The Dichotomy of Car Dealers

Bought a car last night. With my doctor moving further away and more traveling to be done for business, I wanted better mileage than I was getting. Also wanted a sedan, not another van. Wanted high odometer, several years old, good condition, Lexus ... yeah, I am addicted and I wanted another car like I got in Ireland years ago...really loved that right hand drive LS 430.

But, I KNOW I have to look around, search the web, compare prices, find models, and...oh hell...deal with a sales person of some type.

So the loins must be girded, the mind must be focused (fully oxygenated blood coupled with a high dose of anti-cancer steroids really was a plus!!!) Set my mental budget, went in admitting to no more than 2/3 of that and looked for a deal that was only 1/3 ... miracles do happen.

Also remind myself this is no trade in (we keep the van for real hauling and Linda likes it) and a cash sale, no note. I hope that gives me a bit of price leverage, but really, these days, they don't care much about that...I just do not want a car payment. Have not had one for several years now and have totally changed my perspective on such things.

I had a list of must haves and wanna haves...not a big list, but specific...older, around the 100K mile mark, auto climate control, power seats ... and memory seats were a big want to have. The car had to 'fit' both of us comfortably and be in good condition. Looking for a nice older car I can drive into the ground over a few years.

I ultimately searched the web for 2 weeks, and then went to 7 lots, both big dealers and small used car lots. And I ultimately found a deal I am pretty happy with.

2004 Lexus ES 330, a soft grey (millennium they call it) with just over 100K miles. New brakes and fully inspected...we made that a condition of sale to cover lots of mechanical bases. The Texas emission controls inspection can be a real pain.

Came in right at my 2/3 budget mark.

But the GAME, the GAME, the GAME.

Car sales people have no people skills! They do not know how to treat people with any respect. For instance:

After 2 hours of test driving a bunch of T's, I 'meet the manager' of course. First he looks like some wannabe mafia don...in Texas (maybe it's Cosa Nostra here...used to be)...ill fitting pin stripe suit when everyone else was in T-corp Khakis and he had this slicked back hair like it  is to impress me. Yuck!...nearly made me walk away just to shake his hand.

He spins a story of how his used car lot is being demolished on Monday and "ALL THE CARS HAVE TO GO" ... so he want to make me a good deal. I tell him I am pretty sold on a Camry, but I need an hour to think about it and he needs to come up with a firm out the door price.

I psyche myself up to buy the car while at dinner (and discussing it with Linda, of course) then call back in an hour as I promised and the sales person (lowest on the leader board, by the way) acts like he does not remember me, doesn't have the price figured out (any price) and says he'll call me in an hour.

That was 6pm Saturday night ... he calls me back on Thursday afternoon to see if I am still interested in his Camry. THURSDAY! And he seems miffed when I tell him I bought a Lexus on Wednesday!

T Used Cars are still there...have no fear...the lot is full of nice used overpriced cars.

So we keep looking. I was impressed by a 2010 Buick LaCrosse and came VERY close to a 2011 Ford Fusion, but they were both right at my budget limit and I was still leery of an American car...much burned in the 1980's and I have a long memory.

New cars like the Elantra, the Civic, and the Sonata, all right at the budget limit, but do not offer the features I want.

There is pressure to buy a new car. It would seem sensible to buy a new car if the price is only $2K over a 2 year old used model, but depreciation and insurance just make it a sick deal.

We test drive an Elantra (doesn't fit) and a Sonata hybrid ...very interested in the hybrids... but the sales person tells us he is specifically not a hybrid lover and does not like to sell them ... no real reason, he doesn't even know how the engine works, exactly (neither did the Toyota sales person). No, this guy just doesn't like them. Oddly, the T sales dude had a similar attitude about hybrids.

The Sonata is a good car and the hybrid was great...enough power and smooth transition ... just beyond my max number...we will wait.

 I tell the Lexus salesman I want a 6-8 year old sedan with near 100K miles and he says he doesn't have any and lets me drive a 2011 LS 460..Sure, If I had that kind of budget, nothing beats an LS ... I would take another over a Merc, a BMW, a Jag, or even a Bentley...they are just superb cars. (The Hyundai Equus looks very Lexus LS like too...and is valued so). But Lexus is best.

Today when I happen to see him at the Lexus dealership (having new keys made) I mention I bought an ES from another dealer and he switches off immediately...that's OK, I am no longer a prospect, I understand that...but then he tells me he had a 2004 LS with 30K miles for right at my 2/3 number...and that he sold it to a friend.

Now, why did he tell me this little story. It might be true, it might not be, but was he deliberately telling me that he chose NOT to contact me with the perfect car when it came in and that instead he 'sold it to his friend'? Was that just to sort of establish that I was NOT his friend, not even on his contact list? I found it weird behaviour.

After 6 other dealers, looking at N's cars (which NEVER fit me...my head hits the headliner in every model)...we had come across a 2004 Lexus ES 330 at just about the right price. Needs a brake job and some work to make it inspect-able...that's what we set as a contingent and agreed to pay a certain amount of overage if needed...of course it was.

But when we came to collect it, our sales rep was flitting about, not with other customers, but just running from his empty office to someplace else even as he told us the car was being brought 'round. Then, suddenly, his partner, mentor, super, whatever shows up, shakes my hand and says, let's go look at it and get it closed. OK...but this guy has not been involved in the sale at all.

We look at it, drive it a bit, with a new dealer plate on it, then adjourn to the cashier's office area to pay the final piece. I had paid several thousand via Amex as a deposit already to hold the car and get the work done, no problem, and then our new sales guy makes us wait at a table in the lobby, runs back with my credit card (whole car paid for via Amex ... gotta get the points!) and returns saying we're done.

He presents me with an Amex charge sheet where he charged the agreed overage. He's about to let me out the door with this car, signed and sealed (although no one EVER asked me to sign an Amex charge authorization) for several thousand dollars less than the agreed price. Like more than half the agreed price. I looked at the slip and thought, "what if I just drive off with all this documentation saying I've paid, everything is done?"

I presumed they would discover the problem, call me and/or call the cops ... but thoughts of taking advantage of this idiot who inserted himself for no reason of value to me into my sale did, indeed, flit through my mind.

I showed the credit card receipt to him and said, I think I owe you rather a lot more than that. He looked surprised, confessed he knew nothing about the prior sales process, deposit, payments or anything, then ran back to his 'Cashier' and showed up with a NEW bill for the residual.

But there is a wrinkle. He wants me to pay the 2% AMEX merchant charge in addition to the agreed residual amount for the car. Or I could write him a check.

I suddenly realized this was a scam to extract a little more money out of the deal. Just a little more, just a bit, just 2% of half. I told him that if he did that I would just go file a complaint with AMEX since it is against the rules in the US Merchant agreement to force your customer to pay the fee as a surcharge or to direct your customer away from using the card.

He sullenly said he didn't know about that and then thanked me and shook my hand.

Looking into the sales person's eyes, I knew what the problem was. His eyes were totally dead, devoid of emotion, reptilian or snake like. He's a sociopath. He's high functioning, and it may be a learned sociopathy, but he has no sense of community, his place as a member, empathy for fellows, or even a sense of people as person. He also has no social skills.

It has been said that most successful high end executives are high functioning psychopaths. I suspect that middle tier, barely making it car salesmen are on the sociopathy or ASPD scale.

This guy interrupted me three times as I was using my iPad to bind over my insurance for the car, then when I said, I was doing that, he gets startled and says,"Oh, I haven't given you my friend's card...he'll get you set up with insurance..." I just looked at him and said, "no", hit the button on my policy site and got the message that I was covered. It IS the 21st century, after all.

He thanked me and shook my hand again...in an hour he shook my hand four times and told me he would follow up with the missing paperwork the next day and wanted to "stay with me and the car" to be sure everything was right. I, of course, never heard from him again.

