Social identity and Hackney Wick

Opinions differ on the authenticity of Hackney Wick.  Historically, it’s an inner city industrial site along London’s Lea River, ribbed by tributary canals and factories.  Today, it’s a redeveloping neighborhood, given new life by the nearby 2012 Olympic venues and various community and arts grants.

  

Its character is harder to define.  Superficially, it is a gritty maze of graffiti’d walls and urban bars, rundown buildings and overgrown concrete.  But it also looks too rough by half: a clever stage-set to attract younger renters and develop artist’s lofts?

It’s hard to judge: while the buildings and streets are in disrepair. the roughness doesn’t feel unsafe, the the street art can seem carefully placed.

How are we to judge contextual authenticity, the source or strength of social identity?

 

I was similarly talking with friends last week about how national, as opposed to neighborhood,  identity is established.  The shape, laws, and cultures of the UK have aggregated over millennia, rights of men and women evolving from one monarch to the next.  But does also foster a weaker sense of shared identity, such that  the Scots could consider an exit after 300 years.

The US, in contrast, defines itself with strong national roots instead of regional ones. Historically, the government sprang into being fully formed, with constitutional law borrowed from the British and French, a strong dose of individual rights, and a spirit of frontier self-reliance.

I would expect that a stronger identity results from the authenticity of older roots and organic growth that are characteristic of the UK, just as stronger neighborhoods should be built by long-standing residents with shared values.

 

But it doesn’t seem to hold that way, either north towards the Orkneys nor south towards Hackney Wick.

Our monsters, our values

A flaxen-maned sea creature, two stories tall, has waded ashore in Bournemouth this week.  All I can say is that it wasn’t there on Sunday…

The monster was made personal in the spirit of Richard Branson, put up by Virgin Media as part of a new publicity campaign. It will undoubtedly travel from beach to beach around Britain this summer before, in all likelihood, heading to permanent repose on Necker Island.

It’s also kind of cool: I  hope it stays a couple of days until I get back into town to have a look on Friday.

The  notion of personalized monsters got me thinking about the converse: the sort imagined by WH Auden in The Ascent of F6.  In the play, a group of climbers ascends a haunted mountain, where an embodiment of each person’s hidden flaws kills them, one by one.

The  Guardian stuck a similar theme in an article about how people form their personal values.  The author suggested two principle origins,  one based in history (shifting baseline syndrome: We perceive the circumstances of our youth as normal and unexceptional) and one based in environment (values ratchet: We are shaped by accepted social norms and governmental policies around us).

Nostalgia and environment, together, drop people along a spectrum of value types, ranging from Intrinsic (high levels of self-acceptance, strong bonds of intimacy and a powerful desire to help others) to Extrinsic (Greater need for external validation, seek financial rewards and power, more competitive against others). 

The paper holds that we’re currently in an era dominated by Extrinsic values.  It is both created by the political dominance of conservative policies and feeds back to reinforce them.  Thus inequality, intolerance, environmental degradation, and social injustice all increase as opposition withers.

Although I’m sympathetic to the Guardian’s conclusion (the world would, indeed be a better place if we were nicer to each other), I think that the argument used to get there is very forced.  In particular, I disagree that personal values are so easily shaped by perceived historical and political norms. 

What, then, does explain the prevalence of Extrinsic personal values, selfishness and intolerance, and the corresponding decline of social cooperation, inclusiveness, and mutual aid?

I think that the key is that people act defensively when they feel threatened: they protect their own interests and dismiss other people's, gravitating towards Extrinsic behaviours.

Personal circumstances such as aging, job loss, weakened relationships, financial or health worries can trigger extrinsic behaviours.  So, more distantly, are perceived dangers of crime, terrorism, deficits, inflation or immigration. 

As can uncertainty and isolation, two snares waiting to trap expats and entrepreneurs.

