“I’m not sure what you’re trying to do.”
“I’m trying to print! Control-P-Print!”
“Ah, but there’s something you haven’t done.”
“What? Tell me what it is! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”
“No, I can’t tell you.”
~ Eddie Izzard (having an imaginary conversation with his computer), Glorious

In the very early 90′s when I first started monkeying around with graphics, the programs I learned to use were Corel Draw on Mac and Microsoft Paintbrush. I have zero artistic talent, no eye for perspective, no understanding of framing or light source — but, I am a good mimic and I can develop techniques of craft in place of talent. My method of learning, however, is often hindered by the fact that I learn dramatically better with one-on-one instruction. When left to my own devices of gleaning from source material without the ability to ask questions specific to my process, my learning curve is handicapped to the point where I’m often simply discouraged from trying. This creates a feedback loop, as my desire to not inconvenience friends or associates by asking them to take the time to instruct me often crashes into my desire to learn or try new things. Basically, I need an ever-patient AI to tirelessly hold my hand and walk me through all I want to learn to make me happy. And, if the AI could be programmed with the late, great Majel Barrett’s vocal tracks that would rock my world. Someone get on that, will you?

At any rate, an amusing artifact of my learning process is the fact that I have an almost creepy loyalty to the tools I learn on. Even once I’ve developed new skills and adapted to superior tools, I have a tendency to fall back on the archaic out-of-date programs because they fill me with nostalgic happy and make me feel comfortable while pimping my creative energies in new directions.

I was an Apple girl until the late 80s because even though I played with PCs, they felt foreign and overly complicated to me; why drive a stick when you’ve learned on an automatic? It wasn’t until a friend sat down with me for a two hour session and taught me some basics of DOS and Windows when I hopped over to PC. To this day, however, I have fond memories of my Apple IIe clone and my first Mac and when I get back to a place where I can be frivolous with money, I fully intend to create a nook in my house that has an Apple IIe and Atari 2600 sitting side by side to feed my retrogaming lust. Why? Because Taipan! and Adventure just aren’t the same on emulators. That’s why.

Anyway. Where were we? Oh, yes, my creepy loyalty to obsolesce.

In the early 2000′s, when I first began making textures for The Sims and website graphics, Sabrina held me at gunpoint and forced me to learn Paint Shop Pro because when she discovered what I was using at the time, her geek sensibilities were revolted. The program she taught me on was Paint Shop Pro 6.0. I *still* use it to this day from time to time when I just need a quick and dirty edit on a small, simple file. However in late 2002, another beloved soul in my life (who happens to be a professional artist) insisted on giving me Adobe Photoshop 101. The version at the time was Photoshop 7.0, and even though I have CS versions on my computer with their bells and whistles, I still open up Photoshop 7.0 90% of the time when I start a new project.

Shut up. It’s a sickness. Something about my brain and comfortable territory.

The good news is that, most of the time, when someone takes their time to instruct me, I have a one-trial learning process — which is to say once I “get it” no one ever has to show me again and I never forget (barring the occasional need for refreshers after long periods between employing knowledge). Further, I can be a quick study unless there is a lot of higher level math involved or I’m wading completely out of my depth. Unfortunately, however, these boons only apply to human-instructed knowledge. Knowledge I’ve had to research on my own or eke out for myself does not enjoy such preeminence in my gray matter. I have no idea why. The majority of my developmental learning happened by myself out of books and resource materials with occasional input from human units — you’d think it would be the other way around.

So when I gutted up and convinced myself that I needed to start experimenting with AV tools, I knew it was going to be bumpy. Once again, I have zero artistic talent outside of the ability to spin the occasional phrase and make it purdy-like. I also am no smooth hand with mouse controls or hot keys, and there’s the fact that the most professional programs I have are a wee bit out of date. Still, if every 14 year old can make a You Tube video, surely I can.

The jury is still out on this. I am not impressed with any of my early attempts and would be utterly discouraged if I felt anyone outside of a small sector of kind eyes and ears were paying attention. There is a benefit to having a personal blogspace and throwing bones into the wind to see how they fall. The augury can take its time and be more patient before casting the final say.

