Category: Understanding life and the world

Big ideas and analysis related to life and the world. This is where I become philosophical and tend towards guru-ness.

Notes From San Francisco [en]

So, roughly half-way through my five-week trip to San Francisco, what’s going on? I haven’t been blogging much lately, that’s for sure.

For once, I took some photographs from the plane. Unfortunately my camera batteries ran out just as we were coming down on San Francisco, and my spare ones were in the luggage compartment above my head. Oh, well.

Flying to San Francisco 31

I got some first-level questioning at immigration coming in. No, not the sort where they take you to a separate room, become much less friendly, and have boxes of rubber gloves on the counter. This is how it went:

  • …And what is the duration of your stay?
  • Five weeks.
  • …And what do you do in… over in Switzerland?
  • I’m a freelance… internet consultant. OMG that sounds bad. …I’m actually here to work on a book project. Yeah I know I should never volunteer information.
  • What’s the book about?
  • Er… teenagers and the internet.
  • And…?
  • Er… Well, the situation with teenagers and the internet, and what we’re doing about it in Switzerland.
  • And what are you doing about it?
  • Well, not enough!
  • And? Come on, tell me more about it.
  • Er… OK. OMGOMG Well, see, teenagers are really comfortable with computers and the internet, and so they’re chatting, blogging, etc. — they’re digital natives, see? — and parents, well, they’re clueless or terrified about the internet, and they don’t always understand what’s going on in their kids lives online, so basically, we have teenagers who are spending a lot of time online and sometimes getting into trouble and parents don’t know or don’t care about what they’re doing there, so we have this… chasm between generations and…
  • Thank you. You can go.

The pick-up from the airport was wonderfully orchestrated and much appreciated. Being driven into town by somebody friendly rather than having to use unfamiliar public transportation really makes a difference. Thanks to all those involved (yes, it took that many people!)

Waiting on the Sidewalk

Then, through some freak breakdown of all modern forms of communication (partially documented on Twitter), I ended up waiting outside on the sidewalk for almost an hour while my kind host Tara waited for me inside her appartment. We worked it out finally, and I was introduced to my (nice and spacious) room before going to hang out at Citizen Space. A nice dinner out with Chris, Tara and Jimmy to end the day, and I happily collapsed in my bed at a respectable local hour. You will have taken note that I did not collapse at 4pm feeling like a zombie, thanks to having taken melatonin on the plane. (It doesn’t seem to work that well for Suw, but it works perfectly on me, and I’m never traveling between continents without it again.)

The four next days went by in a blur of Supernova madness: too many people, too many sessions, food with ups and downs, parties with cupcakes and others at the top of skyscapers. I took lots of photographs and even a video sequence that got some attention.

Supernova First Day 33

During the next week, I started settling down. Met and hung out with old friends, made new ones, unpacked my suitcases, went walking around in town, saw Dykes on Bikes, the Gay Pride Parade, and the iPhone launch, photographed skyscrapers in the night, ordered a new camera, got my MacBook (partly) repaired, and even dropped in at Google to take notes of Suw’s talk there.

All this, actually, is documented in my Twitter stream — maybe I should add a whole lot of links? — be sure to keep an eye on it if you’re interested in a more day-by-day account of what I’m doing here.

Overall, things have been good. A small bout of homesickness a few days ago, but I’m feeling better now. I need to start focusing on the things I want to get done (blogging, writing, book, writing, fixing things for clients…) — holiday over now!

Downtown San Francisco By Night 9

I’ve been thinking about my “work career” a little, too. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing, but I’m not going to be doing “Blog 101” for ever — I can feel my interests shifting somewhat already. I’ve been interested in the “social tools at large” department for a long time, but unfortunately it seems to translated to “blogging” in most of the work I do, so I’d like to expand my horizons in that direction a little. I’ve had a couple of talks with people in startups recently, and I realize it’s a kind of environment I wouldn’t mind working in — at least part-time. We’ll see what happens.

I’m also realizing that there is more potential than I first thought around the two main things I care about these days: teenagers online and internet language issues. Hence, the book, and also a talk on the subject of languages on the internet which I’ll be giving at Google this coming Tuesday.

