Anthropomorphism

It is human to see human responses around us, and we have the ability for abstraction. So we apply human patterns to animals and objects. “An evil wind blows..”

Computers are “thinking”, when that little spinny beachball or hourglass pops up. I assure you, computers do not think, they compute. And crash. And they do not have malicious thoughts by themselves, try to trip you up or attempts to confuse you originating from any inherited intelligence. It may seem that way at times though; “it is doing it again” is a classic line often heard on computer support. It insinuates that the machinery have a mind of its own, and therefore the user does not have any influence, responsibility or impact. This is what supportpeople call pebkac. Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Most people would not see human traits in a cockroach, say, a frog or a shark. But we all do it, particularly to big-eyed, furry mammals. Large heads, big eyes and mammarian glands seems to be a prerequisite. Of course, primates tops the list. It seems we have to see our abilities in them to have empathy. It has been argued for many years that for example fish does not feel. A preposterous argument based on no evidence whatsoever. Just a convenient conclusion.

Sometimes the interpretation can be correct, but do not take it for granted. Sometimes it is wishful thinking. Let snoozing lion lie.

People read expressions in animals and get very very surprised when the animal does not react accordingly or do not understand that we are “the good guys”. There have been incidents where seemingly happy and domesticated animals have killed or mauled their owners. To much surprise, “Buster was such a happy, caring tiger”. Right.

This is the – at times – very misguided idea that animals understands us, and we them. The obvious examples would of course be people like TImothy Treadwell that lived with grizzly bears, played with their cubs, and argued that he “communicated” with them and protected them. Until they ate him. A Darwin Award for eco-warrior Mr. Treadwell. And various people who have kept wild animals, believe to have them under control, and then being killed by them. It is not because the cat is malicious. It is because we interpret the behavioural patterns as similar to ours.

Dressing up animals in human clothes we remove their species identity and apply our own. It is fun in myths and stories, and can work as metaphors, but it is not doing us or their species any favours.

Cats and dogs, in particular, of course, as they have been domesticated for many many years are usually victims of this. We “know” each other. And we give them  toys in multiple colours looking like human-baby toys. Many animals have poor colour vision, so this is not for their benefit, but for ours. It is cute. Funnily, animals often are in that respect like human children: often they prefer to play with the box the gift came in, an old sock, a post-it or a twig. Any old rubbish lying around, and the expensive “pet furniture” stands untouched.

I am not opposed to pet toys or brightly coloured things. But I am opposed to humans  applying our wishes and preferences on animals. Such as giving a cat a nightlight. I mean, really. Cats are predators, they hunt at night, their night vision and sense of smell and hearing leaves us in the dust. In fact, studies shows that cats see better at night than in daylight. Which means, that for the cats sake, turn the light off.

cat mummy, national museum of natural history, DC

For thousands of years, we kept cats to get rid of vermin. They had a job, to catch mice. Still there are famous mousers in the distilleries in Scotland that do a very important job. I love whisky, and I do not want any mouse poo in my barley, thankyou. I do not think those cats are cuddled much. I do not think they lie in front of a fire or on a lap (I have met a couple). Yet I do believe they are taken good care of (good mousers being hard to find), and I believe they have fine lives. A cat does not, from some mythical primordial state, natively belong in a human lap.

Now, cats are pets, and the catching of mice is a nuisance. Our expectations of cats have changed. Over time, the cats with less ability to drag headless rodents home and dump them on the carpet might be the ones that win out. Certainly, cats that get along with humans, fulfil our expectations and wishes, will have better lives and better chances of survival and possibly reproduction. There is no such thing as the primeval original, when there is constant adaptation. A good life for a cat does not mean spoonfeeding or a loopy lady calling herself “mammy”, nattering on with babytalk. Just because they have soft fur, does not mean they appreciate or need being petted all day long.

Our expectations of animals determine their quality of life and chances of survival. As these expectations change over time, so the animals will try to adapt as well as they can. Humans should not underestimate species other than our own, nor try to make them more like us. After all. A lot of us are not really all that nice.

Kurt Vonnegut

A carpenter was commissioned to build some boxes for a SPCA cat shelter. This is what he did. He did not even bother to pretend to do a half decent job.

