If you like some of my other posts I hope you will enjoy this one as well.  Systems are such a fascination for me - they are complicated, not always obvious, but always full of the unintended.  It intrigues me when I stumble on someone else’s writing and they are using a systems lens.  Recently I found several examples of people describing events and giving us a glimpse of the systems the events exist within. For example, Sharon Begley in Newsweek is worried about global warming.  Her piece starts with the false consolation she received reading a website sponsored by the coal industry which “painted climate change in Edenic terms, promising that the atmosphere’s rising levels of carbon dioxide would act like airborne fertilizer, boosting crop yields and turning marginal regions into breadbaskets.”  This provided her a segue to the Gangotri glacier.  Here’s a paragraph that captures a great chunk of a system quite nicely beginning with the glacier.

One of the Himalayas’ largest, it has been shrinking since the late 18th century. But over the last 25 years it has shrunk about half a mile, a rate three times the historical norm. The retreat threatens more than the loss of a panoramic background for tourist snapshots. The Gangotri supplies 70 percent of the flow of India’s Ganges River during the dry season, when farmers depend on it for irrigation. Glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau, which are also shrinking, feed major rivers in China, which are also crucial for irrigation. “Without the ice melt, the Ganges and the Yellow rivers could dry up in the dry season, shrinking harvests,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. “If the Ganges flows only part of the year, double cropping [in which farmers plant rice and wheat in back-to-back growing seasons, and which underlies India's green revolution] breaks down.”

 In one fell swoop Begley goes from the coal industry to food shortages caused by the shrinking of a glacier.  That’s nice work.

The New Yorker  carried a piece by Alex Ross that also seemed to capture an amazing view of another type of system or perhaps, the links between a couple of systems, the natural and the technological.  Ross interviews John Luther Adams, an American composer living in Alaska.  Adams writes music in collaboration with Alaska.  Using technology, Adams has created a performance installation - a room that “translates raw data into music.”

At the Museum of the North, on the grounds of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, the composer John Luther Adams has created a sound-and-light installation called “The Place Where You Go to Listen”—a kind of infinite musical work that is controlled by natural events occurring in real time. The title refers to Naalagiagvik, a place on the coast of the Arctic Ocean where, according to legend, a spiritually attuned Inupiaq woman went to hear the voices of birds, whales, and unseen things around her. In keeping with that magical idea, the mechanism of “The Place” translates raw data into music: information from seismological, meteorological, and geomagnetic stations in various parts of Alaska is fed into a computer and transformed into an intricate, vibrantly colored field of electronic sound.

Basically Adams has created a technological system that uses the natural system to create a real time musical experience.  The sounds are generated by what is happening outside the museum and around the museum.  The sounds are generated by earthquake activity, sunshine, and aurora activity.  I wish I could hear this music because it must be amazing.  At the end of the New Yorker article there is a connection to another Adams piece entitled Dark Wave - although it was not rock and roll to me, it was strangely mesmerizing.   Adams says in The Place piece, he is trying to capture the “unheard”  sounds of a place that he loves;  “My music is going inexorably from being about place to becoming place.”

Michael Schrage discusses the system that allows merchants like Amazon to make recommendations to customers on their websites.  In his piece in Technology Review, Schrage says “The truth is that I now get more good recommendations about more things, more often, from Bayesian algorithms than from my best friends. Perhaps this should make me wistful, but it doesn’t. Better tech­nology doesn’t mean worse friends.”

[Bayes' theorem or law uses probability theory to assess the probability of two random events being related. It is heavy mathematics and forms the basis for lots of work in artificial intelligence. ]

Schrage describes the recommendation system at the Amazon site — you know the one that say if you liked this book then you might also like all these other books that others who liked this book also liked.  Really. it is just another way to get me to buy more books, which I have to say is not all that difficult.  Here’s Schrage’s more elegant description.

