Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
Everything cultural that interests me: music, reading, science, arts in general, news, photography…
[fr] Chatons! Choupitude! Mais que de boulot!
It’s spring, we need kittens.
This is actually a sad story but it seems to be ending well. My brother’s mummy-cat disappeared a week after giving birth to her three kittens. She hasn’t been seen in over a week, so we fear she is gone for good.
That’s the sad bit.
The happy bit is that we’re hand-rearing the kittens and everybody is doing great. Expect cuteness.
Photos on Flickr, Facebook, and Google Plus (your pick of social network).
[en] In Torrevieja. Saw the most impressive rainbow I've ever seen (only iPhone photos, sorry). About to start my Day Skipper course, and interested in taking up kitesurfing.
Bon, article bateau, je sais, mais avant-hier, je crois bien que j’ai vu le plus bel arc-en-ciel de ma vie. 180° d’arc, double arc tout le long, luminosité magnifique, indigo visible. J’avais bien entendu laissé mon bon appareil de photo au bateau, alors je n’ai que des photos-iPhone.
Après l’orage, il fait beau ici à Torrevieja. Environ 20°C dehors (plus au soleil), nuits fraîches, bateau qui tangue juste ce qu’il faut. Demain, je commence mon cours de voile de 5 jours (Day Skipper) à la fin duquel j’aurai mon ICC. Le ICC est le papier qui est généralement demandé pour naviguer en mer dans les eaux territoriales. (Après, il y a ce qu’on est capable de faire, et c’est une autre histoire.)
Déjà en octobre dernier, j’avais remarqué de nombreux kitesurfs dans les parages. Le kitesurf, ça me fait toujours penser à Loïc, avide kitesurfeur. Je me souviens d’ailleurs d’une époque où une photo de lui faisant du kitesurf illustrait son blog (ou son compte Facebook? son blog, je crois).
Bref, ça me fait extrêmement envie, et je vais profiter de ces prochains jours pour me renseigner. Je suis sûre qu’il doit être possible de prendre des cours de kitesurf pour les jours où il y a tellement de vent qu’on n’a pas vraiment envie de naviguer!
[en] Many people without cats -- or with indoor cats -- wonder that I let my cats out (including at the chalet). Aren't you afraid they'll run off? Well, not too much. Here's how I proceed to introduce my cats to the outside.
J’ai des chats depuis à peu près 30 ans. J’ai toujours eu des chats qui sortaient. Pour moi, un chat, ça sort. Je comprends qu’on puisse voir les choses autrement, et ce serait peut-être mon cas si je n’avais pas la possibilité de vivre quelque part de “chat-compatible”. (J’ai choisi mon appartement exprès pour que mon chat puisse sortir, c’était une condition sine qua non quand je suis rentrée d’Inde avec Bagha.) Après, bien sûr, c’est tout à fait possible de s’occuper convenablement d’un chat d’intérieur — mais c’est du boulot!
Souvent, on me demande — et j’ai même entendu ça de gens habitant le même immeuble que moi! — “mais t’as pas peur qu’il se taille?”
Alors voilà, une réponse sous forme d’article. Non je n’ai pas peur (enfin pas trop peur), et voici pourquoi.
D’abord, les préliminaires. Avant de sortir, le chat doit
Le chat est territorial. Si c’est clair pour lui que dedans c’est son territoire, là où il y a du chaud, du doux, du miam, du glou, du ronron et des câlins, il ne va pas prendre ses cliques et ses claques comme ça et foutre le camp.
Par contre, le chat est un animal de nature plutôt timide. Il faut en tenir compte.
Pour sortir un chat, il y a pour moi deux clés:
La plupart des chats, quand ils explorent un nouvel extérieur, ils font 20m en avant, puis reviennent 20m en arrière, puis repartent 30m, reviennent, repartent un peu plus loin, etc. Bien sûr il y a toujours des exceptions comme Tounsi qui filent droit devant eux — mais on peut faire avec, j’en reparle. Si quelque chose fait peur au chat, il va plutôt essayer de revenir en terrain connu plutôt que de partir droit devant lui (mais ça peut arriver).