Success as an expatriate or an entrepreneur requires Intrinsic values: tolerant and cooperative interpersonal and social skills.  Adoption of Extrinsic personal values undermines necessary attitudes and relationships.

So, the danger isn’t, as suggested by the Guardian, in the way politics or media foster Extrinsic values, putting human hair onto the monster.  The danger comes from inside each of us, is in how we regard our history and context, keeping our inner Branzilla at bay.

In the words of the Cherokee, it is determined by the wolf we each choose to feed.

What is the average age of….

American Expats in the Netherlands?

 

CBS.nl is the home  of Statistics Netherlands, a government agency that keeps track of all distributions Dutch.  A recent study  of American expats showed 31,000 making their home in the Netherlands.  3/4 cluster in the North and younger than the average Dutch, half under 30 and 4% in retirement.  Fewer are arriving for marriage, more to study.  Interestingly, the net migration,to and from America, has balanced year by year since the 60’s.

Founders Starting their First Businesses?

 

The average age of founders is rising, notes the Harvard Business Review and the Financial Times.  Twice as many successful startups are founded by people over 50 as under 35, and most heath care entrepreneurs are over 40.  The highest rate of new business formation is among the 55-64;  2/3 of all UK startups are founded by people over 55.  I think that the likelihood of success rises with experience; healthcare in particular requires knowledge of the development process.  With pensions, house value, and savings shrinking, pre-retirement workers see security in creating and harvesting short-term exit value or long-term cash  flows from a business that they own.  HBR also notes that people in their 50’s are obsessed with their legacy:  How do I make my life really count?

Social Network Membership?

‘mirrors my usage almost exactly.

The meaning of words

Why is it that…

“Spa” has evolved from it’s Roman (later German) association with baths and massage to an Eastern focus on stones and oils?

When I look into a spa at hotels and resorts, there is bamboo in place of marble, calligraphy instead of statuary.  Only the restful silence and towels remain.

Backed by oboes, wind chimes, and eucalyptus.

A British or Dutch invasion and displacement of indigenous peoples is called a “colonization” while a similar Spanish or Portuguese event is called a “conquest”.

There’s a similar twist of language in Chinese views of history, reciprocal with European accounts.  The Economist recently wrote

“The National Museum’s “Road to Revival” exhibit is a propaganda romp through China’s history since the mid-19th century. Its aim is to show China’s suffering at the hands of colonial powers in the “century of humiliation” and its eventual glorious recovery under party rule. (The millions of deaths from starvation and political strife under Mao, and the bloody crushing of anti-government unrest under Deng, go unremarked.) “

“Analysts” are, increasingly, being replaced by “Commentators”.  I rely on my primary News sources to give  in-depth, verified facts about people and events.  But time gives perspective and I look to weekly summaries, both magazines and podcasts, to put these fact into context and perspective.  A news analyst used to have that long view, understanding the history and the personalities  and able to say “why”,  not just “how”, something is happening, and chat it means for the future.

I listen to several tech podcast networks, TWIT and 5By5, to understand trends in devices, applications, business and social media.  During a discussion of journalistic perspectives on In Beta, Gina Trapani said that she really sees her role is as a commentator.  To me , that implies that she simply reacts to news, gives her opinion, and endorses.

I know that she is a software developer herself, an insider for many years, and well connected with the people and trends that are moving the industry.  Her analysis I one that I would trust.  But, described as a commentator, I’m less inclined to give weight to her view than to her journalistic co-host.

More generally, the world seems to be filling with commentators, ‘talking heads’ that gather audience rather than insight.  It takes work to reflect on events, dig into background, and deliver thoughtful perspectives, the stories that make sense of the news.  Fewer and fewer seem willing to do it.

Brand definition and clout (with a K)

There was a time when your maintaining your good name, your reputation, was an essential part of being in business.  Those were days of neighborhood storefronts and face-to-face customer contact: people came to know you over time and to build trust and affection for what you represented.  Businesses were based on family names.

