Thursday, May 19, 2011
Scientific Process Rage
Paul Vallet created a hilarious and astute cartoon version of the scientific process as viewed by the general public and by scientists for the Electron Cafe. In the form of flow charts, it's a reaction to how the media tend to depict research as straightforward and rewarding. Vallet depicts the real deal as messily, maddeningly complicated and hard. Which it is. Scientists have been forwarding this to each other and getting a hearty laugh of self-recognition from it.
Monday, May 9, 2011
I was kidnapped by the Tijuana Liberation Front
[Vid: Kiosk dispensing sf minibuks to puzzled pedestrian border crossers.]
This past May Day weekend I had the good fortune to be a guest at one of the more interesting events I have ever attended: a science fictional convocation on the U.S.-Mexico border (like, so "on the border" the Homeland Security guys could watch our Power Point slides without the need to use the surveillance cameras looming over us). The event was "Lecturas de Cruce" (roughly, the "Crossing Lectures"), a four-day series of lectures, round tables, and performances endeavoring to illuminate the border region as a zone in which we can see and create the future. The lectures followed a two-month program of science fictional interventions, DESDE AQUI VE EL FUTURO (roughly, "from here you see the future"), in which students from the Autonomous University of Baja California under the tutelage of Professor (and science fiction writer) Pepe Rojo presented visions of the future to the travelers gathered at the border. The event was sponsored and programmed by the Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT) under the direction and management of literary director Mara Maciel and her colleague Samantha Luna.
[Pic: Maestro Pepe Rojo, a little spent after the last evening of programming.]
The interventions included a talking dispensary of free science fiction books, a newspaper of the future handed out to the cars queued in the 90-minute line to cross, dance performances by pre-programmed cyborgs, future scenarios printed on bookmarks and handed out for consideration by the crowds, and even a procession of devotees of an imaginary saint, the cyborg Guadalupe known as Santa Ste.la, whose appearance with her acolytes passing through the center of Tijuana caused a near-riot, multiple anti-Satanic genuflections, and several calls for immediate baptisms.
[Pic: The procession of Sta.Ste.la.]
The idea of science fiction as the source of artistic interventions in real life is a brilliant and underused strategy. There are precedents—Ballard's 1960s crashed car installations, the recent post-apocalyptic reality show, and all our 20th century American Tomorrowlands—but no real direct analog (I can think of) for an event in which the imaginations of scores of local college students are harnessed to season the arteries of border commerce with visions of dozens of imminent futures. In the atemporal age of Network Culture ascendant, I expect and hope we will see more such speculative interventions in the present.
[Pic: Cyborg dancer points the way forward: through your head.]
The final event, the lecture program, was held in an abandoned government facility, a former Mexican passport office a couple of hundred yards from the U.S. border crossing. This is the chokepoint for the whole region, at which cars and pedestrian crossers converge to take their place in lines that can take hours, surrounded by dispensaries of prescriptionless pharmaceuticals (and soda bottles of pseudo-Viagra) and billboards advertising budget plastic surgery. During the program, stickers advised drivers to tune into the lectures on local simulcast as they sat in the adjacent lanes of crossing; they could even see the slides of the presenters as they approached. Overseeing it all was a giant Verizon billboard featuring an image that keynote presenter Bruce Sterling duly noted could have passed for an eyeball-kicking cyberpunk book cover in 1985, but is now taken for granted: a lovely woman surrounded in concentric colored halos of network radiance, begging Mexicans to plug into her 4G as fast as possible.
[Pic: A captive audience (programming underway to left of photo).]
In addition to Pepe and Bruce, participants included leading Mexican science fiction writers Bernardo Fernández (aka Bef), Gerardo Porcayo, Miguel Ángel Fernández, Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz, and children's author Francisco Hinojosa. Latin American sf scholar Professor Libby Ginway also attended and led most of the q&a. The program also included a screening of Alex Rivera's brilliant film Sleep Dealer, a cyberpunk tale of near-future Tijuana, and a performance of improvised techno by Casa Wagner (who also ended the program with a wild night of trance-inducing electrocumbia).