I went to the service folks today and collected the inspection report...the work order for the repairs was "not in the computer yet" ... we'll see if the title and plates show up without another visit. Probably have to go to the DMV myself.

The man is an IDIOT!!! He actually thought I would stop using my regular insurance company and switch to his 'friend'? He thought we were so stupid as to even WANT to do that?

What is wrong with these people? I don't mind the tactics, the good sales guy, bad sales guy routine, the  make you wait and sweat a deal out of you. But they have no subtlety in their con, no finesse, not even social engineering. When I first showed up alone, every sales person tried to play the macho man card..."you can make this decision, right? You don't have to ask anyone else?"

Of COURSE I have to consult with my life partner, wife, lover, best friend, and the saint who has seen me through more medical crap than you can shake a stick at. And, frankly, these guys could play THAT card more subtly than they do...some are so blatant (the T guys) that you could swat flies with their rhetoric!

These N guys are also amazingly blatant about bending or edging the law.  They put an inspection sticker on the car, but Texas law says they HAVE to give you the inspection report. I was very suspicious that they had not really inspected the car...after all I received the car with a new inspection sticker and the first thing the car did was report a dead tail light to me on the dash (good info system on this car)

We did encounter one sales rep who really did earn our business with a good, friendly, non-manipulative style. I wanted to do a deal with him, but we could not come to terms on the price. But he was not miffed, not dismissive, nor condescending when I said no. He was a pro. HOPE HE DOES WELL.

Which brings me to the dichotomy: Service

I went to Lexus this morning to have new keys cut ... old car, one key, held together with tape. This is non-trivial at Lexus as new keys are about $200 each  .. .they carry an immobilizing  security transponder and the remote control is in the key head. No master key, no car start...period.

I saw someone online asking if anyone knew where you could get such keys cheap...the best answer was, "you own a Lexus and can't afford a $100 key?" Good answer!

The service rep was polite, professional, helpful, not pushy about other services, which we did discuss. he was prompt with answers and did not try to hedge  amounts or mislead. When I declined something he did not become miffed or anti-social, nor did he keep coming back to something trying to sell it.

Two keys took an hour and I was made very comfortable with good espresso and plenty of TV.

He was NOT a sociopath, nor ASPD. He had people skills and he won my business and will win more with that attitude.

I went back to the N dealership, but straight to service and the service people were very concerned about why the light was out. They pulled the inspection report, then opened the light bulb compartment, but the light was not out...it was dead in their driveway and working in their garage. Loose connection apparently and they tightened that.

No upsell, no pressure, no resentment, serious concern and then a solution. No charge. And they said to watch it and bring it back if it happens again. Slick and pro and restored my faith. They DID do an inspection, the sales dudes (2 of them) had just not bothered to pull the report and give it to me.

So why is service attentive and sales repulsive?

Why is this so? Sure, they may make more money with a good service department and one reason I just acquired my 4th Lexus is the service..amen to that!

But a calmer, more attentive, more interested sales person would go further toward closing a sale at least with me. Oh yeah, car sales are just booming aren't they? Used cars are so in demand that the prices are almost as high as new.

But with deceptions, lies, misleadings, weird stories about closing the lot and all else, it would appear these tactics are not working.

But interested service with full disclosure and professional attitude, non-condescending rhetoric and punctual results pulls customers back...I wonder why?

Service at my local mechanic is much the same. He's helpful, punctual, doesn't try to oversell me, and is happy to help as he can. Of course, good service is his bread and butter...he has no cars to sell. But the tactics work and work better than the traditional sales tactics seem to.

I think that is because the sales people and their management and their management are sociopaths...the business seems to attract them. I don't really mean to criticize; sociopaths need work too. It is a character trait, a brain chemistry thing, probably augmented by social environment and then being able to find a culture where they can be anti-social as instinct dictates while still being part of a weird, competitive, dysfunctional community. And the weak do not last long. Low man on the leader board is probably gone quickly.

Service, on the other hand attracts people who like to solve problems, understand problems and enjoy interactions...or at least the dealerships seem to architect their departments this way. And it works; I WANT to go back and spend money with a good service department. If I could open a hole and have every sales rep sucked into the hell-mouth, I would.

Why does it perpetuate? Surely, with so much info online, so many comparisons to be done, so much intelligence to be garnered about the products, silly, manipulative stupid sales people must be at a disadvantage? Aren't they? Or are they perpetuating a tradition as a last dying scream since they will have little place to go if buyers reject the tactics and buy what they want, as they want, for a price they want, without the histrionics.

CARMAX is making a dent there, and I researched with them a lot, but most cars fell outside my budget because they were too new or they were too far away and the transport cost would add more to the cost. But the no haggle price (plus the no haggle fees they barely disclose) is a step in the right direction.

Someone needs to do a serious, perhaps longitudinal, study on the psychology of car dealerships and their business models, ethics, tactics, and style in both sales and service. I have been unable to find anything very much in-depth or academic...a few popular magazine articles, but not much more.

But I do like my new car...excellent condition, very smooth and drives like the bubble bath I enjoy. A bit smaller than the LS, but not so much I care.  Much better gas mileage. I'll get an LS hybrid when they become common in a few more years. If they ever do...yeah, they will.

Thoughts anyone? Am I just letting off steam after a memorable and not totally pleasant experience?

By the way, buying my LS 430 in Galway, Ireland was totally different...very pleasant, none of the manipulation...sales and service felt as one..of course, the dealership went bankrupt later...what does that say?


Bill

A Little Touch of Heart

As many of my friends know, I have had severe breathing problems for several years. I could not walk far or fast, could not climb stairs, and was often huffing and puffing after the mildest exertion. This began, in earnest when I was working at Adobe systems in the 2004-2005 timeframe, even as I was walking 3 miles a day to work and back in downtown San Jose. After a bout of pneumonia in 2006, I was severely restricted as my colleagues at DERI in Ireland may recall.

I want to thank all the friends and colleagues who tolerated my disability and my slowness. I also want to let everyone know that those days are behind me now.

No, it was not my lifestyle or my weight..I am the same 280 lb or 129 kg now that I have been for a dozen years. No it was not my Myeloma which I am still living with and undergoing treatment for.

No, I had a hole in my heart. A little hole which I have had since birth. A minor congenital birth defect. And I have had it repaired. As I say, I have been darned like an old sock!

A Patent Foramen Ovale or Atrial Septal Defect is a remnant from the womb. Everyone has this little hole while gestating. But it is supposed to close up upon your first breath, when your lungs take over the job of supplying oxygen to the blood.

In 25%-30% of people it does not close. un-oxygenated blood from the venous side of the cardiovascular system is forced under pressure into the oxygenated arterial side, thus lowering the percentage of oxygenated arterial blood flowing to muscles and organs.

For most, the hole is so small, the effect so benign that it causes no impact. This is the current medical line. However, as we age and our heart's stiffen, it can become a possible site for clots and can lead to stroke. Protocol at many hospitals now is that once you have a stroke, a special type of sonogram is performed to see if a PFO or ASD is present.

In May I had two strokes while on Myeloma meds which increased the thrombophilic properties of my blood. Fortunately, they were minor, left no impairment, and pushed me into this protocol.

The 'bubble' test, where microscopic bubbles are dissolved in your blood while a cardio echogram is performed, was very positive, showing a literal stream of bubbles flowing from my right to left ventricles in just the way that is never supposed to happen. I have it on DVD. It is the most compelling video of myself I have ever seen. The test is not dangerous or painful and took less than 15 minutes. It needs a nurse to assist (she mixes the air with the sterile saline and shoots it into a vein through an IV). microscopic bubbles pose no threat and dissolve rapidly into the blood.

