I really liked this essay, and I think I would really like its author if I knew her.
At the end of the essay, the vague sadness I felt was joined by a pretty unsympathetic “well, what did you expect?” kind of feeling. I didn’t like that, it put me into the shuttle bus of coyotes she might have been talking about.
But she doesn’t like technical backpacks, or people who like technical backpacks, and she took a job in a technical backpack factory.
When the town turns into a company town for the makers of technical backpacks, I feel some admiration for the people that try to assimilate, but also... it's kind of a shame.
There's no easy reaction to all the engineers and technical staff that don't love making tech products, maybe don't even like it. I want to explain to them why I love it in the hopes they'll start to feel the way I do and be happy. But people are too complex for that. And you can't just be like "get some other job" because there are very few other jobs that won't leave them struggling to make rent, at least not without moving far away.
> Surrounded by transplants, we together inhabit a prehistoric California of 1970s sedans, rickety on the highway, hot air blowing through open windows into the backseat. [...] Our coworkers had moved here to be a part of the future, but we were left over from something that had already passed.
> Dustin wants me to know that it was his decision to not hire me. “I have to feel really good about a person before I bring them on, and I don’t feel that way about you,” he says.
Whenever I took a decision to fire somebody, I always made a point of openly taking responsibility for it. I thought it was the right thing to do; I was sick of people who couldn't stomach making a decision, and that I could at least look the person I was letting go in the eye and try to explain, in the most honest and open way possible the reason for my decision. Same for declining to hire someone after an interview.
But reading this, it felt unnecessary cruel; now I wonder if it's sometimes best to just let these things work out themselves. May be not everyone is like me, and some people don't really need this conversation.
One thing for certain though: Dustin had no self-interest in having this conversation, after author have already been informed about the decision.
Nah, seems like a power trip to me. Maybe hoping she’d throw herself at him; maybe just getting into making her know it was his feelings that controlled her access to housing and health care.
Since it was about a hiring decision—not just a termination of a 1099 contractor—I’d take it to the California labor board.
"What dismays me about technology is this: not the machine itself but the way its architecture echoes outward, imposing a grid of quantification on everything it touches. The sadness of numbers interferes with our thoughts, begs us to apply logic to warm, messy things. What becomes of the ambiguity of feeling? That which can’t be immediately identified is derided, denied, and eventually erased." Amen.
Standardizing, gridifying and quantiazing it's what allows our modern huge world to exist.
> Social scalability is the ability of an institution –- a relationship or shared endeavor, in which multiple people repeatedly participate, and featuring customs, rules, or other features which constrain or motivate participants’ behaviors -- to overcome shortcomings in human minds and in the motivating or constraining aspects of said institution that limit who or how many can successfully participate. Social scalability is about the ways and extents to which participants can think about and respond to institutions and fellow participants as the variety and numbers of participants in those institutions or relationships grow. It's about human limitations, not about technological limitations or physical resource constraints.
Standardizing and quantizing is also what enables conceptual proliferation which makes reality increasingly intractable. Understanding this is why China had Chuang Tzu and continuity in civilization. Things shouldn't be the slave of reason, they should be a slave of the senses. Love, Hume/Buddha :) perception in terms of quantization has that old problem 'with a hammer everything looks like a nail'... everything looks like a market transaction... to be solved by some financial instrument, bureaucracy or code. Chuang Tzu was talking about this millenia ago and was required reading for China's leaders.
Meanwhile Global Warming carries on... reality doesn't care what we think.
> Things shouldn't be the slave of reason, they should be a slave of the senses
People say that. But then they are horrified when someone kills another one because it made them angry. Or when a man rapes a woman because he couldn't control his senses.
They say they want a "human touch" and "emotion instead of logic", but don't like the consequences of truly doing that.
The solution IMHO is not to substitute the emotions, but to understand, control and channel them by equanimity, concentration, meditation, investigation and mindfulness.
Spare a moment for those whom change leaves behind. The ones with pretty backpacks that have pony tails. The ones who have to cry.
Spare a thought for those whom numbers don’t define. The ones who draw strength from stories of humpback whales. The ones who hear the redwoods’ cry.
Spare a feeling for those whom see through the self-congratulatory lies. The ones who know that the X in UX is a haphazard lie. The ones who know that sometimes even numbers can cry.
Spare a tiny piece of your heart before the day you too get left behind and become undefined while feeling you’re seeing through the lies.
Something special happens when one reads a piece of such ineffable beauty. Beyond thought or specific emotion, we are affected, taken to some other undefined place. It happens very rarely for me, perhaps due to my lifetime of tech-oriented pursuits, but it certainly happened to me today and I am thankful for Ms. Gannon's soul-bearing work of beauty.
