parker higgins

Conversation’s just fine, thanks: a response to Sherry Turkle

Every once in a while, my Iron Blogger group decides to take on a common topic. At our meet-up this week, a handful of us agreed to take on last week’s Sherry Turkle op-ed in the New York Times. It’s called “The Flight from Conversation,” and it seems to cover some of the same territory as her book “Alone Together”: namely, that we’re allowing gadgets to get in the way of interpersonal communication, favoring “sips” of online contact over a “big gulp of real conversation.”

I disagree with Turkle on both her premise and its conclusion. I’m just not convinced that the anecdotes she collects amount to more than the kind of bogus trend story NY Times is notorious for. Worse, it has the particular flavor of a moral panic, where the issue raised threatens to disrupt the social order. But just as teen texting, comic books, Dungeons and Dragons, rock and roll, and many others failed to unravel the threads of society, we may just make it through the “handheld gadget” era.

In fact, of course, the sort of conversations we have today are the result of refinement over thousands of years, and it would require extraordinary evidence to support the extraordinary claim that this latest change is different in kind and the one that will finally undo us.

And really, the examples Turkle cites don’t seem new. Quiet offices, 16-year-old boys who wish they knew how to hold a conversation, high school students who don’t want to speak with their parents about dating — are these really the products of mobile devices, or the way things always have been? Am I mistaken to think that a high school sophomore in 1952 would have wanted an alternative to asking his father for dating advice, even if he couldn’t characterize it as a sophisticated AI?

More importantly, though, I object to the idea that the inclusion of technology in conversation makes it any less “real,” or even less good. Certain kinds of conversations seem less likely, like those between passengers on a bus or elevator, or, say, patients in a waiting room. But — and I don’t mean to be flip here — so what? These aren’t the “big gulp” conversation Turkle’s concerned with. What’s more, they seem institutionally biased towards extroverts.

I will grant, though, that I’ve seen plenty of occasions where somebody has been rude or anti-social with a device in hand. But they’re rude because they’re violating social norms and expectations, not because those specific norms and expectations are fixed and unchanging. To the extent that gadgets affect our conversations, communities need to evaluate their own experiences, and come to their own conclusions. At South by Southwest this year, for example, I was very comfortable using my phones at meals or in conversations, because that was the community norm there. Turkle’s model doesn’t seem to account for that.

She does get close though, with the suggestion that certain physical spaces or times are gadget-free. I like that suggestion, even if I disagree with the reasoning that drives it. Coming up with a smart way to manage our relationships so that people don’t feel neglected doesn’t require throwing away the smartphone, it just requires being sensitive and respectful to what people expect, gadgets or otherwise.

The impossibility of imagining information retrieval in the past

It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online. But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve already been there and nobody paid any attention. That world is gone.

My great-grandfather was born into a world where there was no recorded music. It’s very, very difficult to conceive of a world in which there is no possibility of audio recording at all. Some people were extremely upset by the first Edison recordings. It nauseated them, terrified them. It sounded like the devil, they said, this evil unnatural technology that offered the potential of hearing the dead speak. We don’t think about that when we’re driving somewhere and turn on the radio. We take it for granted.

–William Gibson, interviewed in the Paris Review no. 211

There’s a whole class of information that’s both trivially easy for Web-literate people to access today and virtually impossible to access with tools from even 10 or 15 years ago.

I’ve thought about this fact for a while, and one of my favorite examples has been the names of members of a band. It’s one Google or Wikipedia search away, but as Gibson suggests above, I almost cannot conceive of how to determine this without those tools.

Seriously: what could you do? Such information would not likely be in an encyclopedia, and maybe not in any printed reference books. You could ask at a record store, or call a radio station or the label they were on (after finding a number on the back of an LP, in a catalog, or calling an operator in the city in which they were based).

I’d used that example to describe the phenomenon for a long time before finding one of my favorite sections of the Wikipedia, a timeline of the members of Journey,¹ embedded teeny-tiny here:

The difference is incredible. And it’s easier (for me at least) to imagine getting this information through an augmented reality pop-up or piped into a heads-up display than to get it in any analog way.

Interesting questions from the CC 4.0 draft discussions

I’ve been following the discussion about Creative Commons BY-NC-SA v4.0d1. This release is an important one for many reasons; one is the sense that v4.0 is expected to remain in place even longer than the 5+ years v3.0 has been final.

Creative Commons has been very straightforward about precisely what’s changed [pdf] and what are the major decision points on which they want input. Those are all interesting and worth reading, but I’ve been most interested by three separate threads that have emerged out of points of contention on the cc-licenses mailing list where discussion is taking place.