There is also a TTE test which I had that is a bit more involved (tube down the throat so the sonogram transducer is in the esophagus. Also safe, non-painful, but requires a bit of sedation for 15 minutes or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transthoracic_echocardiogram 

On Monday, July 23, I went in for robotic open heart surgery for an ASD repair at the Baylor Heart Hospital in Plano, Tx. On Wednesday I went home feeling ten years younger.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! 

The robot is used to penetrate from the right side in four or five small incisions where catheters, cameras, drains, and any other tools can be inserted. The chest is NOT cracked as in the old days and there is no long scar.

I do look as if I battled a samurai and the camera went in through a slit at the base of my right nipple...that was a bit of an ouch for a few days. But only thin scars remain and they will fade in a year or so. Even the neck and groin incisions where the bypass catheters went in (had to stop the heart, so a little pumping help was needed) are soft, thin, and fading already. It has not been 2 full months yet.

The pain was virtually nil. I was standing Monday afternoon, walking Tuesday and Wednesday I went home. The folks (Nurses, PTs, OTs, Admins, Doctors, Dietitians, etc) at the hospital are a) wonderful, b) impressed, c) amazingly well trained and helpful, and d) did I mention wonderful.

My surgeon was friendly, conversant, articulate, and wonderfully competent. Among the best in the world as the Plano Heart Hospital has just been recognized. Thank you, Robert Smith!

My cardiologist is also friendly, articulate, competent, and very, very impressed that this returned me to such energy and stamina as I have not had in years. thank you Kevin Theleman!

But I have to thank my oncologist/hematologist for sticking with me and being smart enough to NOT make it all about the Myeloma. When we met I told him better breathing was a goal and we had to find out what was wrong there. He never wavered from thinking about that and helping me even as he also fought the Myeloma aggressively as he had to do. He has moved his offices somewhat further away now, but is worth the drive (and possibly a new car with better mileage) to stick with his treatment and his wisdom. Thank you Lee Drinkard!

I spent a couple of days and nights on the living room couch, then climbed to my bedroom with virtually no effort by the end of the first week. Today I carried a 100 pound piece of granite chess set down the stairs. I was huffing a bit, but my O2 saturation never fell below 96%...before, a 30 foot walk would drop me into 70% "go to ER immediately range".

Now, walks, stairs, lawn work, swimming, even scuba are once again no-fear activities. I literally feel like I am back in my mid forties. Doctors all agree; no cardiac restrictions, and I can resume my normal activities as I wish.

Which, of course, now includes Myeloma treatments. I was off all treatment for 4 months to get the heart and breathing thing fixed. That did give the Myeloma time to regroup and to start coming back...but now I am MUCH, MUCH more capable of tolerating the treatment and seem to be doing so quite well.

Six years! Six years of heavy breathing, tiredness, avoiding stairs, not going to conferences, and many other restrictions I put on my life. Six years of asking doctors why I did not have enough breath for normal activities. Six years of looking at my lungs and my blood, but never seriously at my heart. I had an Echo done in Ireland and was told my heart would last 100 years. And well it might...but THAT Echo was not the bubble test Echo and so did not reveal my little birth defect.

Fifty-seven years to find and repair a congenital heart defect. Fifty-seven years. Is this why I never could excel at sports? I tired very easily even at my peak in high school...running laps and bleachers was the world's worst for me.  I could hit softball homers repeatedly, but could not rapidly run the bases. Who knows?

But that is all over. I feel fantastic and, as I said, the normal activities of a middle aged man no longer hold fear and trepidation for me. I don't carefully plan my walks to the curb or my trots up and down stairs in our house. I know longer worry if I need to walk up a flight of stairs at a client site.

Twenty-five to thirty percent of you have this defect, too. You may never notice it. But if n ot found and treated, it can lead to strokes. Unfortunately, it is not typically tested for until AFTER the first stroke. But you CAN talk to your cardiologist about it and ask for it.

So life continues, work continues, and I continue. Looking forward to a vacation next year where I can get some downtime in a pretty lagoon or on a nice drift dive. It is GOOD to be back!

Heroes

I was struck, as I usually am, by the surprise the media evince when discussing the actions of people at the Century Cinema in Aurora, Co during the recent shooting there. The reporters always seem to find it hard to understand when they tell a story of a man throwing himself on top of his girlfriend or wife (or even a stranger) to shield her from the bullets and dying as a result. On occasion the genders are reversed, or the story is of a mother defending a child, but most commonly we read of men who step or dive between death and others.

The reason I find the reporting somewhat disingenuous in this particular case is of course, because the people who shielded these innocents were doing so at a movie about a comic book hero.

They were just doing what they had been taught; what they had been shown repeatedly in works of fictional literature,  heroes do. They were just being heroes.

By no means do I intend to trivialize these actions. What I do want to say, however, is that these actions, these heroic actions, are NOT unusual to people. They are common and normal. When sudden danger presents itself, REAL people act as heroes, even to the "last full measure of devotion".

"The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all." — Russian proverb

We are, at our core, an altruistic social species. We actually do NOT instinctively seek the course of action which guarantees our individual survival. Rather, we instinctively act to preserve and protect our families, our friends, our companions, our crowd, our tribe, our nation.

The people who do this are not acting unusually, nor above and beyond. They are acting normally and that is all the more noble because they are acting to preserve that very character in our species and culture.

The depiction of heroes like Batman helps preserve and propagate this tendency, this meme within our societies. Every culture has them as well; the heroes. But, frankly, I think comic books and graphic novels have some of the best. In sequential  art we have returned to a method of storytelling that engages and exercises multiple aspects of our cognitive abilities. Sequential art (comics) tells stories with pictures, words, framing, temporality, and imagination...comics are, when looked at carefully, one of the finest literary art forms ever devised.

When events such as the Aurora shootings occur, there are rules which, one can trust, were both instinctual and learned; reinforced as it were by the literature these people had consumed. First, get women and children to safety. This is not at all misogynistic. If we, as a society, do not make such a rule primary, the species may die out...this reaction is evolutionarily encoded in our genes. Besides, of what other value are we males in such a situation than serving as self selecting shields. Again, genetically, we are predisposed to do this.

Of course, there are always plenty of women who act as heroes in this manner as well. Sacrificing themselves for their children or for any children. Or for their mates and other people in the vicinity. Such heroism is also both instinctual and learned from a society's hero literature. Protect, defend, preserve...first for the next generation, then for the ones who can create the next generation.

This is what REAL people do in terrifying, dangerous, life threatening, chaotic, insane situations such as a movie theater filled with complacent, relaxed, comfortable, overweight spectators of silly fictional stories about bizarre characters dressed in caped armor to fight crime.

They step up and act heroically because, at our heart, we are a heroic people.

It is very important for our media to recognize heroic action, yes. But they should not seem so surprised...it is what we do.

And, we SHOULD take our lessons in heroism from these hyperbolic characters.  From classic myth through James Bond to Batman, literary fictions are the lies we tell ourselves to reveal the truth of our condition.

An American Teen Died Today

Dick Clark died today

America's oldest teenager was 82 when he left us

Anyone who ever enjoyed music between the years 1945 and 2012 will have heard of Dick Clark and will have been influenced by his ability to be the world's greatest music show host.

Much is made of his influence, his friendliness, his eternally youthful appearance (comparisons with Dorian Grey are always rampant).

But another aspect of his contribution to TV which is being mentioned a lot today is his boldness in crossing race barriers in the 1950's and 1960's.

Did this TV host, who did not really perform, but rather introduced, managed, delivered the very notion of youth music to a nation undergoing change, did this man have a positive effect on race relations?

He did, but not by saying anything, not by preaching, not by being controversial.

Dick Clark helped integrate America by assuming it was integrated...by being subtle...by simply assuming that youth would want to listen to anyone's music if it was good, had a beat and you could dance to it

In this he embodied America and the American spirit of tolerance and innovation.

Dick Clark was intensely respected and trusted. In many ways, he was the Walter Cronkite of every teen generation from 1945 to 2012. Teens trusted him to bring them wonderful music and to treat them with respect as adults...always referring to them as Ladies and Gentlemen.

