Castro 2.0

Are we there yet?

Former(?) Cuban President, Fidel Castro, emerged from apparent convalescence for an August 3, 2010 speech to Cuba's parliament. That, in and of itself is remarkable; however, things got even curiouser and curiouser as he seemed to be simultaneously environmentalist, anti-nuke, anti-war, anti-terrorism, pro-diplomacy, and, perhaps most-astonishingly, pro-wiki.

Wikileaks, any way.

Castro referenced the classified documents available to the world via wikilieaks regarding the U.S. war in Afghanistan. He assured his audience that U.S. intelligence agencies wouldn't able to "hurt a hair on the head" of Bradley Manning, identified as the leaked documents' key source.

Although there is a meandering quality to Castro's speech (which lacks a clear thesis, but not necessarily purpose), it is evident that he tried to convey genuine concern for the future of planet earth. That broader view belies, perhaps, a person hoping to affect change on the macro spectrum instead of using the macro to advance the micro of nationalism. Note this excerpt, liberally translated by yours truly and web translation.

For the first time, I address this message to President Barack Obama:

It is in your hands to offer humanity the only real opportunity for peace. Within your purview is the power to launch an apocalypse, but also the opportunity for peaceful resolution. Whether on the political right or left, American citizens will applaud your efforts, and they remain faultless in these dire events in any case.

This speech signals something -- for Cuba, for Earth. Not that Fidel Castro is going to shake things up for the American Empire, but that Castro is a barometer of just how much technology has changed society, and how society has changed technology, demanding openness, moving dialogues into public forums, and seeking an increase in the quality of ideas we exchange with one another.

It is a strange circle, the grizzled dictator of pro-Soviet Cuba, calling on the allegedly socialist Obama administration, to enact the change promised in those upstart speeches in 2008.

The world waits in the comment boxes for the response.

Transparency is a Two-Way Street

The United Arab Emirates wants to ban the BlackBerry. You know why?

Because it works too well.

Canada-based Research In Motion uses encryption (“AES” encryption, in fact – whatever that is) for all data traveling between your BlackBerry and the enterprise server. The only problem is that that foils snooping by certain curious emirates who may want a peeksie of what’s going on in your world.

Quid pro quo, isn’t it?

We certainly want to know what’s happening in the corridors of power, so why wouldn’t a government have an equal right to know where you’re going to have lunch, or who won your office fantasy football league?

The fundamental problem is that we have developed an “us-and-them” paradigm, where government is the Other, something that is separated from us and clearly interested only in keeping us under “its” jack boot of despotic control. In the “us-and-them” model, if a government wants to monitor our allegedly private communications, they are one step away from forcing us onto box cars headed to re-education camps.

If I say the occasional controversial thing in a casual phone call, I hope the DHS agents will consider it constructive criticism, and pass along my ideas to the appropriate agencies.

But when we want to see the goings-on in the smoky backrooms of Congress and governors’ mansions, that is simply well-informed citizenry. In a democracy, after all, should not the government work for us?

Of course, most of us were pretty comfortable when the Patriot Act passed in 2001 – with broad bipartisan support, by the way.

It’s all about context.

9/11 made us comfortable with a lot of actions that just a week before the twin towers fell, we never would have imagined.

From the spin angle, all the UAE has to say about encrypted BlackBerry messages is that they undermine the country’s ability to identify and eliminate terrorist threats. In fact, if Americans are uncomfortable with the UAE’s stance on privacy, they will be likewise uncomfortable with Saudi Arabia and India, who may follow suit to ban the BlackBerry.

What exactly do we own in terms of our communications, anyway? What’s so special about my emails or my phone calls that would cause me alarm when I learn that the Department of Homeland Security might be listening in?

I was raised to believe that sharing is caring, after all. I should be proud of the things I write in electronic missives. And if I say the occasional controversial thing in a casual phone call, I hope the DHS agents will consider it constructive criticism, and pass along my ideas to the appropriate agencies.

We could turn our entire communications system into the largest suggestion box in history.

