Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Posted on February 1, 2009 - by amy senger
The 8 questions
Below is a list of 8 questions that was given to me by Bill Jordan, an 80-year old man I met while waiting at the Ritz Camera in DC. He was wearing an Obama cap and holding an iPhone. We started talking about iPhones, Apple, and travel. His blind 12-year old granddaughter convinced him to buy stock in Apple when it was selling at $42/share. He has visited over 100 countries and handed me a slip of paper that read: The doom of a profligate nation is certain – having been foretold by all of recorded history.”~Bill Jordan
- If you had unlimited time and unlimited money, what three cities in the world would you like to visit?
- If you could be present on any one day in the history of the world and participate in the events of the day or simply observe what happened what day would you choose?
- If I would reserve a table for four tomorrow night at 7pm at the very best restaurant in town (I would agree to pay the bill) and you could invite three people (now living or you could bring them back from the dead), what three people would you choose to visit and converse with for several hours?
- Please give me your three most negative impression about America or Americans.
- Out of 1000 people selected at random, how many do you believe are capable of original thought?
- Do you believe in life after death?
- If you believe in life after death, is there anything that you can do to improve your status in the afterlife? If so what?
Feel free to leave your answers as a comment:)
Posted on January 27, 2009 - by amy senger
One Human’s Minutiae is Another’s Munificence
For thirty years, Albert Einstein struggled to produce a unified theory that would provide an explanation for everything in the physical universe. This quest for a single blueprint for life would accompany him to his grave and in his last years he admitted, “It is so difficult to employ mathematically that I have not been able to verify it somehow, in spite of all my efforts.” He finally conceded, “Someone else is going to have to it.”
For several decades in the 1500s Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe diligently recorded the positions of the planet Mars. Every day at the same time he observed its position and noted it, and while this might have seemed like a trivial acquisition, qualifying it as minutia even, he eventually observed that Mars drifted from west to east, “but every two years roughly the planet would take a brief diversion, slowing down, going backward and doing a loop, before regaining its senses and continuing its normal motion.” (The Social Atom)
After Brahe’s death, Johannes Kepler studied Brahe’s notebooks, and eight years later he concluded that Mars and Earth were rotating on elliptical tracks around the sun, with Earth on the inside track. This served as the foundation for Issac Newton’s laws of gravity and motion.
The scientific method for gathering data, identifying patterns and finding a mechanism to explain them is the same one that social scientists today are using to find solutions to problems such as global warming and the spread of infectious diseases. People, like the physical world, fall into very explainable patterns and these patterns reveal regularities that the seemingly complicated just isn’t so.
There are some patterns that are not so common, not so regular, not so obvious in their occurrence and therefore are more difficult to understand. Acts like the “random” campus shooting that took place at Virginia Tech could be considered one of these anomalies, not easy to predict given the paucity of data about the shooter and lack of similar events to which to compare it. I’m curious what a stream of this shooter’s life would have looked like in Twitter, what it would have revealed and what we could have learned from it. Given a large dynamic system like Twitter, where small variations of a initial condition can be captured, would a butterfly effect emerged? Clive Thompson compared Twitter to “proprioception, your body’s ability to know where your limbs are.” I consider Twitter a tool for social omniscience, in which the identification of natural laws of patterns can lead to the possibility of prediction.
What’s so intriguing and exciting about social patterns is the ability to change them – social behaviors are often dictated by mutable and constructed norms. However, because social patterns are influenced by norms, social etiquette “black holes” can present great barriers to revealing true patterns and ultimately presenting solutions. When I hear how I should conduct myself, what I should and should not say, by entities as imposing as the United States government and as intrusive as the “family order” – I immediately object. These formal and informal gag rules are exactly what will prevent us from solving the most complicated of issues – the ones that keep me from saying I smoked an entire pack of cigarettes this weekend, or I think the industry I work in is inherently doomed for failure and virtually no one understands this, or I do look at porn on occasion, or I like illegal aliens because they work jobs that “Americans” don’t want but I get annoyed when they don’t learn/speak English.
I laugh at the notion that technology alone will ever solve a problem; even if we lived in a world in which every person could contribute to one global database, these invisible barriers would still exist. The fact is I am regularly surprised by what I say has meaning to whom and while I myself don’t want to read every single thing a person does or thinks, I’d be willing to bet the farm that the compilation of this minutiae, coupled with other sources of data, would reveal patterns never obvious to us before and present answers to questions that have eluded humankind for ages. To do this however would require a lot of data, a lot of minutiae, all the minutiae you don’t want to hear. And yet the more information we make available, the greater our ability to understand our world and change it.
I believe with enough data, we can discover the truth in everything – and we will unveil an artisan’s masterfully ordered structure and achieve what Einstein simply did not have enough minutiae to achieve.