[Pic: Surveillance interrogation device presented by yours truly for the consideration of the captive audience.]
The border is a perfect place to go to envision futures. The border wall articulates an insanely dystopian present—a DMZ far more intimidating than the Berlin wall was for those of us saw it live and in the flesh complete with schefferhunds and land mines. Approaching Mexico from the US side, you are admonished with escalating warnings that you are, in essence, playing with your life by crossing over to Narcoland. For those of us who survived downtown Manhattan in the 70s and 80s, or DC in the early 90s, it's like back to the Escape From New York future. What you quickly realize after you have crossed over a few times is the extent to which the border is a permeable membrane designed to reinforce the fiction of political jurisdictional boundaries that Network Culture (including the culture of the most powerful network: Capital) is obliterating—and, as Berkeley's Wendy Brown suggests, the increasing effort to reinforce the border with physical and virtual fortifications is really just an effort by an increasingly irrelevant sovereign nation state to sustain the idea of its existence. Revealing an American future in which either the Nation State no longer exists in a form we recognize, or sustains the fiction of its 19th-20th century version through co-optation of a media-doped populace backed by a nascent Homeland Security sort of tyrannical force.
[Vid: Casa Wagner makes free jazz Tijuanense from the sonic materials of the border city.]
So while you think about what your own path would be to get Snake Plissken out of the cultural labyrinth, I would point you in the direction of Tijuana, where you can get some of the best Lacanian Cochinita Pibil around.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
All the sky... and I mean all of it
Now readers of Wired and Gizmodo may have already seen this (yeah, like we have such a huge crossover readership) but this is simply too spectacularly nifty not to share. The Photopic Sky Survey is something I would do if 1) I had a daring sense of adventure, 2) had an imagination large enough to conceive of such a project and 3) had astrophotography skills somewhat more accomplished than those of a nearsighted lemur. So what's the big deal? I'll let Nick Risinger explain:
In concrete terms, Risinger took a year to travel the globe, spending an inordinate amount of time in the western states of the U.S. and the western Cape of South Africa to effectively photograph the heavens visible from both the northern and southern hemispheres throughout the year. Encroaching light pollution has dramatically reduced the number of truly dark-sky sites on the Earth today, and Risinger had to travel quite a bit to reach these isolated areas. That's 45,000 miles by air, 12,000 overland. Any way you slice it, that's dedication. Click on the image above for a breathtaking tour of the largest true-color, all-sky photographic survey ever made.
The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Changing corporate gender: a case study.
The following is a prose version of a Twitter lecture I did yesterday over on my Twitter feed.
It was based on a fascinating article: Robin J. Ely’s and Debra E. Meyerson’s “An Organizational Approach to Undoing Gender: The Unlikely Case of Offshore Oil Platforms,” which appeared in Research in Organizational Behavior v30 (2010).
The authors begin by examining the ways in which gender has become, for men, a dynamic performance rather than a static state of being. The authors compare how men define masculinity in traditionally male occupations, especially those occupations which entail physical risk: policemen, fire fighters, oil rig workers, soldiers, etc.
The traditional research has shown that men in these occupations try to achieve a kind of hyper-masculinity, but this comes with a cost: excessive risk-taking, poor decision-making, interference in training and recruitment, marginalizing women workers, violating the civil and human rights of workers, and alienating “men from their health, emotions, and relationships with others.”
However, the authors of this paper looked at “high-reliability organizations” (HROs), which are “organizations designed to avoid catastrophes despite operating in dangerous, technologically complex environments.” Studies have shown that male workers at HROs “deviate from conventional masculine norms. In place of toughness, these men avoid taking unnecessary risks, seek help, and inquire after failures.”
The authors of this paper, seeing the basic contradiction, did on-site examinations of two offshore oil rigs, which are HROs.
The authors recap typical male behavior in dangerous workplaces (not HROs): demonstrations of physical prowess, the idealization of strength, bravado in the presence of danger, the projection of the image of sexual potency, assuming the guise of being technically infallible (never admitting mistakes), covering up the mistakes of co-workers, and the “presentation of self as emotionally detached, unflappable, and fearless.”
