Walking slooowly toward the door

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In grade school I became adept at timing a trip to the pencil sharpener (located next to the classroom door) so I arrived exactly at 3:00 p.m. and could bolt at the first sound of the bell and be the first one out the door.

I began a similar slow shuffle this week by announcing April 1, 2013 would be my last day of full-time employment at the company I have worked for the past 29 years.

Yes, that’s a lot of “notice,” but I won’t be 65 until next March and want to be sure to qualify for some of that great public health care for which the US is known and admired.

And there are a few things to hand off. Shoot, it’s going to take weeks to remember where I hid the master list of all the passwords for the company websites I’ve been tending.

I’m making an effort to not think of this move as retirement but haven’t come up with the right word. Sabbatical suggests I’ll be coming back to a full-time gig and that’s not likely. Freelancer has a sexy ring to it but sort of implies income. I have no interest in “consulting” anyone. So far, I like my buddy George’s suggestion: Soldier of Fortune!

The list of things I won’t be doing is pretty firm. No RV. No vegetable garden. No cruises.

“So, what are you going to do?” is a common question.

“I have no idea,” is a troubling answer for folks who have known me as a hopeless workaholic. And I understand their concern. I always insisted I would work until I dropped. This new let’s-see-what-happens Steve is a new and troublesome persona.

After driving the MINI Cooper that first time, I said, “Yes! No more cars that aren’t fun!” That’s sort of how I’m approaching this next chapter. Only fun and interesting stuff from this point on. (Not that making banners for the company websites wasn’t fun)

What bothers my friends, I think, is my lackadaisical attitude about this transition (metamorphosis?). I’m making an effort NOT to plan the rest of my life. I’ve come to believe such planning is folly (Planners scoff at this kind of talk). Planning is important, I suppose, if the outcome is important to you. But I’m trying accept any outcome (I’ll let you know how that goes).

As I walk verrry slooowly toward the pencil sharpener, I’ll probably share some of what I see and experience along the way. And I’m counting on those who have made the journey and bolted onto the playground to pass along their advice. I’d especially like to hear suggestions on interesting things to do, placed to go, people to meet. I might even take on a project or job along the way. (Will work for free if I can do it the way I want. $100K if you want to have some input)

Thought Cloud

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I’d like to have a tag cloud of my thoughts. A “thought cloud.”  I think it would be useful to see a cloud representation of my thoughts. I’m thinking almost constantly, but have no real data on what I’m thinking about.

I’ve been spending a fair amount in recent years, trying to observe my thoughts. To be aware of what’s happening in my head. One of the more challenging things I’ve attempted.

But what if there were a better way to monitor my thoughts, convert them to text, and show them to me. Last hour. Last 24 hours. Last week. Month, Year, whatever.

Would I be surprised by the results? I think so. Based on my reading and personal experience, we are rarely aware of our thoughts. You can test this by trying to be aware of your thoughts for sixty seconds. Listen to that voice in your head and jot down the keywords and phrases for one minute.

Could I do anything with this information? No idea. Would I really want to know? I would.

William Gibson Wired interview

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In the old days, if you wanted to become insanely knowledgeable about something like that, you basically had to be insane — you had to travel around the world, finding other people who were sufficiently crazy to know everything there was to know about that. That would have been so hard to do, dependent on sheer luck, that it kept the numbers of those people down.

But now you can be a kid in a town in the backwoods of Brazil, and you can wake up one morning and say, “I want to know everything about stainless steel sports watches from the 1950s,” and if you really applied yourself, to the internet, at the end of the year you would have the equivalent of a master’s degree in this tiny pointless field. I’ve totally met lots of people who have the equivalent of that degree.

I never wanted to be a collector of anything; I just wanted to pointlessly know really a lot about one thing

My friend Doug Coupland recently tweeted something to the effect that he was once again trying to get into Facebook but he said, “It’s like Twitter but with mandatory homework.” That might be another good way to describe it. With Twitter you’re just there; everybody else is just there. And its appeal to me is the lack of structure and the lack of — there’s this kind of democratization that I think is absent with more structured forms of social media.

Now, last week, 30 years ago? What’s the difference? What does it matter? It’s all there on YouTube. And so I find myself discovering things like a decade late, or I discover things before very many people have found them. It’s atemporal. It’s just all over the long calendar, and that’s going to make things different. But that’s been going on for a long time.

