Yesterday I watched The Great Debators, a movie about a debate team at a black college in 1930's Texas. It was an excellent and moving film, but as with many great films, this movie is much more about the historical backdrop than it is about the plotline or even the characters. When I look at stories (told mostly through films these days), I can't help but notice that most consist of a formulaic plotline for the main characters to follow (love, rags to riches, misfits, underdogs etc.) and then get pummeled by the overwhelming power of the context in which they live (Racism in the deep south, World War 2, Vietnam, etc.). Movies that mix these personal dramas with such historic events can be immensely powerful, but it makes me ask one question:

What are future historical movies about today going to be about? Great and tragic events have defined the lives of previous generations. How do you grow up black in 1930's America without having that oppression seep into your soul? How do you fight in World War I, World War II, the Korean war or Vietnam without it changing your world view forever? The trauma of the last century has given purpose to those generations. But how about our generation?

We are lucky. We are phenomenally lucky to live in a world (parts of America, not the whole world) surprisingly free from overwhelming oppression and suffering. But as a result, we are a disjointed generation, free from purpose but left wallowing as a result. Our challenge is to find purpose with our freedom, and this is a great opportunity. But it requires us in some ways to divorce ourselves from the stories of the past.

We are mostly free from violence, and yet it seems that our culture cannot free ourselves from violence. In our happy peaceful world, why do we still have toy guns? Why are all our movies about war or crime? I love martial arts movies, but I've never punched someone in my life. Why? This pervades not just our view of the present, but our aspirations for the future. All the beauty imagined in the world of Avatar, all the advancements in the biological sciences, leads at the end to a good old fashioned ass-kicking. Even most fantasy children's stories have fighting and war in them (Narnia).

We still yearn to fight. We still yearn to triumph. And yet I hope that violence is NOT a universal truth and that one day it will disappear from our library of stories, and that those movies, devoid of fight scenes and battle scenes, won't suck.

What if you won the reverse lottery?

I met a man with the strangest problem the other day. He was trying to lower his salary to $1 a year, but his boss wouldn't let him. Yes, it certainly sounds like a good problem to have.

I know what you're thinking. "Rich bastard. He can just donate that money to me." Or maybe, "I'll pay him $1 a year to clean my house." But alas, the truth is more complicated than that and originates from his desire to Change the World. He actually used to be a software engineer at Google. For those of you who don't know, Google not only allows but encourages its engineers to spend 20% of their working hours working on anything they felt passionate about. Sounds crazy right?

Well, this guy felt that the world would be a much better place if people learned how to be "emotionally intelligent." I know that phrase has many meanings, but in this case, it basically meant learning how to be at peace with yourself and others. So he spent 20% of his time creating a curriculum based loosely on meditation. He started volunteer-based classes and invited guest lecturers to come into work.

Now, this began taking more and more of his time (after all, 20% is just a guideline). One day his boss decided that he wasn't really an engineer anymore. So, this being the wonderful world of Google, his boss helped him transfer over to Human Resources so that he could pursue this full-time as his job. Wow.

So why does this guy want only $1 a year when he's getting paid a full salary to pursue his dreams? Well, it's his dream, and he wants to be free from the ties of a "boss" and do things because he wants to, not because he's being paid to. But then why doesn't he just quit if he can afford it? It's hard to make change without a lever, and Google is one big lever (and the food is good.) Like many people who retire but don't, he works because of his ability to have an impact, not for the money.

So that opens up an interesting question. You've all heard the question before of "What would you do if you won a million dollars?" Most people at some point in their answer say something like "I wouldn't go to work anymore." OK, well, what if you won the reverse lottery and only got paid $1 a year at your job, or any job. Assume you don't have to worry about money. Would you act differently in your job? Would you feel you had more freedom in your job and become MORE motivated? The book "Drive" by Daniel Pink talks about the things that create intrinsic motivation in humans (I'll give you a hint, one of them is not money). I won't get into it, but check it out if you're interested.

But now try this. What if everyone had the wonderful luxury that this man has of getting paid $1 a year. Would everyone be more motivated? This is starting to sound like communism, and we all know how that turned out. Except maybe if you take communism, only apply it to people who have worked for a while and have already chosen a job which they are passionate about... well, who knows?