What I have learned this week, is that sometimes you have to accept that you’re an amateur and use amateur tools and ignore all the tutorials that *insist* you have to have the newest, shiniest version of X. After 20 days of weeping, screaming, begging and making lewd gestures at Adobe Premiere to try and woo it to do what I needed, I gave up and Googled foolproof digital home videos. This led me to discover that Windows Movie Maker was already on my computer and was already intended for AV dimwits like me to start on. It comes with training wheels.

What this means for my October Project, is that the process has gone from two hour uploads and hair-pulling guesses about compression and formats to “click, click, done” with the final product being superior in quality and a fraction of the file size.

To my credit I didn’t cry. Although I really, really wanted to. Realizing I’ve been wasting insane amounts of time to produce something of inferior quality *seriously* shakes the pennies from my mental piggie bank. Ah well, we live, we learn, we scream obscenities to the walls, and we move on. Ugly processes can lead to the best results. Or so I keep telling myself.

I am certain that if I continue down this masochistic path and develop my craftiness to shoot and edit AV files, I will look back and wonder how I could ever have been so clueless. I’m also betting Windows Movie Maker will still be something I keep around, in all its lame idiot-proof glory.

And yes, I would like some cheese with my whine. So there.

Researchers have found that introverts who act extraverted show slower reaction times on subsequent cognitive tests than those allowed to act introverted. Their cognitive fatigue testifies to the fact that “acting counter-dispositionally is depleting.” ~ Laurie Helgoe, “Revenge of the Introvert”

Dear extroverts: you are killing us and fucking up our interwebs. Okay, so that’s not exactly what the research shows, but I’m convinced it’s a statement with merit. What I should say is more like “Dear extrovert-trending virtual environments, my name is Salome, I’m an IFG and I’m exhausted by the lot of you.”

I cannot say that I remember the first time I was administered an MBTI as an adult. I know that as a child I was on occasion given personality tests because I was unschooled and the individual that guided my learning path used such tests as a means to figure out what my natural inclinations would be. What I do know is that for as long as I can remember, I have been classified with words like “right brained” and “introverted.” I test heavily INFJ.

When I entered mainstream school and peer social interaction, I had the advantage of being excited about it. Yes, I was that girl — for the first few years I was thrilled to go to school (although by the end I had senioritis along with the best of ‘em). As I melted into the culture of American public school, there was an overwhelming toll inflicted upon me that increased exponentially.

School, like most American hives, caters to extrovert tropes. Those who excel with extrovert social skills are rated better in the tribal hierarchy. Even counter-culture groups (in my high school days, these were punkers) tended to defer to the bolder, louder individuals of their subgroups. These behaviors are similarly (if unintentionally) rewarded by the school system. I was hard to intimidate as a youth, but I watched “the quiet kids” I identified with suffer through a great many situations like public speaking, large class sizes, and forced interaction. The concept that group activity was more “healthy” than quiet contemplation was everywhere. American schooling, in my day at least, was underscored by the message that you were part of the herd, and the more willingly you mooed the better you would do in the game of life. I understand the wisdom of preparing students to deal with melding into the expectations of society, and I certainly understand the limited resources of education makes highlighting individualism prohibitive. However, even as a teenager, I could figure out that it was a crummy way to run a lemonade stand.

Now more than ever, it’s worth considering the toll this takes on what we now understand to be 50% of the population who can be identified as introverts. By forcing them into patterns that not only go against the grain of their personalities, but may be causing them emotional and mental harm, American society is growing more damaging to its introverted population. Moreover, because they are inclined toward silence, introverts do not necessarily serve their own causes.

Socializing on the internet largely began as the domain of misfits and introverts. It makes sense because in the early days the net just wasn’t all that shiny. The social rewards of those old forums, user groups and BBS’s appealed more to those of us who spent a lot more time with Erector sets and Lincoln Logs than we did at little league games.

