deadlines, schmeadlines

It's hard not to look at the date and remember that I'm way behind on the book. 12 chapters. Due Sept 1 2007. So I figured one chapter a month would work nicely. Easy. So now it is February eve and I'm 2.5 chapters in, and the chapters are a bit shorter than I'd hoped. It's going to be an interesting summer. Pity my family. Better yet, invite them to come stay with you. I'll be a bit, um, grizzly. Even better, if you've got a quiet place with a coffeemaker and a wireless hookup, invite me to stay with you.

I had a long, upwind walk to work this morning, my first day back in the office after the 48 hour viral debacle that knocked me on my ass. Here was my deep thought of the morning, as I felt my long hair freeze into the front of my beard, making me look like some kind of hoary, bedraggled street person (and I liked that). Perhaps not so much a thought as a series of vaguely connected thoughts. More a tattered sheet of semi-thoughts. But I digress (and hence that deadline problem).

I think it started with Caroline's comment on the Old Man Farm blog about how intimate contact with landscape alters our relationship with time (and thank goodness for another post from the inimitable Farmer's Wife, though the sight of all those fresh-faced young WWOOFers left me feeling positively fossiline). I tried a stint on that farm once. All I was good for was staring at cows and drinking scotch. But I was there, goddamit, and I knew what Caroline meant.

Though it was different, I had a moment, after having escaped from urban chaos for almost a full year when, one morning, while walking along an Atlantic beach last year, I was struck by a thought that seemed so profound at the time that I stopped, fumbled through my pockets for a bit of paper and leaning on a big rock with the goofy but now defunct dog staring up at me in wonderment, wrote down my idea. I was convinced that by the time I got home this grand idea would have oozed away, like a Dali timepiece, and it would remind me of one of those grand visions of the universe experienced as a teenager after a nice jolt of LSD. I'd look at it in the cold reflection of a kitchen cup of coffee, scratch my head and, in the argot of the day, mutter "WTF?" It would be like the early morning in Toronto, about 30 years ago now, when I stood under a lamppost with my best friend, staring up at a sea of moving stars, laughing because we both realized that we 'got' it. All of it. (And maybe we did at the time, but the next morning all I had of 'it' was a peculiar feeling that I no longer quite fit inside my own brain properly -- as if I'd picked up the wrong shoes by mistake at a party and had worn them home). This moment on the beach was different, though. Even though I recognize that I was heavily under the influence of what I still believe is one of the most important books I've read, certainly one of the most beautiful, and one that I will read again soon (much sooner than I will ever again let any lysergic acid pass my lips -- it's got nothing left to teach me I haven't found better ways to learn), I still think I might have been on to something. And it all connects up to Old Man Farm, time, attention, and awareness.

So now here comes the weird little clang association that I don't know what to make of. We're going digital. I've spent countless more hours reading about how much of the world we're pouring into silicon and light. Computing is becoming so cheap that the Hans Moravec notion of being able to pour all of our life's experiences into silicon seems not quite as nutty as it did at the time (I sat beside Moravec at a conference once. I had no idea who he was and couldn't understand why, even though he never said much, the room fell silent when his mouth opened). We're getting better at modelling. Everything. Behaviour, brains, weather, traffic jams. Much of that is because we can get our grubby little paws on gazillions of terabytes of storage and we can move bits around faster than my lovely little Chinese hyperdaughter can smash fine china plates. Accurate modelling means that now, not only can we bottle up the past to play over and over again in achingly Technicolor detail, but we can lean into the future. We're getting better at knowing what will happen. So if we know what's about to happen, when are we? What's that Laurie Anderson lyric? "History is an angel being blown backwards into the future." In a song dedicated to Walter Benjamin. Who wrote this.

