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July 23, 2000
One Sunday Afternoon
As I type this, our son Christopher is playing with his baby gym on the bed behind me. He is four months old. What have I learned from being a hands-on Dad in the last four months?
The role of the modern father is changing -- and feeding, and burping, etc., as one funny card sent to me by my niece says. I'm struck by the contrast between my fatherhood and that of several male contemporaries. I seem to be much more involved with my son right from day one. Perhaps it's because I'm starting parenthood much later in life, as I mentioned below; perhaps it's because I just find our son so fascinating to watch, even in his sleep.
So far, the most amazing thing that has happened to me in becoming a father, is rediscovering a powerful sense of awe, of wonder. Whenever I carry our son with his face close to mine but looking outwards, I share in his utter fascination with everything he can see -- because he is seeing with new eyes. What once left me jaded, whatever seemed so utterly familiar, is reborn through this gift of seeing with him. A greater gift, I could not have anticipated. I sometimes lie down beside him and look up at the ceiling, which seems to make him smile and coo a lot. Somewhere in the stippled texture of the paint, I think, he sees angels.
And they, too, are smiling at him.
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November 18, 1999
The Gift of Parenthood
I've just started reading Randall Colton Rolfe's You Can Postpone Anything But Love (unfortunately, now out of print -- I just checked on amazon.com). It looks like an excellent guidebook to what promises to be the greatest adventure I have ever undertaken -- becoming a Dad. Like so many other things, I'm late starting on this compared with my contemporaries (I'm now 37). But there's something about choosing to bring a child into the world just on the cusp of a new century (if not quite a new millennium, which doesn't really start until Jan. 1, 2001) that makes me stop and think: what is this path I have chosen? What must I teach my child?
Many of us have hopes and dreams for our children, usually along the lines of having them eclipse our own achievements in every way, if possible. And while there's nothing at all wrong with teaching our children that striving for excellence is a worthwhile goal, perhaps it's time for us to step back and see what the world needs most.
I think we need above all to teach our children to love life, not in the sense of wanting to surround themselves with material comfort and luxury, but in the spirit of seeking to understand that, in a mysterious and profoundly beautiful way, life itself is a gift for which we must give thanks each and every day. Approaching life as the ultimate gift helps us -- not just our children, but all of us -- to glimpse something of who we are meant to be, in the fullness of our humanity. Anything that distracts us from this -- the singleminded pursuit of wealth, power, or fame -- also shrinks our souls.
Too often, we forget. Life becomes mundane, dull, boring. But is it, really? Or is its apparent ordinariness a failure of perception on our part, more than anything else? If we truly love life, how can we allow it to take on the pallor of neglect?
If there is one thing I would like my child to learn from me, it is this sense of life as gift. I hope that she will carry it with her all her days, and pass it on.
Rolfe's book begins with a quote defining "love," from William Law:
"By love I do not mean natural tenderness, which is in people according to their constitution, but I see it as a larger principle of the soul, founded in reason and spiritual understanding, which makes us kind and gentle to all our fellow creatures as creations of God."
I can only hope and pray that as a parent, I will let my child teach me about love.
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June 2, 1999
Birds of A Feather
I had no small bit of trouble falling asleep last night. My insomnia was rooted in a heady swirl of ideas converging furiously in my mind -- the nature of human beings (or of humans be-ing), the reality of worker alienation in large corporations, how to build intranets that people will actually want to use everyday (I work as a web architect, after all). Two words -- concepts, really -- kept coming to the forefront: community, and connection.
Over the last year or so, I've struggled to make sense of why so many of the well-meaning intranet efforts in my company have failed to elicit the kind of popular participation seen on well-known public Web sites such as Yahoo, EBay, and Amazon. Even specialized sites such as Slashdot or Ars.Technica draw people in. Why?
Most human beings are innately tribal.
The main problem with official corporate intranet projects is that many of these are created by organizational edict and are shepherded by 'knowledge managers' who have trouble explaining what they do to other people in the organization (been there, done that). Like so many other corporate buzzwords du jour (empowerment, 'thinking outside the box,' business process reengineering, etc.), 'knowledge management' rings hollow in many people's minds. Years of downsizing and retrenchment (witness the rise of 'contingent or 'flexible' workforces) have only battered employee morale ('I'm just a cog in the machine, so why should I care?' or 'I just work here, I don't make the rules') and created indifference to corporate objectives -- profits, shareholder value, etc. that have little to do with the immediate, everyday concerns of the average worker. Indeed, why should anyone want to share their knowledge with others if it will only make them more expendable?
Why, indeed.
We could force people to share what they know by making it part of their annual performance reviews. Some organizations do precisely this. But something tells me that this approach will only deepen most people's sense of being manipulated, in the long run -- unless there are meaningful, tangible rewards for sharing knowledge effectively. Without the support of the highest executive ranks, any effort to promote such behaviour is likely to fail.
