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Life and Personal Tech and Culture

Unpopular Opinions

We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. There’s no shortage of news about what’s going well and what isn’t. Even then, every now and then, something pops up on the various news channels that makes you stop and think. One of these things is how Amazon recently fired 2 employees for speaking out against the company — and I have seen one of the Tweets that, apparently, “broke the camel’s back” — it was a proclamation that the employee was making a contribution towards the well-being of the various warehouse employees on Amazon’s roster that, allegedly, aren’t being taken care of and are being forced to work in life-threatening conditions.

This is not something that all of us are unaware of — just this week, France compelled Amazon to only deliver/process orders for essential items as investigations revealed that a lot of warehouse employees were having to break social-distancing rules for the sake of shipping bottles of wine or other luxurious items like Nintendo Switches. In what sounds like verbal retaliation, Amazon has responded with a threat that it would completely stop its operations in France.

This kind of corporate behavior has become so normal and acceptable over the last 2 decades that the unpopular opinion now is to actually take a personal stand over issues that don’t align with personal values. When governments force better citizenship, they’re maligned. When private individuals do as much as voice their opinions outside of work in their private time, they’re found guilty of violating social media rules in the workplace.

While most people don’t go beyond the short-term impact of such punitive action against upholding a person’s identity and values, the long term impact is tremendous. People, evolutionally, have an urge to spread and validate their inherent values. While financial compensation and social acceptance is a way to successful limit these urges, these feelings have a way of boiling over and causing more harm than necessary.

In this hyper-connected world where all of our communications, down to where we are moving and which web pages we’re clicking on is traceable back to us, and is ultimately consequential to our work place and social acceptance, it becomes that much important to separate our humanity from our workplace obligations. To that end, we need to go back to how we expressed our opinions in the early days of the Internet, and where what we said or expressed was countered in a non-personal, reasonable manner.

This was especially true at universities and schools. We all had a webpage or two, where we expressed our thoughts, our plans, and ultimately, journaled our life and experiences. There were no repercussions for questioning politics or expressing an unpopular opinion that went against the University administration. At most, you would be referred to an independent ombudsman (person?) whose goal was to help both the parties.

Contrast that to now — people, especially those with good jobs at multinational organizations, seldom find the time or build a place to express themselves using their true identity. There have been countless instances of those that did so not recovering from the repercussions for a very long time. In fact, the bigger the company, the higher the chances of never being accepted anywhere else, and the greater the risk.

This is not how it’s supposed to be.

The more people avoid free expression, the more they flock to echo chambers that have the ‘other person with nothing to lose’ voicing their opinions that they could only look at for re-affirmation, but have no way to refine or to dilute towards the less radical. The algorithms at work tend to make this echo chamber ever bigger, and the same companies that ‘enable’ this ‘free expression’ build internal mono-cultures that dampen real expression by their own employees.

Those that continue to operate free blogs and voicing free opinion do so under the pretense of having nothing to lose, which is often a result of opting not to work for these companies or to de-prioritize career advancement in the traditional sense. After all, shouldn’t the top executive at Amazon be, in fact, supporting their warehouse workers and thanking the blogger instead of ignoring any punitive action taken against them by the company?

There is glimmer of hope that the world after this latest pandemic would be the world that uses the forced pause to reflect upon the values that make us human. Already, governments are stepping up efforts to better calibrate compensation for the delivery and healthcare workers according to their real contribution to the society. The world could certainly do with more equity and equality.

And more than anything, we need to make space for the unpopular opinion, for more often than not, the opinion is a result of having spent time pondering over things that no one else deemed necessary, or because someone had the courage to go against the grain.

Categories
Life and Personal Tech and Culture

There are two kinds of people…

… those that make a Facebook post about leaving the platform, and those that just do.

The need to announce your departure makes you the perfect Facebook user, and hence a very easy target for rehabilitation targeting.

Is it my validation that you’re seeking for? You have it!

Categories
Life and Personal

Power of Simple Metaphors

I love talking; I love discussing matters of philosophy and human nature. The strange dichotomy of human existence is that what makes us human also makes us difficult to understand each other. As a result, we often rely on established social norms and behaviors to guide us.

Every so often, you want to ask yourself why things are the way they are; why there are inexplicable patterns surrounding everything from human migration to business development. A theorist would take out their subject compendium and refer you to the works of someone who has performed academic research in that area. Yet, you will be left with dealing with a few assumptions that have no clear basis.