At which point, to use an ironic turn of phrase, I realized I didn't know whether I was coming or going. But I was pretty sure that those stinging little jabs of snow on my eyelids as I stumbled up the last snowbank before sliding under the wheels of a (thankfully stationary) SUV in the parking lot of my not-completely-pedestrian-friendly campus, were not the least bit digital. They were right there making my flesh hurt. And I was glad.

old home

I'm home for the day, having succumbed to the nasty bug that has swept through our house. The last case was almost a week ago, so I thought I'd dodged the bullet, but, alas, no.

I heard last night that my kids are worried about me (some of them) because I seem to be so stressed. I know how this started. I was at the grocery store with my oldest daughter (20) for a short list of about 5 items. I became a bit disoriented when I discovered that I'd forgotten my list Normally, I wouldn't even make a list for 5 items, but I expected it to be longer and then, as I tried to explain to her, as soon as I'd committed the list to paper, I flushed the items from my memory store so I could make room for more important stuff. We had a houseful of company arriving in about two hours, and the combination of the time pressure, the lack of organization, the crowd at the store, my effort to discuss a complicated set of first year university issues with my daughter conspired to bring me to a state of motionless confusion in the produce aisle of the store. To me, at the time, it made perfect sense. There was too much going on. My daughter was worried, though. And when I explained the whole situation to my wife later, she seemed worried, too. So then I worried a bit. It reminded me of a time, a million years ago, when I was out driving with my dad. He and I were lost in conversation and he discovered that he was lost. What was curious was that we were only a few blocks from home on a route that he drove every day. I spent the next few days worrying that he might have Alzheimer's disease. He was about my age -- perhaps a couple of years older. I was about my daughter's age. So now it's a funny little reminder that, though I feel inside as though I'm about 20, my behaviour is changing in ways to which I'll have to adapt.

To me, the changes are tiny, considering that I'm a 49 year old man trapped in the life of a 35 year old, but to others they must seem larger. I suppose I should consider this as a kind of compliment. If I don't normally act my age, then the subtle signs of time's inexorable march would unnerve them a little.

Dr. Feelgood

I'm now deeply into my 50th year and still feeling optimistic (sorry Richard). It might be that I'm reading too much Christopher Alexander. Such a frank, workmanlike but so profound understanding of how the configuration of built space can make everything better. If only he were right....

Global warming has been postponed for a few days so the temperatures can plunge to interesting levels and my kids will be assured of at least a few days of skating in the neighbourhood rink. I'm sure the pundits will be out in full force about it all tomorrow.

For the second day in a row, I walked past a man at our local park who was sleeping in an idling car, seat fully restrained, slack-jawed, possibly snoring. He looked poor, unkempt, a bit beaten by life. I imagined that he must have nowhere to go between jobs. Is it possible his car was his home? I wondered whether to check on him, but didn't. Last week, I passed three people in almost the same spot -- two men and a woman. They looked as though they might be from the Middle East, but I couldn't tell what language they were yelling. The woman was the most incensed of the three, occasionally raising her fists to beat lightly on the men. At one point, one of the men began to grab at her and she yelled louder and pulled away. This was when I became confused and worried. When does a stranger intercede? When should I have worried about her safety? Not understanding what they were saying was not helpful. In the end, I decided to stop, a couple of hundred feet away, turn around and watch for a while. I hoped that their realizing they were being witnessed, turning from being a trio of very hot "I's" to a she and a pair of he's would bring the fire down a notch or two. I don't know if it worked, but the yelling stopped. Who knows what I will see there tomorrow?

