One problem is that employers are ambivalent about this. They put a pressure on academia to act more as job-training centers, and the students misguidedly play along: they don't want to learn about algorithms, they want to learn C++. They, and their parents, want immediately useful job skills that will get them placed the day they graduate. And employers don't want to have to spend money on on-the-job training.
The results are disposable generations of workers: the skills of each graduating class are relevant for as long as those specific techniques are used. If they are able to generalize their knowledge and become more flexible, they can continue to do well (but, of course, they are then competing for positions with the next generation of recent college grads.)
While there are problems with Japan's higher education system, one thing that they do right is to make specialized skill training the responsibility of the employer. Of course, part of the problem is that employer costs are already strained by health care costs, so they are reluctant to invest more in their workers.
People don't make major choices about their broad vocations simply on money. Temperament and aptitude is more important. Now, within those broad vocational parameters, money matters. Someone may become an oncologist, a general practitioner, or a pediatrician based on various trade-offs between pay, workload, etc. But they aren't going to choose between software engineer and doctor - considering the vicissitudes of the labor market, it would be foolish for them to.
The problem is competition. They want the cost of labor to go down to compete with companies that are hiring those foreign workers where they live - in India, for example. You can't have it both ways: either you reduce the cost of labor here, or you lose jobs as companies are unable to compete on price.
There is a third way, but it will not happen: protectionism, with tariffs to protect wages all around. But the local worker who wants to get paid more doesn't want to pay more, either, and is usually quite happy buying Chinese-made goods for every industry except his own.
Apple has a long history of locked formats and aggressive litigious behavior. Their legal team is more aggressive against consumers that MS' is- I think that history is well-established. That is the basis of their "Spanish Inquisition" line, as is the behavior of their fan base- I am frankly mortified by loyalty to any brand qua brand. (If you want to extend that wing of the metaphor, the fans are the Jesuits and Apple is either the Spanish court or Renaissance/Counter-Reformation Rome.)
Of course Apple doesn't "deserve" being called the Spanish Inquisition any more than Microsoft deserves being called Stalinist Russia. It's hyperbole on both sides.
iTunes on Windows is a monstrosity. Attempting to move an iPod between systems is a pain. iTunes is lock-in on two levels: it only works with iPod, and it is the only way to get an iPod to work. Most PFS hardware can also work via drag-and-drop.
Well, I don't like Apple, but I'll sure as hell never get a Zune. (Choosing between Apple and Microsoft is like choosing between the Spanish Inquisition and a Stalinist purge.)
I like my iRiver. I do wonder just how furious all the 3rd party portable music device manufacturers are at Microsoft for screwing them over on the "Plays For Sure" thing. Dollars to donuts that Zune is a few months of dismal sales and one firmware update away from becoming a low-rent "Plays For Sure" device, itself.
At a certain point, it stops being humor and is just a Pavlovian response. Usually, the 3rd retelling.
Why is it geeky to repeat lines over and over? Because it reflects a desire for predictability, control, and safety. Instead of this vague "sense" of humor that seems abstract and fleeting, you have humor-as-algorithm. It is a reliance on the cliche in place of immediate experience. Two of the more interesting 20th century writers about aesthetics - Adorno and Deleuze - describe the cliche as the enemy of authentic experience.
There is no discovery when you repeat a joke. When something is found funny the first time, it is partially because it uncovers some absurdity or twist in the world.
Sex is different. Very different. And if one isn't careful, it too can become a cliche.
1. it is an entirely dependent relationship. Your loyalty is going to a brand.
1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.
1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand.
2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling.
3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that experience. An example: fans going to see, repeatedly, Star Wars films that they know and admit are bad, while independent films of substantially higher quality (like Gattaca) are neglected.
The OLPC project is not about wiring villages, its about getting, um, one laptop per child. Unless you have some indication otherwise.
All these people who are so confident that information that a networked computer would provide is the key to prosperity for so many people: do you have any evidence, other than a kind of wishful thinking based on your own values, for making these claims?
