Productivity, True Confessions

Snowy Days, Slow Ways

by  •  • 0 Comments

I have to confess I felt woefully unprepared for any of the warnings accompanying the monster snow storm. Namely, the thought of losing electricity put me in a mild panic. Not only are my emergency supplies disorganized, but my skills are weak. Relying on the internet I’ve become soft and pampered. Who needs to remember anything when we can just look it up? Except, if there is no electricity to charge devices, cellular, and wifi goes down… this could be a big deal.

Growing up we all marveled at the series “MacGyver.” The show’s protagonist somehow managed to get himself out of many dangerous situations. He accomplished this by using brains, skills, and anything available to devise a solution. He was an improvisation master. As kids, we often invented our own solutions. We had no internet or readily accessible source of instant curated information. Unless we could ask someone, or knew the answer, we learned by experience. In this way, we developed and retained some life skills.

For example, I grew up with a wood burning fireplace. I watched others build many fires. I helped, or did it on my own, sometimes. However, the thought of rekindling this old, learned skill in a time of need without being able to look up instructions or google something left me questioning myself. Could I really build a successful fire from a memory decades old? I also knew if something didn’t go right, nobody else around me would have this particular skill. And I might not have service to call somebody who would know. I thought of this as one possible emergency measure during the storm, if we lost our heat. Where I live now has a fireplace, which is clean, but unused. Though I’m sure the survival instinct would have triumphed, the over-reliant feeling made me uncomfortable.

This is probably one of the biggest downsides of having access to instant information all the time. We get information overload and this overload prevents us from wanting to fill our brains. Why bother to retain or learn anything if the answer is available anytime?

I’m going to make it a point this year to reacquaint myself with some analog survival skills. That way I’ll be prepared. I’ll be ready for zombies, civil war, climate change impacts, or whatever else might happen in this chaotic, topsy-turvy world.

Digital Dilemma

The Autonomous Vehicle

by  •  • 2 Comments

When I first heard about self-driving cars I felt pretty excited. One of my lifelong dreams is to hire a chauffeur. This has only amplified now that I live in a place where I have to drive everywhere. I would love to have someone drive me at a moment’s notice. I could be dropped off directly at the location. No time wasted looking for parking and fiddling with payments. Best of all, sitting in traffic could be valuable me-time rather than white-knuckling the steering wheel and getting a calf cramp.

Some weeks ago I read an opinion article authored by an ER doctor. After having seen the grizzly results of many, many car accidents, he was advocating for more self-driving cars based on the statistical data provided by Waymo (available here). By all measures, Waymo self-driving cars demonstrate a significant reduction in injury and crash rates. This caused me to think about the expectations we might have about self-driving cars. Do we need them to be perfect? Or do we just need them to be an improvement?

When I thought about it, a self-driving chauffeur to a real human in some scenarios. Robots don’t feel sleepy or let emotions interfere with their driving. They can easily tune out distractions. You will never have an intoxicated or impaired self-driver. This could be reason enough to go autonomous, the perfect DD.

I read another article discussing how some parents rely on Waymo to help with logistics getting their kids around. They preferred Waymo because it was reliable and felt safer. No risk of a creepy, unreliable driver.

On the flip side, here are some of my reservations. Although the data shows a strong safety trend, I feel concerned about the heavy reliance on sensors. In poor weather, I’ve noticed that some of my sensors get confused. For example, driving in an icy rain one afternoon, it covered up something in the front of the car and impacted the braking. Recently, after a snowstorm, the sensors on the side of the car kept flashing indicating I was close to hitting something. I wasn’t.

Somebody hacking into the car’s control system is my other main concern. The information security is almost more critical than physical security when it comes to safety. So… will my next car be self-driving? I’m not sure, but I would definitely like to go for a ride.

Digital Dilemma

Eighties Flashback

by  •  • 0 Comments

I recently started watching “Stranger Things” on Netflix again. Season 5 is available and I still had to watch season 4. Beginning the season, immersing myself in a world that feels so reminiscent of my childhood, a few things stuck out. Namely, I can’t stop focusing on how the kids interact with each other. The lunchroom scenes, the classroom dynamics, hallway excitement, and kids making out next to lockers. Even the bullying scenes all look and feel so different from today’s landscapes.

I think mostly I’m hyper aware that there are no devices. It’s rare to see a computer. Most of the phones are either rotary dial or big, chunky cordless phones. The kids have headphones for their walkmans to play cassette tapes. In some ways, watching some of the kids disengage (e.g., Max) by constantly listening to headphones, feels like a pre-cursor to today’s situation. However, cassette tapes could only hold a limited number of songs. Also, they were heavy and clunky to transport. Chances are, somebody listening to cassette tapes only had one with them at any given time. This is in stark contrast with today’s world. Now we can carry around thousands of songs in a device slightly larger than one cassette tape.

One episode takes place in a roller rink. This is for the old fashioned skates with 4 wheels. It’s the kind I grew up with. I felt excited watching the episode because it reminded me of all the fun times I had at the skating rink. Parties, being with friends, loud music, bright lights, and lots of skating. Watching the scenes, the kids are all interacting with each other. Nobody is huddled off with a device. Nobody is roller skating while also holding their phone to snap selfies or pics of others.

A particularly graphic bullying scene happens here that I found hard to watch. I also thought it was weird one of the kids had one of the ancient camcorders propped on his shoulder recording everything. This to me felt like a weird mix of something that would definitely happen in today’s world, but with dated technology. Growing up, I never saw any kid carrying around camcorders. They were super expensive and heavy. Mostly people reserved them for really special occasions, certainly not an afternoon outing at a skating rink. But other than that, it felt pretty authentic.

