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10/20/09

Urban Desert Storm: Phoenix Arizona September 2009

I'm a geek...weather interests me


Video Response to my unedited video "Urban Desert Rain 09/16/2007"



http://www.youtube.com/jrsnyderjr


10/7/09

9/14/09

Phoenx South Mountain Communications Towers


Twenty Towers Top South
Mountain



Over the years I've wondered about the vulnerability of the towers on South Mountain. Usually decades ago when lightning protection was not what it is today, the concern was lightning strikes. That also sparks another concern, wildfires from the brush that covers the mountain, which could be started by lightning.
After September 11, 2001 the security of locations like this all over the US was reconsidered. The Bush Administration quietly spent millions of dollars in securing all kinds of locations. Among other things 911 emergency communication systems were upgraded both in locations like this and correspondingly in 911 centers.

This video blog was taken on South Mountain where the communications towers are located.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8obFpg_MTYk

http://www.youtube.com/jrsnyderjr



9/7/09

The Economy and Me: My Hometown


Phoenix, Arizona | Labor Day Weekend


This is the summer I believe we will look back and remember as the time when the fullness of this economic crisis and the aftermath, became much more real to the mass population.
Relatively no one will go untouched by the current and upcoming extended economic period. The United States and world are affected profoundly and in this video blog I discuss my thoughts on the one city and state, Phoenix, Arizona that I know well. In my mind the most difficult bear to wrestle is going to be unemployment because that is about income. The conundrum is an old one and too large to tackle here.
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Due to my personal circumstances I've had unique opportunities to see this economic crisis develop to it's ultimate collapse in a variety of ways. My professional associates, friends, family and myself have had to and are dealing with issues daily very directly and no end seems in sight. Currently I am in a good place of acceptance with an understanding of basic facts that no public relations spin of any corporation, media outlet or government agency will change my mind about, when they're as plain as the nose on my face. Of course my acceptance is subject to change with new information, since the ground is shifting beneath us. Another key though is knowing that shifting ground is part of the package.

It's been a long road since this Economic Crisis really began for me with the Tech/Telecom Crash in 2000 and then exacerbated by the events of September 11, 2001. Additionally I am living in a state that was giddy with vaporous money at the height of the market, when my mindset was that if it seemed too good to be true, it was. There have been employment and monetary struggles but they have been overcome, but not without challenges.

As painful as it's been at times, this decade for me has been rich with learning new things about myself and others, as well as where, when and how my values diverged with certain parts of American culture (such as consumerism). So many of us were sidetracked and I'm finding many of us are now finding our way back to our original selves and reflecting on "where do we go from here"?

This is a topic I am far from done writing and video blogging about I suspect.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbCARgTdin8

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8/15/09

There is a lake in California...

A visit to Dry Ford Lake in California in August, peak heat of the year



My video blog on YouTube



http://www.youtube.com/jrsnyderjr


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8/9/09

...on not casting pearls before swine


If you live long enough you experience the joy of learning things over and over again.

This is certainly true for me regarding the internet and specifically the social web. In the nineties when the internet came into the mainstream and more social with the advent of the worldwide web, I learned some lessons which laid the foundation for how I intended to deal with a technology that quickly became an information backbone of our time.

Since then, the internet has become more ubiquitous. A wealth of information and a cyber junkyard, a web of commerce and a social networking venue but above all else an overflowing warehouse of too much data. The rules controlling my online social engagement are pretty much the same as they are offline. I have come to relearn that not only is it intrinsic to my nature to be selective but also a requirement in order to keep my sense of self relatively intact as well as balance and order in my life. Rules for my life online need to come from my experience in life offline.


I was the kid who lived in a remote place and back in the day would have loved to have online interaction to explore the world and for a while escape what seemed like a mundane local world.



Oh, if I only knew then what I know now...












For some reason it seems necessary to reconsider the ground rules for operating on the internet. I'm not sure why...but I trust my instincts. It's not clear if this is due to the economic crisis, a change of decade, feeling overwhelmed, I'm wiser or something else and right now the reason seems irrelevant. The bottom line fundamental rule is I have control over how much and what information I see, and who I interact with online and any benefit or repercussions are due to my choices. In any case I use and interact on the web on my terms and what I use any website for is generally my business and not subject to the opinion of people who do not influence me.

