May 5, 2003

THE KNOWLEDGE WE'RE MISSING Those of us who spend a lot of time online tend to feel that we're more informed than those that get their information from the TV, radio, and magazines. I'm beginning to feel that's a false sense of security. Here are four examples of content we're missing: Conference Transcripts: Several of the bloggers I read have been at the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, and have dutifully tried to keep us up to date on the important news from it, and link us to the slide decks, but presentation slides just don't do it. Full transcripts are not available. Hard-Copy-Only and Unarchived Analysis: The New Yorker and other periodicals contain critical analysis. They have on-line versions, but they're incomplete (the longer analyses are missing) and the archives are only available for a limited time.  News Analysis and Educational Programming: Public broadcasting stations like PBS, NPR, CBC, BBC have news analyses and educational programs whose content is not available on the Internet. One of my most popular posts, Facing the Dragons was based entirely on a program on Canadian educational channel TVO. And I still get regularly Googled by people looking for the text of Charlie Rose's interview of Fareed Zakaria , which I wrote about. Live Performances: Barbaric Yawp is currently acting in an amateur theatre presentation. I'd like to be able to buy a copy of any live theatre performance, or at least get a copy of the script of plays, including tele-plays. Many people think it's unreasonable to expect educational institutions, public broadcasters, conference organizers and magazines to provide the full archival text and transcripts of all their articles, programs, lectures and presentations online. But is it? The technology certainly exists to do this, and server space is not the cost constraint it once was. Of course, we shouldn't expect to be able to access this for free. But the blogosphere provides a critical mechanism for us to hear from others what is, and is not, worth plunking down some cash for. And there are technologies that prevent the first person that 'buys' pay-per-use content from giving it away free to others. So, content aggregators of the world, get on it! This is really no different from reading a review of a book/music/movie and then ordering it online and picking it out of the mailbox the next day (and soon, downloading it right over the Internet). But we don't want to be limited to this 'pre-packaged' content -- we want to be able to buy transcripts of anything, especially exemplary content like that described above that isn't available anywhere else. And there's money in this, for the cash-starved universities, conference presenters, theatres and public broadcasters, as well as the enterprising intermediary. There may even be money in this for entrepreneurial on-line reviewers like us, who others trust to tell them what content is worth the investment. 7:00:16 PM   comment []

IS DEPRESSION NATURAL? ...go, go, go, said the bird, human kind cannot bear very much reality. -- TS Eliot, Burnt Norton Depression is often a consequence of stress. It represents a shutting down of the normal systems of coping, of survival. In its most extreme form, it is debilitating, and can lead to suicide. It is a horrendous affliction. I'm not a psychologist or a neurologist, so what I'm about to hypothesize is based strictly on personal experience and observations. As this chart shows, the combination of awareness of an acute problem and understanding of the situation that gave rise to that problem, leads to stress that can be dealt with in three ways: Positively: Take aggressive action (fight or flee) or creative action to address the problem (i.e.  do something) Passively: Deny the existence of the problem, or responsibility for it (i.e. do nothing) Negatively: Be overwhelmed by the difficulty of the problem (i.e. become anxious or depressed) This negative reaction can manifest itself three ways: Disengagement: the feeling of isolation and separation from one's fellow man or from nature, that leades to withdrawal and social disability. You can see this in people who spend most of their lives alone. We are all social animals, and such disengagement is extraordinary and unhealthy. Discouragement: the feeling of helplessness, hopelessness and of being oppressed, of being out of control, of being unable to act in ways that we feel instinctively, morally or rationally we should. Deprivation: the feeling of lacking the space and resources we need for a happy and healthy life, due to overcrowding or a shortage of the necessities of life. People who are exceptionally intelligent, sensitive, artistic, and/or well-read seem particularly prone to depression. This may be because they are more aware than the rest of us of acute problems and the difficulty or futility of foreseeable solutions. To me this raises an obvious question: What is the function of depression in nature, what purpose does it serve, and why do exceptional people, who you would expect to be advantaged in natural selection, seem predisposed to a mental disease that disadvantages them? One of the few lessons I've learned from life is that things are usually the way they are for a reason. In nature, a creature that is caught or injured will initially attempt to flee or fight, using a natural adrenaline rush (reacting aggressively/reacting creatively on the chart). If that fails, and the situation appears hopeless, the creature will give up, shut down, perhaps even go into shock in preparation to die. People who are exposed to extreme shock or stress, or are imprisoned under exceptionally cruel circumstances, or suffer from intense or protracted physical disease, often exhibit similar fight-or-flight and then shut-down behaviour. If you take a Darwinian perspective on this, you have to ask how such responses in our modern human culture, in the face of relentless but less extreme stress over a lifetime, contribute to the survival of our species. My answer is that they don't. In nature, intelligent creatures act smartly and survive, outliving the less advantaged. When they encounter a problem they can't solve through action, such as a crippling disease or capture by a predator, they shut down. They know when they're beaten, and they accept that. Their 'depressed' behaviour aids the tribe by having them withdraw rather than expose the rest of the tribe to the problem that beat them. In our modern society, this set of responses doesn't work. We are aware of, and accept responsibility for, many more problems, and more acute problems, than we can ever hope to solve. Aggression in our sophisticated and crowded culture leads not to quick resolution of the problem, but to escalation of violence, and this aggression almost inevitably fails. Creativity and innovation are our greatest strengths, but they usually create new acute problems faster than they solve the old ones. And the sheer complexity of our society requires us to give up much of the control over our lives that human individuals once had, to others, which vastly reduces our agility and ability to act. So we are left with the alternatives of inaction -- denying the problem or responsibility for it, which is disingenuous, immoral, irrational and counter-intuitive, or internalizing the feelings of isolation, helplessness and deprivation, which leads to anxiety and depression. I would argue that this is why so many of us, especially our most exceptional citizens, suffer such mental anguish in a world of unprecedented material wealth and unsustainable stresses. Worse, as those that have the best handle on what needs to be done quit the field, we leave the tyrants, the aggressors, the ignorant and the psychopaths in charge. It's completely natural, and completely unnatural. It's also depressing, and potentially our world's undoing. 8:27:08 AM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Dave Pollard. Last update: 27/05/2003; 6:36:16 AM.