Man, I had a real revelation a while back. On Facebook, one of my cousins posted the origin of his Dad’s nickname. [Background, if you don’t know my family: My Dad had one sibling, a slightly older brother, who married Mom’s younger sister. Mom and Aunt Peg were the last two of 10, 8 surviving.] My sibs and I had always called him Uncle Skid, and I never knew why. It was just his name, or nickname. He had a severe stutter. Bill (my cousin) had seen a television show on stuttering, no doubt because of the new movie “The King’s Speech”, and posted how he had been moved by it. It was good to know that it was now better understood, and can often be effectively treated. He mentioned a few ways that it had been a problem in his Dad’s life, mostly because he was rejected by the armed forces in World War II.
He also mentioned the nick name and its origin. When they were boys, my Dad thought that the stutter sounded like the words were skidding. He started calling him Skid, and the nickname stuck. This would have been in the 1920’s, or at most early 30’s. American culture was rougher then; sensitivity was considered a little effeminate. And Dad could be rough. He was a teaser, like me, and not particularly sensitive about it. He believed that making fun of misfortune was a good way to help someone deal with it. But of course it isn’t always. He was sometimes hurt or embarrassed when one of his attempts at humor was not well received. He really was trying to help.
While they were two different men in many ways, their brotherly love was unmistakable. One time I made some remark to my Dad about being the brains of the family, and he said "Hell, Skid was just as smart as I was. But because of his handicap, everyone babied him." I was shocked; it was the only time I ever heard him being seriously critical of his parents, or Catholic schools. But he was bitter; there was a definite vibe of "they screwed up my brother!" After our family moved up north, they still kept in touch, even though the visits sometimes were limited to a couple of times a year. They just liked being together. Dad’s jobs kept him away more and more as time went on; that hurt all of us, including him and his brother. But the bond was never broken, or even weakened. I pray that my sons can also keep their bond unbroken throughout their lives.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Productivity and Society
When I was young, in the fifties and sixties give or take, science fiction sometimes ran stories speculating about how to have a society in which it is not necessary for everyone to work. If I knew a scifi writer who was looking for an idea, I’d suggest reviving that theme. It seems like America, at least, if not all of the first world, is rapidly approaching the point when all the stuff we need, and a large chunk of what we want, can be produced by a portion of the population. Things I have read recently seem to indicate that this trend may continue, and even accelerate.
First, why didn’t it happen sooner? Writers of that era, both fiction and academic, observed that technology was making output per worker grow much faster than before. Sometime, probably pretty soon, technology would reach the point that having everyone work was unnecessary. It didn’t happen, because while the new tech increased productivity, it also made new things possible, and those new things needed new workers to produce them, and thus more new jobs were created. While assembly line cars needed fewer workers per car, those cars were cheap enough that new demand turned into demand for more workers. Mainframe computers required both programmers and operators, since they made new applications possible, or cheap enough to be practical.
But that’s not happening with the new, www-based inventions. Things like Google and Facebook make their originators billionaires, but generate mere thousands of new jobs, instead of the millions of the last technology generation. So again, we face the prospect of a system which supports more people than it needs.
Actually, this is not a new situation in human history. Most societies have a leisure class. But until industrialization, it has only been possible by having a slave class to make the leisure class possible. The advanced societies of antiquity, both eastern and western, had a leisure class supported by hordes of slaves. The leisure class was nearly always the highest social class, and was usually a tiny percentage of the population. The late Roman Republic was a bit of an anomaly, in having a grain dole and public entertainment that effectively made the lowest social class a leisure class. Of course this was made possible by vast hordes of foreign slaves, mainly in Egypt. It developed from the standard democratic practice of politicians buying votes.
The welfare system of the “Great Society” of the sixties could have been the beginning of a return to the Roman Republic system, only with machines instead of human slaves. It was later pretty much scrapped, for two main reasons. The first was the moral argument: Why should the most useless people get a free ride? Shouldn’t everyone have to earn their way? The other reason was the growing trend toward a radical selfishness: My money is MINE! I don’t want to share any of it with anyone! Taxes are always evil, and taxes which support bums are the greatest evil. These arguments will need to be addressed.
