Interaction Fail

Between commerce and law enforcement

Innovation and Wonder

National Human Genome Research Institute

I think that most generations of human beings around the world have probably said, “How incredibly lucky we are to be living in the most exciting time in all of human history.” We should be no different. I see so many people taking for granted the explosion in human knowledge, understanding, and technology. Here’s a list of things, off the top of my head, which I find awe-inspiring:

• the mapping of the human genome
• global telecommunications
• social networking and technologies of emergence
• advances in space exploration
• medical science technology
• revolutionized cancer treatment
• AIDS as a chronic, manageable issue rather than a death sentence
• stem cell research and re-growth of organs
• harnessing sustainable energies
• the global discussion on and appreciation for universal economic development

Education and Urgency

For awhile now, I've had this nagging sense of urgency. Perhaps it is the product of growing up in a culture with a rather consistent narrative about success, one that lauds the achievements of self-made, twenty-something millionaires as if they were the new lords of the universe. Or perhaps I'm just hanging out with too many people in grad school while I'm still figuring things out. Either way, I ran across the site of designer Alessandro Segalini and found these inspiring words. I can't find them anywhere else, so Alessandro either wrote it or paraphrased it.

I asked the Professor about the secret of success; two words.
The Professor said: “Right decisions.”
Then I asked how I can make the right decision; one word.
The Professor said: “Experience.”
I asked what is the secret of experience.
The Professor said: “Wrong decisions.”

John Dewey - Portrait by Anthony Hare

And in the same place, I found this John Dewey quote. I did a report on John Dewey when I was in grade school and it made a big impression on me, even as a very young person. Finding this quote has inspired me to look further into the life and philosophy of this great educator.

I believe that education is a process of living, and not a preparation for future living.

Practical Wisdom and Incentives

Barry Schwartz, in a TED talk, speaks about the value of practical wisdom and the problems with reliance on rules and incentives. Near the end of his talk, he quickly lauds Aaron Feuerstein as a moral hero for having gone against the pressures of Wall Street after a fire destroyed Malden Mills. He chose to keep everyone on the payroll at immense cost to the company and to shareholder value because doing otherwise would irreparably damage the Massachusetts community where they were located, according to Shwartz.

Robert Reich also mentions the actions of Feuerstein in his book, Supercapitalism. Malden Mills had to file Chapter 11 in 2001 as a direct result of the $15 million it took to keep everyone paid and the insistence on staying in Lawrence, Mass. where wages remained high in spite of more “competitive” wages elsewhere (North Carolina or subcontracting in China). Feuerstein was fired and replaced with someone who took most of the jobs out of the community.

Barry Schwartz’s talk was in 2009, eight years after the bankruptcy, “Three thousand employees, he kept every one of them on the payroll. Why? Because it would have been a disaster for them and for the community if he had let them go. Maybe on paper our company is worth less to Wall Street, but I can tell you it’s worth more. We’re doing fine.”

Obviously not. Feuerstein, according to Reich, is an anachronism, a “corporate statesmen” in an era of ruthless competition.

I find myself to be “of two minds”, as Reich puts eloquently. I want to live in a world where people and organizations can make decisions that are morally and socially beneficial to others, but I also see that as an impossibility given the current economic context. Shareholder value will continue to trump any sort of ethical stance until we find a way to reassert ourselves as citizens with moral agency.

Design as Storytelling

Being in the process of my first real estate purchase, this article about the redesign of the mortgage disclosure form (MDF) caught my eye:
www.fastcodesign.com/1663487/home-buying-makeover

This sort of project is precisely what excites me about design. Buying a home, especially in America, comes with a powerful narrative fraught with emotion and passion. The confusion of documents composed of vast seas of black and white legalese is unsettling at best, perhaps even counterproductive. In comes a group of people who understand the importance of the experience and are able to synthesize the perspectives of lenders and regulators as well as (and more importantly) the borrower. An accessible and communicative MDF will not prevent a future mortgage crisis all by itself, but it provides an empowering mental model for the layperson. This model can serve as scaffolding upon which the details of the transaction are hung. Lacking a working mental model, we have no insertion point for new vocabulary, no way to create patterns and relationships. Foundational understanding allows us to be involved in the telling of the story of how a situation fits into our lives. Design, therefore, is not the story but the stage.

Another fine example:
http://www.jonkolko.com/educationCourse370Taxes.php

Pattern and Surprise

I love the process of slowly recognizing a pattern in your own cognition and then later discovering an explanation of it that is supported by scientific research. This happened to me the other day when I read that human beings prefer to look at fractal patterns over non-fractal patterns, and we like our fractals with a density of 1.3, which oxymoronically exhibits “low complexity.” Complexity, but not too much. Michael Gazzaniga writes about this in Human: the Science Behind what Makes Us Unique.

Similarly, David Brooks talks about how we prefer music that conforms to traditional patterns of composition while still offering moments of surprise. For a long time, I have noticed that I’ll quickly dislike a piece of music if it is too predictable, even if I know that I enjoy similar works. The parts of music that I love the most are those little divergences in the melody, the playful spots in the rhythm, the interesting pairings of harmony. I have unconsciously smiled countless times when something catches my ear that my head wasn’t expecting.

This is probably part of the reason that culture is so slow to change. There is a great example of the way our brains accept or reject things that don’t conform to our previous experiences. I heard it on an episode of RadioLab. Parisian ballet goers responded to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring by rioting against it. It was so new and groundbreaking that it is speculated they went momentarily insane. If I remember correctly (I’ll have to go back and listen again), he was received the very next year in the same city with resounding acclaim. And we know the piece best from Disney’s Fantasia.  It’s not so controversial anymore, I suppose, but our brains are certainly picky the first time we encounter something.