The two oil rigs visited were in the Gulf of Mexico. As of the mid-1990s, the companies that owned them had a distressingly high rate of worker injury. So the companies built new rigs and went out of their way to do daily business differently, as a way to reduce worker injuries. That production, efficiency, and reliability increased as a result of this change was anticipated, but was not the main reason that the companies changed their ways of doing business.
Quotes from rig workers: it used to be that the “guy that was in charge was the one who could...out-intimidate the others...intimidation was the name of the game.” “They decided who the driller was by fighting. If the job came open, the one that was left standing was the driller.” But after the change in doing business: “we had to be taught how to be more lovey-dovey and more friendly with each other and to get in touch with the more tender side of each toher type of thing. And all of us just laughed at first. It was like, man, this is never going to work, you know? But now you can really tell the difference. Even though we kid around and joke around with each other, there's no malice in it. We are...kinder, gentler.”
The authors pointed out that: “importantly, these men did not repudiate traditionally masculine traits but they did not seem focused on proving them.” [italics in the original].
“Everyone–workers, managers, contractors–attributed this break from the past to the company-wide initiative to make safety its highest priority: ‘macho’ behavior was unsafe and therefore simply unacceptable.”
The authors point out that the ethos of individualism, which in the case of oil rigs is a kind of machismo taken to extremes) has been replaced by collectivism. “These men indicated that they were as committed to giving protection as they were grateful to receive it. ‘It’s for the safety of us out here,’ one explained, ‘and I appreciate that.’”
The authors give examples they witness of new hires from other rigs who had to learn how to ask for help, to obey safety rules, and to admit mistakes. One sample exchange: “At [company x], they don’t do this.” “You’re not at [company x]. Forget everything you know about where you came from. You’re here now.”
This emphasis on asking for advice and help led to greater administrative willingness to listen to input from lower-level employees. The informal company motto became "If you're out doing something, you're going to make mistakes. It's all part of the learning process." This lack of assigning blame extended to employees who tripped safety valves, stopping production and costing the copy big money, not being blamed. The mistakes were analyzed, but the employees were not punished, despite the financial cost to the company.
The authors: "In short, men routinely breached conventional-male norms, acknowledging their own and others' shortcomings as part of the learning process.”
Which leads to the really interesting (to me) stuff: the results of this change in the "emotional domain" of the workers.
Employees became comfortable sharing their problems at home with supervisors, as a way to help maintain group safety. One worker, first thing one morning, told his coworkers about his sick child and said: "This is what I'm dealing with at home. If you all would please keep me focused and understand if I'm a little distracted, I'd appreciate it.”
The authors: “Workers displayed raw fears in our presence, with no indication of shame.”
One inexperienced worker precipitated a shut-down because he followed the advice of his physically intimidating coworker. After error analysis "this exchange led to a larger team discussion about the need to guard against one's potential to intimidate, however unwittingly, or to be intimidated.” Production goals on the rigs “were stated in relative terms rather than absolute numbers,” which workers saw as concrete evidence of the company’s concern with safety over profit and the bottom line.
One of the oil rigs made light of the mistakes by establishing the "Millionaires Club," made up of workers whose mistake cost the company millions of dollars. "To become a member was not a source of shame, but rather a mark of being human."
One worker described "how he had become less blaming and more attentive to others' feelings" from the emphasis on learning from mistakes. "You realize you need to change when you see a look on someone's face after they made a mistake like that--and you see the hurt. Because that's something you don't want to cause."
For the workers, the definition of being a man changed. It "doesn't mean I want to kick someone's ass" or "being macho or arrogant." "I don't want to be a superhero out there. I don't want to know eveyrthing."
The money quote:
"A man is a man when he can think like a woman," which means "being sensitive, compassionate, in touch with my feelings; knowing when to laugh and when to cry." The authors add that "several interviewees corroborated this view, offering definitions of manhood that similarly emphasized humility, feelings, approachability and compassion."