Actually, the selfish argument is more easily addressed, at least in theory. A greater population, especially a population with money to spend, is good for all of the working people. More money being circulated for more goods is prosperity, by definition. Such a system could work. It would have to have a sharp divide between working and non-working, with both social and economic advantage to the working class. It would also need two-way class mobility. This theory may be too abstract to be effective as a short-term political stance, even if it convinces the more educated.
The moral argument is more difficult. The moral teaching that everyone should earn their way in the world has been, up till now, a practical necessity. The result of most people’s natural tendency to do no more than necessary has been the downfall of socialist systems. Some people are full of energy and work helps them feel worthwhile; they will be workers in any system. Others are bums; they will never work harder than they absolutely must to stay alive and are willing to lie, cheat and steal to avoid working. Most, of course, are along a spectrum in the middle. Many, if not most, people will work more if they can receive more for their work. Some will work more even if they only might receive more for the work. So, even with much greater productivity this moral teaching is practical and advisable.
I think that the most likely solution will involve reduced working hours for workers, and generation of make-work, likely by the government. The latter was part of the New Deal attempt to get out of the Great Depression. These projects did many good things of marginal economic value. As a result they were condemned and mocked by passionate believers in capitalism and the work ethic. But they did ease the pain of the Depression, while they lasted.
Sigh, that’s the best I can come up with. Another imperfect solution for this imperfect world. Sometimes I feel really ready for the Kingdom of Heaven.
First, why didn’t it happen sooner? Writers of that era, both fiction and academic, observed that technology was making output per worker grow much faster than before. Sometime, probably pretty soon, technology would reach the point that having everyone work was unnecessary. It didn’t happen, because while the new tech increased productivity, it also made new things possible, and those new things needed new workers to produce them, and thus more new jobs were created. While assembly line cars needed fewer workers per car, those cars were cheap enough that new demand turned into demand for more workers. Mainframe computers required both programmers and operators, since they made new applications possible, or cheap enough to be practical.
But that’s not happening with the new, www-based inventions. Things like Google and Facebook make their originators billionaires, but generate mere thousands of new jobs, instead of the millions of the last technology generation. So again, we face the prospect of a system which supports more people than it needs.
Actually, this is not a new situation in human history. Most societies have a leisure class. But until industrialization, it has only been possible by having a slave class to make the leisure class possible. The advanced societies of antiquity, both eastern and western, had a leisure class supported by hordes of slaves. The leisure class was nearly always the highest social class, and was usually a tiny percentage of the population. The late Roman Republic was a bit of an anomaly, in having a grain dole and public entertainment that effectively made the lowest social class a leisure class. Of course this was made possible by vast hordes of foreign slaves, mainly in Egypt. It developed from the standard democratic practice of politicians buying votes.
The welfare system of the “Great Society” of the sixties could have been the beginning of a return to the Roman Republic system, only with machines instead of human slaves. It was later pretty much scrapped, for two main reasons. The first was the moral argument: Why should the most useless people get a free ride? Shouldn’t everyone have to earn their way? The other reason was the growing trend toward a radical selfishness: My money is MINE! I don’t want to share any of it with anyone! Taxes are always evil, and taxes which support bums are the greatest evil. These arguments will need to be addressed.
Actually, the selfish argument is more easily addressed, at least in theory. A greater population, especially a population with money to spend, is good for all of the working people. More money being circulated for more goods is prosperity, by definition. Such a system could work. It would have to have a sharp divide between working and non-working, with both social and economic advantage to the working class. It would also need two-way class mobility. This theory may be too abstract to be effective as a short-term political stance, even if it convinces the more educated.