Also in the “work” department, two other things have been on my mind. First, the idea of opening up a coworking space in or around Lausanne (Ollie is having the same kind of thought — we’re talking). Second, trying to find a solution so that I don’t have to do maintenance on my clients’ WordPress installations once all is rolling, or spend hours swimming in HTML, CSS and WordPress theme PHP template tags. Not that I don’t know how to do it or don’t enjoy it once in a while, but it’s really not the kind of work I want to spend my time doing. So, I’ve been starting to ask around for names of people who might do this kind of thing (for a reasonable fee), and even thinking of recruiting some students in Lausanne that I could coach/train so that they can do most of the work, and call me up only for major problems. So, see, I’ve been thinking.

Some people have been asking me if I was planning to move here. Indeed, 5 weeks in the city looks suspiciously like a scouting operation. Actually, traveling has an interesting side-effect for me: I tend to come back home thinking “gee, Lausanne is such a great place to live! I’m never moving!” Sure, I have some underlying personal issues which contribute to making me overly attached to my hometown, and I know that someday I might end up living elsewhere. But really, for the moment, I don’t think I’d want that.

And even though I’m told San Francisco is very “European” compared to the rest of the US (which I have yet to see) I can’t help seeing how “horribly American” it is. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this city and am enjoying my time here. I know that what I say can give wrong impressions (for example, people — especially Indians — read the story of my year living in India and think that I hated the country; it’s not true, I really loved it, and can’t wait to go back). But I walk around San Francisco and see all the signs with rules and regulations and “stupid” warnings (like, God, the pineapple chunks I buy at Whole Foods haven’t been pasteurized and may contain harmful germs! or, don’t use the hairdryer in the bath tub!), the AT&T Park and other manifestations of what to me is “consumerism gone mad”, I hear about health care and “you’re expected to sue” horror stories, visa lotteries for non-renewal, the education system…

So, yes, I’m focusing on the negative. And Switzerland, even though it’s a wonderful country ;-), has its negatives too. Like many natives all over the world, I’ve developed a selective blindness to what is “wrong” in the land I come from, considering much of it “normal” as I have been brought up with it. I know that. But too much of what I see here makes my skin crawl. I’m really enjoying spending some weeks here, I love my friends, the food and the sunshine, but I don’t think I’d be happy living here.

Misty Skyscrapers in Downtown San Francisco 10

Well, this was one of these longer-than-expected posts, and it’s occupied most of my morning. My tasks for this afternoon are (in this order):

  • one WordPress install for a client
  • spending a little more time trying to see if there is hope for the aggravating Google Groups problem I bumped into, and if not, setting up a Yahoo! Group instead
  • writing a post for bub.blicio.us or working on my book — whichever I most feel like.

Cours de psychologie féline — euh, humaine [fr]

[en] Most efficient way for dealing with humans who complain that your cat is excerting revenge on them by peeing on doors: don't try to explain that cats don't have human feelings or attitudes. Instead, tell your cat sternly off in presence of the complaining person (just talk normally but firmly, of course, no being nasty), and say something like "Now, Puss, have you heard that? You can't go on peeing on doors like that. I want you to behave, understood?" And tell the person that you're going to have a serious discussion with the guilty feline about the situation.

Un truc infaillible pour régler le sort des personnes bien intentionnées qui se plaignent de problèmes avec votre chat en l’anthropomorphisant à outrance (concierge, voisine du dessus, etc.) Exemple: votre chat se venge des gens qu’il n’aime pas en allant marquer sur les portes des appartements quand il les voit. Tenter d’expliquer que ce genre de comportement ne correspond pas à la psychologie féline se solde en général par un échec cuisant et du temps perdu (conversation tournant désespérément en rond).

Remède

Ramasser le chat, qui durant la conversation est venu voir de quoi il s’agissait. Regarder ensuite sévèrement le coupable qui ronronne dans vos bras et lui dire: “Bon, Bagha, tu entends ce qu’elle dit, hein? Ça ne va pas du tout. Faut vraiment que tu apprennes à te comporter correctement, c’est compris? A partir de maintenant, plus de marquage sur les portes que la concierge vient de nettoyer, d’accord? Sinon, je vais me fâcher!”

Et préciser à la personne qui se plaint que vous allez avoir une discussion sérieuse avec votre chat et que vous comptez bien lui faire entendre raison.

A problèmes humains, solutions humaines.

Productivity Thought of the Day [en]

[fr] Les post-its marient la puissance du couper-coller à la portabilité du papier.

