Players versus Spectators

June 26, 2013 By

I’ve been growing increasingly interested in the interaction between players and spectators in various games, literal and metaphoric. In both kinds of games, spectators need players to create value, and players need spectators to consume it.  I’ve been trying to classify the various sorts of “extra” interactions that seem to emerge, and came up with this 3×3 grid.

dialog1

The classification is based on the observation that both sides always seem to want something beyond the basic economic transaction from the other side. Though players sometimes yell “just shut up and watch,” and though spectators sometimes yell in turn, “just shut up and listen, I am the customer” at the players, neither side ever really shuts up.

The phenomenology of player-spectator interactions is of particular interest today because the Internet has seriously muddied the clarity of roles and relationships all around.

Here’s how you read the chart.

[Read more…]

New York City Meetup on Wednesday, 12th June

June 11, 2013 By

The Tristate area Refactorings meetup group is holding its monthly meetup in New York, on Wednesday (the 12th) at Pete’s Tavern at 6:30 PM. The group has been active online and offline for about six months now, thanks to the efforts of Jay Hinton and Adam Hogan, and I am looking forward to finally meeting a few people I’ve only interacted with online so far.

If you can make it, it would be great to see you there. Email me or RSVP on Facebook if you plan to attend. If you do, you’ll also be able to join the associated Facebook group (as with the Bay Area chapter, the group limits membership to people who have met other group members offline).

Venue: Pete’s Tavern, 129 E 18th Street, New York, NY 10003
Time: 6:30 PM

On the Unraveling of Scripts

June 6, 2013 By

I am fascinated by scriptlessness: the state of not having a script telling you what to do. I’ve danced around this question a lot in my writing, mostly with reference to the American middle-class life script. But I’ve never really tackled the phenomenon head-on.

I’ll define scripts as collections of learned patterns of behavior that reliably supply both psychological and material resources for survival.  These lend meaning and sustenance to power the script, respectively. Both are necessary, and any loss on one front, if not quickly reversed, usually leads to loss on the other, triggering a vicious cycle of increasingly severe script breakdown.

This is the unraveling of scripts. It is the subjective experience of collapsing social and material realities around you, leading eventually to a state of behavioral collapse: scriptlessness. Along the way you encounter all those demons poets like to talk about.

Scripts can collapse for groups and organizations, not just individuals, but let’s start with individuals.

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Aphorisms: Collection 1

May 30, 2013 By

For the past few months, I’ve been experimenting with shorter forms of writing, ranging from one-line aphorisms to shorter 100-200 word vignettes. I find I enjoy the challenge of producing interesting prose at these lengths. My writing seems to exhibit a barbell curve of comfort. The nightmare zone for me is between 500 to 1500 words. Curiously enough, that’s the length that dominates both old and new media. I can do less than that or more than that easily, but staying within that range feels like squeezing blood from a rock.

Anyway, for the last two weeks, on Sunday evenings, I’ve been doing a rather silly “aphorism on demand” thing on Facebook where people throw topics at me and I come with aphorisms on the fly. I thought I’d share the output. Thanks to my Facebook buddies for playing. I might keep doing this on a semi-regular basis, so if you are interested in watching the live show, follow me on Facebook.

Here are the results of the first two shows. I am omitting topics and names of people who proposed them. If you tweet any of these, cc @ribbonfarm

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The Gervais Principle VI: Children of an Absent God

May 16, 2013 By

And so here we are, ready for an assault on our Everest: the mind that lies behind the low-reactor Sociopath face. A face that gazes upon the worlds of Losers and the Clueless with divine inscrutability. It’s certainly been a long climb.

Series Home | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | ebook

 

With the resurrection of David Wallace and the ascent of Robert California to a richly undeserved heaven-on-earth, a harem of  young East European women, the crew at The Office teed up their final season, and presented us with our last and biggest challenge. And finally, we are ready to take it on.

Under the creepily steady gaze of Robert California, Jim wilts and chokes. Dwight blusters like a frightened dog, “Stop trying to get into my head!” But ultimately even that courageous Clueless soul cowers.

But you and I, we are going to break through. Our gaze may flinch. We may lose the staring contest with Robert California. We may fail to perturb the preternatural poise of David Wallace. But we will figure out the minds that lie beneath.

As The Office winds its way to a satisfyingly redemptive American series finale this week, the remaining questions in our own little sideshow tent will be answered in deeply unsatisfying and empty ways.  

Here’s a brief recap of the series so far if you need it. Welcome to the finale of the Gervais Principle. [Read more…]

Roundup, January-April 2013

May 9, 2013 By

Busy week so I thought I’d do a roundup and let you guys catch up a bit with a roundup. The year has had a rocky but solid (heh!) start, with some pretty strange posts. Not counting a couple of meta posts, we have had 15 posts in the first third of the year, 9 by me, and 6 by residents.

  1. The Economics of Social Status (Kevin)
  2. So I Shall be Written, So I Shall be Performed (Mike)
  3. A Beginner’s Guide to Immortality
  4. The Locust Economy
  5. The Wave of Unknowing (Drew)
  6. Social Dark Matter: On Seeing and Being Seen
  7. The Dead-Curious Cat and the Joyless Immortal
  8. Honesty and the Human Body (Kevin)
  9. Binoculars versus Cameras
  10. Solidarity and Recursion (Mike)
  11. Adventures in Amateur Talking-Headery
  12. Machine Cities and Ghost Cities (Drew)
  13. Stone-Soup for the Capitalist’s Soul
  14. Eternal Hypochondria of the Expanding Mind
  15. Schumpeter’s Demon

The call for sponsorships a couple of weeks ago has so far brought in $1850 this year from 17 sponsors, which I think beats the total for the same time last year. Thank you, and feel free to chip in to support the site as and when you’re able.