Full interview

Write software by talking

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“Sit in front of your computer and simply describe your requirements: “I want an app that lets me organize hiking trips. There should be a sign-up page, a map of hiking places, a calendar of events …” Just keep describing your requirements while the site takes shape right in front of your eyes. If you forget to include something, your computer will helpfully suggest features borrowed from similar websites on the Internet. Maybe the future of software won’t be quite that simple. But I do think that creating apps and websites will someday be no harder than building a PowerPoint presentation or using Excel. It’s heading that way.” — Scott Adams

Scott Adams: Gullibility

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“Interestingly, a person can be brilliant and well-informed but gullible at the same time because the brain uses different zones for different functions. I’d like to know who my brilliant-but-gullible fellow citizens are because those folks are a menace to society. The brilliant part makes them highly capable while the gullible part makes them dangerous. The ones who don’t become serial killers are voting. In terms of body count, which is worse?”

The Great Divide

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“Romney is a perfect representative of one side of the ominous cultural divide that will define the next generation, not just here in America but all over the world. Forget about the Southern strategy, blue versus red, swing states and swing voters – all of those political clichés are quaint relics of a less threatening era that is now part of our past, or soon will be. The next conflict defining us all is much more unnerving.”

“That conflict will be between people who live somewhere, and people who live nowhere. It will be between people who consider themselves citizens of actual countries, to which they have patriotic allegiance, and people to whom nations are meaningless, who live in a stateless global archipelago of privilege – a collection of private schools, tax havens and gated residential communities with little or no connection to the outside world.”

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

“Careers Are Dead”

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“There’s mounting evidence that the American labor market may never return to its pre-recession composition. The future is already here and it brings with it low-wage temporary or contract work as a way of life.

“According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 30% of American workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs – defined as earnings at or below the poverty line to support a family of four – in 2020. This number will remain virtually unchanged from 2010.”

Forbes

Scott Adams: Creativity

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“…all creativity comes from putting existing ideas into a mixing bowl then swirling the whole mess around to see what happens. The more ideas you are exposed to, the more likely one of your mixtures will produce something great. If you read any idea in this blog that you wouldn’t have thought on your own, your creative potential is increased. That’s a big deal because nothing of importance has ever been done without creativity. I’m motivated by the thought that I’m contributing to civilization’s creative pool.”

Race Against The Machine

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Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, by Erik Brynjolfsson

“Terry Gou, the founder and chairman of the electronics manufacturer Foxconn, announced this year a plan to purchase 1 million robots over the next three years to replace much of his workforce. The robots will mke over routine jobs like spraying paint, welding, and basic assembly. Foxconn currently has 10,000 robots, with 300,000 expected to be in place by next year.”

“If technology exists for a single seller to cheaply replicate his or her services, then the top-quality provider can capture most—or all—of the market. The next-best provider might be almost as good yet get only a tiny fraction of the revenue.”

“…the top 0.01% of households in the United States—that is, the 14,588 families with income above $11,477,000 — saw their share of national income double from 3% to 6% between 1995 and 2007.”

“About 90% of Americans worked in agriculture in 1800; by 1900 it was 41%, and by 2000 it was just 2%.”

The Business of War (VICE News)

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In the last couple of days I’ve watched three or four news documentaries produced by Vice.  The one below is titled “The Business of War: SOFEX”

If you invest the 20 minutes to watch this you might conclude — as I did — the world is fucked. Not a little bit fucked. Not “It’s okay, I think we can un-fuck this.” We are Ving-Rhames-Pulp-Fiction fucked.

This documentary explains SO much of what is happening in the world. As you watch it, try to imagine Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams (and the corporations they work for) doing this kind of reporting.

As I watched these reports, I kept contrasting them to the network news formats of the past 20+ years. Half-hour summaries with forest fires and floods at the top, followed by fluffy pretend news at the bottom. With lots and lots of commercials mixed in.

In all fairness, you can sort of imagine a piece like the one below on 60 Minutes but only after the teeth have been extracted.

I spotted the link to this documentary in my Twitter stream. I can play these on my iPhone, any time, anywhere. Or, using AirPlay to stream them to my big screen, watch them at home via Apple TV.

I can only assume the gasping, lumbering news organzations of yore know they are irrelevant but just don’t know what to do about it.

There is nothing on CNN or Fox or XYZ for which I’d pay cash money. But yeah, I’d pay for reporting this good.