Childhood dreams

Did you ever play with stuffed animals as a kid (or an adult?) I certainly did. Now, do you remember ever wishing that one of your stuffed animals was real? I do. Of course I also dreamed that I didn't have to wear glasses and had superpowers. But just as I accepted that I would always wear glasses, I also accepted that my gang of teddy bears would always remain puppets to my imagination.

Three years ago, I got lasik and put away my glasses forever (or at least THOSE glasses), so perhaps those other dreams aren't that far away. Or at least that was the thought that popped into my head as I was listening to a lecture at Stanford about user-generated AI in games. Here's the super quick summary:

The AI in games decides how computer-controlled characters (most often your opponent) act. If you played video games back in the 80's, then you probably think computer AI's are very predictable. But these days AI's can be very complex. More importantly, they can take on different styles of play and have different behavioral personalities.

Now we are currently seeing a large trend of user generated everything, most prominently in the form of user-generated avatars (characters) and user-generated items and worlds. In many games, players can create their own characters and stages. And of course, in virtual worlds, you can create buildings, clothes,... almost anything. The speaker's research was focused on the next step, namely user-created behaviors for the actual game engine that determines the behavior of non-user controlled characters. So basically, training a peon, knight, shopkeeper, wizard, horse, or whatever else your game has, to act with a given personality.

Now, the speaker went on to elaborate on the actual computational techniques to train AI while my mind drifted down a different path. I thought back to my stuffed animals and how playing with them over the years was like developing a personality for each one. We may be far from mechanically dexterous mechanical pets (remember Teddy Ruxpin?) but in the virtual world...

Imaging the stuffed animal or imaginary friend you had as a child. Let's call him Teddy. Now imagine creating him in the virtual world (let's say Second Life). He has a pretty simple personality to start with. Maybe he likes to hold hands with your avatar but hates being picked up. He likes riding on your shoulder but insists on climbing up there himself. He is addicted to sweets but hates salty things. He likes rock music and winces when he hears sappy pop songs. He speaks in a Chinese accent because his tag says Made in China.

These are all pretty trivial things. But luckily as you get older, technology gets better as well, and Teddy is able to develop a deeper personality. He remembers the years he's spent with you. He realizes that he needs to eat salty things sometimes and will listen to sappy pop songs when you want to though he still makes faces when you're avatar isn't looking. You share inside jokes and tell him all your secrets, but your life has changed a lot. You have a job now and don't have time for Second Life. But how can you leave Teddy behind?

Luckily your phone is now pretty smart. And it's networked to your car and your home computer too. So you download the huge codebase for Teddy's personality and load it into your phone and your home computer. At first, it's a little weird, but Teddy adjusts. When someone calls you and you don't pick up, Teddy answers in his British accent. He's funny and nice to the people he likes, but he can be slow at getting you messages from people he dislikes, and he's really nasty to those telemarketers. When you're working on the computer, he floats ads for ice cream across your screen. You laugh. Teddy still loves those sweets.

A decade later you're lying on your couch. You need to work through a personal problem, so you tap your earpiece to go over some thoughts with your two closest advisors. Teddy's known you for 30 years now and listens to you, adding in some humorous remarks to keep things light. Your other confidant, Alice you created twenty years ago. She's much more serious than Teddy but represents some of the idealism you had back when you were in college. The three of you hash things out, the perfect team.

A childhood dream maybe, but for the next generation of kids, maybe it's not too far off.

Would you read this book?

Yes, I took the weekend off from writing because who really wants to be in front of the computer on the weekend, well, besides almost every person I saw in or near anything even resembling a cafe, coffee shop, dessert shop, or an ice cream shop. But tonight I finally got online to tweak the book summary and the first 5 pages of my book which I will be sending out to an agent tomorrow. So please read the next paragraph and let me know if this blurb would make you at least ask to see more of the book (first 5 pages conveniently enclosed. If not, the I welcome your constructive feedback.

