As a writing tutor, I tried to be as honest and straightforward about my assessments of student writing as I could while supporting the art and act of writing and helping writers to see where they had room to improve.  This made me a very polar writing tutor: people either loved sessions with me or they hated it and never returned.  If I got lucky, students who hated it realized that they needed the level of candid feedback that I provided and returned for more sessions with different pieces of work.  If I got extremely lucky, the writers that I absolutely reveled in working with returned time and time again.  That is not to say that I did not enjoy each and every single session I had (there were bad ones, but 90% of them were enjoyable).  But the quality of the writing and the talent of the writer allowed me to engage on a much deeper philosophical level with several students over time, getting past mechanics into more complicated issues like flow, thesis development, voice, and assertiveness.

I have not offered to read many of my classmate’s papers in the MSIM program, partly because it was no longer my job, but partly because my group work and the quality of the writing that resulted from that work discouraged me.  It is not that I am dealing with more English as a World Language speakers (some of whom have a better grasp of the mechanics of English composition than I do!), but that I am left unimpressed by the devotion to the art.  I recognize in many of my classmates the same tendencies that I wrestled with as a writing tutor: an aversion to the skill of written communication in general, a lack of interest in complete development of ideas, and no realization of the power that the written word holds.  Again, I do not imply that these are bad writers — there is no such thing - underdeveloped, perhaps, where skill can be improved, but never bad — only that they seem detached.

The problem is this: the MSIM program is a professional program, and a core competency for professionals is to be able to write.  By this, I do not mean the ability to string words together to make a coherent sentence - it is a much higher level than that.  It is the ability to use words to convince, to argue, to assert, to discuss, and to realize.  I do not demand that they enjoy the act, that they pine for the days when they can pick up the pen or sit down at the keyboard and write.  I do not even demand that they do so frequently (the program does, but I don’t).  Instead, I demand that they respect the process and that they devote themselves to nothing less than the best they can achieve.  Half-hearted is not sufficient.  I prefer no complaints, but I will tolerate those within reason, for not everyone is as interested in writing as I am.  If I am to hear whining the entire quarter about how we have to write a paper, I am unlikely to be interested in working with that individual again, for such reactions are uninspiring and indicative of more than they might think.

This is not a complaint post - far from it.  I am not bemoaning my peers, nor am I taking any stance in particular as to the technical quality of their work.  I have merely realized that my skills in writing have influenced my perception of my peers.  I have also realized that perhaps I have failed at something small but nonetheless significant: it was not simply my job to promote the art and act of writing as a writing tutor, but to carry this effort on.  I owe this in part to Kevin Desouza, associate professor at the Information School, who tirelessly offers on a weekly basis to both his Change Management and Finance classes to read any writing sent his way so long as it is mechanically correct.  His devotion to his students and to supporting them is above and beyond some of the other classes I have taken here.  This is neither good nor bad from a program perspective, but from the perspective of a tutor who has, perhaps, let the art slip, is inspiring nonetheless.

With our new president-elect being heralded by the TV networks, could this mean a drastic shift in the way that technology is used in government?  We are seeing the end of an era:

Nov. 4, 2008, is a historic day because it marks the end of an economic era, a political era and a generational era all at once.

Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968. For the past 16 years, baby boomers, who were formed by the tumult of the 1960s, occupied the White House. By Tuesday night, if the polls are to be believed, a member of a new generation will become president-elect.

So today is not only a pivot, but a confluence of pivots.

– David Brooks, “A Date with Scarcity“, New York Times, November 3, 2008

Could this also mark a new beginning in the realization of technology usage in public government?  Obama’s grassroots campaign coordinated using the Internet, and it would be a significant oversight to lose that element of his work.  From Twitter to Facebook to his own web site, he utilized the tools of the 21st century to mobilize a huge following that pushed him to a landslide.

What if that following demanded accountability through social media?  What if Obama continued to tweet on the issue that he was considering, that mattered to the nation?  What if the grassroots movement he started was applied to the White House web site?  What if the change he promised continued to be a grassroots effort, with him taking the role of a peer who considers all angles, rather than one of Commander in Chief, whose decisions are final?  Obama has recognized the power of my generation - the “Net Generation” or the “Digital Generation”, whatever you choose to call us.  What if he continued to leverage that power?