Post-It notes bring to you the power of cut-and-paste and the portability of paper.

Culture Shock in Second Life [en]

[fr] Second Life est vraiment ressenti par ceux qui l'utilisent comme un espace physique. Preuve en est le sentiment de désorientation qui m'habite alors que je découvre cet espace -- sentiment très proche de celui qui a accompagné mes premiers jours un Inde: un choc culturel. On trouve également dans Second Life des problèmes de racisme. A mon avis, un terrain fertile pour mieux comprendre, par exemple, comment l'utilisation de jeux vidéos interactifs (comme WoW) peut agir sur nous.

After my first few hours inside Second Life, I realized that the confusion I was feeling was very similar to what I had experienced when I first arrived in India: I was suffering from a culture shock.

There were people all around me that looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. I had trouble communicating (I’d try to chat and I’d fly up in the air) and identifying what I saw in my surroundings. I didn’t know where to go. I read notes which mentioned places which ringed no bells. I just didn’t know what to do or where to start.

But what really rang the “culture shock” bells for me was that I was feeling anxious and afraid of the avatar-people around me. I feared somebody would pounce on me (well, my avatar, but by then the identification process had kicked in), or animate my avatar against my will, or start shouting obscene things at me. I felt pretty insecure and vulnerable amongst all these people with masks on their faces. I had no idea what to expect from them, just as I had no idea what to expect from people when I landed in India.

In India, I was afraid to go out by myself and explore. In Second Life, I get some of that feeling too. I’m afraid of ending up in “bad places”. Talk of griefers and guns makes me scared. So I tend to hang out in the New Citizens Plaza a lot. (Note: if you click on that URL, you’ll be shown where that place is on a map of Second Life. If you’re running Second Life, you can click on the “Teleport” button to go there. Doesn’t seem to work for me, though.) Then last night buridan showed me to Joi‘s island Kula (fun stuff there with merry-go-rounds and dancing floors).

The interesting point here is that I’m exploring Second Life space just as I do real physical geographical space. I find the same patterns in my behaviour. Same with activities that do not match anything in my life experience yet: flying, teleporting — I don’t tend to do these things much yet, just as it took me a while to start taking rickshaws on my own, queueing to get somebody else to photocopy (“Xerox”) documents for me, and fend off beggars efficiently.

Second Life is much more than “chat with graphics”. As I told my Grandma on the phone yesterday, when she asked me what on earth my last posts were about, it’s almost like an “internet inside the internet”. There are chatrooms in it, but they are informal and transient: put a few people in an open space, and if they gather and start talking, you have a chatroom-like atmosphere. But you can walk/fly/teleport away, do your hair or build/program stuff while the others talk. All that without leaving Second Life.

As a long-time IRC chatroom inhabitant, I see two major differences between what I’m used to and Second Life.

From the chatroom point of view, first of all, you cannot be in two places at once inside Second Life. On IRC, I sit in way more than one chatroom at a time, and it’s not uncommon for me to be conducting conversations in two or three chatrooms at once. In Second Life, you can send private messages in parallel to the “physical group conversation” you’re having, but you can’t have more than one group conversation.

Another “quality” of Second Life that strikes me is that it’s less “partial-attention-friendly” than text-only chat or instant messaging — or even web surfing. I find it very hard to do “something else” at the same time as I’m in Second Life. I think it has something to do with the graphical nature of Second Life, and how rich an environment it is. There’s enough material inside Second Life for partial attention as it is 🙂 — but also, the fact there is a graphical representation of the people you’re chatting with helps capture one’s attention. (Maybe I feel things this way because I’m new to Second Life, I might think differently later on.)

So, even though Second Life is an entirely on-the-computer thing, it clearly activates the pathways in our brains that we use to deal with physical space and beings. I’ve already said many times that the internet is broadly perceived as “space without space”, but it’s much more obvious in Second Life. Another element that shows us how “real” this virtual environment is to our brains is the presence of racism in Second Life. The topic came up when I was talking to a few “Furries” (ie, people with an animal-like avatar) who mentioned there were “furry areas” because Furries were often subject to discrimination from others. Even though we know the aspect of a Second Life citizen is a mask, it seems to have an impact on the way we relate to him/her.