Posted on December 15, 2008 - by amy senger
Twitter Silence: A Diary
After being in New York over the weekend for the She’s Geeky unconference and my good friend’s birthday, I ended up taking a sick day to recoup. Since I wasn’t at work, where I am unable to stay continuously engaged in the online world, I didn’t feel my usual craving to be connected and tuned in. This made it very easy not to tweet, because I did have web and mobile access and was able to use SMS and chat. My twitter prohibition allowed me to be totally self-focused and this impunity from the need to share enabled me to be noticeably productive. I knocked off several tasks from my M-F, 9-5 “to-do” list.
Day 2 (Tuesday)
In the morning I attended the Energy Forum and it was relief not to tweet (although @cheeky_geeky outed me); I could just listen and consume without feeling the need to share what I was hearing and experiencing. But being at the Forum reinforced the reality that energy issues will only be addressed through global participation and it will require cooperation with countries like China and this was distressing because I know our country and government is not at a place to cooperate. Then I was off to a meeting at work which was draining in the sense that didn’t feel like it accomplished much. I left work to put a contract on a condo and this was perhaps the most difficult aspect of my week. I have never assumed such a large financial responsibility on my own and this level of stress created an overwhelming need for social support, interaction and perspective. Even though I was leveraging SMS and chat, I truly missed Twitter:
I’m lonely without it
I feel neglected
unloved
untouched
ignored
I’m pouting, sticking out my bottom lip:(
I saw Cal at the office. I hadn’t seen him for a while and whenever I do seem him, I just light up. He interviewed me for the training role and he’s the reason I got involved with social software. My first IC consulting role at a another agency was uninspiring to say the least, and I psychologically withered from the political, cultural and physical barriers that anchored the agency to an un-evolved way of doing business. Cal shared with me his vision for intelligence and exposed me to the innovative, forward-looking thinking many of my colleagues possess. He happens to be one the people I respect the most in my professional life: he has an extremely creative and agile mind, capable of examining thoughts and ideas to evolve his own beliefs but lacks the braggadocio and self-centeredness that so many idea champions possess. This is the moment I wanted to tweet the most – to share the energy I experienced from interacting with him.
By the afternoon, I was entirely focused on checking out activity in the analyst workspaces, and felt a shift to not caring what was going on outside this environment. I had little interest in what was happening in Twitter, Facebook, and Blip because I not could participate.
I also read a fantastic article in Portfolio magazine on Paul Krugman’s bailout dissent that I wanted to share.
Day 4 (Thursday)
I woke up feeling socially isolated and I had this feeling of wanting to leave my current role. I attended mandatory Ethics training in the morning and was reminded of the all the rules public servants must abide by. I learned that the Hatch Act doesn’t apply to contractors, I can only have one bumper sticker on my car and I can accept gifts up to $335 from foreign nationals.
I also thought is was funny the briefing starting off with this quote by Plato: Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. It seems like all the innovation and positive change I’ve seen has come from people who have found ways to get things done in spite of the rules and regulations that encumber them.
Day 5 (Friday)
It was a productive daty at work; I holed up in the lab, sat in my old desk in the corner and was extremely focused and in my own world. I eliminated my online and physical distractions and was able to pull my thoughts together for a blog post I had been wanting to write. I also had a heart-to-heart with colleague who I had been needing to share my thoughts with and we both walked away feeling better about some issues that had surfaced at work.
That night I attended the Atlas Corps holiday party and met Harris Wolford (former PA Senator and Co-Founder of the Peace Corps) and enjoyed talking to a bunch of folks I hadn’t seen for a while or hadn’t met before, including Senator Wolford’s super cute aid. I texted my friend because I had to share this with someone! I had an aha moment when I realized the Twitterverse was missing out.
I also found out the seller accepted and ratified my contract on the condo.
Day 6 (Saturday)
I woke up and didn’t really care what was going on. I felt at ease, not distracted and was productive. I read and wrote a lot. I ended up not going to several events I was supposed to attend. I just hung low.
Day 7 (Sunday)
This was the most difficult day I’ve experienced – in a long time. The reality of becoming a homeowner and assuming a great financial responsibility during a volatile market really hit me. I spent most of the day in the apartment, reading, reviewing the condo docs and talking to two of my close friends and my mom about the new purchase. I didn’t feel comfortable with the price I was buying at. My real estate friend said if I didn’t feel good about the offer, I had (3) days to counter, even though it was a ratified contract, since contract law provides for a 3-day live window. I didn’t know I could do this.
I talked to Steve for an hour on the phone. I’m so thankful to have someone who makes me laugh and keeps things in perspective like he does. I made the decision to counter on the contract.