I'm once again up far too late for my own good, sending off encouraging emails to colleagues that I think are really meant to bolster my own confidence on the eve of the day that I sign off on the biggest order of my career, knowing full well that I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm getting better by the day at faking it. What if that was all there were to getting things done? Getting other people to believe you know the way? How sad that would be. Sometimes leadership seems so simple, as if most people just stand motionless waiting for the smallest provocation to impel them to action. They know what to do, they may even know what they want to do, but just need a little push. It's as if we're all standing on little peaks, filled with potential, just not being quite sure which way we want to roll. If someone comes along with a little helping hand, we're only too willing to be guided. At other times, it just seems incredibly complex and confusing and I feel like a little boy with great big flabby fingers trying to put an intricate Swiss watch together without bending or breaking anything. One wrong word, one forgotten issue, one false step, can suddenly explode into a huge problem, in seconds it seems, ruining days and days of careful planning. It's hard not to believe I won't soon make some huge gaffe, some nasty public fart which will cause all the fun I'm having to vanish overnight. Ah, ego.

Words to strike fear in a father's heart

On giving one's daughter a nice birthday party, including very prime steak, good wine, shooters, a nice stint in the hot tub with her friends. Her response:

"I can't wait to move home again."

I yay yay yay.

Reasons for optimism

Ok, ok. I know. After my last post, the heading here seems a little paradoxical. But it's my birthday today, so I'm entitled to put on the pink glasses for a day. A perfect square birthday at that. A few minutes ago, I was explaining this to my children -- that perfect square birthdays come rarely, that most of us will only have 9 of these things, at best, and that this one is my seventh. That they come less and less frequently (thank goodness!). I'm not sure she saw the point at all, but then she's 11. She's going to live forever.

I spent most of my day on Friday at the new site of our School of Architecture. In a brilliant move, they left town, bought an old, unused textile factory in the nearby town of Cambridge and renovated in spectacular fashion. The thing about old textile factories is that the work requires big machines, big spaces and, at the time this factory was built, lots of natural light. These features having been preserved in the renovation means that these lucky students and faculty spend their day in a building that seems to float on the edge of the Grand River in a great vestibule of light, colour and space. It's exactly the kind of place you'd want to be in as an architect, I would think. I remarked to the person I went to visit that I would think the hardest thing about his day would be leaving in the evening.

The day generated what for me seem like spectacular and unreal ideas. Serious projects are still perhaps some distance in the future, but on Friday they came to life. One of my great revelations of last year was that architects and planners are in business of understanding how to apply the principles that govern how space works to the world of human affairs. This is an obvious truth that had somehow escaped me in all of my years as a scientist interested in how mental space works. In an era where technology is forcing us to rethink physical space, architectural theory is booming. More than anything else, my day, spent discussing these kinds of ideas with an incredibly wise and interesting architect made me realize that at least some of the craziness that is floating around in my head is a shared craziness. Unless somebody somewhere makes a slip and presses the wrong button at the wrong time, there's just some chance that the creativity of a new generation of young people who think about how to design buildings, machines, cities, and neighbourhoods to change social systems, to rectify some of our past mistakes, could put my children, and their children, into a world of undreamt of goodness and light. It could happen.

Our new government (now not so new, I suppose) and its new environment minister, is unrolling a series of very bold policy announcements dealing with energy conservation, environmental cleanup, carbon sequestration, alternative energy initiatives. The cynics say that these announcements are simply revamped versions of policies devised by the previous government. I don't care whether or not this is true. I don't care whether or not these policies are being announced solely for the purpose of enhancing this government's chances of re-election. I'm not sure whether I even care who is elected, provided that these policies are acted on. Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work? Those who can figure out what a people really consider to be important, and to act on it effectively, should win elections.

Call me a naive dupe, but it's my birthday today and I'm going to keep these pink specs on until a minute past midnight.

Reasons we deserve extinction, Part 5.

And I was just telling someone that I try to be optimistic these days....

Then this.

A math game

Dreadfully late for school, but not really very concerned about that, as long as we were there to drink each other's company without too many distractions, pre-teen in training and I stood at glare corner, counting cars, waiting to cross. PTIT has had some math challenges lately. I saw a teachable moment.

"Hey, kiddo, how many of these cars have just one person in them?"
"All of them do, Dad."
"How many people can fit into one car?"
"At least four."
"So, if these people got together and shared rides, how many fewer cars would we have just counted, and how much easier would it be for us to get across the road?"

