Easy Rider is cool: and as it’s from the decade that invented cool, the 60s, it’s everything you expect - messy, drug-riddled, hairy and hippy. There’s no slickness or shine here: just folks kicking back.

Easy Rider presents the world as suits it best: there’s no suburban American, just little towns and vast expanses of beautiful and wild desert. The visuals are perfectly offset by classic American music - country and rock ‘n’ roll - and even the editor seems to be high at times, with wild cuts and babbled scenes.

There is a back story to Easy Rider, and it has some good themes: freedom being one. For liberals such as myself, it’s a particularly chilling illustration of how conservative America isn’t as free as it thinks it is: Jack Nicholson hits the nail on the head in his central speech of the film:

Billy (Denis Hopper): What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about.
George (Jack Nicholson): Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it - that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. ‘Course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.

Ultimately, though, watching Easy Rider as social commentary is probably going to result in disappointment: there are more intelligent alternatives. The best way to enjoy this film is just to chill out and let it flow (and I wouldn’t care to suggest you how do that). Peace, man.

I’ve written about synchronicity vs. asynchronicity before, but I wanted to revisit the subject because it seems to be so key to modern services; as more and more communication mechanisms evolve out of available technology and entrepreneurs’ imagination, understanding customer’s usage patterns will be important when developing businesses around them. An excellent article by Gregor Hohpe, Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit (included in Joel Spolsky’s Best Software Writing Vol. 1), is an examination of why understanding computer science concepts such as 2PC (and, I would argue, synchronicity) is important when engaging in business process engineering. There’s a large overlap between business and software engineering here, and this is why IBM sells products like WebSphere Process Server together with business consultants to help customers implement them. There are a number of other essays in Spolsky’s excellent book which also discuss related subjects.

Clay Shirky, in his essay A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy (also included in the same volume; the online copy is edited slightly differently from the printed one), notes how online (synchronous) discussions frequently descend into talk about sex - and that sexual banter is much more common in synchronous communication than asynchronous (how often have you flirted with someone over the phone compared to email? - please, no anecdotes in the comments section). I’m not a psychologist, but I assume that this has something to do with it being hard to retain the thrill of adult banter over the course of a (potentially lengthy) asynchronous discussion. The same arguments probably apply in a less dramatic fashion to non-sexual communication.

There’s a related observation to be made about the perceived economics of people’s time. In general, most folks implicitly value synchronous time as higher than asynchronous - if I ask advice of a mentor over a half-hour coffee, I feel more indebted to him than if he spends half an hour hour answering my email. I suspect the reasons are a combination of my having accurate information (I know exactly how long he spent drinking the coffee), the start-up and tear-down time (he actually took 5 minutes to get to the coffee shop), and knowing that I have his undivided attention (he wasn’t multi-tasking). Nevertheless, we still continue to rate synchronous time more highly than its opportunity costs compared to asynchronous time.

To relate the two assertions, wouldn’t you rather spend half an hour in person with your spouse / significant other / other politically correct phrase than an hour writing and exchanging emails with them? Synchronous communication has a strange attraction than its poor cousin doesn’t - despite all of asynchronicity’s time-shifting advantages. This is going to be a big challenge for a multi-time-zone world.

Fascinating. This 2-day old article regarding a German plane bomb plot made the front page of the Der Spiegel website, but never came anywhere near the front page of the BBC one (this eventually made an appearance, hidden away). Perhaps British folks are expected not to care about German travellers? Maybe alleged terrorist threats are now that commonplace? Or is the BBC just not quite as capable as it many believe it to be? Our ‘trusted’ news source slips past day by day without asking the most basic of questions in most situations (mostly, ’show me the evidence’). It’s immoral that I would face a £1000 fine for having a box of electronics and refusing to pay for this (I don’t own a TV).

A truly great man. The world is poorer (in every sense) with his passing. Russ Roberts was fortunate enough to interview him only a few months ago - his brilliance shone through even at the age of 94. From another interview in 2004:

There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.

Update: The New York Times has a detailed story and biography.

‘What’s sex?’ - Betty

Pleasantville is a favourite film of mine. Powerful on many levels, it manages to captivate the attention as well as entertain and give pause for thought.