What change could he achieve then?

The letter below was originally written as a reflection paper for Kevin Desouza’s class, IMT 583 - Finance & Accounting Foundations for Information Professionals.

Mr. Eyman:

It seems, that in this economic climate where people are trying to make life easier for themselves, you are intent upon bringing up initiatives that will only waste our money and time. In fact, your abuse of Washington’s initiative system has been so flagrant that you have been mocked by an initiative that attempted to name you a horse’s ass^[3]. Fortunately for you – unfortunately for the citizens of Washington – the Courts struck Initiative 831 down as a mockery of the initiative system^[5]. Now we find you at it again with Initiative 985, which has been soundly discounted by none less than the federal government as potentially endangering Washington’s transportation infrastructure, despite your attempts to prove otherwise^[1].

So here is my proposal: since you seem so gung-ho about utilizing the initiative system to make the lives of Washington State citizens better (nevermind that you often miss your target and go straight to making it a living hell): why not create an initiative to abolish Washington State’s observation of Daylight Savings Time?

No, bear with me now – this is no better or worse an initiative than you could have dreamed up yourself. Arizona and Hawaii already buck the trend of daylight savings (so much so that Arizona becomes its own time zone when the rest of the country switches to Daylight Savings). Back in 2007, when the United States extended Daylight Savings so that it ended later, the National Geographic had this to say:

A study released last year by the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the change will save less than 1 percent of the country’s annual energy consumption.

Bob Aldrich of the California Energy Commission told National Public Radio that energy needs in the U.S. have changed a lot since the 1970s, when the data supporting the current bill was collected.

"We’ve become much more electronically configured, if you will," he told NPR. In addition to lights, people plug in more computers, televisions, satellite dishes, and other power-hungry electronics than they did 30 years ago^[2].

Yup, that’s right – we based the choice, in part, on data from the 1970s! Keep in mind, Daylight Savings Time was a way of helping to standardize railroad schedules, and no federal mandate exists that requires states to observe it^[6]. Let’s examine this from a financial perspective, since your initiatives are all about saving citizens money.

Consider for a moment that Washington is widely regarded as an economic gateway to Asian countries. Thus, much of our economy depends on our economic relationships with them. Later in Handwerk’s article, he cites Anthony Concil of the International Air Transport Association:

"When Europe and the U.S. are on different times, connections become less convenient. Right now there is one week of discord between the U.S. and Europe, so it’s sort of at a manageable level," Concil said.

He argued that if the energy bill passed, every year "you might have a monthlong period where you have lousy connections, so from a traveler’s perspective it’s not going to be particularly good."

Airlines may ultimately feel the change where it hurts the most—on the bottom line.

"It’s going to be expensive for airlines," Concil added. "Particularly for U.S. carriers—and they are in a difficult climate right now—it’s a major issue, as well as for carriers traveling to and from the U.S."

In 2006, the State of Indiana required all of its counties to begin observing Daylight Savings Time consistently – previously, it was left up to the counties to determine whether or not to observe Daylight Savings. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research took advantage of this law to study energy consumption changes in the state. In the abstract of their report, they state:

Our main finding is that—contrary to the policy’s intent—DST increases residential electricity demand. Estimates of the overall increase are approximately 1 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant throughout the DST period. DST causes the greatest increase in electricity consumption in the fall, when estimates range between 2 and 4 percent. These findings are consistent with simulation results that point to a tradeoff between reducing demand for lighting and increasing demand for heating and cooling. We estimate a cost of increased electricity bills to Indiana households of $9 million per year. We also estimate social costs of increased pollution emissions that range from $1.7 to $5.5 million per year. Finally, we argue that the effect is likely to be even stronger in other regions of the United States^[4].

An abolishment of Daylight Savings would likely have drastic impacts on our energy usage and consumption in the residential sector. Pairing an abolishment of Daylight Savings with a significant push for energy conservation and for companies to manufacture highly energy-efficient products could only help the state.