Actually, I disagree with you... following the right instructions, communicating, and paying attention is/i? "the skill." As well as not losing it when things are getting a little crazy.
The fact that people are willing to grind for that uber item rather than play another game only goes all the more to my point.
I don't think Dahlen has any idea how "grinds" are created. They aren't part of the designs of the game: they are emergent phenomena that occur when players seek to isolate the most efficient method of achieving a goal, and then repeat that method.
By their very nature as rule-constituted software systems, games will tend to instrumental play. There is already one exception: Second Life, which is already available. My question is: why hasn't the world flocked there? Could it be that, despite protests to the contrary, we like a well-defined achievement path, and enjoy finding efficient methods for progressing on them? Could the grind be part of the pleasure, even if it doesn't "feel" like it is?
I'm assuming you mean science fiction, of course: there are hundreds of films that are not-for-kids, many of them playing in art-house cinemas. But, here we go:
Gattaca. (The remake of) Solaris. Robbot Stories. AI.
Blade Runner misses the 20 year mark.
Even Firefly is essentially a traditional Hollywood (mini-)blockbuster. I don't think it counts. Minority Report is a borderlne case as well.
I don' watch TV, but if I did, I might include Battlestar Galactica.
"The Californians." Jeez, pretty much everything west of the Mississippi was developed in the last 140 years at best. The "Californians" were Oklahomans, Missourans, Iowans, Kansans, Nebraskans only one or two generations ago. Most of the Californian demographic boom came during the dust bowl years: except for the gold rush crowd (and the East Coast financial elite that came with it), Californians are returning to these places.
Nativism on the part of such places, where roots are seldom more than two or three generations deep at best, is really absurd.
I like the idea of treating people who editorially vandalize (or just edit-while-stupid) categories such "God" also being considered "fanbois." I guess we can consider "fanbois" as a secular, popular-culture version of a Jihadist.
I like kids in most places. There are places where I don't like them and don't think they should be, such as certain types of plays, concerts, and lectures, and places where I don't like them, but realize that they have a right, and often a need, to be there, and so I suck it up. Planes are one of those.
But a screaming baby or kicking toddler still bugs the hell out of me.
Anarcho-capitalists and other right-libertarians have this fiction that the state somehow interferes with or frustrates capitalism.
Both historically and functionally, capital created the modern nation-state, and capital would re-create the state it needed if it were abolished or diminished. Intellectual property is one example - the creation of currency is another, as is the enforcement of national boundaries to maintain tiered labor markets.
The trouble is that, while normative approaches toward languages are more about social convention than about linguistics, they are still vital for communication. And, I think as importantly, for cultural literacy: already, I see students for whom 19th century English and American novels are incomprehensible.
I know that the whole "ebonics" thing was a red herring: in fact, the initiative was to teach standard English by recognizing that American Black English was, for the most part, another dialect, and using what was known about cross-dialectical education to improve their standard English literacy and fluency. But it was picked up by the conservative, fly-over country demagogues as another example of "what's wrong with the left." (You'll find that a lot of those anecdotes wither under scrutiny.)
I think the real problem is that student reading loads are too low: they aren't actually reading books that get assigned to them. Intensive reading improves writing, but too many students are writing without reading - over IM, on online forums, etc. The accommodations made to this kind of behaviour don't level the playing field, either: children sent to private schools are held to much higher standards, and the results become apparent later. Dumbing down the requirements reinforces social immobility.
I've been here since the 90s, and while I'm definitely of a left temperament, what you say in unfair. There were libertarians and conservatives of various sorts here from very early on, and some of them very well-spoken, informed and thoughtful.
The vulgarization of online discourse crosses ideological lines. From "unregulated markets are more efficient and property rights are the basis of all rights," or "an unregulated private sector creates gaps of wealth and environmental crises, and capital will always generate a state" we get "BUSH lied, people DIED!!! Convict war Crimenels!" and "Dems love terrerist and hate Amerrica! God made adam and eve, not Adam and Steve!!1" The crackpots, mouth-offs, fanatics and other rabble on all parts of the political map have rolled in. And that is the fate of any successful, open forum. It's the discourse-equivalent of the tragedy of the commons.
