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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

Seeking the Source

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This piece from four years ago is a bit dated, but it also is not. We do need to find original sources, and far too many important issues in our world are clouded by the lack of them.

The internet is a wide, rolling river of information. It can be treacherous and dangerous to wade into if you’re not careful. If you’re looking for a cool drink of truth, the muddy brown of this mighty Mississippi of data often has a harsh stench of bias bubbling along with the waves. What can a reader thirsty for knowledge do?

The answer is to seek the source – the cool, clear stream that feeds into the torment at the headwaters. I call it the “Urquelle”, a German word meaning “original source” favored in the mountains and rolling hills that are the source of so many great rivers in Bavaria and Bohemia. This process of seeking out primary sources is valuable not just for writers, for whom primary sources have long been a staple of good, useful prose. As surely as reading is writing, today’s discerning reader should also seek the Urquelle.
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Work Redefined

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What has been called “The best job market in half a century” is reason enough to revisit this piece from three years ago.

Is technology a net creator or destroyer of jobs? The question is as old as the Industrial Revolution, when workers in mills found themselves put out of work by large industrial looms. In France, they threw their shoes (sabots) into the weaving machines to destroy them – the origin of the term “sabotage”. The protests didn’t stop the machines, however, and the workers had to find something else to do in an ever-changing economy where machines did more and more work.

Today, the pace of technological change is faster than ever, with new gadgets coming into our lives constantly. Automation is also transforming our lives, with new robots and artificial intelligence replacing workers constantly. Are today’s productivity gains tomorrow’s unemployment? Increasingly those who study technology in our lives and the popular media are coming to the conclusion that yes, workers are net losers in the race against tech. And this is not a partisan issue.

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Getting Past Anxiety

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When anyone is confronted with a new situation, it’s only natural to want to treat it just like something that they have experienced before. There may be a few tweaks necessary, of course, but can’t this just be handled like everything we’ve ever done before?

Anxiety in today’s world generally comes from a realization that this isn’t a good idea. The feeling is likely to come from the guts than the head, being an intuitive feeling more than a thought. But it’s there. This can easily be preyed on by hucksters looking for loyalty of various kinds as they shop solutions in search of problems. “This isn’t anything new,” the arguments always go, “It’s that THEY don’t want to do the right thing.”

There has to be a better way. And there is.

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Cynefin, a Sense-Making Framework

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The world is changing constantly. This causes tremendous anxiety everywhere, and for good reasons. Many of the systems we depend on to dispense wealth, understanding, and happiness appear to be broken. People everywhere have to adapt to a new level of complexity brought about by dealing with other people and cultures who do not respond according to assumed values and behaviors.

One solution is to run shrieking to the hills, away from this world and into a land where the old assumptions and known practices still work. Another is to deal with the situation, one way or another, and master at least some sense of order in your own life.

But how? Here is one tool for analyzing new situations which steps out of the assumptions and best practices and beyond the many solutions in search of problems.

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Humbling Chill

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(The Sage) knows he makes no fine display,
and wears rough clothes, not finery.
It is not in his expectancy of men
that they should understand his ways,
for he carries his jade within his heart.
– Tao Te Ching 70 (Rosenthal)

The short, hunched figure marched with purpose. The weather bent us both down, compelled our gaze towards cautious feet and the treacherous lack of grip underneath them. It was only a casual glance that saw the short red coat and hood approaching as I wondered who else might be out making their own time down the sidewalk. A child? A friend? Anyone I knew?

When the figure was close I could see it was an older woman. It wasn’t until she was close that I could make out anything about her even as we both concentrated on our chilling task, the path from here to there. I smiled a quick “Hello!” and she said as much back as we passed, still a stranger if also a comrade in purpose. But we were both anonymous in our shields against the cold that might catch up if we had stopped for any more than a word. The weather itself had rendered us equal, distant, and humble.

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