Smarter Planet

Earlier today, Sam Palmisano, IBM’s chairman, delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations called “Smarter Planet”. In it, he outlined IBM’s vision for the future, a vision where technology helps improve people’s lives all over the world by becoming “digitally aware and interconnected”. But the thing that interests me is how the proof points deal almost entirely with efficiency problems: electricity losses from the grid, wasted food, petrol burned while sitting idly in traffic, and more besides.

The timing of the announcement couldn’t be better. As I stated at the end of my previous post, the topic of efficiency has been on my mind for a while now and quite serendipitously, this gem gets dropped into my lap. I didn’t plan to start writing about it so soon, but I got caught up in the Zeitgeist sweeping through the IBM community.

Let me start by stating the problem: humans are manifestly inefficient; the primary evidence being the amount of waste that we generate. Our limited brains and selfish nature mean that we spend most of the time doing things that are either necessary for our personal survival, or leads to our pleasure. So what a rare time in history we find ourselves in today, when humanity is starting to wake up to the fact that its collective burden on the environment is causing negative change. Scientists are even beginning to label this as a new epoch: “the Anthropocene” – the time when human activity started having a significant impact on the earth.

Like most, I worry about the future, but I tend to focus on unusual resource management issues, such as what will happen if we keep flinging our limited terrestrial resources out into space? And I think several people have heard me talk about my career aspirations as a garbage sorter (it’s not enough to separate the recycling from the ordinary rubbish in my own home, I want to do it for everybody else too). It is from these thoughts that spring my visions for the future.

I dream of crazy machines that liquify garbage, with nanobots to sort the output into piles of base molecules and elements ready for resuse. I imagine computers that can keep track of every single object on earth, so nothing in good, working condition that could be reused by somebody, somwhere, is ever discarded. I’ve considered starting a global database of instruction manuals and spare parts, so that whatever can be fixed, will be. All of this makes perfect sense in my head – I just wish somebody, or some business, would make it a reality. And it seems IBM could very well be that business.

I often tell people how much I love my job. Now that it has become apparent that IBM’s vision aligns so closely with my own, I know that I couldn’t be happier anywhere else.

Cooking up some social change

The Sunday Telegraph ran an article last month on a surprising phenomenon: cookbooks are selling better than ever despite the financial crisis. The journalist, Charles Miranda, points out the wartime themes chosen by notable celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith, and offers it as evidence that the public (in the UK at least) are adopting a recession mindset. However, I think that the global downturn has resulted in more than just people rediscovering the joys of cooking; the attractiveness of a lifestyle financed through credit* has lost its glossy appeal.

I find this heartening, because it’ll now be easier keeping up with the Joneses. Not that I’ve ever been particularly envious of others’ houses, cars, share portfolios or whatever, but there are times when I just know I’m being Compared; for example: “You’re still in the same job? You know you could get more if you look elsewhere/had more ambition/changed roles once in a while,” or “You really should invest in shares/property/super to get ahead.”

Despite the many attempts in the past, I just can’t muster up enough enthusiasm or motivation to climb to the top of the heap. The pyramid view of the world never rang true for me, and now with this credit crunch, the pointy end is starting to collapse: climbing the social ladder by using credit to live beyond your means is banished, and people are learning to save instead of spend (or cooking at home instead of eating out). Now we have a much more level playing field, and I really hope that these changes in behaviour will drive a stake through the heart of our current capitalistic, consumeristic, materialistic society… said he who in the intervening hours since writing that last sentence, spent $429 on a brand new Dyson vacuum cleaner. Mwahaha!

I strongly believe that this economic rationalisation, along with the environmental issues currently being played out on the world stage, will lead to a new social order, which for now I’ll simply describe as “Efficiency” and leave the elaboration for a later post. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I’m looking forward to finally spending some time trying to articulate it.

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* I have a slight racist tendency in my belief that the love of credit is a malady that mainly affects Western society, but a few friends have said that South Korea is also in a state of near-collapse due to a high level of consumer debt.

On mediocrity and undeserved praise

I was greatly heartened today to see an opinion piece in last Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald that spoke of a topic which has also been very irksome to me. In my case, it is the tendency for people in church to “over-express” themselves in heaping on praise after any kind of performance, whether good, bad or in between. As the article describes it “… we have become infected with the US disease that sees audiences on their feet no matter how mediocre the work or inadequately it is presented.”

