Good or Bad? – 7 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

I hope you will accept that human beings are social.  Unless you are totally self-sufficient you depend upon interaction with other humans (1). Going out on a limb just a bit, I submit to you that all of the good things and all of the bad things in this world happen to us because we are social.  Our goal in life is to maximize the good things and minimize the bad things that happen to us.  Unless you like bad things.  But then doesn’t that make them good things to you?    I think “there is the rub.”  An example of this going on in the world might be one person making light of the prophet of another person’s religion – it’s free speech, right?  Then the person with the Prophet threatens the person making light – it’s blasphemy, right?  Each person is attacking something fundamental to the other and each is very likely willing to defend their position.  Which is good and which is bad?  It depends upon your social group.  This example is pretty “out there” but also quite real.  Versions of this scenario – hopefully much milder – happen all the time within and between social groups.  This book is not about identifying the good good and the bad good and the good bad and the bad bad.  It is about recognizing what is going on around you and self-assessing your part in it.

(1) I’m not quite sure how total self-sufficiency would be accomplished now-a-days, but it seems at least possible and I hear some people try – which is quite interesting in itself if you really think about it since if they are actually self-sufficient then why do they feel the need to tell someone about it?!  Maybe they didn’t mean THAT kind of self-sufficient.  Also, if they are THAT kind of self-sufficient, then you would never hear about it so I guess we don’t know, do we?  Okay, I’ll stop – for now.

Communication Wrap Up – 5 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

I could go on and on about the history of communications (some would say I already have).  There are a few other things I’m going to mention before moving on.

Art deserves a prominent place in any discussion of communication.  It pre-dates writing (and it seems reasonable that in some form it pre-dated language) and was likely the key mechanism for transmitting culture from generation to generation until writing became rich enough and could be preserved long enough to be useful for this purpose and then they both became tools to this end.    Each of Art’s many forms (and sub-forms) seems to be a language, and hopefully you have some Art forms that speak to you.  It is an important and powerful mode of communication.

Control and the practice of writing was likely (invented and) quickly consolidated with those who had the necessary resources.  It would have been difficult and time consuming and therefore expensive.  The invention of simpler writing instruments and better quality “paper” makes the process simpler, but still very time consuming and expensive.  The invention of printing processes started to dilute the concentration of control of writing from the ruling and religious classes to the somewhat less wealthy and the business classes.  More and more people started learning how to read, and the ensuing intellectual development has tended to decentralize power to varying degrees over time.  Once enough people learned how to read, Newspapers, pamphlets and books afforded the opportunity for more people to gain increasing levels of knowledge.  Electronic communications – telegraph, telephone, radio, television – provided a progression of new ways to reach people quickly.  What we call progress seems to accelerate with the introduction of each new communication technology.  These are a few of the many major shifts that I will only mention as we get ready to move on to relationships.

Writing Beginnings – 4 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

We’ve covered a lot of ground with regard to communications.  Most of it has been inherently transitory.  You speak a word and it is gone from the world in an instant.  It lives on in the minds of the hearers and the speaker, but making that word live on for others takes a great deal of effort and only the most important can then be carried forward from generation to generation.  A large amount of information can be carried forward, but there are certainly limits.  There are also many things in the world that aren’t transitory – the human form, the landscapes, the sky/stars/sun/moon, etc.  Ideas, stories of our rulers and ancestors, etc. didn’t persist unless we made them persist.  Since persistence is good…

If we consider what written language probably started out like, it is most likely with people trying to draw objects in the sand/dirt to help them get their message across regarding something that needed to be accomplished or a narrative that someone needed or wanted to convey.  “I can’t seem to make a sound or gesture that gets my point across – wait, there’s a shape in the sand that looks kind-of like where I’m trying to go.  Let me just round out that corner and add/delete this detail and voila!”  And then “Wait, I could just start from a smooth plot of sand and draw my own!”  And.  The.  Rest.  Is.  History.  That said, though, what we’re discussing was all by definition before what we call recorded history so we can’t really know what transpired with any high degree of certainty.  The development of writing could have and probably did take many paths (and I suppose you could say it still does).

People – Steven Pinker comes to mind due to the currency of his writings – have written volumes on the subject of language.  Speaking or writing about language at length seems a bit odd when I think about it.  It’s a bit like standing in between two mirrors and adjusting those mirrors until you start to see yourself repeated again and again to what looks like infinity.  It is not infinity primarily because you can’t see that far, but it really is similar to trying to see back to the beginnings of language and writing (in part because you also can’t see that far).  I guess that showcases some of the versatility of language and writing.  The idea that you and I  or you and Steven Pinker can be somewhere “together” separated by who knows how much time and space considering this or any other topic is a truly amazing idea.  Honestly, I think it is every bit as if not more profound than the internet, but it is certainly not as timely – which is why we are sitting down together “here” to discuss the internet and not writing.  The spoken word is up there too, but writing is what really kicked language and many other things into high gear – over time at least.