This, to me, is related in some way to the fact that the learning experiences you make in interactive virtual worlds (think “video games”) affect your “non-game” life as well (think “flight simulators”). Which can bring us to question, for example, what effect it can have on one’s brain to spend a long number of hours “killing virtual people”. But that’s another chapter!

Pensée sociale [fr]

[en] My sister said it very well: it's worth planning your social life a little in advance, because part of the pleasure of seeing your friends is also to be found in anticipation to the meeting itself.

Ma soeur l’a très bien formulé ce week-end: ça fait partie du plaisir de voir ses amis que de se réjouir de la rencontre parce qu’on l’a fixée à  l’avance.

Du coup, ça vaut la peine de prévoir sa vie sociale un peu à  l’avance plutôt que systématiquement à  la dernière minute, vous ne trouvez pas?

J'ai refusé mon premier interview [fr]

[en] I just refused my first interview. It was on a topic I knew nothing about until the journalist's phone call, roughly twenty minutes before the show (live). It's not that they shouldn't have contacted me, but the fact I knew nothing of the story (leak of music festival programs through blogs) and that it brought along the hairy "blogs vs. journalism" issue (I'm no means a specialist on that question) made me feel really uncomfortable about speaking up as the "bloggy specialist". The journalist understood my concerns, and I'm grateful to her for that. You'll just have to be a bit more patient until the next interview!

Eh oui. Il n’y a pas plus tard que quelques minutes. Produit de toutes mes réflexions, prises de tête et discussions au sujet de mon statut de Madame Blogs ces derniers mois.

On ne pourra cependant pas dire que j’ai refusé net. J’ai hésité. J’ai réfléchi (autant que je pouvais, pendant que je discutais au téléphone avec la journaliste et que je voyais passer les minutes). C’était pour un direct à  la RSR, vers 18h00, sur le sujet des fuites du programme de Paléo (et du Montreux Jazz) via les blogs, ce qui a eu pour conséquence (me dit-on) l’annulation de la conférence de presse qui était prévue pour aujourd’hui. Problématique: blogs et médias traditionnels (terrain ô combien glissant), motivation de ceux qui contribuent à  faire circuler des infos qui sont “sous embargo” pour la presse traditionnelle, à  qui profite le crime…

Ce n’est pas qu’on tenait à  me faire dire des choses avec lesquelles je n’étais pas d’accord. C’était surtout parce que je ne savais rien de l’histoire en question avant que la journaliste ne m’en parle (j’ai téléchargé le programme de Paléo cet après-midi sur leur site comme “tout le monde” avant d’y commander mes billets). Donc, en gros, j’allais m’exprimer en direct sur un sujet dont j’avais entendu parler pour la première fois une vingtaine de minutes auparavant. Pas très confortable pour le moins, et surtout, pas très déontologique de ma part, puisque ma présence dans cette interview sous-entendrait tout de même pour les auditeurs que je savais de quoi il en retournait.

Une autre source de mon malaise est le sentiment qu’on glisse vers une tendance où il suffit de mettre le mot “blog” dans un reportage pour accrocher le lecteur ou l’auditeur. “Le programme de Paléo circule sur les blogs” — ça donne le sentiment que la blogosphère entière se refile le programme, mais qu’en est-il en réalité? De combien de blogs s’agit-il? Je n’en sais rien. Une poignée, plus que probablement. Peut-être plus? De nouveau, je débarque, aucune idée de l’ampleur du phénomène.

Ce ne sont pas les blogs qui sont importants en tant que tel. Avec l’apparition d’internet, les médias traditionnels ont perdu l’exclusivité de la diffusion publique de l’information. Ce qu’ont fait les blogs, c’est (pardonnez-moi, mais j’aime bien cette formule) actualiser la promesse d’internet et rendre effectivement possible au plus grand nombre de s’exprimer sur la toile.

Les blogs sont aussi des machines à  conversation, ils sont un média social, et fonctionnent comme du bouche à  oreille, mais avec le pouvoir de diffusion d’internet. Alors, les programmes de festival qui circulent, ça n’a rien de bien extraordinaire, à  mon humble avis.