The moral argument is more difficult. The moral teaching that everyone should earn their way in the world has been, up till now, a practical necessity. The result of most people’s natural tendency to do no more than necessary has been the downfall of socialist systems. Some people are full of energy and work helps them feel worthwhile; they will be workers in any system. Others are bums; they will never work harder than they absolutely must to stay alive and are willing to lie, cheat and steal to avoid working. Most, of course, are along a spectrum in the middle. Many, if not most, people will work more if they can receive more for their work. Some will work more even if they only might receive more for the work. So, even with much greater productivity this moral teaching is practical and advisable.
I think that the most likely solution will involve reduced working hours for workers, and generation of make-work, likely by the government. The latter was part of the New Deal attempt to get out of the Great Depression. These projects did many good things of marginal economic value. As a result they were condemned and mocked by passionate believers in capitalism and the work ethic. But they did ease the pain of the Depression, while they lasted.
Sigh, that’s the best I can come up with. Another imperfect solution for this imperfect world. Sometimes I feel really ready for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Friday, March 25, 2011
So where is the center, anyway?
A recent exchange on the Kent State library school listserv helped me realize something about myself and the current political situation. I have long thought of myself as a centrist, a firm believer in moderation, compromise and the middle way. I've been pretty proud of it, actually. It feels like I'm in solidarity with one of my heroes, St. Thomas Aquinas. And it's bothered me a lot lately that on many subjects, I seem to be liberal, left-wing, not center. Am I betraying my hero? Am I being sucked into the extremist, left-wing, socialist Dark Side? Quelle idee! God forbid!
It helped considerably when a responder to one of my listserv posts said that the center changes over time. He pointed out that while the right-wing is still advocating the same extreme libertarianism, this country has no left advocating, for example, government ownership of anything. (Well, there are a few, but they have no real influence on anything.) The positions which, thirty years ago or so, were centrist are now supported by liberals. So I am not turning liberal, liberals are becoming centrists. I had been deceived by the fright-wing propaganda calling anything that they don't like "socialism". I've tried to tell my ditto-head friends that they have no idea what socialism is, but they don't seem to care.
Not that I'll ever call myself "liberal". The biggest problem with centrism is that on a few subjects, there is no center. The most important such subject is abortion: the unborn are people, or else they are not. No middle ground there. I've often said, though perhaps not in this blog, that the worst thing to happen to the unborn was not Roe v. Wade, but the co-opting of the issue by the right wing. As a result, few people actually think about the problem. Everyone is either "I'm conservative, I'm against it" or else "I'm liberal, I'm for it." And the slaughter goes on.
It helped considerably when a responder to one of my listserv posts said that the center changes over time. He pointed out that while the right-wing is still advocating the same extreme libertarianism, this country has no left advocating, for example, government ownership of anything. (Well, there are a few, but they have no real influence on anything.) The positions which, thirty years ago or so, were centrist are now supported by liberals. So I am not turning liberal, liberals are becoming centrists. I had been deceived by the fright-wing propaganda calling anything that they don't like "socialism". I've tried to tell my ditto-head friends that they have no idea what socialism is, but they don't seem to care.
Not that I'll ever call myself "liberal". The biggest problem with centrism is that on a few subjects, there is no center. The most important such subject is abortion: the unborn are people, or else they are not. No middle ground there. I've often said, though perhaps not in this blog, that the worst thing to happen to the unborn was not Roe v. Wade, but the co-opting of the issue by the right wing. As a result, few people actually think about the problem. Everyone is either "I'm conservative, I'm against it" or else "I'm liberal, I'm for it." And the slaughter goes on.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Abortion and Society
I ran across an absolutely fascinating article in the Huffington Post, by David P. Gushee, an evangelical Christian academic (yes, there is such an animal!) on abortion, law and morality. Here is the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-p-gushee/abortion-culture-and-the-_b_813002.html though I don’t know if it will be still there when you access it. Here is the author’s HuffPo bio page and blog list: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-p-gushee since the article may be available there later. This one is near the top of the “I wish I’d said that” file.