Click-throughs are the currency of the recommendation nation. The more choices you make (or decline to make), the more finely tuned the recommendations become. The more your peers interact with Amazon, the better Amazon’s engines can infer which recommendations will make the most sense for you and the most dollars for them. The result is that recommendations can become breathtakingly profitable examples of what economists call “network effects,” where a network’s value is proportional to the number of its participants.   

Because Amazon’s customer base is so large and the algorithms have so much data to work with, the recommendation system provides a service that I enjoy by pointing out books that I might otherwise not have seen or discovered.  It is also astounding to me that the system works so well.  It makes my shopping experience much more fun and I don’t need to get out of my pajamas.  I only wish it were as easy to meet the others with similar interest in real life - the conversation would be terrific. 

Using Bayesian algorithms to help me find books is only one way this mathematical system is changing our lives.  The NYT just featured Daphne Koller, an artificial intelligence researcher, whose work is leading to advances in fields as diverse as traffic control and cancer diagnosis.  In essence this work harnesses the power of systems to create new insights that are generally useful to all of us as we deal with the increasing uncertainties of our time. 

Systems power is a force that not only gives us insight, it can also give us headaches as we recognize that we just do not yet have the capability to see the whole structure of any system.  Certainly we can’t avoid unintended consequences.  It really does teach us that we can’t control anything but we can appreciate its complexity.   

In Salon recently Andrew Leonard described the recent resurgence of the camel market.  It appears that Rajastani farmers are finding the gas for tractors too expensive and they are returning to the use of camels.  It is always amazing to me to trace these relationships - camels and gas prices are only one example.  Higher gas prices are great for Toyota and its Prius line, great for public transportation providers as ridership rises, and rotten for SUV owners or producers. 

An April 23, 2008 BusinessWeek article reports that for the last “20 years now, county workers in Palm Beach County, Fla., have been counting cars with sensors at strategic points along its 4,000 miles of roads. Nearly every year traffic volume has climbed at least 2%. But in 2007 there was a slight decline in the number of vehicles on the roads. This year traffic is down 7.5% through March. “We’re seeing a very significant change,” says county engineer George Webb. “We’re having a good time speculating why.”  Gas consumption was also down a bit in 2007. 

After reporting drops in overall miles being driven and a fall in gas purchases, BusinessWeek reports another interconnected set of events.   A financial analyst for Costco Wholesale reports that because her employer will pay for the $63 a month bus pass, ”she has stopped driving to work altogether and cut her gas consumption in half. “It’s nice,” she says. “I can take a nap or read.”   Costco is probably paying for the higher cost of gas in two ways, employee bus passes and business costs such as deliveries.  Subsidizing employee use of public transport has recently become tax deductible so maybe the costs and benefits will balance out.  Camels are not yet tax deductable but if they become important in conserving oil and water, anything is possible.

Wired reports that fresh water may be a renewable resource but it is also being used and polluted faster than nature can filter it and put it back into circulation.   The article describes water use scenarios in Arizona, London, and Australia.   The scenarios reflect the three major uses of water: manufacturing, human consumption, and agriculture.  These uses must be balanced and choices will need to be made about how we utilize the water we have.   A great chart in the Wired article tells us that making a sheet of paper takes 3 gallons of water, growing an orange uses 13 gallons, brewing a glass of beer takes 20 gallons and making a pair of jeans uses 2,866 gallons.  

Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, a leading think tank on water issues.  He suggests that instead of building bigger engineering projects or relying on the discovery of new sources of resources, we might try ”making the most efficient use of what we already have.”

“Technology can help, and some new infrastructure will be necessary. But the larger issue is conceptual: We must view efficiency itself as a source of water and tap this hidden wellspring. Americans already use 20 percent less water per capita than they did a generation ago. Gains in industrial use are even more impressive: A ton of US steel manufactured today requires just 2 percent of the water it did in the 1940s. Still, we are using more than we have.”