A dumb person who know that there's a rattlesnake in my sleeping bag might be more important to listen to than a smart person who doesn't.
That said, anyone who can go this far without understanding the basic political temperaments of the parties is someone who doesn't know which sleeping bag has the rattlesnake.
Let us agree that you are somehow, at some level, responsible for the destruction of my kidney, whether intentionally or by complete accident. This is a stronger case than even a late-term abortion: there is no doubt that I am a human being with full person-hood and full rights. I would agree that you would deserve to be punished in those circumstances by which the destruction of my kidney was intentional. But I still doubt, by any standard, that you should be legally obligated to provide me with a kidney, even if we might agree that it would be morally commendable to do so.
I don't think your anthropological analysis is sound as far as the reason that we assign rights to the foetus. We do so out of a blended sense of self-interest as a species, and a perhaps innate or nearly-innate motivation to protect our young, even if we don't hold that young as qualifying for all the rights and benefits that our society has to offer. Most people are capable of distinguishing between differentials in affection for one creature or another on anthropomorphic grounds and a more neutral appraisal of their value or claim to some rights or another.
My argument regarding the level of personhood of the foetus is meant to go to the twin basis of the reason why they are assigned rights which are trumped by that of the mother: the first is the non-negotiable, unrelieved dependency they have on the mother (they have a lack of autonomy which is greater than that of a newborn) by which they depend on the physiological support of the mother for food and air - and directly, not in some transferable "you need to bring food to the baby" kind of way, and they lack experiences of the world itself by which personhood is developed (in other words, they are "unformatted" except, at most, for rather restricted in-womb experiences) - the human as person is the product of rich semantic and cultural experiences, embedded in a community of linguistic, representational practice. This being is the object of political and social right. There are boundary cases where, by gradation, adult humans move to the periphery of this model: it is little accident that those boundary cases (e.g., Terry Schiavo) re-introduce the same problematics.
Again, you never really address my initial case: you need my kidney - I have two and am assured that I will be able to live a full life with only one. Am I obliged to give it to you? Are there circumstances under which I would be?
See, there's this thing with discourse. The meaning of what you say is always contextual.
If someone is going out to a rough part of town, I would advise them not to dress too nicely and to carry little cash. If they get mugged, though, I won't blame them. While there is an instinct from some to find a single point of responsibility for every event, in fact, there are multiple perspectives, multiple contexts, and a variety of ways of looking at responsibility.
So, "take things with a grain of salt" is good advice. "You have no one to blame but yourself" is a (simplistic) affixing of blame. "Find out who did this and punish them" is a kind of policy response of sorts. And remember: hindsight is 20/20 - handing out advice about something that's already happened is the lazy man's approach to counsel.
The thing is, you are nowhere in any of your analogies suggesting anything as central as the right to do what one will with the body. And the other end of your analogy is the term "child," which indicates a level of personhood that we don't have here. The obligation to bring one's own child to term is far more dramatic than any other these counter-examples you offer, and, particularly in the first 2 trimesters, the sense of the value of the foetus is far more negotiable. And you again conflate the value issue with the question of origin.
Being a rude host, we can agree, is ill-mannered. It may even be wrong. But part of a system of rights is the right to do something wrong: I can be illogical, or mean-spirited, or advocate a horrendous code of ethics, all without abrogating the right of free speech. Likewise, if there is a substantial right to the dominion over one's own body, greater than the question of another being's dependence on it, then it comes before questions of the ethical exercise of that right.
Slashdot Mirror
One problem is that employers are ambivalent about this. They put a pressure on academia to act more as job-training centers, and the students misguidedly play along: they don't want to learn about algorithms, they want to learn C++. They, and their parents, want immediately useful job skills that will get them placed the day they graduate. And employers don't want to have to spend money on on-the-job training.
