November 2002 Archives

Doc Searles has a short and pithy interview at Creative Commons. In it he reiterates a theme from The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Well, as we pointed out in Cluetrain, business is thick with the language of shipping. We have something we call "content" that we "load" into a "channel" and "address" for "delivery" to a "consumer" or an "end user." Even a category as human-oriented as customer support talks about "delivering" services...

That said, the businesses that are most afflicted with pipe-mindedness are the ones that are quickest to call everything "content." It's amazing to me that I used to be a writer, and now I'm a "content provider." Entertainment and publishing are the biggest offenders here, at least in the sense that they see the Net entirely as a plumbing system. The whole notion of a "commons" is anathema to the plumbing construct.

This was the problem with all these dot-com acronyms with a 2 in the middle -- B2B, B2C and so on. "To" was the wrong preposition. As Christine Boehlke put it to me once, the correct middle letter should have been W, because in a real marketplace we do business with people not to them. Does anybody ever shake hands and say "Nice doing business to you!"? Because the Net is more fundamentally a place than a pipe, we do business with each other there, not just to each other. Critical difference.

All of this is so true. I know I've had plenty of conversations about the delivery of service, and relatively few about the collaboration end of services.

In regards to creativity - the recent obsession of my blog - I know already that metaphors are crucially important.

George Steiner is one of those cultural critics I have heard more about than actually read. This recent profile cum interview in the Globe and Mail reminds me to investigate his work in more depth. Mostly he criticizes the decline of contemporary culture and the rejection of history,

To wit, millions can read computer manuals, but very, very few people today have either the wish or the will to read The Iliad.

Every generation loses a little bit of the past, as new poems and novels jostle for attention. But Steiner (like Baudrillard, Sontag and Paglia) believes that the catastrophic forgetfulness that has overtaken the West since the Second World War is a sign that the print culture that sustained us for six centuries is actually dying.

These criticisms are nothing new. But what I did find interesting was the next move Steiner made from an end to high culture to the disappearence of transcendent motivations for creativity.

He has convinced himself that nihilism is not inevitable, if only because it would be tedious in a way we are not wired to tolerate. Something will take the place of the culture that is passing away. "I won't live to see what it will be, but it might be splendid."

What it will not be, he is certain, is transcendent. Many thinkers have observed that literal belief in God, or any reality behind the reality we see, is rapidly disappearing wherever modern values and technology penetrate. Steiner is one of the first seriously to ask what that may do to the human imagination.

He casts the net wide. It's not only that almost everything of beauty in our culture was made by people who believed in and hoped for life after death. It's also that our great political and social thinkers believed likewise. For Steiner, in his tongue-in-cheek mode, idealistic Marxism is nothing more than a "heresy" of Judaism.

"Certain kinds of Western creation are underwritten by the possible existence of God," he says. "When that question becomes embarrassing exhibitionism among educated people, as it has, then there are orders of [artistic] work that we will not be getting again in the West."

I wrote about money being an extrinsic motivation for creativity a few days ago and argued that intrinsic motivation is a necessary part of creativity. But is this conclusion an artifact of our historical perspective, living in a secular age after the so-called death of God. I think our contemporary relation to religion is neither a simple nihilism or a return to fundamentalism, but the discourse about creativity in the contemporary world is certainly secular. Few, if any, people are exhorting us to create for the glory of God or for a reward in heaven. I'm sure many people do create for these reasons. What I'm saying is that the transcendent reason is rarely described or analyzed in contemporary studies of how creativity works.

I personally believe creativity can be secular. What is interesting is to question why we, like Steiner, admire the divinely inspired work of the past so much? What quality gives these works so much power? Can this quality be replaced by a secular motive? Finally what does the success of an extrinsic motive of the past - glory for god - have to say about extrinsic motives in general today?

Another issue I'm always intrigued by within creativity is the dialogue/dichotomy/opposition, call it what you will, between the professional and the amateur, sometimes rephrased as the center versus the periphery. According to an article in The Globe and Mail the art world is currently going through a fad for 'outsider' art. "The poor, alienated, ignorant and mentally marginal are the new "ethnics"; their otherness as remote and alluring to privileged art buyers as any African mask."

The kicker questions come in the middle of the article:

Is the outsider craze a positive sign of a new democracy in the arts, or merely a symptom of advanced and destructive jadedness, the mixed message of a culture turned overly suspicious of professionalism and education that nevertheless remains enthralled by romantic ideas of "authenticity"? And who decides what makes an outsider artist, or whether or not postmodernism leaves the crude and crusty outsider look, like any other, up for grabs by insiders?