How might we overcome employee cynicism and reluctance to share?
Here's a thought: we can help people to easily form tribes (or to use the corporatese, "communities of shared interest"), of their own accord. We could make it rewarding for other people to find and join tribes. Provide a basic framework, then watch as cubicle dwellers customize these spaces with personally meaningful bits commingled with the value each person adds to the corporation. (This web essay is a self-referential example of what I'm describing).
There is a compelling precedent for this kind of organic, bottoms-up, evolutionary approach. (There's open source software, of course, but not everyone uses Linux or Apache).
Of all the application programs installed on people's personal computers in the workplace, which one gets used the most without any prodding from management, by employees with little or no training? E-mail. Why? Because it helps people connect to other human beings. Within and outside the corporation. The same thing, on a more complex scale, is happening on the Web. Don't believe me? Just check out eGroups.com, DejaNews or Cluetrain.
If we want our intranet projects to succeed, we (intranet builders) must think like savvy real estate developers, and create the foundations for desirable communities that people will want to visit regularly, or better yet, live in. People who have an intranet shoved down their gullets will use it grudgingly at best, if at all.
The Web originated in one academic's desire to share his work with colleagues around the world. (Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist, created the world's first HTTP server and client at CERN in 1990.) Since then, the Web has evolved into the largest (and most badly organized) storehouse of human experience, with the tacit support of (but little or no direction from) organized bureaucracies in government and business. Like the open source movement, it was a grassroots, bootstrapped effort. The Web was initially embraced by the usual suspects (early technology adopters and Internet veterans), but it truly became a mass phenomenon when Marc Andreessen created a graphical browser (Mosaic) that made it possible for millions of people to point and click their way around this hyperlinked medium without first learning arcane command syntax. Just as the GUI (graphical user interface) broadened the usability of personal computers, a graphical Web browser made hypertext not only accessible to a wide audience, it enticed them to enter the Web to explore and follow their curiosity wherever it took them.
Most human beings are innately curious.
About themselves, and about others. (Unless they have been lobotomized at home or at school). Why else would sites as diverse as GeoCities, Tripod, and JenniCam proliferate?
So why do people surf the Web? To look up information. To shop. To find useful things. To entertain themselves. And to connect with others. By e-mailing. Or by posting to discussion threads. Or, more and more, by publishing their own web pages. (On the Web, anyone can be a contributor).
The attractions of the Web are to be found mainly not just in its content, but in its hyperlinked, interactive nature. Eventually, people will come to see the Web as just one big extension to their personal computers.
What are the lessons for those of us who care about site traffic and about designing intranets that people will actually want to use everyday? I think these are fairly self-evident:
Knowledge 'management'? Yeah, right.
I prefer to jump-start serendipity. Let a thousand flowers bloom! Plant a seed, watch it grow.
Meanwhile, check out Ceilidh.
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April 28, 1999
Why We Need Everyday Heroes
Last Tuesday, while vacationing in Maryland, my wife and I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. We didn't realize it was Hitler's birthday, but we did notice the strict airport-like security measures at the museum entrance. Suffice it to say that the exhibits left a deep impression. That same evening, we heard on TV about the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
As you might expect, by now I've read, listened to, and watched some of the extensive media coverage of the shooting. Like many of you, I'm trying to make sense of it all. Here's what I've come up with so far.
It is tempting to view the Littleton shooting as an aberration, but I suspect there's more to the story than just a couple of unpopular, misfit teenagers who decided to act out depraved revenge fantasies on their schoolmates. For some background, see Laura Fraser's Of Course It Happened Here. She closes with:
As a law-abiding Canuck, I can only shake my head in disbelief at this. While waiting to get my bike fixed today at Canadian Tire, I had the young salesperson tell me he would not sell a BB gun to a customer who inquired if it was legal to carry it in a vehicle. Similarly, he would not sell bear spray to someone who asked if it would injure humans. Such discernment and good judgment in an 18-year old speaks well of his upbringing and the store's sales policies, and it also brings into sharp relief one of the major features of the "land of the free and the home of the brave" -- when there are many guns in public circulation, sooner or later, those guns will be used for something.
During tonight's Larry King show on CNN, Sen. Barbara Boxer (Dem.- Calif.) stated that over 58,000 American soldiers died during the Vietnam War. Since that time, it is estimated that more than 400,000 U.S. civilians were killed by guns. Now, many Americans insist that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," and even more will cite that the U.S. Constitution upholds every American's inalienable "right to bear arms." Well, this particular proviso was intended to reduce the chance of government tyranny, not to put machine guns into the hands of resentful teenaged murderers. And while it may be true that an armed populace is harder to subjugate, the Founding Fathers would probably look at the current situation in the U.S. and conclude that it amounts to a lurid perversion of democracy, one that devolves from a civil society -- where the rule of law is paramount -- into the insanity of a gun-toting mob intent on enforcing justice as it sees fit. Darwinist? Yes. Moral? Certainly not. Don't agree with me? Check out this explanation.
