While I was at Banff, I attended a workshop were we discussed “the ethics of collaboration”. I understood the terms at face value, of course, but didn’t really realize the concept’s implications and relevance to my own work until a recent event with some former collaborators. It was this event that caused me to re-examine what it means to work together, and what the ethics of collaboration/collectives are (at least to me).

Searching the Internet for “ethics of collaboration”(!), I found an *excellent* paper, which I want to highlight because of its relevance. The paper is called, “The The Tyranny of Structurelessness” by the relatively-famous scholar Jo Freeman.

In the paper, the author writes about formal/informal organizational structures and communication channels, and asserts explicit structure is the best way to avoid hegemony by an “elite”. It seems to almost touch upon parts of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory of social networks, particularly his idea of a “obligatory point of passage”, though she never uses those terms (they didn’t exist, I suppose–Latour wrote in the ’80s; she in 1970).

Not only does her description of outside-the-organization friends as an “elite” hit the nail right on the head, but so does her notion of looking at “whose approval is the stamp of acceptance” to understand who really has power in an organization. She also hits the mark when she says those who are on the “outside” often suffer from “paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware”. I might argue with her as to whether they are always delusions, but maybe that makes me delusional?!

Anyway, this should be required reading for all collaborators and collectives of any kind.

I’ve been really busy at work lately, feverishly working on a year-long project that is being shoe-horned into the last few weeks of my employment. We’re working with a design firm to design the interactions and visuals of the site, and I’m building it. Ugh.

One of the things the designers frequently bring up is “open source”. “There’s an open source package that does that, so it should be easy…” is often the predicate to their argument. Open source also came up during my interview with eyebeam yesterday. The director described the lab and process there as “open source”–they like to distribute information openly and freely. Sounds good!

While I agree with many of the philosophies of open source (but not the elitism), I am now starting to shudder when I hear the term. First, the designers just don’t understand how software works. They specify many rich (i.e. AJAX, confirm dialogs, visually rich UI, etc.) interactions–open source packages are usually ugly. Usually. One can *easily* spend as much time required to rewrite a piece of functionality, integrating and modifying an open source package to do the same task up to specification. Open source does not mean something’s been “done”. Open source packages are more like software libraries than finished projects–they provide handy routines/modules, but aren’t usually finished in and of themselves. Unless you are okay with the usually conservative, sometimes useless default UIs and settings they “ship” with.

Hearing the words “open source” from eyebeam made my eyes roll because it’s now also become a synonym for freely, publicly disseminated anything. And I’m not really arguing with that part of it, nor the philosophy behind it. But eyebeam doesn’t open source everything they make, as promised. Take their WaveBubble project (essentially a cellular phone jammer) for instance (here or here). I know it’s illegal, but I want to build one. Lady Ada (the author) says the project will “never be available as a kit due to FCC regulations”. Okay. But I still want to build one. Schematic, please? How about a parts list? I’m pretty technically savvy (not with electronics, granted), but I can’t get the information.

Like most “open source” projects, maybe I’m not in the “committer’s club”, but I ask, “does anybody have the ‘open source’?”

When Alex and I went to Millvale this past weekend, we saw a “real gem” of an infrastructure: an *analog* gas pressure logger! Seeing this system still in use made me realize that one of two things is true.

One, the gas distribution system, at least in Pittsburgh, is antiquated. There seems to be no, or very little, central logging or telemetry data collection infrastructure for the gas distribution network. The system would be slow to respond to an abnormality, as people would have to drive around and collect these paper discs to get a full picture of the system and isolate the problem. The electrical grid, on the other hand, seems much more modern and centrally monitored and controlled.

Or, possibility two: infrastructure’s modernization is place-contextual. That is, infrastructure is newer in newer neighborhoods (obvious), but more interestingly, maybe older neighborhood’s infrastructure is not *updated* as newer technology is released. Maybe infrastructure “decays” or ages along with the neighborhood. Pipes would, of course, but maybe above-ground things (control systems, for instance) do the same. If this is true, it seems like an awfully big burden on the system operators, as they would then have to support a multitude of different systems that report data in different ways. But then again, why upgrade a system if you don’t have to?

One really interesting example of this is the cable TV network. In Larimer, a disadvantaged neighborhood in Pittsburgh, the water mains suck. We saw a few leaky ones in our informal walks through the neighborhood. The neighborhood does have, however, a modern (hybrid fiber-coax) cable TV network. Interesting.

Back to the gas, I’m guessing the real reason is the first. Equitable Gas (or Equitable Resources as they now want to be called) invested a lot of capital in fixing the underground gas pipelines in Pittsburgh–I’m guessing they’re just pushing investment of control/telemetry systems off as long as they can. Gotta’ please those investors!

Over a snack at Panera(!), Alex and I were talking about corporate cultures and how companies attract or drive away certain groups of people as both employees and customers. For instance, Pot Belly Sandwich Works in Troy (and other places) has a culture of “funky artist”. Some of the employees are vegan (as I learned through a discussion with them), and most looked like hipsters. How much of this is corporately desired/encouraged, I don’t know.

Panera, on the other hand, has a more diverse workforce–the one we went to in Pittsburgh had two African-Americans, one guy of unknown decent and three white women working there. Then we thought about McDonalds, and what culture they have. According to their annual reports, McDonalds is moving towards more of a “lounge model” in some urban markets. Presumably, this is to grab more of the “coffee house” market. The locations will reportedly have TVs, wireless Internet and nicer (stuffed?) chairs.

McDonalds advertises mainly to urban African-Americans (looking at their ads of young black men playing basketball and saying they’re “loving it” with their quarter pounder with cheese). When Alex and I worked in Larimer and went into the corner store, it was common to see patrons buying bread and cheese and telling their hungry kids that it was dinner. We assumed these were single mothers who were on a limited income. I’ve read that many use McDonalds in much the same way–a primary food source.

We wondered what role the corner store could play in encouraging nutritious choices, but how about McDonalds? As a corporation that, in many ways, forms people’s thinking about food and nutrition, what role do they have? I acknowledge they are serving salads and fruit now, but I think they could do more. A start may be, for instance, reducing serving sizes of fries or soda. Maybe introducing a fruit-juice sweetened drink. Having *fresh* fruit instead of fries, similar to Panera’s replacement of chips with fruit. McDonalds could, similar to the Healthy Black Families initiative in Pittsburgh, make this thrust a cultural thing. Unfortunately, McDonalds either doesn’t realize the power of their cultural impact, or, more likely, chooses the safe, yet profitable path of giving people what sells, regardless of whether it’s slowly killing them.

I just got back from paying off my student account at the Banff Centre. The receptionist asked me, “when are you leaving?” The 22nd I replied. “Do you want to add more money to your meal plan?” No thanks, I replied. I told her I was vegetarian, and that I didn’t care for the dining options. I could tell this made her a bit upset. “We are an institution…” she said. “The new dining hall will be a lot better.” I’m sure it will be, I said.

My reason for writing about this story is that I find it interesting that the fact that the Banff Centre is an institution is an excuse for bad food or lack of options for people with dietary restrictions. If they had people with vision and attitudes of making the most of their role as an institution (e.g. volume discounts, buying in bulk to reduce costs, etc.), I think they could actually do better than most individuals. They do have professional chefs–most people don’t have those at home!