The premise is simple; David (Tobey Maguire) is given a remote control that allows him to enter the TV set and the programme of Pleasantville with his sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon). This mysterious start to the film is a well-trod one (Gremlins and Back to the Future being well-known previous examples), but it works without too much tedium. The world of Pleasantville that they enter is a black and white sitcom set in the 50s with bland, inoffensive content. David loves this programme, but, egged on by his sister’s behaviour in having sex with one of the town’s other teenagers (in a place where holding hands is risqué), he soon begins to encourage the townspeople to rebel and investigate their adventurous side. Apparently too much sex means poor quality basketball the next morning, but as each townsperson’s innocence is challenged, the town begins to turn from black and white to colour, piece by piece, in a most beautiful manner, as they realise their greater potential.

The film is a superb parody of conservative social values: everything the townspeople hold dear is challenged by David and the growing band of ‘coloreds’. There’s more than a nod towards the segregation in America of that period, with a separation of the coloreds from the non-coloreds as the more conservative folk (led by mayor Big Bob - played the always excellent J.T. Walsh - sadly his last film) try to resist the growing awareness of beauty and variety. There are some truly touching scenes, such as where Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels) sees an art book for the first time - his reaction looks like Newton’s would if you showed him a 747. The film also investigates Pavlovian response, as George (William H. Macy) highlights in a humourous scene where he seems incapable of understanding why his dinner is not on the table.

Ultimately Pleasantville is not only great fun, and funny to boot, it’s also deep, meaningful, and has a happy ending. What more could you want? This is a film to be enjoyed.

As I’ve mentioned before, I regularly listen to the Econtalk series of podcasts; along with TEDTalks, they are one of the highlights of my [vod,pod]cast week.

An Econtalk podcast on the subject of religion a few weeks ago was the first I haven’t fully enjoyed. Larry Iannacone, the guest that week, outlined a theory he has spent many years developing: the amount of religious participation in a market (e.g. a country) is correlated with the amount of religious freedom permitted. He alleged that the USA was a good example - somewhere that had constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom, and subsequently widespread religious belief. This argument has intuitive power (when people are more free to do stuff their own way, they are more likely to take part in it), and seems empirically justified too (I didn’t spend long on the ARDA website he linked to, which contains more statistics on this than one can shake a stick at).

However, Iannacone went on to say some things about average education levels of religious folk vs. non-religious folk that, as an agnostic atheist, made me rather uncomfortable. He didn’t really discuss how these education levels were measured, or how, if at all, they might be biased towards religion. Further digs at Ayn Rand (I’m not an objectivist, but I am a libertarian) seemed a bit below the belt.

This isn’t to say that Iannacone’s statistics seemed implausible; quite the opposite. If anything, they are a good illustration of how economics can sometimes clue us in on the truths we don’t really want to hear. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel a little more comfortable when I saw the case for the defence (admittedly without the economic content) presented by Richard Dawkins a few days later in The Root of All Evil - which is worth seeing, even if the arguments are a little simplistic.

Second Life is an idea I want to like. It’s not a game, and it’s not just for playing around either (despite the slightly frivolous avatars and other trivialities imported from actual games). Some of my colleagues from IBM in various R&D labs around the world - such as the Emerging Technologies Lab here in Hursley - have been doing an admirable job of promoting Second Life as a genuine business tool (articles on Slashdot, the BBC), and I think it’s great that IBM is looking at using something so bright and fresh.

Nevertheless, Second Life is in a dangerous period. The early adopters are familiar with it now, and there some important challenges to be overcome if it is to break into the mainstream:

• It needs to shake off the geeky image, as Google, Wikipedia, and others have done before. This is essential for mass sign-up. There is a huge group who will equate it with MMORPGs such as the famous World of Warcraft, and an even larger one who simply aren’t aware of its existence.
• It needs to become more robust. The demands Second Life makes on one’s machine are significant, which currently denies a huge potential market, and the client and world in general are not particularly stable - frequent updates and glitches will not be tolerated by most folks. The only way this seems likely to happen in practice is to slow the world’s technology changes for a while so they are further behind the hardware development curve.
• Second Life is a lot like the house that Wikipedia built; great from 30,000 feet, but rough round the edges when you zoom in. Left-overs from experiments are everywhere, and the world itself lacks coherency. I’m not convinced this is necessarily harmful by itself, but it is a problem that needs addressing to avoid frustrating impatient later adopters. Wikipedia has done a good job of starting to fix this with voluntary task forces attacking accuracy problems and polishing the edges. Second Life probably needs the same.
• Most of all, Second Life needs to decide what it is for. This isn’t to say that Linden Lab needs to do this (although they’d do well to encourage it if they want to stay in business), but somebody sure does. I’ve seen Second Life used for meetings, lectures, classes and similar functions, but other use cases seem to have so far evaded it. I’m sure there must be some more innovative stuff to come; Second Life is, after all, a brand new interface to manipulate data with. Yes, OK, it’s not the first 3D interface by a long shot, but it is the first with such a vast user base and such a high degree of customisability.