The results are disposable generations of workers: the skills of each graduating class are relevant for as long as those specific techniques are used. If they are able to generalize their knowledge and become more flexible, they can continue to do well (but, of course, they are then competing for positions with the next generation of recent college grads.)
While there are problems with Japan's higher education system, one thing that they do right is to make specialized skill training the responsibility of the employer. Of course, part of the problem is that employer costs are already strained by health care costs, so they are reluctant to invest more in their workers.
People don't make major choices about their broad vocations simply on money. Temperament and aptitude is more important. Now, within those broad vocational parameters, money matters. Someone may become an oncologist, a general practitioner, or a pediatrician based on various trade-offs between pay, workload, etc. But they aren't going to choose between software engineer and doctor - considering the vicissitudes of the labor market, it would be foolish for them to.
The problem is competition. They want the cost of labor to go down to compete with companies that are hiring those foreign workers where they live - in India, for example. You can't have it both ways: either you reduce the cost of labor here, or you lose jobs as companies are unable to compete on price.
There is a third way, but it will not happen: protectionism, with tariffs to protect wages all around. But the local worker who wants to get paid more doesn't want to pay more, either, and is usually quite happy buying Chinese-made goods for every industry except his own.
Apple has a long history of locked formats and aggressive litigious behavior. Their legal team is more aggressive against consumers that MS' is- I think that history is well-established. That is the basis of their "Spanish Inquisition" line, as is the behavior of their fan base- I am frankly mortified by loyalty to any brand qua brand. (If you want to extend that wing of the metaphor, the fans are the Jesuits and Apple is either the Spanish court or Renaissance/Counter-Reformation Rome.)
Of course Apple doesn't "deserve" being called the Spanish Inquisition any more than Microsoft deserves being called Stalinist Russia. It's hyperbole on both sides.
iTunes on Windows is a monstrosity. Attempting to move an iPod between systems is a pain. iTunes is lock-in on two levels: it only works with iPod, and it is the only way to get an iPod to work. Most PFS hardware can also work via drag-and-drop.
but I guess some people just don't like Apple.
Well, I don't like Apple, but I'll sure as hell never get a Zune. (Choosing between Apple and Microsoft is like choosing between the Spanish Inquisition and a Stalinist purge.)
I like my iRiver. I do wonder just how furious all the 3rd party portable music device manufacturers are at Microsoft for screwing them over on the "Plays For Sure" thing. Dollars to donuts that Zune is a few months of dismal sales and one firmware update away from becoming a low-rent "Plays For Sure" device, itself.
At a certain point, it stops being humor and is just a Pavlovian response. Usually, the 3rd retelling.
Why is it geeky to repeat lines over and over? Because it reflects a desire for predictability, control, and safety. Instead of this vague "sense" of humor that seems abstract and fleeting, you have humor-as-algorithm. It is a reliance on the cliche in place of immediate experience. Two of the more interesting 20th century writers about aesthetics - Adorno and Deleuze - describe the cliche as the enemy of authentic experience.
There is no discovery when you repeat a joke. When something is found funny the first time, it is partially because it uncovers some absurdity or twist in the world.
Sex is different. Very different. And if one isn't careful, it too can become a cliche.
...why is being a fanboy necessarily a bad thing?
Because:
1. it is an entirely dependent relationship. Your loyalty is going to a brand.
1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.
1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand.
2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling.
3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that experience. An example: fans going to see, repeatedly, Star Wars films that they know and admit are bad, while independent films of substantially higher quality (like Gattaca) are neglected.
The OLPC project is not about wiring villages, its about getting, um, one laptop per child. Unless you have some indication otherwise.
All these people who are so confident that information that a networked computer would provide is the key to prosperity for so many people: do you have any evidence, other than a kind of wishful thinking based on your own values, for making these claims?
Actually, I disagree with you... following the right instructions, communicating, and paying attention is/i? "the skill." As well as not losing it when things are getting a little crazy.
