Tag Archives: reading

So Oversimplified They Don’t Get You

Why the video trump the book in the Quest for communicating his ideas

Cal Newport, 2012, ‘The Clarity of the Craftsman’ in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work, NY Business Plus, ch.4.

Just as I was about to write a #triggered rant about this reading after I finished it, I decided to read up on who Cal Newport actually is… who he is writing to… and what he was ultimately on about.

As evident in his publications, they are mostly aimed at high schoolers or college students:

I also stumbled upon a Talks at Google video in which he makes a bit more effort than the book does in addressing the issues and explaining his ideas. But first, let’s breakdown the issues in the text.

Firstly, it is really difficult to understand the full context of this text without the rest of his book. So my critique of it is subject to the lack of certain contexts. That is, the author may have clarified or defined some of these points earlier in the book.

The author seem to take for granted the words he uses mean the exact same thing to everyone else, and fails to acknowledge any room for interpretation. He doesn’t define any of the terms he chooses to use repeatedly throughout the text. From the contents page down to the actual text itself, the author is prone to oversimplifying his concepts and other ideas he is referring to. And by doing so, reveal the complex relationships between them even more.

Some semantics worth elaborating upon would be:

“Be So Good”:

Good at what? Good in what sense? Not once throughout the text does he actually elaborate on what he means to be ‘so good they can’t ignore you’. What does this author define as good? Why good and not best, or better? Good is such an elusive term!

More Importantly – One might contemplate on the varying degrees on our individual scales. What do we all think is good, or good enough? Good for you might not be good enough for me, etc.

“Crafts”:

The writer interviews a handful of performers and establishes that whoever his readers are, no matter what kind of career or work they are involved in or plan to pursue, they should take on the “craftsman mindset”. Firstly, he doesn’t explain or contextualise his case studies. He generalises and ignores the various natures of different types of work. It almost feels like he was too lazy to go into depths. By emphasising ‘crafts’, it implies to readers they should obsess over the medium or means in which they create or work and not focus on what you want to do with it. Why give it such a misleading name?

“what you can offer the world” & “what the world can offer you”:

These phrases are not only vague in what they’re actually saying, but only seem to invoke by feeling in the readers that one is good for you and the other clearly not. By saying ‘what you can offer the world’, he could very well mean something along the lines of contribution to the larger things we care about (he does provide a better example in the video). But one can easily interpret this line as offering your services to the market, which many more people (in retail/hospitality for example) actually do and think they are “serving the world”.

“Passion”:

The writer uses strong and subjective language and again, fails to elaborate when needed. In the video below, he actually does address what is it about the word “passion” that he is against. This might also be addressed in a previous chapter in the book, but it is certainly not clarified within this chapter. In the video he speaks specifically of the “follow your passion” mindset, which he explains as being problematic due to the assumption that we all have preexisting passions and can be matched or assigned to specific jobs. In other words, he is saying don’t think of passions as the jobs you seek. Which is really good advice, only he didn’t really do it justice in the text. In the text, he seems awfully bias against anything to do with passion or self discovery; which honestly befuddled me.

‘Second (reason)…the deep questions driving the passion mindset – “Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?” – are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes-or-no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused…’

By listing a few generic examples of “deep questions” and then jumping to an extreme and far-fetched conclusion that: the passion mindset (which is not distinguished enough in the text from passion itself) will leave you ‘perpetually unhappy and confused’, He seem to assume he has achieved his explanation.

That argument projects, whether he intended it or not, a fundamental logical fallacy: Sophisticated questions are difficult to answer, so let’s not worry about them. It even sounds more like: life is not about living for yourself, it’s about ‘the quest for work you love’. Surely, he ain’t suggesting that, right? But by downplaying these philosophical questions while he continues to market his quote “be so good they can’t ignore you’ for the fifth time in the last ten pages, it positions his ideas in a very misleading context.

My conclusion is that this guy actually does make a lot of sense when he talks about these ideas in the video. But his text falls short in delivering the same. His Q&A in the video also brings out and clarifies his perspective even more.

What he wanted to say from this video:

Passion is not an entitlement nor does it preexist. It does take work to discover something we can call a sense of purpose. That purpose shouldn’t be about matching an interest to a job. And it often will overlap with what we need to contribute or offer to the world. Part of this might involve trying different roles, doing or making, dedicating those hours to immerse oneself in those environments to find out what in life fulfills or satisfies.
Achieving more ‘general lifestyle traits’ such as: autonomy, power, respect, impact, time, affluence, etc. are what gives people a real sense of satisfaction in what they do. Not the specific work itself. There are many possible paths that leads to these traits.
Building up the skills that you can offer to the market and will make you valuable. This maximises your opportunities and allow you to take control of your working life and lead towards achieving the more general traits in life that create fulfillment and satisfaction.