Identifying the Real Problem Can Save a Lot of Time (and Sweat)

I begin this posting with a personal story. I played hookie from work yesterday afternoon to go on an impromptu bike adventure with my wife. Careful what you wish for, because we definitely wound up with an adventure.

Six miles from home on the Gateway Trail, my wife noticed my back tire was low, so I dutifully stopped to pump it up. Unfortunately, the tire pump did not release well, and, as I was tugging on it, the entire valve stem tore from the inner tube, releasing all the air – new and old. And me with no spare tube.

Did I mention six miles from home?

It wasn’t all bad. It was a nice day. We were together. But I felt a little stupid pushing my bike while other cyclists zipped by. My immediate dilemma was which direction to head. Try the six-mile hike home, or push on to this very vague notion I had that there was a bicycle store ahead of me – somewhere.

Feeling optimistic, we pushed forward. Two miles of avoiding the pedals scraping our shins later, I finally flagged down two cyclists and asked if my hopes of nearby bike shop were in vain. They assured me I was on the right path, and only a mile away. That raised our spirits, and we renewed our hike, watching the two cyclists gain momentum and disappear into the horizon.

But what really raised our spirits was when those two cyclists appeared again heading towards us.

“You know,” one of them said, “There’s a Target about six blocks from here.” And he pointed the way.

They understood my real situation: I needed a new inner tube. Yes, they were able to point me towards the bike store I had asked about, but they literally went out of their way to provide the solution that best fit our needs: a nearby store that sells inner tubes.

By identifying real problems for clients (and friends, family, and hapless strangers), we demonstrate a sort of super-empathy that satisfies the immediate need, and often with the least amount of resources. This requires a commendable level of creativity and commitment to helping others. It seems to me, incidentally, that this pairing of traits would make for one kick-ass sales force.

P.S., I had to buy a nine-dollar wrench in order to replace my flat, but it’s already safe in my back pack with the patch kit and another spare inner tube for the next time I hit the trail. I consider it a $9 memento of how, in spite of incessant bad news all around us, there are opportunities to be human in the highest sense.

Thank you, good Samaritan cyclists, whoever you are!

Steering the Bandwagon

One way we influencers influence others is by generating the illusion that there is a groundswell of support for an initiative, product, or service. This is known as the bandwagon, which calls to mind images of a raucous parade, appearing mysteriously but moving determinedly forward.

The core of this parade is a particularly loud float – the one supporting the weight of a be-tassled brass band.

The bandwagon can be rolled out within companies. A new service initiative, a new human resources strategy, a new accounting system. “Everyone’s on board, you should be on board, too!”

Where the bandwagon came from is less important than where they’re going.

Where are they going?

That’s the magic of the bandwagon method of garnering support. Throw a pro football player up there next to the band, and we’re hooked. We’ll follow that parade into the gaping jaws of hell itself.

Or at least into the grocery store, or the Gap, or Afghanistan, or healthcare reform.

Once the wheels begin rolling, the bandwagon becomes a collection of shiftless individuals who drive forward with the momentum – the most dynamic barnacles – under the misconception they are part of a common cause.

The truth is, the bandwagon is applied as the insidious invention of one or two masterminds (or marketing directors). Seldom are the captains of the bandwagon strategy actually on the bandwagon. They lurk in their foregone conclusions, rubbing their hands, waiting for the rubes with pockets full of money to roll in.

Hard questions are brushed aside, and if one resists the joyous cacophony of the group-think polka, then one quickly finds that the steel wheels of the band slow for no dissenters.

Perhaps the best way to counteract the bandwagon pandemic (band-demic?) is to get on board – and STEER. Join in the banter. Shout with the heady crowd and, by degrees, edge the bandwagon in the right direction.

If you know where the right direction lies, that is.

Consider it a polite highjacking.

Your Facebook Profile Pic Makes You Look Bad

At work today, I got a call from a coworker wondering who ran our company's Facebook page. She was concerned by one of our Facebook "fans" whose profile picture apparently was a scantily-clad Playboy model. My coworker thought we should kick out the fan for his potentially offensive profile picture.