In the final section the authors provide a theoretical how-to for undoing corporate gender. "By consistently putting collectivistic goals front and center, cultural practices anchor men to work goals that connect them to others. Men's sense that others' well-being is at stake in how they perform their jobs gives them a compelling reason to deviate from conventional masculinity when the work requires it."
The authors also touch on how the presence of women–there were none on the oil rig–might change things: "consistent with the finding that men 'place the highest value on their identity in the eyes of other men' male-dominated workplaces are a breeding ground for conventional masculinity." "Even in women's absence, men strive to prove their masculine credentials; hence, women's presence does not appear to be determinative."
Finally, as an example of the unusual (for oil rigs) "emotional domain" and "sharing concerns and advice about personal matters," an overheard conversation among men at lunch: "Sent home a tape of that Mozart and Chopin for Joe's baby, because it's real important for them babies to listen to music like that. Real soothing."
It was based on a fascinating article: Robin J. Ely’s and Debra E. Meyerson’s “An Organizational Approach to Undoing Gender: The Unlikely Case of Offshore Oil Platforms,” which appeared in Research in Organizational Behavior v30 (2010).
The authors begin by examining the ways in which gender has become, for men, a dynamic performance rather than a static state of being. The authors compare how men define masculinity in traditionally male occupations, especially those occupations which entail physical risk: policemen, fire fighters, oil rig workers, soldiers, etc.
The traditional research has shown that men in these occupations try to achieve a kind of hyper-masculinity, but this comes with a cost: excessive risk-taking, poor decision-making, interference in training and recruitment, marginalizing women workers, violating the civil and human rights of workers, and alienating “men from their health, emotions, and relationships with others.”
However, the authors of this paper looked at “high-reliability organizations” (HROs), which are “organizations designed to avoid catastrophes despite operating in dangerous, technologically complex environments.” Studies have shown that male workers at HROs “deviate from conventional masculine norms. In place of toughness, these men avoid taking unnecessary risks, seek help, and inquire after failures.”
The authors of this paper, seeing the basic contradiction, did on-site examinations of two offshore oil rigs, which are HROs.
The authors recap typical male behavior in dangerous workplaces (not HROs): demonstrations of physical prowess, the idealization of strength, bravado in the presence of danger, the projection of the image of sexual potency, assuming the guise of being technically infallible (never admitting mistakes), covering up the mistakes of co-workers, and the “presentation of self as emotionally detached, unflappable, and fearless.”
The two oil rigs visited were in the Gulf of Mexico. As of the mid-1990s, the companies that owned them had a distressingly high rate of worker injury. So the companies built new rigs and went out of their way to do daily business differently, as a way to reduce worker injuries. That production, efficiency, and reliability increased as a result of this change was anticipated, but was not the main reason that the companies changed their ways of doing business.
Quotes from rig workers: it used to be that the “guy that was in charge was the one who could...out-intimidate the others...intimidation was the name of the game.” “They decided who the driller was by fighting. If the job came open, the one that was left standing was the driller.” But after the change in doing business: “we had to be taught how to be more lovey-dovey and more friendly with each other and to get in touch with the more tender side of each toher type of thing. And all of us just laughed at first. It was like, man, this is never going to work, you know? But now you can really tell the difference. Even though we kid around and joke around with each other, there's no malice in it. We are...kinder, gentler.”
The authors pointed out that: “importantly, these men did not repudiate traditionally masculine traits but they did not seem focused on proving them.” [italics in the original].
“Everyone–workers, managers, contractors–attributed this break from the past to the company-wide initiative to make safety its highest priority: ‘macho’ behavior was unsafe and therefore simply unacceptable.”
The authors point out that the ethos of individualism, which in the case of oil rigs is a kind of machismo taken to extremes) has been replaced by collectivism. “These men indicated that they were as committed to giving protection as they were grateful to receive it. ‘It’s for the safety of us out here,’ one explained, ‘and I appreciate that.’”
