Geography of the Mind

Just when you thought...

Nothing else could happen, something does and we all know about it immediately.

For a moment in time, the year 2010 seemed to give us and the world a brief respite. It felt as if, although thinking people realized it wouldn't take hold, we may not be in a fully sustainable economic recovery but at least there was a pause or suspension of things getting worse. We were lulled by overkill of good news of small magnitude. The wishful hope I think most of us had was that the economic crisis would not get too much worse and we could stabilize as a people and begin the laborious task of slowly rebuilding. It seems though the dawn of 2011 has brought home to society the realization that we are not going to get out of this universe changing crackup so easily. On the economic front in the United States, a large segment of Americans now recognize that we are indeed in a genuine depression. We'll likely skip spring and head straight into long, hot summer afternoons followed by cold fall and winter nights.

We've been recently jolted by big, bad news. Another shoe may drop. Anything can happen. Things happen in threes. We will all know about it at the same time.

There are uprisings all across the Middle East, which at a minimum threatens our oil supplies and is bound to cause global economic problems. Even larger than that, the turbulence of the Jasmine Revolution, is far from over and more is to come. There is now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, taking a terrible toll on the people of that country. Worse, nuclear meltdown is a very real possibility, bringing to the people of Japan the horror of revisiting a different nuclear disaster reminiscent of the Second World War. Japan is the third largest economy in the world and this event will have a financial effect on all of us.

What is next? One of the Four Horsemen? Conquest, War, Famine or Death? We will know within minutes if a White, Red, Black or Pale horse arrives.

Any number of things could bring another cataclysmic event to us soon. The debt of the European nations and the US government is one. The Currency Crisis could suddenly make itself obvious as the insolvency of governments reveals itself. Is a widespread incurable global disease possible in this day and age? A technological meltdown? Food shortages everywhere, including first world nations?

No one knows. Nothing could happen since so much already has. The world is random. Everyone will be aware of it instantly.

In the long course of history, Classical Ancient, Middle Ages and Modern, humans have suffered and thrived simultaneously but in the first two periods, news and knowledge was local and took a long time to spread. In the Modern era globalization began and technological progress, for better or worse, advanced and is omnipresent in our lives. The breadth of communications that span the globe is a critical component of input into our minds with a subliminal effect. The social web is the epitome of oversharing personal thought. 

This is the period of Too Much Information. Media Saturation. Information Overload. Whatever you prefer to call it, I maintain one of our highest priorities should be managing the flow of current material that enters into our brains. We may be people of the latest Modern age but I'm not sure that as mortal souls most of us have caught up with the rapidity of the advances science and technology have made. Especially those of the last thirty years.

I believe the effects of instant connections have altered the psychology of the larger population, affecting the economic crisis and the way people perceive and react to it.

Mass marketing of mass communications isn't necessarily good for the masses. It's unlikely that progression of widespread communications is going to slow down. The effect of globalization, technological innovations and communication has been one of the major reasons why the impact of this economic depression is different. Prior to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression of the thirties, drastic economic downturns were referred to as Panics. Just a Panics came to be called Recessions and Depressions, the nomenclature of economic crisis has changed to Disruption, due to instant messaging. This is not only an economic depression and change of a way of life but also a disruption of great magnitude because we are at a zenith of communications. The progression from local news and knowledge to global information is made complete. All that remains is improving the tools that transmit it.

Know your own mind. Guard and protect it as securely as you would your body. Consider what you feed into your head as much as you consider what you should eat.

Understanding that this economic disruption is not only a life-altering physical endurance contest, it also is a groupthink mental challenge, is pivotal to understanding how to survive relatively intact. Stress is a demanding thing, it eats you up, that is why it is important to learn how to cope with it and prevent it from distracting you as much as possible. Learn it, live it, to do more than survive it, but thrive in it.

Arizona Landscape

Desktop...

It's The End Of The United States As We Know It

This is a total revaluation of everything...

The Great Disruption isn't the worst thing that could happen and probably long overdue.


1. The internet has disrupted everything ranging from communications to commerce.


2. This total revaluation is due to the failure of the government regulated financial system.


3. Across the board insolvency is creating a tidal wave of bankruptcies that can't be stopped. 


4. We've been living on borrowed time: ideas, money, consumerism, ethics.


5. There will be a profound reorder of personal values due to people's relationship with money.


6. We will see an acrimonious social and political atmosphere of conflicting and competing interest groups.

Personally I don't think it can be called off no matter how many fingers in the dike try to postpone it. There are too many circumstances already in play that portend an overturning of the way we live, sooner rather than later.