Gleick’s comments bring us back to camels.  Camels are helping to reduce gasoline usage in India and now maybe their legendary efficiency of water usage could make them valuable in meeting water shortages.  Seriously, camels are physically able to use water very differently from other animals.  They don’t need to drink as often and adapt to heat and dehydration.  Apparently their stomachs and intestines absorb water more slowly and their body temperatures fluctuate sharply (heat accumulates in day and is dissipated in the cooler evening). [NOTE: there are other fascinating facts that only hard core strange minds like mine want to know about how camels adapt to dry conditions.]

The Financial Times reports that if you wish to purchase your own camel, you should plan to spend more these days.

“A sturdy male with a life expectancy of 60-80 years now fetches up to Rs40,000 ($973), compared to Rs5,000-Rs10,000 three years ago, according to Hanuwant Singh of the Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, a non-profit welfare organisation for livestock keepers. Entry-level tractors cost around $4,000.  Market prices for these “ships of the desert”, which crashed with the growing affordability of motorised transport, are rising again as oil prices soar.”

Don’t look to me to recommend that we all go out and buy camels but I do think that it is worth pondering what other low tech answers we don’t consider.  Peter Gleick’s comments about shifting to greater efficiency in existing technology points to a need to evaluate the criteria we use in making decisions about how to use our resources.  Makes sense to me.

Recently a friend sent me an email with the following “Tuesday funnies” as she called them.   I read them and chuckled.   It didn’t occur to me until later that maybe they weren’t quite as funny as I first thought.  

 *While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which
direction was north because, he explained, he didn’t want the sun waking him
up every morning. She asked, ‘Does the sun rise in the north?’ When my
brother explained that the sun rises in the east, and has for sometime, she
shook her head and said, ‘Oh, I don’t keep up with that stuff.’

*I used to work in technical support for a 24/7 call center. One day I got a
call from an individual who asked what hours the call center was open. I
told him, ‘The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.’ He
responded, ‘Is that Eastern or Pacific time?’ Wanting to end the call
quickly, I said, ‘Uh, Pacific.’

*My colleague and I were eating lunch in our cafeteria, when we overheard one
of the administrative assistants talking about the sunburn he got on his
weekend drive to the shore. He drove down in a convertible, but ‘didn’t
think he’d get sunburned because the car was moving.’

Funny?  I already admitted to chuckling.
So, did you hear the one about the nearly 20 percent of  17 year old American students responding to a recent survey that did not know who the U.S. fought in World War II or the eleven percent who thought that Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal.  Bob Herbert’s recent OP ED column in the NYT left me with a odd sense about the humor in those earlier jokes.  

In his column, Herbert  reported that an American student drops out of high school every 26 seconds.  He then goes on to describe  the Common Core report from which he took the survey results.  I decided to look more deeply into the survey results.  On the Common Core website, the organization describes itself as ”a source for quality education standards, programs, and curricula. We’re also the place to find data on why a comprehensive education in the liberal arts and sciences is important, and on the status of liberal education today.”  A complete copy of the report, Still At Risk, can be downloaded if you want to read it yourself. 

It was disturbing that those surveyed were 17 year olds - they are about to become adults and enter into the world of work or higher education.  We need these kids to be well informed so that they can make thoughtful decisions about the world.  It seems we may not be making reasoned decisions about the knowledge these kids need.   Common Core leaders argue that the No Child Left Behind law has caused American educators to focus to narrowly on math and reading with little time left for history or other liberal arts.   They contend that this results in 25% of the students not knowing who Adolf Hitler was or believing that Chrstopher Columber sailed to America after 1750.