In my own experience:

Having gone through many of these phases throughout high school and 8 years of vocational and higher education, I can relate to his message in the video about focusing on attaining the skills or qualities you need before pursuing the larger, more fulfilling projects later in life, which will present themselves as you maximise your opportunities.

When I was in high school, family, my partner, and close friends often questioned and expected me to have a passion in the creative arts. They expected that I knew I was going to be a photographer for the rest of my life if I chose that path. I would never know how to respond to those expectations. I knew I wanted to be in the creative arts, but photography to be exact? I would tell them that I am pursuing photography until I discover something else in a similar field.

After a good 5 years in the field of contemporary art, I transferred to Media, and did a crash course in philosophy through my early electives. It wasn’t until I started being interested in the broader world that I found some sense of purpose. I became curious and begun to understand the world around me: science, technology, education, and other global and social issues. All of a sudden, filmmaking didn’t matter anymore. I had the epiphany that the medium I am training in is not the end game. It only provides the means for me to communicate or help others communicate important messages. I looked at the skills and abilities I have acquired in the past few years: art direction, photography, digital editing skills, technical knowledge and experience, experimentation, conceptual development, creative methodology, critical thinking and ability to think philosophically, crafting communication through multiple mediums. These skills and abilities can now be used to achieve a more fulfilling purposes of communicating important and valuable messages or be used to contribute to and solve more significant issues I care about.

Purpose unites skills and passion. Newport defines skills as what you can offer the world, and following your passion being what the world can offer you. On the contrary, I would argue that: Skills are what the world offers you which enables you to more purposeful work and pursue what you want to offer the world.

~~#Triggered~~

Industry 4.0

Self-driving cars + 3d printing + A.I. + Designer babies + Economics = Best Reading Ever!

In The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016), Klaus Schwab provides a global economic perspective on how the fourth industrial revolution is changing the way we live, work, consume, and think. Schwab highlights the mega-trends in science and technology which have lead to today’s physical, digital, and biological revolution. These new developments and innovations have significant impact on the economical, political, social, and individual levels.

Some areas of the reading that I found interesting or sparked some insights:

On the nature of work

The on-demand economy:

Projects are being compartmentalised and outsourced to independent workers around the world. ‘A series of transactions between a worker and a company more than an enduring relationship’ (p.47). We can already see this trend in media and other creative industries. Not only do more creative workers establish themselves as freelancers compared to workers in other industries, but this also appears to be the trend in the larger collaborative structure of creative industries e.g. when major production houses from the U.S. outsource visual effects work on their films to Australian companies, or when smaller production companies – who tend to specialise in areas of graphics, sound, and other production areas – collaborate on a larger scale project themselves.

The downside of the human cloud:

I have always been excited about the collaborative, content sharing and networking possibilities opened by crowd-sourcing. ‘Belonging to a global virtual network’ (p.48) is a very appealing thought to me. But it had never occur to me that there was a downside to it. Whilst enabling greater opportunities for skill sharing and more diverse ways of making a living, this new form of employment is currently under-regulated and prone to exploitation as companies are free from the requirements of employment regulation such as minimum wages, taxation, and social benefits. I am not disgusted by this new perspective, but appreciate how complex and delicate this fast-changing, technologically-driven economy is; and how this text has broaden my views on this topic. There is always two sides of a coin to consider. As Schwab summed it up: ‘it all depends on the policy and institutional decisions we make’ (p.49).

The importance of purpose:

Though this segment was brief, it struck me most personally. Younger generations are beginning to realise and understand the importance of viewing work and life as a unified concept, and the importance of passion and purpose in both. However, as work become more of a sense of purpose and fulfillment in life rather than a means to make ends meet for the younger generation, the economy is evolving to be more compartmentalised, and less personal and communal.

Karl Marx’s concern and Buckminster Fuller’s words contextualises a question I have been trying to figure out since the start of this year: For the past six months or so, I have been thinking hard and thorough about my strengths and weaknesses in terms of my career. I know myself well enough to say that I am thoroughly a generalist. This is my biggest strength as it gives me the ability to intuitively understand the world around me through the relationship of parts. But this is also my biggest weakness as the industry is heading in the opposite direction – particularly in its value of specialisation within the crowd-sourcing and skill sharing landscape. In this regard, I have very little to market professionally.