An American teenager died today ... but he gave us the optimism of youth for over 60 years

He'll be sorely missed ... we need another eternal teen.

Christmas, a Time for Pagans

I understand that there is a community in Michigan who received letters from someone complaining about those pagan lights on their houses and in their yards. Urging them to remove these pagan symbols from their christian lives.

Someone needs to say something about this.

Hmmm...yeah

PISS OFF!

Folks, I hate to be the bearer of scary news, but...uh...it's all pagan.

Virtually all of our rituals at this time of year have their origins in old, old pagan beliefs. From Celtic rituals to Norse Legends, and Northern European stories of grinchy old guys to get children to mind their manners...it's all pagan.

Dec 25, the day when Mithras (Roman God, "the unconquered son") had his birth celebrated. His whole story was appropriated by early Christians and wrapped around their little chid in the manger (which was imported from Egypt's story of Osiris). Virgin births are everywhere in myth...Krishna, Osiris, Mithras, Jesus ... lots of conception going on without the benefit of male sperm.

Evergreen trees to remind us of life surviving through the darkness of winter (and old Yule Logs used similarly)

A lot of this is from the Roman Saturnalia, including 12/25 as the birthday of the 'unconquered son', Mithras. (His entire story looks a LOT like the Christ myth too, but then so does Osiris's)

This is really all about the return of the sun. The winter solstice, Dec 22, the shortest day of the year. But after that, by 12/25, you can see the days are getting longer and this is incredibly important to an agrarian society. The wolves did not eat them, the sun did not stay gone, the days became longer, and the snows melted.

The germanic and scandinavian mid winter celebrations gave us trees and logs and many other rituals.

And Santa most likely grew first out of very, very old tales of a boogie man used to keep children in line. Then he got merged with Sinterklass and ultimately a Byzantine bishop. Of course he didn't really take shape until Moore dropped him down a chimney and Coca Cola took him in and fattened him up.

But make no mistake, he IS an elf, a pagan forest creature, and in most of history has been more about punishment or denial to children (remember the lump of coal) than about giving presents and having a 5 billion name address book.

None of this detracts from Christmas celebrations. Religious people can certainly participate in these lighting and singing rituals, these present exchanges and good meals. Just remember, they are all about the return of the sun ... the homophone is only coincidental.

So whoever is trying to rain on the parade of good churchgoing folk in Michigan and on the parade of many of us non-believers who still love the season and celebrate its older, deeper meanings,

PISS OFF!

It is, in fact, wonderful that the Christian religion preserved these old myths and rituals and absorbed them into their myths and legends. People need stories, myths, and celebrations to get through a life that is often harsh, brutish, and looooonnnnggg.

The world is a harsh, brutal and scary place. Every year we survive is a good year, but we, even in this day and age, can never be sure we will survive to see the return of the sun after the solstice. So there can be little wrong with celebrating that return by giving gifts, decorating trees and houses, lighting lights, and singing carols.

Anyone who thinks that these holiday celebrations should be discarded for mere religion does not understand humanity at all.

Bill

Want more jobs? Take your business elsewhere

We are experiencing another dark side of efficiency.

And too much efficiency is hell.

Many businesses are sitting on piles of cash and not hiring ... we hear about this daily. But why? Job recovery is always a lagging indicator in a recession, but we've been 'out' now for a while and yet even as the layoff and job LOSS rate flattens, the hiring rate does not pick up.

That may be because business is so efficient right now, with the improved communications and control ability brought about through automation and internet connectivity, that businesses are able to satisfy the load on their capacity with fewer and fewer people.

But there is a downside to that and it is the consumer who suffers it.

Just today I was essentially turned away from a garage for an oil change (very early on) because they had too much work to get done in a day...if I come back tomorrow, even earlier, I may get a slot.

I bypassed McDonald's for breakfast because the drive through line this morning was snaking out into the street. And the inside line was outrageously long too.

I skipped Starbuck's for coffee for the same reasons.

Note, I said line. Both places had so few staff on board at 7.30 this morning that they could only staff one inside line.

Last Sunday the same thing happened at another Starbuck's. Long drive thru line, TWO inside lines, and only 3 baristas in the store. One poor person was trying to make drinks and take orders at a register simultaneously. Take it from someone who's run a cafe before...that is no way to make a good cup of coffee or run a coffee shop.

I asked there why they didn't have at least one other person (that much business, they really needed +2) and was told management wouldn't hire any more. "We just have to deal".

Sonic has trimmed the fat off its menus...wait, actually, they've trimmed the lean...virtually all the chicken sandwiches are gone and if you look carefully you realize all they really offer are variations on a hamburger...with or without cheese, bun or texas toast, one greasy patty or two. The whole menu can be summed up in a single sentence.

So, while it may be amazingly efficient to eak out every erg of work related energy and every therblig of productivity from fewer and fewer workers, the consumers suffer poor response times, poor choice, poorer quality goods and service, and a general feeling that they are being abused.

Of course the workers suffer as well; horribly overworked, unable to concentrate, fearful for their own continuance of employment.

Perfectly efficient capacity utilization...it sounds wonderful. We do more with less which translates, on paper, to an apparent increase in productivity and value.

But let's face it...it's crap! So what can we, the consumer do?

Here's what I did

• I pulled into the Sonic, looked at the menu, and when the staff member came on to take my order, I politely told her I was going elsewhere because their selection was now so poor.
• I politely explained to the Starbuck's barista who served me my Americano that he should mention to his manager that one customer won't be back until they hire more staff.
• I told the garage manager that I was happy to hear they had so much business, but I would find another oil change place that had enough capacity to handle an oil change and tune-up more rapidly than 24 hours.
• I did not speak to today's McDonald's and Starbuck's folk, but I also did not purchase from them.

We used to have a saying..."no one comes here anymore, it's too busy."

A business needs to have a bit of over capacity...a bit of stretch room. If your capacity is operating at 100%, you have exactly the number of employees to handle exactly the number of customers you get, then you have too few employees or too many customers. The slightest hiccup (an illness, a stopped up toilet) leads to unhappy customers.

We take this into account when we order computing hardware; servers and network gear. If you order just enough that you run at 100% utilization, all of your customers will be unhappy with the poor performance. You HAVE to have some extra capacity not just to handle spikes, but to keep things running smoothly for customers during ordinary times.

Few businesses will hire more staff if everything SEEMS to be running smoothly. The base load of work is getting done, customers are coming in and buying goods and services, employees are not collapsing in the aisles from exhaustion.

The best way to send a message to a business that they need to change is to NOT buy their goods or services. Walk away. Vote with your feet. But they need to know why.

So if you find yourself in situations like mine, let the manager or someone know. Start a gentle murmur of discontent on the client-side. Don't buy from them if you feel they need to hire more people.

Now, the key is, of course to be very polite, understand the person you say anything to (even the store manager in many cases) cannot do a damned thing about the lack of capacity, but make sure they understand you are walking away from that business because it has not staffed up to provide a modicum of over capacity and a bit of breathing room for employees.

Don't tell them they are too busy to handle your needs. Tell them they are too understaffed to handle your needs. Tell them something very specific like that.

And you don't have to boycott...you can come back another time and make a purchase if you need to. But if you decide to walk away because there are not enough people to help you, let the store know. They need to know and the best WANT to know.

Business will get the message. If there is a perception that a lack of staff is leading to a fall off of custom, change will occur. And more jobs will suddenly, magically, appear.

Is any business likely to suffer greatly or have to lay off more people because YOU choose to walk away? Hell no! They won't let it get that far. One person says it to them it's nothing. Ten people mention it and walk away, it's weird. After a month of hearing it fro 30, 50, 100 customers, business management WILL act and more people will be hired.