One interesting question concerns source requirements in CC licenses, and particularly in ShareAlike licenses. Should freely licensed culture, like free software, come with some sort of “source”? What form does that even take for cultural works? In some software licenses, such as the GPL and Apache license the source code is defined as the “preferred form for making modifications.” By that definition, some sort of source requirement could seem workable for culture. But in practice, the preferred form for modification just varies too much in cultural works based on the sort of modification. That leads to a problem that Christopher Allan Webber has summed up neatly:

as far as I can tell it’s simply too hard to draft legalcode that’s not incredibly hard to comply with for many cases of users, or which ends up being so vague that it ends up being basically useless or completely ignored.

A second question I’ve been following is whether there should be no-DRM clauses in the licenses. At first glance it seems similar to the source requirement argument, in that technically speaking both “object content” (i.e., content presented in a form other than the “source” preferred for modification) and DRM-wrapped content are difficult but not impossible to work with. There’s one major difference between the two, though: anti-circumvention laws in place make DRM breaking illegal in a way that modifying object content isn’t. In effect, that makes the DRM an overriding all-rights-reserved for anybody who wishes to use it as such. As Rob Myers describes the difference:

unlike with DRM one cannot have people fined or imprisoned if they decide they are going to do the work of translating the work to a more useful format. Low-fidelity or non-machine-readable media are a separate issue from legal restrictions. In the absence of copyright or DRM I can scan a hardback book or rip a vinyl record, neither of which are high-fidelity, digital, or read/write media.

Finally, one of the more out-there suggestions that’s sparked a lot of discussion is a proposed re-branding of the NonCommercial license as Commercial Rights Reserved. Changing the name of a license clause seems like a big deal to me, because the different modules are a major part of the CC brand and the way that many people understand them. But I think this proposal is so much closer to the meaning of the license it must be seriously considered. On the mailing list, one participant has objected to this proposal on the grounds that she uses NC licenses to indicate that “a work is meant to be primarily or entirely outside of the commercial realm rather than the creator reserving commercial rights.” I think that she’s unwittingly highlighted the problem: people are attracted to the words “NonCommercial” without a real understanding of what the license text says. The results are not good for anybody, because the works then carry less freedom and aren’t subject to the same conditions the licensor thinks they are.

It’s not the usual way I think of it, but each of the CC modules is about reserving some rights. BY reserves the right to publish a work without attribution, SA reserves the right to choose a license for a work, ND reserves the right to make derivatives. It only stands to reason that NC reserves the commercial rights, but I don’t think that’s how the clause is generally understood.

I’ve really been enjoying these conversations, and I appreciate that CC gives the public an opportunity to engage at this level. I’m looking forward to seeing how this drafting process develops.

Lessons from the Reynoso report

I spent some time this weekend reading the Reynoso Task Force Report [pdf], the findings from a group of UC Davis professors, students and administrators, which assigns responsibility for the November 18 pepper spraying incident and delivers recommendations to the administration.

I highly recommend reading the report. It is extremely readable and direct, and provides unusually straightforward insights about leadership failures and dysfunctions. The task force report is about 30 pages, and additionally incorporates by reference the 150-odd-page Kroll report, which provides much more detail about facts, the timeline of events, and best practices in policing.

The Task Force, which was led by former California Supreme Court Associate Justice Cruz Reynoso, pulls no punches. “The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.” Reading the report, I felt that the failings that led to the pepper spraying fall into three categories. These problems are common, and while the results are rarely as disastrous as the casually-pepper-spraying cop, they are worth identifying and addressing before the situation goes off the rails.

First, the entire situation escalated because of poor risk assessment, driven by a disconnect between perceived risk and actual risk. In particular, campus administrators were exaggerating the risks that appear in the media: in this case, the crime and sanitation issues associated with Occupy protests in nearby Berkeley and Oakland.

Leading up to the police raid, administrators behaved as if they were certain that the Davis protest was filled with “non-affiliates” (protestors who weren’t students) — even though they hadn’t received any data to suggest so. The report’s Introduction even refers to a New York Times article about health and safety issues at Occupy protests on college campuses that administrators e-mailed to Police Chief Anette Spicuzza.

But their colleague Assistant Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro had actually been to the protest, and had reported that there were few if any participants that weren’t students. Section III-C describes Castro “detailing her conversations with protestors, counseling caution on the part of the Leadership Team, and advocating against the removal of the tents…. AVC Castro’s statement was met with silence.”

The risk of sensational crime against students from participating non-affiliates was then at least unknown and likely very small. When the risk is exaggerated, though, it seemed preferable to take extreme actions rather than the “almost self-evident” solutions proposed in the report’s Section I-B — solutions like posting police to provide security and monitoring to the encampment over night. Such measures would’ve given the administration an opportunity to do a real evaluation of the risks.

Second, the police actions were magnified by the background of police militarization across the country and in the UC system in particular. The past decade has seen a shift to the Miami model for police departments, even where that sort of approach is completely inappropriate. Section I-C reports that Chief Spicuzza “attempted, unsuccessfully, to dissuade her officers from using batons and pepper spray or to prevent them from wearing ‘riot gear’ during the operation.”