This doesn't mean that I'm stopping or slowing my current online activity or judging what anyone else does. Perhaps our privacy is not as intact as we'd like to think and we should recognize accessing the "information superhighway" means sharing the road with unlicensed drivers. That also means making intelligent choices about how much road we can handle and proceed with caution.

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http://www.youtube.com/jrsnyderjr

7/21/09

Signs of the Times

Phoenix Arizona 07.21.2009


It is now two years after it became glaringly obvious that Arizona was at the epicenter of a cascading real estate market fall of epic proportions...

the state is in essentially in suspended animation, at an impasse, with no real resolution regarding what real estate is actually realistically worth and the refusal of lenders/real estate to concede they're over-leveraged, and "there is no there, there" to extract back the overextended amounts they loaned out.

The State Legislature in September
will start the state budget from scratch. The current budget is a makeshift, temporary fix with an expanding deficit that hasn't been addressed.

A few signs of the times...
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Mortgages Ltd filed for bankruptcy in June 2008 after the suicide of President Scott Coles. Mortgages Ltd fueled the commercial real estate bubble as one of Arizona's largest private lenders, using cash from private investors. The returns were paid by proceeds coming in from new investors and not actual gains. They funded the largest commercial real estate projects, many now unfinished, causing long term damage to commercial real estate in the state.

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Arizona government has never done well at social service programs and the recognition is slowly dawning that probably our government is not a good place to humanely solve those problems. The best possible solutions in this economic environment are likely to be found in local community resources and self-reliant financial support. __________________________________________________________________



Biggest Anxiety of All: The Other Side of the Tracks
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It is no longer unusual to see BMW and Mercedes in the parking lot of uptown pawn shops.




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As much as Arizona epitomizes the Boom and Bust cycles of the American West it actually may have the best opportunity to reinvent itself, although it will take innovation and hard work. There are unique factors about the governmental process in the 97 year old 48th state. We are not encumbered by too many complex processes developed over centuries as some states are.


6/30/09

FWIW: My Thoughts on State Government Shutdown


Why I think shutting down state government is a bad idea, using Arizona as an example...


Today, 19 states are struggling with their state's budgets and how they are going to meet services with declining or no tax revenues. Arizona is one of them and less than 24 hours from a meltdown.


No matter your political point of view, recognize that a state government shutdown is much more than just stopping services and putting everything on hold until everyone makes up their mind. It triggers responses that have irretrievable consequences and is irresponsible. A shutdown, slowdown, meltdown, whatever...freezes all the State's money and the State Treasurer can not issue any warrants or checks (vendor payments, payroll, utilities, janitorial companies, loan payments, tax refunds) or disburse Federal money such as Unemployment, Medicare, Food Stamps, TANF, etc. The National Guard could be called out for prison duty but because they're federally funded, the money for them to operate will also be frozen. How many will accept an IOU for that assignment for very long?


If you choose to take the position that the state needs a shutdown to get it's house in order, know the consequences no matter which side you're on. Social services may be distasteful but the answer is not abruptly halting them without some thoughtful unwinding. The chaos ensuing affects all citizens, because the ripple of destruction will run through the state economy on all levels.


Destruction is not the same as Disruption.


There are good reasons why even a partial shutdown is a very bad idea right now. A shutdown will destroy the state's credit rating. We are already insolvent and any money borrowed to operate will have to be paid back at higher interest rates due to bad credit. The entire state economy is in a precarious position and even a 24 hour shutdown will have a negative impact and far worse if protracted. The law suits against the state alone will hinder us for decades.


I am absolutely against spending money we don't have and are not likely to obtain in the near future. This is the worst possible time for taxation and I have grave doubts about the effectiveness of government social services. On the other hand I do not see any sense in further destruction of the state's economy and government, simply because some people don't understand that there is just not enough money, and others are too stubborn to reflect that destruction is irresponsible anarchy and nothing more than that.


If there ever was a time to call for cooler heads to prevail, this is it.


3/21/09

Everything is amazing, nobody is happy...