The fact that people are willing to grind for that uber item rather than play another game only goes all the more to my point.
I don't think Dahlen has any idea how "grinds" are created. They aren't part of the designs of the game: they are emergent phenomena that occur when players seek to isolate the most efficient method of achieving a goal, and then repeat that method.
By their very nature as rule-constituted software systems, games will tend to instrumental play. There is already one exception: Second Life, which is already available. My question is: why hasn't the world flocked there? Could it be that, despite protests to the contrary, we like a well-defined achievement path, and enjoy finding efficient methods for progressing on them? Could the grind be part of the pleasure, even if it doesn't "feel" like it is?
I'm assuming you mean science fiction, of course: there are hundreds of films that are not-for-kids, many of them playing in art-house cinemas. But, here we go:
Gattaca. (The remake of) Solaris. Robbot Stories. AI.
Blade Runner misses the 20 year mark.
Even Firefly is essentially a traditional Hollywood (mini-)blockbuster. I don't think it counts. Minority Report is a borderlne case as well.
I don' watch TV, but if I did, I might include Battlestar Galactica.
"The Californians." Jeez, pretty much everything west of the Mississippi was developed in the last 140 years at best. The "Californians" were Oklahomans, Missourans, Iowans, Kansans, Nebraskans only one or two generations ago. Most of the Californian demographic boom came during the dust bowl years: except for the gold rush crowd (and the East Coast financial elite that came with it), Californians are returning to these places.
Nativism on the part of such places, where roots are seldom more than two or three generations deep at best, is really absurd.
I like the idea of treating people who editorially vandalize (or just edit-while-stupid) categories such "God" also being considered "fanbois." I guess we can consider "fanbois" as a secular, popular-culture version of a Jihadist.
You must be a pilot.
I like kids in most places. There are places where I don't like them and don't think they should be, such as certain types of plays, concerts, and lectures, and places where I don't like them, but realize that they have a right, and often a need, to be there, and so I suck it up. Planes are one of those.
But a screaming baby or kicking toddler still bugs the hell out of me.
Anarcho-capitalists and other right-libertarians have this fiction that the state somehow interferes with or frustrates capitalism.
Both historically and functionally, capital created the modern nation-state, and capital would re-create the state it needed if it were abolished or diminished. Intellectual property is one example - the creation of currency is another, as is the enforcement of national boundaries to maintain tiered labor markets.
Is that same generosity of spirit applied to people who get labelled "criminals?"
The trouble is that, while normative approaches toward languages are more about social convention than about linguistics, they are still vital for communication. And, I think as importantly, for cultural literacy: already, I see students for whom 19th century English and American novels are incomprehensible.
I know that the whole "ebonics" thing was a red herring: in fact, the initiative was to teach standard English by recognizing that American Black English was, for the most part, another dialect, and using what was known about cross-dialectical education to improve their standard English literacy and fluency. But it was picked up by the conservative, fly-over country demagogues as another example of "what's wrong with the left." (You'll find that a lot of those anecdotes wither under scrutiny.)
I think the real problem is that student reading loads are too low: they aren't actually reading books that get assigned to them. Intensive reading improves writing, but too many students are writing without reading - over IM, on online forums, etc. The accommodations made to this kind of behaviour don't level the playing field, either: children sent to private schools are held to much higher standards, and the results become apparent later. Dumbing down the requirements reinforces social immobility.
I've been here since the 90s, and while I'm definitely of a left temperament, what you say in unfair. There were libertarians and conservatives of various sorts here from very early on, and some of them very well-spoken, informed and thoughtful.
The vulgarization of online discourse crosses ideological lines. From "unregulated markets are more efficient and property rights are the basis of all rights," or "an unregulated private sector creates gaps of wealth and environmental crises, and capital will always generate a state" we get "BUSH lied, people DIED!!! Convict war Crimenels!" and "Dems love terrerist and hate Amerrica! God made adam and eve, not Adam and Steve!!1" The crackpots, mouth-offs, fanatics and other rabble on all parts of the political map have rolled in. And that is the fate of any successful, open forum. It's the discourse-equivalent of the tragedy of the commons.