Uncategorized

The Boredom Gimmick

by  •  • 2 Comments

At some point over the weekend my eye caught a couple stories about people setting timers to be “bored.” One of the people featured had his laptop turned toward the camera with a running clock. The time he spent sitting around “bored” was sped up so the whole video ran for only 36 seconds. His lofty goal was to increase his “bored” time by a minute every day up to an ultimate goal. I actually forgot what the goal was because I felt a little bored reading about it.

The second person aimed to be “bored” for 20 hours. This also included not getting anything to eat or drink to avoid all sorts of stimulation. Essentially, his idea of boredom was to sit around with no devices, no TV, radio, media, food (?!), or anything. For hours.

I’m a proud Gen X-er. By today’s standards of on-demand everything and instant gratification, it probably seems unthinkable how we even managed to pass time and have fun. But when I reflect on my childhood, I don’t recall long bouts of boredom. I think mostly we came up with creative ways to not feel bored. Or sometimes we lounged around reading magazines, talking, and waiting for that one hit song to play on the radio or MTV. Then we would spring into action to record it on a cassette tape or VHS, if we were lucky. The point is, we didn’t deprive ourselves of stimulation to fabricate feelings of boredom.

The irony of these people’s experiments is that engaging with media and scrolling can get boring. All this doom scrolling and constant bombardment of over-stylized, sensationalized posts feels tedious after a while. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines boredom as “the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.” I have to confess, this is often how I feel after engaging with anything for too long. At times like these, I start longing for a good paperback, some quiet time away from vibrating notifications and beeping alerts.

In my opinion, if these people really wanted to experience boredom, or at least experience it Gen-X style, they wouldn’t need to broadcast it. They wouldn’t post about anything, video themselves, or create a spectacle and media opportunity from “disengaging,” all in the name of boredom. To me, that’s defeating the purpose, but maybe I’m just a little bored from all the hype.

Digital Dilemma, Social Media

Teenage Awkward

by  •  • 1 Comment

I occasionally get the good fortune to interact with the teenagers in my life. Mostly they’re relatives or my friends’ kids. I’m endlessly curious about their experiences. What is it like to be a teenager in the age of social media? And now AI? ChatGPT?

I sometimes think I only made it through my tween and teenage years because there wasn’t a lot of documenting going on. For some of my classmates, the only picture I might have of them is in a year book. Even then, it’s probably a small, grainy photo. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be photographed, tagged, and posted for everyone to see. It seems like there’s a lot of pressure for something that’s impossible to avoid. Even for teenagers who might not want to partake in social media, there’s nothing they can do to stop others from taking their photos and posting them.

Aside from the worry some of these kids must feel about ending up on somebody’s social media feed, it detracts from social experiences. I constantly see kids walking around with headphones in, even while they’re conversing with others! Or they’re heads down on their phones, even when they’re walking together in a group. When I was growing up, we didn’t have any of these things. We had to learn to deal with our awkwardness, build resilience, and explore. Then again, we also had the freedom to do these things without being photographed and put on display for everybody to see. We could collectively forget and reinvent.

The pandemic likely impacted many of these kids. While the pandemic started almost 6 years ago, it lasted for years. For some of these teens, the isolation and lockdowns hit during formative social years. Lots of school districts were remote, or hybrid, during the early part. It’s hard to even understand or quantify the effect. These kids isolated before they even had a chance to develop social skills. Will these teens be more starved for human contact? Or will they prefer solitude and more technology-driven interactions?

With all this talk, and some action, of people returning to the office 5-days/week, I also think about the newer workforce. No doubt many of them were teenagers when the pandemic hit. How will they adjust to so much face-time in the office? Working onsite includes more than just being there physically.

Digital Dilemma, Productivity

A Use Case for AI

by  •  • 1 Comment

Submitting insurance claims is one activity I would gladly delegate to AI and automation. The transition from paper forms and snail mail to online data entry definitely improved the process. However, the transformation wasn’t enough to create a real high-quality digital experience.

With paper forms I felt annoyed filling in all the information. Then I had to assemble them with the receipts and mail it. I had to make my own scans or photocopies to retain in case something happened to the claim. The whole thing took a long time, both to prepare and to wait for the result. Usually I received a check in the mail which took even more time to go and deposit.

While some of the wait times are dramatically improved with the online process, some of it remains frustratingly outdated. I appreciate that the processing time is now days with direct deposit into my bank account. However, I still submit the claims by filling out a clunky online form. A couple years ago my company switched insurers and the online forms became even worse. Here are a few examples.

One question on the form asks if your partner has insurance. Even though my partner had insurance with the same insurer, every time I selected yes I had to fill out his plan, policy number, and birthdate. Every. Single. Time. As though these things would change frequently. Also, the insurer inconsistently submitted the remainder of my claims to my partner’s insurance policy. We discovered this months later and it was annoying to fix.

Earlier this week I had to submit a dental claim. Fortunately my regular dentist submits the claims for me, but this was for a new dentist that wasn’t able to do that. For a dental claim, I had to enter in each line item as a separate procedure code. Even though six codes were from the same visit, I had to re-enter the date and some other repetitive information every time. The whole time I kept wondering why I couldn’t just upload the receipt and have the system automatically fill out the claim. This would be much easier and likely more accurate as many of the codes were similar and ripe for typos. Just one example of how a technological improvement didn’t go far enough to transform the clunky parts of a process.