A Tech Lover’s Luddian Emotions

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I have been conflicted for a long time with technology, and hype. Technology is wonderful in that it gives us productivity or efficiency, but what are do we trade for them? It isn’t always free, we still have to put in something, and maybe we don’t even see all the resources that are devoted to the process.

I have a tendency to feel Luddian about things, but it comes from knowledge not ignorance. Most things have merits, that, I can’t deny, but it also has somewhat hidden ramifications for it’s use. Cellphones. RSS. Search Engines. Social Networks. All have their positives, but simultaneously negatives.

We have reached a point of decentralization, so that we can do almost anything, anywhere; we’ve also managed to place a shackle upon ourselves, that is virtually always there, (or always virtually there.) We have created a world that we can’t walk away from, because it is so easy to connect and get drawn in. We can check the news, our portfolios, our relationships with family and friends, using the technology at our fingertips via text, photos, video, audio all on a device that can be kept in our pocket. At this point we have more knowledge that is more ubiquitous than at any other time, but with it we’ve become forgetful.

I’m stupid. I can’t give you a single friends phone number off the top of my head. My grammar and spelling is often atrocious, without spellcheck. I often have to check definitions because I only have half a clue of what a word might mean. I can find information, but it’s often not of the quality that is necessary, for what I want.

We gave up our freedom, of being unavailable for evenings, weekends, weeks, in order to always have access to the outside world, with cellphones. Then we gave up our freedom to not be bombarded by news, and information. How much of the news you see every day, has an immediate or profound effect on you? Noise is growing faster than the valuable pieces, and search is succumbing to it.

Last night, I spent 2 hours searching for an article I had read about the creation of Zork. Unfortunately, the article was mainly on the MDL language, with Zork  only as an example. Searching for it, Google gave me nothing but junk. Stumbleupon and Delicious  gave me nothing. I only lucked out in that I had shared the article with Friendfeed, and Friendfeed’s search was actually functional. It shouldn’t take that long to find what you’re looking for. That was 2 hours I could have spent actually doing something, by the end I was exhausted, and didn’t even really want to do what I had started the search for.

Everything comes with the sacrifice, but it seems that I’m having to sacrifice more and more to gather the value from all the systems that I use. I broke away from my cell phone last year, it was great for setting up the occasional meeting with friends, and in cases of emergency, but over all it was just a nuisance. I like to escape from constant distraction and information, because it’s what I deal with on a day to day basis. Somewhere I feel that we lost our way, but at the same time I’m damn amazed at what is possible now. I stand torn, in what I know, and my opinions on what I know.

This was written on January 21st, 2011.

The Thought Of Success Is Wonderful

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Humans are self and group inhibitors in general, primarily the former. We all have fears and worries, that force us into reactionary tactics for survival, but often times, the fears are fiction, induced by over-thinking, or someone promoting them. Reactions, aren’t precise and are rarely efficient, they are emotional decisions made in angst, we shouldn’t trust it in most cases. I think this is why so many people fail, they allow fears to get in their way.

A child’s innocence and sense of wonder make them marvelous. They truly believe anything is possible, they aren’t inhibited by their prior experience. The “empty” mind that is open to being filled, with new experiences, new ideas, but they often lack the experience and skills required to communicate  with the world. If children are able to fight the inhibitions that allows their wonder, can we try to promote it to as a way to encourage success?*

Adults have mostly forgotten how wonderful life is, and think it is beating them down. I can’t count how many people I know who think life is out to get them, because of their bad experiences, with prior failure or contempt at others success. Many suspend their wonder, in order to fight others ability to succeed, they feel that injustices were served to them, because a disease, their financial situation, employment possibilities, etc. I’m not saying any of that is necessarily wrong, but what is wrong, is complaining about what you can’t do, instead of  looking at what you can do, in an uninhibited manner.

Your dreams don’t have to die, because of something that has happened to you. e.g. Randy Pausch – Experience Zero G like an Astronaut. Randy Pausch author of, “The Last Lecture.” He realized early on that he couldn’t be an Astronaut, because he wore glasses, so he changed his goal. All Randy really wanted to experience was Zero G, so he set out in life with the goal of one day going on, “The Vomit Commit,” which is an aircraft used for simulating Zero G. He changed his goal, to fit what he could do, and I believe too many people give up, based on their general disadvantages, and never look at what they could do, regardless, to get close.**

Open your mind, your eyes, your heart, and fight for your dreams. Find someone to help, I know not everyone has someone to help, but it never hurts to ask. There are plenty of enablers out there, just show them that you’re passionate. If there is one thing I’ve seen lately is that there has been talk about how to get a mentor to assist you, in achieving your goals, and there has been one point in these articles that sticks out.