Dr Gushee makes the case that three trends in Western culture make the legal battle over abortion, while not irrelevant, unlikely to solve the basic problem in Western cultures. The trends are:
1) “The collapse of any cultural assumption that sex is to be reserved for marriage and that marriage is the best context in which to conceive and raise children.”
2) “The devolution of male-female relationships from a striving for a mutual lifetime covenant to short-term use of one another for individual sexual and emotional needs.”
3) “The overall transition from a focus on doing what is right to an emphasis on my rights.”
I hate to have to say it, but this article deepened even further my fear and hopelessness for American society. I can see what he points out, especially since in my misguided youth I helped the growth of these trends. Sigh, more guilt. Having seen and lived a better way since then, I greatly regret my early embrace of ideas 1 and 2. But 3 is arguably the most critical, and as Dr. Gushee points out, has been growing for much longer.
The idea of liberty, that everyone should be free to live a life of their own choosing, goes back to at least the eighteenth century Enlightenment movement. It’s pretty hard to argue with, especially considering the thought prevailing before then: that everyone was either free or slave. A lot of Western thought, at least, taught or implied that one’s estate was divinely ordained. You don’t like being a slave? Hard cheese, property. Think you know better than God? Dr. Gushee expressed it this way:
"My claim here is that the western intellectual heritage -- I speak especially of historic Christianity and Judaism -- trained people for a very long time to orient their lives around living rightly, as right living was prescribed by their faith. There was a given moral framework to the universe and our responsibility was to fit our lives to that framework, which, of course, these faith traditions believed came from God. "
When the Enlightenment intellectuals began to question this attitude towards life, Liberty became the prime value: if God is not defining my life, then I should be. At least, I want to be. But this makes a real problem: how do people live together? What do we do when my freedom conflicts with yours? And conflict it will.
This, I think, inescapably results in a system of radical selfishness. Whether the “enlightened self-interest” of the secular humanist or a naked sociopathic “me-first”, anyone else’s interest must be secondary to mine. After all, it’s my “right!” I’m only seeking justice! This strikes me as a terrible, ultimately suicidal way to run a society. Dr. Gushee describes it thus: “Society becomes a chaotic collision of rights-claims, with everything ending up in court.” This cannot be a stable situation; as the famous Mr. Dooley said “the supreme court follows the election returns.” I know judges greatly respect precedent, but they’re only human. They make mistakes, which either higher judges or subsequent judges must correct. And they have personality conflicts, like any group of people. Mr. Dooley again: “An appeal is asking one court to show its contempt for another court.”
The only solution, I believe as a Christian, is love. God was exactly correct in commanding that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In love, the other’s happiness is what makes our own happiness possible. When I act in love, I ignore my rights. My concern is for the rights of the ones I love. No one needs a court; we strive to make our lovers happy. And if this works against our own interests, so be it. It’s worth it to make them happy. But even among Christians who believe in an afterlife, in heaven, this requires trust. It requires trust that the ones we love also love us, and have the same care for our happiness that we have for theirs. And trust is a very fragile commodity.
In this world of Original Sin (as we Catholics call it), where we cannot count on love, we have no clear and obvious way to run a stable society. Probably the best human-only system is something like capitalism, where competing selfishnesses balance against each other. But capitalism is not ultimately stable; it is a balance which can be lost if one actor becomes too strong. The current economic times demonstrate that pretty clearly.
And on the original topic, abortion, who would be the Lorax for the unborn? If justice, and even existence, can only be secured by screaming for “My Rights!”, how can the voiceless survive?
Dr Gushee makes the case that three trends in Western culture make the legal battle over abortion, while not irrelevant, unlikely to solve the basic problem in Western cultures. The trends are:
1) “The collapse of any cultural assumption that sex is to be reserved for marriage and that marriage is the best context in which to conceive and raise children.”
2) “The devolution of male-female relationships from a striving for a mutual lifetime covenant to short-term use of one another for individual sexual and emotional needs.”