So, Mr. Eyman, I implore you – prepare our state for the future once again and throw your weight behind creating this initiative. Like many other initiatives that you have fathered, you can expect a good deal of healthy debate of the pros and cons of such an initiative; unlike your other initiatives, however, no matter what the result, you will have encouraged the citizens of our state to think seriously about energy conservation and use, as well as the practicality of observing an outmoded tool used for synchronizing train schedules.

With warmest regards,

Peter Ellis

Works Cited

1. Broom, J. (2008, October 25). "Federal transportation officials say Eyman’s initiative could be costly to state". The Seattle Times. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008309267_fedshov25m.html.
2. Handwerk, B. (2007, March 9). "Daylight Saving Change: Energy Boon or Waste of Time?". National Geographic. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070309-daylight-saving.html.
3. Initiative 831. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2003-04/Htm/Initiatives/Initiative%20To%20The%20People/INITIATIVE%20831.htm.
4. Kotchen, M. J. and Grant, L. E. (2008, October). Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Indiana. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://www.nber.org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/papers/w14429.pdf.
5. Modie, N. (2003, March 15). "A bum rap? Eyman initiative is ruled out". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/112731_initiative15.shtml.
6. Vernon, J. (2008, October 31). "Daylight Saving Time History in the U.S.". National Geographic. Retrieved online November 2, 2008 from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081031-daylight-saving-time-history-facts.html.

Inspired by an xkcd comic, NP-Complete, and also because I was buying some DVDs from Amazon anyway, I decided that I wanted to place an order from Amazon that was as close to $100 worth of merchandise as possible after tax and shipping.

The rules:

• The order must be as close to $100.00 as possible, including tax and shipping charges (note: using free shipping options is not considered cheating).
• Items in the cart at checkout must be things that the buyer wants and will use. You cannot?????? simply select something that will round out the price tag.
• All items must be sold by Amazon.com, not their resellers (this is because resellers tack on extra shipping costs for certain items).

This took a bit of work, especially since I already had three DVD box sets in the cart that I was buying via one of Amazon’s TV DVD sales. Values as follows:

• Stargate Atlantis - The Complete First Season; DVD; $24.99
• Stargate Atlantis - The Complete Second Season; DVD; $25.00
• Eureka - Season One; DVD; $25.00

компютри втора употребаI tried first throwing stuff in from my wish list, originally throwing in a paperback copy of Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous. After that, I realized that I had been looking for either a spork or a set of stainless steel chopsticks for home/travel use. I was able to add in a set of stainless steel chopsticks fairly cheaply. With the chopsticks, the book, and the three DVD sets, I got to $98.29 after tax and shipping - roughly $1.70 short.

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out if I could fill that extra $1.70 by buying something small, useful, and cheap - apparently Amazon doesn’t believe in selling individual packets of Post-its or M&Ms or something trivial like that (at least not without going through a reseller, which would break the rules).

I finally managed to get it to $99.75 total with free Super Saver shipping after swapping Weinberger’s book out with another book on my wish list. The breakdown looks like this:

• Stargate Atlantis - The Complete First Season; DVD; $24.99
• Stargate Atlantis - The Complete Second Season; DVD; $25.00
• Eureka - Season One; DVD; $25.00
• Serves One: Simple Meals to Savor When You’re on Your Own; Toni Lydecker; Paperback; $11.53
• Global Decor Stainless Steel Chopsticks, 4 Pairs; Kitchen; $4.99

  Subtotal: 91.51
  Free shipping and handling
  Estimated Tax: $8.24
  Total for this Order: $99.75

This is actually an interesting exercise because it exposes information about what Amazon does and does not sell, and also gives some hints as to the usability of the site overall. While I was doing this, I was instant messaging a friend of mine that’s currently serving in Iraq (and coming home in the next couple weeks, I might add) - I originally described this as an “intellectual exercise in consumerism”; he shot back that this is actually interesting social commentary.

This was after calling me a geek/nerd/dork/weirdo/etc.

I’ve spent the last couple days at the Seattle Green Festival, a celebration of sustainability and, simultaneously, a call for change. The festival consists of a wide variety of speakers, an exhibit hall, and a number of activities and vendors all centered around the philosophy of living green. An interesting tidbit: all of the vendors at the Festival were screened and certified to adhere to specific green practices (though what these are, exactly, were never disclosed). This is a unique event, co-sponsored by Global Exchange, a human rights organization, and Co-op America, which focuses on economic action for sustainability.