Language Wrap Up – 3 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

We’re not QUITE ready to move on to the next iceberg just yet.  There are still some rather important things to say about language – and I’m sure I’ll just skip over a large number of other things that connoisseurs would likely spend a good deal of time discussing.  What I’m attempting to do with this trip down memory lane is to put the Internet into some semblance of the proper perspective.  If language was simply making word sounds that evoke mental images, that would be one thing.  That would simplify the transition to the internet significantly.  What I am saying is that if that were the case then writing a word (wait, we don’t know what writing is yet!) would be the same thing as speaking a word.  In a few cases, that is true, but in most cases words offer a narrative to another story being told by physical or other actions.  Your face tells a story.  Your hands and arms tell a story.  The snake that just slithered by tells a story.  Your words are likely an accompaniment to the symphony of information that is also occupying or passing through the space you and your audience are occupying or passing through at the moment.

If that weren’t enough, the use of language offers up other things – like common experience.  To make that even more powerful, you can use language to “experience” things you can’t experience in person, making a part of that a part of common experience.  I touched on the topic of passing down history and culture by word of mouth previously.  It is believed that much of common culture at least in the ruling classes was passed down by the use of professional storytellers or Bards.  They would make their living by traveling from place to place and performing the stories that represented common experience.  One would like to think that they were chosen for an uncommon ability to recall combined with a similarly uncommon ability to evoke the right images.  Their stories were also very likely tightly controlled by the elders from the class to whom they told their stories.  Of course other common experiences were passed down as well, and some of these would have persisted, but the most persistent would have tended to be the ones that were controlled and rewarded.  The point is that the abilities to communicate offered up through the use of language is immense.

Language Beginnings – 2 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

That’s it.  That is the extent of unassisted communications, which I define as communication without invention.  You could even make the argument that both the physical and emotional forms of indirect communication discussed above are inventions – the idea that you don’t have to perform the act to communicate the act seems a pretty simple distinction.  As long as we know that it is not, we can probably save ourselves some quibble-time by grouping them as unassisted communication.

This seems a good point to move to the TECHNOLOGY of language.  The processes of an invention – the steps you follow to implement it, the materials you use, etc. – is by definition the technology of that invention.  If you haven’t already figured out why I bring this up, it will likely become clear fairly soon.

One can only imagine how our ancestors transitioned from the types of communication we’ve discussed to language.  So far what we’ve discussed were ways of communication that likely involved imitation of the sounds, appearance and actions of those things we were trying to describe in an attempt to evoke an image of that thing in someone else’s mind.  Who knows how long we existed in that state.  Remember, we didn’t know what we were missing but I imagine communication was slow and difficult.  All it really takes to start, though, is to agree among the individuals in your community  that sounds will mean certain things.  Simple, eh?  Actually, it likely happened very early on at the most basic of level as the community started to adopt shortcuts in their efforts at unassisted communication.  The need for communication efficiency – i.e. protecting your community, trying to tell the story of the hunt or the battle, etc. -  was likely what drove us to the first languages.  There were probably just about an many languages as there were small communities at first.  At some point, people either realized or perhaps it was simply a fact that a better language toward the simple end of a language could make a real difference.  Speed of learning, speed of actual communication, richness of communication, variety of meanings that can be conveyed, etc. are all factors and there are likely many more if you care to dig.

Now imagine a scenario – a community is in the process of being “convinced” to use one language over another.  It could be through conflict or it could be that the leaders of the group realized that they could be more effective in some way by using another language.  Parents and children and grandchildren and neighbors and their families have grown up using one language.  Now someone comes along and says the technology you were using is not good enough and we want you to start using the new technology.  Even though this is simply a new twist on the same fundamental technology, IMAGINE THE CONTROVERSY!  “I hear that the kids will be able to communicate things that they won’t be ready to communicate until they are much older,” and “If they learn this technology, our kids will be able to communicate with the kids across the valley, and you know what those kids do, don’t you?!”  I could go on, but I hope you get the picture, and the picture is the same (similar) again and again throughout history.  I’ll try not to do this to you again, but I hope you’ll carry this with you – our situation with “THE INTERNET” is not new.  It is unique and different, but so were the other inventions that caused varying levels of social turmoil.  The turmoil may indeed have been either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, and there is a good chance that how each individual (was) prepared for it and how they approached the change made a difference in the outcome.  These new technologies probably won’t go away and we haven’t seen the last of them, so the best thing is to learn to use them to our advantage – right?  Well, I guess you don’t have to, but I will say that I believe you would be missing one heck of an opportunity (along with attendant risks of course).