I'm brilliant. Brilliant! Eco-mathematics. Quantitative urban planning for grade 4 math.

My stunning, drop-dead perfectly formed daughter tilted her head up at me with a crooked smile. She fixed me with those big, dark pools of eyes, little dimples of amusement forming.

"Dad. I know what you're trying to do. But we're studying 'area' in math. Not cars."
"Oh, ok. So how big is your room? How many meters across?"
"About as big as this road. 20 meters."
"Really? How tall am I?"
"10 meters."

The traffic cleared. We crossed the road. I had to duck underneath the telephone wires.

The metaverse

I'm spending more and more of my time in some other space defined only by a humming collection of servers. I have an avatar there -- his name is Colin Alacrity. I've just taken a snapshot of myself. Don't laugh. When I first climbed aboard SecondLife, I threw together an outfit, basically pasted a nice picture of a sunset onto the default white t-shirt and couldn't really quite figure out how to get shoes on my feet, but did find a way to give my skin a greenish hue. Then, sometime later, I met someone I knew in real life 'in-world' and was taken aback by the fact that he'd taken some pains to make his avatar look a bit like him. So I found myself a dark corner to hide in, and I stripped off my default clothes and put together something that looked like an outfit I might wear. I spent a fair bit of time on my physique, my face, my hair and ended up with something that looked a bit like me. Only, in some indefinable way, no matter how hard I try, my avatar looks better than I do. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't mastered all of those fancy sliders or if my subconscious just won't let me in far enough to be completely objective about things. It would be interesting to get someone else to design me.

I'm not sure where all of this metaverse is going for me. I began to explore it because of a colleague who has grand visions of what such constructions could eventually mean for all of us. I vacillate between thinking it is nothing more than a 3d chat room, to thinking that it is something much more interesting. Certainly, it has attracted the attention of a large number of very clever people, including a few who seem to believe that it can be used for some very interesting research -- a kind of computational social science is how one recent news report described it. I have some ideas for interesting projects in the metaverse, but I'm not sure how much time I want to invest in this.

A part of me feels that it is exactly the wrong approach. Rather than trying to shrug off our embodiment, pixelize our relationship with the physical, I really do feel at heart that we should embrace it, dig our fingers into the dirt. I read today that Roland Barthes had objected to the Eiffel Tower because he thought it gave people a chance to look down on Paris from a great height and to generate the illusion for themselves that they understood what it was. Metaverses may have the same effect.

But another part of me suspects that these digital constructions may hold great power as ways to connect people to one another and perhaps, if they are integrated with facets of the real world, to connect people with places -- perhaps even creating new and very strange kinds of hybrid places that are, in part flesh and blood and soil and leaf and, in part, the play of electrons, plasma, and fiber optics. It seems critical that if all of this is to be a positive thing, we need to make the latter serve the former.

The last thing we need is another justification for abandonment of the body and the ground it walks upon.

Ad libbing space

So. What if we didn't really have any kinds of maps in our heads? What if we just kind of made things up as we went along? Somebody recently asked me why I have to train an animal to judge distance. Why do we perform simple tasks so poorly without practice? I'd always assumed it was because we need to tune muscles, movements, kinesthesis. But maybe it isn't. Maybe it's because we're inventing the script in the moment. What we do next depends on what just worked. I see this all the time in experiments. We dispense with the early trials because they're messy, filled with noise. But maybe that's where the real story lies.