J’ai gardé mes nouveaux chats Tounsi et Safran à l’intérieur 3 semaines à peine, et c’était peut-être un peu juste. Ils ne me connaissaient pas avant, donc n’étaient encore pas vraiment en confiance. Avec Bagha, j’ai attendu beaucoup moins longtemps, mais c’était un chat que je connaissais et avec qui j’avais déjà vécu de longs mois.
Apprendre à un chat à venir quand on l’appelle (quand il veut bien) ce n’est pas extrêmement compliqué, avec un petit sachet de friandises. (On peut même aller plus loin et faire un peu de clicker training, ce qui est une excellente façon de créer un lien avec le chat.) Si le chat pige la fonction du sachet de friandises à l’intérieur, il y a toutes les chances que ça marche aussi dehors.
Avant de mettre le nez dehors, le chat doit bien entendu être pucé (faites d’ailleurs pucer même vos chats d’intérieur — c’est quand ils se retrouvent dehors de façon imprévue que la puce est utile!). Personnellement je prends une précaution supplémentaire: je mets au chat un collier avec une étiquette indiquant son nom et mon numéro de téléphone.
Pour Bagha, comme vous voyez ci-dessous, ça m’a été extrêmement utile pour indiquer aux gens chez qui il allait s’installer qu’il ne fallait pas le nourrir ni le garder longtemps dedans (il était vraiment sans-gêne, sans être tout à fait aussi envahissant que Tounsi).
Ensuite, il faut commencer par le début. La porte d’entrée. Pour que le chat revienne, il faut qu’il soit super familier avec “l’extérieur” juste derrière la porte. Alors on ouvre la porte, on la laisse ouverte, on sort, on laisse sortir le chat, qui probablement filera dedans au premier bruit un peu inquiétant. Il faut le laisser ressortir à sa vitesse. Si c’est un chat craintif et visiblement trop flippé, l’attirer dehors à coups de friandises (mais pas trop loin).
Je ne fais pas des séances “extérieur” trop longues au début. J’accompagne le chat, primo pour garder un oeil sur lui, deuxio pour qu’il s’habitue à ma présence dehors aussi. De temps en temps je l’appelle et je lui présente une friandise, histoire qu’il associe ma présence “en extérieur” à une gâterie.
Une fois que le chat commence à être à l’aise, peut-être après quelques sorties, il va s’éloigner de plus en plus. Là aussi je l’accompagne, et je profite pour l’encourager à rester dans les zones extérieures que j’aimerais qu’il s’approprie. Par exemple, chez moi, il y a quand même des routes pas loin. Je passe donc beaucoup de temps avec les chats devant et autour de l’immeuble, pour être sûre qu’ils sont bien là. Quand ils partent dans une direction que je ne veux pas encourager, je les rappelle (friandise) et je les invite ailleurs. (C’est comme ça que je me retrouve à “promener les chats”, au grand amusement de mon entourage.)
Une fois que j’ai pu constater que le chat était à l’aise dans son environnement extérieur immédiat, qu’il connaît le chemin du retour (je l’aurai régulièrement appelé pour le faire rentrer, puis ressortir, puis rentrer, puis ressortir…), je commence avec les sorties non supervisées — ou supervisées depuis le pas de la porte.
Voilà en gros comment je m’y prends!
Avec Tounsi et Quintus, j’ai deux chats assez différents. Tounsi était probablement un chat voyageur: il n’avait aucune peur ou appréhension dans un environnement nouveau, par contre, revenait en courant comme un petit chien lorsque je l’appelais, et me suivait. Le souci ça a été les premières sorties sans supervision (il allait loin, et je l’ai laissé faire trop vite). J’ai donc rétrogradé aux sorties surveillées et fait beaucoup beaucoup de tours d’immeuble avec lui.