Look how fast the banks backed off when consumers just said, "NO". A consistent, gentle nudge from many, many people can move even a giant stone.

Too much efficiency sucks...systems run best when well within their tolerances, when they have a bit of give, and with a certain amount of noise in the signal.

Just my thoughts.

Comments?

The Zombification of a Culture

Zombies.

Have you noticed their recent proliferation in culture? They are mentioned, shown, discussed, denigrated, and used for amazing things.

First, lets discuss shambling. Shambling is what zombies do. The shamble...they come at their victims with a stiff-armed shambling walk. The make their way toward their victims at a shambling pace.

As far as I can determine, the ONLY context in which we use the word SHAMBLING is when we are discussing zombies. Technically shambling is just a style of walk...a slow, awkward gait.

But we only seem to ever speak of Zombies shambling. How very weird. Others shuffle and things may be in a SHAMBLES, but only zombies are described as shambling.

Zombies have entered not only pop culture (where they have been since Romero made Night of the Living Dead) but now they have entered advertising. A recent car commercial has a very urbane, neatly dressed zombie driving along in a new car. He tend to lose fingers, but that is just an occupational hazard when you are a reanimated desiccated decaying corpse.

Let's not forget that the CDC has preparations online for a zombie apocalypse. It is viewable here.

Then there is the zombie proof house in Poland. See it here.

And the weird Toshiba commercial with the 'for want of a nail' approach...If the newest laptop goes out without a shockproof hard drive, its that zombie apocalypse!

And lastly, they appear on magazine covers. I refer, of course, to the recent Newsweek cover showing an algorithmically aged Diana apparently out and about with Kate. This was done to commemorate what would have been her 50th Birthday, but as one commenter said, wouldn't NOT making her a zombie have been a better gift?

I wonder if she shambled as she walked with Kate during the photo shoot?

Thoughts?

Reading Where You Are

A colleague, John Breslin, sent me a reference to a new book and website on the changing nature of reading. It struck a chord, so I thought I would share.

The book is I Read Where I Am ... http://www.valiz.nl/en/IReadWhereIAm and its contents are also available at http://www.ireadwhereiam.com/

The topic, as you might guess, is reading and the changing nature of reading in the 21st century.

Back in the late 90's I was presenting at conferences on what I called the post-literate age we were entering...when literacy as we've understood it throughout the 19th and 20th centuries would fade in importance as new forms of storytelling came online. I think 'reading' in the 21st century will heavily involve the visual arts, media, video and audio in the future. The ability to simultaneously merge text, txt, video, audio, and image into a single communique gives everyone a huge opportunity to modify and adapt 'language' as they see fit.

The discussions in the essays about whether texting is writing or reading texts is reading are completely missing the point. We have an excellent opportunity to watch our language (and many other languages) change and evolve right before our eyes almost in real time. Most adults today would be hard pressed to understand a general text from the mid 19th century and have little hope of comprehending one from the 18th or 17th centuries. The differences between what we consider modern literature today vs what our grand or great grand children will consider it are likely far beyond even the differences we see between 21st century modern and 18th century enlightenment era texts.

The comments about art and engineering being at odds I found funny. These days artists work closely with engineers to achieve special effects both in commercial and non-commercial art. Technology and a growing awareness of physics in the art community have led to some fantastic new media emerging. So, I think any discussion of art and engineering being at odds with each other is either ill informed or disingenuous.

Of course, as in all endeavors, Sturgeon's law applies (90% of everything is crap!) so we get a lot of junk from both professional and amateur artists.

There is actually probably an order of magnitude more 'reading' and 'writing' going on today than there was in the 1960's, for instance (There is an NEA report from 2009 indicating a rise in reading in the US since 1982. The link's below.). Worries such as "reading twitter feeds is not 'real' reading" is silly. Reading Dickens in his original published form (serialized in a magazine) was considered invalid reading in its time.

The whole concept of the novel was considered invalid reading in the 17th century when it was invented. So it is important to remember that 'reading', even 'literary reading' is a dynamic, fluid thing. In the future, anyone reading a 'text' which contains only print and no interactivity, annotation, video,and audio may very well be considered to not be 'reading' by, say, a late 21st century standard.

There must have been Sumerians who said, "That papyrus stuff is just a fad. It just doesn't feel like reading if you don't have a good clay tablet in your hand!"

The NEA Report is at http://www.nea.gov/research/Readingonrise.pdf

Bill

The NOOKcolor has a problem

I gave my wife a NOOKcolor for Christmas and she has had trouble with it ever since. Now I know what it is, how to reproduce it, and that B&N NOOK service sucks! But maybe this will help others.

She reads a few pages, then suddenly it stops responding. Moments later the blue bottom menu starts going up and down and up and down with no end.

As well, suddenly, words will get highlighted and the word help menu will pop up and then disappear. Or pages will simply start turning, one after another. At some point it stops responding or it just glitches with the blue menu going up and down. You cannot even turn it off the normal way.

But if you get it to go off, re-booting seems to clear it up.

It's as if the device is possessed by a poltergeist

I looked on the web and saw several other people have reported the problem. I upgraded to the latest software and the problem still remains. So today, I set about diagnosing it.

The problem typically occurs after she has read about 5 pages either in the tub or while sitting in the bathroom after a shower. But sometimes it happens while she is reading in bed. With a glass of tea by the bedside.

Moisture! ... If you touch the screen with wet fingers, you can reproduce this problem. the device doesn't have to get really wet, wet...just damp. turning the page after licking your finger may well do it. It is much more likely to occur if you touch it with two wet fingers or if you try to turn the page forward with one wet finger, then turn the page back, leaving two slightly damp spots on the screen.

Even slightly sweaty fingers after a workout or yard work are enough to glitch it.

We called 800 THE-BOOK ... their final answer was "don't ever touch it in a moist place" after they had me deregister and reboot and reregister the device...like that was going to clear this problem up. It is actually all they know how to tell you. The woman, whom I could barely understand, also wanted to know the last four digits of the credit card number purchasing the NOOK. But that didn't work...finally I realized she meant the number my wife had used to open the account...not the same number...it was a gift. When I did not have that she took our address as verification.

She said they had no record or notice of such a problem. She finally agreed to replace the Nook with a new one by post if I would give her a credit card number they can charge if we don't send the old unit back quickly enough.

But then I went out to my local B&N and tested my wet finger theory. I was able to successfully glitch all 6 NOOKcolor devices that I picked up and examined. A couple of fingers damp from the condensation on the outside of my iced coffee cup were enough to screw every single device up.

Conclusions

• B&N has a serious problem with user experience because lots of people will read in a tub, touch it with wet or damp fingers, give it to their children to read (and we know kids are naturally walking wetnesses).
• B&N are ignoring this problem or don't have testers sufficiently innovative enough to reproduce it.
• B&N is wasting a lot of money on tech support people who can only tell you that you must deregister your device and reboot to see if it clears up a problem. This is indicative of very, very, poor design of both the device and the support protocol
• B&N should take a page from Apple customer service. A few weeks ago they replaced an iPad with a broken screen for a developer friend of mine...no questions asked. And today they replaced my iPad rubber cover because it was peeling off the plastic substrate...no questions asked. THAT'S SERVICE.
• If you have a NOOKcolor, do your best to avoid having any moisture on your fingers or on the device...a steamy bathroom is enough to trigger this

What Good is a Glass Promise

I've recently been disenchanted with the miscellaneous claims of service being offered by a lot of businesses. In particular, drugstores and banks.

I tried to get a flu shot last month. It's a good thing to do, the cost is reasonable (although higher than it should be) and virtually every pharmacy and grocery store (with pharmacies) were advertising how easy t was to come in and get one.

It took me two hours

And it took visits to 5 pharmacies. In our neighborhood there are over a dozen top name pharmacies within a 5 minute drive. This includes Tom Thumb and Target.