3) “The overall transition from a focus on doing what is right to an emphasis on my rights.”
I hate to have to say it, but this article deepened even further my fear and hopelessness for American society. I can see what he points out, especially since in my misguided youth I helped the growth of these trends. Sigh, more guilt. Having seen and lived a better way since then, I greatly regret my early embrace of ideas 1 and 2. But 3 is arguably the most critical, and as Dr. Gushee points out, has been growing for much longer.
The idea of liberty, that everyone should be free to live a life of their own choosing, goes back to at least the eighteenth century Enlightenment movement. It’s pretty hard to argue with, especially considering the thought prevailing before then: that everyone was either free or slave. A lot of Western thought, at least, taught or implied that one’s estate was divinely ordained. You don’t like being a slave? Hard cheese, property. Think you know better than God? Dr. Gushee expressed it this way:
"My claim here is that the western intellectual heritage -- I speak especially of historic Christianity and Judaism -- trained people for a very long time to orient their lives around living rightly, as right living was prescribed by their faith. There was a given moral framework to the universe and our responsibility was to fit our lives to that framework, which, of course, these faith traditions believed came from God. "
When the Enlightenment intellectuals began to question this attitude towards life, Liberty became the prime value: if God is not defining my life, then I should be. At least, I want to be. But this makes a real problem: how do people live together? What do we do when my freedom conflicts with yours? And conflict it will.
This, I think, inescapably results in a system of radical selfishness. Whether the “enlightened self-interest” of the secular humanist or a naked sociopathic “me-first”, anyone else’s interest must be secondary to mine. After all, it’s my “right!” I’m only seeking justice! This strikes me as a terrible, ultimately suicidal way to run a society. Dr. Gushee describes it thus: “Society becomes a chaotic collision of rights-claims, with everything ending up in court.” This cannot be a stable situation; as the famous Mr. Dooley said “the supreme court follows the election returns.” I know judges greatly respect precedent, but they’re only human. They make mistakes, which either higher judges or subsequent judges must correct. And they have personality conflicts, like any group of people. Mr. Dooley again: “An appeal is asking one court to show its contempt for another court.”
The only solution, I believe as a Christian, is love. God was exactly correct in commanding that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In love, the other’s happiness is what makes our own happiness possible. When I act in love, I ignore my rights. My concern is for the rights of the ones I love. No one needs a court; we strive to make our lovers happy. And if this works against our own interests, so be it. It’s worth it to make them happy. But even among Christians who believe in an afterlife, in heaven, this requires trust. It requires trust that the ones we love also love us, and have the same care for our happiness that we have for theirs. And trust is a very fragile commodity.
In this world of Original Sin (as we Catholics call it), where we cannot count on love, we have no clear and obvious way to run a stable society. Probably the best human-only system is something like capitalism, where competing selfishnesses balance against each other. But capitalism is not ultimately stable; it is a balance which can be lost if one actor becomes too strong. The current economic times demonstrate that pretty clearly.
And on the original topic, abortion, who would be the Lorax for the unborn? If justice, and even existence, can only be secured by screaming for “My Rights!”, how can the voiceless survive?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Peel some Spuds
“I just think it’s important to be fair – “ the man began.
“Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there’s a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one?”
Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
I was happy to read this little part of the novel. Night Watch is one of the darker, less going-for-laughs Discworld novels. Copyrighted 2002, I suspect that, like most Westerners, Pratchett was in a somber mood, wondering what would become of our world. Dave Barry's first column after 9/11/2001 began "No humor here today. I can't write it, and you couldn't read it." I've heard depressingly few "good news" things since then. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has become an unwinnable quagmire. Also like Vietnam, changing the political party in control didn't really change anything.