Quintus est plus peureux. Il a peur du couloir. Peu après qu’on ait commencé à le laisser sortir, il a “fugué”. J’étais en vacances et ma catsitteuse n’était pas très rassurée! (Pas malin de partir, mais j’avais des soucis “intérieurs” avec les chats et c’était vraiment important de le laisser sortir — et c’est un chat que je connaissais déjà un peu.) En fait il était planqué à une dizaine de mètres de l’immeuble, ne réagissait pas quand on l’appelait, et avait peur de l’entrée. A mon retour j’ai fait une grande opération “séduction en extérieur” pour qu’il comprenne que venir vers moi quand on était dehors était gustativement intéressant ;-). Quant à ses jours de fugue, on avait la chance de pouvoir lui laisser l’accès au bureau ouvert la nuit, avec eau et croquettes. Pas idéal, mais ça a marché.
La semaine dernière au chalet, j’ai sorti les deux chats d’un coup après 36h environ. Ils étaient bien peinards dans le chalet, et Tounsi commençait à faire la vie pour sortir (il fait normalement ses besoins dehors). Il n’y a pas de dangers immédiats autour du chalet, il me restait plusieurs jours avant de devoir redescendre, alors je me suis lancée. Je suis sortie avec Tounsi, j’ai laissé la porte ouverte, Quintus a suivi. Tounsi a filé assez vite chez les voisins, et je l’ai suivi — Quintus aussi. J’ai perdu de vue Quintus près de leur chalet. Après un moment j’ai appelé Tounsi pour le rentrer et je suis partie à la recherche de Quintus — en vain. De retour au chalet, je suis accueillie par deux chats: Quintus était en fait rentré tout seul au chalet bien avant, sans que je le voie! J’ai donc ensuite simplement pris soin de laisser la porte du chalet entrebâillée quand les chats étaient dehors, et d’aller les rapercher à coups de friandises après 15-30 minutes. (Sortie du chalet en photos et en vidéo. Premières sorties de Tounsi et Safran à la maison.)
Questions? 🙂
I’m reading “Here Comes Everybody“. I’m taking notes.
In the chapter “Everyone is a media outlet”, Clay explains very well what is the matter with the journalism industry. (He has since then co-authored a report on the future of the news industry, which I need to read.)
In a world where everyone is a publisher, journalism is becoming an activity rather than a profession — activity which can be carried out both by those employed by the news industry and the “amateurs” (oh heck). A profession serves to solve a hard problem, that requires specialisation. Reproduction, distribution, and categorisation are now orders of magnitude easier and cheaper than before: professionals are no longer required for these activities.
Look at iStockPhoto and professional photography: the price of professional photography not so much due to the incredible quality of the professional’s work, in many cases, but comes from the difficulty of finding the right photo. iStockPhoto helps solve that problem, so the photo now costs 1$ instead of 500$, can very well have been shot by an amateur, and be no lesser in quality than a more expensive, specially-commissioned professional one.
As it has become easier to publish, public speech and action have become more valuable and less scarce, just like the ability to read and write became more commonplace with the invention of movable type, and scribes lost their raison-d’être.
Journalism is a profession that seems to exist because of accidental scarcity of published material due to the expense of publishing in the physical world. Scarcity (and therefore cost) is not an indication of importance: water is more important to life than diamonds, but that doesn’t make it expensive (The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith).
When everybody had learned to read and write, and scribes weren’t needed anymore, we didn’t call everybody a scribe, we just stopped using the word; reading and writing is ubiquitous and so not rare enough to pay for, even if it’s a really important skill. Scribes as a profession died out.
As for music and movie industry: the service they performed was distributing music and movies, but now anybody can move music and video easily and cheaply. The problem they were solving does not exist anymore, and so they are trying to maintain it by turning on their customers and trying to make moving movies and music harder artificially.