Many folks propose that Second Life is merely a ‘taster’ - the Yahoo of virtual worlds - and that the Google is still to arrive. Others foresee a gloomier future. I hope that isn’t the case - I want to like virtual universes, I really do. But like most people, I want to use it for something constructive - a half-way house between a communication tool and a game is no fun. Please, Second Lifers, invent a value proposition.

Update 2006-12-13: Clay Shirky’s analysis of Second Life is spot on.

Here’s a fun thought experiment: imagine what innovations would be necessary, feasible, or useful if the fundamental biological or physical restrictions of our world were different: not generally, but in a specific area.

For example, let’s say that the hair on our heads grew not at the rate it does now - approximately 0.5mm/day - but at 1m/day. It seems clear that hairdressers, as least as they are currently organised, wouldn’t be able to keep up. Either we’d need hairdressers to be everywhere and very efficient, or, more likely, we’d need some form of automated haircutting machine - perhaps with one installed in every bathroom. Brides-to-be would struggle to look just-so at the right moment, so there’d need to be an emergency hairdresser on standby.

Another example, perhaps even more far-fetched, but nevertheless pertinent - what if rubbish expanded in volume in an unbounded way after being disposed of - at a modest rate of, say, 10% a year? We’d already have had to have found a way of either vastly cutting down on rubbish disposal or offloading it to other planets - or perhaps, more sinister, cutting down on the population generating it.

Both of the above scenarios are clearly nonsense given our current understanding of science, but they help in jogging the brain into thinking in a more open-minded mode, and they clarify the consequences of our actions (although rubbish doesn’t expand, we are using more landfill space every year - the scenario merely amplifies the logical conclusion).

Here’s some more to try:

• The average air temperature at ground level in temperate areas is -50°C.
• Most insects are fatally dangerous to humans, and almost impossible to vaccinate against.
• Water cannot be frozen artificially.
• Paper decays within 2 months.

Is this a new technique? I’ve never come across it anywhere.

For those who don’t keep up with such things, the American car industry is in big trouble. Detroit’s sales have been declining for some time, hurt by high costs, and Japan is stepping in to take their place. Some Americans, of course, will only buy American, but many seem to be taking the more pragmatic approach. High gas prices and a preference for marketing big cars and vans among America’s car markers haven’t helped.

Chevy seems to be upping the ante with a controversial new advert for their Silverado truck - with an admittedly catchy tune (video; I’m not sure what Stephen Colbert has to do with it). A recent Slate podcast deconstructs this in detail; suffice to say that images of Katrina and Vietnam are hardly likely to avoid heated discussion. A slightly blunt and clumsy parody is already doing the rounds.

This is all particularly interesting at a time when alternatives to petrol-guzzling SUVs finally seem to be becoming viable. David (site down at the time of writing) recently discussed an In Business podcast that looked at the Tesla Roadster, the first electric car that seems to actually have both a realistic marketing and engineering story. Tesla claim a 135 mpg equivalent energy consumption and 0-60mph in 4 seconds: not a bad combination. The car is currently being marketed only in California due to EU regulatory problems (please, government, get out of the way of the entrepreneurs saving the world). But it looks like it might finally herald the start of a more sustainable future.

I don’t think it’s an unreasonable prediction to say that the car industry will be one to watch closely over the next decade.

(Using big words gives me a cheap thrill).

Has anyone else noticed that the word ‘expert’ is changing its meaning, becoming more generous? It seems like the bar for becoming an ‘expert’ is lower than it once was (good examples can be found on the 6 o’clock news). Of course it’s hard to measure this other than empirically, but it’s fun to play the mental exercise - are you an expert in anything? I’m going to assert arbitrarily that unless you know more about a subject than 95% of the people who are in some way experienced in the field in question (by the most narrow definition feasible), then you’re not an expert. I think this approximates to the definition of ‘expert’ most people used to have, but not any more (I’d postulate the figure is now drifting in the 60% region). My strict definition of ‘expert’ means I’m not one in economics, film, libertarianism, SOA, or a variety of other fields I’m interested in. I don’t find this depressing, though - I think it just makes the word more useful. A vague definition is the enemy of precise language (something Strunk and White advocated). Unfortunately, most dictionaries are vague on expert, only hinting towards a ‘high degree of skill’. This is why I felt it might be better to put numbers on it (even if the domain can still be vague).

I’d be interested to hear your empirical observations.