This guy have a three-year apprenticeship, cutting pieces of wood, using a drill, sandpaper and a saw. Screws juts out on the inside of the cages, the doors do not close. Distressed animals will injure themselves on these. I could have done a better job! It would have taken me ages, but I would have done a better job.

I was a teaching assistant at the university college, and one of my students came whining one day, that he had to read. That there was books with words in them. That he was expected to read. He actually said, and I quote, “I canna do it! I try! I open the first page and there are all these words!”

I smiled sweetly and said, “well maybe you should do something else. Maybe you should become a bus driver or a carpenter instead”. He was deeply offended, his classmates rekindled their hatred of me.

I regret that comment now. It turns out you can be as incompetent as a carpenter, as you could be unfit for anything vaguely academic, such as reading. The difference between rubbish carpentry and shoddy academic work is depressingly obvious. A bad house will fall down. A bad thesis will have no impact on anything. You can set fire to both, though, and you probably should.

Art can be made out of any old rubbish. Craft cannot. If you are not in fine art, you are in craft, and there is a quality gauge. If you cannot sign your work with excellence, at least do not inflict injury on homeless kittys.

I do not take this site immensely serious, but when I come to think of it, loosing everything would actually be a himalayan annoyance. Really really inconvenient. I have deleted, copied, put in storage, quarantined, exported, scrubbed, scrutinised and bleached.

The residue of black hacks are persistent. And I am uncertain what this one actually accomplishes, apart from a proof of concept. No, I am not furious, it is part of the risk, I just wish I had been a little ahead. It did not seem to last long before my site gave that ugly warning page, and then it does not last long before google blacklists me. Hassle.

Still some little hiccups to fix and some research to do, but the cracks should be well stuffed with oakum and I am sailing on, although cautiously.

 “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth..

Encyclopedia of life is an amazing, insane undertaking. E. O. Wilson did a delightful, rambling TED-talk, and things actually happened. A lot of people apparently got together, large sums of money was involved, an awful lot of meetings, I presume, and a website was born. With a whole bunch of impressive collaborators, they started building a page for every living thing. Every living named thing, I should say. We do not really know how may species there is on earth.

Personally, I thought the site was awful. Then – Hurrah! – they rebuilt and redesigned recently. It got much better, I certainly approve. It is made by scientists and the public; we can all contribute, and the information is moderated by scientists. I love the idea, I love the insane ambition of it, I love living things, and I think it is both scientifically and individually important. This is a good start for having a positive dander through a website. Through lifeforms, actually. I excitedly open the brand new EOL. Not unreasonably, I am met with a large search box.

And there I sat. What to search for? Pathetically, I typed in “cat”. I messed around with felidae. You and me can contribute to EOL, so I amused myself looking for pics of peoples pets. I imagine a lot of people would think it wonderous to have their tabby put in encyclopedic context for all the world to see. Then I did “elephant shrew”. Because they are the funniest little things. I fiddle about with the taxonomy for a bit, but my latin is not good enough, my understanding of taxonomy a little shaky, their tree a little unclear (Taxonomy, by the way, is a scary, scary thing, but that is a different chapter). So, as is so often the case, finding something specific, the known-item-search is wonderfully easy. It is the discovering that is a problem.

UI & UX. Unknown terms to many. It stands for usability and user interface; we all know when these things do not work. It is a bit like only noticing the surface you are driving on when it is full of potholes.

I have to say, EOL is not full of potholes. They are doing a lot of things right. But here is what I would have liked to play with, what I would like to discover. If I was the president of the universe, EOL would have these things for me to explore… find living things that have the colour green. All things with fur that lives in Marocco. What creatures are parasites, what have symbiotic relations? (The disturbing Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating louse springs to mind) Who eats who? What species overlap where? What is the food chain for a deepwater anglerfish, a bobcat, a tapir? What do humans make and eat of various species? Why are there no green mammals? What species have their closest relation on another contient? Show me all creatures with wings. How many species of dragonflies? What species are directly dependent on each other, and which species are mutually beneficial? I can go on and on and on. I am a little Napoleonic here maybe, EOL is a massive undertaking as it is.

And maybe it is a good thing they do not have this. If EOL ever get these things, I would never leave the site, and get nothing done.