On another note and only because I am a paying, very satisfied customer, I have to recommend MasterClass. I was originally simply interested in watching Gary Kasparov's chess class with my 10yo son, but when I saw the list of experts in writing, music and media production, we decided that $90 for one class was inferior to $180 for a year of all the classes (and we live in public housing so this was no easy investment). It has been an outstanding decision. I literally did this within the past week and watching Judy Blume and Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood with my 12yo daughter has been nothing less than revelatory. I also have enjoyed Will Wright and Herbie Hancock and Malcolm Gladwell and Frank Gehry and Hans Zimmer; excellence and passion inspire us. The production on the classes is its own master class in educational video creation in the internet age, but their choice of educators is its own special kind of genius.
My favorite, however (and surprisingly, to me), has been the poet Billy Collins. We need more poets' hearts in this digital world of MBAs ruthlessly squeezing the populace and our beloved Mother Earth for everything the laws they crafted will allow. I applaud Victoria Gannon for her wonderful piece of poetic prose. Her poet's heart has inspired me this morning and I need all of that I can get in this world of callous competition.
He had found a Market-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a real comment. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Reply button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic examination of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a real comment.
When one tells the truth there is no guarantee that the listener lives closely enough with the truth to recognize it as such, the filters of their life often obscurring the simpler reality that some few others choose to inhabit.
All that is important is living and telling one's truth because, in the end, most people don't even know who Dunning & Kruger are, let alone that McArthur Wheeler bears a great resemblance to the vast majority of humanity in the early 21st Century.
So part of this is all about you, but not in the way you wanted. You're not just a reader in this; you're part of the ensemble; did you see yourself as you read?
I'm gonna fess up and say I didn't read it at first. Within a few seconds when I realised it wasn't about literal backpacks I checked the comments to see if anything of value is discussed. Agreed with the person before me and moved on.
This is how I operate these days I'm afraid. I subconsciously attribute some vague numerical value to anything I do and should it fall under some equally vague threshold the effort is abandoned.
I think the more I work as a coder the more I allow my behaviour to become algorithmic :D
There's nothing shallow about this. If you are carrying 75 pounds on your back for 7 days, you had better size a pack that fits your dimensions and then pack it according to best practices. Why experience unnecessary pain and discomfort? Do it right.
I went there to see what they had to say about backpacks too, and was taken aback to find it wasn't about that at all, but I decided to read enough to find the connection and was very surprised with what I found.
I don't read a lot of introspective stuff, I focus almost entirely on learning something from what I read, but this piece is truly exceptional and it gave me a much deeper insight to what working in a tech center city really feels like.
And it confirms my decision to leave the "Big City" long ago, before the tech boom, and to not go back, was a great one.
I clicked because I am interested in backpacks having seen someone hitch with like 8 possesions and no money from singapore to india just a month a go. As I was reading this article at first, It was choppy at the beginning... switching back and forth seemi ngly, I sort of felt I had to adjust my focus and re-read a few times to understand... this to me is a sign... a sign of a new way of thinking or terrible writing. I had an intuition this could be a good piece. I was not disappointed.
Gotta give it some attention, this is lit/literature. Reading that communicates a novel way of thinking requires attention. Then when that thinking is commonplace later, it may become "more readable". Consider what it felt like to read more adult literature in high school.
I abandoned about halfway through when I realized it wasn't going to get to a discussion of backpack design and I had no idea what the actual point was. You're not alone.
In the article, the author describes the people she works with in this exact context.
Parent you're replying to is lumping those further up the comment chain with the people described in the article. She says they often talk about how to get their wives to watch more science fiction movies.
I felt it landed perfectly given the context of the article, YMMV.
I travel almost every week. One of my 'favourite' things on this planet is the one that I use most. My backpack. It usually carries a 1lt bottle of water, 4 pens, dental floss, 2 laptops & chargers, phone charger, 1 journal, 1 A4 notepad, clean socks. I love using this backpack because I don't have to check it in the airports.
I was hoping for a backpack article that would suggest tips, tricks for people like me/us. Travelers with laptops. I was initially disappointed until I started reading. Thank you for this.
So much of this account resonates with my experience as a UX ("X!" Must be technical!) developer in the Bay Area. I love this line particularly: "A film of pseudoscience sticks to everything we touch."
As humanity we need a greater purpose. We need to constantly expand and move into more difficult frontiers. It is what defines us as a species and the challenge keeps us collectively sane.
We need to push as a species into Space. To mine asteroids and setup bases. We need to get our home planet off fossil fuels and maintain it as a haven of life, with a smaller and more productive human workforce.
At the end of the essay, the vague sadness I felt was joined by a pretty unsympathetic “well, what did you expect?” kind of feeling. I didn’t like that, it put me into the shuttle bus of coyotes she might have been talking about.
But she doesn’t like technical backpacks, or people who like technical backpacks, and she took a job in a technical backpack factory.