1. Technology has sped the exchange of everything spanning from ideas to currency and spinning out of control.


2. There is a war in Afghanistan that is a no win situation for the US.


3. The paper shifting of debt among governments in Europe is contagious to the UK, Asia and US.





4. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is one example of environmental problems that are vexing.


5. There is only one way for the US Stock Market to go now and it isn't up or sideways.


6. Unemployment and underemployment are not going to be solved for quite a long time.

We can hope that the situation doesn't become so charged that we see people do things so ugly that we never thought that we'd see in our lifetime. Immigration conflict is only a symptom of long simmering racial and ethnic issues  Political divisiveness is a result of class warfare. Terrorism has been glossed over and is internal on several fronts. There's more...Anything is possible.

THERE IS A PERSONAL RESPONSE FOR INDIVIDUALS

Therefore also for the individual: Anything is possible. Personally and it doesn't have to be a negative reaction. If we choose to accept that there will be very little money in circulation, even among those who once had it, that consumer goods will not be as available as they once were, we can choose to take this as an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth, a chance to innovate new ways of doing things.

No matter where you are in life, you can always find someone better off and someone worse off than you are.

Really what choice is there? We can accept reality and adjust to it in the best possible way or we can be angry and bitter. Many of us have worked hard all our lives and achieved quite a bit and expected to be at least comfortable by this time. I know people who have complained bitterly to me about this and I can no longer be around them because it triggers the worst fears in me. Other people I know are well aware of how things look and what direction the country likely will head. What kind of future we face and are transcending to understanding it is out of our control. What we do have control over is how we reorient our internal compass to acceptance.

My grandfather used to tell me stories of the Depression. One of them was many men his age (in their thirties and forties) never accepted the conditions of the Depression and stayed inside their houses for the rest of their lives. Only their wives went out to do the shopping, etc. He said they "wasted their lives away when they could have done something, anything, even if it wasn't earning money." My grandfather was a barber but his business was slow, so he started beekeeping. He had men helping him who also had slow business or no jobs, this gave them something to do, they also had lots of honey.

Everyone has to find their own path to acceptance, a positive and hopeful outlook, their own personal revaluation of what is important and coping with the difficult fact that like a hurricane blowing through...a lot of what we thought, believed in, as well as the physical aspects of life we had, has been blown away.

In no way do I believe this is an easy task. If there was ever a time to build a solid support system around you it is now. Do I have fear about the future in five years that I didn't have five years ago? YES. I cannot let that rule me and it is important that I get the message out to as many people as possible to alleviate my own fears, doubts and anxieties, share the burden.

I have an avocation that is a labor of love people help me with and it keeps us occupied, plus we get benefit from doing something together . My mother wants me to start beekeeping with one of my nephews, who is in the similar employment predicament that I've been in for the same amount of time. Through these activities we discover new gems inside ourselves and from them, anything can happen.

I believe we are capable of more than surviving but winning in new ways, in this historical reordering of society, by recognizing that it is about people valuing each other in ways other than in financial and material terms. That is the bottom line revaluation. We may even get the real America back.

Manifest your own Destiny: "I feel fine"


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How many times have you driven by this statue and wondered about it?

Navajo WWII Code Talkers Tribute: 
Arizona Communications History...

Qwest Tower 20 E Thomas Rd Phoenix AZ

Tribute To Navajo Code Talkers statue


This statute by Doug Hyde is on the northeast corner of Thomas Road and Central Avenue in Phoenix and was placed in 1989 as a tribute to the Navajo Code Talkers. The statue was commissioned through the Heard Museum by Best West Properties Inc. (investor real estate owned by US WEST Inc.) and the Koll Companies, developers of the plaza project. The intention was to represent communications history in Arizona and the commission was due to the location becoming the new state headquarters of US WEST Communications (now Qwest).

At the time there was still some sentiment among corporations in the US to honor the heritage and influence of their industries on the communities they served. This was especially prevalent in telephone companies who had strong traditions and sense of their history and heritage. This specific example is particularly remarkable in that it recognizes the forgotten contributions of the Navajo (and other Native American) Code Talkers of WWII, the connection between historical communications of a group once considered inferior to western US civilization and modern communications. The intent was also to recognize the diversity of the employees and customers the company served.

The inscription on the plaque reads:

This tribute represents the spirit of the Navajo Code Talkers, a group of more than 400 U.S. Marines who bravely served their country during World War II.

Their mission: to utilize the Navajo language in the creation of an unbreakable secret code. Between 1942 and 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers used this code, and their skills as radio operators, to provide a secure method of communications vital to America's Victory.

Among many Native Americans, the flute is a communications tool used to signal the end of confrontation and the coming of peace. This tribute represents the advancement of  peace for all future generations.