“I’m not going to  spend my time helping you, unless you prove that you’re willing to put the time in yourself, and show me what you’ve done. You have to show that you’re willing to go it alone, but would like help.”

So what are your dreams? Write down 5 things you’d like to do in the next 5 years, and/or 5 things you want to do before you die.

*= One of the things that occurs to me, about STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), is that they are very rigid in general, and our school system doesn’t try to break from the rigidity. What that rigidity does, is when a child doesn’t get something, he is penalized by bad grades, but this enforces fear and contempt, or it is overly repetitive and the child loses his sense of wonder. We should work on filling these areas with wonder and flexibility.

**= Actually, while skimming the book to find the story on this, I noticed this article is very reminiscent of the later chapters, on Dreaming Big.

I Can’t Say I Can’t, But I Could If…

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With the beginning of a new year, I plan on taking several realizations and things I discovered momentarily, last year, and try to make them permanent. The first is to stop saying, “I/it can’t…,” with the exception of when used in conjunction with, “… but I could if.” The second is, “third-person introspective.”

Some time in September or October, I had an epiphany of how harmful, “I can’t,” is; it allows for excuses to be provided so easily. It allows you to just shuck your responsibility, without fully thinking through the problem, or trying to find another way around the problem. My solution is to only allow myself to say the phrase, “I/It can’t X, but I/it could if x.” It is a simple method, that can be used recursively, to find the starting point, if you can’t do x, then substitute it for X and start again. Ultimately, I feel that it is a great way of breaking a problem down, and avoiding excuses.

Third-person introspective, now this idea is a little less approachable, but personally more fun. I allow myself to escape, and critique myself on all of the actions I make as though I had someone following me around, looking over my shoulder. I tried this for about a week, and while it’s odd at first, it has some pretty interesting results,  you self-inhibit as though you weren’t alone, even if you are. The one issue that I had with it is that you have to be able to maintain two-levels of consciousness simultaneously, which can be difficult, particularly when you’re tired. I assume once one becomes adjusted to it, the second consciousness could become controlled subconsciously.

I’m hoping that implementing both of these, along with my recent purging of  stuff that was weighing on my mind will help me be more active, and engaged in the now. I still have a couple more things to get out of there, but for the most part, I’ve put everything I want behind me, and I’m starting to truly move forward for the first time in two or three years. Hope your year is going to be as wonderful as mine.

Chronological Data’s Influence On Relevancy Analysis

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Last night , I read Content should be experienced by relevance and importance and interestingness, not chronologically,  after Louis Gray shared it on Friendfeed. This is my take on chronological and other relevancy metrics. While, I agree with Garry on the outcome; I don’t  want to shrug off chronology as lacking importance, is a great tool for weighting an objects relevance.

Chronological data is a very nice weight to have when you’re looking at the whole set of objects. Chronology isn’t as important for idea’s or thoughts, as it is for news, but when looking at the subset of most actual news, it is much better.  Cadmus succeeds because it focuses on a small chronological window, or at least it does in my case, showing me the most relevant items in the last 24 hours, as well as a focused source of input, Twitter. Twitter, and most social tools, have high-entropy in relevance over a sustained period, so that if you really want to provide relevant or important information, focusing on what has happened in the past 24 hours is a great idea. Unfortunately, the web isn’t just Twitter, Facebook, or other tools, there are thousands of blogs, and news sources that are also relevant.

I’m going to use the example of a feed reader, considering that’s where I was focused when looking at these things, and thus have more insight into the discussion at hand, in that area. Trying to determine relevance on items, particularly news, doesn’t work so well when you’re focusing on a set of items you’ haven’t read, over a period of weeks, months, years, or even a few days, and seeking relevance/importance. What you end up with is possibly having sets of news that is outdated, being more relevant than current news, or an item that doesn’t fit the users interests.

Some real quick techniques, to boost relevance involve chronological data, though it’s not as necessary in the later stages of relevancy, it plays a huge role in cutting the set down to size for analysis. Here are a few methods of using chronological data for quickly sculpting more relevant information.

  • Create a window, static or sliding, this helps capture and condense echo. (48-72 hours is good)
  • Over a period, larger than your initial window, you can remove stale items, by comparing condense sets, that are on the topics that are more current.