So often I wish that I could take control of this screwed-up world and straighten out all the dysfunctions, confusions and cross-purposes. But as the poet (Friedrich Schiller) said, "against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." And I'm a good Catholic boy; I understand about Original Sin and its consequences. Still, I feel like one of the characters in Jack London's The Sea Wolf who says "...God is noddin' and not doin' His duty, though it's me as shouldn't be sayin' it." Why do we have to sort things out ourselves? We’re no good at it.
But this bit of Sam Vimes' wisdom helps calm me down. Like Reg Shoe (the “man” in the quote, later the first zombie constable in the City Watch,) I want to save the whole world. Also like Reg, I can't save very much. I have joined movements that I hoped would improve life, maybe perfect it. As a hippie I tried to revolutionize our culture so that everyone would be happy. Later I wanted the Charismatic Renewal to revolutionize the Church and through it the world. The second failure hurt worse; I really thought we were God's agents in our world. I withdrew a little too far after that. It was good to concentrate on raising my kids and supporting my wife, but I felt too hopeless even to try anything much bigger.
I’m still hopeless, as you can probably tell from this blog. But I need to light the proverbial one candle. It won’t illuminate the whole world, but maybe somebody won’t stumble.
(“Peeling spuds” is a bit ironic, though. I’m one of those folks that think tater skins are good for you.)
“Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there’s a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one?”
Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
I was happy to read this little part of the novel. Night Watch is one of the darker, less going-for-laughs Discworld novels. Copyrighted 2002, I suspect that, like most Westerners, Pratchett was in a somber mood, wondering what would become of our world. Dave Barry's first column after 9/11/2001 began "No humor here today. I can't write it, and you couldn't read it." I've heard depressingly few "good news" things since then. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has become an unwinnable quagmire. Also like Vietnam, changing the political party in control didn't really change anything.
So often I wish that I could take control of this screwed-up world and straighten out all the dysfunctions, confusions and cross-purposes. But as the poet (Friedrich Schiller) said, "against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." And I'm a good Catholic boy; I understand about Original Sin and its consequences. Still, I feel like one of the characters in Jack London's The Sea Wolf who says "...God is noddin' and not doin' His duty, though it's me as shouldn't be sayin' it." Why do we have to sort things out ourselves? We’re no good at it.
But this bit of Sam Vimes' wisdom helps calm me down. Like Reg Shoe (the “man” in the quote, later the first zombie constable in the City Watch,) I want to save the whole world. Also like Reg, I can't save very much. I have joined movements that I hoped would improve life, maybe perfect it. As a hippie I tried to revolutionize our culture so that everyone would be happy. Later I wanted the Charismatic Renewal to revolutionize the Church and through it the world. The second failure hurt worse; I really thought we were God's agents in our world. I withdrew a little too far after that. It was good to concentrate on raising my kids and supporting my wife, but I felt too hopeless even to try anything much bigger.
I’m still hopeless, as you can probably tell from this blog. But I need to light the proverbial one candle. It won’t illuminate the whole world, but maybe somebody won’t stumble.
(“Peeling spuds” is a bit ironic, though. I’m one of those folks that think tater skins are good for you.)
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Things I'm Thankful For
It occurred to me that I'm writing a lot of pretty negative stuff here, and I want to balance that a little. There are, after all, a lot of things I've been given that are true blessings and I'm thankful for them. Here is a short list.
It occurred to me recently that for most of my life, I've had a job that I liked doing. I currently work, however irregularly, as a reference librarian, and I really like it! It is the work I like best of my jobs so far. Programming was fun, and pretty satisfying. I loved being part of a Catholic institution at U. D. But as a reference librarian, I help people directly and immediately. I love the thanks I get, right away. Most of the work at UD was too much time alone with a keyboard; it got lonesome. But at the library, I get the psychic reward right away; I hope that this lasts a good long time.
I was born to a very good family, both immediate and extended. I hear so much in this culture about disfunctional families, and I see stats about the breakdown of families, and I am so glad that I have no personal experience of it.
