DaveShearon

Scarcity, Production, Self-Determination Theory, and College-for-All!

Thomas Sherman has a three posts (1, 2, 3) up on the topic of how participation by the masses in online systems is mostly destroying old mechanisms such as newspapers without replacing them with new mechanisms. (See here for an analysis of this phenomenon for youtube, twitter, facebook, etc.)  He also argues that mass participation is bendinging online systems (facebook, youtube) to mass tastes.  There's a lot to think about here, including the impact of the long tail.  But the most interesting paragraph to me is:

"Historically, technology has come with utopian promises of change that it has failed to deliver in the hoped for or predicted way. Industrialization and automation were supposed to create abundance and leisure but today some of our greatest social challenges involve scarcity. Our personal lives are marked by over-work, "time famine" and sleep deprivation. In America, many people working full-time or multiple jobs are unable to provide for their family's basic needs."

This is an extraordinarily important point.  How, in a culture that distributes wealth based on contribution (free market) do you handle the fact that technology continues to enable fewer and fewer people to produce more goods than everyone can consume?  The corrollary of this proposition can appear to be that a growing percentage of folks may not have the capacity to contribute sufficiently to "earn" adequate resources for a good life, but there's a fallacy in that apparent corrollary which I will get to below.  What to do?

Some will argue that the government should take care of this through single-payer  health  care, "livable wage" laws, government-owned or mandated public housing, "free" public education, restrictions on layoffs or plant closings, mandated pension systems, etc.  However, there are economic counter-arguments to each of these suggestions, and the real-life experience with them has often been disappointing.  Without trying to re-hash the economic and performance arguments in this area, I would suggest a basis from positive psychology for thinking about this issue:  Self-Determination Theory (SDT).

SDT suggests that humans have three basic psychological needs:  

Autonomy -- the feeling that we are living our lives based on our choices,

Competence -- a sense of being able to do the things that are important to us,

Relatedness -- a feeling of connectedness to those around us, family, friends, community.

Approaches that better allow for individuals to meet these psychological needs will work better for society.  This requires more sophisticated policy thinking than "let government do it."  It also requires a recognition of the strengths of individuals and their ability to create excellence and meaning in jobs that some college-educated law makers, governors, school board members, presidents, etc. have trouble seeing as valuable.  See the work of the Gallup organization on how the strengths of individuals can make them exceptional as bartenders, hotel maids, and Walgreens' stock clerks.  Or see Amy Wiersneski's work on work as a calling for hospital orderlies or administrative assistants in a university. 

The idea that anyone without a college education cannot live a good, happy, fulfilling, meaningful life is just wrong.  Of course, we don't say that.  What we say is that everyone should go to college.  But that's what we mean.  Even when it is said by a popular president, it's just wrong!  College for all?  Not a reasonable goal today.  Good life for all?  Absolutely!  Other people matter!

"Other People Matter" - "Social Networking in the Digital Age"

Gordon Crovitz' column in today's Wall Street Journal has the second phrase in quotes above as its headline.  The first is Chris Peterson's summary of the key findings of positive psychology.  Mr. Crovitz notes that rising number and attendance at business conferences, and focuses on the D: All Things Digital Conference sponsored by the Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.  The point is that even the leading lights in technology like to get together in person.  I would have enjoyed hearing Bill Gates talk to a crowd around an outdoor table about his efforts to improve American high schools and eliminate malaria in Africa!

In another interesting aspect, the conference bans PowerPoint presentations!  Instead, panelists and questioned, intensively and persistently, by the organizers and attendees.  As an educational strategy, I like it.  I've become a bigger user of PowerPoint as I give more presentations, but I struggle with it.  I try hard to use it as a visual aid to a story, not my personal notes about what to say next.  And that makes creating a presentation MUCH harder.  Right now, I'm working on a 30-minute presentation on Positive Psychology and Law that will be recorded for delivery online.  Yikes!  That's tough!  I'm focusing on the interactive tools I will have available.

Distance learning, telecommuting, and webinars are all great.  But, I suspect that as we learn, work, and meet more with folks who are physically distant from us, the desire to get together with them in person occasionally will grow.  Other people matter, and their avatars are insufficient as a complete substitute.

WikiMindMap

Thanks to Brian Friedlander for pointing me toward www.wikimindmap.org.  Cool site to search wikis, including wikipedia, and display the results as a mindmap.  Here's a picture of the search results for "positive psychology."