Because it’s so easy to publish, making something public is less the momentous decision that it used to be. The general criticism of the low quality of online content has to do with the fact we are judging “communications” content (conversation, often) by “broadcast” content standards of interest and quality. We look at Facebook statuses and think “was that really worth broadcasting?” — not realising that it was never intended for broadcast in the first place. It was not meant for us. If you eavesdrop on a dining hall conversation at the table next to you, doubtless you’ll find it uninteresting, but you won’t think “why are they speaking so loud I can hear what they’re saying?”
There used to be a distinction between communications and broadcast media, which has now broken down. Broadcast is one-to-many, a one-way megaphone which attempts to reach as many people as possible of a target audience. Communications, on the other hand, are two-way conversations for specific recipients, one-to-one. Now we also have many-to-many, communications tools which enable group conversation. There is a continuum between broadcast and communications rather than a sharp break neatly following the lines of the technology used (TV/radio vs. phone/fax). Communications and broadcast are mixed in the same medium, and we make the mistake of judging communications by the standards of broadcast.
A few random notes about my Indian trip, which I was sure I had published, but just found sitting in my MarsEdit drafts.
Health-wise, it was “interesting”. It started off with itchy knees that I carelessly brought from Switzerland. A nice dermatologist near Pune University helped me get rid of it (cream, antihistaminics, and even anti-scabies stuff — it was my big fear). In Kerala, I awoke after a first night of sleep to tons of little itchy bites on my forearm. Bed bugs? Fear, yes, but it seems not: thorough examination and repeat nights with no incident thankfully ruled that out. The bites disappeared, but I’m still curious what caused them.
In Mysore, I carelessly dropped a hearing aid — which promptly died. With three weeks of holiday left to go, it was worth thinking up a solution to get it fixed before my return to Switzerland. I ended up testing Fedex in India for you. There is an office in Mysore, and I’m happy to say it was quite painless: 2800 INR, an announced shipping time of 4 days which they managed to keep. My audiologist was able to change the 70 CHF piece that needed it and send the hearing aid right back again. 140 CHF of shipping! I’m not sure how many days they promised him, but the package took longer to reach me in Kolkata than on the way out. Looking at the tracking data for both packages shows that some parts of the shipping process in India are still big black holes. 48 hours at Delhi airport? Heck. Probably lying in a pile somewhere while people had tea (yeah, I’m probably unfair).
Anyway, the package did reach me and I was very happy to have both ears again for the end of my stay. So, success.
Around the time of my arrival in Kolkata, one of my teeth started reacting really painfully to cold and hot. I’ve always had sensitive teeth (to cold), but this was beyond anything. It got worse and worse, to the extent that I just didn’t want to drink anymore. I needed a dentist. Knowing I have a bunch of 15-to-20-years-old fillings that will at some point need replacing, I figured that if I found a good dentist, I might as well do the work in India. Which I did. A two-session root canal treatment on a molar cost me about a tenth of the price it would have in Switzerland. The dentist in question did part of his training in the UK and worked with Somak and Aleika’s dentist in Birmingham, who recommended him and sent their files there. So, there we go. My first root canal, in Kolkata. The result is magical, I can tell you: no more pain. I think that tooth had been hurting me for a very long time, actually, but I didn’t really notice it until it got really bad.
Aside from the medical stuff, I experimented properly with radio-rickshaws in Pune — Autowale.in. After a couple of successful trips, I booked an auto to bring my parents back after New Year’s Eve party. That was a disaster. Whereas for my previous bookings I had received a call from the driver about an hour before to check the pick-up point, this time around we hadn’t heard anything 30 minutes before. We called. The driver said it would take him at least 90 minutes to get there as his auto had broken down. We called the booking centre to ask them to find a replacement, and we were told that there were no available cars and that we had to “find an alternative”. Try finding an alternative in the university campus around 1am on January first. Well, the Shindes made a bunch of calls, and the son of a neighbor left his party to drive my parents back to their hotel. In the meantime, I left a pretty upset note on Autowale’s Facebook wall. We were really pissed off. The happy ending to this story is that the incident did finally get internal attention at Autowale — they asked me for details and I got an e-mail apology from the CEO, saying this was indeed completely unacceptable and that they needed to find a solution so this kind of situation didn’t happen again. Well, I’m willing to give them another chance next time I’m in Pune. But they better not mess up again: when you book a radio auto it’s usually specifically because you know it will be very difficult to find a ride. Leaving you stranded is just disastrous!
