Media – Page 29

Kevin Kelly on the rise of nerds and the Third Culture

I’m a recent admirer of Kevin Kelly’s writing. This article, where he explains the emergence of a third, “nerd culture” (in addition to the science and art cultures), is thoughtful and inspiring. Below are some excerpts and my reactions.

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Science as the outsider culture:

When we say “culture,” we think of books, music, or painting. Since 1937 the United States has anointed a national poet laureate but never a scientist laureate.

Ironically, science continually creates tools that enable new art forms: radio, TV, computers, smartphones.

But it’s no longer just science vs art. A third culture has emerged, driven largely by computers.

It’s a pop culture based in technology, for technology. Call it nerd culture.

Nerds now grace the cover of Time and Newsweek. They are heroes in movies and Man of the Year. Indeed, more people wanna be Bill Gates than wanna be Bill Clinton.

(I think there is growing backlash against this “nerd culture”…if anything, it’s a sign that nerd culture is crossing that chasm and people are feeling transition pain)

Cultures create new jargon. Let’s “google” something. The language of text messaging.

Science is the pursuit of truth. Art is the exploration of humanity. Nerds are about novelty and creation.

Scientists would measure and test a mind; artists would contemplate and abstract it. Nerds would manufacture one.

This nerd culture builds tools, ignores credentials and admires crazy.

C. P. Snow had imagined a third culture where scientists interacted directly with artists. Nerd culture is both a step towards that vision, and something entirely different.

A really good dynamic computer model—of the global atmosphere, for example—is like a theory that throws off data, or data with a built-in theory. It’s easy to see why such technological worlds are regarded with such wariness by science—they seem corrupted coming and going.

But it will only grow, because computers and internet.

As large numbers of the world’s population move into the global middle class, they share the ingredients needed for the third culture: science in schools; access to cheap, hi-tech goods; media saturation; and most important, familiarity with other nerds and nerd culture.

“The effect of concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained” – Freeman Dyson

I disagree with Kelly on the following:

Indeed, raw opportunity may be the only thing of lasting value that technology provides us. It’s not going to solve our social ills, or bring meaning to our lives.

It seems clear to me that the manifestations of technology (the internet, mobile phones, cheap PCs, home appliances) have made Joe- and Jane-citizen richer, smarter and more comfortable. Computer simulations of cancer-fighting drugs…accurate pricing data for third world farmers and fishermen…vast libraries of digital books for schoolchildren around the world…these are all examples of how technology addresses social ills.

(it may just be semantics; for example, Kelly might mean that even the world’s fastest computer is worthless without a competent user, and the computer itself is the product of human minds and hands)

Kelly ends with this beautiful thought:

The culture of science, so long in the shadow of the culture of art, now has another orientation to contend with, one grown from its own rib.

Daniel Goleman on the value of focus and empathy

I started watching this 1-hour lecture with low expectations, but was blown away by Dan’s info-packed, beautifully-articulated talk on the importance of focus and empathy and the psychology and science behind them.

I generally avoid the nonfiction bestseller lists these days, but I just downloaded samples of Emotional Intelligence and Focus. My Kindle queue hates me…

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” – Herbert Simon

My notes:

two groups of people were asked to give speeches; one group on the Good Samaritan parable; on their way to the lecture hall, people in each group “accidentally” bump into a stranger that needs their help; it didn’t matter whether the good samaritan parable was their speech topic (and thus on their minds) or another unrelated, control topic; what mattered was how much time pressure they were under (boy can I relate to this)
your intuition, your gut instinct is what one scientist calls “somatic markers”
there are 3 types of empathy:
- cognitive empathy – knowing what another person knows
- emotional empathy – immediately feeling what another person feels; reading and processing their emotions
- empathic concern – “I know how you think and how you feel, and I’m pre-disposed to help” (Goleman believes this is a defining quality of leaders)
what matters in meditation is not focus, it’s bringing your mind back when it wanders; the “bringing it back” strengthens connectivity in your attention circuitry
before puberty, parents are primary in a kid’s life; after, it’s all about friends and peers
First-Person Shooter games strengthen a kid’s vigilance (ability to detect threats, process stimuli quickly) but also their hostile attribution bias (if another kid bumps into them, they will think it’s on purpose)
a study in the UK showed attention control (how focused you can be on the task in front of you) was more correlated with career success than family background or education level
in that famous study of whether kids could resist eating one marshmellow to be rewarded for their patience with two marshmellows, there was a 200 point difference in SAT scores when tracked over time; the crazy part? the kids all attended Bing Nursery School at Stanford, so I presume most were children of Stanford parents or faculty and admin — which means they had access to, on average, plenty of academic resources and parental attention
emotions are contagious and spread by:
- expressivity of person
- power and hierarchy
- stability of emotions (which is why a monk can calm an angry person)
Goleman asks, why is it that a culture defaults to giving a pill to solve what is essentially a skill deficit? (attention, for example, is a skill that can be taught and practiced and improved)
behavioral inhibition, aka being “shy”; researchers thought it was genetic, but found a strong tie to parenting style: there are parents who publicly say things like “oh, she’s shy” and inhibit their kid from taking risks, and then they wonder why their kids don’t like public speaking and aren’t so outgoing; the parents that tell their child to “go ahead and try it anyway” raise more outgoing, more extroverted children

Why college athletes should be paid

Schooled: The Price of College Sports The debate over whether college athletes should be paid, and if so how much, has been picking up steam. I’m in favor of doing so if the particular sport an athlete plays generates “meaningful revenues” for the university. In practice this means football, basketball, baseball, maybe a handful of others. Of course, there are many questions to be answered (how is the money shared amongst players? do non-revenue generating sports get a cut? and so forth), but the current system is economically and morally untenable.