   

Funny Google Searches

A recent Google search that found one of my prior posts read, "Cliffnotes for Fish!"  Really.  Have you seen the book?  It's 115 small pages with big type and written as a story!  The searcher could have read the book in the time spent looking for a shortcut, and had more fun to boot!

Instalanche benefits

One of the bonuses of an Instalanche is the interesting folks who leave comments and the chance to check out their web sites.  At Jon's, I found this.  I agree; quite an unusual visual effect.

SPSS Customer Service Problems

I try not to begrudge software companies for reasonable protections of their intellectual property.  It is sad but true that the selfish, dishonest, and illegal behavior of a few causes problems for all of us.  But I've just run into a licensing scheme for SPSS statistical software that is extraordinarily customer unfriendly. 

Apparently, though I successfully installed the $200 "Graduate Pack" and went through their online registration process, I did something wrong.  Maybe.  Or maybe it's their fault.  But, either way, yesterday after the close of business, the product suddenly quit working and throws an error report that "the license will not permit that operation" every time I launch the software.  Turns out that, either due to my mistake or some problem on their end, the software was only installed in "trial mode" that expired after two weeks.  AND IT NEVER GAVE ME ANY WARNING THAT IT WAS IN TRIAL MODE!! 

I've used other software with trial periods -- MindManager comes to mind -- and they've usually given you at least a warning on launching the program and generally a countdown to the drop dead date.  Not SPSS.  Nothing.  Nada.  And, what's worse, they won't respond timely to the problem.  It's a common enough situation that the first three FAQs on their customer-service site read:

Where do I find my Authorization Code or License Code?

What's the difference between a License Code and an Authorization Code?

I installed the software two weeks ago and it was working fine. Now it's not working. What happened?

The first suggestion is to use the License Authorization Wizard in the software itself to register over a high-speed internet connection.  Great.  No problem.  I go through the process, keying in the 19 digit authorization code that is in the manual.  And I get back the response that my software is now licensed, though I may have to re-start the product for it to take effect.  OK.  No problem.  Shut 'er down and re-start.  Same thing.  Throws the error report and won't work. Repeat the whole "License Authorization" rigamarole; same result.  Repeat; nothing.  Ok, now it is really their problem, not mine.

The FAQs mention that the code was on a "yellow sheet" loose in the box with the product when delivered.  What?  Are they kidding?  A critical piece of information on a separate sheet loose in the box?  That's ridiculous.  And, of course, it's long gone now.  Or maybe it was never there.  Regardless, it's not a solution for me now.  But, wait!  They also have a "License Code Request Form" on their web site.  Now, I'm "logged in" to their site.  They have my customer identification information, including my e-mail address. (Why is a fax number a required field on this form?  That doesn't look good!)  So, they're going to retrieve my license code on the spot, or at least e-mail it to me, right?  Nope.  The form, as far as anything on the site shows, does nothing worthwhile.  Instead, it returns this message:

Your customer service inquiry has been sent to SPSS Customer Service who will process it and get back with you shortly.

AND CUSTOMER SERVICE IS ONLY OPEN 8:30 - 5:00 CENTRAL TIME, M-F!!

So, my partner and I have a deadline of next Friday for the first draft of our Capstone paper, I've been doing data analysis all week and need to be immersed in it this week, and, instead, I'm sitting here writing this post because of REALLY POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE FROM SPSS!!

Resoultion:  On Monday, I got an e-mail from an SPSS representative in response to a  license request form I had submitted.  The e-mail asked for the "lock code" for my machine and told me how to obtain it. I sent that and the registration authorization back and got a return e-mail containing a 95-character license code.   I entered this through the license wizard, started SPSS, and got a message that "the license has expired"!!  So, it now being a M-F betwee 8 and 5, I called, sat on hold for 15 minutes, talked to a customer service representative who, after putting me on hold for several more minutes, put me through to technical service.  The technical service representative had none of the information about me from my registration, even though the customer service representative had that info.  He had to set me up anew in their system.  Then he went through some questions, generated a set a files, zipped them up and e-mailed them to me.  With him on the phone, I unzipped them into the main SPSS directory and ran a batch program that was among them to "clean" the flag in SPSS that made the program act as if it had been in trial mode.  Oh, and I had apparently licensed the program correctly because the customer service records showed it licensed on the day I installed it, 2 weeks before it shut down.  The batch program worked.  Problem solved.  Three days lost.  And apparently this happens to folks with Graduate Pack 14.0 fairly frequently.

