gong.szeto.blog

Updates Fall 2010

2010-08-27T19:30:57Z

I am now blogging at my version of a political blog at rhetoricsandheretics.com

I am on the Board of Directors for the Open Forum Foundation in Washington D.C.

I am on the Advisory Board for investigative journalism startup WarIsBusiness.com

From "Logos" to "Mythos" in America?

2010-06-17T05:39:28Z

From Jane Jacobs' 2005 Dark Age Ahead (I am reading now, highly recommended):

Cultural xenophobia is a frequent sequel to a society's decline from cultural vigor. Someone has aptly called self-imposed isolation a fortress mentality. Armstrong describes it as a shift from faith in logos, reason, with its future-oriented spirit, "always...seeking to know more and to extend...areas of competence and control of the environment," to mythos, meaning conservatism that looks backward to fundamentalist beliefs for guidance and a worldview.

Now, take a look at at recent data from the Congressional Conversation Index (CCI), which tracks the top inbound issue categories in communications from American citizens (letters, emails, faxes, etc) to their elected representatives in Congress.

The Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College

2010-06-13T03:06:02Z

I am pleased to announce that I have accepted an appointment as a Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College.

Back in November, I was catching up on some highlight presentations at TED2009 when I remembered a bunch of buzz on Twitter about a talk by Bennington College president Liz Coleman on reinventing liberal arts education. I was gobsmacked. Really, it was one of the most inspiring talks I'd ever seen on TED, and struck me on many levels. I'd since watched it several times, especially when I'd get a little down in the dumps in my own work trying to think of new ways to harness technology innovations to promote better and healthier democratic deliberation models in this country (nevermind the fact that the political climate in America can be downright toxic). But along with a pile of other talks, articles, essays I come across daily, shelved it into my permanently overflowing reference file labelled, "Do It Like This, Cupcake..."

You can probably imagine my utter shock and amazement when I received an email from Elizabeth Coleman in March requesting a meeting. She had seen my talk at Cusp'09, and wanted to explore the possibility of me becoming involved with Bennington's ambitious new CAPA Program. She flew to Santa Fe days later, and I had the privilege of having the most thrilling twelve hour marathon conversation (yes, 12 hours straight, no interruptions) with one of the most incredible minds and spirits I'd ever encountered. My head spun for days.

Long story short, after several visits to Bennington to see their amazing campus setting, the impressive under-construction CAPA building designed by the briliant Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, meeting with the incredible minds of the faculty and students, getting over the fact that I haven't been in a serious academic setting in over two decades, I concluded that this was going to be the beginning of a pretty incredible journey for me, for my intellectual and creative life.

I begin a four-week residency and will be teaching a CAPA module this coming fall semester. I'll be teaching something about the politics and economics of American Democracy, something about the society that dwells within simultaneous overlapping, and at times contradictory, systems, something about the complex interplay of rich, and oftentimes competing, personal and tribal narratives that comprise what we call our political lives, something about how to visualize one's self in this n-dimensional cluster-eff of American politics and what one's possible trajectories through it might be; all of which, of course, with a few unorthodox methodological twists that perhaps only a career designer and design-thinker can bring to a creatively and intellectually rigorous academy like Bennington College (can you say, "Walls of Post-It-Notes"?..). I'll be figuring out the details in earnest this summer. Sweating it out, to be precise...

Thank you, Liz and Bennington, for rolling the dice on a wildcard like me, for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime. Looking forward to this fall. Absolutely thrilled.

On voting (and flushing)

2010-06-01T14:35:03Z

"Our primary electoral act, voting, is rather like using a public toilet: we wait in line with a crowd in order to close ourselves up in a small compartment where we can relieve ourselves in solitude and in privacy or our burden, pull a lever, and then, yielding to the next in line, go silently home."