Of course, making this would be either the nightmare of a lifetime, or the most fun you could possibly have. A million potholes, and a million things that can go wrong, I see piles of technical problems, itches and conundrums. But I mean; imagine… dream…

HistoryPin is a nifty little site, that gives you the opportunity to load historical pictures in streetview. I think it needs more work and refining, but it is a splendid thing, informative and fun.

This map shows the worlds most interesting remote places from touristiness. It exemplifies basically a heat map, that shows density. This particular map is curiously interesting because it shows interesting remote places, while as the natural instinct would be to go for the – say – most popular places (they do that too). In that sense, it is a “negative” map, and therefore a tad more interesting. The idea is to show you where you are less likely to meet other tourists. As a way of showing density, heat maps are brilliant. Intuitive, easy to understand, and highly flexible.

I also learned about fusion tables, and how Google includes the Similie timeline. This feels a little ironic, as we looked into Similie in 2010 as a potential solution for this project for the Smithsonian. We then decided against it, mainly because it was unnecessarily large, and the documentation a little shaky for our project. Now, it seems, it works directly with fusion tables… so it goes.

I also learned about other things, such as shapefiles (shp), Google Earth Builder, intensity maps with own defined borders and space-time. I have to look into all of it. Exciting times, and indeed thanks to Mano Marks.

Graphic design is a part of system design. Confusing to people that word. Design. It conjures up images of lovey-dovey hippies splashing with purple and orange, or all-in-black guys with hip glasses. Endless austere portfolios in swiss graphics, squares, black, white, red, Helvetica.

Structures, architecture, flexibility in backend and responsive frontend. HTML5, I think, is my new best friend. And the feeling that are going around these days, that we will simply not give a fiddlers fart about Internet-Bloody-Exporer 6 anymore is a huge relief.

I see, we all do, a lot of not quite optimal sites around. Almost-but-not-quite-getting-there. Flash, I have previously mentioned, is now pet-hate number one, after IE6 has been thrown in the rubbish tip of technological shite. Often, I think, they simply lacked someone saying “no”.

Sites with a squillion photos but you can’t share them by copying the URL.
Restaurant menus you cannot download or copy into an email.
Addresses that are images.
Directions you cannot print or forward.

That sort of thing.

Someone should have said no. “Dear client, all your wishes can come true, we can make it blink, dance, shine, jump, slide, glide, bump, sparkle and sing. But you will loose these things…” There is a crack in everything.

I think I know how it happens, and I am sure a lot of well-meaning people are involved. We have too many possibilities and ways of doing things. We want to please. “can you do this?” “of course we can”. We are technological wizards. We will twist the backend into a knot and hack it to make it so. We will squeeze blood from a stone, force the limitations of our technologies to squeal for mercy.

I care about things that works, I will say no.

You have the Apple fans and the – until recently slightly guilty – Microsoft followers. The MS crowd seems to have gained some confidence back recently, and they yell as loud as the macApple clan.
The two biggest companies have become, as most other complex situations and multinationals, personal. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (No, it does not matter that Bill Gates no longer works for/at MS). They are these companies. It is a sort of anthropomorphism. But here is what kills me every time: Sooner rather than later the argument gets to ethics. Bill Gates is an altruist. Therefore Microsoft is best. Apple apparently uses child labour in appalling conditions. This makes Apple evil. Therefore, Microsoft is best. Microsoft was for a long time the king of proprietary formats. Evil. Therefore, Apple is best. Ad nauseam.

Chew on that one. Evil.

Arguments are usually pointless and based on emotions, that again are based on coincidences, what you are used to, grew up with. As in religion, the newly converted are always the worst. Apple and Microsoft are big, big, big companies. They want to make money. Pretty much like every other company. But somehow, we think their ethical conduct more essential and important than others massive systems. We somehow seems to expect better or otherwise from them. It is fundamentally absurd.

Though I too would want to see a more ethical world, and wishes for multinationals to be responsible, intelligent, I do not comprehend why all these emotions are spent on these two, and how that transfers to the software and hardware. When will you protest the awful practices of the producer of your food-processor, hair-dryer, the proprietary software in your car? The paint you use for your house? Diamonds? (“nothing says I love you like a superficial…”) Why not a public outcry against the s/w control-thievery of a squillion other things in your house, your pockets, your office?

Where is your outrage?
Wasted on bickering over the tools that was supposed help us change the world.

And, yes. We are all sheep. Geeks included.