You can take the test yourself to see how you do as compared to the teens who took the survey.  I know that it seems really scary to me that people have such gaps in their knowledge.  What I don’t know is whether knowledge is all that is essential today.  Technology demands exponentially more complex knowledge to create, to understand, or to consider its uses.  It also seems to me that we need to have standards, values, norms, or morals (pick your word or add another) to help shape our thinking and decisions.  It isn’t enough to just understand, don’t we also need to be able to humanely apply that knowledge?  I hope that the Common Core survey results aren’t pointing out a future situation.  The No Child Left Behind legislation was aimed in part at insuring that our children would all be better prepared to face the future and that this would insure national competitiveness. 

Technological intelligence needs to be balanced with an equal measure of thoughtful social consideration.  I hope that we are not creating more problems by our solutions to previous concerns. 

 Is it too big a stretch to ask what five dead in a Haitian food riot and dead fish have in common?  They are both unintended consequences of actions that would not seem related without seeing them in a systems context.  Wikipedia quotes Robert Merton, who identifies five causes of unintended consequences (UCs).   

“Possible causes of unintended consequences include the world’s inherent complexity (parts of a system responding to changes in the environment), perverse incentives, human stupidity, self-deception or other cognitive or emotional biases.

Robert K. Merton listed five causes of unanticipated consequences:^[1]

1. Ignorance (It is impossible to anticipate everything, thereby leading to incomplete analysis)
2. Error (Incorrect analysis of the problem or following habits that worked in the past but may not apply to the current situation)
3. Immediate interest, which may override long-term interests
4. Basic values may require or prohibit certain actions even if the long-term result might be unfavorable (these long-term consequences may eventually cause changes in basic values)
5. Self-defeating prophecy (Fear of some consequence drives people to find solutions before the problem occurs, thus the non-occurrence of the problem is unanticipated)”

Merton was writing this during the 1930’s when events were probably also proving him right.  The context today of globalization, rapid technological development, and ever-increasing interdependency make the consideration of UCs even more critical. 

Five people died in in food riots in Haiti last week.  The government has responded by artificially lowering the price of basic foodstuffs and because these prices will not allow enough food to be purchased on the open market, has asked for donations from organizations like the UN.  The price of food has not gone up because the government of Haiti or India or Bangladesh has done anything but because the grain that they would have purchased for food is now going to produce ethanol to fuel SUVs, transportation, and other energy needs of the global economy.  I am not saying that those people who are driving SUVs are responsible for the death of those Haitians but I am saying they are linked.  The connection just wasn’t obvious and Merton might say it was a case of immediate interests taking precedence.

We really aren’t used to thinking through our actions in a systemic manner.   It may be that as individuals we are disconnected from many of the consequences of the things we do or it may be that systems like the global economic web feel beyond our immediate control.  The important point is that we really do need to take the extra time to think through the consequences of what often happens in our name.  For example, I’ll bet that like me you didn’t know that socks today were so hi tech.  Manufacturers have begun treating socks with nanoparticle silver.  It has antibacterial properties and so fights odor.   Great!  However (and you knew this was coming), the silver washes out over time as the socks are laundered.   Two researchers from Arizona State recently released a report that describes a UC - the silver washes out, goes into the wastewater treatment system, and enters the natural water system.  At this point it has become ionic silver but continues to attack microbes and here is the UC.  It will kill things we didn’t want to kill.  The researchers report that it can get into the gills of fish or other aquatic creatures.   So while we don’t think of our socks as truly deadly, they could be.   

Toxic socks are only one example of the unanticipated problems that can result from use of chemicals or other technological compounds for wide spread commercial use without careful analysis of the long term and systems consequences.  For example, the antibacterial soaps (toothpastes, deodorants, lotions,  acne creams, and hand soaps) that we are using today contain a antimicrobial agent  called triclosan which reacts to chlorine in water and forms chloroform.  Sunshine may also trigger this compound of triclosan and chlorine to become dioxin.  Somehow the microbes sound healthier. 

Bottom line here - we need to think through the technological developments that are created in our name and devise a process that allows us to enjoy the benefits while mitigating the costs for ourselves and others to whom our actions connect us.