Anyway – back to the story line.  We’re still in pre-history, right?  Probably.  At some point people began passing down history through the spoken word and we have at least vague outlines of a few that may have been enhanced to some degree or another (Homer, etc.).  History, culture, etc. was certainly passed from generation to generation (to generation…) somehow.  There are still some fairly significant things missing but I plan to try to get us back to the present fairly quickly.

Unassisted Communication – 1 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

Trying to represent the communication channels and dynamics of relationships with any reasonable degree of accuracy and richness is quite challenging.  I tend to view each human walking around as an encapsulation of the world in human form – at least that part of the learned behaviors and knowledge that any given human has managed to absorb into their mind through learning and then retain and be able to use.  The complexity of humans can be mind boggling and is certainly amazing.  If you then set out to model their interactions, things become very interesting indeed.  The simple fact that many humans seem to understand enough about other humans to please them, enrich their lives, be a part of groups, control them, etc., etc., etc. is truly a wonder.

I hope we can all visualize a human in the physical world.  We are each a container of skin with skeleton, muscles and other tissue. fluids, …  We can each move or be moved around in the world, and can interact physically with the things around us.  When we can see/hear/smell/touch/taste each other and the things around us, we have an enormous range of “unassisted” options for communication.  We are well constructed for, among other things, this type of physical communication.  While highly complex, since we are “built for it,” it is sort of by definition the “simplest” form of communication.  (Yes, I did just present you with a significant contradiction because it is indeed rich)  While today we take our abstract spoken language for granted to a large degree, recall that this along with most of the devices we use to communicate are inventions that are not a part of the “original equipment.”

The Movie “Quest for Fire” is an interesting window into what that world might have been like.  Trying to protect and then find new burning embers, and then discovering that another group had invented a way to actually start a fire – all without words.  Another approach to get some idea of what it might have been like to communicate before there was language, the closest you are likely to come would be to imagine how you would communicate with a person who speaks a language that has very few common sound-meanings with your own language.  What you do know, however, is that this person very likely also has words and language.  This may actually make things harder for you, however, depending upon what you are trying to communicate.  If you are hungry or thirsty figuring out which words correspond with these physical realities might well be a waste of time depending upon how hungry or thirsty you are of course.  Simply simulating motions for drinking or eating would likely suffice and once you have eaten or quenched your thirst, you can sort out the words and perhaps those words would serve as the start of your very own Rosetta Stone.

Actually eating or drinking to show that you are hungry or thirsty – doing the thing you are trying to communicate – is (I would argue) the most direct form of communication – let’s call this “Direct Physical Communication (DPC).”  The jump from this to trying to act out eating or drinking without actually eating or drinking to communicate need may seem like a very small one, but it is the fundamental basis for all abstracted, or indirect communications.  I’ll refer to this simplest form of abstracted communication (for our purposes at least) “Indirect Physical Communication (IPC).”  While the  distinction here is a bit interesting, DPC is of limited use so we’ll likely refer mostly to IPC.

Our path could take several branches at this point, but now is very likely a good time to introduce the idea of communicating emotions.  Emotions are not a physical reality to anyone except the person who is experiencing the emotion – happiness, sadness, fear, anger, affection, etc. Many people are very adept at communicating their emotions, and many people are also very adept at reading the emotions of others.  This is where things START to get very interesting and challenging.  At the most basic level the individual who is feeling the emotion can generally communicate that emotion or not – with some exceptions where things are more difficult to mask.  Although the reasoning is somewhat different, we’ll call this “Direct Emotional Communication (DEC).”  One of our learned behaviors is the acceptable display of emotion, which can involve masking, replacement and other techniques including of course the display of the actual emotion.  Adding learned behaviors into this communication mix leads to “Indirect Emotional Communication (IEC).”  It is very difficult (perhaps impossible) to know when one of these terms applies and the other doesn’t.  For that reason, IEC will pretty much always be assumed and so IEC and EC (Emotional Communication) will be used interchangeably unless there is some reason to know and then DEC will be explicitly referenced.