Websites. it is everything and nothing. Not everyone needs a website. But by god, how much shite is out there – it is baffling; it begs belief.

There are reams, piles and buckets of resources on usability, rules-of-thumb. Endless, boring description of best-practice. And yet, I cannot find the address of the shop. The map on how to get there. The products. It drowns in FLASH, animations. I can hear the customer saying “make something that lives“. Vomit.

So I can’t find the phone number, a simple list of products. Xkcd describes it perfectly in the chart above.

..and of course, there is The Oatmeal’s how a webdesign goes straight to hell

Why this rant now? This is nothing new. In fact, small businesses in USA tends to be the worst. I do not know how it works, if they all have a cousin that “are really good at webdesign” (QUICK! RUN! HIDE!) or whatever. I was simply trying to find a bakery in D.C.

It annoys me that so much time, energy, money and talent goes to waste on making shite. These are simple sites. I want to find a bakery. I wonder what sort of stuff they have. When they are open.

I found a couple of bakeries. But because it is all FLASH, I cannot send links to specific content. I have to send the index url, and then write down all the clicks necessary to find the danish pastry. Do you think I will bother?

To all your FLASHdevelopers out there: fucking stop now! If you cannot do most of it in HTML you are idiots. Stay away from making websites.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

I was summoned to the interview, both by phone and an e-mail through finn.no’s system.

With a spring in my step, I bounced to the given address, and found the company in question. A cup of coffee, some chit-chat, and off we went. ”We are a small company”, the guy says. “so the work is diverse, you’d have to do lots of different things”. All good with me; I prefer variety. “Outsourcing”, he says. “marked analysis”, he says. I followed as well as I could, but attempting to steer a little towards methods, tools and processes; closer to my heart and attention. Trying to figure out what and how exactly my place and job as a 3D assistant would pan out.

“Do you know our four major competitors?” says he. “no” I say. “Well, you should.”
At this point I am a little frustrated. I cannot entirely see that a 3D-assistants first priority should be knowing that. Surely, I’d learn that within the first day. I’d rather hear and talk about software, processes, workflow, cooperation. About quality. He goes on. And on. And on. About marked strategies, quizzing me on what and how I would grab marked shares from competitors, how would I do it? What other markeds could I see for this company? How would I expand it? How would I get the customers? Do I have the drive for this?

A small gnome in my head tries to get my attention; there is something wrong here. A little nagging feeling that something is not right. But an interview is a stressful situation, I answer to the best of my abilities, on Q’s about outsourcing, time zones, marked shares.

I try to talk about files. About the technology behind. I try to say that a lot of these questions I cannot answer properly, without knowing the processes and methods in the company. On and on. Nag, nag, goes the little gnome.

I am getting increasingly frustrated. All of a sudden, the interview is over. I politely bid them goodbye, they say the standard “we will call you next week”.

I am rather frustrated, but have no-one to blame but myself; I realise I have not done a good job. A long discussion in my head on the way home. What happened, how could I do so badly, when it seemed I should easily manage to get myself across as sensible and useful? Nag, nag.

Back at home, the little gnome gets me to double check the mail I got. It is tagged, from the job-marked site, both in subject field and footer: “regarding application for “3d-assistant” code 24732471″. Seems I fucked up :-(

The little gnome goes “paste that code in the url, paste that code in the url, paste that code in the url”.

Right.

Weeeell! Will you look at that…!
That was an entirely different kettle of fish. The ad had been changed, and this time around the title was not 3D-assistant, but “project management and global outsourcing”.
Not really interchangeable.

We had all been sensible and relevant. Same time, same place. Just not the same interview.

So it goes.

Update

I mailed them about the mistake. In fact, all was dead silence. I admit I got pissed off; they could have said “ups, sorry”. I left it for a long time, then mailed them, and said I thought they owed me an apology, as it is stressful enough to be applying for jobs, if not also have to keep track of various companies every idiot move.

He replied. He justified himself, and said “the ad was not (in the original version) there for long. The position has been filled.”

Why is it so fucking hard to say sorry? Because the company wanted to save tiny money, not paying for another ad, he makes it look like I am the idiot.

Fuck you very much.
“Ups, sorry, our mistake” would have been fine with me. The curious thing is that they summoned me to an interview for project management and global outsourcing, on the basis of an application as a 3d assistant.

Professional, they are not.