The authors give examples they witness of new hires from other rigs who had to learn how to ask for help, to obey safety rules, and to admit mistakes. One sample exchange: “At [company x], they don’t do this.” “You’re not at [company x]. Forget everything you know about where you came from. You’re here now.”
This emphasis on asking for advice and help led to greater administrative willingness to listen to input from lower-level employees. The informal company motto became "If you're out doing something, you're going to make mistakes. It's all part of the learning process." This lack of assigning blame extended to employees who tripped safety valves, stopping production and costing the copy big money, not being blamed. The mistakes were analyzed, but the employees were not punished, despite the financial cost to the company.
The authors: "In short, men routinely breached conventional-male norms, acknowledging their own and others' shortcomings as part of the learning process.”
Which leads to the really interesting (to me) stuff: the results of this change in the "emotional domain" of the workers.
Employees became comfortable sharing their problems at home with supervisors, as a way to help maintain group safety. One worker, first thing one morning, told his coworkers about his sick child and said: "This is what I'm dealing with at home. If you all would please keep me focused and understand if I'm a little distracted, I'd appreciate it.”
The authors: “Workers displayed raw fears in our presence, with no indication of shame.”
One inexperienced worker precipitated a shut-down because he followed the advice of his physically intimidating coworker. After error analysis "this exchange led to a larger team discussion about the need to guard against one's potential to intimidate, however unwittingly, or to be intimidated.” Production goals on the rigs “were stated in relative terms rather than absolute numbers,” which workers saw as concrete evidence of the company’s concern with safety over profit and the bottom line.
One of the oil rigs made light of the mistakes by establishing the "Millionaires Club," made up of workers whose mistake cost the company millions of dollars. "To become a member was not a source of shame, but rather a mark of being human."
One worker described "how he had become less blaming and more attentive to others' feelings" from the emphasis on learning from mistakes. "You realize you need to change when you see a look on someone's face after they made a mistake like that--and you see the hurt. Because that's something you don't want to cause."
For the workers, the definition of being a man changed. It "doesn't mean I want to kick someone's ass" or "being macho or arrogant." "I don't want to be a superhero out there. I don't want to know eveyrthing."
The money quote:
"A man is a man when he can think like a woman," which means "being sensitive, compassionate, in touch with my feelings; knowing when to laugh and when to cry." The authors add that "several interviewees corroborated this view, offering definitions of manhood that similarly emphasized humility, feelings, approachability and compassion."
In the final section the authors provide a theoretical how-to for undoing corporate gender. "By consistently putting collectivistic goals front and center, cultural practices anchor men to work goals that connect them to others. Men's sense that others' well-being is at stake in how they perform their jobs gives them a compelling reason to deviate from conventional masculinity when the work requires it."
The authors also touch on how the presence of women–there were none on the oil rig–might change things: "consistent with the finding that men 'place the highest value on their identity in the eyes of other men' male-dominated workplaces are a breeding ground for conventional masculinity." "Even in women's absence, men strive to prove their masculine credentials; hence, women's presence does not appear to be determinative."
Finally, as an example of the unusual (for oil rigs) "emotional domain" and "sharing concerns and advice about personal matters," an overheard conversation among men at lunch: "Sent home a tape of that Mozart and Chopin for Joe's baby, because it's real important for them babies to listen to music like that. Real soothing."
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
FLURB
The new issue of FLURB, Rudy Rucker's "Webzine of Astonishing Tales," includes a new story by me, "Medusa." Guest edited by Eileen Gunn, the issue also includes work by three amazing Mexican authors, Pepe Rojo, Alberto Chimal, and Bernardo Fernandez (in both English and Spanish), as well as an impressive roster of Canadians, Brits, and Americans: Doug Lain, io9's Charlie Jane Anders, Minister Faust, Leslie What, Kek-W, Robert Guffey, Michael Swanwick, and Rudy Rucker himself. FLURB is meant to provide a home for stories that are a little too "astonishing" for the mainstream magazins, and I am delighted to be included in such exciting and impressive company.
Check it out!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Official State Firearm, but not of Texas. Yet.