ActiveWords & Mind Manager

I use both ActiveWords and Mindmanager daily and love both.  Now buzznovation reports they are working together.  Too cool.  The integration of technologies to create custom performance tools without custom programming is a trend I expect to continue, and I think it will make inter-functioning software components (work-togethers and add-ins) a continuing boom.

Google's Worth

Scott Burns (ridiculously invasive registration required) column in today's Tennessean contains this note:

...Google, which, at its recently reduced $369 a share and $109 Billion marktet capitalization, is still valued at more than eight times General Motors and nearly twice as much as the entire newspaper industry."

He's talking about "residual" - an economics concept that entails value not captured by standard measures.  The suggestion is that Google's value, (and Yahoo's, etc.) is the "residual" of lots of value that wasn't captured when tens of thousands of individuals put in untold hours of high-value time working on startups during the dot-com burst.  And that work continues today.  The value ultimately shows up somewhere, and part is in IPO's, stock prices of the companies that succeed, etc.

Google worth more than the newspaper industry?  Does that make sense?  Well, when's the last time you "newspapered" something?  Eight times more valuable than GM?  Well, if you had to bet, which organization would you say  is more likely to survive twenty years from today, GM or Google?  Very little "residual" value's gone into newspapers or automobiles (in this country) in recent years.  And it shows.

Different notes for different folks

In class the other day, I noticed the differences in notes in my area.  My mind map is on the left, a classmate's on the right, and below is another classmate's approach.  That's a tablet pc, by the way.  I don't know if I write down as much info when I mindmap, but I enjoy it better, enjoy looking at my notes later, and can more quickly get back into what was going on in the class.  I like it.

New Tech Experiences

Well, given that I've had my nose stuck in a book more in he last few weeks than at any time since ... hmmm..., high school?  Naaaah.  More like sixth or seventh grade.  Or maybe ninth, when sports gave me two study halls and home room to end the day.  In the library.  Heaven.  (Although, there was the six weeks when my table of boys in study hall had an A, B, C, D, and F in conduct.  Idle hands are the devils workshop, or something like that.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Reading.  Or, rather, what I've been learning when I haven't been reading.  (I'll get to that, but I've got to process a little first!)

Tech stuff:

Microsoft Sharepoint Server:  I had no idea what this was until the last two weeks.  Then, the company programming Form1.org, Intellinet, set one up as the respository/workspace for that project.  As President of Form1.org, Inc., I have access, so I've gotten a little feeling for it.  It's a wiki.  Ok, now I know that if anyone who REALLY knows what Sharepoint is reads this they'll likely light me up for that statement and explain how completely off base it is.  But, that's what it looks like to me.  Document storage, notices of updates when things are added or changed, comments, and entries much like a group blog.  Yep, looks a lot like a wiki to me. 

X1 and Exchange:  I've gotten these technologies installed at work and they're beginning to take hold.  We have a public folder on Exchange that gets a copy of every incoming and outgoing e-mail, and X1 on everyone's desk that is set to index that folder.  So, no matter who's been involved in an e-mail exchange with an attorney or provider, any of us can access that exchange easily and quickly.  Cool.  And very helpful.

Document Imaging:  We've also installed a document management system by a company called Infodynamics.  We scan it in on our multifunction copier/scanner and put the attorney, provider, or course ID, plus other key information in the title of the documents for identification.  Then, one of our folks moves each to a "Work in Progress" folder for the appropriate person.  When processed, that person may add a little more to the title and then sticks it in a "storage" folder.  Again, entering an attorney's id number can call up all correspondence between us and that attorney, regardless of who's desk, I mean, WIP folder it's in.  I'm planning to set the system to do an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on each document so that we'll be able to search on text in the document, but haven't gotten that done yet.

Open Office:  A while back, a disk drive died in this computer and we had to get a new one installed.  We saved all the data, but not the programs.  Generally not a problem, but I had Microsoft Office on here from some time or another when it was ok to install on an office and a home system.  Don't know if that's still ok, and hadn't gotten around to checking.  Then, last week, Patrick needed to finish and print a Word document he'd started at the library.  So, I downloaded the current version of Open Office and told him to go at it.  No questions from him since, so it must be a fairly close work-alike.