adam georgiou's blog

Facebook

I’m trying to figure out how to use Facebook non-narcassitically. I feel like a large part of what I’ve recently posted has been too “look-at-me” and shallow…

I think Facebook is a tool, and, aside from logistical stuff like event planning, it’s best used to share beautiful, mutually beneficial, and inspiring things: meaningful photos, art, yet-to-be-answers questions, postulates, etc. 

Too often, though, I use it to as a naive way to satisfy a craving for self-affirmation and an outlet for pride. I find myself taking place in idle and increasingly boastful conversation, and that’s bad. Really, if I think about it, most of the time I’m just talking to myself, since what I post usually doesn’t get anyone thinking; any interaction those empty posts provoke might as well be scripted.

What it comes down to is this: this type of participation doesn’t help anyone — both me, the producer, or my readers — be any happier or more content with life.

Certain features of Facebook promote this type of behavior, too. For instance, the Facebook newsfeed aggregates information using really crude heuristics. Those heuristics aren’t disclosed, but it’s pretty obvious that things like ‘comment’ and ‘like’ count account for what makes it past the popularity filter and what doesn’t.

Well, I’d argue that vapid content is more often liked and commented on than rich content, due to the circle-jerk nature of the internet and our need for instant gratification. It happens, and it’s not really anyone-in-specific’s fault, but what it results in is a lot of rambling and not a lot of conversation on quality content. When you log onto Facebook, you’re presented with a wall of nothingness.

What’s more is, I’m not sure Facebook is really looking to address this issue. People participating in the endless search for instant-gratification means more traffic for them, where-as a system designed to promote thought and evoke complex emotion, is slower in nature. When you’re stricter on you’re standards of quality, your rate of production slows, because it’s difficult to produce. Subsequently, if content is richer, it’s more likely to be of a higher density as well, and thus harder to consume.

A solution, assuming my conjectured opinion on Facebook being disinterested is wrong, might be kind of what Google did with circles, but perhaps implemented differently. This isn’t a new idea and i’m not trying to take credit for it, but: if there were a way to easily focus content toward a select group of people, I think you could exchange some of the overwhelming noise for depth and interest. If I could use Facebook as both a hub for identity (a profile) and a way for precise focused communication (as opposed to the current broadcast oriented model), without the distraction of everything else, I’d consider that a step in the right direction.

On the other side of things, there’s also a requirement for discipline on my end. I’m the arbiter of my Facebook production and consumption. Facebook may not be ideal, but wishing for an ideal tool is somewhat pointless and indicative of laziness*. Perhaps the best way to use Facebook is to stop endlessly checking and updating it, and instead filter things from behind the keyboard.

*While wishing for ideal tools is pointless, building ideal tools is very much the opposite. But that’s another story…

Sometimes, programming makes me think of what it must feel like to be a wizard…

When my fingers are moving faster than I thought they could, and EMACS buffers are flying around, and files are opening and closing, and compilations are occurring, and reference documents are being foreground-ed and background-ed; all simultaneously and while listening to fast paced awesome music, I can’t help but feel like there’s a little magic involved…

Bansky on Advertising

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriends feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. 

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange, and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. 

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t [ever] start asking for theirs.

-Banksy

Hopefully, going to come back and edit-in my response to this…

…and here we go.

I love this; it resonates with me so perfectly. I don’t know if I’m really entitled to that opinion, myself being as much of consumer as anyone, but fuck, it still feels good to hear someone say it.

I remember taking Advertising & Culture and Corporate Identity in college, and the majority of my rants shared a similar foundation to Banksy’s above: namely, that there is no implicit righteousness to what just-so-happens to be the popular idea. The way I see it, Banksy takes this truth and concludes that the lack of righteousness equates to a lack of authority, and therefore any rules and regulations based on said authority are null and void. I agree wholeheartedly.

A slightly different conversation that I think is also worth having is the nature of this virus’s origin. 

