Crazytown

TECHNOLOGY OR SOCIAL? DO I HAVE TO CHOOSE?

This man wants to change the world.
 by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

He's rich and he wants to change the world. Where have we heard that before?

To be honest, I most often think of these mogul-people as politicians -- and therefore, anything they say is mostly newspeak [go back and read 1984].

But Dustin Curtis brought up this segment from Mark Zuckerberg's Home announcement:

At one level, [Home] is just the next mobile version of Facebook. At a deeper level, I think this can start to be a change in the relationship that we have with how we use computing devices. For more than thirty years, computers have mostly just been about tasks, and they had to be–they were too expensive and clunky and hard to use, so you wouldn't really want to use them for anything else. But the modern computing device has a very different place in our lives. It's not just for productivity and business, although it's great for that too. It's for making us more connected, more social, more aware.

 ...and more beholden to Facebook.

Home, by putting people first, and then apps–by just flipping the order–is one of many small but meaningful changes in our relationship with technology over time.

Essentially, Zuckerberg wants us to trust technology...it can become the savior of our (Facebook-designed) social problem!

When I think about the world today, what amazes me most is the number of people who are getting on the internet every day and how it's improving their lives as they join this modern knowledge economy. I grew up with the internet, and I can't really imagine a world without sharing, and messaging, and searching, but actually only about a third of the world is on the internet today–a little more than two billion people. So we're really very close to the beginning of this. If you look out, maybe five or ten years, when all five billion people who have feature phones are going to have smart phones, we're soon going to be living in a world where the majority of people who have a smart phone–a modern computing device–will have never seen in their lives what you and I call a “computer.”

This is true. Good one, Zuckerberg.

So, just think about that for a moment.

Okay, I'm thinking...

The very definition of what a computer is and what our relationship with it should be hasn't been set for the majority of the world. And when it is, I think a lot of that definition is going to be around people first. We're about to see the most empowered generation of people in history, and it's really an honor to be able to work on these problems.

...and to make more money from them...but again, he's right. Computing will cease to be this thing where we have to sit down in front of a screen and start working; rather, computing will only be needed as it applies to various tasks that we go about during our daily lives.

This is a deeply technical problem and it's also a deeply social problem. This is the kind of problem that Facebook, our culture and our community, are uniquely built to work on.

As an observer of science and culture, what Zuckerberg says resonates strongly with me, and yet fills me with dread: Our relationships cannot be governed by technology. They simply cannot. And yet Zuckerberg sees an opportunity: a way for those of us constantly connected to our devices to remain social beings. And he gets to profit from it. But he also will exercise more and more control over those social relationships; I am wary of Facebook's increasing influence and control over how I communicate with my friends on Facebook. Mind you: I know they have every right to do whatever they want -- they are a publicly-held company that wants to make a massive profit. But we, as human beings, need to be in the driver's seat when it comes to how we interact with each other and technology.

Yes? Or are we destined, as Ray Kurweil posits, for a moment when we transcend the biological, human/social constructs that we have relied on for centuries?

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a Doobie Brothers tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY

Musicians: You need more sleep. Seriously. You will memorize your music better, according to a new study.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Your memory is a fragile thing, but studies show we can help it along...

I have spoken about this before [here], but there is a new study that I want to discuss.

Are you feeling like you are having a hard time memorizing new music? It happens to us all. This new study suggests that the reason might be twofold: lack of sleep and/or too much other input. Directly from Science Daily:

Performance of a musical task improved among pianists whose practice of a new melody was followed by a night of sleep, says researcher Sarah E. Allen, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

...

The study found, however, that when two similar melodies were practiced one after the other, followed by sleep, any gains in speed and accuracy achieved during practice diminished overnight, said Allen, an assistant professor of music education in SMU's Meadows School of the Arts.

...

Surprisingly, in a third result the study found that when two similar musical pieces were practiced one after the other, followed by practice of the first melody again, a night's sleep enhanced pianists' skills on the first melody, she said.

The researchers are reticent to make blanket statements about how this might affect our pedagogy for music training, but I will simply say “let’s try sleeping!” And secondly: “let’s simplify and only learn one thing at a time!”