I attended five sessions over the two days, in addition to wandering around the exhibition hall. Below are my notes from each presentation, followed by my general commentary on the entire thing. I don’t guarantee that these notes represent the entire presentation, just what I got out of it.

11AM Saturday: What’s the Economy for Anyway? (John de Graaf)
John de Graaf, co-author of Affluenza and creator of the PBS documentary by the same name, is someone whose work I’ve been familiar with since my freshman year in college. I’ve seen the film, and I think I’ve even heard him speak at least once before. He’s a fantastic, witty speaker who really knows his stuff, and it was fun to hear him again. Here are my notes:

• 48% of Americans think that the market should take over from the government
• What is the purpose of our economic system?
• Gifford Pinchot stated that the purpose of the economy was the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run
• A bit of historical background on our current economy..
  • 1920s: big economic boom!
  • October 1929: stock market crashes, Great Depression
  • Then: A slow increase in economic benefits for all between the ’40s and the ’80s
  • 1980s: Reaganomics: the “trickle down” theory of economics
  • Now: What Bush calls the ownership society and de Graaf calls the “You’re On Your Own”ership society
• Today, Europeans work about 80% of the time compared to the American work week
• The US is one of four countries in the world that doesn’t guarantee maternity leave
• Health: in the 1980s, the US ranked 11th worldwide in longevity; now, we rank, depending on when you check, somewhere between 45th and 47th!
• The US has 25% of the world’s prisoners
• The US pays the highest prices for health care and yet gets the worst results out of the system
• Americans take up 25 acres/person of space; realistically, the world can only support 5 acres/person.
• Question from de Graaf - and this is a fundamental question: what is the working definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. Americans are encouraged to do this - in fact, we’re encouraged to do more and more of this.
• Last year, only 14% of Americans took a two week vacation from work.

de Graaf’s point was that, for all of our supposed success, as a country, we have a long way to go. There are inherent contradictions in who we think we are as a nation and who we actually are, and these contradictions need to be vocalized and discussed.

Referenced web sites: Global Working Families, Take Back Your Time

12PM Saturday: Climate Change as a Moral Issue (LeeAnne Beres)
This session was one I just walked into without really knowing what to expect. I hadn’t done any research on the speakers beforehand, so I really wasn’t sure who was speaking. As it turns out, LeeAnne Beres is executive director of Earth Ministry, a program trying to bring sustainability and religion together.This was unexpected, but an interesting talk nonetheless, despite my lack of a religious background (some of the Biblical references escaped me).

• Imagine: a religions conference in Japan in 1997 brings together religious leaders from several different religions and draws attention to climate change
• Belief drives action!
• Climate change needs to be framed as a moral/social justice issue, not just an environmental issue.
• Why argue about the origin of the species and not pay any attention to the extinction of the species?
• The Vatican was the first carbon neutral state in the world.
• Working for justice means sharing knowledge and imagination for good.
• Focus on values and why things happen.

Beres also plugged an upcoming exhibit at the Burke Museum in July: The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World, featuring photography by Steven Kazlowski.

1PM Saturday: The Living Building: Integrating Technology with Nature (Jason McLennan)
Jason McLennan is one of the nationally recognized leaders of the green building revolution and is part of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. If nothing else, he may have convinced me that I need to pester my parents about their upcoming remodel and potentially making it greener (something I’ve held off on thus far).