In the “new things” department we also did quite a lot of “day trip with car” outings. Most of them good experiences, some of them a tiny bit sour when it came to payment. No huge disasters, though. Two memorable rides were those to and from Mysore. We took a car from Kannur to Mysore, through the mountains and the national park. Crap road but beautiful scenery. And then, from Mysore to Bangalore, that was more memorable in the “dreadful” category. One of my family members was sick (first part of the trip went OK, but by the time we reached Bangalore we were stopping the car every 10-15 minutes). We got stuck half an hour (thankfully not more) on Mysore road because a car had hit a school girl and killed her, we were told. (I saw an ambulance go by after, though, so I like to think that maybe she did make it after all.)
Indian roads are deadly. Those close shaves we sometimes admire are sometimes too close and end up shaving off a life. I think I had looked up number last year: something like 100’000 deaths per year on Indian roads. 4000 in Pune alone. (Check those numbers somewhere if you’re going to use them.) To compare, Switzerland (roughly the population of Pune): 350-400 a year. In Kolkata I saw quite a few ambulances go by (Akirno’s school is near a hospital). People don’t even make way for them — or worse, they cut them off. Last year when I was stuck in Bangalore traffic to go and take my bus to Kerala, there was an ambulance stuck with us. If you need an ambulance to get you fast to the hospital to stay alive, you’re probably dead. You’d better not need one.
In Kolkata we had a car with a driver at our disposal. I have to say it makes a world of difference when it comes to going out and getting stuff done. Having to find taxis and rickshaws is stressful, even when you’ve become used to it. Don’t get any grand visions about the car and driver though. Boot bashed in, screaming belt, and over the last days we had to push it to start it quite a few times. This did result in a change of cars, however.
In addition to Loki the annoying puppy, I got to meet Coco, the baby African Grey parrot. My first bird contact, really! Let me just say that bird feet are warm (was sure they were cold, silly me), and that I had a great time interacting with Coco and getting to know him. Birds are not boring at all and need a lot of attention! I was there for his first flight across the room — took us all by surprise, him too, probably.
To wrap up I’ll leave you with this article that appeared in Metro during my stay, about Presidency University and some of the infrastructure problems there. Sadly Somak forgot to tell the journalist about the giant rat that fell from the ceiling onto the instrument the students had spent a good long time calibrating so they could run their experiment, or the guy who was sitting hunched up on his chair in his office the first day he met him, because there was 10cm of water on the floor.
More notes and related thoughts to my reading of Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody (chapter 2).
Both markets and organisations imply costs (transaction costs in large groups, labour required to maintain organisation). There are activities which simply don’t happen, because their cost is higher than their potential value both for markets and organisations. This is where social tools step in: they lower the cost of coordinating group action, and allow new forms of activities to appear.
Stuff that we find normal in 2013: if you stage a public event, photos of it will most certainly be made publicly available (through Flickr and the like) even if you do not hire a professional photographer or mandate people to collect photos. The social tool provides a cheap way for any person taking photos of the event for their personal satisfaction to add them to a public pool that anybody can draw from, through spontaneous tagging.
Under the Coasean floor: activities that are valuable to somebody but too expensive to be taken on in an institutional way, like aggregating amateur documentation of the London transit bombings. People have always had the desire to share, and the obstacles to sharing are now gone, so it happens.
When transaction costs are high, hierarchical organisations are the least bad solution for group action. If transaction costs drop a little, large organisations can afford to become larger, and small organisations appear where there were none, because they are now “cheap enough” to put in place. But when tools arrive which make transaction costs plummet, all kinds of group action which were impossible before are now happening outside of traditional organisations, in loosely structured groups, without managerial direction or profit motive.