Louis CK appearance on Conan O'Brien's 03.18.2009 show viral video on YouTube

Enjoy...hopefully this video won't be removed from YouTube by DMCA

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Thomas Edison's Automatic Telegraph at the 1872 Centennial Expedition
First keyboard of The Victorian Internet


For those of us born smack in the middle of the Baby Boom, the advances in communications, medicine, transportation and social norms is staggering. We're fortunate to live in a period of history when advances equivalent to those in the Renaissance have occurred at lightning speeds in a mere few generations. The Dark Ages lasted from the fall of Rome in the 5th century until the Renaissance began in the 14th...centuries of decline in culture and no progress, generations where life never changed and knowledge stood still, secreted away.

3/17/09

POTUS LBJ and Obama: Early Adopters of Communications Tools

...Presidential Electronic Trendsetters in footsteps of Lincoln.

"President Johnson believed in using the telephone, and his staff saw to it that he was never more than two minutes from one no matter where he was."

From The Heritage of Time: The People and Times of GTE Southwest 1876-1988, by Larry Johnson. (1990)





LBJ on phone in Oval Office.
Notice the large PBX console,
speakerphone box and
thick cable connecting the console.



President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was an early adopter of complex telecommunications to stay in constant communication wherever he went. Through this method he was able to keep tabs on a volatile social political environment he wanted to control. He advanced the use of telecommunications in the Office of the President and the White House, paving the way for a 21st century President Obama to use a Blackberry device.

When he was elected Vice President in 1960 LBJ's "telephone mania" was kicked into high gear and he required even more telephone equipment at the LBJ Ranch . The ranch was served by the Independent Telco Southwestern States Telephone and the high level communication needs in ranch country required a complex arrangement between them and the nearby local Bell System company, Southwestern Bell in Austin.

The assassination of President Kennedy meant an immediate increased demand for instant communications at the ranch by the "always on" new President. On Privateline.com in Telephones at the LBJ Ranch the story of how sudden communications needs were met at the LBJ Ranch, during that national emergency, is recounted from the out of print Good Connections: A Century of Service by the Men and Women of Southwestern Bell by David Park Jr. It is a study in how the regulated wireline telecommunications infrastructure stepped up to meet the needs of a President demanding instant communications in a manner that gives every indication he would make use of wireless devices and the internet today. Also in that section is Don Kimberlin's brush with LBJ's telephone mania and experience with POTUS setup for President Richard M. Nixon.


Going Mobile
LBJ's console
underdesk pullout
Air Force One


President Johnson pushed the envelop of available telecommunications for instant messaging through electronic communications in the 1960s and that included personal involvement in the conducting of a war. A century earlier, President Abraham Lincoln pressed boundaries of available electronic technology by extensive use of the telegraph for instant messaging.

President Abraham Lincoln is a hero of President Barack Obama and Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War by Tom Wheeler (2006) is a friendly read on how President Lincoln combined his skill as a writer with use of the telegraph for effective immediate electronic communication to win the Civil War. Tom Wheeler plays a role and is influential in President Obama's telecommunications policy. It is helpful in understanding how electronic communications that advance in one President's administration permanently changes social communication in the Office of the President .



Blackberry President


President Obama's Air Force One Phone


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"Oh Doctor please, some more of these, outside the door..."


JFK 1963 Phone Call requesting "a little extra medication" sent up




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White House Operators 1970

3/12/09

Another Google Fail? Gary Busey on Business! GotVMail?


Longtime GrandCentral users unable to upgrade to Google Voice


I started using GrandCentral before they were bought by Google and they put it into beta. Actually I ended up with two numbers, one from an invitation sent to me after Google took over.


How I solved my "one-number" problem, a different way a long time ago, is another story. There is some over-complicated reinvention of the wheel with these web dashboard VoIP virtual phone services for solving an old problem. Considering that for most people who call me, these days area code is irrelevant, as are long distance charges. I live in a 10 digit dialing mandated city and also in mind. There are a lot of people who live and work here with out of state or oustate area codes and it's become irrelevant for voice. If I'm somewhere else it becomes more irrelevant. Cell phones with national plans and plenty of minutes but data plans that are a killer. Skype is also a viable option, with webcam and especially for international calls.