As a reminder, we haven’t gotten to “language” or other devices to assist in communication as yet.  It can be difficult for us to think from a different frame of reference, but I think it is important to keep in mind that language is not required for DPC, IPC, DEC or IEC (did I lose you?!).  Before there was language, people didn’t know what they were missing and I’m sure many believed they were getting along as well as can be expected without it.  In fact, it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the impact of this communication level.  We continue to use it extensively today in our interpersonal contact and how well we are trained to use it can have a large impact upon how successful we are.

Homeowner Bailout Frustration

I am going to take a stab at NOT complaining about a supplier.  This is a bit of a complaint entry, but I do suggest a solution so not so much…

Generally I feel very badly for homeowners who have gotten themselves into an upside-down mortgage that they can’t pay for.  I don’t actually know anyone in that situation – at least I don’t know that I know anyone.  It has got to be a highly frustrating situation, particularly if it was due to predatory lending practices.

That said, when I hear a politician saying he wants to buy up mortgages and turn mortgages right-side-up at the expense of taxpayers (presumably), this gets my dander up.  I have taken great pains to maintain my financial reputation, and what this politician is basically saying – on the surface at least – is that “he” wants to punish people like me by making me pay to help get people in these upside-down mortgages out of their troubled situation.

It is NOT that I wish to see these folks go bankrupt, or lose their home in any other way.  I don’t.  I believe in home ownership.

In the process of considering this problem, I came up with an idea that I would like to share.  I don’t imagine it is original, but I haven’t heard it suggested so I will share it as if it were original with this caveat.  What I would suggest we do is buy up these mortgages as suggested, and in the process of adjusting the value of the mortgages we should take an ownership stake in each of these homes equal to the % of the mortgage value that we forgive.  When the home is sold, the government organization who holds the stake would be paid that % of the home value as repayment.  The homeowner could also buy the subject stake at any point under the same terms based upon a mutually agreed appraisal.

I used to think we should try to distinguish between “flippers” and homeowners interested in long-term ownership in this discussion.  It may be worth considering including all cases given the above scenario, but priority should be given to more traditional homeowners hoping to accomplish long term home ownership.

One other thing that bothers me is homeowners who get in a situation where they must default on their mortgage and then go in and destroy their property so that the lender or another entity does not benefit from their misfortune.  I have a hard time identifying with this mindset (and definitely do NOT agree with it).  My point is that if we bail out a given homeowner and take an ownership stake and the homeowner has to subsequently default AND destroys property, this would be a felony criminal action and so the whole process would discourage this behavior.  As far as I know, there is nothing – aside from ethics and good common sense – that currently prevents a homeowner from engaging in this behavior.

OnStar Service Quality

Sorry about this, but I guess this is my “absolution” blog…  :-/

One of my daughters drove her car through high water (references to 100 year flooding were made).  Other cars were making it through just fine, so why did her car then proceed to stall in the worst of it.  Good samaritans helped her push the car to a little-used turn lane.  Soon after, she pushed the little blue button in her car, and we thought all would be well.

Back to reality – she was told that due to the flooding, it could be 4-6 hours until it would be towed and could she leave the car unlocked with they keys in an agreed place if she needed to leave it unattended.  Her boyfriend helps her push the car to a Starbucks parking lot, and they hunker down (boyfriend shivering cold from having to push/walk through high water.  About midnight, the tow truck is nearby but the road is barricaded – what to do.  They agree that locking the car and calling again the next day is the thing to do, so she locks the car, and then the Starbucks fairy gives them a ride to their apartment – thank goodness for good people!

The next day – Friday before hurricane Ike – she calls OnStar again and gets put back in the 4-6 hour queue.  She waits several hours.  She gets a call saying they can’t get to her car and have to cancel.  She calls OnStar again, and they will be there to pick up the car in 4-6 hours.  She asks them to call her 30 minutes before they get there and she’ll be there to unlock the car/provide the keys.  She hears NOTHING.

Next day (Saturday – Ike day) she calls me and I call OnStar and get belligerent.  OnStar gets belligerent back – “we don’t control the roadside assistance people.”  I say “if you don’t, then who exactly does?”  That, sir, is between you and roadside assistance.”  I’m outraged, and continue to be, but this is a recurring theme.  I understand their frustration, but that’s part of the biz.  She 3-ways me in to the Roadside people, and they say the truck was there at 11 PM the night before but the car was locked so they couldn’t do anything.  “Why didn’t you call?”  “We tried, and no one answered.”  “What number?”  “217-xxx-yyyy”  “But my daughter’s number is 214-xxx-yyyy!”  No notes to say call before they arrive, no indication of how they can talk repeatedly on previous calls, but this one results in a wrong number and they couldn’t look back at the previous calls to see that they have a wrong number.  OMG!

