content analysis

No, I’m not talking about Allen Iverson.  Here is the solution to our entire energy crisis.

A quick addendum to my earlier post …
A great speech at Cal-Tech’s commencement by NPR’s Robert Krulwich on how to translate science for the public and the importance of doing so.  Even though he speaks about natural science, of course the same should be said for social science.

…and while we’re talking about worthwhile stuff to read, I need to mention the superior blogging of Jay Livingston over at Montclair SocioBlog.  This guy … I love this guy.  His fantastic posts over the summer made what time I did register online enjoyable.  He has my vote for Summer MVP of the Socioblogosphere.

Greetings after a long absence!  I thought of telling you all that I had fallen victim to an experience closely paralleling Tom Hanks’ in Castaway.  But alas, the truth is much more mundane.  Summer was simply too packed for me to post.  I was delightfully somewhat removed from the Internet during the summer months.

I had hatched a glorious return during the first week of classes, but those of you who are employed by liberal arts colleges know too well of the extensive faculty workshops that accompany the beginning of a new year.  For those of you who are less familiar, let me describe a few of the key features of these events:

The Liberal Arts: our faculty workshop is rife with panel discussions and small workgroups that consider pedagogy and the mission of the liberal arts.  While I know well that this would be misery for many, I view it as gift that I work for an institution and have colleagues that eagerly engage in serious conversations about pedagogy.  Or more simply people who believe that discussion of the liberal arts should be a living one.

Curricular Theme: Our current curricular theme involves the increasingly globalized society and encouraging our students to think about the many questions and challenges that reality presents.  To kick-start a conversation on this topic (rather than resorting to cliches), we were treated to two truly excellent speakers in professional positions with global relevance, each of whom spoke for 45 minutes.  We then had another hour to just ask them questions and have a dialogue.  What a pleasure to engage in an interdisciplinary, intellectual conversation!

Pondering: To paraphrase Weber, all the most intellectually productive times I have enjoyed were spent laying in a hammock just thinking.  The informal tradition at my institution is that faculty take nearly a full week just before the beginning of classes to prepare their syllabi — even if they’ve taught the same classes for twenty years.  It’s a wonderful time when we think carefully about the process of education, chat about assignments, and swap readings.

Though I personally cherish the community and intellectualism that this programming encourages, it’s also damn time consuming.  Of course, the semester only gets busier.  But somehow, I’m now re-acclimated to the pace.  So, it’s my sincere hope that I’m back now — like for real.

Just one more thought: Like many, I was saddened to hear of the death of gifted writer, fellow liberal arts educator, and thoughtful human being, David Foster Wallace.  Others, with more expertise or greater poetry of language, have already offered insightful commentary on the man.  But I just wanted to post quote of his that speaks volumes about his personal biography, but also resonates for its honesty about our historical era:

There’s something particularly sad about [living in America around the millennium], something that doesn’t have very much to do with physical circumstances, or the economy, or any of the stuff that gets talked about in the news. It’s more like a stomach-level sadness. I see it in myself and my friends in different ways. It manifests itself as a kind of lostness. Whether it’s unique to our generation I really don’t know.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall for this little convo. Would have killed Senator Feinstein to put out a cheese plate?

On another campaign-related note, I find it fascinating how the Obama campaign is changing political culture (perhaps, even expanding the traditional boundaries of who engages in political discourse).  “American surprise us and let a black man guide us.”

Holy god this is true (via whatisthewhat). I love Ira Glass like George Bush loves tax cuts for the wealthy.

Fascinating discovery of “uncontacted tribe” in Brazil, but don’t the photos look like Old Hollywood fakes?

The dumblest thing I’ve ever heard (via Sociological Images)

And finally, on what I suppose is a sentimental and vaguely moralistic note, I think that when you honestly notice something positive about someone, it is really important to be forthcoming with a compliment. It’s amazing how much it means to people to be reassured of their value by those around them.

slow news – May 28, 2008

An Op-Ed Need for Diverse Voices

By Deborah Howell (Washington Post)

The WP ombudsman, Deborah Howell, points out that of the WP’s 654 op-ed pieces so far this year, 575 were by men, 79 by women, and 80 by minorities.  I suppose this is something we’re all aware of, but it is truly startling to see the hard numbers.  And, of course, the Washington Post isn’t alone on this one (Nicholas Kristof “nervously” awaits comments about this issue).

For the record, I favor any proposal that might lead to less David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, and Nicholas Kristof.

Drawing on the news that the NY City Transit may bring back double-decker buses on Fifth Avenue, NYT blog City Room asks readers what Old New York institutions they’d like to see make a return.

I loved comment #4: “Myself. When I could afford to live there.”

Americans live in a state of abject cell phone poverty.  Of course, there are much worse kinds of poverty: economic, moral, spiritual.   However, I think that this state of affairs speaks volumes about the kind of society we live and the risks it faces in the future.

