Get Busy Living

Great post in the New York Times Opinionator. “The ‘Busy’ Trap” looks at what we’re really doing when we overbook and overlook the most important interactions in our lives.

A key graf:

Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t either working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with friends the way students with 4.0 G.P.A.’s  make sure to sign up for community service because it looks good on their college applications. I recently wrote a friend to ask if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. I wanted to clarify that my question had not been a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation; this was the invitation. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he was shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

My other favorite part of this piece has to do with the importance of your environment in shaping your state of mind. Telling of the change that came over a friend who moved from New York City to a small town in southern France, the author notes:

What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious and sad — turned out to be a deformative effect of her environment. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

Absolutely worth a read.

535 Parties of One?

The notion that a third political party could emerge in American politics — occupying some kind of radical center that combines the “best” positions of both parties while dispensing with their posturing and gamesmanship — is the chimera of modern political conjecture. Looking for this party’s arrival on the horizon is like squinting into the woods to glimpse Bigfoot. Waiting for it to come galloping in to save our faith in government is to wait for Godot.

The public would benefit from more political options, certainly. But turning to a third political party is too narrow, too unimaginative, and too unrealistic a solution. First of all, it wouldn’t fit on the current political spectrum. While study after predictable study claims to have confirmed that the two major parties are more polarized than ever, there is by no means a gaping space between them that could accommodate an entirely new party and its range of positions on every issue. It’s a matter of logistics — there just isn’t room.

But frankly, the larger issue is that three options is only marginally better than two. Calling for a third political party is just thinking way too small.

Continue reading →

The Scourge of “Datalitism”

Data: It’s for Yuppies and Hipsters.

That’s the message I’m hearing lately from more than a few companies that deal in data. It seems like more often than not, the messaging around data is, frankly, elitist — based on an assumption that data is something for people of means. Because I’m a sucker for a good portmanteau, I’m calling this phenomenon of elitism in the data space “datalitism.”

I had been noticing examples of datalitism for a while, but Google’s recent “Project Glass” video really brought it home. In this video, which previews a technology that is undeniably cool, a young man of means wakes up and accomplishes a number of very hip tasks by interacting with data via Google Glasses. These interactions are elegant and useful, which is why I think the video is successful at sharing a vision for the technology. But the context is pure datalitism.
Continue reading →

How to Ruin Your Child

What is the point of becoming a parent if you can’t pass your terrible, heart-wrenching sports traditions on to your unsuspecting progeny?

Last Sunday, my father and I took Rose to the new Red Sox spring training park in Naples, Florida, for opening day. The weather was perfect, and the team came to play, beating the Twins 8-3 following some solid fielding and a grand slam from newcomer Lars Anderson in the 7th inning. Nothing like some preseason optimism to blunt the inevitable trauma known as September.

Rose did great, enjoying the game as much as a three-month old could. Which is to say, she pretty much slept through the whole thing. Given what the Sox tend to put their fans through, this may be the wisest approach possible.

Hopefully the first of many such trips.

What Rush Meant

In the firestorm surrounding Rush Limbaugh’s recent deplorable comments regarding Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, less if any attention has been paid to what he actually meant by them. This is understandable — his words were cruel, unfair, incendiary, and hearkened back to an era of misogeny to which most Americans long ago bid ‘good riddance.’ But it is also unfortunate, since the lie that undergirds those words is arguably even more insidious than the words themselves.

After Sandra Fluke testified before Congress in support of the Obama administration’s new policy requiring health insurers to cover contraceptive care in their health plans, Rush (and others, including Bill O’Reilly) attacked Fluke for wanting taxpayers to subsidize her “social activities” (read: sex lives). This was the driving force behind Limbaugh’s disgusting verbal assault, which peaked filthily with his assertion that, for supporting such activities, he and the rest of the taxpaying public deserved “something in return.”

America’s outrage focused on the nauseating way he made this point — the words he used, and the historical implications of those words. Those are very valid points, and Limbaugh has now begrudgingly apologized for “choosing the wrong words”. What he has not backed away from is his point. That no one seems to be pressuring him to do so is a shame, because that point is complete and total bunk. Continue reading →

How Google Should Be Communicating about Privacy

When it comes to perceptions about its respect for user privacy, it’s been a rough month for Google. The roll-out of its new privacy policy consolidation was widely characterized as a “controversial” threat to users’ personal information — one even worthy of congressional hearings. Then a Stanford researcher discovered that Google was circumventing privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser. Now, Microsoft has cried foul about Google’s non-compliance with its own outdated and widely disregarded IE privacy standards.

From a communications standpoint, having all these stories break so close together creates quite a challenge, as the rising hubbub over these largely non-stories (more on this in a minute) threatens to drown out any reasoned defense from the web search giant. But it also creates an opportunity to communicate clearly and effectively about Google’s privacy protections and core principles to an engaged and gathered audience. To date, this is an opportunity the company has not adequately seized.

Before I get into why I think Google has been largely flat-footed and tone deaf in its communications on these issues, let me touch briefly on the issues themselves. Continue reading →

Fatherhood Geekery

Back in November I saw a post on Google+ speculating about whether a quilt stitched to include a QR code would make a nice wedding gift. Weddings aside, immediately I knew this was a must-have item for my daughter Rose, who at that point was still a few weeks away from being born. I hadn’t even met her and already I was imposing my geekery on her. Sorry, kiddo.

A few web searches and some email negotiations later, I struck a deal with a wonderful lady in Connecticut, Deirdre Abbotts, to make one for us. It arrived tonight.

Beautiful colors and excellent quality, and scanning it takes you to www.rosecluchey.com. At last, my circle of fatherhood geekdom is complete.

Metro Music

…or, since it’s NYC, Subway Symphony? Either way, a very cool representation of a public transit system through color, motion, and music.

Conductor: www.mta.me from Alexander Chen on Vimeo.

Conductor (2011) by Alexander Chen. Video capture. View live at: mta.me
Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.