Archive for the 'english' Category

While working on a mixtape for some friends, i was reminded of the Keine Angst compilation Marina and i created almost nine years ago. We put together this sampler for Micah who was about to disappear in Wyoming. Listening to it again, it still is an awesome selection of songs. It is music against the fear. Rocking rarities for uproar.

Check it out!

I was just told by a good friend that my blog was dying, to which i can only say that it is actually only dozing off a bit and taking it easy. In the meantime i have been also using Facebook and constraining myself to short status updates on Twitter. So you are happily invited to friend or follow me. So much about decentralizing social software.

It’s good to be reminded again of the psychology courses i took back in Magdeburg: In this TED talk Dan Pink talks about motivation for tasks that particularly involve thinking and problem solving. He cites several scientific studies in psychology that show how creative tasks are sometimes even impeded by extrinsic motivators such as rewards and penalties. He makes a good case for running businesses on the basis of intrinsic motivators autonomy, mastery, and purpose:

Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.

Sounds pretty exciting, if not revolutionary! However, Dan’s distinction between creative and mechanical tasks may sound a bit classist. He is focussing on a new operating system for the knowledge workers troubled by facebook and procrastination. The rest of the workforce, it seems, is still well-served with sticks and carrots:

That routine, rule-based, left brain work, certain kinds of accounting, certain kinds of financial analysis, certain kinds of computer programing, has become fairly easy to outsource, fairly easy to automate. Software can do it faster. Low-cost providers around the world can do it cheaper. So what really matters are the more right-brained creative, conceptual kinds of abilities.

I am not so sure if this is what really matters. Doesn’t everybody deserve autonomy, mastery and purpose? I wonder if balanced job complexes would be more suitable for this goal by having workers do both creative and mechanical tasks, using both sides of the brain, and having a diverse set of motivators for different types of tasks.

via swissmiss

I was just talking with a newly met friend in Boston about ‘community’ and how it doesn’t translate well to German. It almost seems as if in progressive circles in North America community is the best: think community bikeshops, community gardens, and online communities.

However, the next best German translation, Gemeinschaft, doesn’t seem to carry over the enthusiasm for new forms of collective engagements. Could it be that many German speakers are wary of collective structures due to Germany’s history which certainly has contributed to a dark perspective on collectivity. The racist people’s community (Volksgemeinschaft) of the Nazis and the authoritarian collectives in the GDR have made us justifiably suspicious and critical of community reminding us of violence and oppression based on race and ideology.

While the United States have historically put a very strong focus on individuality, there seems to be a surge of community-based activism and civic engagement. Could it be that the individual approach to happiness has also led to isolation and alienation? We need to build open and emancipatory communities that support individuality and collectivity as compliments to each other. Right after the conversation with the aforementioned friend i stumbled upon a fitting quote in the weekly dig (magazine in the Boston area):

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather youselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
- The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

Towards the end of my high school time i had a pin on which “Get Radical!” stood. I think i got it at some thrift store in South Dakota. I liked this pin a lot, because it was political and aesthetic - attributes that are typically not used to describe the same thing. While i saw the green lettering on beige background as a charming plea to consider the root of the mess we’re in, some of my peers read it as incitement to crude and dull activism. Recently i discovered that an abbreviation of radical, namely rad, now seems to be the hip way of saying that something is cool and awesome (at least among certain English speaking North Americans). As i am temporarily residing in Cambridge/Boston, a localized version of that may be “wicked rad” - however, i am not sure if native/local speakers would agree…

I am finishing the wonderful book Pedagogy of the Oppressed written by Paulo Freire in 1970 and i must say it is an inspiring read for anybody (still) interested in revolutionary social change. While this book deserves a lengthier discussion particularly about education and activism, i stumbled upon this sentence that begs to be quoted:

“The destroyers call themselves builders,
and accuse the true builders of being destructive.”

I immediately had to think of the discourse around street art. While commercial billboards are accepted and legitimate, street art gets criminalized and denounced. Yes, i also dislike many types of graffiti, tags, etc., but i have encountered so many beautiful and revealing pieces of street art that i just cannot resist seeing city administrations as the true destroyers here. Many of the pieces i have photographed have been destroyed by the true destroyers. For example, a wheatpaste of a homeless person under the bridge in Calgary—which also has the anti-human rocks—had a very short life span…

Together with my supervisors Sheelagh Carpendale and Carey Williamson at the University of Calgary, i am conducting a Web-based study on information visualization and Web search. Participants of this study are asked to use a visual search prototype for as long as they wish and fill out short questionnaires before and after using the system. The purpose of this research is to better understand performance and usability issues of information visualization supporting search on the Web. The data collected during the study will be anonymised and the questionnaires will not ask for any personal information.

If you are interested in participating, please visit this Web page:

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mdoerk/view

If you have any questions, please contact me at mdoerk[at]ucalgary.ca for more information. In addition, if you have friends or colleagues who you believe might also be interested in participating in this research, we would be grateful if you were to talk to them about this research opportunity and/or forward them this information about our study.

As i read this article on the website of Calgary’s weekly zine FFWD about a local magazine shop and the printed news industry, i thought about print and the physical. I agree with the commenter Melly Mel, that print is awesome and FFWD rules. But i really do appreciate adding comments to articles, subscribing to RSS feeds (which FFWD’s website lacks unfortunately), and saving trees. To me the limitation of the screen boils down to its resolution and versatility (so far) in contrast to paper. I don’t have a problem with taking my laptop and reading blogs or news outside/beyond a desk setting, but paper is in some respects still far superior. Yet, everytime i see those free magazines at C-Train stations and on campus i ask myself is it still worth it? Does printed broadcasting like this still make sense?

I have been to the store mentioned in the article before and i agree it has a nice selection of national and international magazines. But as i read and work more online than on paper, i think i am exposed to a wider range of information and inspiration that i could ever afford to access (read: buy) in such a store. While this may have bad consequences for news/magazine shops, i think there are still opportunities to “make money” off of our information needs. But maybe less directly. Maybe we will rather pay for coffee, muffins, and a nice atmosphere. Coffeeshops and teahouses are already experiencing a new bloom, as we yearn for more social and physical interaction.

Listening to BBC Global News (19 Feb 09 AM), i just learned about the US-American organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) that trains and supports to-be-evicted homeowners essentially to squat and defend their homes. Their ‘home defender’ campaign somewhat reminds one of the other kind of squatting carried out by dreamers in the global north and by the underprivileged in the south, both refusing and/or unable to play by market rules. Pretty interesting how a subversive method like occupying a property that ‘technically’ doesn’t belong to you (anymore) makes its debut in North American suburbia. As everybody is talking about Main street (in contrast to Wall street) i wonder if there will be alliances between the squatters from the edge of the city and those from the ‘real’ Main street in the inner city. However, i am actually not so sure whether inner-city squatting is still happening in North America or if it has already been declared terrorism.

Since my last rant about the Calgary Transit website five months ago on this blog and many rants with locals, much has happened. First Calgary Transit updated their website later last year and ironically it deteriorated even more. But the major step happened today: Calgary’s public transport is finally put on Google Transit (press release). Hooray!

There are still some glitches to be fixed. For example, right now the system has troubles integrating the C-Train into trip planning, if not the explicit station names are used for search queries. However, one can click the station explicitly. This problem seems to be due to the naming legacy at Calgary Transit. Where, for example, the university station is called “@Unvrsty STN”, which is a bit unfortunate… Anyhow, thanks to both Google and City of Calgary. Let’s hope now that the physical counterpart of Calgary Transit catches up, too.