Group undertakings: sharing, cooperation, collective action — by order of increasing difficulty.
Cooperation is more demanding than sharing because it requires changing one’s behaviour to synchronise with others (who are also doing the same thing). Conversation is an example. This makes me think of something I wanted to say about Facebook groups: groups where all that happens is people “sharing” stuff don’t take off. Sharing doesn’t really create a sense of community like conversation does. So if one wants a community of people, one must encourage conversation, which is more difficult to achieve than simple sharing. Collaborative production (cf. wikipedia, a potluck dinner, a barn raising) is another form of cooperation, more involved than conversation.
Collective action goes a step further, ambitioning to change something in the world, creating shared responsibility by tying the group and individual identities together. Action is taken “in the name of”. This comes with a share of governance issues, especially the larger the group. The shared vision of the group needs to be strong enough to keep the group together despite the tensions arising from individual disagreement on specific decisions.
Seb Paquet: ridiculously easy group-forming. This reminds me of an O’Reilly book that I read during my year in India (I read a number of O’Reilly books there, purchased in Indian editions and therefore compatible with my student’s budget): Practical Internet Groupware. It was an eye-opener, and much of the stuff in there is still true nearly 15 years later.
Says Clay Shirky (quoting!):
Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by transaction costs. Now that group-forming has gone from hard to ridiculously easy, we are seeing an explosion of experiments with new groups and new kinds of groups.
I have just finished reading “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh. It’s a much “lighter” read than “Here Comes Everybody”, though the lessons it delivers are just as profound. Whereas Clay Shirky’s book has points to make, supported by stories, Tony Hsieh’s is the story of Zappos and his own, making points along the way.
When I was working at Orange during the end of my studies, I used to say that if I ever ran a business, it would be unsustainable because my first priority would be to make it a good workplace, which cared about its employees. Zappos seems to have achieved that, and at the same time managed to be sustainable and profitable. It’s not a “despite that”, either. It’s pretty clear that what has allowed Zappos to survive and be profitable is it’s concern about treating people well — both outside its walls and in.
I see echoes of my quest over the last years in Tony’s interest in happiness. What makes us happy? How can we organise our lives and businesses to have more of that?
My distaste for much of the corporate world has all to do with the fact it values profit over people. The story of Zappos shows us it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to create a workplace where there is a higher purpose than profit, where profit is a means to preserving the culture and “tribe” of the company.
Reading “Delivering Happiness” has moved me a step further towards understanding the importance of brands. For me, the word “brand has a distasteful ring to it, because I guess it’s so often associated with a certain type of marketing and hollow messages. Seeing brand as the external flip side of company culture actually makes perfect sense, and might help me develop some of my thinking about my own brand (I know I have one), the eclau brand, the Going Solo brand, etc. A brand doesn’t have to be artificial.
If you’re interested in an inspiring story of building a business based on trust, values, personality, growth, happiness, purpose, transparency, and authenticity, read this book. You won’t regret those few hours of your life. And buy an extra copy to leave lying around at work.
[en] A rant about the "translation" of the Occupy Movement by "les Indignés" in francophonia. Not the same movement. Occupy is a verb. "Indigné" is a state, an emotion, with moral undertones.
Ça date, Occupy, je sais. Vous qui connaissez plus d’une langue, vous avez déjà remarqué comment on perd parfois tout dans une traduction? Lost in translation. Etonnamment, le français n’a pas d’expression équivalente. En tant que bilingue français-anglais, je vois régulièrement ce phénomène à l’oeuvre dans les traductions de titres de livres ou de films, qui passent très bien en anglais et plus du tout en français. (Je ne parle même pas du doublage, qui a le don de transformer une chouette bande-annonce anglo-saxonne en un truc qui ne donne absolument pas envie de se pointer au multiplex.)