I don’t believe the objectifying, materialistic, stereotyping media is the product of some malicious overlord, cackling in his mansion. “The Man” is a construct, more so than a person. Instead, I think we — the collective — watch and listen to advertising and accept it as being acceptable, even if it doesn’t line up with our morals. And then, when it comes time to create the next generation of ads, that same set of people gets drafted to do the deed. Consumers and producers are not mutually exclusive. The advertisers own ipads, too. Yet, at least in my own naive experience in the field, we tend to market toward what we think the majority of people accept as ideal, as opposed to what we know to be ideal, what we know to be the truth. It’s like we’re afraid to market the truth, because we think the people on the other side of the television screen are too stupid to handle it.

Reminder: insert paul rand plug here. Innovation through bold, explicit, and truly unique branding.

Going back to Banksy’s blurb above: even if we got to the point where 100% of marketers were trying demonstrate truth-in-advertising, I still don’t think that would give them the authority to shove a message down our throats, unreciprocated. You still have the right to ‘throw the rock back’ sort of speak. I’m just saying the message is all-too-often the proverbial rock because of this unchecked recursion of perverted ideals. Back to the point… 

Granted, this slice of the pie is slowly fading, as the stage for marketing grows smaller in size and higher in count; and as higher quality and more ethical advertising gets cast in the place of the behemoth jack-of-all-trades ads of mass broadcasting. In the macro-scope of things, this paradigm shift is dramatic and obvious. For example, Red Bull has transitioned from poorly drawn cartoons ranting about how the drink “gives you wings”, to showing me videos of extreme sports athletes doing awesome things. 

But in the practical space, this dichotomy lives on. Sitting around the round table, ping-ponging ideas back and forth still breeds more cliched and will-be-cliched ideas than ever, and I think it’s in this space, where you truly see why advertising is a craft; a skill to be honed and mastered, like any other.

Because master advertisers cut through the shallowness of it all. They see that in order for a campaign to be successful, it has to be real; and to build a narrative that people can accept as real, you have to be truthful. Lies aren’t maintainable and will eventually become noise, like played out radio music or whatever.

I’m not sure if any firm truly employees this strategy, as money has skewed a lot. Maybe the khan academy, or the bill-and-malinda gets foundation… 

I’ll get back to this… tired now.

Skydiving

Today, I went skydiving.



I’m going to try and get something insightful out of my head while it’s still fresh, but I doubt that’ll work very well, considering the whole thing has been a blur from the second I got on that plane…

My buddy Charlie and I have been sending videos of BASE jumpers, skydivers, and wing-suit fliers — pretty much anything involving terminal velocity, gravity, and a parachute — back and forth to one another, for the past 6 months or so. In print, it’s always been the next rung in the ladder. We’ve done gnarly things with the snow, wind, and waves, so gravity at 13,000 feet was the next logical progression. That being said, the hypothetical instant messaging of two extreme-oriented dudes and the reality-based shock of actually planning such an adventure, are two very different things.

I am terrified of heights; or at least, that’s what I always thought.

On skis, I can hit pretty large jumps. The two biggest booters I ever hit were the 2010-11 Dew Tour jumps at Mount Snow, which were 60 and 70 feet respectively. With those jumps, you’re in the air a decent amount of time and completely at the mercy of your own ability.

On a kite, I’ve boosted 10-15 feet at a time.

When you’re in the moment and committed, neither of these endeavours seem so daunting or that high, and even if they did, they only last 2 to 3 seconds, max.

But skydiving… with that, you’re in the air… eh em… high in the air for a bit under 10 minutes. Just the idea of such a long hang time gave me the mental wiggle room to think of every possible disaster possible, and it’s always made skydiving unapproachable for me.

There’s no way to ease into it. No way to work you’re way up from something smaller. It’s go big, or nothing…

Well, needless to say, when Charlie called me up two weeks ago and said we were booked, I was nervous. I drove up to New Paltz, NY not knowing what to expect. The day before the jump I was entranced by the idea. I meditated on it. I paced. I bugged out with excitement and anxiety. And then the morning came and we were finally off to the dropzone. We get there, and the girl behind the desk said it was too cloudy, sorry, and that we’d have to come back another time. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. And then, just as we were walking back to the car, she tells us the jump was back on… only to let us down again.

