Learning From Others

Today I finished reading Mandela’s Way: Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage by Richard Stengel. It’s sort of a biography formatted into lessons. I really appreciated this format. It allowed the author to focus on ideas throughout Mandela’s life rather than focusing on a time-based approach.

I bought this book many years ago and only just read it. I expected it to be a sort of leadership or business book applying the lessons of a great leader to those worlds. I was surprised to find that it was much more approachable than that. It is really a series of life lessons that apply to all aspects of life.

I sometimes read a book and struggle to make myself come back to it and finish. At first that happened to me with this book. I think that was because I was looking at it through a business lens. Once I shifted my perspective and saw it as a biography of life lessons to learn, I found myself eager to continue reading.

While I did not find any of the lessons earth shattering or new, there is great value in seeing how common life principles were lived by someone so much a part of history as Mandela was. And the author does not shy from Mandela’s flaws; this is no hagiography. In my opinion, that only make is more valuable. Life is messy. Learning how others applied life principles, successfully or not, is a great way to spend my time reading.

Our Technological Adolescence

Note: I am writing as a citizen and resident of the United States of America but I believe that the ideas in this post apply equally to all of us as human beings as fellow citizens of the world.

We hear it every day. Us vs. them. Right vs. left. Republican vs. Democrat. Red vs. blue. Globalization vs. protectionism. Urban vs. rural. Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. All lives matter. How did we get here? Why do we seem to be more divided than ever?

A lot has changed in the world over the last twenty to thirty years. Technology has become a bigger and more dominant part of our everyday lives, changing the way we relate to each other and to the world around us. How are we handling that change? I would answer, “Not well.”

As human beings, we have a tendency to hold on to what we know best and resist change when that change is scary or particularly unknown. As we do this as individuals we start to seek out others who think like us, for comfort. Our journalists have been taught to distill stories down to “just the facts”, largely erasing the broad spectrum of struggles that are going on by individuals that don’t fit their story. (See this wonderful article for the beginning of a solution to this problem in journalism.) While this is understandable, it only serves to divide us further.

Collectively, no matter what “side” we are on, we all seem to be deeply dissatisfied with where we are politically and culturally. We are asking ourselves and each other (or we should be), “How did we get here and what do we do?” Perhaps an analogy will give some perspective and provide some direction. By way of illustration, I will share something a little personal.

Growing up, I was the “good kid” in my family. I got good grades and did what I was told (mostly). I graduated second in my high school class and attended Georgetown University receiving a bachelor’s degree in Russian. By all outward definitions, I was a success. But inwardly, I was still an adolescent. I had made no decisions about who I was at a fundamental level. Worse, I didn’t even realize it. I had goals and ideals, but these were ones that I had received from my community. I wanted to help the world not blow itself up. That’s why I studied Russian at (what we didn’t know then was) the end of the Cold War. I wanted to have a wife and family, so I got married and had children. But I wasn’t connected to what it really meant to be a husband and father. I simply expected things to happen and just fall into place like they had throughout my life in school prior to my growing into adulthood. So while I had become an adult, I had never really grown up. Ultimately, this led to a decades long breakdown in my relationship with my wife, finally ending in divorce.

This completely exploded my view of myself and my place in the world and forced me back to deal with my incomplete adolescence in a way that I never had in my teen years and early twenties. I am convinced that if I had used my teen years to wrestle with the questions of adolescence, then much of the pain I experienced and caused others over the past three decades could have largely been avoided. And I fear that my country is in the midst of avoiding its own adolescence brought on by the drastic changes in technology that are affecting every aspect of our daily lives and that this is expressing itself in the division and separateness we feel from others. We are so afraid that our way of seeing and interacting in the world is going away that we are clinging to it and trying to beat the other side into accepting it. This will never work, because our way (whichever way that is) will no longer work due to these profound technological changes affecting our politics and economics. We are in the “teen” years of our global technological adolescence. We need to figure out what this great change means for our coming adult lives in this new world of technology, globalization, and relative abundance. Our current solutions aren’t designed with the new realities we are dealing with, so none of them is likely to work. We need new models and views of our world based on these new realities. But where will these new models come from. I suggest that the answers lies in returning first to the universal lessons of our childhood.

From 1968 to 2001, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood taught children about their world and how it works. The host, Fred Rogers, also spoke directly to his young viewers about difficult subjects like death and anger. And he ended each show by telling each viewer that he or she was special “just by being you…. And people can like you just for being you.”

