Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.
Good: I’m on track to getting a bunch of writing done today! Bad: It’s writing that was foisted on me by an external party and the writing is to their (immediate) deadline. Depressing: All of the writing might get tossed away should their editor decide to can the story.
The reality of a day in the life of a public intellectual…
Over the weekend we signed up for a pair of hikes for March. One will take us to one of the highest (and safest) points in Nicaragua1 — another challenging volcano hike! — and another calmer hike through the rainforest and along a series of waterfalls. I admit a little bit of trepidation over the first hike mostly because of the heat we’ll be walking through (and walking down young volcanos is always a bit slippery), but I’m also super excited summit Volcan Concepcion and take photos!
While I wouldn’t necessarily identify Cole’s nineteen habits as ‘tiny’ in aggregate I would agree that most of the habits he identifies are important for developing a well-balanced life. Perhaps the most important habit, to my mind right now, is to reflect on oneself and to value oneself, to the point where you can identify aspirations goals and strive to achieve them. If I’m being honest, it’s really hard for me to visualize or express such personal aspirations and thus one of my more important ‘tasks’ over the coming months is to both clarify such aspirations and identify how to achieve and exceed them.
I’ve been trying to clean up aspects of my digital past for the past six or eight months. To date, that’s mostly meant migrating content between a range of different platforms to consolidate it. The ultimate goal is to move all personal stuff to either a private journal or public blog (this one), all business and work-related stuff migrated to my professional website, permanently delete tens of thousands of old emails (and empty old email accounts),1 and re-evaluate the different social media accounts that I possess and close/delete at least some of them.
In the course of this digital cleanup I’ve stumbled across lots of old writings, communications, and thoughts. Most are pretty banal but others remind me of significant moments in my life. Small things, like the first time I signed a lease or received notice that I was accepted into graduate schools. Notifications of family health emergencies. And too many messages from friends to which I didn’t respond.
Why am I cleaning things up? In part, for privacy and security reasons. I’ve tried to keep a relatively ‘clean’ online profile but know that my more youthful self was less mindful of what was put online that I am today. There are regular stories about accounts being penetrated and documents either being directly leaked to the public or, worse, being selectively modified and then subsequently published. The best way of addressing such threats starts by getting rid of materials that might be used in such doxing operations and old accounts that might offer insight into my private life.
I think that the process of going through and deleting items, however, also stems from my distaste for how near-permanent retention affects human relationships. In his book, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Victor Mayer Schonberger argues that humans have evolved to forget many of our interactions with one another in order to facilitate long-term relationships with one another. He impresses on the reader that it is important to add ‘forgetfulness’ to digital data collection processes and, as I wrote previously,
draws what are arguably correct theoretical conclusions (we need to get a lot better at deleting data to avoid significant normative, political, and social harms) while drawing absolutely devastatingly incorrect technological solutions (key: legislating ‘forgetting’ into all data formats and OSes).
We don’t remember all of the slights in a relationship, or all the harsh words spoken between one another, or even the abnormally positive comments or actions. As a result, we can have interactions with people who might have really upset us in the past because the reasons of that upset fade over time: we say that ‘time heals all wounds’ for a reason. It turns out that it’s because of human evolution!
So by retaining our memories permanently in a digital format there is the perpetual chance that we’re reminded of things that our minds have forgotten on our behalves. Perfect and permanent recollection isn’t the norm, and in our race to digitize and remember everything forever our technical aspirations are stepping beyond the nature of our bodies. Now we exceed our own bodily capabilities in lots of ways — humans are functionally cyborgs — but affecting our psychological interactions with one another strikes me, personally, as having potentially dangerous social implications. As a result, I tend to regard my current process of deleting parts of my past, forever, as a mental health practice as well as a practice linked to privacy or security.
The last few months of 2017 were hard for me. One of the ways that I know this is I took up hobbies that didn’t contribute to my development as a person and were, instead, simply pleasurable ways of wasting away time and trying to relax in the absence of doing anything of import. But it never really felt right: I had nothing to show at the end of the activities and typically wasn’t any happier with myself by the end of the recreation period.
Some of that is scar tissue from past relationships and past work-life imbalances.2 And some of it is linked to historical coping methods in periods of high stress. But this year I want to ensure that I find more productive outputs to relax so as to to find enjoyment in personal creation and to ensure that I can develop and grow as a person instead of just wasting away precious time. That doesn’t mean I’m never going to waste away time but, instead, that I want to be more deliberate and measured when I do decide to indulge in pointless recreation that doesn’t contribute to my personal enrichment.
“To make real change, you have to be well anchored – not only in the belief that it can be done, but also in some pretty real ways about who you are and what you can do.”
– Twyla Tharp
Vincent Laforet strapped an iPhone 7 to the bottom of a Lear jet and then flew in a straight direction while activating the iPhone’s panorama mode. He’s sharing photos over at Instagram. They’re absolutely spectacular and show just what you can do with smartphone cameras.
Peer review is a hit and miss proposition. Sometimes whoever reviews the work is clearly unsuitable. Other times the reviewer’s suggestions would have you write a totally new paper. And other times the reviewer shows how the argument you’re making can be helpfully deepened and strengthened. That last kind of review is rarer than it should be but, when you experience it, can help to transform a good paper into a considerably stronger and more meaningful piece of work.
Blew away over 10K emails that were collecting dust in one of my main accounts. My goal over the next few months is to remove the mass majority of old email that serves no purpose. Doing so will both free up some space (not that I really need it) while also cutting down on the possible deleterious effects of having the account in question getting hacked and contents selectively modified and/or leaked.
From The Globe and Mail:
Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine Labs, says it’s common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding “likes” from certain users. If the photo-sharing app decides you need to use the service more often, it’ll show only a fraction of the likes you’ve received on a given post at first, hoping you’ll be disappointed with your haul and check back again in a minute or two. “They’re tying in to your greatest insecurities,” Mr. Mayberry said.
I didn’t know that how ‘likes’ were doled out were designed to get you to keep coming back into social media applications. If Instagram is toying with its users this way then I’m going to seriously evaluate whether I ever want to use the application again. Activities like those described are just slimy and I don’t feel the need to provide such companies with either my content or my attention.
I’ve swapped between a bunch of different fitness trackers (and companies) over the past several years. I love how Apple Health manages to bring all of them together…except for my historical Fitbit data. But I found (and installed and ran) myFitnessSync for Fitbit – Fitbit to Apple Health and now I finally have all of my data stored in Apple Health. And, also, I can now blow away my old Fitbit account!
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