I recently watched a solid, if not spectacular, documentary on the topic, Schooled: The Price of College Sports (you can stream it on Netflix; here’s the IMDB link).

I wanted to share my notes with y’all. I’ve bolded points of particular agreement :)

the current system is an effective monopoly – as a high school athlete, you can no longer go straight to pros, and there’s no other legitimate farm system (maybe baseball?)
the NCAA is a tax-exempt nonprofit that makes almost a billion dollars
sponsors, brands, TV networks also make billions
most college athletes come from poor, single-parent households
college athletes have many obligations – jersey signings, commercial appearances, media interviews, autograph sessions, promotion events, even video game appearances – all while being paid nothing for their labor (beyond the standard scholarship)
UCLA football and basketball alone generate $70M in revenues, and coaches and admin are paid very well ($100s of thousands to millions in salaries)
the US is the only country where big money sports are played at institutions of higher learning; for example, you don’t see a big collegiate soccer market in Europe
people think amateur athletics goes back to the Greek Olympics, but in reality those guys were paid, professional athletes who got all sorts of benefits including war deferments!
amateur sports started in the Ivy Leagues; the concept was borrowed from England where amateur unpaid sports was a method to keep poor people from competing (this needs further research…unsure to what extent I believe this)
in the early 1900s, some college athletes were paid under table, often recruited by universities
to combat this, universities came up with the idea of offering free room + board, and thus began the current arrangement
the irony is that many other voluntary student positions – e.g., student body presidents – are paid and receive benefits that would violate athlete contracts
no other scholarship students have as many rules and constraints – english majors can publish books, CS majors can take consulting gigs
quote from a college athlete: “it’s funny because i looked up the definition of indentured servant…food, board, training…but not paid”
quote from a sports administrator: “you can’t have animals running the zoo” (wow)
quote from an analyst: “some would argue…the NCAA has the best salary cap in sports”
scholarships can be terminated at any time
early on, states made an effort to classify college athletes as employees since they made money for school athletic programs, but were rebuffed by the NCAA, which invented the term “student athlete” to make it seem like they were students first and athletes second (we know the reality is anything but)
NCAA power grew enormously because its leader Walter Byers convinced colleges to license TV rights as a single package
Nike started paying coaches up to $100s of thousands to have their players wear Nike shoes; eventually school administrators were being paid, too (but players still aren’t!); the man most responsible for this, Sonny Vaccaro, said the following: “I’ve watched this grow and grow and grow..the one thing was constant: the kids never got anything”
98% of college athletes don’t go pro – they’re counting on that degree, despite a clear de-prioritization of their studies
at UNC, athletes took many “paper classes” that were guaranteed As and Bs
Walter Byers, the man most responsible for the NCAA’s growth and the current “student-athlete” structure, now believes rules against paying college athletes can no longer stand the test of law
the Olympics is a great model for how to treat college athletes — 20% of its governing body is made up of current athletes; because of this, the Olympics eventually abandoned the idea of amateurism; professional athletes now compete in most (or all?) Olympic sports (like the ’92 Dream Team!)
“it’s too complicated” is an easy and frequently used defense (e.g., which sports get paid, how much does each player get), but universities answer more complicated questions every day

Hope you found these notes useful. Thanks for reading!

Alain de Botton on success

I always enjoy Alain de Botton’s work. He’s insightful, he’s prolific, and among the writers I follow, he cares the most about helping us become better people, to reach for our better angels.

Some people may call his work “pop philosophy”, but what’s wrong with that? Those very same people might benefit most from engaging with his questions and observations.

I recently watched his below TED talk on how to think about success, and wanted to share my notes with y’all. For more on Alain, here’s my initial post. In the timelines of our lives, mine would have an arrow pointing to early 2012 with the label “started reading Alain de Botton.”

