As our nation approaches another birthday, I find myself like many Americans feeling unsteady, shaken, and increasingly uncomfortable in holding onto a sense of connection to beliefs I never thought could be at risk. Shared values are essential to me, as is the ability to build consensus on difficult issues and a fundamental acceptance of diversity. A few critical points at the moment are eating away at me.
Respecting Secular Differences
The separation of church and state is something I have always believed cannot be denied in our nation. If this pillar falls, the rest crumbles with it. Of course, I know not everyone believes this, but I always thought the majority would never abandon it. Now I worry it might only take a cleverly constructed minority for it to no longer matter. That would forever undo the nation my family chose as a place to immigrate to several generations ago and call home. Is it possible today we would not be welcome here?
Thinking Through Laws
Originalism, or the notion that our Constitution can only be applied to the literal text of its authorship some two and a half centuries ago, seems impossibly flawed as an idea. This is a document that from its inception has encompassed the notion of revision as a core tenet of its foundation. It also has been amended multiple times in its existence to correct the injustices it has allowed, unintentionally or in ambiguity. Peeling back complex nuance is as critical to an argument as referencing precedent. Judges and lawyers cite case law to examine the relevancy and consistency of prior rulings, where opinions are molded into outcomes through rigorous thinking. If the U.S. Constitution does not require interpretation in its application on the endless topics it does not specifically reference—including innovations that couldn’t possibly have been contemplated in prior times—what is the purpose of higher courts?
Growing with Technology
Technology continues to advance exponentially at a rate that consistently outpaces our ability to understand its implications and effects. Without a nimble, advanced, multifaceted framework to consider legislation around innovations that previous generations could never have imagined, we will find ourselves acted upon by invention rather than fostering wise guidelines for incorporating discovery into our everyday lives. Think ahead another hundred years and try to envision what’s coming. Now try to envision how we will create daily norms around incorporating scientific and engineering achievements so far beyond our current imagination we have no concept of how we will be impacted. If we continue to apply yesterday’s rules to tomorrow’s frontier, we will fail much worse at finding common ground than we are now.
Winning and Losing
My sense is that the heightened divineness so many of us are experiencing is becoming increasingly debilitating. If our notion of winning and losing with each other does not evolve into a more palatable interchange of conflicting concepts, our inability to work through our differences could undermine this great experiment we call democracy. There are always individuals who benefit from pouring fuel on a fire and turning otherwise kind people against each other. We cannot let agendas we don’t share take precedence over the communities we cherish.
As we celebrate Independence Day in the midst of so much turmoil and dissonance, perhaps we should reflect on how blessed we could be if we rediscovered a broader sense of shared values, or at least could approach consensus on addressing our disagreements without knocking each other to the ground in the name of unnecessary polemics.
We can do better. We can be better. The alternative is staying where we are currently stuck, and that does not seem to be leading us to improvement. Commit to clearer logic, expanded empathy, and enthusiastic compassion. Let that be our muse this Fourth of July.
I just finished another trip around the sun (they seem to come annually for some reason), and to the extent it was a bit of a numerical milestone, it certainly got me thinking about things that matter.
I like living in this world, despite all its faults. When I am immersed in places like Yosemite Valley and looking up at Half Dome, I have less desire than ever to partake in meta. Learning how to navigate in this reality has never lost its appeal to me. Being an avatar in a virtual world has almost no appeal to me.
I find it deeply troubling that regardless of how technology has accelerated global interdependence, ruthless despots continue to pursue egomaniacal, territorial wars of vast destruction like we are seeing in Ukraine. I find it more troubling that in the 21st century, more humanitarian societies remain largely clueless about how to circumvent crises without accelerating conflict. I love our democracy, our nation, and the limitless opportunity this generational child of immigrants continues to experience, but the divisive politics of rhetoric and hyperbole leave me sleepless most nights and concerned about the reemergence of authoritarian populism.
I like our U.S. currency and monetary system. It is not flawless, but I understand it and trust it enough to park my assets in its floating value. I don’t have an interest in cryptocurrency, particularly those that began as jokes and trade in wide ranges on speculation. I am intrigued by blockchain technology and see its potential in future accounting systems, but I don’t think that has to be tied to flavor-of-the-day money brands. Similarly, I have no plans to purchase NFTs. Maybe if people like me sit out the NFT market, the price will be lower for others who see value here. Consider it our invisible gift to you.
I like trading equities on fundamentals. I like owning shares in companies that either generate earnings or are on a path to generate earnings. I want to understand traditional ratios and multiples that determine the price of stocks. I don’t care if a company has sextupled in current market value because “everyone” is buying it. I want to buy it at fair market value where I understand the valuation.