The interaction between the center and the periphery is nothing new, in philosophy you could trace it back to the Greeks and the barbarians or the 'natural savage' of the Enlightenment. Today the interaction takes place on an accelerated scale; the periphery is snapped up by a mainstream eagerly looking for the next commercial hit. Technology, like the internet, make it even easier for new movements or ideas to become part of the mainstream. On most days I think this access is an unequivocal boon.

Today I'm wondering if the sheer speed with which the center incorporates the periphery, or the professionals coopt the amateurs, decreases the chances for truly evolutionary changes to occur. Biological evolution, a la the Galapagos Islands, thrives on prolonged separation. If the new environment is invaded or raided by the old too soon then new species are not created. Our technology may make the creative ecosphere easier to navigate but it also makes it easier to plunder. The connection between biology and creativity may be tenuous but the metaphors seem intriguing.

"The essays that the graduating BAs would submit with their applications were often brilliant. After five or six years of PhD work, the same people would write incomprehensible crap. Where did they learn it? They learned it from us"

So begins Frederick Crews in an interview about his book, Postmodern Pooh, a satire of the poor academic standards prevalent in contemporary literary criticism. The quote hits close to home since I'm working on writing my own graduate school essay right now. Another article from March 2002 on the blow up at Harvard over the comments the president, Lawrence Summers, made about Cornel West, suggests that academics are more interested in not offending or being offended by anything that might be said to them. I especially liked the following:

As Harvard Crimson (the Harvard daily newspaper) columnist Ross G Douthat asked, 'Is there a slight contradiction between West's prophetic contempt for material gain and his exquisitely tailored suits, comfortably tenured lifestyle, lucrative speaking gigs and fancy cars?'

The academy is as full as the rest of the world with vanity and politics. I just hope to navigate my way around and through it.

I watched the movie version of Robert Harris' novel, Enigma, over the weekend and would recommend it to most. It's basically a novelized account of the code-breaking work undertaken by the British at Bletchley Part during World War 2.

Some recently found links:

• TRIPS [trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights] website at the World Trade Organization.
• Freedom From Religion Foundation, found while looking for Richard Dawkins essays against religion written after 9-11.
• Force and Consent, an editorial by Perry Anderson about American power from the New Left Review.
• Debate on America first: the case to answer between Philip Bobbit and Paul Hirst at OpenDemocracy.

Richard Goldstein argues in the Village Voice for a connection between the success of Eminem's "8 Mile" and the recent election victories for Bush.

These two events may not seem related, but they both reflect the mainstreaming of ideas that seemed extreme just two years ago. Bush's right-wing agenda and Eminem's violent misogyny were once considered over the line. Now they have crossed over and become the line.

Not that Em is a Republican (though he might favor ending the estate tax). But he and George W. Bush do have certain things in common. Both draw their power from the compelling image of the strongman posing as the common man. Both played the populist card to win the nation's heart. And I would argue that both owe their success to the sexual backlash.

I remember being in college during the early 1990's watching the political correctness battles and the culture wars surrounding the NEA. The Republicans and Bush have successfully toned down their message from the histrionic levels of the Gingrich era, but have the policies and attitudes behind them really changed?

Although I was skeptical of the efforts by multiculturalists to create speech policies that protected anyone from offense or even disappointment, I was sympathetic to their efforts to promote tolerance and education about other cultures. The real shame of the debate is that words like 'multiculturalism' and 'political correctness' have been tainted with levels of infamy akin to the word 'liberal.' But the words do connote a real struggle. Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult, well nigh impossible, to be nuanced in today's media world.

Via the cool weblog at the Guardian Unlimited, England.

Renee Hopkins over at Ideaflow took my email to her and my last post on the topic of creativity even further than I expected. Thanks for the positive feedback Renee.

Let it not be said that I am a theory snob or purest. I agree that most creative people work from a mixture of motivations - external and internal. The question I'm curious about is whether you can have a purely intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for creativity. To me it seems harder to suppose someone creating something from a purely external motivation. Perhaps this reflects more on my biases for creativity than the actual conditions of the real world. And it may be a barrier to my ever becoming an entreprenuer.

The more I think about the whole idea of dividing the measurement and motivation of creativity the more I return to the image of the circle or helix or spiral. What may be a motivation for one person could be a measurement for another. And the different perceptions we have of motivation and measurement could change over time, making today's measurement a motivation tomorrow. Maybe this is what the idea of 'selling-out' is talking about: a fear that the measurement of success (making money) will become the motivation for further creativity.