In 1986, Robert Fulghum published All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Here is an excerpt that succinctly describes the lesson expanded on throughout the book:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

These are not partisan ideals; they are human ideals and principles. All our politics and economies have grown out of these. And since the changes we are in the midst of experiencing seem to have blown up the models we have built since the industrial revolution, now is the time to think up new models and identities that will work in this new environment, together. Is it scary? It sure is. But we cannot avoid this “growing up”; we can only put it off. And putting it off will only make the transition more scary and difficult. We have to “embrace the suck” in the short term to get to the freedom and joy of adulthood on the other side. If we don’t, we will only extend the discomfort and pain of this transition period. What exactly lies on that other side? None of us really knows, but let’s explore it together with the same sense of wonder and joy that accompany the fear of growing up into the unknown.

What’s with All the Privacy Policy Updates?

If you have a lot of online accounts, you have likely received many notices over the last few weeks regarding privacy policy updates. There is a simple reason for this. It’s called the GDPR or the General Data Protection Regulation. If you don’t live in the European Union, you might not be familiar with it. It is an EU law that goes into effect tomorrow (May 25, 2018) “to give control to citizens and residents over their personal data.” Because so many Internet-based companies do business worldwide, it is easier for many of them to simply adopt the practices necessary to meet the GDPR for all of their users. That’s why you are getting all those emails asking you to review new privacy policies.

So how does the GDPR affect citizens of the EU and the users of companies that adopt the GDPR in general? Here are some highlights.

Companies who collect any personal information from you must
- clearly disclose what data is being collected and how
- why it is being processed
- how long it is being retained
- if it is being shared with any third-parties
You have the right to request a portable version of the data collected and stored about you in a common format that would be easy for you to read; in other words, they can’t send it to you in a file format that you would need to purchase expensive software to read
You have the right to have your data erased in certain circumstances
Any breach of data must be reported within 72 hours
And any business who primarily processes personal data must appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who is responsible for managing all this

Keep in mind that these regulations only legally apply to those individuals within the EU and companies who do business within the EU. However, since so many companies do business around the world and collect personal information to do so, there is a high likelihood that you will have many more ways to control how your data is stored and shared.

Be sure to not simply ignore all those updates to those privacy policies. It is worth taking a little time to review them. They should be much easier and clearer now in many cases due to the new GDPR regulations that take affect tomorrow in the EU.

Listening to Each Other

With all that has been going on in politics in the United States over the last year, it can be easy to think that it is a new thing that we as Americans and even human beings aren’t doing a good job of listening to each other. Let me explain what I mean.

Last week I read an article by US Army veteran green beret Nate Boyer. It was an open letter addressing the controversy over what, if anything, should be done about players kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before NFL games. Interestingly, the author of that open letter met with Colin Kaepernick after his first protest — sitting on the bench during the national anthem. In the meeting, Boyer made it a point to listen to Kapernick. Afterward, he felt that Kapernick had listened to his perspective as a veteran. It was after that meeting that Kapernick started kneeling next to his teammates instead of sitting on the bench. Boyer expressed that he has no issue with that and doesn’t feel it is disrespectful. There are plenty of others who do feel it is inappropriate. But he points out that the real issue here is not the dispute. It is that we are so stuck in our own perspectives that we are unwilling to accept that someone else could think very differently about an issue than we do. His prescription for the current dispute over this issue? The President of the United States (who has repeatedly expressed that he feels such protests are wrong) and Kolin Kapernick should meet and listen to each other.

I opened this post by saying that this lack of listening feels new. But it’s not. This afternoon I watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge. It was released last year and tells the story of a soldier in World War II who refused to carry a gun. He saved 75 of his fellow soldiers during a gruesome battle and was the only conscientious objector to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. And no one listened to him, either. His fellow soldiers assumed that he was a coward for his refusal to carry a gun. The fact is that he felt very strongly about the war and his need to serve. He just wanted to do it saving lives as an Army medic. Due to this lack of understanding, his fellow soldiers and commanding officers tried to get him discharged or make him quit. He refused to quit or carry a gun. After the battle of Okinawa ended on the first day, he stayed on the ridge continuing to risk his life to pull injured men to safety — 75 of them, including some injured Japanese. They had refused to listen to Private Desmond Doss.

One way we can learn from Private Doss is to follow his actions. He did not spend a lot of time trying to convince other of his convictions or even try to make them understood. Instead he acted on his convictions and tried to understand those around him. Now that is something that seems to be missing from our current civil and social discourse. I only hope that we will learn from a hero of the Greatest Generation and follow the advice of recent veteran Nate Boyer and simply listen to each other with a heart to understand. Only then will true progress be possible.

Intuitive and Logical Thinking

This week, as I always do, I listened to the latest podcast episode of On Being. I like to describe it as an interview program that explores where spirituality and religion touch everyday life. I find it both practical and inspiring. Each week, the host (Krista Tippett) interviews a different guest. This week’s interviewee was Daniel Kahneman, the bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. While I haven’t yet read the book (it is on my electronic “pile” of books to read on my ereader), I am fascinated by his concept of System 1 thinking and System 2 thinking which he discusses in this interview.