A recent NYT story asked a question that intrigued me:  “How does wool come off a sheep?”  The number of people, who can put an answer to that question into action, are in short supply in this country.  Globalization, a declining dollar,  and ever fewer U.S. sheep ranches have reduced the attraction for sheep shearers to come from Australia or New Zealand to work in this country.  Shearing appears to be one job which has not been automated except by the addition of electric shears.  Technology has not provided an alternative to people. 

In an odd twist, shearing has become a job that some people are learning as insurance when their regular jobs are hurt by recession.  The Times article reports on a class of people who are learning shearing.  One is “a  home builder looking for an economic sideline in tough times.”  I can’t say that that shearing sheep is the first thought I might have for new employment but it does have connections to the real and wholesome like wool, lanolin and hard work. 

YouTube has a number of videos that demonstrate the “glories” of sheep shearing.  My favorite though comes  from Montana State University.  The university hosts the shearing school featured in the NYT and has posted a  set of photos with voice over.  Jim Moore, who does the voice over, teaches the class from 32 years of experience shearing.

In this world where there are machines to pick crops, aid in surgery, and explore the surface of Mars, sheep shearing is a fine reminder that there are still areas where the sociotechnical balance is weighted more to the human side than the machine side of the equation.

Yesterday as I listened to Martin Luther King’s words broadcast in memory of his death forty years ago, I was struck by how incredibly fortunate we are that technology allows us to hear the voice and words of a person, who so fundamentally changed our world.

What do Dunkin’ Donuts units,  Hilton hotels, Marine Corps bases, elementary schools, city parks, and grain elevators all have in common?  Biometric time clocks are used in each of those settings.  Until today I hadn’t really given much thought to fingerprint or hand scanners except as something I read about in sci fi novels or saw in space TV shows.  Blogs like the Huffington Post or the NYT City Room (and now, this one) and the Associated Press wire feed feature stories that report on the upset among New York City employees when they were told of the city’s plan to use new biometric time clocks. 

Biometric systems use physical traits for identification.  According to a March 2003 web article by Bill Roberts of International Biometric Group, this is not new. 

“Using human characteristics to identify people is as old as civilization itself. The ancient Egyptians measured height for identification. Ancient China was the first to use fingerprints. Police in Europe and the United States have used fingerprint identification for more than 100 years. In the 1960s, the FBI began to automate it, and by the mid-1970s the agency had installed Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) throughout the United States. Now police around the world use AFIS.

The first biometrics time clock, used in the 1970s, measured the shape of the hand and the length of the fingers, which is called hand- or finger-geometry identification. Iris identification came into play in the 1980s.”  

Although the technology is not the newest, recent installation or plans for installation of this type time clock has caused controversy among employees and unions that will use the technology.  The new time clocks are being marketed as an option that will cut costs and reduce the incidents of ‘buddy punching’.  Buddy punching occurs when one employee clocks in for another that is late arriving or who is leaving work early.  The new time clocks should eliminate that practice. 

“Administrators hope the technology ultimately will save on overhead and alleviate spotty record-keeping, but some educators consider the system an affront to their professionalism and say the money could have been spent better elsewhere. ” In Monroe, Louisiana all city school employees from the superintendent down, must use the scanners. They key in their employee ID numbers and scan their hands to record their work hours.  This district is also among a number that use scanners to manage school lunch distribution. 

The most recent spate of news reports on biometric time clocks comes out of New York city where the city has just invested $410 million on new time clock systems.  City employees are upset over the new system  despite the various options that might be put into use.   An agency may choose to have employees use the hand biometric device for arrival and departure times, the web clock for meal start and end times, and the desktop PC for leave requests, overtime requests, and submission of final timesheets.  Employers cite a number of reasons for acquiring and using the new systems.