Betty wasn't very easy to catch, but I'm soooo glad I caught her. We have so many good times together; our tastes mesh so well. We hardly disagreed on child-rearing, even. She also was born to a good family; I love her family as much as mine. It hasn't always been easy, but it has always been good.
Tom and John are two different men, and were two different boys, so it pleases me no end that they get along with each other so well. And it is so good to see some of the things about them that Betty and I worked to give them. And Tom found a wife who suits him at least as well as Betty suits me. I profoundly hope that John can do as well.
These are the immediate thankfuls. I'm running out of time here, so maybe next year I'll list some larger ones.
It occurred to me recently that for most of my life, I've had a job that I liked doing. I currently work, however irregularly, as a reference librarian, and I really like it! It is the work I like best of my jobs so far. Programming was fun, and pretty satisfying. I loved being part of a Catholic institution at U. D. But as a reference librarian, I help people directly and immediately. I love the thanks I get, right away. Most of the work at UD was too much time alone with a keyboard; it got lonesome. But at the library, I get the psychic reward right away; I hope that this lasts a good long time.
I was born to a very good family, both immediate and extended. I hear so much in this culture about disfunctional families, and I see stats about the breakdown of families, and I am so glad that I have no personal experience of it.
Betty wasn't very easy to catch, but I'm soooo glad I caught her. We have so many good times together; our tastes mesh so well. We hardly disagreed on child-rearing, even. She also was born to a good family; I love her family as much as mine. It hasn't always been easy, but it has always been good.
Tom and John are two different men, and were two different boys, so it pleases me no end that they get along with each other so well. And it is so good to see some of the things about them that Betty and I worked to give them. And Tom found a wife who suits him at least as well as Betty suits me. I profoundly hope that John can do as well.
These are the immediate thankfuls. I'm running out of time here, so maybe next year I'll list some larger ones.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Is Everything Miscellaneous?
Been reading "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger recently. It's pretty good; it helped me understand some things about the Web/Internet that I hadn't understood, or hadn't appreciated, before. One thing is Wikipedia. He showed how its community generated entries, when controversial and fought over, will eventually come to a consensus on the entry and the vocabulary to describe it. Of course, this pushed my centrist, compromising, consensus-builder buttons big time. But even after slowing down and thinking it over, I still agree that this technique will produce valid knowledge at least as often as reliance on experts. God knows "experts" have pulled some amazing stunts in the past; that's a source of material for lots of web sites and stand-up comedy routines. But Weinberger, like most writers on new technology, seems to take the technology he writes about (the WWW) as the only source of all truth, beauty and goodness. He seems to me to say that in this brave new world knowledge itself is different and better. He throws around the phrase "third order", short for third order of knowledge, with great gusto; the Web has made all things new.
Not that Third Order doesn't make a lot of sense. The first two orders of knowledge can be summarized as data (descriptions of the real world) first, and metadata (data describing data) second. Both of these orders have definite limitations. Weinberger's favorite example of metadata is the Dewey Decimal Classification, especially as implemented in the good old card catalog. These two, while they are vast improvements over simple lists of books, have definite limits to their usefulness. He describes these limits as inevitable consequences of their physicality. I find it a persuasive argument. The card catalog is especially convincing. When I was young it was how you found anything in the library, and it had limits. Subject terms have to be assigned by an educated professional, and if too many books have too many subject terms, the catalog swells to unusability. Conversely, when you kept the catalog to a manageable size you inevitably left out a lot of useful information. Plus, having studied indexing myself, I know that the best educated expert in the world can’t anticipate everyone’s needs.
It is certainly true that new information technology has enabled a drastic increase in what is possible and what is practical. On the Internet we are not hobbled by many of the physical limits on how we link things, and how we label them. But he sometimes seems to me too rapturous about what these changes and new powers mean. He almost seems to say that reality itself has been re-created. To be fair, he explicitly denies that in the last chapter, but his re-definition of "knowledge" is still much too sweeping for my taste.
