Analog by Night

Linda Morabito, archaic computers and a hot Voyager tee-shirt

This fine young lass is Linda Morabito, and she was probably one of the most desirable young ladies working anywhere in Pasadena, but certainly at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Check out that stylish computer she’s working with. She’s telling you, yes you, all about the discovery of volcanoes on Io.

Rick Spencer – Have you ever been away from something so long that when you’re near some semblance of it, you get innappropriately excited?

Ana Pirri – I’m the queen of inappropriately excited. What’s making you so?

Rick Spencer – Well, there’s a [creative person in a place I frequent], and it’s a woman, and she’s kinda cute, and super easy to work with, but this happens at conferences [also], and really any time i’m around other smart people and creatives. Male or female, I get this sort of low frequency urge to secure them in my life, and my body/brain translates that into sexual desire. It’s like I’m starving, but I get a little TOO turned on by food.

Ana Pirri – But rick, i can’t imagine you ever being away from the type…

Rick Spencer – I’m so starved of the company of other smart creatives that my lizard brain tries to use all it’s tricks to keep them around, or to show my adoration/appreciation. [It's been] at least two years now

Ana Pirri – !

Rick Spencer – Pretty much 90% starved of fellow creators.

Ana Pirri – Well, did it work? oh rick!

Rick Spencer – [One time I did have a sexual relationship with a another creative.]

Ana Pirri – It hurts it hurts!

Rick Spencer – and withdrawing the sex made everything sour.

Ana Pirri – Sure.

Rick Spencer – That’s when you realize that for you, creativity really IS something you need to survive. When your lizard brain turns on the bad behaviors, and emotional conflict, and all those urges and energies to GET it. It’s more powerful than I remember. Anyway, I have to [go], but I thought I would share that with you. Can I ask a favor?

Ana Pirri – Of course

Rick Spencer – I would like to blog this dialogue/monologue. Would you mind if I did, if I anonymized you?

Ana Pirri – Yes – honored.

Rick Spencer – Cool. I’ll give you a rad pseudonym.

Ana Pirri – Excellent

- end

The parts of this exchange that are bracketed are edits with varied degrees of verisimilitude. I have done so to obfuscate experiences that could be embarrassing to others, or simply to enhance readability.

Looking back on this experience I think ‘creatives’ may not have been the right word. Maybe ‘imaginatives’ would have been better. Then again I haven’t been explicitly deprived of imaginitives either. I have known one or two very creative and imaginative people in the last two years, but we certainly met in contexts that were hostile. I know it’s the trendy thing to do but I’m going to quote Teh Mad Menz, “You came here because we do this better than you, and part of that is letting our creatives be unproductive until they are.“

I took this test sometime in 2007. I got the results the day I was laid off. I haven’t cracked that envelope until now. It’s pretty much what you think it is. Here’s your personality traits, here’s your co-worker’s. He’s not an asshole, you guys just differ. Interesting for a moment, but ultimately sorta…blech. They don’t really give you STRATEGIES for utilizing what you know.  Here’s what it says about me:

“This profile is triple dominant, with three preferred quadrants. These primaries occur in Upper Left A, Lower Right C and Upper Right D quadrants. This is a multi-dominant profile that would be characterized by the well-balanced processing modes of Upper Left A – analytical, logical and rational processing: Lower Right C – interpersonal, emotional and intuitive thinking modes combined with the artistic, creative and holistic processing modes of the Upper Right D quadrant. The Lower Left B secondary quadrant would be functional, yet clearly of less preference in terms of organizing, control, structure and conservative thinking styles. This profile is also double dominant in the cerebral modes, both left and right. This individual would be more experimental than safe-keeping and more emotional than controlled. Occupations would involve those with less administrative detail and more attention to broad concepts, strategic planning as compared to operational planning and those occupations tending towards a more ‘generalized’ nature. Positions involving technical innovation and future planning fit this profile along with human resource and development  professions. Work that is considered a “Turn On” would include: solving tough problems, explaining things, taking risks, designing, seeing the big picture, being part of a team and helping people.”