He describes System 1 thinking as the kind of thinking that happens when someone asks you what the answer is to two plus two. You don’t think about it or do any calculating. The answer comes effortlessly because it is already there in your consciousness. System 2 thinking is more linear and deliberate. It’s what happens when someone asks you to solve seventeen times twenty-four. You have to go step by step through the process of multiplying to arrive at the answer. He goes into how these two systems work together and how what starts out as System 2 thinking can often become automatic System 1 thinking (like driving a car or riding a bike).

In addition to each interview produced for the hour-long program and podcast, On Being also publishes each complete and unedited interview on Soundcloud. I don’t listen to these each week, but I was so fascinated by the produced interview and how it relates to much of what I have been reading and thinking about technology, boredom, and deep work that I decided to listen to it. I am so glad I did! At about 1:25:30 into the interview, he is in the midst of talking about artificial intelligence when he mentions my favorite game — the ancient board game of go. He talks about how he is fascinated by the fact that a computer program has finally beaten professional humans at a game that is based largely on System 1 thinking, or intuition.

I like to think about System 1 and System 2 thinking as intuition and logic, respectively. One of the many reasons why go is my favorite game is that it combines both of these kinds of thinking. In order to play well consistently, you need to be able to think both logically and intuitively.

Playing the game also helps players learn to balance big picture thinking (strategy) with what to do in specific situations (tactics). The game is most popular in east Asia (China, Japan, and Korea in particular). Playing go into their advanced years has been credited with keeping people mentally sharp while business men and women use it as a model for competing in business.

The social aspects of the game are fascinating as well. Each game is started by wishing your opponent a good game and at the end players thank each other for the game and often review together in a friendly way where things went well or took a bad turn. The combination of cognitive and social aspects of the game, I find deeply intriguing; I simply love this game! And the fact that a reference to it showed up in one of the podcasts I regularly listen to was a wonderful moment of serendipity.

If you are interested in learning more about the game of go, here is an excellent article recently published in Chicagoly magazine. You can also learn how and where to play in your local area (US only) at usgo.org.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Windows XP

You shouldn’t use Windows XP. If you do, your computer could be being used by criminals to send spam and hack other sites. Let me explain.

All software is imperfect and has flaws. These flaws are called bugs (Read this to see why). Updates are released periodically by the makers of software to fix these bugs, making the software work better.

Some of the bugs in software are simply annoying, kind of like a typo in a novel you might read. It makes you pause while your are reading, but it doesn’t prevent you from understanding the story.

Other bugs are security threats. This is more like when you lose your keys or your wallet. It’s a real pain if you don’t find them because then you need to change your locks or get new credit cards.

Software companies only support their software for a limited period of time. As they release new versions of their software, it becomes harder to support multiple versions. So they eventually stop supporting the older versions.

An operating system is the software that runs your computer. If you use a Mac, your operating system (OS) is likely Apple OS X. If you are using a PC, you are most likely using some version of Windows. Windows has gone through many versions over the years. The latest version is Windows 10.

Windows XP was released in 2001. It was supported for over 12 years (that is a very long time!). Support and security patches ended on April 8, 2014. That means that any bugs, including security bugs, that were found after that date will no longer be fixed. So if you are currently running Windows XP on your computer, your computer is at a high risk of being compromised in some way (e.g. getting a virus or becoming part of a botnet).

If your are currently using Windows XP, there are two things you can do to use your computer more safely:

Upgrade your computer to a version of Windows that is supported, like Windows 7 or Windows 8 or Windows 10 (there is no Windows 9)
Install a free open source operating system like Ubuntu, a flavor of the Linux operating system

If you are looking to choose number 1, you will most likely need to buy a newer computer. It is very likely that your computer hardware is too old and slow to run a newer version of Windows. To determine if this is your situation, you can go to Best Buy and ask the Geek Squad or call your local computer tech guy for help. You can also contact me. I’d be happy to help you.

If you choose to go with choice 2, you can almost certainly use the computer hardware you currently have. You will still likely need help installing the new operating system without losing any of your data. You can go to the same sources as choice 1 for help, including me.

Next week I will go over why you might want to consider using open source software even if you don’t need to upgrade from Windows XP.

Lots of Questions!

The presentation on Friday went extremely well. Even before the presentation started, audience members were asking questions. We started on time, and it wasn’t very long before my prepared remarks became reference notes for answering questions. Everyone was very interested and took notes. Everything I prepared to cover is in the outline on this page. In addition we covered the following:

Don’t ever access sensitive financial information while you are on public wifi
How to avoid phishing scams where emails seem to come from a reputable sort but they are really from hackers
How to avoid “social engineering” attacks; for example, when you receive an unexpected call from your bank, do NOT verify your PIN or password as your bank will never ask for it

I also found some appropriate library books on security and privacy, displaying them at the front of the room. After the talk, many attendees came up to ask for help with individual questions. I even helped one person to put a new more secure password on his iPhone.

