Ones and Zeros

It’s been a pretty good while now, and my posting was getting sparse before that.  Despite the news with health care, various items of note in economics, and more recently a guy with a bomb in his pants I’ve not been around.

My day job has been occupying a very large portion of my time for the last three or four months.  In engineering project work it’s not uncommon to have a “push” where long hours are required.  This is usually a week or two, occasionally as much as a month.  Three months is not common and was due to budget shrinkage with no work shrinkage, I’m supremely glad that’s over.

There are plenty of other people doing year-end retrospectives; let’s look forward here in a few areas.

Economy:  It won’t be getting better for many of us.  If your idea of economy = Wall Street, you’ll probably be ok for a while at least.  But Wall Street can’t be isolated from the real world forever.  The hangover in the lack of jobs and the consequent poor consumer spending will affect us for some years yet.  The stimulus helped, but it was too small.  It will also be years before the housing bubble is resolved as housing is comparatively illiquid.  In short 2010 will be a lot like 2009 without some of the higher drama perhaps.

Politics: What can I say here?  The GOP is against everything and for nothing.  The Dems are trying to keep everyone happy - a losing game - and ended up with a weak and watered down health care bill.  The next year looks like the same: the GOP will continue to be the party of the irrational tantrum and the Dems will continue to ignore the progressives that got them elected.  Lawrence Lessig is right.  Without reforming the election process, there is no progress.

Aviation: For me 2010 won’t bring a new rating as it did last year.  (Unless my company funds it, which is very unlikely.) In a less self-centered view, I’m told that all the GA aviation companies are focusing on glass panel instruments now.  The AOPA show in Tampa had very few people that were pushing round dials.  So expect the technology revolution in aviation to continue and to probably accelerate into new areas. The FAA is continuing to move toward a GPS-based nav system.  The little problem of single points of failure is dictating some sort of backup.  But GPS and WAAS is the way they’re going.

Technology: It seems like Apple may kick off their tablet computer early in 2010.  Google will follow with theirs of course. They’re both planning to remake computing as  we know it again.  They’ll probably both succeed in some way too.  It’ll be a big year.  The “maker” movement will continue to pick up steam and is an outgrowth of open source tech.  This is a good thing and offers hope for future technical growth.  The risks in tech are the ongoing dilution of privacy and security for our information.  I’m more concerned about out government and our companies misusing information about me that I am with terrorism.  The former is infinitely more common.

If we can survive the economy and the political battles of officials who’ve forgotten how they were elected, we’ll be ok.  I do believe things are getting better over the long run.  It is hard to see that long run on a day-to-day basis sometimes.  Keep the faith, and may your new year be a good year for you.

Pilots that fly past their destination airport in Milwaukee. Or, back in 2008, pilots that flew from Honolulu to Hilo, past Hilo with not enough fuel to reach the continent.  Fortunately, the latter woke up and turned back.  Apparently so did the former too.

These pilots lacked awareness since they were asleep (at least that’s my guess).  But we can lack awareness for many other reasons.  Walking to my car I was thinking of calling my wife, what I was going to tell her, wondering what to have for dinner, and watching the traffic on the road I was to walk across all as I took my phone out of my back pocket.  I fumbled my phone and dropped it - hard - on the brick sideway.  My iPhone no longer had it’s usual screen, but only a while screen with abstract black lines.

Lack of attention to the task at hand is the cause of many accidents: cell phone use by drivers, texting while driving a train, dropping a phone.  Ram Dass, Timothy Leary’s lab mate, used to say “Be Here Now”.  He got that from the old traditions of Buddhism and it’s not bad advice not just for avoiding accidents, but for many things.  People who want to loose weight eat less if they pay more attention to their food. I enjoy more and remember more of anything when I pay attention.

In a recent post I talked about adaptation.  You can’t adapt if you don’t see changes and new patterns, and you can’t see that if you don’t pay attention.  As my wife tells herself - and me, “watch what you’re doing”.  I’ve taken it as a westernized version of “be here now”.

I came across the phrase “normalized deviancy” recently. It’s the idea that we can get used to things that are not normal and we come to behave as if they were normal. Things like 1-2 hour commutes to work or wearing ties (or heels) perhaps. But this phrase has the embedded idea that there is a “normal”; I’m not so sure of that.

Anyone who wants to read the history of the world, or even just the many ways that people today live around the world should see that normal is a very flexible idea. Even in just one country the variation in the way we live can be high. But deciding what “normal” is this way is using it as a descriptive term. How about as a prescriptive term?

So what should “normal” be? We could decide that by figuring what we want, what’s good for us, or what we’re evolved to be. But I’m not sure that’s much better. Now we have to decide what is good to be able to measure what normal should be. So how do we describe what is good?  There are different value systems and what’s good in one environment isn’t good in another; there’s also a physical aspect to this as well as a moral or ethical one.

What we think of as “normal” is really seems to be an adaptation to our situation and our environment. My commute seems normal since I do it routinely and many people I know also have similar commutes. Flying into a rough strip in Africa or northern Canada is not normal because I only read about it online or in books. It’s healthy and a good survival trait to be able to adapt to one’s surroundings.

PTSD in returning vets might be an extreme example. In a war zone, being hypervigilant and not wanting to drive under overpasses help you live longer. Since the danger is high these are very strong adaptations. But they’re also adaptations not useful back at home so it becomes a problem.

Some adaptations, like pilots in Africa thinking rough brush airstrips are normal, are not completely successful. The rate of accidents for cargo aircraft that use these strips is significantly higher than similar pilots in developed countries. However it’s probably a reasonable guess that the accident rate is lower than it would be if the pilots didn’t adapt!

When I reach for something, a doorknob, a tool, or a pen, my hand automatically adapts to the shape of the object and I pick it up without thinking. I’ve picked up a similar object probably thousands of times before. A man with arthritis knows his hand won’t work as reliably. He learnes to recognized that and to take a bit more time and to beware of how it might go wrong. He adaptes to change.  One day I may have to as well.

Humans can be highly adaptable. Our brains are basically pattern recognition machines that can easily learn new patterns and responses to those patterns. The trick we have is to do is to keep adapting. One way is to let one generation die off and the next take over. This works slowly but reliably at a population level but is a lousy strategy for an individual.

A better way is be aware and to recognize changing patterns. And to respond to that change successfully we have to watch and be aware of things happening around us.  That’s requires effort and attention instead of going on mental autopilot.  Life is a full time job.

I spend my working days analyzing, designing, writing, and testing software.  But I’m not a software programmer, I’m an engineer.  Just like a writer isn’t a typist, I’m not a programmer.  A writer’s job is to communicate effectively, not to type.  But typing on a keyboard is what a writer does when working. Programming is a tool I use in my job to create software, but the goal is to make the software to fit a given need.

Just don’t call me a programmer, my title is software engineer.  Just wanted to get that straight.