Although the theory of creativity is interesting, the practical promotion of creativity is even more difficult. A lot of the interesting work I've read on motivating employees seems to say that building an internal motivation is more successful than rewarding people purely with money or accolades. Of course, that could merely be the position of a manager who is trying to save money on bonuses.

Either way searching for a pure motive to creativity runs against my pragmatic instincts. Too many loops and whorls are available; too many people, events and things interacting to set the stage for the creative moment. For me the diversity itself is a motivation.

Renee Hopkins, writing at Corante's Ideaflow, posted two recent pieces on motivation for creativity. She compares two quotes, one from Teresa Amabile about the intrinsic motivation for creativity, the other from an article in Business 2.0 about measuring creative success through the market.

The conclusion Renee reaches is that intrinsic motivation is not a universal condition for successful creativity. I disagree with this and I think the problem is a confusion between measuring and motivating creativity.

Measuring creativity requires some type of criteria, whether it be success in the market or longevity over time. But measuring creativity is an aftereffect of the process.

Motivation, by contrast, describes the reason for the creativity in the first place. The extrinsic vs. intrinsic distinction isn't an either/or. People can be motivated to be creative by both factors. However, I think that a strong case can be made that intrinsic motivation is necessary for creativity. Even the commercial creatives Hopkins is hiring for her own work have an intrinsic property, idea-centric creativity, that makes them useful for her work. I think the creatives working in advertising, the movies or elsewhere must be motivated by intrinsic factors in order to create anything. That intrinsic factor could be the enjoyment they get from their job, or the playfulness of mind they experience while working on a new idea. Offering more money or rewards to people is not sufficient to generate creativity.

I ran across this delightful spoof of the moon hoaxers via Charlie Stross.

In an interesting replay of the issue I mentioned here, the citizen versus the consumer, I came across this link summarizing proposed changes to the FCC regulations for media companies. Consider this quote:

In a strange and twisted "déjà vu," the FCC's Notice points to policy findings made by the Reagan-era "marketplace-is-supreme" FCC as the foundation for its many current assumptions. Mark Fowler, Reagan's first FCC chairman, is clearly the spiritual father of Michael Powell. Fowler infamously said that public interest rules for television were unnecessary, since TV was just another appliance, "a toaster with pictures." Like Fowler, Michael Powell sees a media world in which public policies are unnecessary. For Powell, we live in a new golden age of media, in which the emergence of Fox News and other new cable channels preclude the need for meaningful federal policy designed to ensure the public is served as citizens. Indeed, its striking that the NPRM mentions "citizens" only once, and doesn't discuss "civic engagement" at all. Consumers, however, are mentioned more than three-dozen times, revealing the commission's assumption that the issue at hand is whether "viewers" have several choices for TV movies and sit-coms.

The problem with current conservative politics is that it condemns the government for all possible failures but refuses to put the same scrutiny to free market capitalism. Capitalism may be a more effective distributor of resources, but just because I can watch a thousand different cable channels doesn't mean I'm a better member of society.

Link via Richard Stallman's home page and Center for Digital Democracy.

One of my favorite parts of going to the Minnesota State Fair used to be visiting the Libertarian Party booth in the grandstand. My friends and I would take their political matrix test every year to see where we came out (see an example here). I came across this essay (Libertarianism Makes You Stupid) and post at Infothought. Remind me to visit whenever I start feeling like a libertarian.

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, has this to say about How to Get Rich.

So what this suggests is that we can extract from human history a couple of principles. First, the principle that really isolated groups are at a disadvantage, because most groups get most of their ideas and innovations from the outside. Second, I also derive the principle of intermediate fragmentation: you don't want excessive unity and you don't want excessive fragmentation; instead, you want your human society or business to be broken up into a number of groups which compete with each other but which also maintain relatively free communication with each other. And those I see as the overall principles of how to organize a business and get rich.

• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Skeptics Why doubters should celebrate J.K. Rowling's tales of magic and wizardry.
• James Morone at the American Prospect Cultural Phenomena: Dumbledore's Message
• Harry Potter Pampered jock, patsy, fraud by Chris Suellentrop

Electrolite is one of my favorite blogs and I've spent the last half hour trying to remember the link to this brilliant piece in the Washington Post about the consumerization of our political process. I start reading Electrolite and suddenly find the link staring me in the face. Here's part of what it says:

We are watching the slow-motion collapse of American citizenship. For more than two centuries, ordinary citizens were important actors on this country's stage. Their vanguard entered political life with a bang in the 18th century, rising up to fire the shot heard 'round the world. Over the ensuing decades, tens of millions more served their revolutionary republic as citizen-soldiers, jurors, taxpayers and citizen-administrators who helped to extend government authority and services across a sparsely populated continent. At the same time, government extended voting rights to citizens once excluded from the electorate.