The advent of mass media gave businesses much greater reach to find customers, and so reputation gave way to brand.  Companies became known for what they did rather than for who they were; names increasingly reflected function.  Public image, press relations, and ad presence fostered the “Know, like, trust” progression.

A parallel evolution happened with personal interactions: we were once know as neighbors, then as office colleagues, and now as Internet friends.  As we become increasingly distant from our contacts and the number of connections grew past our Dunbar number, frequent and sustained personal contact faded.  We needed branding.

What do you want to be known for?  Does your online search say that about you?  Are you appearing in the right contexts, so that you are known within the community?  Are you an influencer within that group?

These aren’t abstract questions.  As we define ourselves by our personal interests and activities, our business services and achievements, our scope for opportunity and reward, connection and referral, follows.  There are a growing number of channels for social and professional signaling that can consume ever more time to maintain.  Notions of productivity and return on invested time begin to sneak in.

Along with Klout.

I first heard about it on a Slate Culture Gabfest, and took it for a spin this week.  The service purports to scan your Internet presence and to rank you as a communicator and  influencer, 0 to 100.  20 is average, over 50 represents real power.  The algorithm (proprietary, changing)  looks at Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and other social media to determine the reach of your connections and the responses you elicit (retweets, Likes).

My score?  A miserly 19.

In its present form, Klout probably isn’t very worthwhile. It misses a lot of social networks (TripAdvisor, ResearchGate) and overweights others (Facebook connections). There’s no Google-parsing.  It doesn’t rank professional publications, conferences, teaching, patents, or consultancies, arguably more important in my circle than raw social connections. 

Klout decided that I was an influencer for iPads (I don’t own one) and Religion (I don’t have one).  I’ve since convinced it that Travel, Entrepreneurship, and Science /Technology are a better fit.

On the whole, it seems to judge based on linked responses (comment, share) rather than on actions produced (go, buy). As such, I’m not sure what Klout is really measuring, or the value (relative or absolute) of a particular score or trajectory.

Still, Klout is likely a harbinger of the future.  Once you score and rank people, then people want to compare and manipulate scores.  I’m reminded of how Lenny’s life in Super Sad True Love Story was reduced to a set of scores based on his credit, personality, sex appeal, and social connections.  Will we come to be defined by algorithms that constantly assess our fitness and performance for the niches that we choose for ourselves (or that get chosen for us)?  There are rumors that Klout scores are already being touted by candidates for marketing and PR positions: at what point will these scores begin to carry real professional weight?  And can they be used prescriptively (identify a mentor; target who gets moved up the customer service queue)?

The only certainty is that it will happen. ‘ Gimmie a +K.

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Oh, this can get addictive – my daughter and I are both at 38 as the algorithm gets traction on our networks.  A good article in Wired that puts a bit of perspective on it all, and three alternatives (none quite as good as the (still incomplete) Klout: Kred (of course), PeerIndex, and Traackr. 

<sigh> this is going to happen: it’s just aggregation…

Wandering old haunts–Campus

I was never particularly fond of Northwestern.

The school was impersonal and indifferent; long winters along the windy lakefront were brutal. The professors were excellent and the facilities were superb, but the program had huge gaps in my interest areas.  I’m a signals guy and the only signals professor was a tenured EE whose passion was asserting that the Holocaust never happened.

It made the path to a degree uncertain.  Where European schools are focused on doing three year’s time and publishing a small collection of papers, our American programs were all about persevering until you’d done enough and wanted out badly enough. Only when a student said “I’ve had it, I’m leaving”, would they get permission to write and defend their dissertation.  Our unofficial mascot was Theodore Streleski, the Stanford mathematics graduate student who bludgeoned his advisor to death with a hammer after failing to earn his doctorate.