I also like companies that create products and services with a business model I understand, where technology is not just disruptive but improves process, where customer experience is highly valued, and where there is a path to future reinvention. I like leadership teams who are never satisfied with themselves. I don’t care if an IPO is oversubscribed because of hype if there is not a clear value proposition that is explicitly articulated. I am okay to miss out.
I believe in talent more than I ever have, that great things can happen when high-caliber people are assembled to address a meaningful and elusive task, but I have a very high bar when I think about what constitutes high-caliber talent. Part of my expectation in building a team has to do with a demonstrable track record of success, not just an energetic expression of possibility. Much has been written on the war for talent, and sometimes it is real, but excessive bidding wars to fill open positions in a company are not specifically nurturing or championing talent. Real talent in my mind is rare, precious, usually humble, collaborative, collegial, and views career trajectory over the long haul while building lasting relationships and selflessly mentoring others.
I think people need to read more. This has nothing to do with the fact that I work for a company that sells books (well, maybe it does). Reading helps develop minds. This cannot be substituted with truncated, silly videos, brief unpunctuated texts, misguided tweets, or pithy sound bites forwarded out of context. Reading is a gift, language can be a conduit of compassion, stories often reveal empathy, and books are forever our treasures.
I think excellence in the arts is exceptionally hard to achieve, and too often we confuse celebrity with extraordinary craftsmanship. Super-hero movies are fine for those who want to watch them, but the fact that they generate piles of money doesn’t increase my interest. If someone aspires to be a TikTok star that’s their choice, but that is not in the same class as being a brilliant playwright, painter, or musician.
I think climate change can never get enough attention, income inequality is a corrosive catastrophe we have no idea how to mitigate, and the ravages of woke mandates are shutting down dialogue rather than improving it.
I think working in a workplace rather than at home all the time is critical to collaboration, communication, and leadership development. I think in-person meetings when well planned improve human connection and help augment trust. I think phone calls should be returned politely and promptly.
I am feeling increasingly old-fashioned as I get older, largely because I have spent my life in technology and seen what helps us and what distracts us. I love innovation, I admire visionary change, I adore the notion of a Carousel of Progress. I’m also a lifelong skeptic and a fierce utilizer of a nose for bad-smelling dross. There are things I believe we can improve, things we can’t, and things that sound like we can even when we haven’t a real clue how. An idea pitched is not an idea proven. An idea proven can often be as subjective as it is objective.
And finally, to the extent anyone cares, as a result of the recently settled MLB lockout, I am okay with the universal designated hitter.
“Someone has to tell me why we keep allowing social media and our very lives as social creatures to be dictated by the most socially awkward person in history.” — Bill Maher
I have the same nagging question. The self-celebrating visionary Mark Zuckerberg continues to express that he knows something about building human ties that the rest of us can learn from his business mission. I see scant evidence that Zuck can guide us anywhere better than where we are at the moment or have been. There is near zero chance that he is going to stop talking because his determined point of view is driven by a conflicted agenda where he benefits most. I am done listening.
I recently learned a new acronym: IRL. You’re probably ahead of me, but it means In Real Life. That would be the opposite of what we bucket today under the category of virtual. Virtual would be something other than sharing the same physical space. Zoom is virtual. Social media is virtual. Running around in a 3D online game space is virtual. Meta is virtual.
If you already know this, forgive me for catching up late. Here’s something that might irritate you even more: I don’t like Meta. Agreed, I don’t like the company now known as Meta, but I really don’t like the idea of meta.
Said better, if I have a choice to interact with you in person—In Real Life—unless we’ve already established an unrepairable dislike for each other, I would prefer to interact with you in shared physical space over shared electronic space. I believe we get more done in person more quickly. I believe there are fewer errors in interpretation when we are together in person. I believe our relationship has a better chance to improve in person. I believe our manners are better in person.
That doesn’t mean I don’t see a role for virtual, I just prefer IRL. Virtual has proven more accessible, often more practical, certainly more economic. The compromise is that virtual leans toward purely transactional exchange, algorithmic efficiency often at the expense of building emotional intelligence. There’s the rub—a lot can get lost when we eliminate nuance from contact.
Zuck probably doesn’t agree. I don’t think the renaming of Facebook to Meta is simply a PR stunt to get us to see past the failings of the platform called Facebook. I think he saw the early experiment called Second Life as an end, not a means. He lives better in the virtual. He belongs in the virtual. He wants us to join him in the virtual. He can be King of All Data in the virtual.
Count me out.
My sense is much of the unbearable divisiveness we are experiencing results from too many of us coming to the conclusion that virtual, or meta, is a substitute for IRL. I’ll accept virtual as an adjunct to IRL—an extension, enhancement, or convenience to supplement IRL. I also think we need to relearn IRL, and quickly, because human contact is a big part of what makes us human. Creating a machine interface between us does not always extract our best selves.