Didn't you get that memo? The one they passed around 15 years ago?
There's still a 30-year moratorium on Monty Python sketch recital. It's been observed to cause virginity.
A dumb person who know that there's a rattlesnake in my sleeping bag might be more important to listen to than a smart person who doesn't.
That said, anyone who can go this far without understanding the basic political temperaments of the parties is someone who doesn't know which sleeping bag has the rattlesnake.
I dislike Google Desktop - it's a resource hog - but do like Picasa, their image library software. (And Picasa was also an acquisititon.)
I really want to like Google Apps more than I do, but they just don't quite cut it.
Let us agree that you are somehow, at some level, responsible for the destruction of my kidney, whether intentionally or by complete accident. This is a stronger case than even a late-term abortion: there is no doubt that I am a human being with full person-hood and full rights. I would agree that you would deserve to be punished in those circumstances by which the destruction of my kidney was intentional. But I still doubt, by any standard, that you should be legally obligated to provide me with a kidney, even if we might agree that it would be morally commendable to do so.
I don't think your anthropological analysis is sound as far as the reason that we assign rights to the foetus. We do so out of a blended sense of self-interest as a species, and a perhaps innate or nearly-innate motivation to protect our young, even if we don't hold that young as qualifying for all the rights and benefits that our society has to offer. Most people are capable of distinguishing between differentials in affection for one creature or another on anthropomorphic grounds and a more neutral appraisal of their value or claim to some rights or another.
My argument regarding the level of personhood of the foetus is meant to go to the twin basis of the reason why they are assigned rights which are trumped by that of the mother: the first is the non-negotiable, unrelieved dependency they have on the mother (they have a lack of autonomy which is greater than that of a newborn) by which they depend on the physiological support of the mother for food and air - and directly, not in some transferable "you need to bring food to the baby" kind of way, and they lack experiences of the world itself by which personhood is developed (in other words, they are "unformatted" except, at most, for rather restricted in-womb experiences) - the human as person is the product of rich semantic and cultural experiences, embedded in a community of linguistic, representational practice. This being is the object of political and social right. There are boundary cases where, by gradation, adult humans move to the periphery of this model: it is little accident that those boundary cases (e.g., Terry Schiavo) re-introduce the same problematics.
Again, you never really address my initial case: you need my kidney - I have two and am assured that I will be able to live a full life with only one. Am I obliged to give it to you? Are there circumstances under which I would be?
See, there's this thing with discourse. The meaning of what you say is always contextual.
If someone is going out to a rough part of town, I would advise them not to dress too nicely and to carry little cash. If they get mugged, though, I won't blame them. While there is an instinct from some to find a single point of responsibility for every event, in fact, there are multiple perspectives, multiple contexts, and a variety of ways of looking at responsibility.
So, "take things with a grain of salt" is good advice. "You have no one to blame but yourself" is a (simplistic) affixing of blame. "Find out who did this and punish them" is a kind of policy response of sorts. And remember: hindsight is 20/20 - handing out advice about something that's already happened is the lazy man's approach to counsel.
The thing is, you are nowhere in any of your analogies suggesting anything as central as the right to do what one will with the body. And the other end of your analogy is the term "child," which indicates a level of personhood that we don't have here. The obligation to bring one's own child to term is far more dramatic than any other these counter-examples you offer, and, particularly in the first 2 trimesters, the sense of the value of the foetus is far more negotiable. And you again conflate the value issue with the question of origin.
Being a rude host, we can agree, is ill-mannered. It may even be wrong. But part of a system of rights is the right to do something wrong: I can be illogical, or mean-spirited, or advocate a horrendous code of ethics, all without abrogating the right of free speech. Likewise, if there is a substantial right to the dominion over one's own body, greater than the question of another being's dependence on it, then it comes before questions of the ethical exercise of that right.