On the impact on governance

The impact on power:

The fourth industrial revolution has created a world that is more integrated, boundless, and empowering. But these liberations comes at a price. Schwab points out that:

‘With growing citizen empowerment and greater fragmentation and polarization of populations, this could result in political systems that make governing more difficult and governments less effective.’ (p.67)

As evident in the lack of regulation in the new work landscape, governments and legal systems around the world are often struggling to keep up with the fast-growing developments of the online and technological economies. Adding to this delay is the growing public engagement via the empowerment of social networks.

Power is becoming more elusive:

‘As Moisés Naím puts it, “in the 21st century, power is easier to get, harder to use, and easier to lose.”…With a few exceptions, policymakers are finding it harder to effect change…Micro-powers are now capable of constraining macro-powers such as national governments’ (p.68).

Whilst social empowerment is a liberty I do not take for granted, social opinion is gradually becoming a red herring among political debates. Leading to political parties trying to winning popularity contests rather than paying attention to game-changing developments and their significance. It is not just new economic systems that need new regulations. As Schwab emphasised, the advancements in the biological sector are the trickiest to regulate. Not only are we absolutely unprepared for the world these developments are leading us towards, but the ontological questions they challenge us with are ones we have not yet been able to successfully define.

Other topics in Schwab’s text that intrigue me greatly on which if I choose to elaborate, this post will not be delivered on time, even with the “backdating” feature…

Artificial Intelligence!
The Internet of Things!
Bioengineering and its ethical implications!
Virtual and physical integration!
The dynamics of discovery!

Progress

This week in the first half of the symposium, Adrian went through tips on how to write a critical media essay and how to inventively integrate footnotes as links and so on…

Then the entire second half (perhaps longer than that) was dedicated to one question that was posed from the class: How does The Long Tail affect the music industry.

Despite the symposiums usually being rather one sided or leading to a semantics debate, the discussion responding to this question actually didn’t go off-track. And there were some very relevant ideas to think about.

Media industries on the internet> a scale-free network> this model disrupts physical retail model> The hit market> Big media have to be generalists> Power law> The Long Tail> more sold by the long tail than mass entertainment> Constant change> in a transitional time> Industrial vs. Post-Industrial

20% of this post delivers 80% of the information

Notes based on Week 9: Reading and Symposium

Pareto’s Law: The 80/20 Rule

Observation of economic inequalities: In most cases four-fifths of our efforts are largely irrelevant.

80% land owned by 20% of population
80% profit produced by 20% employees
80% crime commited by 20% criminals
80% web links link to 15% webpages
80% citations go to 38% scientists

Bell curves:

pattern in most quantities in nature , with a peak distribution and very few on the extremes ends.
A signature of random networks.
Disorder

Power laws:

a continuously decreasing curve, implying many small events coexisting with a few large events.
Acknowledgement of hubs.
transition from disorder to order

How does order emerge from disorder?

Some fascinating visualizations of networks.

‘These

hubs

are the strongest argument

against the Utopian vision

of an egalitarian cyberspace. Yes, we all have the right to put anything we wish on the Web. But

will anybody notice?

If the Web were a random network, we would all have the same chance to be seen and heard. In a collective manner, we somehow create hubs, Websites to which everyone links. They are very easy to find, no matter where you are the Web. Compared to these hubs,

the rest of the web is invisible.’

(p.58.)

Collage on Readings

Here are some ideas from the week 8 readings:

“MY PART IN THIS STORY BEGAN, AS MANY STORIES DO, MORE OR less by accident, in a small town in upstate New York called Ithaca. And a place named after the mythical home of Odysseus is, I suppose, as good a place to begin a story as any. Back then, however, the only Odysseus I knew was a small cricket, who along with his brothers Prometheus and Hercules was part of an experiment I was running as a graduate student at Cornell University with my adviser, Steven Strogatz. Steve is a mathematician, but pretty early on in his career he started to become much more interested in the applications of mathematics to problems in biology, physics, and even sociology than in the math itself.”

In one of his paragraphs, Duncan J Watts demonstrated, with subtlety, an example of social networks. The end of his previous sentences is directly connected to the start of the next, hinting at the six degrees of connection. He also describes his involvement in the story as an ‘accident’. Knowing now that there is no such thing as random network or accidents, Watts choice of words plays cleverly on the very nature of networks.

@

In the most ‘creative’ way, I chose to use this symbol to represent how I felt about David Shield’s “Collage” text. The letter ‘a’ is situated within the circle, but it is also a part of the circle. Each fragment within the collage are individual identifiable parts that are also an indispensable contribution to the collage’s concept.