Regretfully, I am a hypocrite on this. I worked with an innovative team at Disney over a decade ago that created ToonTown Online, the first massively multiplayer universe for kids and families, complete with third-party vetted built-in safety. We never intended this virtual playground to be a substitute for recess or a replacement for after-school outdoor activity. It was meant as an alternative for when that playground wasn’t available, particularly for children dependent on parents for logistics.
I don’t think alternative or supplement is what Zuck has in mind. I think primary platform is what he has in mind, as addictive as Facebook, but even more isolating. We will have less agency in Meta. We will have less freedom. We will behave less well.
Zuck will have more authority. Zuck will have more control over directing our actions. Zuck will revel in even less oversight. Zuck will make more money.
Dystopian fiction usually takes us on a gradual journey into descent. In well-told stories, it doesn’t happen in an instant. We are drawn in slowly. Then we realize we have been had and are trapped. Kind of like Facebook.
I see a revolt on the horizon. It won’t look like January 6. It will be the alternative to getting “Zucked” in. Slowly we will grow tired of Facebook. Meta will fail, because IRL is better.
Several years ago during another public flare-up, I posed this question: Is Facebook the Next AOL? Then as now, I wondered if the voracious beast would devolve into oblivion. Why does that destiny today seem even more possible? Because Meta is fundamentally flawed. It advances a business agenda over a human objective. It presumes addiction is a higher-order force than graciously serving customer needs.
Zuck early on said the purpose of Facebook was to make the world more open and connected. He lied. How do I know that? Because he walked away from that proclamation the same way that Google walked away from don’t be evil. It was too hard to be consistent and authentic. Eliminating the binding pretension made it way easier to generate exponentially more cash.
The purpose of Facebook is to collect vast amounts of personal data and leverage it for advertising value. I’m actually okay with that. It’s a true and understandable business objective. We can resist it. We will resist it.
The purpose of Meta is to head-fake us from the world we need to improve to an alternate reality we can never make better than the one we can experience IRL. Even John Carmack, the technical genius behind Oculus, knows the vast details behind building a metaverse are well beyond the hype of advocating for its imminent commercial deployment.
Here’s a thought, Mr. Meta: Fix some of the nasty problems you’ve already created moving fast and breaking things before you dump another pile of poorly considered conflict on us.
Lest you be readying to drop the Luddite card on me, please know that I remain wildly optimistic about the application of virtual reality and augmented reality to medical and other scientific research. I also bear no grudge toward the gaming community, which gave birth to my career, as long as it approaches immersive gaming in a healthy balance with healthy living.
My gripe is with Zuck and anyone else advocating isolating technologies. Escape is not a viable substitute for learning to develop coping mechanisms that lead to mastery of the highly demanding but uniquely rewarding anything-but-meta real world.
Let’s hear a cheer for evolving our delicate mastery of IRL.
Avoidance of human beings in person is not a strategy for learning how to navigate the human landscape, which is created in a natural state to be physical first, virtual as an adjunct and counterpoint. A little social media now and again probably won’t ruin our lives, everything in moderation. Digital sharing can have its place when it defies obsession. I suggested a better rebranding of Facebook might have been Happy Birthday Central. That would celebrate its finest function.
Focus on the basics as we revisit each other IRL: being polite, making eye contact, actually laughing when something is funny rather than typing LOL. Go outside for walks, and when it’s safe to be maskless, smile at passersby. Feel the sun and the rain on your biological skin and be thankful for the gift of our senses.
We truly are a unique blend of the physical, psychological, and dare I say, spiritual. Productive communities are established in tangible places before they become replicated models. There remains evidence to suggest we can be better together than separate. It takes work to keep producing this evidence, but my experience is that removing an LED screen between us offers a dimension of clarity that is otherwise less satisfying and cannot be replicated.
When we let Zuck know we are out on Meta and all-in on true human connections, the real agenda of living with advanced technology can continue. As I have written so many times, technology is advancing much more quickly than our ability to make sense of it. This is not a secret. It’s why we feel anxiety. It’s why we don’t like Mark Zuckerberg when his answers to the hardest questions are unsatisfactory. His vision will not be our vision.
Bill Maher summarized his point of view in his recent ‘New Rules’ segment on Real Time succinctly: “The more time you spend in the virtual world, the more you suck at engaging in the real world.”
Given too many of my own interactions in the pandemic recovering world, I find that awfully and unfortunately compelling.
As we return to work and the workplace in the new order of normalcy, I am reminded of the many bad habits we may have acquired in the discomfort of isolation. Foremost among these vices is the spreading disease of poor telephone conduct.