In the isolated valley of Terrene, where technology is grown, not manufactured, no one ventures beyond the surrounding mountains, and no one questions the guidance of the enigmatic Institute... no one except for Flora, an underachieving teen whose constant daydreaming is a frustration for both her mom and her teacher. But then a chance encounter sparks lucid dreams where Flora lives the life of climate-change researcher, Jane Ingram, experiencing the technological wonders of a world outside her tiny village. With the mysterious knowledge gained from her dreams, Flora earns a spot at the prestigious Institute where she encounters amazing discoveries and thrilling new challenges. At the same time, she experiences Jane's trials as she fights to stop the impending doom of global climate change. As Flora works with her new-found friends and discovers the true purpose of the Institute, the events of Jane's life become more and more intertwined with Flora's. Soon Flora realizes that her dreams of Jane may change not just her life, but the lives of everyone in both their worlds.

Being Discovered... by yourself

I'm going to do it. I'm sending out my first query letter to a literary agent on Monday. And now that I blogged about it, it must happen. Sure maybe I'm not totally and completely happy with the fiction novel I've been writing, but by Monday, I'll be happy enough with a brief synopsis and the first five pages to send it off to someone in New York who may or may not actually read it. Yeah, the lack of feedback can really suck. That's why I REALLY appreciate your comments (hint, hint).

Of course this won't really be my first rejection. Like anything else, being rejected is a skill that you can get better at. Or perhaps it would be more fair to say that persisting in the face of certain rejection is a skill that you can get better at. I submitted a short story to a magazine and a contest a few months ago. Rejection. But some of the form letters that come back are actually quite supportive of said recipient. These little things matter. One day when I somehow lack the energy to write something new, maybe I'll post the story.

But back to my main point, I am going to actively pursue becoming a published writer. And doing so does make me feel a slight twinge of hypocracy. Why you ask? Well, in writing as well as in so many other creative fields such as art, music and film, there lies the concept of being discovered. Stars are made by the chance meeting of a famous producer. If only this hot-shot from the record company or this famous publisher saw my work, I'll be signed to ABC records or We-Make-You-Into-JK-Rowlings Book Publisher. That's just how stars are made.

But I'm a self proclaimed futurist. I love the shifting of paradigms, and the road towards stardom is being repaved by the democratization of the arts. It is both becoming easier and cheaper to create works of art (photoshop, garage band, digital film) as well as much easier to distribute your works to the audience without going through the publishing industry (youtube, ebooks, free mp3 websites, facebook, blogger, etc.) I can imagine a day when the sharing of creative works is less corporate and more viral. And with so many other paradigm shifts, catching that revolutionary wave makes history.

And so I should "discover" myself. I should self-publish and self-market in a devastatingly original digital campaign over facebook, youtube, and mobile apps. I should even write a book in a new format to fit the new reading habits of today's readers.

But alas, launching a revolution takes a lot of time and focus, and I don't believe that this one is ready yet. There are other changes coming which I care much more about, and my voice is not yet strong enough to shift its direction. Above all, I yearn for a voice with which to influence this future. For some, their voice comes from the dollars they invest, the celebrity they wield, or the groups they govern. For me, I hope it will come from the readers I influence. I have a voice. But until people can hear it, I'll be throwing pebbles at people's windows, hoping to be discovered.

Learning to be better humans

I occasionally present at new hire orientation for my company, so I had some "presentation training" today and yesterday. What was interesting is that the training wasn't just about the obvious (don't cross your arms, make eye contact, don't pee your pants), but it was also about how to structure your presentation to make the desired impact. In particular, one of the consultant's models was about how the audience must go through phases (like the popularized phases of grief http://www.survivingsuicide.com/grief.htm, but with less dying).

"know," where the audience is gaining facts, context and background.
"Understand" where the audience is allowed to draw limited conclusions
"Believe" where the audience is aligning with your argument
"Endorse" where you've converted the audience into advocates for your cause

It's an interesting system of viewing a presentation, especially when realizing that you must go in order and don't want to be pushing for the audience to believe your conclusions before you've given them a chance to know the background and understand the arguments. But I'm not really interested in writing too much about this particular methodology.

