Define "real work"

Last night, J and I went to a lecture at RIT by Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft. I read the back of the book when J bought it and was not sold. J was excited, though, so I went as a skeptic, trying to keep a relatively open mind.

First, the things that I DID buy.
- People have different skills, interests, and brains work different ways. We should not build an even remotely elitist system that might prevent people from pursuing careers they are passionate about. Vocational training can be as valid as a college degree.

- It's better for all around if you can land in a job that sparks your passion and helps you feel that you are doing something worthwhile.

Beyond that, I was insulted. J saw the points differently than I and I'll try to share his views here, but I'm really hoping he comments (nudge nudge) to spur discussion. There are 4 areas (2 major, 2 minor) that I totally disagree with and the enthusiasm of the packed room disturbed me a bit.

1. Those of us who do not care to take apart washing machines, cars, or TVs when they break live in a state of "learned helplessness" - bereft of individual agency. Crawford also used "lack of responsibility" and, my favorite, "idiocy". To be a productive member of society, you should know every part of every device you own and how it works. - NOT ME! Sorry, I don't have an affinity for machinery and I would rather spend brain cells on other things that have a positive impact on my life and the world. It's just like those differences that send some to college and some to the trades...
   
   As a secondary argument to this, he cites the surge of interest in urban farming and craft as a search for compensating "self-reliance" or, as Crawford put it the "home-economics of Grandma". - NO. It's about creating and taking joy in that, not about being less dependent on others.



2. Office work is not real work - only the trades are real work. Crawford would back away from this, saying that some office jobs are OK, then return to that dreadful phrase. - I do REAL WORK. My job may be frustrating at times, but I do cool stuff and creatively solve problems for our users and work to make their lives better, ultimately. Just because I sit at a computer or in meetings, don't assume I'm a drudge! You're just as biased against non-tradespeeps as you claim society is against the trades...
   
   At one point in the Q&A, after saying that college is fine if you have 4 years and the money to throw away, he urged a father to NOT let his son attend business school - "you'll never learn anything worthwhile there". Applause in the room as I repressed a bit of Hulk. Maybe B-school isn't valuable to everyone, but I am grateful for my time there - I had some great teachers and teammates who pushed me to my analytical and dot-connecting approach today.

J tends to take a broader perspective. That Crawford's main message is the one about fulfilling/ rewarding work. He feels that the principle can be applied to office workers just as much as to tradespeeps. I'd like to agree, but Crawford's turns of phrase were too negative, kept bringing it back.

What do you think? Is work done with your hands as part of a trade like plumbing, electrical, or mechanics more REAL than product development, marketing, social media? Has anyone read the whole book?

Punching holes in the walls that surround us

I recently watched a talk by novelist Elif Shafak on TEDGlobal 2010. She talked about her background growing up in a diplomatic life, about the expectation critics have that her books reflect Turkish issues, even when she's writing novels in English set in Boston.

She described the circles we build around ourselves, the walls we use to enclose our groups of friends who tend to live lives so similar to our own. How associating with others like ourselves can blind us to the way other people live, and the stories that they have from their own point-of-view.

One way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling. Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls and through those holes we can get a glimpse of the other and sometimes even like what we see.

This is one reason why my bookshelf, Google Reader, and Twitter friends are so diverse (at least I think so, hope so). I love seeing the world thru different eyes, getting a perspective on lives so different from my pretty sheltered Western NY existence. Being obsessed with stories and language as I am, it's not just about the subject material, but how the stories are told - the language people use, the tone and meter of their prose. For more on the benefits of following a diverse Twitter crowd, see Twitter Strangers on The Frontal Cortex.

Now, Shafak is adamant that her work is "JUST A STORY" and doesn't have any underlying meaning other than what the story intends to say - no hidden messages. I don't think that holds true across all stories.

Explore, open your eyes, punch holes in your walls - see what life can be like beyond the circle of those just like you. And let me know what you find.

Art in the Community

It's that time of year again. Humongo (formerly Plaid), the agency that is super-smart about everything social media and confectionery, is touring the US and visiting bunches of cool people on the way. My favorite stop so far was early on in the tour - the NuPenny store.