Quand vous préparez un festival, il y a des tas de gens “à  l’intérieur” qui connaissent le programme ou une partie de celui-ci. Il y a des fuites. Il y a toujours des fuites. Et maintenant, au lieu de juste parler de ce que l’on sait à  ses voisins, collègues, et amis, on le colle sur son blog. Des inconnus le lisent. L’information se diffuse. Et les pauvres médias traditionnels qui respectaient l’embargo se posent des colles: les blogueurs en parlent, pourquoi pas nous? Mais les blogueurs, eux, se contentent de parler de ce qui les intéresse, avec plus ou moins de sérieux, plus ou moins de compétence, sans se préoccuper de questions d’exclusivité ou d’embargos.

Quant à  la fameuse “opposition” entre blogs et médias traditionnels qui plaît à  certains (on peut mettre en avant le manque de crédibilité des blogs — mais franchement, qui est plus crédible, le patron d’entreprise qui vous parle directement de ses produits, ou bien un resucé de communiqué de presse rédigé par l’agence de communication engagée spécialement pour l’occasion?), je pense qu’il n’y a pas de réponses simples à  apporter. En tous cas moi, je n’en ai pas, et surtout pas hors contexte, en deux minutes de direct, sans préparation. Ce que je sais cependant, c’est que je vois une cohabitation plutôt qu’une opposition. C’est clair que l’évolution d’internet force la presse traditionnelle à  se remettre en question. Mais je ne suis pas une spécialiste de la presse 🙂

Qu’il soit bien clair: je ne jette nullement la pierre à  la RSR pour m’avoir contacté. Si j’avais suivi l’affaire, j’aurais volontiers fait la spécialiste et tenté d’apporter un modeste éclairage à  l’histoire. Mais là , ça me mettait dans une situation vraiment trop inconfortable. La journaliste (avec qui j’ai parlé près d’un quart d’heure au téléphone) a tout à  fait accepté mes réticences et je l’en remercie.

Je crois juste qu’il est grand temps que je commence à  faire attention à  n’intervenir dans les médias traditionnels que lorsque je me sens réellement compétente pour le sujet, et pas juste parce qu’il s’agit de blogs, et qu’en blogs de manière générale, je sais plus ou moins de quoi je parle.

Le reportage peut être écouté ici.

Vulnérable [fr]

[en] Sharing your vulnerability makes you truly human.

J.-F. H.

C’est en partageant sa vulnérabilité que l’on est véritablement humain.

J.-F. H.

On Tags and Ontologies [en]

Quote from Clay Shirky on the suckiness of ontologies, and how tags-labels are better for classifying ideas.

[fr] Le problème avec les ontologies ou les systèmes de classement hiérarchiques est qu'ils doivent être conçus de façon à  accommoder tout élément à  classer pouvant surgir dans le futur. Les tags-étiquettes créent une structure multi-dimentionelle élastique, qui s'adapte à  mesure à  ce qu'on y classe.

This last point is key — the number one fucked up thing about ontology (don’t get me started, the suckiness of ontology is going to be my ETech talk this year…), but, as I say, the number one thing, out of a rich list of such things, is the need to declare today what contains what as a prediction about the future. Let’s say I have a bunch of books on art and creativity, and no other books on creativity. Books about creativity are, for the moment, a subset of art books, which are a subset of all books.

Then I get a book about creativity in engineering. Ruh roh. I either break my ontology, or I have to separate the books on creativity, because when I did the earlier nesting, I didn’t know there would be books on creativity in engineering. A system that requires you to predict the future up front is guaranteed to get worse over time.

And the reason ontology has been even a moderately good idea for the last few hundred years is that the physical fact of books forces you to predict the future. You have to put a book somewhere when you get it, and as you get more books, you can neither reshelve constantly, nor buy enough copies of any given book to file it on all dimensions you might want to search for it on later.

Ontology is a good way to organize objects, in other words, but it is a terrible way to organize ideas, and in the period between the invention of the printing press and the invention of the symlink, we were forced to optimize for the storage and retrieval of objects, not ideas. Now, though, we can scrap of the stupid hack of modeling our worldview on the dictates of shelf space. One day the concept of creativity can be a subset of a larger category, and the next day it can become a slice that cuts across several categories. In hierarchy land, this is a crisis; in tag land, it’s an operation so simple it hardly merits comment.

Clay Shirky, Many-to-Many

Yes!

Un corps parfait [fr]

[en] A lovely phrase from a friend that came up in a conversation not long ago.

Au détour d’une conversation. C’est trop joli pour que je laisse passer.

Un corps n’est parfait que pour celui ou celle qui décide de lui offrir son coeur.

Kumquat