My main purpose for using GrandCentral is that it provides a phone number in another city, where I have a lot of contacts, to easily reach me. I like having control over programming the direction of calls, messages, announcements, blocking. Additionally I can also control these features other than on GrandCentral's web page by a widget on a web page or through my phone.

London Faraday International Control Centre
(Overseas Operators) cord switchboard ca 1977

This morning I logged into GrandCentral and was excited to see the message offering me the chance upgrade to Google Voice as was ballyhooed announced. My plan was to blog today about how the upgrade went and the new features. Now I'll leave that to the bloggers who were able to continue with the upgrade.


My plans changed when my welcome page with the upgrade notification suddenly became "Your account is not yet ready to be upgraded. Please check back shortly." While the Twitterverse is fluttering madly over Google Voice or some decrying the same fate as myself, I'm instead blogging now about why that gave me pause to re-think why am I using GrandCentral at all or upgrading to Google Voice. Just pondering while waiting...

Do I really want to use another Google service? Do I want all my stuff on their cloud? I recognize that data collection in the cloud is largely unavoidable but I'll split mine up amongst clouds. I'm thinking of diversified financial investing as a concept for web services, although the choices are narrowing for diversity.

The new Google Voice Features, even the voicemail transcriptions, are not unique. The question is how great is the assembly and do they actually reliably function? I don't know yet.

Larry Majid of CNET gushes "Google Voice: Flawed but still awesome." TelephonyOnline's Rich Karpinski writes a good "Analysis: Google Voice versus...everybody?"


RingCentral and Ribbit from BT, GotVMail, OneBox and others provide similar services and don't count telcos and cable providers out yet. Then there's the re-invention of the home phone sparked off by the Verizon Wireless Hub, a tempting alternative for growing microbusinesses to downshifting home office professionals and entrepreneurs. Google still doesn't seem sure what to do with YouTube after major missteps and then there's Gmail...

Amazon is in the cloud, Paypal and Skype are still alive and Twitter is underestimated for it's capabilities beyond 140 character messages. Yahoo isn't dead and there's Mozilla...

Google's Eric Schmidt thinks Twitter is a "poor man's email" while in the same interview conceding the economy is "pretty dire." So how many people will be buying into rich man's email (Gmail?) in an extended recession? Google Voice as a rich man's...phone service?
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Inside the Entrepreneutrial Mind of the Inimitable Gary Busey

GotVMail is like a Mullet or Mohawk, by Gary Busey




Subscribe to
garybuseyonbusiness on YouTube. Get the embed code to put the "Gary on Business" video on your site by going to Gary Busey on Business on the GotVMail site!

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Interesting...

The revoked upgrade caused me to think about what I had been putting off, how to better simplify and integrate the few phone numbers I'm now down to, with better messaging. The GrandCentral platform number works reasonably well and when they do eventually offer Google Voice to me, I'll upgrade and use one number as long as it's free.

Realistically, if "Google is going to revolutionize the telecom business" it can't remain free to customers forever, much less in our lifetime. Charging is inevitable, after the teaser, because advertising alone cannot support the type of network and traffic it will take to "revolutionize telecom", even with billions in your pocket, eventually you must turn a profit. Customers will have "one number for life" if they pay for it in addition to being tracked by Google.

There's a fundamental shift here: the person using a service like Google Voice is a "user" and not a "customer" in the sense a telco or cable provider views it.

I can accomplish what Google Voice does much simpler, for less cost and trouble in the long run, another way right now. In the near future I see a need for some of the services of web based VoIP service with feature control and will now start looking in advance at the options, to be prepared for when the time is right. Who knows what else may develop by then?

Does anyone want to purchase a GrandCentral 602 Phoenix Arizona number?



3/9/09

Amazon Kindle 2 Unboxing


Jon Rettinger of jon4lakers.com gives a good overview in this video

I really want an Amazon Kindle 2 and it is on my short list of must have items. Upcoming blogs will be about devices and applications I use (or plan to use) and how I try to Keep It Simple Stupid with my use of technology.