• The GBC provides leadership at all levels of the building industry: want to buy a chair? Go to them. Want architectural plans? Go to them. Want to build something? Well… go to them!
• The average house is twice as efficient as in the 1960s, but these houses have also doubled in size. In addition, the average family size per household has declined.
• If we don’t make the leap towards green buildings (and sustainability in general), what kind of a leap do we force on the next generation?
• The active metaphor in this presentation: the flower as a building of the future
• The goal of the building should be positive net impact
• The Cascadia GBC has set forth a Living Building Challenge, in which they want buildings to meet requirements defined by six core “petals” (going again with the flower metaphor).
• The first petal: site. Create compact, connected communities without using new site locations (we MUST reuse land that we’ve already claimed rather than simply claiming more land). In addition, we must set aside an amount of land for preservation equal to the amount of land developed in the project.
• The second petal: energy. The goal should be net zero energy impact; all energy should be provided for on site.
• The third petal: materials. Use reusable materials that are safe for human consumption and interaction.
• The fourth petal: water. Harvest enough water for the needs of the building.
• The fifth petal: indoor environmental quality.
• The sixth petal: beauty and inspiration.
• Buildings that quality for the Living Building Challenge must have already been built and have stood for a year before applying for the program. The program assesses based on real rather than theoretical numbers and estimates of use.
• This is not an architectural style, it’s a building philosophy!
• It took 30 years for drastic community change with the introduction of the interstate system between the 1960s and the 1980s. Fast change in our communities is possible, it merely has to be done.

12PM Sunday: The Great Turning (David Korten)
David Korten is the Founder and President of the People-Centered Development Forum.

• The big picture of the world as we know it today: a confrontation with Earth’s elements
• First element of the big picture: environmental collapse
• In 1970, our rate of consumption of materials and as a lifestyle became unsustainable
• Korten draws some inspiration from the original Star Trek, wherein Kirk would often call for Scotty to divert all power to life support (this routinely happened about once an episode, it seems): this is the message we should be heeding today - divert all power to life support!
• Second element: poverty/inequality
• We have to redistribute riches from the rich to the poor and convert nonessential uses of things to essential uses
• Equity of resources can be defended as a property right
• The world is ruled by financial institutions whose role is to increase the inequality worldwide
• “Tinkering in the margins” is not enough for sustainability
• The idea that it is an unbearable hardship to change our way of life to support the planet is a myth
• Our problem is really a bad story! The story we grew up with was to control and to subjugate things to human control because we are superior. We organize ourselves into what Korten calls “hierarchies of domination and abuse”. We have to change the story so that we care about one another and the earth, breaking the cycle of domination.
• The Internet provides the means to change the story.
• Korten notes that stories have changed already: the establishment of democracy changed the story of how nations can be run, women’s rights and the civil rights movement changed the story of equality
• For the environment, we must change the story from domination to symbiosis. This transition is in progress.
• The stories we tell are forms of power - in fact, they’re foundations for power.
• Korten quotes Hartmann, who describes this as “walking away from the king” (I’m not clear on which Hartmann he refers to, however).

The thing I noticed in this presentation is that while Korten calls the Internet the medium for changing the story, he completely ignored the idea that the technology itself runs counter to the ideas of sustainability. I noticed this to a certain extent in John de Graaf’s presentation as well, but not nearly as much, since he made no explicit reference to the Internet other than the web sites he referred people to.

1PM Sunday: Building the Green Economy (Shannon Biggs, Kevin Danaher, Jason Mark)
These are all co-writers of a book by the same name.

• The presentation opened with an exercise which I thought was brilliant: the presenter asked the audience to identify three different types of plants, then three different industrial logos. Almost nobody in the audience identified the plants, while everyone identified the logos.
• Martin Luther King’s speech was not titled “I Have a Nightmare” - he called it “I Have A Dream” for good reason, and this is the message we need to send.
• The current economy is something like the Titanic, band playing and all.
• Start from where we are with change!

Web sites mentioned: Global Citizen Center

Exhibition Hall
There was a wide variety of exhibitions, including Third Place Books, Bainbridge Graduate Institute (also a sponsor of the event), the Presidio School of Management, ChicoBag, Annie’s, and Batdorf and Bronson (heck, one of the companies I did a project with in my undergraduate work in Olympia, Fish Tale Ales, was even there). This was an interesting chance to walk around and see what kind of things are already being done sustainably. There was a children’s card game that I didn’t learn much about that was tied into the topic, people pedaling furiously on bikes to power one booth, and a whole slew of people wandering around at any given time. Alas, I had to feed the bookworm part of me and buy more books to toss onto the rather long list of books that I want to read someday.