The fan in question is not an employee of my company. If he were an employee, I could call him and let him know that the company is at this moment developing guidelines for how employees behave on social media sites – even when on their own time. He could take that under advisement and either change his profile pic or go to work for a hipper industry.

Frankly, I'm not sure why a young man with, shall we say, more artistic aspirations, would want to become a Facebook fan of an engineering company. But he is. And that is just how the web works.

I spoke with our social media administrator, and we agreed that the best course of action was no action, but the situation reminded me of a phone interview I had with professional speaker and coach, Jane Atkinson. I was talking to her about personal branding, and how a person's brand influenced their professional opportunities. The conversation turned to channels (like Facebook and LinkedIn) for marketing the "self brand". She navigated to my Facebook page as we spoke, and she saw my profile pic – a photo of a statue of three deer in a, shall we say, artistic pose.

I was deeply embarrassed. The personal brand article turned out great, but I instantly became aware of how my credibility was jeopardized by my admittedly juvenile sense of humor.

My internal debate has been that desire to live an unfettered life versus finding new opportunities, personally and professionally. Perhaps Eleanor Roosevelt said it best with "with great freedom comes great responsibility" – or am I thinking of Ozzy Osbourne who wrote "I don't want to change the world/I don't want the world to change me"?

It's a new world, I guess. Love it or leave it.

Is Transparency Wearing Thin?

The Obama Administration is missing an excellent tie-in to the health care debate around the issue of airport scanners.

Instead of just looking for weapons or explosives under our clothes, why not scan for cancer or osteoporosis? People would flock to the airport for regular check ups, freeing up hospital waiting rooms for good old fashioned gunshot victims.

Airlines could fill prescriptions right in flight. Along with the $5 headphones, passengers could purchase backless gowns, very comfortable, and extremely practical when dealing with more aggressive security procedures.

I recently heard someone say, without irony, that "there ought to be a law limiting big government."

It seems like we, the public, want our proverbial cake and we want to eat it, too.

It's as if technology has brought us to a golden age of interactive everything. Pushocracy (push button, remote control democracy) is just around the corner. We'll be able to vote on every line item of a budget bill while we drive to work. We will be the government, an iMob of virtual patriots.

Meanwhile we expect a high level of what has come to be known as "transparency" from our governments, our employers, our bankers, our celebrities, and thanks to web cams and Skyping, one another.

This idea of transparency not only seems to have been driven by technology, but it is currently embodied by the discussions about full body airport scanners that can see through our clothes. Now that is literally mandating transparency.

As technology has pushed everything into overdrive, our tolerance for waiting, for not knowing, for inaction has plummeted. We want it now. As long as we don't have to do anything.

This is the cake conundrum. I notice more and more that we expect to keep tabs on what "the man" is up to, sort of a quid pro quo for Big Brother government wanting to keep tabs on us via airport screening and citywide video cameras and marketing databases.

We show you ours, so let's see yours.

The problem is that what we see isn't necessarily of any significance. Even if it was significant, what we really do about it, anyway? Tweet?

The folks demanding transparency may inadvertently be fostering a larger bureaucratic monster who always keeps one hand waving at us while the other hand slices the throats of good ideas. By simply demanding "transparency", we are really demanding a peek at the inner workings of power. Just seeing the inner workings of power, however, doesn't transfer any power to us simply for having seen it, any more than watching a storm on radar will keep it from raining.

Yes, I know that the radar analogy could also be turned to suggest that by seeing the storm coming, we can prepare ourselves with umbrellas and rain boots, but that's not what the iMob wants. We want someone to keep it from raining, as infantile and illogical as that is, it is what we want. Our desire for transparency isn't motivated by any bold underpinning, that if we are discontent we would go so far as to do something about it.

Heavens, no.

We want a more passive relationship with our masters. Yes, we want to keep an eye on those rascals, but from a safe distance, generally measured by terabytes. We want to feel like we control them, because as long as they stay in the confines of our Blackberry and iPhone screens, they are diminutive and less threatening.

For my money, "transparency" is simply the new "shallow".

How Air Quotes have “Changed” Our Lives

Sincerity is important in communication.