Let me explain what I am getting at. Today, while sipping our morning coffee, V&I started a discussion on simplifying how V approaches her new food entrepreneurship. She was concerned that she did not have a clear path to innovation that would differentiate her business/service from that of established competitors. Classic problem, right. There are dozens of books and university courses that offer to solve exactly this problem.

Then, I started with one of my simple metaphors. That of a train.

When you’re starting a new business, you’re the person with the second class train ticket without reservation, which means you’re going to have to walk all the way to the end of the platform to get into the train. This means that you would have to budget for some time to get to the station and get into your train; you’d probably also have to put up a little fight to get any open unreserved seats so that you don’t have to endure your journey standing up. Life will be a bit tough, especially if reaching your destination means a couple transfers along the way, all complicated by your possession of only a second class ticket without a seat reservation.

So, how do you make your life and journey better? You simply keep catching the same train every day, getting there a little earlier every day to save time, to find a seat, and then getting accustomed to the journey enough that you know precisely when seats open up at stations along the way. After each day of repeating this, you become an expert in the art of traveling on a second class ticket.

There is no need to innovate. You just follow the established playbook of finding a seat, with perseverance.

Then, as you optimize your daily journey, you gradually start reaping benefits of getting to work earlier and in a better state. That leads you to gradually be able to afford a seat reservation, possibly even in first class. You have mastered the playbook.

When do you innovate? How do you get to your destination even faster? Perhaps you could charter an airplane or figure out a combination of rail and road segments. That’s when you innovate. That stage comes long after you’ve made yourself comfortable doing the same thing day in and day out.

This is probably not a perfect metaphor, but it sure does motivate you and make things a whole lot clearer.

The same metaphor also explains human migration. We are all catching the same train to work every day. People in developed countries are riding fast direct trains, whereas there are some stuck riding trains that are slow and often have to endure their journey without a seat. The whole point of migration is to promote yourself to one of those fast trains.

Life is simple.

Categories
Life and Personal Tech and Culture

4 Weeks with the Apple AirPods, or How Social Wearables Are the next Big Thing

On a whim, 4 weeks ago, I logged onto the Apple Store app and decided to check the AirPods availability for in-store pickup. As I write this, they’re in extremely limited supplies with online ordered backordered by about 6 weeks and general store availability more than a month into the future. If you’re feeling lucky, you could check the app a few times a day to grab one as limited supplies come in sporadically.

I am generally not a fan of headphones. Firstly, I am not out of the house much, and then when I do have to step out every now and then, I prefer spending my time reading. Secondly, I can never settle for a pair – sometimes I want good in-ear headphones, while at other times, I crave for a wonderful over-the-head set. Whenever I do use one, I usually settle for the ones you get for free with an iPhone, even though I also own a pair of Beats in wonderful red!

Technologically, these are the best Bluetooth headphones I have ever used – not because of the range or the battery life, but because they alleviate the biggest pain-point with Bluetooth headphones – connecting and reconnecting with devices. When it comes to battery life, owing to their minuscule size, the AirPods actually have very little to offer. You will almost always need to carry the charging box since they only last like 5 hours on a single charge; less so if you spend some of that time having a real time call.

I have not had them fall out of my ears, yet, either, and I do sometimes wear them to the bathroom or while hastily walking towards the next train. Not connecting via a cable, they’re extremely good to use with traveling in a train when your station is near and you have to wear your jacket before you get off. In fact, were they connected together by cable, they probably wouldn’t even qualify for a purchase by me.

As the title of this post implies – the AirPods are also the first piece of ‘social wearables’ technology that I have in my possession. Let me explain – sure, they’re just headphones, but since the two earpieces aren’t connected by cable, you get to enjoy the sound with someone else as long as they’re within the signal range. This changes everything!

My favorite use is listening to a podcast while on our morning walk. This way, both of us (V&I) are listening to the same thing and can discuss it later. The AirPods are also great for FaceTime calls while you’re out in public. The only downside is that only one microphone works at a time, so you still have to sit very close together. No longer are you beholden by the lack of multiple audio outputs on your phone!

What is otherwise quite an isolating experience – walking while listening to a podcast is now suddenly much more fun and social. It also feels different since can just pop out your headphone from your ear and the podcast pauses for both of you automatically to give you time to discuss something or to decide what to get from the grocery store on the walk back home.

I wonder if this aspect of the AirPods could be used to build some interesting games/puzzles.

All-in-all, I find myself using the AirPods a lot more than I have used other headphones in the past. They’re small, sleek, light, and as simple to use as just popping them in your ears. Definitely a fan!