Some climates never change

Here in Eastern Canada, in an area that used to be known as the "snow belt," on January 5, middle of the day, it's 10C outside and the temperature is still climbing. The neighbourhood skating rink is a swimming pool. We filled it a few weeks ago and it hasn't shown more than a slight covering of frost on one or two chilly mornings. The local ski resort is closed, and the Christmas break ski camp they offer to schoolkids was cancelled. Rather than offer refunds, they are offering 'incentives' for the kids to go find snow somewhere else, or wait until later in the season. I suspect they don't have the money to pay it back without going under. I've got very healthy looking spinach growing in my yard. No kidding. I'll take a picture on the weekend if I can get through all the mud out there. We're hoping for a nice 'cold snap' on the weekend that will bring the temperature down to about 4-5C higher than the seasonal average. The west coast is being battered with storms like never seen before -- they're having a hard time keeping the power on and, when it goes off, large urban areas teeter on the brink of catastrophe. Greater Vancouver's tap water was deemed unsafe to drink without boiling for several days -- the largest 'boil water order' in Canadian history. Farmers in Australia are going bankrupt for lack of water. Food is becoming scarce.

Yes. It's an El Nino year and, yes, virtually every one of the effects I've just described are predicted El Nino events, though we've never seen them with this kind of intensity. But good old El Nino gives us a way to shrug this off as an anomaly for just one more year. Globally, there's a good chance that this will be the warmest year on record. The Canadian government is showing some small sign that it is paying attention, if not to the weather then at least to the growing cries for some concession to an imminent catastrophe with a bit more oomph than a small tax credit for those who buy bus passes. Rona Ambrose, our insult of an environment minister, has been fired. Though there's no evidence her replacement has any particular insight into the environment, a fresh face is better than nothing.

For all of this, my closest decent newspaper, the Globe and Mail, carries a story today about climate change the most interesting part of which for me is the collection of reader comments. At last count, about 1/3 of the commenters were online to ridicule the notion of anthropogenic climate change. The main arguments seemed to be that 1. we don't really know what climate was like in the distant past and all evidence suggests that present trends are just natural long term trends (they're not.) and 2. weather forecasters are always wrong. This latter criticism puzzles me. My experience is that weather forecasters are seldom wrong. If the Environment Canada forecast tells me its going to rain, then it rains. It may be off about the amount of rain, but not the fact of it. Weather models have improved vastly since the genesis of this old canard about forecasting. So has monitoring both on the ground and by satellite. Meteorologists don't have every answer, obviously, and the further they look into the future, the less certain they can be about the details. But this all makes perfect sense and is true of any kind of prediction. I can predict what I'll have for dinner tonight. And perhaps tomorrow. Not so much a year from now (will I still have teeth?). Or ten years from now. But I can predict that I probably will eat something. This doesn't mean I don't know anything about my own diet.

Sigh.

Many have said that we will only reverse the planet's fortunes with a coordinated global effort similar in scope and commitment to the effort it took the Alliance to win WWII. With about 30% of us in full denial stage, probably at least that many of us in full ignorant bliss, and the other 40% of us not really knowing what to do, it's hard to keep my chin up about prospects for my kids.

That little son of mine, not quite 3 years old, not the least bit complicit in any of this, is going to be a part of a generation that will suffer like we haven't seen suffering since at least the Middle Ages.

Here we go

Inspired titles on these posts.....

It's a new year and I'm settling back into a work routine that I must say is quite relaxing compared to life on the home front. The mother of my children and I continue to stare at each other every evening, dumbfounded, not quite sure how to maintain any semblance of real life in the face of these two toddlers whose energy levels continue to ramp up. It's like living with the Roadrunner and Taz (they alternate roles). I swear you can see the little animation speedlines around them.

My worklife this term should be different -- less teaching and more writing, thinking, developing. Things have gotten off to a nice start. A random meeting on my street yesterday with an interesting artist turned up a gazillion new tangents for me to explore. Like this one. And this. It's funny how, when you're deeply involved in some kind of adventure, you begin to think that everything that happens to you is somehow connected to it, as if the universe is leaning into you, egging you on, like a great mother putting a gentle hand into the small of your back and giving a little push.

I know I should say a little more her about this and that, but I did just promise myself that I would shut my office door and spend the last hour here getting a bit of writing done. So here I go.