Image via boingboing

The store is an art installation in retail space by Randy Regier- a store of retro-looking, not quite real toys in shades of grey - that you can only see thru the windows.

I love this on 2 major points:

Unexpected Art. As most of you know, my brother, CW Roelle, is an artist. While in Baltimore, he'd often show his work in a cafe. He did not want people walking into his show with "expectations" or preconceived notions about "art". Instead, he wanted them to see the art in "living spaces", to be surprised by it, and therefore elicit perhaps a more honest response. NuPenny is much like this, as it could be just another store on the street, but there's something special and unique about it.

Peering into someone else's dreams. Regier talks about the project as a dream space. Seeking to give people the impression they're peering into someone else's dreams. Giving an almost tangible essence to the experience, akin to the physical reactions we can have to vivid dreams. By not letting people into the space, he's keeping the experience at arm's length. It doesn't become "too real" so the dream-like atmosphere is not broken. This is awesome. It brings TOM associations with the film Inception and with the intense dream-communications Shadow experiences in Gaiman's American Gods. It is a physical embodiment of the principles behind good stories. I'd love to hear stories from visitors about the experience...

Won't you be.... my neighbor?

Neighbor is one word where the British spelling always seems better to me - neighbour - random note.

It was roughly 2004 when I really started digging into blogging - when the list of blogs I followed grew exponentially, I started RoelleKids, and I started noodling on a potential whitepaper "Personal Encounters in a Digital World" - shortly thereafter I was moved to a different assignment where I was not required to produce whitepapers and didn't really have time for that anyway. Not that I stopped obsessing, just never wrote the paper.

Part of the fodder for the paper was the book Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam. It's been a while since I've read the book, so no extensive review here. My feelings for it were mixed. It's a great treatise, but also annoyed me enough that I lashed out in my margin notes. Part of the problem is that the social sphere of the web that Putnam described seemed dated to the days of primarily usenet groups and he didn't seem to get that people were connecting in ways that made it accessible to everyone.

I dislike the implication that if you're connecting online you're not connecting in the real world and society is going to pot. We all know the power of Meetups - that online connections become more valuable when you can meet face-to-face. And many people who are active online are active in other aspects of community as well.

Community isn't deteriorating, it's adapting.

The Pew Internet & American Life project recently released a report citing that, while face-to-face encounters and phone calls are still the top ways neighbors communicate, 27% of adult Internet users connect to neighbors or neighborhood orgs via online tools. I think that's cool. You're going to get to know neighbors faster if you start interacting with them online, rather than spending months or years waiting for friendly nods to turn into a conversation. People who may be bashful about in-person neighborhood meetings (me) may be more more comfortable speaking out/ volunteering from an online forum.

I'm pleased that there has not been a wave of concern or backlash around these findings - that people realize this is just one piece of the puzzle.

TV conversations

I should have learned by now that it'd be tough to write a post while J plays Halo on the big screen. Yet here I sit.

The post on episodic stories got me thinking about changes in television viewing. Gavin Purcell made an interesting observation at the 140 Conference - that "living room conversations are now shared with millions". We've moved from raptly listening without uttering a sound to radio theatre, to silently absorbing TV, to cracking remarks with those in the room, to today.

Today's TV shows are enhanced when viewing by SMS, Twitter, Facebook, and various live blogs, fan boards, etc. People try to adapt language to avoid spoilers for the time-shifters, though that doesn't always work. As I type and J kills Covenant beasties, I'm seeing quick blurbs come in about a fellow Red Jacket alum on this season's Top Chef (since I don't have cable, I have to get the iTunes version, hopefully not too delayed).

Bringing in a community of fans to the living room conversation could be viewed by some as yet another distraction from the family in the room with you. To me, it makes the show and conversation with family in the room that much more interesting. Just as in the episodic reading of American Gods, in the collective TV viewing space, I'm keeping an ear out for good quotes, trying to spot subtle references, connections, plot points (and getting help from others when I miss something). And being part of a community of fans discussing it live gets me more excited - like being at a crowded gig for a band vs a practical private show - because sharing my enthusiasm is one of the best parts.

