect an endangered and desperate society from those feared to be guilty"

It book also predicts in the crisis turning, an increase in censorship as society rebels against its own perceived immorality.

Sound familiar?

This book is being added to my "must read" recommendation list to all of my friends.

Posted by Steven at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 31, 2005

Thoughts : Still Turning

I am still thinking through the book "The Fourth Turning" (see yesterday's post). Here's my quick summary of the cycle:

1. An event drives people band together for the common good. Individualism is (voluntarily) set aside for reasons of efficiency. Civic institutions are built up to strengthen the community.

2. A strong, conformist and efficient society becomes materially prosperous but spiritually weak. Non-conformity is treated harshly. Civic institutions reach their peak of power and prestige.

3. An event drives people to seek spiritual enlightenment. Civic institutions are challenged and torn down. Individualism is encouraged, and personal growth is valued over material gain.

4. An individualistic, but inefficient society supports spiritual development (as defined by the individual) but is materially weak - often a balloon waiting to burst. Remaining civic institutions are torn apart by culture wars because of such diverse and passionate views.

1(again). An event drives people band together for the common good....

BTW – according to their theory, what we were living in (at least up until 2001, perhaps later) was/is the equivalent of the roaring 20's, and we are at the start the equivalent of the cultural change that occurred during the great depression and WWII. They are not predicting a depression or a war, only that some event (my guess from hindsight is 9/11) will begin a cascade of changes in society which will increase government power, increase censorship, strengthen institutions over individuality, etc. Remember this was written in the 90's

Posted by Steven at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)