Now our government no longer needs us. The citizen-soldiers have given way to the professional all-volunteer military and its armada of smart bombs and drone aircraft. The citizen-administrators have disappeared, too, replaced long ago by professional bureaucrats. Americans may still regard each other as fellow citizens with common causes and commitments. But the candidates seeking votes on Tuesday see us as something less: not a coherent public with a collective identity but a swarm of disconnected individuals out to satisfy our personal needs in the political marketplace. We see them, in turn, as boring commercials to be tuned out.

In my recent reading, while surfing the net, and in my current classes I keep running into the problem of individual versus the group. This is nothing new. I've seen the issue in many places I've looked ever since high school and college. What disturbed me most about the recent elections and turned me off from the democrats is the complete failure of anyone to counter the consumerist/individualist turn of all our politics.

What really astounds me about conservative politics is a contradiction that seems obvious to me but is missed by every conservative I read and talk to. How can you claim that family and community values are really under attack in America and, at the same time, support the complete abdication of the public sphere to private, capitalist, enterprise? Part of the reason why family values are under attack is because of the relentless drive to privatize everything in our society. Under such an ideology there is no room for community. Although I laughed at Hillary Clinton's book It Takes a Village, I may have to go back and give it some serious reconsideration. The cliche of the title really does get at an important issue. I just wish the Democrats had a better messenger.

Philosophically the idea of objectivity is, when examined, one of the odder notions we have. So says Lorraine Datson in a review of a new book, Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England by George Levine.

'Objectivity' is a word at once indispensable and elusive. It can be metaphysical, methodological and moral by turns, occasionally in the same paragraph. Sometimes it refers to the ultimate reality as seen from a God's-eye point of view, sometimes to methods that replace judgments with algorithms, and sometimes to cool detachment from passions and interests. In one guise it hovers near truth; in another, it approximates disinterestedness. It's unclear how exactly these various meanings connect to one another: what does bedrock reality have to do, for example, with the suppression of emotion? It's still more unclear whether objectivity, in whatever guise, is possible, and, if possible, whether it is also desirable. In the past decade or so, a chorus of voices - feminists, environmentalists, cultural critics, politicians - have decried objectivity as arrogant, inhumane or simply quixotic. Since these critiques usually take objectivity (or pretensions thereto) to be part and parcel of modern science, the word has also become a banner (or target) in the revived debate between humanists and scientists about who should and does wield cultural authority and why. Objectivity is not just a word of many meanings; it is also a fighting word.

Although I admire science a great deal, and believe it to be one of the most effective methods for understanding the world, I've seen plenty of arguments in favor of science harp on its objectivity, as though that must be the only measure of truth. The recent tempest over the possibility of a reverse Sokal hoax show science is not foolproof. Too often the proponents of science support objectivity at the expense of all other modalities of knowledge. I wonder if skepticism is a more appropriate defense of science.

EurekaAlert reports a new study in a recent issue of Science (damn I'm behind in my reading again). The study claims to find similar organizing principles in different types of networks: genes, neurons, the internet.

The LA Times reports that art critics at most newspapres don't criticize art. A new survey by the National Arts Journalism Program says that only 27% of art critics think their job is to form opinions about art, while a whopping 91% believe they are writing to educate the public.

The goal sounds benign, but its courtly arrogance is actually astounding. When a writer begins with the presumption that the reader is uneducated about the subject -- or at least not as well educated as he -- be prepared to be bored silly by what is written. Worse, a creeping tone of superciliousness is almost impossible to escape.

The problem grows acute in the Age of the Internet, when access to news is less bound by the geographic issues of distribution that historically circumscribed newspapers. At every waking moment, any sane writer ought to be aware that somewhere, out in the ether, lurk readers who know a hell of a lot more about the particular subject of his discourse than he will ever know. Condescend to them and you're toast.

Some interesting articles and discussion are coursing through the net on the work of the Bogdanov brothers, two Frenchmen who have received doctorates in physics for papers that are now being questioned for their authenticity.

Via the Chronicle of Higher Ed and RRE I offer the following pointers.

• The Register, Physics hoaxers discover Quantum Bogosity


• Ark, a physicist summarizes the debate


• Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription required), French TV Stars Rock the World of Theoretical Physics