    

It’s strange to return to those halls. Our department was at the northwest corner of tech, overlooking the lake (now overlooking recreational sports facilities).  The stairs with red standpipes, the bulky brick walls, the open ceiling full of pipes, wires, and florescent lighting, all were unchanged.  The visual processing laboratory, where I teased out the relationship between brain and vision, was still there; a few familiar faculty names dotted the abstracts along the walls.  An office sign revealed that a former post-doc was now a full professor.  Graduate student spaces had moved from heavy wooden desks to cloth and metal cubicles.

 

The department office was modern; Gwen, our assistant, was long gone.  The same job openings and occupational warnings filled the bulletin board outside.  There was a plaque announcing participation in the Biomedical Education Consortium: it’s eerie how many of those institutions were also waypoints for me over the years.  Maybe it’s inevitable within a small field.

 

Outside, the open spaces, once grass or parking lots, had all been filled in with massive buildings.  The observatory and computer center were gone (quaint, now, to remember going to a Center to do my computing).  Academic halls of Molecular Therapeutics and Diagnostics or Executive Education fill old roadways and footpaths.  It all appears to have grown and connected,like the images of colonizing biofilms that we’re preventing in CamStent.

 

The cafeteria has gone commercial; the bookstore virtual.  The only sign of political awareness is for student activity board president.  The library is busy (for how much longer); a new sculpture garden fills the old summer-stick theater space.  And more buildings- theater, music, art, all named after benefactors and their parents in bold signage.  It looks like the blond brick and sandstone of Cambridge from some angles.

I spent a few hours touring around the campus, remembering places, people, events.  The building where I took a mime class, the paths where I walked on dates, the professor’s house where a mentor reminded me that ideas always have to come before tools.  A lot of the old feel of an academic grove, thoughtful and contemplative, is long gone.  It feels like the buildings shelter and separate departments rather than bring them together for collaboration and fertilization.

It gave me a good launch in life, strong friendships and credentials for the succeeding 30 years.  But it feels like a touchstone, not a home: still someplace I’m glad to have moved on from.

Social mobility and the Spirit Level

What is the correlation between income and health?  I would guess that those on lower incomes are less healthy, and that they might also score worse on related attributes of life expectancy, addictions, literacy, and criminal or domestic violence. 

And this is, in fact, what the data shows.

But now an intriguing study suggests that many measures of social health also worsen with increased income disparity. 

Income Gap is the ratio of the average income of the richest 20% to that of the poorest 20%: it’s value is 5 in the Netherlands, 7 in the UK, and 10 in the US. 

The study argues that this multiplier directly correlates, and potentially causes, all sorts of social ills.

Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better

The statistics fill graph after graph (available through the Equality Trust).  They are compelling and could factually motivate positions like OWS’s stand against rising income inequality.

The Spirit Level’s argument is controversial, of course.  If true, it completely undermines the conservative position that rising income inequality elevates society as a whole by empowering the winners to spend, create new businesses, and pay the majority of taxes.  BBC4 had a good pro-con debate on Analysis, and the Right has predictably weighed in to say that the facts don’t speak for themselves, the evidence is incomplete: tactics used to hopelessly muddy the climate debate.

The Spirit Level is not perfect: I particularly struggled with this graph of Income Inequality and  Social Mobility.

The data is sparse and the line is created by two outliers: the US and UK – I doubt that this graph proves anything.  More disturbing is the characterization of the US as dead-low in Social Mobility: our “classless” society where merit determines earnings determines social rank should be more mobile, not less.

This drove me back to the literature – “Social Mobility” is, not surprisingly, a slippery concept.  It can be based on at least four definitions: Inter-generational and Intra-generational, each in Social and Economic dimensions.  Is your income highly correlated with your parent’s income?  Yes: and in that way, the US has low social mobility.  Is your income highly correlated with your own educational achievement?  Yes: and in that way, the US has high social mobility.

The truth depends on the myths we tell ourselves about our society and the often differing ways that we choose our definitions in different cultures.  While this is an issue in making the global comparisons, I don’t think that it obscures the central truth of the Spirit Level’s argument: greater income inequality is bad for society.