Twitter has been an example of my experimenting with a subversive technology going mainstream and I'm still exploring it every day. More comment on that to come also.

The underlying philosophy I operate with, before I adopt and use any technology, is it must integrate with my organic real offline life easily and improve my life without distracting from it.

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3/2/09

Evan Williams on social networking and Twitter.com


Evan Williams on social networking




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Evan Williams on Twitter.com

"twitter is an asynchronous relationship model"

"Twitter is over capacity"


This is the status of Twitter at this moment...

the site has been slow to respond all day.
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Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.

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I've only been using it a few weeks and already I miss it when it's down!

2/28/09

ME: 83° in February on Balcony


The desert broom behind me on the balcony garden is already blooming.


I'll try to visualize this when it's a 100 plus degrees for months this summer





2/27/09

Twitter and me so far...

developing...

Since Twitter is enjoying yet another resurgence in popularity, my entry now is onto a more evolved site and coinciding with a flurry of other newcomers. For several reasons I'm evaluating a number of web tools and Twitter was inevitable in my life, even if only for a short time, so on Twitter I am.

So now I'm a tweeter, albeit a awkward and not prolific or clever one, I get the point, the vision and now it seems obvious. It is the ubiquitous version of the way a few close friends (all I grew up with) and I have juggled instant messaging, text messaging, cell calls for years to be accessible with the technology we had. We still use good old msn messenger as the start of every day as a link to what we are doing and where we are or what our opinion/mood is at the moment. I might send an IM at 7:30 am and at 10:15 pm my friend sends a reply back by text message and...that goes on back and forth all day, you get the idea. I've known for awhile we were using modified tools from the late 90s, Web 2.0 updated, to accomplish a social connection through the day that seemed outmoded. I will say that for 5 people it's very functional and works but that is it's limit.

Twitter accomplishes what we do among other things on a larger scale. As the early adopter among my little crowd, I've learned to wait for the question "what is this Twitter thing you're doing all about?"

to be continued...
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"Evan Williams on what's behind Twitter's explosive growth"


In this TED Conference ten minute video with Evan Williams, he talks about the concept of the side project of Twitter and how it evolved to where it is today.


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tip of the hat to our national space

2/26/09

Rick Santelli's "Are You Listening Mr President? "

wow...he really spoke his mind!

Rick Santelli is one of the few mainstream media tv people I like and after watching him for ten years believe he knows his message. Until Thursday, when he went on this impromptu well spoken rant on CNBC while on the trading floor in Chicago, he flew under most viewers radar. That is rapidly changing.
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Benson


The Classic Liberal, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Steve Benson of The Arizona Republic, doesn't seemed thrilled with big government intervention events either...






2/25/09

Helen of Many Glacier Hotel 1925

This 1925 photo is fascinating to me. Helen, the switchboard operator, is dignified photographed at this crudely built switchboard for the Many Glacier Hotel in Montana.



2/24/09

Get Yer True Grit Out America!

we interrupt usual programming for a patriotic jingoistic rant...
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A little over 40 years ago, when I was a freshman in high school, I moved to the United States with my parents, my sister, aunt, uncle and my cousin. I'm proud and fortunate to have been able to come to the United States and live my American Dream.
  
 

Through the decades I've come across all kinds of people working and living their American Dream. The American Dream is a journey that never really ends since as you travel you discover that is the real destination. For those people who have the character traits that are likely to seek the American Dream, the quest to achieve is never satisfied and with each achievement, their nature is to move on to another quest. How the rewards of successful quest results are utilized is as unique as the individuals who achieve them.
 
We are in an economic crisis and era of social and political change that matches any other in history and a lot of hard work needs to be done...


 


In the mean time what are we doing to ourselves? Too much mainstream media, government commentary, wall street prognosticators, politicians, all with an overemphasis on the mentality of failure talking. Has everyone lost their senses and their guts and vision? Personally I don't think so. The self-fulfilling prophecy model can happen if more people don't realize that life is not as we knew it but not nearly as bad as we make it and get their mojo back real soon. I believe many already are and will. America was founded on Self-Reliance, Individualism, True Grit, Innovation, Invention and Reinvention...history is on our side, now let's get on with making it.