On a donc “Occupy”, aux Etats-Unis, et ici en Europe, en tous cas en français, on parle des “Indignés“. Quelle horreur! Je me fiche personnellement de savoir si les deux mouvements ont une origine commune ou non, toujours est-il qu’on les trouve “assimilés” ou “équivalents” dans les médias et donc, par extension, chez l’homme de la rue. La traduction française de “Occupy”, c’est “Indignés”.
Personnellement je n’ai jamais pu avaler ça. Les connotations sont si différentes! Comment les mouvements qui se rallient derrière ces deux noms peuvent-ils identiques? (Et qu’on n’aille même pas essayer de jeter là-dedans les émeutes de Londres, qui n’ont franchement rien à voir.)
“Occupy”, c’est un verbe. Occuper. Une action. Un impératif. “Occupy Wall Street”, c’est un slogan quasi militaire. L’Occupation, ça vous dit quelque chose? On va occuper les lieux. Il y a une prise de pouvoir, ou du moins une volonté de possession. On est là et on réclame notre place.
Etre “Indigné”, au contraire, c’est tout au plus un participe passé (par nature passif). Ou même, un adjectif. C’est émotionnel. C’est un état. Ça parle de ce qui se passe à l’intérieur de nous, et non de ce qu’on fait. On s’indigne, c’est super, et après? Aucune chance que je me retrouve là-dedans. Il y a une couleur morale, jugeante et passive dans ce mot.
Les mots qu’on utilise changent la façon qu’on pense. On sait qu’il y a un lien entre langue et culture. On peine à penser des choses qu’on ne peut mettre en mot.
“Occupy” et “les Indignés”, ce n’est pas la même chose.
[en] About the aspirational pile of books that I brought to the chalet with me.
Note: comme la plupart des billets que je publie ces jours, celui-ci a été écrit hors ligne durant ma petite retraite à la montagne.
Je suis au chalet, avec deux chats et une pile de livres, de quoi lire pendant probablement un mois. Une bonne douzaine. OK, un mois en ne faisant que lire.
J’en suis au premier bouquin que j’ai pris sur la pile. Entre-temps, j’ai quand même passé une demi-journée à trier/organiser mes photos (j’ai pris mon disque dur externe exprès) et je suis maintenant en train de rédiger mon 7e (septième!) article pour Climb to the Stars en quelques heures.
Pourquoi diable monter tant de livres pour quelques jours seulement? Je me suis posé la question. Je me la suis d’autant plus posé qu’on a abordé récemment avec Evren la question de la pile aspirationnelle de “choses à lire plus tard”. Je ne me leurre pas: cette pile de livres est totalement aspirationnelle.
Précisons tout de même que j’ai loué une voiture pour ma petite retraite à la montagne, ce qui me permet de ne pas trop me soucier du poids excédentaire de mes aspirations.
En fait, ce à quoi j’aspire, avec cette pile de livres, mon ordi plein de photos à trier, et mes doigts pleins d’articles à taper, c’est aussi le choix, le possible. Je veux être ici au chalet avec le choix de mes lectures, et non pas limitée et contrainte par un choix fait avant de venir.
Alors j’amène plus de livres que je ne peux lire. J’élargis un peu le choix. Je me laisse la liberté de suivre mon humeur. De butiner. C’est ce que je cherche un peu, ici loin de tout.
Chez moi, c’est un peu la même chose. Il y a dans ma bibliothèque plein de livres que je n’ai pas vus. Dans ma DVD-thèque (oui, encore, je sais) plein de films et de séries à regarder encore. Dans mon étagère vitrée, une bonne trentaine de thés.
Je veux être dans un contexte où j’ai le choix. Je peux sur un coup de tête lire ceci ou cela. Les habits et les chaussures, c’est sans doute la même chose — et les réserves dans le garde-manger.
Mais si on a lu The Paradox of Choice, on sait que cette liberté, ce choix ouvert auquel on aspire, eh bien il peut aussi être contre-productif. A trop devoir choisir on se fatigue. Trop de possibilités, ça angoisse.