Most comfortable communication approaches may include:

• A good debate
• Technical accuracy
• Providing an overview
• Idea chunks
• Involving others
• Personal touch/sensitive to others

But may overlook:

• Written schedule and plan
• Punctuality

The most natural problem solving strategies would include:

• Visualization
• Free-flow brainstorming
• Intuition
• Analysis
• Building on ideas of other team members
• Defining the problem

But may not consider:

• Strict procedure
• Time lines

To make a decision, a person with this profile may ask:

• Have I seen all the hidden possibilities?
• Do I have all the facts?
• How will others be affected?

But may overlook

• The details
• An appropriate sequence

I just finished the Richard Avedon exhibition, and I am out of breath, overwhelmed, Having a religious moment. My heartbeat is up. I feel like I just had a first kiss with the girl I watched all year from across the room. In middle school.

I am rightly humbled, inspired and purged.

I had a Rothko moment earlier. That may have started it.

I’m a stone’s throw away from Dr. Temple Grandin.  Having sort of a fanboy moment.We’re both wearing country western shirts. I think she ACTUALLY works on a farm though. I’m just a hipster. It’s a damn comfy shirt though. I might try and get a picture later.

“Drinking: X people drink not to show off but to get quietly tight.”

- Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, Paul Fussell, 1983
Tight indeed.

About 15 minutes in Virgina shows Hedy for the third or fourth time as an example of glamour, and then drops the anecdote that she invented spread spectrum technology. According to Wikipedia she’s a co-inventor. Damn.

Let Virginia tell it.

Does anybody even bother asking why ENOUGH times?

Why is Google on top? Search
Why is search so important? People have questions and search is one way of getting answers? (there are legion other ways, including browse, invention, and non sequitur)
Why are answers so valuable? They are the most rational, comprehensible way of alleviating the emotional anxiety that questions pose. (There are other ways of responding to that anxiety–that curiosity; they include emotional manipulation, distraction, emergence of new questions, irrelevance.)

My point is this. Search is not Googles only weapon. Of equal and possibly greater import is the I feel Lucky option.
The human being is not simply a robot serving only the immediate need for a rational response to a tactical query, but a complex organic milieu of emotion, novelty, irrational exuberance and defiance, and technology, however traditionally rational in its iterative design, is not the last best pattern, but the first pattern made by those very confused and fleshy organisms that work at google. In our lifetime, the simplistic binary nature of computing will seem laughable, and people will be reminded that that binary mathematics it is based on is nearly as old as electricity itself.

Should the designers choose, it is merely a tight left turn, on the order of a decade or less of work, for any person to author that irrational machine, and it is the pattern of humans to appeal to it as they may with all, or other faculties than the rational. We shouldn’t be looking for the next rational predictor, we should be loooking for the pattern maker, the Lakoff+”rapid prototype” that allows us to home construct our own frames, and our own rose colored search/browse/I-feel-lucky result set.

Emotion is hot on the heels of the purely cognitive gen 1 one of the computing experience, exploration, and challege will be next.

Think of google’s ” were you looking for..” suggesting something interesting rather than relevant. Also see “design for debate”, and you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

I’ve long been fascinated with the myth and reality of Los Angeles. I am reading an article about Helen Gurley Brown (author Sex and the Single Girl, cosmopolitan magazine), and I came across thus quote about the city of her maturation, “There is no better place on Earth to live (or die) by your wits than Los Angeles…”
Quote by Caitlin Flanagan

Based on my one visit, vicarous years through two friends, the writing of Bret Easton Ellis, and endless portrayals by Holywood; I say, “nicely put.”

Sat in my room in the afternoon watching Slacker. It made me nostalgic for Lexington, and Frankfort KY before it. Doesn’t make me want to move to Austin though. I’m sure Seattle was Austin-like at some point.

Where am I now, what am I doing now. I think I started working so that I could play, now i’ve worked my way into this dirty corner thinking that if I play, if I stay up all night, the next day the light-blue collar ghost might set my income into decay.

People find it funny when I make strange metaphors in meetings. They say, where do you get these thoughts, and I’m always struck by the experience that I’m made magical because what is outside of work for me is not simply dinner, friends, a family and home. Frankly i really have little of those anyway, but deep culture. Deep reference. I have a connection, however noological, to the deep shared experiences of my culture. My experience is that of a librarian of the flatlands. Life in the map.