I’m pretty sure your heart is not supposed to do the kind of gymnastics I put it through that day. Those moments just prior to commitment are the most tense and jagged. But they’re also indicative of you being on the right path…

On one hand, I need to do this before I die, if not only once. Until I do, I will be forever disappointed in myself for not taking advantage of the one life I know I have. On the other hand, I have to get over this incredible mental barrier of fear and in-the-moment resistance to do so.

Fast forward a week later, to today (4.7.2012). I booked and planned our dive for 9:30 in the morning out in eastern Long Island, NY. This time, things were different. Prior to the day of the jump, I started really digging down into my fear until I became an expert on its nuances. The meaning of the phrase “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself” revealed itself to me. I started to think that, yes, there will be typical physical fear: my body is going to sweat and my heart is going to beat, both more than usual. But it’s when you start adding meaning to these things, and let them build into a feedback loop of anxiety, that you become crippled. Don’t do that, and you’re set.

With that realization made, I drove out to our dive nervous, but ready for anything.  Just prior to our getting on the plane I was amped. In the plane, I was awed and ready, and even when people started jumping out the plane, I knew that I’d be — mentally, at that moment — o.k.. In fact, I was joking around and high-fiving people; by the time I got to the bay door, I was itching to get out.

Ironic, much? 

And then I was in the air, and none of it mattered a bit, one way or the other.

Fuck fear; thought in general was not something I was occupied with. The world was rushing by me and, after hitting terminal velocity, gravity didn’t really exist. I was in a dream. I was going faster than I ever had before (sans mechanical assistance), with the most incredible view ta’ boot. I’d say more, but when I said ‘thought’ wasn’t something I was taking part in, I meant it. Every sense was so overwhelmed; I remember literally thinking that falling all the way to the ground wouldn’t be the worst way to go. It was bliss. No fear. All now.

Then my tandem instructor pulled the ripcord, and things became even more surreal. It wasn’t violent or jerky, like I expected, but actually a pretty mellow deceleration, the result of which is real-life flying. When you’re falling, there’s no real control or direction (other than down); you’re just falling. But when you’re under the ‘chute, you can steer, and that’s when you feel like a bird.

I had my arms out like wings, and took the reigns for a little bit, too. I remember saying, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with this” over and over again, as the euphoria of the moment began to contrast with my now returning thoughts; this was supposed to be scary, but was instead the most excellent thing I could possible be doing. My instructor was asking me how I liked it and pointing to where we’d land. And like that it was over.

I hit the ground like a feather — it’s amazing what parachutes do — and proceeded to laugh and squirm uncontrollably in giddy pleasure for a few minutes. I found Charlie, we did a bro-mantic chest bump, hugged everyone in a hundred foot radius, and then walked back into the hanger.

Scheduling the next trip in t-minus…

Einstein’s Watch - An Exploration of Empathy

A post by reddit user, johnnynottoscale, originally found here: 
http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/qn1bu/einsteins_watch_an_exploration_of_empathy/ 
Quoted here and shared with author’s explicit permission.


em·pa·thy/ˈempəTHē/ : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this.

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Einstein maintained a healthy skepticism towards concepts. On the subject of scientific theories he wrote: “Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.” In other words: our ideas about how the universe works are merely ideas, and we ought not confuse them with reality. He follows this with an illuminating analogy:

In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.

Now, dear reader, you may be wondering just how this might relate to empathy, the purported subject of this blog post. There is a parallel to be drawn: We are all Einstein’s watches to one another.

You see, the human condition is rigged so that my subjective reality is not yours to experience, and words are often the flimsiest bridges between people. So essentially, we are mysteries to one another. Like Einstein’s watch, I’m unable to peer inside of your head to see what makes you tick. So like any good scientist, I collect data, and I test various hypotheses. Eventually I build a model in my head that represents you. Its dimensions and contours fit all the data, and I may be tempted to say that it is you—but that would be the terminal point of empathy.