Whatever.

We live in one of the most cynical and verbally combative periods of history, fueled by advanced communication technology and declining intellect.

One of the hallmarks of this “golden age” is the use of air quotes by speakers who want to convey connotations that they likely could express with a snitty tone of voice.

Thank goodness America’s “founding fathers” weren’t as jaded as we, the strained seed of their democratic loins, are. Imagine if Thomas Jefferson had stood before the Continental Congress to read aloud the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, with the addition of air quotes:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the “pursuit of Happiness”.

…which suddenly, thanks to air quotes, makes “pursuit of happiness” sound like a euphemism.

Air quotes are used to express satire, sarcasm, irony, or euphemism. (Incidentally, I recently heard from a fellow Toastmaster from a journalistic background that they are also called “quotey fingers”.)

Many English speakers use air quotes routinely, but that is not the case everywhere in the world; in fact, air quotes stymie some learners of English who initially think that a speaker is imitating a rabbit. I suppose this could suggest that the English-speaking world ranks highest on the cynicism spectrum, and for those of us of Scandinavian descent, air quotes are just about the only hand gestures approved by the Sons of Norway.

My “research” shows that air quotes have been in sporadic use since at least the 1920s in the U.S., but they didn’t have a name until the 1980s. Merriam-Webster added the phrase “air quotes” to the Dictionary in 1989 with the definition of “a gesture made by raising and flexing the index and middle fingers of both hands, used to call attention to a spoken word or expression.”

Air quotes are significant, because they change how we interpret a message.

There have been some famous air quotes, for example, in episodes of Friends, like the one where Danny DeVito plays a male stripper, Ross reminisced with Missy, a woman on whom he had a crush during college. He asked her if she remembered his then roommate, Chandler. She said, “Sure, he was in your 'band'." (Using air quotes around "band".)

Ross replies “It's been sixteen years but the air quotes still hurt.”

Plus there was the episode where Joey misuses air quotes, but after Ross punches a pole, Joey finally uses air quotes correctly.

Or how about the “hot mess” when Dateline interviewed Britney Spears where she overused and misused air quotes so frequently that was the subject of, like, a “buhjillion” blogs the next day.

In the movie “Austin Powers”, Dr. Evil said that he developed a ‘sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser". Using these "lasers," we punch a hole in the protective gas layer around the world, which we call the "ozone layer."

The award for the air quote that was heard around the world, though, has to go to Senator John McCain for his October 15th 2008 debate with Barack Obama. Senator McCain got himself into some hot water with air quotes. The topic was abortion, and McCain was saying that Obama was hiding his support for late-term abortions under the guise of a concern for the mother’s “health”.
He said, “That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, health.”

The fact that he chose to use air quotes on such a sensitive topic in general was probably unwise, linking him to a certain level of flippancy about an issue that divides “reasonable people”.

In print, these are known as “scare quotes” or “sneer quotes”, when a writer doesn’t agree with the words in the quotes and wants to distance him- or herself from those words in the quotation marks. For example, in an email to your boss, you might explain why your co-worker didn’t help you complete a project by writing, “He said he was ‘too busy’.” Meaning you didn’t believe that your co-worker was busy at all, and you wanted your boss to know it.

After my “extensive research” on this topic, I have concluded that thanks to “air quotes” and “scare quotes”, many people now suspect anything that they see in quotation marks. Consider some of the examples from an “amusing” blog site called unnecessaryquotes.com.

I believe that people who make these signs may be using the quotation marks to emphasize a word, or to imply a different “voice” saying a particular phrase, as if their mascot suddenly was speaking.

These examples demonstrate, though, that the words in quotation marks can have the exact opposite affect from what the author intended, and I believe that this is, in part, because of air quotes. How they’ve become so ubiquitous, making us cynical about anything in quotation marks.

There are so many ways that the messages we put on signs, in brochures, and in our daily interpersonal exchanges can be misinterpreted. Air quotes fill a need for us literal-minded English speakers, to emphasize that “hey! I’m being sarcastic here! Don’t take me ‘seriously’!”