On n’utilise qu’une petite partie des choix à notre disposition, et le reste pèse sur notre conscience. Ça me fait penser à cette étude où l’on demandait aux gens de planifier leurs menus sur un mois, et on comparait ensuite avec ce qu’ils mangeaient réellement. Pas trop de surprise: les menus “réels” étaient bien plus répétitifs que les menus théoriques. On croit qu’on va vouloir de la variété, mais en réalité, on aime aussi la répétition.
L’autre chose à laquelle ça me fait penser, cette histoire de pile aspirationnelle, c’est la bibliothèque d’Umberto Eco, dont il est question si ma mémoire ne me fait pas défaut dans “A Perfect Mess“, le parfait livre-compagnon à The Paradox of Choice cité plus haut. (Si c’est pas dans A Perfect Mess, c’est peut-être dans The Black Swan, autre livre indispensable.)
La bibliothèque la plus intéressante, c’est celle qui regorge de livres encore-non-lus. C’est elle qui contient peut-être le livre qui va bouleverser notre vie, mais qu’on n’a pas encore lu. (Plus j’y pense, plus il me semble que ça vient de The Black Swan, ce que je raconte.) Le potentiel pour le changement radical réside dans ce que l’on ne connaît pas encore.
Bon, ça rime à quoi, tout ça? Dans cette pile aspirationnelle, il y a plusieurs niveaux:
En résumé: quatre jours au chalet, ce n’est pas assez!
[fr] Je lis "Here Comes Everybody" et je blogue mes notes. Un deuxième chapitre fascinant (en tous cas pour moi) sur les coûts organisationnels.
In an effort to be a better reader, here are some notes and related thoughts to my reading of Clay Shirky‘s book Here Comes Everybody (chapter 2).
Making a decision inside a large unstructured group is hopeless, as you’ve most certainly experienced if you’ve found yourself caught up in a spontaneous “dinner party group” of 15 people or so at the end of a conference (a larger group is more complex). What ends up happening is that somebody steps up and seizes power, either by dictating a venue and giving marching orders, or proposing a decision-making process for the group. If that doesn’t happen, you can bet that some group members will get tired of the situation and head off in their own separate sub-groups, in which it was possible to reach an agreement for action more easily. (I personally usually end up playing “friendly dictator”.)
“More is different” (Philip Anderson, 1972). Aggregates exhibit novel properties which their components did not have. Scale changes the nature of things. This is super important.
At some point of group size, it becomes very costly to maintain connection between each member of the group, and so the “everybody interacting with everybody” dynamic of a small group breaks down. Add more employees to a late project and it will make it even later, because more people involved means higher cost of coordination for the group (Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month). But it’s an inevitable problem: large groups have to be managed in some way, and that’s why people gather together into organisations.
A hierarchical structure simplifies communication between organisation members, but also requires resources to maintain itself. This means that job number one of any organisation is self-preservation, as if it breaks down there is no way in which it can fulfil its stated mission.
Preserving the organisation requires work, and comes at a cost. It’s worth it as long as this cost is lower than the gain from having an organisation (i.e., the organisation allows us to do stuff that would not be possible in an open market of individuals, who would all have to independently agree on how to work together: higher transaction costs).
The Coasean ceiling (Ronald Coase, 1937, The Nature of the Firm): when the organisation grows so much that the cost of managing the business destroys any profit margin. There is a cost whether your hierarchy is flat or deep: if it’s flat, each manager has more subordinates, and so has to spend more time communicating with other people; if it’s deep, there are more layers, and information has to transit through more people.
The first org chart, probably: Western Railroad (McCallum, 1855 or so). It’s a management system designed, amongst other things, to produce “such information, to be obtained through a system of daily reports and checks, that will not embarrass principal officers nor lessen their influence with their subordinates.” No wonder the head so often seems disconnected from the hands and feet in the organisation!