Category: Culture

A Teenager ≠ All Teenagers

View at Medium.com

This article from Andrew Watts, a 19-year-old student at the University of Austin, contains some interesting insights on teenage usage of social media. He speaks from a particular perspective1 and provides some unique thoughts on the various networks in use.

Did you know the first use of the phrase “teenager” to describe a group of people was in 1944? That’s only 60 years ago.

Shortly after reading Andrew’s post, I noticed that danah boyd wrote a great response to Andrew’s post. Her biggest insight 2 is that we mustn’t forget that Andrew doesn’t speak for all teenagers.

Andrew is very visible about where he stands. He’s very clear about his passion for technology (and his love of blogging on Medium should be a big ole hint to anyone who missed his byline). He’s also a college student and talks about his peers as being obviously on path to college. But as readers, let’s not forget that only about half of US 19-year-olds are in college.

If you work with young people and are interested in understanding the complex nature of how they approach the same tools you may use (like Facebook, Twitter) then read both. Andrew provides insight into one perspective of social media usage and danah reminds us to keep the keel even. Let me know what you think with a comment below.

Shubhro Saha on why software engineers should write

Software engineers should write because our craft is increasingly collaborative. Open source projects invite worldwide participation, while industry products often require an army of engineers. (Google Maps has 1100 full-time employees!) Good writing– whether it be in a GitHub comment, code review, or technical documentation– facilitates clear, concise communication for projects like these to move forward.

I’m going to take Shubhro’s essay on why software engineers (i.e. programmers, developers) should write one step further. Everyone should write about their craft. Database administrators, project managers, accountants, plumbers, Wal-Mart door greeter, you name it.

Writing is thinking. Writing helps you to understand your work better. To take a step back from the hustle and bustle and reflect on what you’re doing. You ask different questions about your craft when you take a moment to think and put it down in words for others to read.

O Human Star

After Nimona ended I’ve been looking for another interesting web comics series. I’m rather picky. The art has to be solid and consistent and the writing the same. I love sci-fi elements and anything that approaches the genre with a fresh voice. I think I’ve found my next obsession – O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti.

From the description on the recently successful Kickstarter,

Alastair Sterling was the inventor who sparked the robot revolution, and because of his sudden death he didn’t see any of it. That is, until he unexpectedly wakes up in a robot body that matches his old one exactly and finds out that 16 years have passed. Brendan Pinsky, Al’s former research partner and secret lover, now runs one of the largest robot manufacturers in the country. And Brendan’s dearest project, Sulla – a highly advanced robot with a mind copied from Al’s – is now living as a teenage girl.

Whaaaat? It’s as amazing as it sounds. Questions about gender, identity, mystery, what it means to be human – all great hooks for a story on their own – wrapped up into one beautifully written and illustrated story.

My only gripe is that I binged on every page and am now caught up. I have to wait to read the rest! Join me and be sure to start at the beginning!3

Unreachable Time and a Rant Against Voicemail

I’ve been at my employer for over 3 years now.4 The entire time I’ve been here my voicemail message has said the following:

“Hello, you’ve reached Chris Koerner. I’m often away from my desk and don’t respond quickly to voice mail. The best way to contact me is to send me an email at me@work.net or if it’s urgent call me on my cell at 314-555-2456. Thanks!”

So, don’t leave me a VM, try my cell or email. I’ll answer my cell from a work-prefix number when I’m at work.5 I respond to email in a few hours at most.

My wife finds it amazing that I’m able to do this. That my boss doesn’t prevent this or that I haven’t gotten in trouble yet. Here’s my secret. I never asked my boss how I should make myself accessible and spend my attention. I decided that. He trusts me. I said, for me, the best way to get my attention is via email or cell call. Voicemail sucks.

Short of that. I’m unreachable. I think that’s important. Even with all the responsibilities I have and all the various ways to get in touch with me, sometimes I will not be available. I might be busy with a big project and a deadline. I might be in a meeting.6

I’m still accessible – even faster than voicemail! – and I’m polite about it. The important thing for me is making sure that the time I have allotted to get work done is as productive as possible. I use the tools I have – email, phone, IM – in the best way possible. To me, being accessible via voicemail is the same as being accessible via fax. Ancient, cumbersome, and a pain for all parties involved.

Voicemail is slow. Like most folks I read much faster that someone can talk. If I’m familiar with a topic I can quickly read an email and respond.

Voicemail also introduces ambiguity. Did they say ‘Six five seven two” or “Six five six two”? I’d have to play back the message if I missed a number, address, etc. 7

The tools we use should make us more productive and efficient. We should delight clients and co-workers with our responsiveness. Clunky, outmoded tools like voicemail don’t help us. I encourage you to look at how you’re using things like voicemail and see if there isn’t a better, more productive and friendly way to manage your attention and time.

Leave me a voicemail comment with your own ideas.

Lumpy Links

Here’s a lump of interesting articles I’ve come across over the past few weeks.

I got to see Jeffery Veen present at WordCamp San Francisco a few weeks ago. This video really hits home regarding some of our work at Mercy.

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Moving Past Default Charts (in R) – did you know R can make pretty charts?
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The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling – to say more would spoil the story.
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Ryan Goodman talks about why culture is the important part of any analytics project.
“Driving a culture where people think visually is not about a faster way to create bar charts. After carefully walking through the “people” aspect of driving a visualization roadmap, I asked the attendees (60/40 mix of business and IT professionals) to collaborate in micro round table discussions focused on technology. First, they took turns painting a perfect picture of what the optimal technology mix would look like. Immediately after they went through the self admitting process stating their organization’s current deficiencies. Sure enough, discussions evolved from technology to “people and process” and the body language quickly changed watching from the front of the room.”
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Michael Jordan (no, not the athlete) on the delusions of big data,
“Now, if I start allowing myself to look at all of the combinations of these features—if you live in Beijing, and you ride bike to work, and you work in a certain job, and are a certain age—what’s the probability you will have a certain disease or you will like my advertisement? Now I’m getting combinations of millions of attributes, and the number of such combinations is exponential; it gets to be the size of the number of atoms in the universe.


Those are the hypotheses that I’m willing to consider. And for any particular database, I will find some combination of columns that will predict perfectly any outcome, just by chance alone. If I just look at all the people who have a heart attack and compare them to all the people that don’t have a heart attack, and I’m looking for combinations of the columns that predict heart attacks, I will find all kinds of spurious combinations of columns, because there are huge numbers of them.

So it’s like having billions of monkeys typing. One of them will write Shakespeare.”

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The UK government is working on a huge (some might even say ‘Big”) data sharing program of anonymoized health data. One of the concerns being raised? Communication of what’s being shared and how.
“Many of the concerns care.data critics cite in opposing the program, such as patients being under-informed, doctors being at risk of losing their patients’ trust, and insurance companies having access to the data“