The BBC online informs us that Utah has designated a state firearm to join the roster of state fossil, fruit, bird and so forth. The firearm in question is the Browning M1911 pistol. I’m actually not dead set against this. My Utah stepmother was a direct and proud descendant of John M. Browning, the rifle inventor. Browning firearms really do hold an exceptional place in Utah history.
Unfortunately, the modern pro-firearms movement seems to have its taproot in insecure masculinity. Consider the effect on generations of fragile, potentially violent, Southern male ego of having lost the Civil War. Add the skeleton-in-the-closet fear of slave rebellion or Indian uprising. No wonder gun nuttery flourishes across the US even though it’s a deplorable fallacy (or phallacy) that more guns make a society more safe. Now that Utah has upped and designated a state handgun, can Texas be far behind?
Unfortunately, the modern pro-firearms movement seems to have its taproot in insecure masculinity. Consider the effect on generations of fragile, potentially violent, Southern male ego of having lost the Civil War. Add the skeleton-in-the-closet fear of slave rebellion or Indian uprising. No wonder gun nuttery flourishes across the US even though it’s a deplorable fallacy (or phallacy) that more guns make a society more safe. Now that Utah has upped and designated a state handgun, can Texas be far behind?
Friday, March 18, 2011
Yo, Hannibal
For those of obsessed with the strange overlaps between banal popular culture and contemporary geopolitical insanity (see, eg, "The Noriega Playlist") One of the most important revelations of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the Iraqi obsession with...Lionel Ritchie. There was a great report about this from Nightline's John Berman in 2006:
I have been to Iraq nine times since the American invasion three years ago, for a total of about 10 solid months. (My wife is counting.) During that time, I have seen bombs and blood, I have seen rebuilding and restructuring, and I have seen death and democracy. So what have I heard? That's easy: Lionel Richie.
Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. "I love Lionel Richie," they say. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song.
So I was very pleased to come cross this hilarious and genius Charlie Brooker rant about the Qaddafi variation of this phenomenon, at The Guardian:
Another famous star who reportedly performed for the Gaddafis is notorious pussy 50 Cent, the crybaby pant-shitting wuss whom I could definitely have in a fight. (Did you know his real name is Fifi Millicent? Don't tell him I told you, because he's terribly sensitive about it, and weeps huge cowardly tears out of his gutless baby eyes whenever it's mentioned. Also, he was born a girl.)
Fifi was paid an undisclosed sum to sing and dance like a fey little puppet in front of Mutassim Gaddafi at the 2005 Venice film festival. But while the other stars have been embarrassed by their (possibly unintentional) connection to a despotic regime, Fifi seems to have used his as the inspiration for a startlingly violent video game called 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2009.
The game opens with Fifi Millicent performing a gig in an unnamed war-torn Middle Eastern country, in exchange for a $10m fee. When the mysterious promoter shows signs of not coughing up the money, Fifi and chums storm backstage, call him a "motherfucker" and shove a shotgun in his face. Terrified, he hands them a priceless Damien Hirst-style diamond-encrusted skull. Fiddy and co then bravely head for the airport in their armoured Hummers, only to be ambushed by armed insurgents. During the gunfire and confusion, a sexy woman appears from nowhere and steals the precious skull. "Bitch took my skull," whines Fifi, before embarking on an awesome odyssey of violence across the troubled Arabic nation, shooting and murdering anyone who gets in his way.
Who'd have thought someone like 50 Cent could lend his name to something so crass and stupid? It's almost as if he's an idiot. Still, perhaps openly embracing the despotic crossover in a video game is the way forward. How long before we see a game called Gaddafi Hero, in which you perform a series of upbeat numbers for Middle Eastern tyrants by pushing coloured buttons on a plastic guitar in time to the beat, while trying to drown out the nagging voice of your own conscience and the furious chants of the oppressed?
Suggested tracklisting: While My Qatar Gently Weeps; Gimme Gimme Gimme Oman After Midnight; Insane in the Bahrain; Here Comes Yemen; and 50 Ways To Libya Lover. Recommended retail price? $2m and counting.
Check it out.
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