Got all that out of the way – now, my daughter’s car is STILL in the Starbuck’s parking lot and I, along with 2 other family members, are on our way from MN to IL.  I’m sorry, sir, but there is flooding in the area and it will be 4-6 hours…  NO, THERE IS NOT – not since yesterday morning.  Yes, there is, sir – I just checked it this morning – oh, wait, someone removed it.  We’ll have someone out in under 2 hours.  This time they called and were met there and the car made is to the dealership about 5 minutes before closing time on Saturday – no time to even look at it so assured to be without a car for the weekend – Monday will be day 4 without a car.

Before we hung up from the Roadside folks above, I asked the OnStar person to stay on the line because we still had things to talk about.  She did, and when I asked what she was going to do for my daughter, she forwarded me to “Customer Care” – an interesting name.  Customer care listened to my story, said they don’t do rent cars, said they were very sorry about the delay, said the results of any given call were between roadside assistance and the customer and that there was nothing they could do.  She did say she would forward it to an executive review committee and they would get back with me.  To add insult to injury, as an apology for poor service (my understatement), she would like to tack 3 months of free service on to the end of our service time.  Wow – that’s just wonderful – NOT.

About 1 week later, I get a call from another OnStar customer care person – likely a screener for the executive review board.  She proceeds to ask me to go through my story, which strikes me as very strange since the first customer care person I talked to implied to me that she was taking meticulous notes.  She thinks I’m through after the first leg when the truck can’t get to the car the first night and says “sir, there is nothing we can do about that.”  I told her “you need to sit back and listen” because I’m just getting started.  At one point, she proceeds to tell me that if I will check our contract terms, I will see that the business arrangement is between us and roadside assistance once OnStar assigns the call.  I understand why they would wish a new business relationship upon their customers that doesn’t involve them, but the only money that I’ve paid to anyone is to OnStar and my logic and education says that the business relationship is between me and OnStar.  Anyway, no help from this person either, and to top of her apology, she says she is authorized to add 6 months to the end of our service.  I tell her I guess that is up to her, but I’m not sure I want any more service from them.

The ONLY reason we still have OnStar now is the possibility that we will be able to use the little blue button on the 2 lane roads on the way to and from the Texas Panhandle.  If we had an alternative, we’d be GONE in a heartbeat.  Monopolies are a curse and that’s what OnStar finds themselves with in the form of a little blue button.  Part of me hopes that when we experiment with it on the way there the next time we find that it doesn’t work – but then again, we want it to work so that we can have an out if the car breaks down!

I wish I was through complaining, but I’m probably not.  It is State Farm’s turn next.  My daughter STILL doesn’t have her car back at 2 weeks and counting.  Saturn may get a turn too since the service representation told me that to avoid a cracked engine block in the future, you really want to keep the Ion’s away from water and the engine intake arrangement SUCKs – I guess she meant water.

When I consider the situation, the part I feel worst about is that I started out trying to let my daughter learn something from the situation – dealing with OnStar, Roadside Assist, the Car Dealership, etc.  What I feel bad about is that she was basically “punished” beyond human endurance by these incompetents.  Yes, the first night was excusable.  The rest weren’t and OnStar isn’t being accountable.  I’m sorry, daughter, that you had to go through this – you ROCK! 

Family Positions on Politics (cont. 1)

The Republicans sure know how to make things difficult for voters.  Coming into the week, I would’ve said they needed a miracle to be competitive.  Coming out of the week, McCain can say more of the right things and he can let Palin say the wrong things.  I must say that I tend to be in general agreement with McCain’s economic and foreign affairs policies – to the extent that I understand them (and that’s almost certainly inadequate).  I like the idea of strengthening the existing health insurance system.  I suspect I depart in a fairly big way when I add that we should make it mandatory for everyone to be covered at some basic level at a minimum.  I can see using something like school choice vouchers for this, and then we should add an FDIC/Pension Guarantee kind of function in to back up the system.   Do I have too much confidence in Market-based systems.  Would this mish-mash qualify as a Market-based system…

I believe the free market has been good for our country, but I also agree that individuals can amass more wealth than can be justified given what else goes on in the other 95 % (or pick your own %) of the population.  It is admirable that so much of those resources go back to the rest of “us” in the form of giving, but it seems as though a lot less giving would be needed if the system weren’t balanced so far in the favor of amassed as opposed to distributed wealth.  Of course, then you get into discussions about whether or not overall our country would have prospered so much had it not been the way it was/is – you know the type of impossible discussion…

So where does that leave me other than continuing to be “undecided”?