Plus, J thinks I'm weird if I talk to the TV. If I talk instead to Twitter friends about what I would say to the people on TV, he's none the wiser. ;)

Last fall, Fringe aired a Tweet-peat - a repeat episode where they invited live Twitter conversation. Certain members of the cast & crew were also tweeting live & answering viewer questions. A portion of the tweets appeared at the bottom of the screen during the show, or users could follow the hashtag elsewhere. The additional layer of information on a live episode is something TV has been experimenting with off and on for a while - special 3D moments or pop-up video commentary are examples that come to mind. I hope to see the Twitter experiment repeated, it was fun.

Episodic stories

My favorite TV shows are enhanced by sharing with people who love them [almost] as much as I. With Mom over the phone, with friends at work. Heroes was that much better for the Tuesday Heroes review lunches at work. We shared our favorite details, theories, I shared the scoop on the graphic novel backstories - alas, no more :(.

This is also enhanced by getting the story in bits & bites. It gives you enough to talk about but not so much that details are forgotten in favor of the overall gist.

I'm noticing the importance of this as I participate in #1b1t (One Book, One Twitter) - a twitter-wide bookclub started by @Crowdsourcing. We are reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods - there's a reading schedule that the general conversation (using the hashtag #1b1t) follows. Chapter-level discussions allow those who are reading faster to still talk about details without spoiling for others (hashtags #1b1t_1c, _2c, etc).
Because of this setup, I find myself pausing after I finish each chapter to spend some time in the discussion for that chapter, before moving on.

I've been in a bookclub before, where we'd read a book over a month (or a couple of months) and discuss it when everyone had completed the whole book. I'm afraid I wasn't a great bookclub member. When I read a book straight through, I'm finding that what I get from it is mostly gist of plot. I focus on language and tone and style of storytelling, rather than absorbing details about characters, placenames, and whatnot. (I also tended to take a much more critical view than others - sorry I just don't find Mitch Albom's style compelling)

In an episodic construct, however, the Heroes fan comes to the fore. I'm tracking conversations, doing a bit of research on my own, keeping threads at hand for when the story weaves them back in. Part of this could be that it's my second time through the book, but I really think it's the way #1b1t is running. The book is striking home more.

And it follows me around, so that I look at things through the lens of the book's premise of the gods we bring with us from our countries of origin - and what happens when those beliefs and traditions are left by the wayside.

It's those bits & bobs - the bite size story consumption rather than a massive binge. Hmmmm - Twitter-style storytelling (like the stories told by @AngelaShelton a few weeks ago to showcase abuse) is a bit like this - although it needs a bit more structure to accommodate varied paces and thread conversations a bit more clearly. Potential, potential.

"Ecstatic truths" and everyday stories - some thoughts from 140

Returning from 140Conference, I got hit with a massive cold and slept two days then continued in misery several more. When that was over my parents moved. So now, here I am, finally able to share some of my thinking following the mega-meetup...

The night before the conference I shared the seed of an idea from Jonathan Harris - contrasting "accountant" and "ecstatic" truths and the type of stories that emerge. How the truly powerful and amazing stories are the ones full of emotion, the "ecstatic" stories that require something more than our day-to-day status updates. I headed into the sessions thinking about how to make the stories we share in social places more powerful, or how to transfer them to a place where the power could be put back in.

And then 140Conference happened and the wonderful people that took the stage had me hollering, wiping my eyes, laughing, and yes, making farm noises. The stories they told in the brief moments they took the stage ranged across a wide spectrum, but there was one huge point - Twitter and other networks & spaces provide a tool to share big emotions, too. To rally people to a cause. To save lives. To give voice to the voiceless. Pretty darn emotional.

I realized, too, that the day-to-day does not lack value. I skimmed an article recently on the similarity of tweets to diary entries from the 1800's (or earlier, I don't exactly recall), when ink, paper, and time were in short supply and people just conveyed quickly (in, oh, 140 characters or less) what they were up to. But imagine finding such a diary from an ancestor. It wouldn't be like reading American Gods for plot, but you'd find it fascinating to get the view on their life.
"Accountant's truths", the every day flow of life, have value, too.

There are so many stories we can tell and each day brings new ways to tell them. This is an awesome space!