Everyone had signs saying "no waiting", "get it when you want it", etc, etc indicating they were willing to immediately gratify my impulse to get protected from the flu. They are all offering the 3-antigen vaccine this year, and the prices ranged from 25 to 35 dollars. In Ireland they were free.

But, in reality I got responses (at 2pm on a Tuesday) like:

• "Our pharmacist who gives them won't be in until after 6"
• "Come back tomorrow, he's gone home already"
• "Come back in an hour, we have to treat it like a prescription"
• "We're not doing them today"

One place would have had me sit at their mini-clinic which is run like a doctor's office...there were 4 people in front of me with real complaints. That is OK, but not what the advertisement out front indicated.

Ultimately, I found a CVS where the pharmacist who gives them was on his first day and then even he discovered that the store was not quite ready to respond quickly...the injection supplies, such as gloves, swabs, alcohol, etc. were not in a central place for the delivery of shots. He , however, scoured the shelves in the store, gathered things together and managed to deliver the goods (left a hell of a bruise though).

I still had to wait 50 minutes in that pharmacy to receive the shot but 2/3 of that time was spent with the pharmacist trying to get my insurance to cover it. But since I had not begged permission from them first, and the pharmacist who is licensed to administer the shot without a doctor's order was not himself a doctor, the insurance declined it.

This was not totally unexpected since I assumed my insurance would not cover preventive measures...it just took up even more time.

I presume that the difference between the ads and the actal implementation, like the difference between a fast food ad photo and the delivered product, can be put down to marketing. But if a pharmacy is going to advertise the availability of a product or service on an ad hoc, walk in basis, they should be prepared to deliver. The notion of a sort of circuit or roving pharmacist moving from Walgreen's to Walgreen's or from CVS to CVS and being the only one capable of delivering the shot, seems outdated and bizarre.

Now on another note:
Today, I called a bank to verify that a check drawn on one of their accounts is good. I am told that they no longer verify funds. I must confess, I have not accepted a check for a purchase in a long time and so this may have been a service dropped years ago as banks ceased wanting to do business with we the people). They verified the account was open and active, but it is essentially a banking crap shoot as to whether you will incur a fee for depositing a bad check. I was offered the opportunity to drive 45 miles and present it in person to discover whether it is good or not.

Merchants, banks, governments, and service providers of all sorts need to remember that they are not our masters, we are their customers. Advertising a service as being available should mean it is really available...if not enough people take them up on it to make it viable to make it available all the time, then the sign should say, 'by appointment' not ''get it anytime'.

And the people who handle our money need to remember that it is actually OUR money and they are being entrusted with it...they are not granting us the boon of having them take our money...they are not our masters, they are our servers.

just a rant
Bill

PS the flu shot worked. Linda and I went to the state fair the following Saturday. By Monday she had the flu...I did not. Yes, Ikeep urging her to go get one.

Bill

Home Again -- A New Begining

Well, after 4 years and some fascinating experiences, we have returned from Ireland to the US. we have, in fact, returned to our Dallas home.

DERI was fun, but funding was drying up (as could be expected in this economy) and I have been bitten by the entrepreneurial big again.

So, rather than do things halfway, I have started three new companies instead of just one.

SemantiStar, Inc. here in the US is a software product company focusing on knowledge sharing solutions for Enterprise. it is commercializing the eLearning platform we developed a few years ago at DERI, but targeting the emerging Mobile Knowledge Sharing market. We are porting the ideas from Pergamon to the enterprise and including mobile platforms such as the iPad from the outset.

SemantiFace, Ltd is an Irish company I have formed with one of my DERI colleagues, Mark Leyden, to develop visualization interface technology for semantic networks, social graphs, and other complex data visualization efforts.

NKA-Decker, Ltd is an Irish consulting company I have formed with my former director at DERI, Stefan Decker, to provide semantic technology consulting, training, and design.

Nothing like a fresh start!!

Life back in the US is good, but very hot now in TX...about 104 F today (40 C) ... but the sky is crystal clear and that blinding blue we have here in north Texas. Our house has survived 6 years of intermittent occupancy although we have no front lawn to speak of ... working to correct that.

Moving was a trick. It is amazing how much STUFF you can accumulate in 4 years in a small apartment. At least THIS time, I was present and Linda did not have to do it all.

All else is well and we look forward to getting things going and getting business off the ground.

I've been acquiring Apple equipment for development including several iPads. The iPad is a great device...not perfect, but excellent for its first release. However, mine went south this morning when the volume and rotate switches apparently developed a short, bug, or something which renders them useless while leaving the volume control image on the screen.

Apple has given me a 6.30 slot for the GENIUS BAR to examine it...not sure why they can't just replace it...there is absolutely nothing to be done about physical switch issues, I suspect.

The issue I have (aside from a 6 week old device developing a problem) is that it is just as we loaded our first app onto iPads. Also, Apple, who have been most professional to date, seemed more interested in sort of disclaiming the problem ("I can't recall ANY iPad coming back for a problem") than in just getting it fixed and letting me get on with my work.

Well, I must go talk to the bank now and to the post office...trying to get forwarded mail turned back to the original address is a real challenge sometimes.

Bill

stargate galactica must go

I have tried to give it a chance, but Stargate Galactica ... uh I mean Stargate Universe must go.

Rush is a ludicrously annoying character poorly acted by Carlyle...someone should push him out an airlock. He seems to understand everything, but actually never has an answer to anything.

The soldiers do not follow chain of command and their CO is a wimp

The plots all resolve through a deus ex machina process or plot lines just get dropped...and the writing chores seem to consist of trying to find as many characters to yell, bluster, and scream as much as possible...the writers are apparently incapable of telling a story...the first three episodes are all the same plot.

The only interesting character...the only one you care about is Eli...he's the only one doing something while the others are shouting

The camera work is that crappy faux handheld stuff that bsg used and which just annoys

The Stargate franchise is suffering from this effort...hopefully they'll kill off half the cast and everyone will get more professional.

Just my thoughts
bill

a Suggestion for Recovery

I have an idea for helping Ireland recover from the recession.

What Ireland needs is a big (really big) theme park. Ireland needs tourism and with the increasingly inclement weather, this week notwithstanding, a better reason will soon be needed than a trip to the Cliffs of Mohr.

But if a large amusement and theme park was properly designed and built it could attract a huge crowd of tourists and reinvigorate the tourist trade as well as the construction and contracting trade. It could also propmpt the creation of many new businesses in support of the construction, including manufacturing. Not to mention the hotels.

where do you put a big theme park in ireland?

NOT DUBLIN ... The land is too expensive and Dublin is inconvenient to much pf the rest of the country.

You put it in Athlone.

Athlone is beautifully situated ... 90 minutes from Dublin airport, 90 minutes from Galway and not much more from Limerick and Sligo.

Not to mention that it is about that from Galway Airport, Shannon airport, and Knock airport

Cork and Belfast are farther away, but not too bad

Now what would the theme be? I suggest Six Flags of Ireland ... Six flags is a large theme and water park conglomerate int the US ... The original Six flags over Texas commemorated the fact that Texas had six countries which ruled it at differnet periods of time. Spain, Mexico, France, US, Confederacy, and Texas itself (we are the 'Lone Star State' because we were a separate country from 1836 to 1845).

Ireland has certainly had plenty of rulers...it should be easy to list out six rulers that have played their part in Irish history. The rides and amusements could be designed to highlight these and to let the irish work out some of their historical resentment over invasion (as we do in Texas regarding the Mexican and Spanish invasions)

Now any such amusement park must be covered to some degree. The weather is just too wet for people from drier climates to enjoy outdoor amusements. Not the whole park, certainly, but carefully designed layout, walkways, and the odd clear dome would make for a very peasurable experience.

Educational exhibits can be added as well and even arcologies where unusual or out of season crops could be grown and sold.