“Jama Adams, a Parks Department spokeswoman, said in a statement that the system will speed payments to workers, and is also environmentally friendly. “Besides increasing accuracy, ensuring people get paid for the time they work, and improving turnaround time for overtime payments, this ‘green’ technology will eliminate the use of tens of thousands of paper time sheets and cards,” Ms. Adams said.

Unions representing the New York city employees have been quite vocal in opposition to the imposition of the new technology.   For example, Jon Forster, first vice president of Local 375 of the Civil Service Technical Guild, — which has 6,800 employees, 250 of them with the chief medical examiner’s office — said:

For somebody that’s been arrested, we will use all the technology at our disposal to try to discover what was going on, was the person guilty or not, to convict or exonerate them, and that’s appropriate, where someone has been arrested. Our people have not been arrested, they’re not criminals, and not some sort of terrorists out there, yet they’ve been subjected to increasing surveillance and increasing control. It really is a huge step backward, and it’s undermining morale.

Forster also described one Department of Health worker who passes through a palm scanner and fingerprint scanner on the way to his office and then has 32 cameras survey his work area.  Unless this is a high security office, the levels of surveillance seem very high.  Unions are asking how far this will go especially given technology that allows GPS chips and other circuitry or chips to be embedded in identification cards, drivers licenses or passports.

Society does need to explore how these technologies will be used and what level of use will be appropriate.  Is there a need to shape the use of iris scan, face recognition, voice recognition, GPS chips, or fingerprint scanning?  There are certainly logical uses such as GPS units in ambulances and security considerations do prompt use of accurate technologies for safety.  Increasingly these technologies are being embedded in everyday objects such as school back packs and cell phones.  It seems legitimate to have concerns over the impact on people’s lives or activities. 

The biometric industry is big business.  The International Biometric Group, a consulting firm, estimated that $635 million worth of these high-tech devices were sold last year, and projects that the industry will be worth more than $1 billion by 2011.  This growth makes in depth exploration of these issues even more critical.   For example, how accurate are the technologies?  Jennifer Kim, a former IBG senior consultant, “None of these technologies is 100 percent accurate. But high levels of accuracy are possible, depending on the type of technology you use.”

“Iris scanning is the most accurate because the iris does not change after infancy.  It is rare, but two fingerprints can be the same or similar enough to cause problems, and they change with aging. Still, in the relatively small population of a corporate workforce, that is unlikely to present statistically significant problems. Finger geometry’s accuracy is also quite high.

Iris scanning is used mostly, but not exclusively, for physical access to secure premises. For example, the Federal Aviation Authority uses iris scanning at each desktop PC to control access to its networked executive information system. Generally, however, companies adopting biometrics for network authentication choose fingerprint technology.”

In most companies, these decisions may be reached by and will surely be implemented by HR managers and staffers who will need to know how to assess the reliability of a technology before and after it is purchased.  In addition there will be labor relations issues that will need to be attention.  A Canadian arbitrator, V. L. Ready, ruled in 2004, “ that the Employer has the right to move from its manual system of timesheets into a new time keeping system - whatever that system might be, subject only to the raising of valid concerns by the Union and the Employer being willing to listen to those concerns. Like any system, such benefits and/or deficiencies will often only become known once the system is implemented and utilized.”   This decision points to the need for HR managers and staff to have full information about and a deep understanding of the issues these systems will raise about trust and privacy as well as be able to judge their impact on organizational dynamics such as hiring and retention. 

Clearly biometric technologies are not simple cost saving technologies and the full scope of their presence is a vital issue for all of us to ponder.

 TED speaker, Jehane Noujaim wishes for world peace and gets a laugh.  She is a film maker with a dream.  Her wish is implemented through technology in an event that she has helped to organize.  Pangea Day is May 10. 2008.  The organizers ask the question - what if you could see the world through the eyes of someone else?   One dramatic example of one answer to this question is a stunning video from the perspective of the tank driver at Tienanmin Square confronted by the one lone man carrying jacket and a satchel interrupting a normal day to do something unforgettable.  He created an image that we all know.  This is the goal of Pangea day - create images and share them around the globe.  The kicker, however, is that the images have been created by people like the man in China.  Hopeful people who believe they can make a change. 