-Benjamin Barber

Narcissism of Cosmic Proportions

2010-05-23T03:52:41Z

From a genius comment on the Smithsonian's "The 10 Most Disturbing Scientific Discoveries"

Let's say the universe exists within an infinite space. How far to the edge in any direction is it from the earth? The answer would be infinity. Since the distance to the edge of infinite space is infinity in all directions, the earth is the center of the universe. Of course, more precisely, so are you.

On Caleb Howe vs. Roger Ebert

2010-05-13T05:08:27Z

Esquire's Chris Jones writes an elegant response to the ugly flare up between Caleb Howe and Roger Ebert.

Some people create. Some people make beautiful things. Some people inspire. Some people educate. Some people help. Some people dream, some people love, and some people are loved.

Other people pick cancer, and even cancer must sometimes wonder why it didn't choose to become medicine instead.

That's right. Two kinds of people in this world, in this glass-half-empty/half-full country of ours: The cancer or the cure. Which are you?

(And Caleb's bizarre apology...)

Quote of the Day

2010-03-05T05:39:05Z

"You should never ignore the fact that fools and idiots can still get things right, once in a while, and most of the public are neither fools nor idiots."

-Commenter RichardC on this

On Wisdom

2010-02-13T05:31:54Z

“There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is imitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.”

Confucius

Does the Citizens United vs. FEC SCOTUS ruling have implications for design & innovation?

2010-01-24T04:57:53Z

According to Bruce Nussbaum, yes.

The Supreme Court Votes Against Innovation

Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on January 22

The 5 to 4 vote by the Supreme Court to allow corporations and unions to use their general funds to directly support political candidates is really a vote against innovation and economic growth. It is a vote for Old Technology Against New Technology, the Big against the Small, the Established against the Entrepreneurial, the Well-Connected against the Insurgent. Big corporations,in particular, will now have the means to game the legislative as well as regulatory systems in their favor. They will be able to focus the flows of tax-payer money to their industries and have the government subsidize their companies.

The US government has already become a pay-to-play pit of corruption. The only difference between what happens in Washington and every state capital and what happens in Asia or the Middle East is that America has legalized corruption in the form of lobbying while other countries have not. The Supreme Court decision will only make this corruption worse.

If you’re sitting in Silicon Valley thinking of new businesses that will challenge the status quo, this Supreme Court vote is a vote against you.

My response:

well, it depends on whether or not you think corporations being allowed to air political ads without restriction is bad. which is what the ruling is about. (not about unrestricted campaign contributions). the SCOTUS ruling is really just about messaging (and timing thereof). this is only a problem if you think americans actually listen to political ads. (that may or may not have been a rhetorical statement). :)

i do, however, think this has profound implications for those in the creative fields who get hired to develop these messages. once upon a time design and innovation was safe in its little apolitical bubble. propaganda for consumption and profit's sake.

not any more. pop!

bruce, i do think this will have an affect on the architecture of the political process, and not for the better. if you disliked attack ads, then we're in for a new era of influence peddling dynamics, but this time the dollars are spent on not only politicians but on the electorate itself.

however, i really am earnestly trying to buy your argument that this is bad for "innovation" per se. i don't see it. this ruling allows anyone, traditional or insurgent, to attempt to influence the open electorate's vote, SCOTUS pulled any gates there might have existed, forever down.

again, the thing you might want to think about further, since you traffic in the design and innovation worlds, is how corporate political messaging....will get innovated. and it will. my nightmare is that the creative professions are going to bite on this like any lucrative client engagement (ie, like flies on shit, especially with the recession) without batting an eyelash at the political, ergo societal, ramifications of their "creatively innovative" work.

kinda like giving a gun to a baby, if you ask me.

What might have been: Pro-modern China, circa 1927, under Chiang Kai-shek (pre-Communist regime)

2010-01-14T05:58:13Z

Still taken from 6-hour series, "China: A Century of Revolution: Part One 1911-1949" (1989, Ambrica Productions). A must see, amazing historical footage...wow.