So, next time I need to learn a new piece of music, I’m going to a) learn a single short piece only, b) sleep on it, and c) repeat until I have learned the whole piece.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a Doobie Brothers tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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PUT THE GLASS DOWN

RSO loved this.

Via Science is Madness

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."

It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses. As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!

 

 

OH, THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL

What’s in a name?
By Gregory Jacobs-Roseman (Composer-Lyricist) 

This morning I was sorting through my email when I came upon a notice that an alumni event for my undergrad was cancelled. The email read:

With great regret, we need to cancel the NYC Reception with Alumni & Graduate Students, Into the Horizon: Furthering Your Connections, scheduled for tomorrow. With reports that Winter Storm Nemo will be hitting late Friday night and Saturday, we do not believe it is worth jeopardizing the safety of Emerson alumni, students, staff, and faculty.

Now, I had no intention of attending the event to begin with, but something in this email kind of shocked me: the fact that it referred to the upcoming winter storm by it’s supposed “name.”

I admit that I’m a bit of a meteorology and geography nerd. Climate and weather patterns were something I had to study during my sommelier training. In middle school I competed in and won geography bees and in my free time I still research both topics. In short, I find meteorology – tropical cyclones in particular – fascinating.

That said, let's get the facts straight: winter storm names AREN’T a thing. Winter storm names are a marketing ploy made up by The Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel – a for-profit organization owned by NBC – is undermining the authority of the National Weather Service – a government agency – and trying to boost its ratings by suddenly deciding to give names to winter storms for the first time this winter. The National Weather Service gives official names to hurricanes and tropical cyclones, but does not name winter storms, and refuses to go along with this marketing tactic by The Weather Channel.

The National Weather Service isn't having it.

This new practice by The Weather Channel is clearly the result of hurricanes Irene and Sandy striking the northeastern corridor over the past two years. Just nine days after Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, The Weather Channel announced it was naming an ordinary nor’easter “Athena” and would be naming major winter storms in the future. They said it was for “clarity” but it’s pretty clear that their thinking was: now that the most densely populated area of the country is used to named tropical cyclones, why not extend that to a far more common type of storm in the northeast? It makes your average winter storm so much scarier. Maybe then more people in New York and Boston will tune in.

Snowfall from The Blizzard Of 1996. What a fun time to be a pre-teen living in Delaware on the Pennsylvania boarder.

Growing up, we didn’t have “Winter Storm José” or “Nor’easter M. Night Shyamalan.” We had the Blizzard of 1996. Or more recently, the Blizzard of 2006. (Do I sense a pattern? Look out, winter of 2016!) The fact that in the aforementioned email someone in my alma mater’s alumni office was watching The Weather Channel and using it to determine whether or not the event should go on as scheduled isn’t anything unusual. But that person completely fell for the marketing – for The Weather Channel’s own branding of our very atmosphere. It’s something I find very disturbing and pray doesn't become the norm.

NEW STUDY INSTANTLY CHANGES HOW YOU MAKE DECISIONS

What if I told you that you don't really know yourself? Or, more concisely, your future self?
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

It really gets on my nerves when scientific studies have me in their crosshairs.

When I was 14, I hated Shakespeare. That changed (dramatically) less than ten years later. (That's a story for another post.)

On our honeymoon we went wine tasting, and decided that Merlot was awesome and white wines were stupid. Now I love whites and every different red under the sun (and Merlot has kinda run its course for me).

I already told you about how, over the last few years, my attitude towards sitcoms have changed. Bazinga!

But darned if I'm going to change at all over the next decade.

At least that’s what we all think, according to a new study released by a bunch of Harvard brainiacs. They interviewed people at every age -- young and old -- and found that, even when presented with how much we have changed in the past, we are loathe to believe that we will change in the future. And the results of their study held true for every age group.

Amazing.

So, if you knew that you were going to be a different “you” in ten years than you are now, what would you do now?

Answer: Work at it.

The authors of the Harvard study note that people -- yes, you and me -- tend to be a bit egotistical (calling it "self-delusion"): "believing that we just reached the peak of our personal evolution makes us feel good,” Harvard researcher Dr. Quoidbach said. And there's a downside, too: what if we all started thinking that, since we don't know what we're going to like in ten years, we don't buy/create/love anything at all? Would our indecision about life's unkowns freeze us into a scared stupor?

No.