Media Rights has  more information about what the films are, who will make them, and the program of support/prizes that the winning film makers will receive.  They report that the main venues for the showings will be in Cairo, Dharamsala, Kigali, London, New York City, Ramallah, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv.  Satellites  will  link the sites and people will be watching the films simultaneously with each other.  Apparently each film is 5 minutes in length and the 4 hour show  of films, speakers and music will be broadcast live through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones. 

I think this is extraordinary and quite impossible without a unique people-technology link.  What I also find fascinating is that for many younger people using technology in this way is part of how they think.  Technological familiarity makes project of a global scope not just available for many to watch but enables many to participate.  I am astonished and gratified that a whole generation can work and dream at a global level. 

The NYT reports that there are a substantial number of people who delay in adopting the newest technology.  These late adopters cite a number of reasons why they don’t jump onto the latest technological bandwagon or bandwidth.   ”New, of course, is not always better, and people hang on to existing technologies for a variety of reasons, including loyalty, satisfaction with what they have, fear of time-consuming upgrades and even inertia. ”

According to the article there are nine million people, who still pay for AOL dial-up service when faster broadband service is available often at comparable prices.  Is it fair to call these people Luddites?  After all, the Luddites were not anti-technology, they just wanted it introduced at a pace that allowed them to keep up. 

People, who do not jump to the newest and latest upgrade or gadget, may be doing all of us a service.  In order to keep their business or service their needs as customers, technology providers are forced to continue for at least some period of time to support the previous technology.   This also means that the knowledge embedded in the long term support of that technology is also supported and maintained.    This buffer allows people to build knowledge bridges from old to new technologies at a more self-directed pace.  They accept the technological changes when the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived costs.  

I think this happens in a workplace technological change as well.  People are more likely to embrace the change when they can identify clear benefits for themselves.  Building a knowledge bridge from one technology to the next can help with a smoother integration of the old with the new.  We might learn from the Luddites that people are more accepting of change when they can see that their interests are being met as well as those of the technology provider or the employer.

The text messaging skills that so many people have acquired are not yet in my tool box.  I would like to be able to text message with the speed of light and be ever so hip but it doesn’t seem to be in my near future.   I think that one of the true generational differences today is the growing awareness of how much young people rely on text messaging and how they are dragging older generations into the process. 

Cellphone technology is ubiquitous.   Among Chris Jordan’s current work is a photo that shows 426,000 cell phones — a number equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.   Jordan’s work uses digital reproduction to create his images and helps us to understand the staggering physical presence of just this one aspect of contemporary life.  Of interest to me is also the social presence of the cell phone and its impact on our relationships.

It’s possible to check your flights, synchronize your every move with 20-30 of your closest friends, impulse shop, talk dirty, and variously engage in most of life’s essential (and non-essential activities) via cell phone.  Researchers report that parents and children communicate better via TM (text messaging not transcendental meditation).  Grandparents pass on cross generational wisdom with instant messaging. 

Of course, all this is only possible if one speaks the language.  The NYT just posted a cheat sheet of some of the new txt wrds - get used to no vowels!  The article that accompanies the list reports that kids are using TM acronyms to obfuscate their communications with their peers.   Acronyms like prw (parents are watching) have replaced hiding your diary key!   Personally I think we older folks need to fight back — wwhft!  (wish we had faster thumbs!)

There are serious questions raised by the integration of technology with our social relationships and they may not have changed as much as we think.  I remember my mother not being very hip either but she still taught me a lot.  Part of the attention she paid to proper spelling is conditioning me to resist “vowellessness” and that certainly shapes how I use the technology available.  It will be fascinating to see what replaces spelling as a reflection of our general polish and upbringing.