The popular hit of the lot was probably the Locust Economy piece. So in this first third of 2013, the Iron Blogger was not beaten by resident challengers.

I seem to be on a weird sort of immortality/eternity kick (three posts with one of those words right in the title) mixed with some experimentation with story-telling in parable form.  Every time I think I am settling down to develop some meaty theme, something distracts me and I go down a new bunny trail. It’s going to be a year of weirdness.

Here’s the complete 2012 roundup, from where you can backtrack to ribbonfarm prehistory and posts in cuneiform if you are so inclined.

Branches and Roots: 2013 Call for Sponsorships

April 25, 2013 By

Another year, another set of lessons big and small, pleasant and harsh. It’s time for the third annual call for sponsorships and backstage-peek day. If you read the 2012 and 2011 posts, you know the drill.  First, we’ll talk money, then we’ll go backstage to talk philosophy, do a little retrospective and look out at the year ahead. Things are now getting complicated enough that I need a little table of contents. If this goes on, next year I might need video. Here’s the agenda. Skip what doesn’t interest you.

  1. Grow Branches and Roots
  2. The Bristlecone Pine Business Model
  3. Refactor Camp 2013
  4. Refactorings Meetups and Online Groups
  5. Ribbonfarm Consulting Exits Stealth Mode
  6. The Gig Economy and Ribbonfarm
  7. Be Slightly Evil and Gervais Principle series finales
  8. Buy Me a Coffee retired, Crowdfunded Features in the works
  9. Resident Blogger Tryouts
  10. Now Reading

Money first. In 2012, 29 sponsors together contributed $3750 to support this site, a 66% increase over 2011 ($2250 from 25 sponsors). For 2013, four early birds have already contributed $300.  If you were considering sponsoring this year, consider this your cue and go ahead. The money is starting to make a serious difference.

Now for the philosophy. Every year, I add a single line to my evolving business philosophy. In 2011, my first problogger year, the line was go where the wild thoughts are. In 2012, it was go deep, young man. 

For 2013, the line is grow branches and roots.  What do I mean by that?

[Read more…]

A Beginner’s Guide to Immortality

April 10, 2013 By

I recently reached an odd conclusion. A sense of history isn’t about knowing a lot of history or trying to learn from the past in order to create a better future. It is about living your mortal life as though you were immortal.

To understand why this is an interesting definition to play with, consider the following allegory.  Human life is like walking into a movie halfway through, and having to walk out again two minutes later. You’ll have no idea what’s going on when you walk in. And chances are, just as you begin to get a clue, you’ll be kicked out.

So unless you are lucky enough to walk in during a scene that is satisfying without any longer narrative context (think sex or violence), your ability to derive satisfaction from your two-minute glimpse will depend partly on your ability to construct meaning out of it.

One way to do this is to pretend to be immortal. This game of make-believe also reveals a few interesting things about literal immortality seeking, in the sense of seeking longevity therapies or waiting to upload your brain into Skynet, post-Singularity.

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The Locust Economy

April 3, 2013 By

Last week, I figured out that I am a part-time locust. Here’s how it happened.

I was picking the brain of a restauranteur for insight into things like Groupon. He confirmed what we all understand in the abstract: that these deals are terrible for the businesses that offer them; that they draw in nomadic deal hunters from a vast surrounding region who are unlikely to ever return; that most deal-hunters carefully ensure that they spend just the deal amount or slightly more; that a badly designed offer can bankrupt a small business.

He added one little factoid I did not know: offering a Groupon deal is by now so strongly associated with a desperate, dying restaurant that professional food critics tend to write off any restaurant that offers one without even trying it.

Yet, I’ve used (and continue to use) these services and don’t feel entirely terrible about doing so, or truly complicit in the depredations of Groupon. Why? It’s because, like most of the working class, I’ve developed a locust morality.

DesertLocust

Thinking about locusts and the behavior of customers around services like Groupon, I’ve become convinced that the phrase “sharing economy” is mostly a case of putting lipstick on a pig. What we have here is a locust economy. Let me explain what that means.

[Read more…]

Social Dark Matter: On Seeing and Being Seen

March 22, 2013 By

You probably remember a grade school teacher who seemed to have eyes at the back of her head. Somebody who could walk into an unruly classroom and with just a look, quell the disorder and get everybody back into their seats. When such a teacher enters a classroom, any mischief underway is abandoned instantly. Those caught in the teacher’s direct gaze freeze or try to scramble back to their seats. Those who think they are in peripheral vision try to duck and hide. Those who believe they haven’t been seen try to flee.

This sort of teacher possesses an authoritarian eye: a way of seeing shared by certain sorts of effective teachers, drill sergeants, sports coaches and the sorts of large organizations that James Scott explored in Seeing Like a State.

The classroom example illustrates something important. Authority and responses to it are primarily about seeing and being seen, rather than doing or having things done to you.

When you know you’re being watched by an authoritarian eye, you voluntarily behave in simpler (or equivalently, more orderly) ways than when you know you aren’t.

The difference between the two regimes of behavior is social dark matter. And in today’s digital social environments, it is starting to behave in ways we don’t really understand. Because we feel watched in ways we don’t really understand, by forms of authority we have never experienced before.

[Read more…]