Bob Lefsetz turned me on to this article that details Marc Andreessen's vision for the future. It looks at a growing -- not shrinking -- division between the "have's" and the "have-not's." He believes that, if you're not planning on being at the top of the heap in the STEM world (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) or if you are at heart a creative, "a person will have to be good enough that his book is a best seller or her song goes global, or he'll have to be smart enough to apply philosophy to corporate strategic thinking."

In other words, iTunes/YouTube hit or bust. Win The Voice or fall into obscurity.

What it takes to get ahead in this world is scary and daunting. But we're ambitious creatures, and, in some respects, this study gives me hope...because: who I am right now is not who I am going to be in a year, or five years, or a decade. I can achieve that which I have not yet achieved.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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ARE WE ALL STILL HERE? APOCALYPSE 2012 AND 10 END-OF-THE-WORLD PREDICTIONS THAT DIDN’T QUITE PAN OUT

Seeking a prediction for the end of the world.
By Gregory Jacobs-Roseman (Composer-Lyricist) 

While some of us are compiling our “best of 2012” lists this final week of the fall Crazytown term, I thought I’d do something a little different. Because, you know, today was the apocalypse. Did you feel it? Supposedly the Mayans predicted that the planets aligned, gravity shifted, and we all died in a big flaming ball of fire. Or something. Full disclosure: I am writing this post one day before the proposed end-of-time, so if we're all indeed are dead right now, I apologize for my sarcasm.

Of course, that’s not at all what the Mayans were saying. But thanks to popular culture, today’s date has become synonymous with the Rapture.

But let’s take a step back, shall we? Ever since human beings became capable of cognitive thought we have predicting when all of existence will meet its demise. And it will happen eventually. Our sun, the star that gave us life in the first place, will take it away in roughly 1-5 billion years as it slowly warms up, and then expands into a red giant, swallowing the earth completely.

But as far as predictions of the end times while the earth is still inhabitable, there’s no shortage of theories. Some based on calculations from the Mayan calendar, some based on a fear of electronics like Y2K, and some just because some preacher somewhere said so. Here’s a look at the more recent ones that never came to pass, just as I predict December 21, 2012 will come and go without such an event.

• May 27, 2003
  
  Ever hear of the Nibiru cataclysm? It’s the belief that the earth will collide with or nearly miss a large extraterrestrial object or a so-called Planet X. This Wisconsin kook named Nancy Lieder claimed that she could communicate with aliens through a brain implant and that the earth would have one of these near-misses on May 27^th, 2003. When that didn’t happen, she claimed she was trying to fool the establishment so they couldn’t declare martial law before the real event when it comes. We’re all still waiting for that Planet X, apparently.

• September 12, 2006
  
  This one is my favorite only because I get to attach this objectively awesome picture of a Chucky look-a-like baby grasping a bottle in one hand and a nuclear missile in the other. Here’s the story behind this image which looks like it was ripped from one of those random 15-minute long Adult Swim cartoons: 
  
  Yisrayl Hawkins, founder of the “House of Yahweh” (which is basically a cult), claimed that the world would come to an end when thermonuclear war would break out on September 12^th, 2006. When that didn’t happen, he changed the date to June 12^th, 2007, stating that the nuclear was had been “conceived” on September 12^th, but would be “born” 9 months later in September (because, you know, thermonuclear war totally follows the human gestational period). Hence: nuclear baby.

SUMMING UP A MIXED-BAG YEAR: TAKING THE GOOD WITH THE BAD

It’s the end of the world as we know it . . . and I feel fine. Kinda. Here's why.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Let's just keep this in mind for the next few days. Wake up, people.

The events of last week (shootings on both coasts, wars and rumors of wars, missiles being launched into space) have me down. And I guess I should be, since the Mayans tell us that the world is ending in a few days.

But I’m going to try and give you a silver lining, with the things that have made me stand up and take notice this past year.

TOP FIVE “WOW” MOMENTS OF 2012

Number One: Obama.

I will freely admit that I did not vote for Obama the first time around. I still believe that both major political parties are so beholden to big money that there is no way either party -- Democratic or Republican -- can properly represent the people who elected them. So I'm not that happy with either party.

But this time, the stakes were a little higher. And the right person won the election. (I know: my opinion, but this is my blog post. You write your own if you disagree.)