All to often, we confuse others with the ideas we have of them in our heads. Seems innocuous enough; we have evidence to back our ideas up…it’s not like we’re pulling something out of thin air, right? However, if you follow this pseudo-empathy to its extremities, you’ll find the foundation of all the fucked up racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and just about any other other-phobia in the world.

When you become complacent and satisfied that you know someone, you’ve lost your curiosity. You’ve forgotten that the model in your head is just a model in your head, and you’ve mistaken it with reality. A true scientist is never wholly satisfied with his theory—regardless of how many data points he has to corroborate it. Just as science has undergone revolution after revolution—from ‘God pulls all the strings’ to Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics—our concepts of others should always be open-ended and subject to change, for they are quite capable of undergoing revolutions of their own.

The most exciting aspect of my relationship with my wife has not been the prospect of ever knowing her completely. Rather, it’s been the perpetual fleshing out and revision of my idea of her. Countless times I’ve had to scratch off an adjective or bullshit freudian analysis I’d stuck on her. Countless times I’ve run into uncharted territory, which has thankfully been mostly beautiful and fascinating. Our relationship has had such success because each of us allows the other’s being to speak for itself. We do not invent intentions for one another. I don’t reduce her to a simple sum of forces [genetics + environment + culture + race + personal history] not because I think that the solution to such an equation would be wrong, but because I can’t pretend to know and grasp all of the intricacies and details of all of those variables. For all intents and purposes, she is Einstein’s watch to me.

No. Fucks. Given.

Written by some random dude on the internets:

Have you ever played any RPGS, like Final Fantasy?

You, real life you, are the protagonist of this story. Everyone, and I mean everyone else is a [Non Player Character].

Your mom is an NPC, your boss is an NPC, every stranger on the street is an NPC. Hell, even your shitty little cat is an NPC.

Now, how much do the NPCs really affect you? NPCs are never the story, my friend, they only exist to help you move the story along. Your story.

So if you screw up, or feel awkward, or want to start a conversation with a stranger, then don’t feel stressed out. Laugh it off, you’re the protagonist, they’re just an NPC. They deserve no fucks.

I’m telling you this because your story needs to move along. I’ve been put here by the gods of this narrative for just one purpose, to help you see the truth. I’m your muse and I’m revealing a major fucking plot point here, something the other NPCs will never tell your: this is your story.

Live it the way you want to. No. Fucks. Given.

Such awesome stuff.

Quick legend for non-geeky friends:

• Replace PRG with drama, film, etc.
• Replace NPC with supporting actor.
• Replace muse with lead supporting actor. 

Breaking Down Some Language; Because Mysterious Doesn’t Mean Wise

If everything that is discussable can be defined as an instance of a concept, where we define concept as the encapsulation of many complimentary ideas into a consistently recognizable pattern, then the Zen idea of duality becomes definable. I came across this idea while reading Shunryu Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. He talks about how the mind and body are both eternal and finite, simultaneously; he describes this phenomenon through a metaphor calling mind and body “two sides of the same coin”.

I find this kind of language both confusing, frustrating, and misleading. I also find it ubiquitous, as this wisdom-in-fallacy has become somewhat of a generic style for presenting philosophical information (especially in the Buddhist writings I’ve read).

1. I find it confusing, because the metaphor is seemingly contradictory.
2. I find it frustrating, because, while I agree with the sentiment that meditation trumps reading ten-fold, I still feel like readings can unveil the source of suffering; so to have someone who understands the nature of suffering use language I don’t understand makes me feel like I have an answer stuck on the tip of my tongue.
3. And I find it potentially misleading, because when an established school of thought – an authority – starts using incomprehensible language, you run the risk of blind acceptance, where students try to force their experience into a definition, rather than formulate an articulation from their honest observation.

That being said, when you do stumble upon an understanding that happens to coincide with an existing concept, that concept then thereafter seem obvious, even if prior inspection had you feeling as I describe above.