When I made my way through the Holocaust Museum exhibits, I was forced to ponder why many people stood by and did nothing, while others put themselves at great risk to prevent the murder of innocents. In a similar vein, we should ask: how could the parents of the Columbine shooters not have noticed the pipe bombs being noisily built in their family garages, or their sons' rabid embrace of Nazi philosophy? Is teenage privacy really so all-important, after all? Whatever happened to family dinners and good parent-child communication? (This may only be anecdotal evidence, but it is compelling nonetheless -- families I know who control TV viewing in their homes seem to have well-behaved, mature, and responsible kids; I suspect the same would be true in homes where Internet usage is supervised). What sort of parenting produces good kids? (For one answer, see the cover story on actress Natalie Portman in the May 1999 Vanity Fair).
These questions, by simple free association, beg a host of others: should a teen's parents be held criminally negligent in such cases? Is there a deeper work/family life balance issue here? Should companies require employees to spend more and more hours enhancing their employer's "global competitiveness"? Is running business on "Internet time" a good thing? Are we all on a train speeding towards the collapse of civil society? Is this why we've become rude and obnoxious customers, pushing our help desk analysts, pharmacists, cashiers, and fast-food servers into ever more stressful situations? Trust me, it's all interconnected. Remember chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect?
What makes civil society work? I submit that it is simple human decency. And for that, we must have a citizenry, not just a mass of consumers. It would also help if we got back to thinking about whether there is a God or not, instead of waving the question aside as if it were irrelevant.
In Littleton, many people were cited for heroism and bravery. But lest we think that it takes crises to stir our noblest impulses, we should instead take note of what George Lucas observed at the end of his interview with Bill Moyers in the April 26, 1999 Time:
I don't think Lucas meant getting the highest scores in Quake or Doom or paintball, either. And, I also disagree with his thesis. The behaviours he cites should not be considered heroic acts -- these should be deeply-ingrained everyday habits in everyone (in grade school, we were graded on 'deportment' -- do they still do this anywhere today, or is it archaic?).
Now, if only someone had taught the true meaning of "heroism" to the Columbine jocks, the Goths, the Trench Coat Mafia, Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris, the massacre might have been avoided.
Think about that, next time someone cuts you off in traffic.
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August 12, 1998
The Sense of Wonder
The other day, Claire Zakrison (a colleague of mine) stopped by the office to show us her newborn baby. We gathered around and marveled at little Kirsten. We asked the usual questions. We cooed. We ahhed. We tickled her. We held her in our arms.
What makes us instinctively curious about an infant? Is it just our genetic programming? Or is there something more?
Perhaps, every time we see a baby, we're reminded of the promise in every new addition to humanity. Will she be another Marie Curie? A Maria Callas? A Ginger Spice? Or maybe a Monica Lewinsky? Who knows?
A baby also powerfully reminds us of the innocence that is our birthright. If we are lucky, a baby might jolt us into acknowledging, however dimly, our own still-unrealized potential, as individuals and as a species. The instinctive recognition of this truth makes us react the way we do.
To infants and young children, the world is a new, magical, and unexplored place, where the ordinary is extraordinary, because they are discovering it for the first time. Their appetite for learning is unsurpassed, and for a while, we indulge it wholeheartedly.
And then the trouble starts. They ask the most difficult, perplexing, maddening questions.
All too soon, these very same children whom we cherish, have the truth withheld from them, or get it distorted. By whom? By us, of course. Our schools. Our corporations. Our governments. Our churches. In books. On TV. And so on. And we blithely accept this as "just the way things are."
Do we withhold or distort the truth to protect children from harm? Or because we just don't know any better? Or are we really too scared or lazy or indifferent, so instead we pass along the truth substitutes that we absorbed all too well in growing up?
For some children, the truth will impose itself despite our best efforts to "shield" them from it, or our most sincere attempts to indoctrinate them with something else.
How quickly we forget this. And how fondly (or sadly) we remember our own (lost) innocence!
Can we not resolve to cherish and uphold truth in everything we do, even today, even if we think we have become too jaded, cynical, or manipulative?
If we don't honor the truth, then who will?
Rachel Carson, the biologist who started the environmental movement with the publication of her book Silent Spring, said that for a child's innate sense of wonder to survive into adulthood, that child would have to enjoy the company, on a regular basis, of at least one adult whose own sense of wonder was intact.
Can we somehow rediscover our own sense of wonder, perhaps even regain our innocence and our love for truth, without becoming self-destructively naive? I think so.
We should honor the truth, because in so doing, we honor our children, and we honor ourselves.
We deserve no less.
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