Notes

snobbery is when you only know a little bit about someone but draw much larger conclusions about them
iconic question: “what do you do?”
if we could all be like our mothers, who don’t care if we’re successful and accept us unconditionally
we’re not by nature materialistic, we simply live in a society where emotional rewards are pegged to material goods; when you see a Ferrari driver, don’t criticize them for being greedy, because they’re actually communicating that they’re incredibly vulnerable and in need of love
we’ve done away with the caste system and we’re told that anyone can achieve anything, which generates envy
envy: when you can’t relate to them, you can’t envy them (which is why you don’t even the Queen of England, and why de Botton believes you should never go to a school reunion :)
any vision of success needs to admit what you’ll lose out on
why we love nature: in part, an escape from the human anthill
in the Middle Ages, the word for someone at the bottom of society was an “unfortunate”, which describes the lack of control in their life station
make sure your ideas of success are yours: “it’s bad enough to not get what you want…it’s even worse to get what you want, after all this hard work, only to realize it may not be what you wanted all along”
think of your ideal dad – someone who’s tough but gentle – tough line to straddle

33 Insights From Deepak Malhotra’s “How To Negotiate Your Job Offer” Lecture on YouTube

One of the best intro videos I’ve watched on the subject of negotiating. The advice is both strategic and practical, and it’s from a guy who literally wrote the (business school) book on negotiating.

Below are my notes; I’ve taken a lot of liberty in rewriting, but the insights are all Deepak’s.

P.S. I’ve been helping people negotiate their job offers recently, hence the somewhat new topic here on the blog. If this topic interests you (especially if you work in tech), email me.

General negotiating concepts:

1. Do your homework. He who is most prepared usually wins. I think Sun Tzu said something similar about war
2. People think it’s about convincing the other party, but nothing is more important than understanding the other party
3. What’s not negotiable today may be negotiable tomorrow
4. When someone says no in a negotiation, it often means “not right now”; for example if there’s an offer deadline two months from now, and they say they can’t extend it, they may be able to when you ask them 4 or 5 weeks later
6a. Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face”, in response to: “How do you fight someone when you know they’ve prepared specifically to fight you?”
6b. Prepare for the tough questions; sometimes the other party will throw something at you that you don’t want brought up; they might ask “do you have other job offers?” or “did your summer internship turn into a full-time offer?”
7. If something is ambiguous, strange or unexpected, your goal is to investigate by asking good questions
8. Don’t forget: They’re not out to get you…they like you and want to continue liking you…but you’re not the only concern they have
9. Companies don’t negotiate, people negotiate; it depends heavily on their role; negotiating with the boss is different from with HR; the boss may be willing to go to bat for you, but annoying them is more dangerous than annoying HR
10. Don’t be in a mad rush to get the offer; it can backfire (for example, you might get less time to decide)
11. If you think about life happiness, job negotiation success is unimportant; what job you take, what career path, is MUCH more important
12. If they’re repeating themselves, it’s a bad sign
13. In small companies or with close relationships, the range of outcomes is higher – you could either get a lot less or a lot more; everything is more important – them liking you, you being more honest, you learning more about what they can or can’t do
14. It can be easier to ask for something in the future, like working from a different city, but you need to stay at the table to make sure they don’t forget it

Goals you should always try to achieve:

1. They need to like you and want to do it for you
2. They need to believe you deserve it
3. They need to be able to justify your requests within their company
4. They need to believe that they can get you; no one will go to bat for you if they think you’re gonna eventually turn them down
5. Shoot for an 11 out of 10; imagine that they’re going to leave the negotiation and they’re either going to give you what you ask for or not, and they’re also going to rate you 1 to 10 on how much they’re looking forward to working with you; you don’t want a 9, or even a 10, you want an 11
6. Understand where they have room to give – for example, startups may offer lower salaries but provide more equity and flexibility in your role
7. Always tell the truth; don’t get into habit of just saying and doing what you need to achieve your goal
8. Sometimes people undervalue you because they don’t know the value you bring; educate them on what you can do

Tactical advice during negotiations:

1. Don’t ask for something without explaining why – just like you’d never want them to say no without a reason
2. Try to be flexible on the currency you’re paid in – you should care most about the entire offer (location, salary, benefits, stock) and not become too fixated on one component. This includes being flexible on maybe not getting something today, but a tacit agreement to reward you down the line
3. Negotiate multiple interests simultaneously, don’t negotiate piecemeal; signal what is most important, what is less important; avoid “and one more thing…and one more thing…and one more thing…” (Mark Suster says this too)
4. Stay at the table and stay engaged; what they couldn’t share before they gave the offer, they can after they give it to you; what they can’t share before you accept the offer, they can after
5. When they ask a question like “if we give you an offer tomorrow, will you say yes?”, don’t get stuck on what they’re asking; figure out why they’re asking that; what they ask is less important than why
6. Avoid, ignore, downplay ultimatums of any kind; if someone makes an ultimatum, just ignore it – pretend it was never said and move on; if they really mean it, they’ll repeat it over and over again
7. Sometimes you need more time; it’s totally fine to take it, just be nice and considerate about asking
8. Learn what their process tends to be; great question: “What is your usual process here? What does your process tend to be for this situation?”
9. You never want negotiation to end with a no; you want to end with a yes, or a why not
10. “Imagine a world where that is possible, describe that world for me” – gives you a better idea of what’s causing that constraint; or, “can you give me examples of situations where you have done that?”

Ironically as I was writing these notes, Deepak published a similar article. But I didn’t want these notes to go to waste :)