General Festival Comments
Throughout this entire event, I couldn’t help but notice two things:

1. Preaching to the choir. It seemed like the people who attended were those who already spoke the talk and walked the walk, to a certain extent. There were a lot of times, particularly in the Korten presentation, where I got the strong sense of a minister preaching to the choir (and Korten, by the way, really embodied this, and got a standing ovation at the end). This is fine, but the problem is that we need to reach out to people who aren’t in the choir, and in some ways, it seems like we might have missed the mark.
2. It’s not deep enough. Both Amanda and I found ourselves saying “yes, yes, we know this already, we want more.” I didn’t feel that way quite so much in some of the presentations, since they all had good ideas (LeeAnne Beres’ presentation in particular was an eye opener, since I hadn’t thought about Biblical support for the sustainable cause before). There needs to be support for those who want to dive deeper than the people who are only there to regurgitate the content of their latest book, and I felt like that was lacking strongly.

Videos of all the presentations will supposedly be made available on the Green Festivals web site within a couple weeks. There’s another Seattle Green Festival planned for the last weekend of March 2009.

As some of you are probably aware, Sean Rees and I are both co-founders of Energy Soapbox, a web site dedicated to promoting sustainability and environmental awareness. This blog features posts that focus on diverse issues from the meaning of sustainability to sheepwalking (though I have slowly become the sole contributor as late).

With Dennis McDonald’s post on creating blog-based microcommunities, I actually wonder if we might have approached the Energy Soapbox project the wrong way. In a nutshell, McDonald has been working with another blogger to have a shared conversation posted on both their blogs. They then combine their RSS feeds on the topic and present them as a single page (with each blogger having his own copy of that page on their web site).  Would this have been a better approach for Sean and I to use - establish a common tag or category that would synthesize all of our posts together?  That’s not to say we couldn’t also use the Energy Soapbox domain for its current purpose of displaying a running record of the conversation, but the sort of split McDonald describes would denote the ownership of the ideas better and empathize that Energy Soapbox is merely an additional platform (or - ahem - an additional soapbox).

That said, there is still an important question here - when is it better to “spin off” these sorts of projects into their own space, rather than attempting to combine disparate resources to represent a conversation?  There aren’t any real criteria that answer this question, and that may well be for the best, but this still seems like an important conversation to have overall.

On Monday, one of the iSchool professors associated with the iAccess project (which is part of the Information School’s research arm) came in to IMT 580 - Management of Information Organizations and administered a survey on the design of web sites for accessibility by people with disabilities.  Basically, the project they’re working on assesses why web sites are not designed for people with disabilities and what cultural norms or technical information might influence the decision to not design web sites with accessibility in mind.

Aside from the sheer need for this sort of research to be done (which I consider to be a bit of a gap in existing information about web site design), this got me thinking about my own hearing.  One of the questions on the survey explicitly asked whether I, as the survey taker, had a disability that significantly affected my ability to use the Internet and its resources.  I checked “no”, but still indicated that I had a hearing impairment in the section for people who checked “yes”.

Is this a technically accurate representation of my ability to use Internet resources?  Well, that would greatly depend on what type of resource we’re talking about.  If we’re talking about everyday Web usage or IM, the answer is most definitively “no”, since I rely on these methods extensively for keeping touch with friends and family.  However, if you talk about voice applications like Skype or Ventrilo, then the answer is, actually a little surprisingly, still “no” (although I don’t use Skype).  For those unaware, I have a severe discomfort (some might call it a “crippling fear”) with telephones.  To put it succinctly, I avoid them like the plague, and there are a variety of reasons of that, but the largest one is probably my fear of not being able to properly respond to or follow what’s going on in the conversation.  It is, to some extent, also a technical limitation, since not all phones are designed for hearing aid use.

But why the difference?  The phone involves voice interaction just as much as any voice chat application out there.  My opinion is that there are at least two technological factor here: first, as it stands, I have far more flexibility with sound adjustment and tuning with computer volume, speakers, and headphones than I do with phones (including those with speakerphone abilities).  Second - and I consider this key - I’m not limited to hearing with only one ear (again, with the exception of speakerphones, but this depends on the speakerphone having good sound quality to begin with).