Probably my biggest beef with the book is the chapter in which he states that meaning is now a social process. I don't buy that, at least not without a whole lot of nuancing and limitations. It reminded me of a humorous article from many years ago, when I was writing SPSS jobs for UD faculty research projects. SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. It had commands to perform statistical calculations specially designed for social science research. You would usually start with a GET FILE command, to fetch the file of data you wish to analyze. Surveys and other such data-gathering instruments and techniques usually have gaps, where for instance a respondent declined to answer a question. In such cases you would enter a special number, and then tell the system to treat occurrences of this number as missing, not real data. The command ASSIGN MISSING did this.
This article started out by observing that sometimes, sociological research just doesn't go well. You blow through a whole pile of grant money, and nothing correlates, regresses, or lines up with anything else. So he invented some new SPSS commands for when this happens. Instead of GET FILE, use FAKE FILE. You enter the variables and the coefficients you want, and the system generates a data set where everything fits the way it should. Way easier and cheaper, right? But this is a data set with no meaning. So, use the ASSIGN MEANING command. After each variable name, enter a description of its meaning. There; perfect research every time. Of course, the journal editors or referees might balk at "fake data." So you describe your data set as "stochastically inferred data." Problem solved!
I can't hear anything about "assigning meaning" without flashing back to that article, and I just can't take the concept seriously. But this post is long enough; maybe I'll ruminate sometime about meaning, and what it means.
Not that Third Order doesn't make a lot of sense. The first two orders of knowledge can be summarized as data (descriptions of the real world) first, and metadata (data describing data) second. Both of these orders have definite limitations. Weinberger's favorite example of metadata is the Dewey Decimal Classification, especially as implemented in the good old card catalog. These two, while they are vast improvements over simple lists of books, have definite limits to their usefulness. He describes these limits as inevitable consequences of their physicality. I find it a persuasive argument. The card catalog is especially convincing. When I was young it was how you found anything in the library, and it had limits. Subject terms have to be assigned by an educated professional, and if too many books have too many subject terms, the catalog swells to unusability. Conversely, when you kept the catalog to a manageable size you inevitably left out a lot of useful information. Plus, having studied indexing myself, I know that the best educated expert in the world can’t anticipate everyone’s needs.
It is certainly true that new information technology has enabled a drastic increase in what is possible and what is practical. On the Internet we are not hobbled by many of the physical limits on how we link things, and how we label them. But he sometimes seems to me too rapturous about what these changes and new powers mean. He almost seems to say that reality itself has been re-created. To be fair, he explicitly denies that in the last chapter, but his re-definition of "knowledge" is still much too sweeping for my taste.
Probably my biggest beef with the book is the chapter in which he states that meaning is now a social process. I don't buy that, at least not without a whole lot of nuancing and limitations. It reminded me of a humorous article from many years ago, when I was writing SPSS jobs for UD faculty research projects. SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. It had commands to perform statistical calculations specially designed for social science research. You would usually start with a GET FILE command, to fetch the file of data you wish to analyze. Surveys and other such data-gathering instruments and techniques usually have gaps, where for instance a respondent declined to answer a question. In such cases you would enter a special number, and then tell the system to treat occurrences of this number as missing, not real data. The command ASSIGN MISSING did this.
This article started out by observing that sometimes, sociological research just doesn't go well. You blow through a whole pile of grant money, and nothing correlates, regresses, or lines up with anything else. So he invented some new SPSS commands for when this happens. Instead of GET FILE, use FAKE FILE. You enter the variables and the coefficients you want, and the system generates a data set where everything fits the way it should. Way easier and cheaper, right? But this is a data set with no meaning. So, use the ASSIGN MEANING command. After each variable name, enter a description of its meaning. There; perfect research every time. Of course, the journal editors or referees might balk at "fake data." So you describe your data set as "stochastically inferred data." Problem solved!
I can't hear anything about "assigning meaning" without flashing back to that article, and I just can't take the concept seriously. But this post is long enough; maybe I'll ruminate sometime about meaning, and what it means.
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