A phone is hardly a phone anymore. It’s an email device, a web browser, a camera, a texting platform, and an app launcher. Yet its initial (if not primary) function we still call a telephone. Perhaps it is time we relearn how to use it in that regard.
Call me ancient, but let me suggest that manners still matter in human contact on both ends of the line.
Unless we recognize the contact name or Caller ID on the screen, few of us will answer a phone anymore. No matter what number you file at the DoNotCall.gov registry, your phone rings continuously with garbage sales calls and bot inquiries. I think that is where bad manners begin, with poor intention.
I once had a boss who never answered the phone, and this was in the days before cell phones. He used to say, “If it’s good news, they’ll call back. If it’s bad news, I don’t want to hear it.” I think that’s another form of bad manners. I also don’t think it’s true. Sometimes good news gets reallocated. Bad news swept under the rug can swiftly convert a minor misunderstanding into a corporate crisis.
Sometimes we need to answer the phone whether we like it or not.
Mobility doesn’t give any of us license to rotten phone behavior. I have written before about returning calls, but now I am getting into the basics. If you didn’t grow up with a landline or have forgotten the etiquette associated with polite calling, here is a laundry list of reminders you may want to paste on the back of your mobile case.
Do not leave your voice mailbox full. You may be getting a call with a job offer. I may not call back.
Record a greeting on your voicemail, however short, and your name. How else do I know I called the right number, particularly if you told it to me wrong.
Speak clearly into the mouthpiece. Don’t rely on the Bluetooth microphone. Articulate your verbal expressions with deliberate care and emphasis. Pretend the other person is really interested in what you are saying. Say it that way and I might be.
Speak even more clearly when you leave a message on my voice mail, particularly the number I should call back if it’s not the one you called from. If I don’t know you and your name is more than one syllable, be precise or spell it.
Should I take the time to leave you a voice message, please extend the courtesy of listening to it before returning my call. You don’t need to begin our conversation with, “What’s up?” I’ve already told you. You’d know that if you simply hit the playback button.
When you answer, speak. Say, “Hello, this is Joan.” If your name isn’t Joan, you can substitute the correct version. Don’t leave an awkward pause and wait for me. I called you and I want to hear your voice. That is reassurance we are getting off to a good start. Your silence tells me you are not interested in the activity at hand and you may never discover why I called if I don’t continue. There go the Dodger tickets I was calling to offer you.
If you’re sitting in the seat behind me on a plane being boarded, don’t speak at full volume. Same recommendation in the airport when we are in line for coffee. I don’t care if you have an earpiece. You may find this ironic, but I really think your business is best kept to you. If you are fighting with your spouse, do you think the fight will end better if she thinks you are sharing the disagreement with the company of strangers? Speak softly or step away where you are alone to lose your argument with dignity.
If I don’t know you, begin the call with your name. Then tell me why you are calling. You called me, remember? I need to know why, not guess at it.
If I call you to introduce myself, don’t know you, and it goes to voicemail, do not text me back. We don’t know each other yet. I’m not ready to text you in shorthand until we have established a relationship. Dial me back. If I waste your time, you needn’t ever text me at all.
Please, thank you, and goodbye are all foundational words that are exceptionally useful in building a platform for communication. Grunts and guttural utterances have their place, but you’ll be surprised how much easier sentences flow with old-fashioned politeness.
There are time zones. They are easy to understand and largely consistent. If you’re looking at the Atlantic Ocean and I live near the Pacific Ocean, your brilliant idea at an early breakfast is not quite as interesting to me in my final few hours of pre-dawn rapid eye movement. Likewise, when I get an idea at midnight, I promise not to bother you with it for at least six hours when we are both again awake.
The phone part of your mobile phone—don’t hesitate to occasionally use it when conversation is sufficient for the topic. Videoconferencing has its place, but we don’t always need to see each other just because the invitation link is a click away. Sometimes we can just talk. Really, we can.
I am sure you have some recommendations of your own. Feel free to share them in the comments here.
Here’s one more tip: Email is not the best way to handle everything. Around the time of re>re>re the essence of an email is largely lost. If you are seeking to be understood or understand (humbly invoking the inspiration of St. Francis), talking is a wonderful alternative to a long list of email comments no one can follow. Email certainly gives you a paper trail and artifact, but it doesn’t necessarily solve your problem.
Some people subscribe to the notion of returning all your calls every day. Try this. I’ll bet your life gets better.
When your phone rings, don’t assume that someone is in an accident or has died. I know that’s becoming an urban legend. Your heart rate deserves better.
Oh, and if I call you, it’s likely for a reason. Please give me the respect of a call back.
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