Surprising. It kinda renewed my faith in the American people. A little bit.

Number Two: Curiosity.

If you ever need reassurance that the human spirit can overcome just about anything, you should go two places: the slums, or offworld. In the slums, you have people like Mother Teresa doing incredible work; as soon as you leave our planet, you have people like Bobak Ferdowsi (mohawk guy) and John Grotzinger (Curiosity's project scientist) doing incredible things too. These people are scooping dirt and analyzing it on another planet! How much cooler can you get?

You may ask: why put Mother Teresa and a couple of JPL scientists in the same sentence? Because, like a true Trekkie, I believe that science is, in the future, going to be able to solve many of the socio-economic problems that plague our world today. (Obviously, that only will be true if we allow society to progress from where it is now.)

Number Three: self-discovery.

I am an artist. It has taken a long time to get there, but I have no reason to step away from it. I love art. I love creation. (I love getting paid to play music!) I love collaboration with other creators. If I had more money, I would employ more creators to collaborate with me. For now, I pay a few, and I work with a bunch for free, and we'll figure out the finances as we go. I still have a day job, and that provides me some money.

Number Four: family and friends and faith.

This has been one of the hardest years ever for my family, and yet here we are, still ticking, still plodding forward, still -- all of us in our own ways -- creating. Yes, I have a family of creators/artists, and that can be crazy-making sometimes, but my family is awesome. And my friends have helped keep me sane this year. Beers and friends after work have become more frequent, and that's a good thing. Finally, I have kinda “come back into the fold” -- or, I'm on a faith journey that I walked away from ten years ago -- and I'm cautious, but optimistic.

Number Five: the fullness of life.

Since I began this post with a quote from a 1990 movie (Joe vs. the Volcano), I'll finish it with a quote from a 1991 flick entitled Grand Canyon. Mary McDonnell's character is trying to make sense of her life, and she turns to her husband and says "Everything seems so close together…All the good and bad things in the world. Everything. I feel it in myself, even. And in us." And that's me. This world is so screwed up -- once a day I expect that someone is going to push a red button in some secret bunker somewhere and we'll all be dead; but every day, I also look up and see an incredible sunset, or have an awesome talk with a friend, or sit and play Boggle with my daughter, or sing an incredible song with my band, or watch some project that I work on do some amount of good in the world, or...

And that's it. The good and the bad are all mixed together. You can't separate it. You can't just have a perfect life. 'Cuz if you had a perfect life, you would never know how perfect it was, 'cuz you would have never seen the other side.

So go and live your life. Live it to the fullest. And enjoy the new year.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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THE EYES ARE NOT THE WINDOW TO THE SOUL

Recent studies suggest that we should pay attention to body language more, and facial language less. And...all the actors in the room go "Duh!"
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Interesting: have you ever gotten the wrong read from a friend's face? Have you ever been working on a teleconference with someone, and can't understand where the other party is emotionally?

Usually I tell people “I'd rather talk about this face to face.” But I might be wrong. According to a new study, “face-to-face” is not all it’s cracked up to be. Researchers in Jerusalem had an idea: try and figure out if we could tell a person’s emotional state just by looking at the face. Seems obvious, right? -- facial expression should be enough to tell what is going on in a person’s psyche. Guess again!

The researchers showed people three different types of photos: a) just faces, b) faces and bodies, and c) bodies with the faces removed; then they asked the people to tell them what was going on. The people, interestingly, could tell what emotional state was present in the photograph when they saw the body and the face, or just the body, but could not pinpoint the emotional state by looking solely at the face.

What gives?

BODY LANGUAGE RULES

Even more interestingly, when looking at the “body plus face” pictures, the respondents said that it was the facial expression that was significant. But take away the body, and they couldn't tell the emotion. So, even when we think the face and eyes are telling us what is going on, we are probably wrong.

Watching videos of myself perform, I totally understand this phenomenon. Look at my face, and I might look bored, or excited, or happy, or sad -- but those expressions often have nothing to do with my actual state. Look at my whole body, though, and something different happens: I am “in” the moment of the show.