Why would the the UC Davis Police Department wear riot gear to enforce a camping ordinance? Why does the UCDPD even have riot gear? It can be traced right back to rampant militarization of police departments against all common sense. The report rightly recommends (in Section IV-B) that the UCDPD should review the ratio of “sworn officers (authorized to carry weapons) to other personnel.”

That aggressive arming of the police force is just compounded by the department’s incompetence. Not only is there a serious discipline problem — Section II-B is simply titled “There is a Breakdown of Leadership in the UCDPD”, for example — but the pepper spraying operation was carried out with major tactical blunders. The Kroll report explains: “The actual crowd control formations used by the UC Davis Police did not comport to contemporary policing practices,” including the use of the inverse wedge as a skirmish line. Other major components of the November 18 raid were similarly bungled, like the fact that the police made no plans for transporting prisoners.

Most troubling are the areas in which the police have actively departed from the law. Section I-E notes that there was confusion as to the legal basis for the raid in the first place, and points out that without clear knowledge of the relevant policies or laws among the administrators and police, there could be no understanding among the protesters:

Protesters have a right to be told what laws they are alleged to be breaking. When there is ambiguity as to whether or not the police action is lawful or not [sic], it is foreseeable that there will be an increased likelihood that protestors will resist police demands.

Section II-D explains that the pepper spray used by Lt. John Pike (the MK-9) was not an authorized weapon for the department, and the “the investigation found no evidence that any UCDPD officer had been trained in the use of” it.

Four years before the pepper spraying, Lt. Pike had subdued a deranged patient threatening his colleagues, opting against the use of a weapon in the close quarters of a hospital room. His quote at the time was: “You’ve got all these tools on your belt, but sometimes they’re not the best tools.” He was right then, but in fact, sometimes it’s best not to even have those tools on the belt.

In the days after the pepper spraying, the Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal wrote a very interesting piece about how Pike simply represented a growing problem with police departments in America, which is also a very interesting read.

Finally, nearly every communication point was plagued with uncertainty about who had authority to issue orders and which conversations were to be interpreted as “commands” vs. “suggestions”. The most marked example of this dynamic was the selection of 3pm on a Friday as the correct time for a raid. Chief Spicuzza had concerns about the Leadership Team’s suggestion for a daytime raid, but didn’t voice them because she thought she was receiving orders. Section I-D:

The above example is illuminating in that it showcases a process where a major incident objective was determined in an ad hoc setting and where the principal decision maker, Chancellor Katehi, did not realize her statement was both viewed as an “executive order” and a “tactical decision.”

These sorts of communication breakdowns are excruciating to read about, especially given the systems that are in place to bypass them. The lesson from this point is plain: communication issues only get solved with more communication.

The Reynoso Report provides a rare candid evaluation of these points of systemic breakdown, and gives smart suggestions on how to address them in the future. I hope the UC Davis administration is willing to hear it.

Maiden voyage for my Public Laboratory balloon mapping kit

Last weekend, Trevor and Maira and I took the balloon mapping kit I received as a reward for backing the Public Laboratory Kickstarter project out for a spin. The kit is simple and inexpensive by design. It contains a 5.5 foot balloon, a very long string and winder, rubber bands, and assorted clips, rings and carabiners. You provide a camera, a soda bottle camera rig, and helium.

Public Laboratory has made the kits for “grassroots mapping”, but for this trip up I was just interested in getting some photographs from the air and seeing how that goes.

We chose to fly at Alta Plaza Park in Pacific Heights, because it was close to where the helium tank rental was, and the tank was about 40 lbs. Set-up was easy: Public Laboratory provides really good directions in the kit, and up-to-date video supplements online. The soda-bottle camera rig was a bit more complex than I had thought going into it, but Maira was a champ about putting it together.

Of the 600 photos or so we took, we got a handful of interesting ones. That may seem like a low yield, but I think it’s not bad for a first round. Here are some of my favorites:

To get a sense for the whole collection, I put together a video that speeds up the photos, taken about a second apart, to 6fps.¹ The audio is from the public domain recording of the Hungarian Rag played by Pietro Deiro, found on the Public Domain Review.

I underestimated the complexity of grappling with the camera and the balloon in the moments before flying. For one thing it was just a bit too windy to be flying a balloon, but for another, we ran into an annoying technical bug. The camera I use, a Canon Powershot SD 870, has the necessary “continuous” mode, but defaults to single-shot mode each time it gets powered on.

That meant futzing with the controls once the camera was already on and in the harness, and trying to avoid any buttons. I think the photos we got are washed out because I knocked one of the settings off of automatic, but I couldn’t hunt down which.

Fortunately, each of these problems are solvable. Picking a calmer day, a clearer ground, and a heavier payload should help with the first.² For the second, I’ve installed a firmware extension on my camera called CHDK, or the Canon Hacker’s Development Kit, which allows for finer-grained control of camera settings. Before the next flight, I’ll be looking into the best configuration.