I’m not implying that “the good old days” were better. Obviously, web culture is far richer now than in those early days. But I can say that as an introvert the web is a far less comfortable place for me than it once was. Social networking and virtual environments are shifting from introvert-friendly to extrovert-dominated. This evolution happens simply, without any conspiracy. The perception is that the majority of people are extroverts, so, naturally, the people designing environments want to target the things they see as appealing to the largest possible user base. Moreover, extroverts are accustomed to being catered to and are not afraid to be the squeaky wheels demanding grease, while introverts are accustomed to shutting up and adapting as best they can.

In gaming terms, however, where there is lots of player burn-out and turn-over, this may be a key to addressing player engagement, immersion, and loyalty. Take this excerpt from Laurie Helgoe’s Psychology Today article: “Revenge of the Introvert”

With a biological makeup that enables them to see positive emotional stimuli as a distraction when they are focused on another task, introverts are good at resisting all distraction. Using functional brain imaging, Stanford biopsychologist Brian W. Haas measured the reaction time for introverts and extraverts when they tried to identify the color in which an emotionally provocative word was printed. Introverts proved more able to focus on the task of color identification while disregarding the emotional content and had significantly better reaction times. Concludes Haas: Introverts, who exhibit a higher resting state of arousal, “don’t need the same kind of outside entertainment.”

Put simply, our quest strategy and goals are different, and concepts of reward are similarly different.

There are huge implications here for motivational behavior in both physical and virtual domains. In schooling terms, high school and colleges would do better by 50% of their student populations by developing methods and procedures that engaged extroverts without alienating and discouraging introverts. Businesses would benefit greatly from being able to identify introverted employees and helping fit them to better positions that would allow them to excel and recharge, thus prolonging their work energies, creativity, and company loyalty.

Virtual environments have the most to gain, however, because so much of what would benefit introverts is just a matter of coding. Allowing introverts like myself the privacy controls and the ability to opt out of too much information/social stimulation would tremendously increase immersion, loyalty, and engagement in the format.

Attempting to force introverts into the same corners that much of society already corners us into, virtual environments risk losing 50% of their user bases to gradual burn-out and withdraw. Conversely, structuring formats that provide the tools so that introverts and extroverts can customize their experiences to their own personality types is fairly simple.

It’s time to stop spamming users with unwanted social interactions and information and allowing introverts to be introverts if they choose. As a business model it was always ethically dodgy to bombard users with forced visibility and exposure in order to make them feel obligated to engage, but certainly there is a stronger case now for it being simply bad business as well.

“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity” ~ Tom Peters

Recently, while debating a friend, I made a simple statement: “Ethics do not alter.” It’s the type of statement I would consider an axiom. After a two-day argument, however, I realized I was missing a few words. What I should have said was “ethics do not alter according to situation.” My friend wouldn’t have agreed with that statement anymore than the first, but it would have saved a few hours of semantic negotiation.

As a person who does not believe in spiritual forces of good or evil, I am of the opinion that ethics and morality have evolved over the course of humankind’s walk on this planet from a communal commitment to survival. Survival taught our ancestors that there was safety in numbers (not to mention greater odds of procreation), but it must have also been obvious from the beginning that some people just don’t play well with others. From that start came compromise, standards, values, hierarchy consequences, and a number of other factors. For me, this is simple logic. If you remove assigning morality to the decree of a “higher power” then all that remains as a constant in the human condition is survival.

A number of great minds over the centuries have tried to make the case for mankind being inherently good- or bad-natured. In my opinion, such a debate is a waste of time. People are neither. Some are more predisposed to empathy or creativity or destruction, but that’s usually based on bad meat development or funky chemistry. It’s not about good or bad; most people are just inherently simple — they want their survival necessities, their creature comforts, and to spend most of their time seeking pleasure. From an evolution standpoint this makes infinite sense. Evey hive has more drones than queens. The balance of hive society rests on rewarding worker bees just enough so that they don’t want to eat the queen’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Advanced citizenship places extra burdens upon its drones, however, and that can generate rifts. Republics and democracies break down if the people do not hold their leaders accountable. In a free market, if consumers do not keep corporations from overreaching, you get things like depressions. I don’t know the math, but I’m sure there is a probably an equation that demonstrates how much falloff to expect per removed generation. Someone like myself takes a great deal of freedom for granted as a basic right, but someone who immigrated to the US from a less generous nation would likely not take as much for granted. It takes a while for entitlement to set in.