Instead I'm going to write about what it represents. This method of viewing presentations or rather arguments in general I find to be useful in everyday life. In fact, the basic building blocks of how to interact with others in our society seems amazingly lacking. I can't even find the right word for it. There are many related topics: debate, rhetoric, advertising to name a few. And I think we can all acknowledge how important these things are in our lives. It seems odd to me that the main manifestation for the teaching of all these seemingly core skills seems to be self-help books, management training, and talk show hosts.

At the same time, there seems to be a trend towards pushing math and sciences in primary education. Now I must admit that I am an engineer and highly value technology and progress. However, it appears to me that our society as a whole may be developing our industry to be technically advanced while our population remains analytically and rhetorically primitive.

I imagine that someone living 3000 years ago is genetically not much different than someone living now. And yet our lives are completely different, not just in the societies we live in, but the way we think, and particularly the way we interact. As our technology grows, and our tools become more powerful, I think it's important that we also progress in our ability to interact with each other, to understand difficult societal problems and work together. Basically, I think our technological growth is far outpacing our societal growth.

Most of our large problems are not technology problems but societal problems. Poverty. racism, wars, and even environmental problems are not technology problems. The political quagmire is not from a lack of computational power but from a structural failure to be able to make and enact good decisions. Imagine a population of well-educated, well-spoken, analytically proficient citizens, able to act as a populist-driven democracy. Imagine a world where the masses were not swayed by the campaigning of the few that wield power. OK, this is getting a little heavy for a short blog. Suffice to say, it would be interesting to examine the goal of primary education in the world.

Much of our educational curriculum is evolved. There are things that are necessary, vocational education such as learning how to make change for a dollar. And at higher levels, this translates into math and science where many of the jobs will be. However, how about training on how to be a citizen of this country? How do we learn to be better humans? Don't we all need to progress to some higher state of understanding? Or are we still just apes with cooler toys?

The World of Misplaced Blogs

I was talking to a friend last night about my aspirations to write a groundbreaking book that inspires people to view the world from a different, and hopefully beneficial perspective, a book that shifts the dialogue of mainstream America and the lens with which people view our conflicts, problems, and challenges when she suggested I write a blog.

"A blog!" I said. "What a great idea." In fact, I had started a blog half a year ago. The problem was that I had made it very specific to a certain framework (I do love frameworks), and that made it somewhat limiting. As a result, I abandoned it like so many other narrowly-defined tools (have you used your corn-on-the-cob holders recently or just lost them). But my friend convinced me that I can write a more general-purpose blog whose aimless wandering between thoughts on happiness, creativity, politics, and any other topic (I promise not to include what I ate this morning unless it has relevance to future geopolitics). So with great determination, I set out to start a new blog or to modify my narrowly-scoped blog into a much more versatile blog of nothingness and..... promptly discovered that I had already done so... ten months ago.

Yes, that's right, I completely forgot about the existence of this blog. This was a moment akin to trying to open the door of the car parked across the street from your own. I felt a little stupid and maybe a little concerned that I would soon need to shop for adult diapers. But alas, I can't stay mad at me. I've decided that this must happen to everyone.

So just how many discarded blogs, myspace pages, and spam-collecting email accounts are out there? In the Internet, how much space junk is orbiting around our servers? Like all things that are cheap (don't get me started on the hidden price of cheap goods), websites have become disposable. And so they're tossed, not even into nice garbage bins. They're just forgotten and left on the street, forcing everyone to just walk around them, head held high pretending they're not there.

Certainly, this form of junk and waste is better than the physical kind. No birds are choking on your last tweet. No fish ingest your toxic SPAM, introducing it into our food chain. And yet data is served on physical computers. Maybe only 5% of the data stored on servers in the internet is used... ever again.

Does that mean that one day we'll have to hire a janitorial staff to help keep the streets clean? In early industrial cities littering and spitting were accepted and commonplace. Now such behavior is a sign of uncultured barbarism. Perhaps we'll one day view the internet as a sanitary haven and reflect back on the days of internet littering and misplace blogs with revulsion. Well, I'm picking this blog up off the floor. How about you?