All of this requires a lot of land, which does exist around Athlone, a lot of careful construction, the opportunity for utilising alternative energy sources like wind (of which there is a lot) and a great deal of money. But it can be built in stages, financed by joint commercial and government, and can be opened while still under construction. There would be plenty of oppportunities to build hotel complexes, exhibits, car parks, and to enhance the road and rail access to Athlone if not to put in a regional airport of its own.

Governmental tax breaks for the developers, similar to those given to Disney World would spur the development as well.

Obviously, there will be issues and a tendency to say such a project is too expensive now during recession...but now may be the time to do this. After the recession, costs and prices will rise. People will be better able to travel and will be looking for relief from the dreariness of the recessionary period. They will be looking for diversions as their incme comes back up .. i don't just mean the Irish...I am talking about people from all over the world who will be looking for a new leisure diversion, a new vacation spot wher they can also jump off to visit the historical and natural sites of a country they have not been to before.

Building a theme park now would cost less as deflation takes effect and wages can be negotiated to be a bit lower. Then, as the recession lifts, the park will just be opening, all bright and shiny and new. And still under construction of course.

I'll leave it to better trained people than me to work out the details, but I think Ireland, if it wants to re-invigorate the Tiger, needs to investigate alternative economic solutions and an interesting, world class amusement park on a scale to compete with Disneyland Paris and coordinated with Irish-wide tourism using Athlone as a central jumping off spot is an idea to be considered.

Bill

Theory vs Observation -- Philosophy of Science

There are essentially two ways of conducting research ... OK, everything can be made binary.

But in this respect, I am talking about what I am starting to call Theory-based research and Experiment-based research ... and I am thinking specifically about IT research.

Theory-based research involves determining an idea or a structure, learning the state of the art, then forming a new theory, perhpas expressed mathematically. Then, in computer science (computing science, web science, IT?) an instantiation of the theory may be created (i.e. a program). The program, however, is a demonstration of the theory in practice...what is desired is already known, the outcome pre-determined (if the theory was fully thought out)

Experiment-based research involves determining an idea or structure, learning the state of the art, then constructing experiments and observing the results. The theory is developed later, from generalizing observations and deriving rules based on them. The program created is the experiment and its outcomes are not known because the point of the exercise is to see what happens.

Both approaches are valid and science mores forward due to both. The first method is more deductive and the second more inductive, although these are somewhat arbitrary descriptions.

Experiment-based research is more to do with engineering in its purest sense as it expects to iteratively refine a design and to discover a rule through observation. Theory-based research is more to do with mathematics and thought experiments, any engineering being, to some degree, superfluous to the point of the research.

They are two sides of the same coin, attempts to come at ideas and discover truths in different manners and each approach has its strengths and weaknesses.

I am fascinated by emergent behaviour in systems. Emergent behaviour is systems is very hard to explore (perhaps impossible to explore) apriori via theory. The 'system' must be created and allowed to operate to observe emergent behaviour...by its very nature, emergent behaviour cannot be predicted, although it can be encouraged.

Consequently, most of my research is experiment-based ... build it and truths will come. I like that approach. it feels more ... satisfying ... to me.

regards
bill

The Weak and the Strong

I've begun using the terms Weak Semantics and Strong Semantics to help people understand the difference and the application state of the art. The terms are obviously derived from Weak and Strong AI discussions. The terms have been used before but not, i think, in quite this way.

Weak Semantics are Flickr tags ... simple taxonomic annotation
Strong Semantics are fully constituted ontologically complete triple stores

WEAK----------------------------------------------------------STRONG

Applications in the world are somewhere along a continuum between weak and strong. Most of the tagging applications and a lot of the social networking apps we are seeing and working on today fall on the weaker side of the middle of the scale.

Research efforts have typically deal with stronger semantics which ae harder to implement and manage. In particular they are hard to get performance out of.

I've noticed that more and more of our efforts fall on the left side of the scale. They are easier to understand by our partners, easier to implement, and quicker to show results. Butthe time will come for efforts on the right side of the scale. There has to be a committment to solving very hard problems with semantics to get there though and they take a long time.

Bill

Cool news

I learned last night that my book, Critical Mass: A Primer for Living with the Future, co-authored with my long time friend and business partner, Pat McGrew, is being used at a University to explain how technolgoy got to where it is.

That's very cool news.

Critical Mass is a collection of essays written in 2000 on how several aspects of technology would evolve over the next few years. We looked at and extrapolated things like electronic paper, DRM, politics with technology and several other aspects of day to day life.

I re-read it a few months ago and it holds up pretty well...I am happy to be able to say. Pat and I saw a certain inevitability of direction for technologies that were just emerging or on the horizon then and most everything evolved in the directions very similar to those we predicted.

To hear that it is being used now with a historical perspective makes me feel a bit old, but quite happy.

Bill



Critical mass is available at http://mc2books.com/ or from Amazon

Edupunk -- Subversive eLearning

Edupunk: What a perfect term for what we intend.
A new word, coined by Jim Groom in May of this year in his blog http://bavatuesdays.com/

Web 2.0 offers us an opportunity to view the educational landscape from the chaotic perspective. Educational technologies that incorporate and embrace the complexity and chaoticism of the web, the structural ambiguity of collective intelligence.

There is a very articulate article on mapping new technologies onto existing pedagogical theories
in the Ariadne Journal, titled New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies by Gráinne Conole, and it has some interesting insights on how the new web technologies map onto behaviorism, constructivism and situated learning, but I think it misses the point somehow.

Punk was a musical rebellion against the arisen norm. The arisen norm of even the rebellious 60's had become complacent in the sedentary seventies. Punk addressed this with anger, and a complete disrespect for the mores of the day.

Cyberpunk arose as a rebellion and a repudiation of the technologist's dream...a recognition that these wonderful technologies that had grown up and created a type of priesthood could be subverted by individuals working in garages and the back alleys of grubby neighborhoods.

Steampunk came not long after, less in anger than in celebration. Victorian technology was, perhaps, the last technology that an individual could create in his own workshop which might change the world. That is until the nineties when cyberpunk technology once again handed that power to individuals.

All these punk movements share the defining element of punk...a Do It Yourself attitude, a rejection of formalizations and an embracing of chaos to live on the edge, balanced between anarchy and structure.

Edupunk embraces this same spirit. it embraces a DIY method of learning, a collective intelligence and interactivity with a community of learners. It seeks to provide an engaging model for students to create their own curricula, their own learning path, and ultimately their own content.

This is what we are trying to encourage in elearning in our lab at DERI. We are trying to find the way to enable learners to interact with each other, to connect with experts who can pass on the 'real' information as opposed to the 'correct' information.

Ultimately this punk'd approach to learning, the notion that learners will educate themselves and develop their own content, their own paths, their own mappings and roadmaps is very threatening to more established and formalized (formulaic) learning scenarios.

Edupunk may be a misunderstood term and may not fully emerge as a valid term. But it captures the flavor of what learning is undergoing in the way of change and evolution. Web 2.0 technologies and our own semantic technologies make possible the punk process, the DIY nature, the disrespectful disregard for practice within the learning milieu.

Edupunk: it's what learning's all about ... Now.

eLearning Strength here in Ireland

I was having a conversation with our University President, Jim Browne, the other day and he made the comment that he was surprised to learn how significant elearning is to the Irish economy.

It's true. elearning is one of those industries that sit quietly, growing over many years, then suddenly awakens as it crosss that knee in the curve of interest and value. elearning is rapidly becoming not only a major industry here in ireland, but also a major interest and infrastructure in other industries. check out http://brainpower.ie/2008_03_01_archive.html


Many of the consumers of irish elearning expertise are US companies, which provides a very healty multiplier for the market strength. and, as the world becomes more and more global, the expansion of elearning companies in ireland to the entire globe is virtually assured.