Entitlement is not always bad. Cultural entitlement is how society sheds the scales of previous ills. For example, generations coming to age now in the US and many other countries take equality for granted and are largely repulsed at the notions of racial or sexual discrimination.There are types of entitlement, however, that paralyze or destroy systems like government and commerce because people forget they carry a burden of obligation that goes along with privilege. The pursuit of pleasure has a price tag; how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

Ethics and consumer advocacy thus become the “everyman’s burden” in a free society. However, the less these burdens are underscored by survival needs, the lower the odds that the average person will uphold their side of the social bargain. Corporations exist free of ethics. They are, for all intents and purposes, emancipated psychopathic entities that are only charged to follow the letter of the law and generate money. They don’t have to consider the spirit of law or any benefit to society; their survival is often contrary to human survival.

If you look at what is going on in the real world these days in regard to how the general population addresses ethics and consumer advocacy, you can almost draw a line between the things that link directly to a sense of survival and how much the public invests in fulfilling their side of the social bargain. (Religion, of course, is the eternal wildcard in this deck, but I think you have to consider religion intimately linked to survival in the minds of followers — they view spiritual survival at least as important as physical survival.) Downloading unauthorized entertainment or circulating copyrighted material is hardly even a blip on the moral radar of most people. Despite what Lars Ulrich told congress in 2000, no one died from downloading illegal copies of Metallica songs. Unethical corporate CEOs nearly killed the global economy, but other than a few slaps on the wrist, they didn’t have to break stride or surrender an ivory-handled backscratcher. They may have evaporated the savings of billions of average people, but they didn’t directly cause any death, so they didn’t trigger any survival instincts. I don’t equate downloading songs to bankrupting the civilized world, but apparently, most consumers do, because the consequences are largely the same: nothing. In the case of corporate CEOs they even managed to sell the narrative that consumers and the government were at fault. In a way, that’s true. Holding corporate greed accountable is the responsibility of the citizenry.

It is chilling to consider what effect this could translate to when looking at Virtuality. With few exceptions, survival does not come into play in the virtual world. Virtual goods are about as removed as they can possibly be from that key element. And what is the result? Customer service is frighteningly absent from places like Facebook, Blizzard, Linden Lab, etc. Most average consumers don’t even expect immediate responses to inquires anymore, or have been conditioned to accept long hold times to get addressed. Consumer advocacy is also pretty thin on the virtual ground, and when you get a consumer advocacy heavy hitter in technical circles, they invariably end up the target of some power-crazed entity.

Personally, I believe that ethics and consumer advocacy are, in themselves, survival structures. They balance the scales between the average citizen of the world and those offering service in exchange for power. Just as those who feel they are entitled to everything without maintaining their side of the social bargain disrupt the balance, so do those who see problems and choose to do nothing.

If we can’t be trusted, as a society, to connect the dots between greed-based corporate entities ushering in an information-age depression, how can be we be trusted to police the current or next generation of virtual world players? If we don’t redefine survival to include these advanced concepts, how will we maintain ethics? Or will the virtual world transition from the domain of anonymous and free expression to the territory of corporations abandoning consumer care and ethical standards without consequence? Are we already owned by our dependency on a handful of big names?

Don’t get me wrong — I lean capitalist, but capitalism isn’t just about companies, it’s about consumers, too. Yes, it is the job of a company to make money, but it is the role of consumers to demand companies execute their duties with ethics and fair play and it is also the responsibility of consumers to assign consequences when companies fail the basic standards of society.

What consequences are any of us willing to execute in order to define ethics and standards?

Social interaction is the most valuable element of almost every virtual environment and it happens on MMOs, social networking sites, virtual platforms, forums, etc. With that in mind, ask yourself the following:

A) Would you give up your favorite virtual social outlet tomorrow if the company behind it behaved in a way you felt was unethical?
B) What kind of ethical trespass would have to happen for you to give up your favorite virtual social outlet?
C) If you wouldn’t give up your favorite virtual social outlet under any circumstances, do believe you would have any obligation to try and advocate for change of the policies you feel are unethical?
D) Do you even pay attention to the policies of your favorite outlets?