This is the first permanent tribute to honor the Navajo Code Talkers.

  

 
Official website of the Navajo Code Talkers: http://www.navajocodetalkers.org/ 
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Analog Social Web

How Rosie the Riveter became the First Social Web Guru...

Dallas Bryan Street Toll Office

In the period after World War II telephones and dial service became a priority for the nation as the telephone system became the primary way to connect people for social networking. The building of new, more efficient switches and Operator Service centers became a priority for the Bell System and Independent Telcos to accommodate the rapidly escalating demand for service. A primary way of rebuilding the social, economic and political fabric of the country was by way of connecting people through communications as rapidly and effectively as possible. The United States was emerging from a long era of economic downturn and war.

"Hello Operator? I'd like to make a call."

The role of telephone operators interlacing the analog social web known as the telephone system cannot be underestimated. Without them, many connections could not be made and the call for those connections was skyrocketing. In order to handle the traffic volume, it became necessary to develop standardized methods and procedures for call handling consistency and calculated scheduling techniques, to meet the demands of service. It was a matter of efficiently accomplishing tasks in an analog, mechanical world operated by humans for customer satisfaction at a reasonable cost.

Albuquerque NM Toll and Assistance Cord Switchboard ca 1970

The original customer service contact centers that we know today originated in telephone company operator service centers with methods continuously developed after WWII and institutionalized in the 1950s when Operator Toll Dialing was rolled out nationwide. Operator Toll Dialing was the original implementation of the 10-digit telephone area code and number system we use today. The telephone company Operator Toll Centers set the precedence for call routing to centralized locations and the attendant discipline within operations, required to treat common call situations consistently and staff at peak and trough times, and now the core of call centers today. Regimented operating practices were instituted for the most common types of calls handled and scrupulously monitored, to speed up call handling. This led to the widespread institution of what is now known as "Average Call Handling Time", Available Time" and "Actual Work Time," to shave milliseconds off each call to improve the overall financial performance of what are cost centers.

Diagram of original AT&T Traffic Operator Position System (TSPS) keyshelf

With the onset of computerization and operator systems such as Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) and Traffic Operator Position System (TOPS) more data could be gathered to automate processes. The principles of centralization and standardization were replicated outside the phone companies, creating the call center industry. With each switchboard advance, computerized mechanization and automation of routine tasks, the groundwork was laid for contemporary call center operations.

Northern Electric Original Toll Operator Position System (TOPS)

Bell System TV ad introducing "Computer Assisted Phone Operator" (TSPS) to United States

If you enjoyed this article you may also be interested in my post from two days ago "On Social Web Platforms: Bringing It All Back Home..." http://bit.ly/cok7Ur OR from March 2009 "POTUS LBJ and Obama: Early Adopters of Communications Tools" http://bit.ly/co2TRi

Online Social Networking: 2010

What I think now...

Two years ago I did a video blog "Online Social Networking Revolution: Thinking Ahead." It was one of my first video blogs and although I cringe at my presentation and editing, it remains a video that continues to get views.

This is my follow up video blog with some of my current thoughts on online social networking. Over the 15 years that I've been interacting online, YouTube and vlogging really changed the game for me four years ago when I first ventured there. The interaction on YouTube, the video sharing site, made it also a social web site. It pushed many of us further online because it allowed the presentation of self in real life (apologies to Erving Goffman)...we could see each other in video and get a better sense of the people we interacted with online.

Much has been made about what happened with online social networking, interaction and the community on YouTube, however there is no doubt that the site advanced online interaction into the mainstream. It remains to be seen what happens with YouTube but my belief has been that Google as a corporation had (and still has) no idea what it had in YouTube in the aspect of online social networking and what direction to go with it. It has never been in the MBA/CPA marketing business school mindset principles the company operates by, no matter how cool their campus was too work at and trendy their logo was. It was only a matter of time before the community on YouTube became a temporary moment in an era now gone by.

In any case what I've learned personally about online social networking is that it intersects in my life and is integrated now with offline "real life" social networking. A large number of the people I've met online since the early nineties I have met in person and maintain contact with. Those that I haven't, the virtual relationships have become as real as those with people I know in person. I no longer distinguish the difference.

One thing has become clear, everyone must now come to terms with how to handle life online and offline, even if for some that means opting out and not engaging online at all. That is still a choice that must be reckoned with, since to engage or not through the internet, means a decision has been made about relationships. It is neither right or wrong and everyone must decide individually what is best for them in their own personal happiness and choose how they want to interact with other people.

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Online Social Networking 2010 (What I Think Now) from JR Snyder Jr on Vimeo.

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January 14, 2008

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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.

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

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?

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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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!

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

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...

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.

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.

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...