As I noted in “cell phone meets world, pt. 1″ yesterday, the developing world is embracing the cell phone and quickly adopting and developing a wide variety of new ways to use them.  In nearly all parts of the post-industrial world other than the U.S. (most particularly Europe and Japan), the mobile phone is (and has been for years) essentially a mini-computer.  It is capable of advanced word-processing, playing video and images, surfing the internet, and nearly everything else a real computer does.  Text messaging is normal part of everyday professional and personal life.  They can be linked to one’s bank account and swiped at stores (like a debit card).  They have built-in camera as good as some single function cameras.  They travel between countries with no problem.  And the look cool, really cool.  Whereas Americans use mobile phones essentially as phone with a few bonuses, people in other countries carry around multi-purpose, tiny computers.  Probably most irritating to your average American locked into a 75 year Verizon contract costing $100 a month, is that cell phones aren’t costing anybody else nearly as much.

There are many reasons for this disparity.  First, American cell phone companies use antiquated network technology and lock consumers into using one phone on one service (for more on the technical issues, read here).  Second, though the U.S. cell phone market is highly competitive, the fact that companies lock consumers into monthly plans and multi-year contracts essentially gives one company a monopoly over the individual.  By contrast, in Europe, consumers pay the actual cost of a phone, buy pay-as-you-go cards at fairly affordable rates, and can switch between companies at anytime.  This results in far more competitive pay-as-you-go rates.  (Additionally, Europeans don’t pay for incoming calls, unlike us stateside dopes).

Because the cell service companies have such a stranglehold on marketplace and even the models of the phones, they have kept many new technologies from coming out on the U.S. market.  Cell phone makers like Nokia, LG, Samsung, and others are currently producing a wide variety of cool phone technologies that Americans don’t have because Verizon, At&T, and Cingular require very specific specs for their network-specific models of each phone.

This free market disaster — in which Americans don’t have access to the best available technologies because of the capacity of companies to control the availability in an unregulated fashion — is typical of the kind of society we have today.  Because of the unwillingness of political elites to intervene, regulate, and encourage good behavior among corporations, we see American slipping behind the rest of the developed world.  The same is true of environmental technologies like wind power.  Unlike so many European nations, the U.S. government has done very, very little to encourage the development of such technologies or to help companies make environmental options (like residential solar products) consumer-friendly.

Our free market dogmatism — a resistance to regulating in pro-consumer ways — has undoubtedly left us in the dust of Europe and Japan in the realm of cell phone technology.  The same pigheadedness could have far more serious repercussions in other domains.

One of the most informative articles I’ve read recently appeared in the New York Times magazine and focused on the work of Jan Chipchase. Chipchase is a sort of applied anthropologist for cell phone maker Nokia (he calls himself a “human-behavior researcher” or “user anthropologist”). He travels the world studying cell phone usage in an effort to give designers better information on how to improve the product. However, unlike most market researchers, Chipchase’s findings can tell us a lot about global inequalities and how the world is changing.Below, I will give three examples of his findings:

1. A cell phone is the first phone many people will use. As people in a society where the telephone (landline and otherwise) is such an importance part of commerce, personal relationships, and nearly every aspect of everyday life, it seems like a stunning revelation that until very recently, much of the world could not communicate instantaneously.  In the rest of the world, there has been little way (and often little reason) to quickly communicate over great distances. The introduction of cell phone, which requires much less infrastructure than landlines and which offers affordable modes of communicating like the text message, now allows people in undeveloped nations to communicate in new ways.  Doctors can send reminders to patients to take medications.  Or as the article says, “farmers would bring their vegetables to a local person with a mobile phone, who then acted as a commissioned sales agent, using the phone to check market prices and arranging for the most profitable sale.” The potential to advance commerce, health, and relief efforts after natural disasters are tremendous.  At the same time, the great potential for drug cartels, gun-runners, and warlords to exploit the technology for destructive ends is quite troubling.

2. In the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, people keep their cell phones in plastic bags to protect from “pummeling rains.” People who do not have the basics of modern life as we know it – electricity, shelter protected from the weather, running water – now own cell phones (Chipchase uses this information to suggest remedies such as water-proof features). What astonishes me about this is the capacity for change if westerners are motivated. Because there is a commercial incentive for western cell phone makers to sell to people in developing nations, we see 3.3 billion cell phone users worldwide. At the same time, since there is little incentive to improve housing for these people, the people with cell phones in the Dharavi slum have pools of water in their homes.

3. In Bangladesh, people have found informal ways to transfer money using phones. In many small towns, a “phone lady” will have a cell phone which she lets people use for the cost of the minutes plus a small fee. If someone working in the city wants to transfer money to his mother in a small village, s/he would buy cell minutes give the “phone lady” the access code and then the “phone lady” would give the mother cash (minus a small fee). We are living through a moment when our technologies have greater potential than our minds can currently envision. For quite some time to come, we will sudden bursts of creativity as people discover ways to change facets of society using existing technology. These “backdoor” money transfers will almost certainly give way to official, regulated money transfers. More automated text messaging will become available. Soon farmers will not call or text grocers to give prices, but will simply maintain live data (on something like a cell phone web page) that a variety of grocers can check.

These advancements will come from developing nations and be refined and institutionalized in western nations. And on all these advancements, Americans will be the last to know (see part 2 tomorrow). That’s because only in places with no alternatives will people find ways to make do. In a country gluttonous with landlines, cell phones, radios, satellite radio, BlackBerrys, WiFi, television, a trillion web sites, we can choose to ignore the potential of each technology. In places without this communicative wealth, they need to get the most of out what they have.