Tag: Interaction

On "The Media"

On “The Media”

Posted on by jabittan
“The media” is a  term that is frequently used to categorize journalists, newspapers, and broadcast news shows. We often use “the media” in a negative way, complaining about coverage of events in unfair and oversimplified ways. “The media” always seems to have an agenda, a narrative, and a specific concern plucked from the zeitgeist that will fade away without a real resolution. But this idea is a bit misleading. Categorizing only news sources as “the media” misses out on a lot of media consumption that we engage with every day. It also lumps together news organizations and sources that have vastly different ways of operating, different profit motives, and different general beliefs. Even within a single news or media source there can be things that are terrible, things that are marvelous, and things that we barely notice.
Challenges with “the media” have existed as long as news and media have existed. Books, even fiction books, have been burned and banned almost as long as books have existed. People expressing heretical views against churches or governments have also received the same fate across human history.  But “the media” has been a lens through which we have understood the world past and present. Expanding our view of media to include books, movies, podcasts, and even TikTok videos shows us how media consumption can be cultural cornerstones of our highest values and simultaneously cesspools of rot.
In the George Herriman biography Krazy, author Michael Tisserand includes a quote from a critique written by Gilbert Seldes in the Pittsburgh Sun in the 1920’s. Tisserand’s passage reads:
“In his initial appraisal of Krazy Kat [George Herriman’s celebrated comic strip], he wrote that the cult of the genius of the comic strip who has created the fantastic little monster is a growing one. He added if we have to condemn utterly the press which demoralizes all thought and makes ugly all things capable of beauty, we must still be gentle with it, because Krazy Kat, the invincible and joyous, is a creature of the press, inconceivable without its foundation of cheapness and stupidity. He is there to enliven and encourage and to give much delight.“
I really like this quote when viewed through the lens of “the media” that I have been trying to lay out in this post, even though Seldes uses “the press” in the quote above. Categorizing “the media” as entirely worthless or negative or alternatively categorizing “the media” as a cornerstone of democracy is an overly broad brush with which to paint news and information ecosystems. There are things we may hate about “the media” but there are also things we may find invaluable and necessary. Thinking clearly about the media requires that we delve into the particulars, understand the profit motives, understand the competition, and understand the forces that drive the things we like and dislike.
Individually, we are probably powerless to change the course of “the media” or how we talk about “the media.” However, we can think about the choices we make in relation to “the media” and to our friends, family, and colleagues. We can engage in meaningful and deep topics, or we can become enraged over shallow and meaningless topics. We can enjoy the cultural reflections of the shallow or we can criticize them. Ultimately, “the media” is a product of our humanity, and we can project onto it what we want, but we shouldn’t categorize an entire institution as rotten or democracy saving as a whole. “The Media” is complex and has multiple layers running throughout each interconnected element.
Stable Relationships

Stable Relationships

Posted on by jabittan
“We all know that a friendship that may take years to develop can be ruined by a single action,” writes Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow. I quit Facebook for 2020 to get away from political ads and posts, but I imagine that this year many friendships and relationships have been ended with just a single post advocating for or against a candidate. People who have known each other for a long time have probably been surprised to see political posts from friends that don’t match what they had expected, creating friction within friendships.

 

At a high minded level, we don’t generally think that friendships should be influenced by something as small as a political post. True friendships, our stories and Disney movies tell us, are built on more than just liking the same sports team, belonging to the same political party, or lending something to our neighbors every now and then. Real life, however, seems to suggest that those things are exactly what friendship is about. We are constantly doing a mental calculation, keeping score of favors and interactions, and cutting out friends who don’t measure up and don’t bring us happiness or don’t appear to be useful allies.

 

Describing research from John Gottman, Kahneman writes, “Gottman estimated that a stable relationship requires that good interactions outnumber bad interactions by at least 5 to 1.” If we think about our relationships with others from a Disney movie standpoint, this sounds a little bleak. It sounds like all of our relationships are transactional, as though we are willing to ditch a spouse, an ally, or a close friend as soon as things start to turn a little negative and as soon as we get the sense that we are doing more for the friendship than the other person.

 

I don’t think Gottman’s findings are as negative as they might first appear based on the stories we create about true friendship. I think his research presents some hope. His findings show us that we can maintain friendships and good marriages when we find ways to structure more positive than negative interactions with others. To do this, we can think about others rather than about our selves, and we can do things to help create more positive experiences for the other person. This will get us thinking beyond ourselves and about the people we want to be close to and want to connect with. If we can create many positive interactions and limit the negative interactions then we will maintain strong relationships with others (even if an occasional social media post turns other people off). We will develop the strong friendship and trust that we believe relationships are all about. Having a mental accounting system of good and bad interactions doesn’t have to diminish the quality of the relationships we have, at least not if we find ways to create more positive interactions with others and use it in genuine and non-manipulative ways.
Workplace Design

Workplace Design

Posted on by jabittan
One of the things I am secretly fascinated by is workplace design in our modern knowledge work economy. I’m not so interested in where the copy room is located, how the office kitchen is built out, or what furniture/decorations are around, but the big high level design question: where will our employees sit to do their work? (or stand sometimes if your company is cool like that)

 

A lot of companies today are trying to get away from standard cubicle models for offices. The traditional work-space where senior team members have their own office while junior members are in cramped cubicles feels anachronistic, especially for modern tech companies. The alternative has been open office spaces, where dividers between employee workstations are minimized. Companies want to be innovative, to spur conversation between creative individuals, and they also want to create environments where employees would actually want to be, rather than soul sucking cubicle farms.

