Make it work!

I know we have moved on to Habits of the Heart, but while browsing on of my favorite tech blogs, I kept seeing different do-it-yourself tech things. The one that particularly caught my eye was an open source thermostat. I thought to myself that this was the kind of thing Jobs would have created after school during his younger years.

I couldn't help but be sad that he lost his need to discover and experiment -- whether or not it was perfect or marketable. This type of unhindered innovation is one of my favorite things about the tech culture. I wish that the heroes of the industry were as curious as their followers.

iSuccess - Self definition

Google search defines success as "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose."
Conversely, Merriam-Webster's first definition is " the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame."

Our discussions in class and our readings from Bellah's Habits of the Heart indicate that success isn't really definable by a dictionary. It is only definable by each and every individual.
That doesn't stop the media from presenting us with how  our culture defines it, and therefore, how we  should define success.

"Yes, You Can Be Happy While Pushing Yourself to Success" Wait? Success is in opposition to being happy? Culturally, we are told that 'success' [whatever that means] is the path to happiness. But we also seem to know, internally, that the way the it is often define is contradictory.

Bellah recognizes that success is individual in nature. His definitions of Utilitarian and Expressive Individualism are very different and very relateable. One focuses on gains in the public sphere and the other on achievements in the private. Bellah presents these as somewhat disconnected or disparate.

Using different words and semantic context, I can't help but think that this article attempts to combine those two versions of individualism. The author uses the definition of success as material gain, and happiness as separate from that. The author, James Clear, says "Here's the problem: I want both." Clear goes on to outline "How to stay driven" and "How to be happy". While I don't want to say that either or those are definable in a paragraph. I think his thought process adds an interesting layer to Bellah's proposition.

Bellah outlines people who exemplify his different forms of individualism. But in reality, peoples definition of success is not black and white. And that is what the author struggles with, trying to find a balance, trying to find a medium.

How do you define your success?

AI and God

Does Siri believe in God? It might seem like a silly question to ask as computer. But Siri is not just an AI, she is also a window into the opinions and alignment of the company and people that made her. In fact that is exactly where Siri directs your attention when you ask her about it:

Siri knows what you are asking and she doesn't really want to answer. But the Huffington Post interviewer,Yasmine Hafiz, didn't think that was sufficient. She asked more specific questions. Siri continued to brush them off, but she also began to get a little cheeky:

What does all this say about Siri? What does it say about Apple?

I know these questions are religion in the concrete sense, rather than the abstracted version we usually address in class. But, it just seemed like too good of a thought experiment to pass up. If you were Jobs, if you were Apple programmers, how would you have Siri answer questions of this nature?
Me?...I honestly don't know.

God as Us, God as Tools, God as Verb

The Whole Earth Catalog. There is a lot of history and ideals and practices wrapped up in those four words.

I know we were supposed to scan through various volumes of the catalog to find something that stuck with us. And I did. Lots of things were interesting. But I couldn't stop thinking about two things in the very beginning of the very first issue. So, I decided to stop wandering through pages and dive in:

"We are as gods 

and we might as well get used to it." 

That is the first line of the Whole Earth Catalog's purpose statement. That's a pretty profound way to start out. This is followed, on the very next page, by Buckminster Fuller's poem "God is a Verb".

I can't stop thinking about the bold move the creators took in setting their stage with these two statements. It very blatantly positioning themselves, or more accurately their product, as something divine. The Whole Earth Catalog is "access to tools" for accessing that divine. But what are they really saying is divine? I think it's the individual and individual choice.

While the ideas of the "self" and "self determination" have been recurring topics of discussion in class, The Whole Earth Catalog make the idea concrete and marks it in ink. The Catalog's purpose refers continually to the idea of the power of the individual. The second part of the purpose statement even repeats the phase "his own" several times. The individual is a god.

But so are the tools he uses. And that idea is what the "God is a Verb" enhances this position. The first line of the poem is "I see God in the instruments and the mechanisms that work reliably". Without going into a full fledged analysis, this line sets up a poem that, while mildly confusing, paints the divine as a actionable entity. As instruments that make our existence better. Tools that somehow mask our failings.

As I went through this thought process, I couldn't help but to start think about Jobs. We know that he was a part of the same tradition as the Whole Earth Catalog, but think this fundamental idea, of the individual and tools as divine, runs deep for Jobs. We've talked about how he was so focused on his products, on making them perfect, even in the places that were invisible to the consumer. I think that to him making products (instruments) that "work reliably" and beautiful is like attaining some aspect of the divine. He was as a god, and his tools were divine carriers of his ideas.

We are as gods.

God in our instruments.

We and our tools.

We are our tools. 

We are as gods.

Steve Job's Commencement Analysis

On our first official day of class we watched a myriad of commercials that all lauded technology as the next great thing in our lives, whether based in community, intimacy or accessibility. We also watched Steve Job's Commencement Speech at Stanford. The text and video of which can be found here. Steve Job focused on three stories each with their own moral or upshot.

However, I found that each seemed to resonate with the idea of testing, persevering and triumphing presented in a biblical setting. The closest relation I find is the story of Job. Now, let me clarify. I am referring to the cultural representation and usage of story. Not the actual biblical teachings. (Ha, and not the spelling similarities!)

Culturally, Job is used to say "Don't worry, it will all work out in end." ...even if you can't see the end. This is not all that different from what Jobs was saying in his commencement speech. That while he was trudging through his early years "It wasn't all romantic." Well, in many ways, that is an understatement! He has a classic rags to riches story. His is an antihero ragamuffin who has faith in himself and his ideas and he grew into a romanticized icon.

The biblical Job doesn't understand why God has chosen to put him through all these trials. But, he does understand that his faith is being tested and he trusts in God that it is all part of his plan and will work out in the end. Jobs trusts, not in a higher power like Job, but in the power of his own design, his own path. He says, "again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." The struggles and confusion may seem like they will forever weigh you down.

However, Steve Jobs and biblical Job both trust that hindsight is 20-20. They both trust in the power of their path, of divine or individual design.

New Class, Same Blog!

I started this blog for a previous and now I have the opportunity to start up this blog again. I am now taking Apple, Google, Facebook. It's a religious studies class thought by Martin Smith. Here is how he describes the class:

"Our current relation to technology and information feels new, but it fits in with long term cultural and religious transformation in American life. This exploration of the three corporations in the title of the course will be framed by Robert Bellah’s classic sociological study Habits of the Heart. The course is not only interested in the story of these three corporations, but also the elements of technology that they exemplify: personal devices, information, and social websites. The argument of this course will be that these elements can ultimately be related to American notions of the Self and religiosity"

I'm glad to be back to blogging about technology! I'll be posting at least twice weekly, so check back soon for my lasted posts!