I’m not looking for anyone to answer these questions for an audience, but I think it’s important we ask ourselves things like this and figure out where our own standards are and where we expect them to be and how we plan to address ethics when removed from survival.

If you’re not willing to walk away from something, it owns you, so here’s the million dollar question and really the only one that matters:

E) If you look at your online habits, add in the ethics you’re willing to take a stand on and evaluate the outlets you’re not willing to do without — what owns you?

“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” ~ Ayn Rand

Anyone who’s clocked time playing Civ will enjoy this:

I haven’t yet been able to get and play Civ 5 although some of the changes look cool. I have mixed feelings about it, mostly stemming from the fact that Civ was the game JTL and I played most.

One of my favorite playing with JTL memories involves Civ 4. I was always chugging for cultural victory while he was bombing everything that dared look twice at his border. Although we generally played as a team, we had a sort of competition to see if I could win with culture faster than he could win by military means. Once, I convinced him to play a game based on culture wins only (no war) and was explaining all the little tricks I employed to edge up culture gains. As anyone knows, this involves lots and lots of spreading religions. He became exasperated with the fail rate on missionaries and began to growl about how if RL missionaries had been so incompetent the world would be a much better place. Then he began loudly berating his computer with exclamations like: “Damn you, Christianity, how can you not spread in Atlanta!” and “I’m telling Buddha on you” and “Get your Hindu ass over there and convert already!” By the time it was all over, I was in giggling fits.

The next day, I got this email, with an attachment:

1. go to http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/downloads.htm and download the v1.61 patch
2. install the patch.
3. start civ, fix all your options (for me at least, it reset my sound and graphics options). you may also want to turn on the new (?) “show city radius” graphics option. it makes it easier to tell what tiles are already used by cities, when you have a settler selected. If you get a flash of a screen which says something like “Your mods are not correctly installed”, don’t panic — I think that’s complaining about the files we modified by replacing rather than using this new override mechanism. we can and should fix that sometime, but it seems to work just fine as-is
4. exit civ
5. go to your “My Documents” folder and make sure you have a “My Games” directory, and inside of that a “Sid Meier’s Civilizcation 4″ directory, and inside of that a “CustomAssets” directory. If not, stop here and call me
6. save the attached file CvGameCoreDLL.dll in that CustomAssets directory
7. optional, but I think you’ll like the small changes: save the attached file CvReligionScreen.py in the CustomAssets\python\screens directory
8. restart civ; marvel at your hopefully all-powerful missionaries and the only slightly-different but oh-so-much-better f7 screen
9. marvel at my awesomeness

After that, missionaries had a 100% conversion rate — a change which I squeed over, but which he said made him feel “dirty in the bad way.” This is a frequent saying that started between he and I and has been part of my personal vernacular ever since.

The f7 screen shows all your civilization’s cities and which religions are at play in each. It mostly lines up so you can peg what a city might be missing at a glance, except that when a city founds a religion, it puts that religion out of order. This was unacceptable. Things have to laid out properly or OCD brains go haywire, as anyone who reads XKCD knows. If I told you the number of things he coded around just to make margins line up…

He never did get around to the Flying Spaghetti Monster patch.

I miss you, still, dear friend.

“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” ~ Cinderella’s Prince’s in Into the Woods (via Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine)

Last night, while updating my virus definitions and doing whatever else it is that virus protection programs do, Avast popped up to remind me that September 19th will be International Talk Like a Pirate Day and cheekily suggested I allow it to install an app that will change my standard “your virus definitions have been updated” voice-over to something a bit more creative. I haven’t really ever had a strong feeling one way or another about virus protection — I go with whatever is recommended to me by geeks I trust to know more than I do. I can say, however, that unless Avast does something pretty stupid or fails in quality, they’ve turned the dial up on my customer loyalty.