Anyway, back to the point: mind & body both end and go on forever. I think the understanding to take away here is that the concepts or abstractions that we refer to as mind and body are the sum of many different things. I mean this literally.

Think about the body: it is the thing that we best relate our physical presence with; it is the thing composed of organs, cells, and atoms; it is the thing, ever changing, moving through time, aging and deforming as it passes the days. 

The same thing applies for the concept of mind: it is the thing composed of a personality; it is the thing that has mood; it is the thing that influences the environment in which it is alive within; it is the thing that is thinking; and it is one of the things that is remembered, regardless of whether it is present or not.

So when we say mind & body both end and don’t end, it’s really a matter of realizing that certain components of each end and don’t end. When we die, the atoms in our body don’t end, but the abstract concept of our physical manifestation is no longer maintainable, by definition. After death, our minds may not do what we traditionally refer to as ‘think’, but the influence we had during our life still lingers. We may not be able to think about a mind that has died the same way as when it was alive, but we still think about it!

I think the take away is that the abstractions we hold, collectively, as humans, are empty. They have no substance, but are merely an interpretation of the raw data we consume through observation. So while the abstraction may die, the reality persists, even if we think of the two as synonymous; however, even though they are different, neither is more or less important than the other. That’s what “two sides of the same coin” means; the raw reality cannot be expressed or experienced without an abstraction through which it can live, and the abstractions are void unless they describe some sort of reality.

Where we get in trouble is when we start describing abstraction in terms of other abstraction. Then you run the risk of becoming too worked up in trying to understand and keep track of all the variables at play in your model. Meditation is a cure for that ailment, because it trains you to let go of those abstractions before you have the chance to build upon them.

Flushing the toilet while you’re sitting on it is like betting it all on red; it can go either way…

Workplace bathroom behavior would make for an awesome case study. We spend 7+ hours at a place where we carefully maintain our social interactions, trying to optimize for very idiosyncratic professional goals, but one thing we all have in common: we all poop. And given the amount of coffee that gets consumed in highly competitive New York firms, I imagine this reality manifests itself quite frequently.

That being said, we don’t talk about it! I’m not trying to say that the topic should be the lunchtime conversation of choice, but merely noting that there’s this common behavior that functions independently of the communication feedback loop that influences so much of the rest of what we do!

So take this one: I go use the toilet; I’m the only one in the bathroom. As I finish and open the, what is now one of three, empty stalls; another man walks in. I proceed to wash my hands and he takes some paper towel and blows his nose; we are both looking into the mirror, silently. He hesitates at the mirror for about 20 seconds after he throws out his tissue, and the proceeds to walk into the stall I just walked out of. He knew I had just used the stall, so what was going through his mind? I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but I don’t like warm toilet seats, do you? I imagine not. Perhaps the fact that every stall has a bottle of Lysol disinfectant spray and toilet seat covers negates the, what I would expect to be normal, inhibition to use a just-used stall; perhaps this man was just weird; or perhaps this is a personal quirk of mine (I would use a different stall), and I’m the strange one. I guess we’ll never know…

What Else Does/Can Google Know?

I wonder if Google gets enough private data from corporate users accidentally pasting snippets of proprietary information into their search bars, to come up with some sort of snapshot of a company’s private inner workings.

Undoubtedly they do for individuals, but I imagine that information is much more comprehensive; for example, if I constantly search for glutton-free recipes, Google can likely infer that I, or someone I know, has a restricted diet for what can assumed to be one or a small set of reasons.

But at work, at least for me, the things I search for are often much more nuanced and detailed, and thus seemingly arbitrary.

For instance, I often Google function definitions, sometimes without realizing they’re from one of my company’s internal libraries and other times mistakenly all together, thinking I’m using one of my company’s internal search tools (which inadvertently happens to interface with Chrome’s search bar). This kind of information, from a consumer’s (e.g. Google’s) perspective, has to look much more like noise than correlated data, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is noise; perhaps, when augmented with the information corporate users provide through purposeful searches of publicly available information, filtering and refining this “noise” into something more useful becomes possible.