As elearning comes to be understood as a wide ranging activity, the scope of which is truly global when the web is utilized, it will rise in importance. Much of our own work here in the elearning cluster has been focused on the use of informal knowledge acquisition and gathering via web-based social networkign tools.

We begin to understand elearning as any form of research, info gathering, querying, and knowledge acquisition facilitaed through digital media including the web, hypertext, video, audio, data visualizations, normal text, electronic paper, mobile devices, and virtual realities.

Our own Siobhan Dervan has just completed her masters project which involved creating a virtual version of a real live place for children to learn about plants and animals, particularly gaden denizens. her Brigit's Virtual Garden is constructed (executed, instantiated, pick the word) in second life.

Linden Labs, the creators and operators of Second Life have identified learning as one of the prime business models in virtual worlds. They have a page about it and their business model at http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/24/my-first-two-months-at-linden-lab/

The inworld economy of Second Life is 330 Milion US dollars. I've been exploring and playing around with Second Life myself lately and it seems that when a bunch of people come together they will do three things
Buy
Sell
Fornicate

And the first thing they buy and sell is the fornication

I don't see this as a problem. It is human nature and Second Life gives us strong insights into how people build their world when given ultimate freedom to do so.

Second Life is not all about Buying, sellign an Sex, however. Shortly after people form a community, they start building and creating pother things. and they start talking, and talking, and talking. They converse on all topics. In second life, though, that chat can be augmetned with visual, 3d examples.

So chem labs, physics labs, history projects, literature, and all other areas of normal human life are represented, explored, and learned about.

Second Life is going to evolve and expand. They do have problems, but it will probably become one of the most widely used venues for education in the near future. Learning is easier in Second Life for many things. simulations, feedback, analysis, exploration and other facets of learnign can be pursued and made available in ways that traditional learnign can't. we have yet to see seriously radical educational experiments in SL, but they will emerge. And I expect SL to drive the demand for more bandwidth, more processing power and more computing cpaabilities. I was experimenting with the difference between laptops running the SL viewer and a high end graphics machine doing so. It is as one might expect, phenomenal.

which means a grwoing nterest in using SL for anything, education, shopping, simulation, training, sex, communication, or anything else will drive a demand for more, cheaper, graphics power with better bandwidth, particularly to the home and on mobile devices. Demand drives innovation and innovation provides new products and services. voila!

So elearning is vitally important to Ireland's economy and in deed to the economy and probably the future of many companies and other endeavours. Watch this virtual space.

regards
Bill

Darklight Festival Panel - Future of the Web

Had a very nice time Friday at the Darklight film festival in Dublin. I was invited to sit on a panel discussing the future of the web, web 3.0, and whatever that means.

Axel Polleres, a colleague from here at DERI, came with me and sat on the panel as well. We had quite a lively discussion, including a digression with Chris Howard of IBM on virtual reality, the emerging 3D Internet, and my own notion that virtual reality and true reality will begin to merge in both perception and importance for our children or grand children.

The audience seemed to mostly be creatives who were either filmmakers, film aficionados, or film students. things began to get a bit lively when I mentioned that I thought one of the effects of ubiquitous, pervasive and highly realistic virtual worlds would be that gender would become fluid; people would choose their genders on both sides of the virtual divide based on whim and how they wanted to be perceived.

After our discussion, which ran about 30 minutes longer than it was supposed to, I was interviewed by intruders.tv ( http://ie.intruders.tv/ ). Don't know when it will appear on the web site but it should be soon. The interviewer had to do some editing because it took him four tries to get his intro recorded cleanly.

I think the one thing that came clear in the discussion is that the technology is not all that important. there is a certain inevitability about improved graphics, deeper immersion, easier access, and everywhere connectivity. The true challenge is in assessing the impact of such social connectivity on our culture and ultimately on our species. The changes that this level of real immersion into virtual realities can bring about are dramatic.

All in all a nice day

Viral Culture - Mono- and Multi-

The subject of American culture came up the other day. Actually, one of my staff here in Ireland made a bit of a joke about it:
Question: What's the difference between America and Yogurt?
Answer: After 400 years Yogurt would develop a culture!

It's actually quite a cute joke and I laughed hardest...but then I came back with, "If we have no culture in America, why are folks on this side of the Atlantic so keen on importing it?"

He had to concede that there was truth in the implication.

First, let me be clear: No offense was intended or taken by either party to this little dialog. We joke about our respective cultures around here a lot.

But I started thinking about it. We Americans actually take a lot of ribbing for our so-called lack of culture...from the French, the Germans, the Belgians, the English, the Irish, and it seems, everyone else in the world. We are constantly told that America has no culture. I've heard this off and on for 30 years of traveling the globe. I've never given it much thought beyond the "oh yeah, then why do you keep importing our fast food" stage.

And then I think I came to a sudden realization the other day:

The reason America seems to have no culture to other parts of the world is that we don't have A culture...rather, our name is Legion, for we are many (please feel free to insert snide biblical comment here).

When we look abroad, Americans see Irish culture, English culture, French culture, Japanese culture...all nicely monolithic. In fact, one can describe it as seeing a monoculture (to borrow a term from agribusiness)

But when you look at the US, you see eastern culture, midwest culture, california culture, southern culture, Mexican-American culture, African-American culture, Japanese-American culture, Chinese-American culture, Italian-American culture, German-American culture and Irish American culture. To name just a few ... go to Minnesota and discover Scandinavian-American culture...drill down a bit and discover Norwegian-American culture versus Swedish-American culture.

These are more than just politically correct ethnic labels. They attempt, perhaps clumsily, to capture the amazing and improbable fusion of a distinctly US culture (with its fascination for mobility and fast food, casualness and aggressiveness) and the culture of peoples who came into the US bringing and preserving aspects of their original culture. The result is a strange metamorphosis that is understandably difficult for outside observers to grasp.

Tex-Mex food is NOT, repeat NOT, Mexican food. Tex-Mex culture is NOT Mexican culture. it is a synthesis of two tastes, flavor sets, attitudes and points of view to create a third point of view that is new and different.

It is culture imported, sampled, modified, re-contextualized, and shot back at you. And consequently, there is so much of it, in myriad combinations, that it can be hard to see and recognize.

Our US culture is so Multi- that recognition of it is an NP-hard problem, perhaps. And when we look at other nations and cultures, we see an interesting, entertaining, but ultimately mono- culture. This is not necessarily a fair assessment, but, seen through American eyes, each country seems very ethnocentric in style and language and music and art and thought.

As compared to the diversity of culture I have to consume and respond to in a city such as San Jose, CA where there literally is no ethnic majority, walking down the street in Galway is a purely Irish experience, not a japanese-indonesian- mexican-californian-american one.

Galway prides itself on being culturally diverse as evidenced at a major parade this year and that is true. And it is very accepting and inclusive of other cultures, but the volume is so much greater in the US that it is suddenly understandable to me why non-Americans look across our land and fail to see an identifiable American culture. Is it Disneyland? Or Chicago? Las Cruces or Las Vegas? Salem, MA or Salem, OR?

All I can say to my friends on this side of the Atlantic is that you must look for an American Culture in the bizareness of our being. we ARE Tex-Mex and Philly Cheese Steak, Grunge and C&W, McDonald's and The Four Seasons, KFC and Sardi's.

We are the Kennedy Center and the Caesar's Palace, Falling Water by Frank Loyd Wright and Dancing Frogs in Carl's Corners.

So when you say America has no culture, what you mean is that it has no single culture. What it has, my friend, after 400 years, is myriad cultures, blended, stirred, sliced, diced, confused, and convoluted. Actually, it's a bit like that Yogurt would be; chaotic and VERY messy.

But a hell of a lot of people around the world seem to want a piece of it...and we happily export it. So feel free to take it up, import it, sample it, modify it, re-contextualize it, then shoot it back at us...and we will build a neighborhood around it.

ain't it cool?

Bill