This is going to be a tough haul and the best thing Americans can do individually is the necessary work to reinvent the way we live to build back a better country.
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Some books are timeless and 26 years ago when an odd unintentional medical event sidelined me for a period, I read many books to help me rise above the temporary but difficult immediate situation I was in. One recommended to me by a doctor stands out as still relevant, "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. Although first published in 1946 it remains one of ten most influential books in the US. It is most worthwhile reading for gaining a healthy non-monetary perspective on our current dilemma.

2/20/09

Just a moment girls!


Social and Technology History: How it made me an Early Adopter


In the early 70s I was hired as one of the first male operators in AT&T’s Bell System, then the largest corporation in the world (think Microsoft, Google, Cisco), The Telephone Company, the first electronic social network, a forerunner of today’s social media.

I stepped into a world that for decades had been the enclave of acceptable “woman’s work.” As a result it became a theme in my working life, dealing with the massive social dynamic of gender politics and the very real conflicts between men and women in the workplace. It paved the way for me to be set on a road bridging the gap between the WWII "Greatest Generation" who ran things and us "Boomers" who questioned why things were run that way. My early work experience provided me with skills to see with pretty good clarity the tension that others don’t always see. The skills required to navigate the waters of historic social change, coupled with work tasks that required interacting with people over a vast telephone network, prepared me for social media today. It is an explanation of why I became an accidental Early Adopter.

This 1953 Western Electric (the AT&T subsidiary that manufactured switchboards) operator recruitment ad indicates clearly the job of telephone operator, which could be every bit as complex as working a testboard, was for “girls” of any age only. The men have finished their “men’s work” of building the switchboard and the girls were now needed to “man” the switchboards, for much lower wages than men.

Market forces were not at work then. If they had, then the Bell System would not have been a regulated monopoly and on a larger scale, not with gender job roles and pay treatment. In 1948 and through the early 1950’s Operator Toll Dialing was introduced nationwide, the forerunner of customer Direct Distance Dialing (DDD). Long distance traffic was rapidly increasing and the country was humming along towards the economic recovery of 1954.

The demand for women as telephone operators and service representatives was very high and often difficult to constantly recruit for. If market forces were truly at play then the wages of these woman’s jobs should have skyrocketed due to supply and demand. The social interference of assigned gender roles had a significant economic impact on the entire economy. The government interference with attempting to correct assigned gender roles and pay treatment later had unintended consequences on the economy.

In 1973 Stanford University’s Sandra L. Bem and Daryl J. Bem published a report funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, “Does Sex-biased Job Advertising 'Aid and Abet' Sex Discrimination?” in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology (1973, 3, 1, pp 6- 18). The article answered the question:

“Do [these] advertising practices aid and abet discrimination in employment by actually discouraging applicants of one sex or the other from applying for jobs for which they are otherwise well qualified? The two studies reported in this article sought to answer this question empirically. Both were conducted as part of legal testimony, the first in a suit filed by the EEOC against American Telephone and telegraph Company, the second in a suit filed by the National Organization of Women against The Pittsburgh Press."

The use of the Scientific Method, a “hard” science test on Social Science, a “soft” science, for use in a court of law to argue a social case with the potential for economic disruption is still being debated today. Nonetheless it was allowed to be introduced and the course of events seemed inevitable due to the social pressures of the time.

AT&T signed a Consent Decree with the EEOC and the US Justice Department on January 18, 1973 that opened the door for specific hiring quotas for targeted underrepresented groups. My slot had been secured by federal decree in a Bell System job and my job duties were mandated to be “nontraditional” or in the old parlance, woman’s work.

I never objected to performing those jobs because I was young, grew up outside of the US and generally I wasn't looking for a “man’s job” anyway since for me it would likely have meant being a dreaded “suit.” What I did strenuously object to was the limitation it placed on my career mobility. During the recession of the 70s what little hiring occurred across the nation happened mostly in nontraditional jobs that were being filled by force of hand of the federal government. My fate was sealed.