Usually, in our writing and reading, we communicate through making logical points, sequentially setting up our arguments, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. But in the “Collage” extract – ideas, notes, observations, arguments etc. are piled in an archival collage. Structure and logic has been temporarily abandoned by the author. In turn, the ‘visitor’ must experience each fragment individually, before assembling, in a reflective process, the logic or argument of the overall picture. This is an inspiring work and a beautiful and fascinating experience because, like Zen meditation, thought and judgement is suspended during the experience while the participant discovers every piece of the puzzle. And it is not only about the non-linear structure it created, but there is also a duality presented in this experience: one has to focus on the individual fragments while, at the same time, acknowledging the collective body that it is a part of.

Notes on reading

Reading: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)

metatext, paratext
‘we must write with an awareness that we are writing in the presence of other texts”
active reader-author
Comments as a form of hypertext – active participation from reader
Blogs: unsettling the borders between private and public spheres
‘borders of any documents on the internet are porous and provisional at best’
links and search tools limit the power of authority
When copying exactly a printed text into virtual space, experience and textuality changes, borders are broken
Endings: ‘there can be no final word, no final version, no last thought…Always a new view, new idea, and reinterpretation.’
Boundaries of open text: it is not a closed, complete, absolute object. Boundaries are blurred, not being what it is. (Derrida)…between absence and presence, inside and outside, self and other.

SIM•ulation ONE

The title of this blog is borrowed from an idea in S1m0ne (2002), a film by Andrew Niccol starring Al Pacino. The story revolves around a computer generated actress who was titled Simulation One. In similar ways, this blog is a simulation of a persona. In a recent tutorial, the notion of an ONLINE PERSONA was briefly mentioned. This inspired the title and direction of my blog. My previous works in photography were mainly concerned with identity and stereotypes and how much or how little we know another person. Following this interest, I plan to use this blog as an experiment to document the manifestation of an online persona.

In chapter 1 of one of this week’s readings Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Weinberger lists many interesting examples of peculiar situations involving uses of an online persona or username. Through these examples, exploring the effects and phenomena that stem from the fundamental questions of identity. Perhaps it is nothing different from our role playing in daily life. At work I perform a sales assistant; within the family I assume the role of daughter, sister; in a relationship I act as a girlfriend; and here, I carry out the role of a blogger.

So what happens when there is no need for resistance anymore, and we can see our virtual persona in the same light as our personas in the real world? At the moment, we are living a dual life in the midst of such a transition between this seemingly real non-virtual world and our online activities. Some are still resisting the new, some choose to be so immersed in it that they have left the past behind completely.

First Non-lecture

This week we had our first Q&A style symposium, it was an interactive discussion between a panel of teachers and the students. It was quite an effective way to get the specific information you want to know: although there was a general topic, the direction of the symposium was driven by questions from teachers and students. It was organic and non-directional. Its dynamic structure allowed spontaneity and free flow of interaction. It is constantly shaping much like the internet itself. And on many levels resonate with our blogging experience and this week’s reading, Literary Machines by Ted Nelson on hypertext.

However, there are some cons to this ‘interactive lecture’. As there is no specific structure, the information that is generated (half-spontaneously throughout the discussion) may not be as clear as if it were planned and thought out sequentially. After all, it is also important to be able to communicate teachings and ideas in such a way that it is well received and understood by many. Also it would be less messy, if one question or answer were finished before jumping around to another idea or in a different direction. With that said, the benefit of a Q&A session is that it allows a topic to then be explored with more depth if it is done in a slightly more organised fashion.

This week’s session revealed some intriguing and surprising facts: that the millions of Youtube song covers are actually illegal due to the breach of copyrights on lyrics! And that only the copyright owner can prosecute. It was no surprise though that we discovered more grey areas when it comes to policies in the virtual territory. All this makes me feel a little less comfortable than I already was about blogging.

Creative Commons

I have thought a lot about how Youtube has allowed musicians to collaborate and virtually perform together. I also heard about actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s online collaborative production company hitRECord, it was a concept that was just as foreign to me as when I got my first email account. But this is the first time I have heard about Creative Commons. Where have I been?! And now it all makes sense!

Discovering this is quite a big deal for me. Thinking back to when I watched this BBC documentary, ‘Planet Ants: Life inside the colony’, about ant colonies as super-organisms that share all information in order to achieve outcomes that are impossible for one. It inspired me to think very differently about the way we should view our world and interact with each other. That we should aim to be absolutely selfless (or rather to expand, boundlessly, what we include as self) in sharing and responding creatively in order to produce an outcome that wouldn’t exist if we hold on to the idea of ownership and confine the way we define our ‘self’.

Just imagine if we behaved as a super-organism, instead of fighting and competing against one another, I’m sure space-travel would be a common means of transport by now.