Say that to somebody at church, and you will inevitably be met with a response that includes words such as “generosity”, “encouragement” etc. Sure, by all means be gracious in your acceptance of their otherwise dire performance, but why reward it?? How is it anything but mental and/or emotional manipulation? Personally, if I knew or felt that my own performance was crap, then a standing ovation will just make me feel contempt for the audience, because I will think that they know it too, and are ovating me (that sounds rude, doesn’t it?) out of charity, or worse. But that’s me. I’m sure there are some people out there who are encouraged by that sort of thing.

The other aspect of it is the cheapening of extravagance. This too, is covered more eloquently in the article, about how every marvellous thing has been taken and reduced down to a mere token gesture by the frequency and mindless ease with which it is being used.

So, in future if you’re up on stage giving the performance of your life, and at the end of it I’m still sitting down, don’t worry. It means that I have respectfully considered your act and found it not quite deserving of my highest praise. And if you do get a standing ovation from me then you know you’ve truly performed exceptionally. What are these other turkeys going to do? Start jumping up and down in their seats? Sheesh.

Intelligent Design not very intelligently designed

You know, I completely understand what the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) are trying to accomplish, but I disagree 110% with their means of doing it.

To put it simply, the teaching of evolution is causing kids (who sometimes have a tendency to grow into adults) to develop a world view that may become an intellectual and moral road block to somebody’s willingness to adopt Christian beliefs and behaviours – eg. evolution implies that widespread procreation helps to ensure the survival of the species due to genetic diversity. Therefore, children may think that sex with multiple partners is a normal and acceptible behaviour, which obviously goes against the teaching of Christianity, which promotes sex within marriage and monogamy.

Therefore, what ID tries to achieve is to remove these “seeds of thinking” from schools so that they might end up with a more level moral playing field in regards to not having to deconstruct pre-conceived notions, before applying their own.

It is just very sad that the way they have chosen to address this is to try and establish equivalence between dogma and science, and in doing so have distorted religion into something that it was never intended to be. The bible itself says a whole bunch of stuff about how infallible God’s word is, and how one should not being ashamed of it. But the proponenents of ID have turned Christianity, and God, into a thing of ridicule. I can’t see how these people can conscionably refer to themselves as Christians any more. It’s shameful, and not a little pathetic.

Where religion has a purpose is to define a set of morals by which one can choose to live. Whether a person wants to subscribe to that set of morals should be entirely left to the individual’s assessment as to the merits of that particular way of living. Just like we don’t allow children to vote, we should not be placing the choice of moral stance into the hands of minors, until such a time that they are able to be trusted to make such a decision. Educators should be tasked with ensuring that our children have all of the necessary information to make that descision. This is where the ID folks have gotten very confused. They should have pushed for mandatory religious studies, rather than trying to shoehorn religion into science.

Granted, children will then also need to learn about Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Scientology, etc. etc. but if they have as much faith in what they believe as their bible tells them to have, then they shouldn’t have to worry which of these will be chosen.

Separation of church and state

I read something today that got me really riled up. On a discussion board that I frequent, some guy was complaining that the National Parks Service (US) had no right to put books advocating Creation in its bookstores because of the principle of separation of church and state, and because the NPS is a government owned service. To me, this is stupidity.

Being Australian, I don’t claim anywhere near the level of knowledge of US history as a local would, but as I understand it separation of church and state is supposed to be a constitutional guarantee of sorts to protect individual freedoms. That is, by not allowing religion to control government (or government run services), people will not be forced into living or acting according to the edicts of any religion against their will. Conversely, government is not allowed to pass laws in regards to the establishment of any religion.

So tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that putting a book about Creation into a NPS bookstore is restricting anybody’s rights not to believe in Creationism (and Christianity). Rather, it seems to me that people like this guy are using separation of church and state as a tool to purge religion from things that they wish to own for themselves. Ironic, given that atheism itself is a belief (and hence could be considered a religion), not to mention a minority one.

Do you agree or disagree? Post your thoughts in the comments section below!