 

However, thinking and focusing in open work-spaces can be challenging. As Cal Newport writes in his book Deep Work, “Both intuition and a growing body of research underscore the reality that sharing a work-space with a large number of coworkers is incredibly distracting – creating an environment that thwarts attempts to think seriously.” When it comes time to buckle down and focus to get an important project done, an open work-space can become a major hurdle.

 

In his book, Newport encourages more of a hub and spoke style office. He doesn’t say if he thinks everyone should have their own office or be in a dreaded cubicle farm, but he thinks that people should be split by departments/teams into hubs where people can get a little more quite space to do deep work. He encourages developing open pathways to the bathroom, kitchen, or conference rooms that encourage serendipitous connections with others, to help spur some creative encounters that might otherwise not happen in individual offices. He doesn’t think we should all just be isolated away in our little hubs, but in a sweet spot where we have space to think as well as chances to interact and share different ideas and perspectives. “Isolation is not required for productive deep work. Indeed, their example [Bell Labs] indicates that for many types of work – especially when pursuing innovation – collaborative deep work can yield better results.”

 

I’m still not sure exactly what the perfect office space would be for different types of companies based on Newport’s thoughts. Should a CPA firm have a hub and spoke style office, or do they really need their own walled off offices? How exactly do you balance the need for focus spaces with the need to actually interact with other human beings, to prevent employees from going to work but never interacting with anyone? Space for deep work is important, but Newport also advocates for bumping into other creative people at reasonable intervals to foster creativity and heighten innovation and productivity. I’m not sure where exactly we will end up with workplace design, but I don’t think it will be in a space where everyone has their own office or a space where no one has an office.

Tips on Listening

Posted on by jabittan
The last few years I have been working on becoming a better listener, and I am still not great at it. Advice from Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People is helpful for anyone who wants to be a better listener, and has made me a better listener during the times I have remembered it. His advice is fairly simple and summed up by one of his principles to live by, “Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.”

 

A funny scene occurs in a lot of movies is one where one person is doing all the talking in a scene. They may be venting about their problems, rambling on about an idea they had, or just blurting out a string of facts and opinions. The other character in the scene usually won’t have a chance to get a word in, or will be so unsure of what to actually say that they just stammer or shrug, not actually saying a word. The character who does all the talking then turns to them and comments on how good the conversation has been, when in reality there was no conversation or dialogue, just a monologue from a single person.

 

These scenes work from a comical perspective, but they are not far from reality for many of our conversations. Even Carnegie has a line in his book about talking to a botanist that aligns with that common comedy scene. “And so I had him thinking of me as a good conversationalist when, in reality, I had been merely a good listener and had encouraged him to talk.”

 

People want to be listened to for validation. They want someone to hear their ideas, to acknowledge their complaints and suffering, and to share their perspective on the world. People seek audiences.

 

We can be receptive audiences, but often times our own desire for an audience gets in the way of us being the good listening audience for others. We want to talk as much as other people in our conversations, and don’t actually want to listen to them and provide the validation, empathy, and acknowledgement that they are looking for.

 

Carnegie continues on what happens when we fail to listen, “If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.”

 

To be a good listener you have to let others talk, and the good news is that other people love talking about themselves. Simple questions and acknowledgement of other people’s challenges and thoughts can allow them to continue to talking about themselves, and they will find you to be a good conversation partner who listens to what they really have to say. This builds trust and relationships, helping you become closer with the people around you.

Culture Busting

Posted on by jabittan
In The New Localism Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak call for culture busting among city leaders who want to find new solutions to pressing problems. One of the challenges we face is that in general, the public doesn’t understand governance well. We operate with set ideas about what governance is, who sets rules and regulations, and the roles that private companies, local community groups, and formal government agencies play. In the future, as problem solving becomes more local and as we try to tackle major challenges we will need to get beyond these simple models from our high school civics classes.

 

This is what Katz and Nowak call culture busting, “culture busting is a form of risk taking and a fundamental shift in understanding that many responsibilities in a city and metropolis lie with the community broadly rather than with the government narrowly.” The role of government, the role of businesses, and the role of everyday citizens needs to change if we are to truly address the big problems in our societies. If we want to tackle climate change, if we want to reduce healthcare spending, and if we want to spark economic development, we have to realize how interconnected all of the challenges we face are, and we have to develop a community focused action plan to make the necessary changes. Thinking that problem solving is the role of government or that economic development is purely a free market phenomenon will not help us jump to be dynamic leaders in a globalized economy.

 

Part of what culture busting calls for is more education around governance and part of it is a reemergence of community action. A major failure of suburban life is that we drive from our homes to our places of work or commerce, and rarely interact with anyone else along the way. We let others deal with problems unless they happen to be unavoidably right in front of our face. We might get out for a sporting event or a conference, but otherwise we are just as content to watch Disney+ at home. Culture busting replaces this individual isolation with networks that want to see real change and are willing to own part of that change.

 

Culture busting requires that we re-imagine what is possible for governments and redefine the role of businesses and civic organizations. It requires that we think about the challenges our communities face, and ask ourselves what resources and advantages do we have that we can use to make a difference. Rather than waiting for government to make a decision, it requires civic and private energy to clear the path and display a public will for government to direct resources in the direction that the populace already wants to move. It shifts leadership from government back to the people and aligns actors to make the community a better place.