Technology and social change were meeting in the vast Bell System and other corporations like IBM right at the time I was in college and working at the local Bell Company as a nontraditional male operator. The mood on campuses versus that in technology giants such as AT&T and IBM was a contrast. The technology giants were forced into melding cultures by meddling and our generation was expected to deal with it. The effect of that era of social change, technology and economic conditions on the macro economy is still being studied today.

In the long run for me personally it was instrumental to my becoming an Early Adopter. The skills I learned helped me assist people in adapting technology to people and social change, instead of the other way around. Boomers took the old networks that were locked down and secured away from the average user, except with the intervention of workers like telephone operators, bringing networks direct to the user. The box of Pandora was opened and as we are once again in the midst of great social change, it helps to look back to see how we got here for guidance through the present to the future.

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The first telephone operators were teenage boys and this short video explains why they were quickly replaced by women...


2/16/09

A great explanation of the value of Twitter by Dr. Tom Guarriello


I'm exploring Twitter, dipping my toes in, already seeing the value of it for me and intend to do more in-depth blogs (maybe a vlog) on how I am adapting this social media tool to work for me. This
22 minute video by Dr. Tom Guarriello of TrueTalk and VloggerHeads is a very personable explanation of how to use Twitter coupled with why you would want to use Twitter. I also found it useful in understanding what Twitter is.

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"Twitter: Why Bother"



Find more videos like this on VloggerHeads

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You may follow
Dr. Tom Guarriello by going to his Twitter profile at www.twitter.com/tomguarriello.

2/14/09

each melody is you

by ournationalspace on youtube

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when it comes along i'll know it
The perfect song i'll own it
but of course it'll be yours
from me

hang on to it all
those dresses those shoes
you make them so pretty with your smiles
one day you'll wear them
at dances at spring balls
i'll spin you round and round for miles

your blue valentine will turn red
your private poet's flubbed lines will be reread
all the wrong notes will be rewrote
for you

it's always for you my white flame
no matter the who or what the name
each melody is you with a beating rhythm true
for you

2/13/09

Roger: The Boring Dispatcher

repost on 02.20.2009 to add tribute video at end of post.

In late 2005, early 2006 I was discovering the brand new wonders of the video sharing site YouTube with delight. The viral videos were lowbrow to me (sorry Kevin Nalts) but it was way too cool digging through all those tv, movie and best of all, music video clips. I soon discovered the new medium of video web loggers (vloggers) that was developing on YouTube, anonymously watching from my first channel that I created in February 2006. I collected and favorited videos, many of which would not be allowed today and not just because of copyright violations but scandalous content. On that channel (the username an odd mix of letters and numbers) I began to venture out into the social networking world and leave quite a few not so judicious comments. The year 2006 on YouTube was the year of real anarchy where uploading almost anything went unchallenged unless it was pure porn.

In February of 2007 I closed my first channel and opened my current channel with my public username. I had been considering it for a few months and this video "Paypal (Ian's Song)" by ournationalspace for some reason convinced me to do it. Keep in mind that since the 90s I have been cautious and selective regarding which sites I created accounts on, to open a real channel and throw away my anonymous experimental channel, was a commitment of my username. That year the anarchy became a bit more tamed but an online networking social community was crystallizing around vlogging and there was disorder and drama providing the energy that drove the emotional engines of the social community.

One of the best and most prolific vloggers, one of the first that I really remember, was Roger TheBoringDispatcher and especially his "vlog war" with HellionExciter. You probably would have to experienced or been around in that period of Web 2.0 and YouTube to understand why the death of Roger impacted the YouTube community in a very big way and the part it has played since. To me personally he was always very considerate, even if I always wasn’t, while remaining very real.

Just as people I have written about for niche historical publication, that were an early part of different periods of telephone history, were unrecognized at the time for what they were doing, to be later seen as pioneers…I believe people like Roger will in time be recognized for the beginnings of this thing called vlogging.

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This is the tribute video created for him a year ago, at the time of his death, where a vast majority of the community posted video response tributes and commented on the loss. It is still the video that best captures Roger and that moment in time with many comments remaining and some of the responses still attached.

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Simple 2009 One Year Tribute by mymoosejaw Dave:


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Roger Forever (memorial collab for theboringdispatcher)
uploaded on 02/20/2009 on You Tube by Lea, user achampag

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