This survey got me thinking about what it means to classify a hearing impairment as a disability.  I have never regarded it as a disability, though I have called it a disability in cases where it benefited me to do so in the form of additional assistance.  I also have gotten out of the habit of calling it a “hearing impairment”, since, as my father rightly pointed out long ago, that lumps me in with a category of people with far more severe problems than I actually can attest to having.  I simply say that “I hear hearing aids”, and that because of that, “I am very uncomfortable with phone usage” - there is nothing wrong with that statement, since it happens to be a fact of my life.  I have continually had people who didn’t even notice that I wear hearing aids react with shock or amazement when they finally noticed.  My own parents have been known to forget that I hear hearing aids!

So is it a disability that limits quality of life?  No.  Is it a disability that limits my usage of the Internet?  No (it actually increases it).  Is it a disability?  Not the way I approach it, but it, as with everything else in life, is not without its frustrations.

Hmmm.  Excerpts:

On April 10th, 2008, a small group of the country’s top young progressives and post-environmental thinkers and activists will come together in Washington, DC to outline a vision and a strategy for a new progressive movement, one that leaves behind the old generation’s narrow and complaint-based politics.

[ . . . ]

The Breakthrough Generation 2008 Conference seeks highly motivated and talented young individuals who are willing to challenge accepted social and political norms and possess an ability to think and work in new ways.

Even though this is posted on my internal wiki, I figured I’d post it here for posterity.

This document outlines my personal career goals as they currently stand, as well as related academic goals that inform these goals.

General Goals

1. Apply my personal mantra, “everything is interconnected”, to information management and sustainability and understand how these fields infiltrate and influence everyday decisions.
2. Work in a collaborative rather than an isolated environment.
3. When possible, incite change. When impossible, make possible.

Academic Goals

1. Serve as teaching assistant for an undergraduate course.
2. Assist in the learning process of my fellow students; learning is not competition.

Topic-Specific Goals: Information Management

1. Understand how information is ethically and professionally handled and embody these standards in my own work.
2. Understand the paradigms behind information organization.
3. Actively consider issues of information fragmentation, information overload, and information sustainability.
4. Place human use of information first.
5. Promote information accessibility.
6. Participate in relevant national professional associations.

Topic-Specific Goals: Environmental Sustainability

1. Significantly contribute to thinking and dialog about environmental sustainability and environmental policy.
2. Understand the relationship between information and sustainable action.
3. Promote corporate and public environmental stewardship.
4. Recognize that sustainability is not achieved in a void. Promote cross-political and interdisciplinary sustainable initiatives.

   “I never saw a Democratic mountain or a Republican glacier.” - Daniel J. Evans

5. Influence organizational thinking and action around sustainable ideals.

People may or may not be aware that my work at Evergreen made one thing abundantly obvious: everything is interconnected. I’ve been living by this mantra for quite some time (indeed, since somewhere around my freshman year at Evergreen), but lately, I’ve come to realize that, while it’s certainly sufficient to recognize this, there’s an extra layer to this idea that I hadn’t quite recognized. There are two ways that I can state this, and I haven’t quite decided which one I prefer yet, since they are two distinct expressions of the same set of ideas:

Everything is interconnected, given a particular context.

Or:

Everything is interconnected; context is king.

The word “context” is something that is repeated almost ad nauseam in a lot of the work that I’ve done so far in the MSIM program. A lot of user interaction design work depends on the context in which a solution will be used. How things are categorized depends on the context of that information in relation to other facets. The context in which a question is asked can affect the results of that question. Management styles differ depending upon how managers choose to contextualize different information in their environments.

There is one major thing missing at this point as well that I’ve actually chosen not to attempt to integrate: the centrality of the user (or, less technically, of people) in information management. The reason for this is that it’s already recognized in my personal statement of my career goals (which has not been posted to this blog - it exists on my personal wiki).

So what’s the difference between these two potential statements? “given a particular context” implies restrictions or limitations on what connections can be formed, and suggests to me that those limitations may not be surmountable. On the other hand, “context is king” recognizes the original spirit of the mantra of “everything is interconnected” - that everything, somehow, connects to something else, context or not. It also recognizes that context plays a central role in our accumulation of knowledge and information.

Which one I end up choosing will depend heavily on which of these interpretations I feel is more central to my work.