There is something about a company exhibiting a sense of charm and whimsy that appeals to me. Something that sends the signal that even though there’s work to be done, we also have to remember to just not take it all so seriously.

I couldn’t help but think of how this relates to the post Grace made yesterday about Solazyme’s President and CTO, Harrison Dillon and the challenges his company faces trying to woo human beings (specifically us American-type meat puppets, but others, too) out of their complacency habits and into a state of enthusiasm for energy solutions to our looming global crisis. Grace’s final comment on the subject is:

What Harrison Dillon, Farmer D, Team HyPower and everyone else trying to make a dent in the sustainability tragedy of the commons is not more untimely and unmanageable legislation – they need help finding ways to make us smile, just like Prius owners.

The video Grace includes focuses more on the ego-feed side of being a Prius driver, but I think ego appeal might take a backseat to the charm factor.

When I think of the brands I’ve viewed positively over the course of my consumerism, I have to say that elements of whimsy and charm play into them in a much bigger way. For example, I started out an Apple girl and stayed one through most of college until a PC was forced on me for financial reasons. For a long time after, even though I worked and owned PCs, I still had a more positive view of Apple. There are many reasons for it, but the truth is that probably the biggest factor was the now-famous 1984 Mac advert. At 12 years old, I had read 1984. I got the commercial and I liked getting it. It was clever and mischievous and an unconscious part of me identified with the type of minds that would put that sort of an ad forth to represent their product. True, it might have feed a small ego thing (and years of Mac vs PC flame wars certainly were ego-intensive), but I don’t think the ego feed was the real factor, especially when you consider it lingered beyond ownership. Years later, despite the fact that Steve Jobs is a micromanaging fruit loop who flirts with Big Brother instincts, I still have a quirky affection for Apple and irrationally fond memories of my old Mac and IIe.

It wasn’t about status. So what was it?

As cars go, although I never owned a Saturn or a PT Cruiser, I’ve had friends who absolutely loved theirs to the point where it became like a pet. That insane kind of “how can you feel this way about an inanimate object” type love. As Grace pointed out, Pruis owners form their own subcultures and cult behaviors around their vehicles. The object becomes imbued with the characteristics we assign to the brand.

Google won people like me hard and early with their colorful logo and their clean page, but what I remember most about that introductory period was the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. I probably haven’t pressed that button in ten years but I still like that it’s there. I don’t think I’ve used another search engine, other than to compare results since I found Google (in what my memory swears is the end of 1997, but others have insisted to me had to be 1998). It’s silly, when I think about how personally I take it when the Google company does something I disapprove of — but there’s a camaraderie rooted in that “I Feel Lucky” button that lingers.

Someone recently recalled (I’m sorry to admit I don’t remember who or where) the early quirk of humor Linden Lab displayed by putting up the Grid Monkey graphic when the grid would go down unexpectedly. It reminded me of just how amused I was the first time I found that. Unlike now where I’m frustrated and annoyed by every slow grid day and horrific SIM performance day (mostly those that end in Y lately), I used to see that graphic and feel an odd fondness and fellowship. I’m not sure if it was the humor alone, or simply the “yeah, we’re we know, we’re working on it” smirk it conveyed, but something about that graphic inspired a spark in me similar to the one I felt last night when Avast piped up to ask permission to talk like a pirate.

I think companies often forget that we want to like them. We want to approve of them. We want to feel some kindred little sense of whimsy and humor that shows us their products and services are not just grist or machine-work. True, we want to have faith in the products and we want them to work, but we also give a lot more leeway to the brands that charm us. We want to connect via the products to that human factor which assures us someone is at the helm even if we can’t see them — that we’re not just wandering denizens on a ghost ship set to automatic pilot.

I think some of the most lasting ways internet companies build customer loyalty probably start from an idea that springs out of too much caffeine and not enough sleep when one code monkey looks at another code monkey and murmurs “hey, you know what might be fun…?”

More companies need to learn to talk like pirates in the Avast way instead of just the “how do we rob them without them noticing” way. And, if they can get Johnny Depp to talk like a pirate on my computer, so much the better.

Just throwin’ it out there.