All in all, it was a very successful and well-received event. The library may be interested in a similar evening talk. I am also looking for other venues to present at. If you know of anyone who would like a similar presentation, please contact me. And I am also available to help individuals on a one-on-one basis.

Live Presentation

Every year my local library has a summers series of lunch presentations on Fridays. Last year they invited me to present on the topic of passwords. I am doing a similar presentation this Friday at noon about Password Security and Privacy. See the details in the flyer below. Next week, I will review the experience here on my blog.

In preparation for the event, I have been reading a recent book about privacy and security called The Art of Invisibility by Kevin Mitnick. The author is a hacker who explains a bit how technology works and a lot about how it affects you and your privacy and security. One of the most important points he makes is to make sure that you have a password on your smartphone. This will be one my first points in my presentation on Friday. If you are in the area, I hope to see you there!

Why I Won’t Just “Give You the Steps”

Often when I help someone with learning to use their tech, they want me to just “give them the steps”. I almost always refuse to do this. It’s like giving directions that simply say, “Go 2 miles and turn left. Go another 3/4 of a mile and turn right. My house is a mile and half down on the left.” While these may be accurate, they aren’t particularly helpful if I get lost on the way or miss a turn.

But add a little context to the instructions and not only does it help in case I get lost, it helps prevent me front getting lost in the first place. “Go straight for 2 miles and turn left at the light by the Dairy Queen. At the third light, make a right onto Oak Street. Our driveway is the first on the left after you cross over the creek. It’s the one with the blue mailbox. If you get to a stop sign, you have gone too far.” (By the way, these are completely fictitious directions. If you follow them and get somewhere, it definitely won’t be my house.)

The context here is the little details that help you stay oriented as you go. The Dairy Queen. How many light to go through. The color of my mailbox. How to tell if you have passed my driveway. Without these little signposts, the directions are much harder to follow. And if you strayed from them, getting back on track would be very difficult if not impossible.

This also applies to technical instructions. The little extras I give you in addition to the step-by-step instructions are almost more important than the steps themselves because they help keep you oriented in the new, unfamiliar tech space. And if something goes a little wrong, you have a better chance of getting back on track and being successful.

It does take a bit longer to receive these types of instructions and internalize them, but it is worth it. It’s a bit like getting a map to go along with your turn-by-turn instructions. Imagine if all your GPS did was tell you where to turn and didn’t show you on that little map on the screen. Would it work? Sure, but that little line showing you how to go makes it so much easier. And that’s what I do for the people I work with. My job is to provide the step-by-step instructions together with what the surroundings look like as you go.

So the next time someone gives you instructions for how to do something new, if they don’t give you any context be sure to ask for some, just in case you get lost along the way.

What Makes Technology So Challenging?

In my experience training people on how to use their technology, I have noticed a recurring pattern. No matter how accomplished or experienced they are, at some level they are intimidated and made to feel incapable in the face of their tech. This puzzled me at first. How can such accomplished and successful people feel so out of sorts around their digital tools? Some even go so far as to try to give them up altogether. What were they finding so difficult?

Whenever we start learning something new, we are complete novices. We don’t even know what we don’t know. We are essentially helpless. For anyone who prides themselves on their successes and knowledge, this is a very challenging feeling to live with. And with technology, there is so much to learn, right? But what if there wasn’t so much to learn?

We often learn best through metaphor and stories. Let me share one with you. When I learned to drive a car, I learned on my family car. I don’t recall what make it was, but let’s just say it was a Ford. At first I gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles and everyone in my family was afraid to ride with me. Slowly, I got better and more confident until others felt safe whenever I was driving. This felt good. But then I had to drive another make – my grandmother’s Mercedes. While I was nervous about driving her really nice car, I wasn’t nervous that I would know how to drive it even though it was a brand new and different car to me. Why? Because all cars (in the US) work the same. The steering wheel is on the left. The gas pedal is on the right, the brake on the left. The gear shift is generally on the floor to the right of the driver. Sure, how you turn the headlights on and adjust the temperature of the inside of the car are different but the essentials for actually driving the car are the same.

Now, the same is true of any software you use. In fact, I would go so far as to say that once you learn how to use one program, you are about 70% of the way to learning how to use any other. Just like the car, most of what you know in one program works the same way in all the others. Sure the settings might be in a different place, but how you open the program, close the program, and use the menus are the same for all.

The source of much anxiety in learning to use software, then, is feeling overwhelmed by how much there seems to be learn. But with this idea, you can see that there isn’t quite so much as at first seems. In fact, if you can browse the web to read this post, then you are most of the way to knowing how to use any program on your smartphone or computer. Now you just need to learn to play with it!