CULTURAL BIAS

Okay, now, it gets weirder. Even when viewing faces, different cultures weigh different parts of the face differently when trying to figure out moods. Researchers in Glasgow compared a group of Chinese people with a group of Caucasian people, and watched how they took in facial expressions:

The study found that the Chinese participants relied on the eyes more to represent facial expressions, while Western Caucasians relied on the eyebrows and mouth. Those cultural distinctions could lead to missed cues or misinterpreted signals about emotions during cross-cultural communications, the study reported.

So, the next time you are confused about a face, understand that many of the cues that we think are giveaways on a face can be misleading. You might have a cultural bias towards reading faces a certain way, and even then the body is a better indicator of mood than the face is.

Wild, huh?

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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A FEW GEEKY THINGS

Some of the nerd/geek things I have been discovering over the past few months.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

One of the small joys in life these days is realizing just how much we have to be thankful for (I know, I’m a few weeks early). Mostly that comes from the fact that science has solved many MANY problems that plagued humanity for centuries. So call me a true believer in science. 

And never before have we had such a steady stream of quality science news and such at our fingertips. Here are a few of the places I find my science:

SCIENCE DAILY (http://www.sciencedaily.com/ and @sciencedaily on Twitter)

If you need some quick updates on new scientific discoveries going on around the world, this is the place to go. Broken up by topic, or just the day’s biggest stories, I almost always find something that interests me on their homepage.

EMILY LAKDAWALLA’S blog (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/)

Emily has the uncanny ability to get people interested in planetary science through imagery. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s like a planetary Indiana Jones (she’s a geologist) and loves all things geeky. She found a skirt on Etsy that was printed with a Martian horizon...it was really cool.

STARDATE (http://stardate.org/)

Stardate has a daily dose of fun astronomy facts.

SPOT THE STATION (http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/)

Not as useful, but wildly geeky-cool: NASA now has an app that will alert you when the International Space Station will be flying overhead your location. Did you know that it is the third brightest object in the sky (after the sun and moon)?

PLANETARY PHOTOJOURNAL (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/)

Never forget that these images are ours. We paid for them with our tax dollars. And the science -- and beauty -- is there for us to enjoy. Every day.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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PASSION PLAY

Walking into a new season with eyes wide open...once more summoning the energy to say a resounding YES -- to life, to work, to art...
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Think you have passion? Are you hearing voices?

I look around at all of my fellow CrazyTown bloggers, and I feel kinda ashamed.

See, I've been feeling sorry for myself lately. But here is Leah, admonishing everyone to get out and vote (you bet I will). Amanda is singing the praises of people who have too much passion to do just one thing (and I’m right there! -- just look at my byline). I don’t know if you could get much more beauty into a photo than Matthew does in these works of art (Leslie Scott’s Body Art company). Bob is showing energy even for this election by bringing a historical context to our presidential obsession.

And you know what? They are absolutely right. This is not the time for sitting back. This is not the time for wallowing in self-pity, or depression, or whatever.

We have work to do.

POLITICS

I have seen some pretty heartfelt, and well-reasoned, online treatises on politics recently. That gives me hope. Leah’s post gives me hope. Hope, because regardless of who wins all the elections (and remember, it’s not just a presidential election on November 6th!), we need an informed, engaged public. "The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum." (Adlai Stevenson) I am more than ever worried that we -- the American public -- will start to vote from a place of ignorance than with an informed, engaged mind. It’s inevitable that we disengage from the fire hydrant of societal/political facts and fiction we are fed every day, but disengaging is also the most dangerous thing we can do. Somehow, we must fight back, become informed, and become the government “of the people, by the people, for the people” that Lincoln spoke of in his Gettysburg Address.

ART

Don’t stop. That is all.

WORK

I have friends who are working in Japan, getting groups of women together who lost everything in the tsunami 18 months ago, and starting businesses with them -- making jewelry out of all the shattered pieces of pottery that litter the coast of northwestern Japan. Giving these women hope -- women who are broken themselves, but need a friend, need a network, need a reason to go on living.

I see no room in this world for stopping to wallow. Too much needs to be done.

And if you need proof, go volunteer somewhere. Find a school that needs some “rolling readers,” or a soup kitchen, or a Habitat for Humanity project near you.

 

Go...follow your passion.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
EMAIL HIM |  FACEBOOK | TWITTER | OTHER POSTS BY THIS AUTHOR