Chronology is an extremely quick and dirty tool, but it can help tremendously, in narrowing the items down quickly. So that the data that needs to be processed for each user is much smaller, however it is far from the be all end all of the process for determining relevant data. The list of other items for determining importance or relevancy:

  • An external source weighting similar to PageRank — allowing high-value content to be controlled by peers as well as sharing it’s clout. (Source-Data relationships)
  • A personalized weighting based on your relationships similar to EdgeRank — allowing your personal interactions to show trust and interest in items. (Human-Human relationships)
  • A personalized weighting, based on your habits, and usage of various items similar to APML — allowing your content usage to be analyzed and weighted. (Human-Data relationships)
  • An aggregate weighting of both Edgerank & APML, to determine, weighting of topics based on human relationships and habit comparison, an idea like GAP(ML) — allowing your common interests and friendship to expose a more complex set of relevant data. (Human-Data-Human relationships)
  • A set of common related data carriers, and user relationship with his sources, somewhere in between Edgerank and Pagerank — allowing quick analysis and overview of sources, to determine what is important currently, as well as what is important among the sites the user trusts. (Source-Source & Source-Human relationships)

Those are the main relationships, in my mind, though there are a few others, such as media relationships(text, audio, video) not all people prefer the same type of information format. Tools that the user is using, you may want to provide data to the user in a different manner depending on how and what they are using to observe the data, or where they observe the data. If the user is the key, then the relationships and objects around the user are most definitely the teeth, and you have to hit as many tumblers as you can, without getting stuck.

These are just the ones I’ve focused on, and I’m sure their are others just as value that I have skimmed over, but this should provide a good, base for starting out, and there are probably a million little tweaks and touches that I skipped.  To quote Garry, because he was right.

The field is still a bit wide open because few people have both the dataset to work and test on, AND the financial backing to see the project all the way through.

We will definitely push the boundaries over the next few years, and we’ll have a better order for our information, I have no doubt in this. However, I’m betting many individuals will still rely on the very simplicity that we rely today: Chronological ordering. And even if it isn’t shown that way on the surface, deep down, it will be at the very base of relevance. Some under-the-radar companies, in this area, are Bit.ly and BagtheWeb — bundles are an excellent source of the information required for relevancy*, Quora and Stack Overflow — Q&A is a huge resource for the personal interests, Cadmus, Hunch, and My6Sense — all have experience working with this, and I have no doubt all three will only get better.

*- I may be biased here, I’ve been working on and off with bundling, for close to 2 years, but ultimately got lost in perfecting how the data was stored.

Budgeting on Variable Income

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The three main things that need to be taken into account are:

  • Definite Expenses
  • Estimated Income
  • Savings required to cover deficiencies between Income & Expense

Defining Expenses

  • Write down all non-variable monthly expenses (e.g. Rent, Utilities, Insurance, etc.)
  • Estimate all recurring variable expenses for the month(e.g Food, Fuel, etc.)

Add these together and multiply them by 1.10 -1.20 to provide yourself with a buffer  in case of any upward fluctuations of variable expenditures. Excess at the month should be saved  or split between discretionary spending and savings, with only 10-20% going to discretionary, at most, the remaining 80-90% saved.

Estimating Income

  • Average your past 6-12 months of income. Avg. Inc. = (Total income/months)
  • If possible also average your highest and lowest monthly levels of income. H&L = ([Highest + Lowest]/2)
  • Average both of these numbers to come up with a good estimate of your monthly income. Est. Inc. = ([Avg. Inc. + H&L]/2)

* You can also add in quarterly averages, if you’ve seen a recent change in your income up or down, such as change in employment status.

Savings

Take 10-15% of your estimated income and try to save it, and any excess after your budgeted expense, for handling monthly deficiencies. You can use a portion of this as discretionary spending, or rainy day fund, to help maintain your personal happiness. Also, set a baseline for a buffer in your bank account, which you can check against, say $200 dollars, and you can raise this as you progress.

*You don’t have to place it in a savings account, the interest rates are horrible currently anyways, just so long as you try not to overuse these funds.

These techniques aren’t perfect, but they do provide a very good starting line for determining how much you can reasonably spend per month. I used these basic ideas as a set of tools, slightly modified for my personal usage, and managed to pay off $1800 in student loans and save ~$1200 on a variable income that ranged between $500-1400 over 13 months. My average monthly expenses were $400 and my average monthly income was $750. I also managed to maintain a fairly consistent spending, about $50 month, on entertainment.