Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Bruce Byfield’ Category

Flying out of the South Terminal

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Hawkair, Personal, South Terminal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Vancouver airport, YVR, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

Most people are probably unaware that the South Terminal of the Vancouver airport even exists. Decades ago, it was the main terminal, but now it is reserved for small local airlines, and the occasional celebrity hoping to slip into town unobserved. A ten minute shuttle ride from the main terminal will take you there, but the effect is like stepping back in time. Looking at the two-story, yellow brick building and the small, aging Dash-8s on the tarmac, you half expect to see Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains standing around in trench-coats talking about what they will do next over a bottle of Vichy water.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but the scale and the pace are very different from what you find at the main terminal. For one thing, the building is no more than seventy meters long. Inside, it looks more like a shopping mall than an airport terminal. Counters for half a dozen companies line one side, and the center of the building is dominated by a cafe. At one end is a gift shop, full of the inevitable smoked salmon and vaguely Northwest Coast designs. You have to search to find the security checkpoint, which opens on to the single waiting area, which might manage to hold a hundred people, if it were ever full (which, in my experience, it never is).

The crowds are smaller, too, and their members more casually dressed. You don’t get many executives flying out of the South Terminal – or, if they do, they are flying upcountry to small towns where blue jeans and a T-shirt are acceptable as business casual. Who you do see are many men and women in middle age, heavy set and looking as if they might have fished or cut timber thirty years ago. A few music players and netbooks are visible if you look, but not many. You can count them on the fingers of one hand, if you choose, because, there’s rarely forty people waiting at any given time.

This setting makes traveling far more casual than at the main terminal. If you have to wait in line at the counter, it’s only for a couple of people at the most. The counter staff are relaxed and chatty. So are the security staff; while they are by no means slack, they are the only security staff I’ve ever encountered who could be described as friendly and forthcoming. When I forgot my keys in a tray after my belongings were scanned, one even hurried after me with them. They almost make an annoying and pointless procedure bearable, apparently well aware that the chances of suicide bombers targeting a flight to Campbell River or Terrace are remote. Of course, they don’t have to hurry, since there are almost never two planes taking off at the same time, but I appreciate the general atmosphere all the same.
When you line up and are led to your plane along the pedestrian walkways painted on the tarmac, you find the same casual efficiency is found on board the aircraft that fly from the South Terminal – or at least you do on Hawkair, which I’ve flown twice now. When was the last time you remember that WestJet or Air Canada held an in-flight raffle? Or handed out complementary newspapers (even if it was just The Vancouver Province)? Or invited you to take advantage of the empty seats to give yourself more room? Admittedly, once on a SouthWest flight into Phoenix, the pilot announced that we were ahead of schedule and detoured so we could see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon, but I can’t remember the same atmosphere anywhere else.
If you can’t guess, I love flying out of the South Terminal. If the airlines attached to it flew every place I wanted to go, I would use it exclusively and never come near the main terminal (except to view its display of Northwest Coast Art). Given that my parents didn’t have the decency to let me born independently wealthy, it’s probably the closest I’m ever going to get to flying in a private charter.

Read Full Post »

The self-confident and the self-doubting

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, creativity, extroversion, introversion, Personal, self-confidence, self-doubt, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

The Geek Feminist Blog, which is always a source of intelligent reading as I start my daily routine, recently posted an answer to question about how to maintain self-confidence. The poster responded with suggestions, several of which were about how to boost self-esteem – for instance, talk to supportive friends, celebrate your accomplishments, and “don’t forget to be awesome,” which apparently means to feel good about yourself and what you do. However, what neither the poster nor most of the commenters on the entry ever seemed to consider is that self-doubt might have any advantages, or, at the very least, be preferable to self-esteem.

One of the peculiarities of North American culture is that it emphasizes the extrovert. In the popular conception, to be confident and outgoing is to be successful – and not just at one end of a personality perspective.

By contrast, to be diffident and private is nearly synonymous with sociopathy. Geeky high school kids, for example, are widely viewed as the ones most likely to gun down their classmates.

Yet, when you stop to think, both these views fall far short of reality.

Confidence is based on experience, on having gained an understanding of a situation or the ability to handle a situation. But the problem is that North America favors the appearance of confidence – especially in men – and is careless about whether it is real or not. The result is a culture in which, all too often, criticism is ignored and those who argue risk being branded “not a team player.” The dangers of risk-taking are ignored, because to doubt is to show a lack of of confidence and to reveal yourself as being less than leadership material.

Sometimes, the result pays off, because audacity can take people by surprise. But, if you look around business, more often the result is rash, ill-considered, or just plain wrong decisions whose shortcomings a moment’s reflection would have revealed.

For instance, I once worked for a company that brought in a CEO armed with the latest managerial theories. His inevitable response to any company financial crisis was to purge the staff. He would protect his officer team, but otherwise his purges were random. Frequently, he fired key employees who were the only ones who understood major parts of the software that the company was producing. Not that he meant to fire key employees, but the problem was he couldn’t recognize them and was just as likely to fire them as anybody else.

The result? Survivors were demoralized, because not even the jobs of key players were safe. Often, a few months later, the key players were hired back at the more expensive rates of consultants. Other times, the company blundered on alone, trying to recover the lost knowledge instead of doing original development. Four purges and two years later, the company sold its resources and ceased business. What looked like bold and decisive action to the board of directors in the long-term destroyed the company because it was uninformed.

By contrast, self-doubt carried to extremes causes indecision. But what few people seem to consider is that, kept within reasonable limits, self-doubt can be a healthy and creative attitude. Where the artificially confident plunge unthinkingly ahead, the self-doubter looks for information and considers alternatives. Afraid they have left something out, they ask for feedback from other people. Before they act, they double-check, and try to allow some flexibility. While they may miss opportunities that require immediate response, the self-doubters are far less likely than the self-confident to do something wrong – or, if they do, they may have a plan to correct or mitigate the problem.

In other words, doubting yourself can be a source of creativity and painstaking. In fact, of all the accomplished writers and artists I have known, and of all the entrepreneurs I have known who were successful over a period of years or decades, not one of them fell into the category of the artificially self-confident. They might have a facade of confidence, especially the entrepreneurs and especially the men, yet talk to them in private and you would be in no doubt that they were self-doubters. Some of them were not the most naturally gifted, yet they succeeded because their self-doubts drove them to compensate for their perceived deficiencies.

What I have suggested seems a paradox: those who appear most likely to succeed aren’t. Yet I think this paradox is central to creativity and planning.

Robert Graves expressed the paradox elegantly in his poem, “Broken Images:”

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Read Full Post »

Blogging is for practice

Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on April 13, 2010| 1 Comment »

A few days ago, I received an invitation to participate in a study about why people blog. I deleted it without a reply, partly because I never answer phone or email surveys on the grounds that I always have something better to do. Also, I suspect that, as someone who makes a living through writing, I am not a typical blogger, so my replies wouldn’t help the study much. Still, having recently written my 400th post, the question seems legitimate: Why do I blog?

In many ways, I can more easily explain the reasons that do not motivate me. I do not blog for attention. I get enough attention, positive and negative, from my professional writing, and, like many writers, I have enough of a love/hate relationship with that attention that I feel no need to find more.

For the same reason, I do not need to assert to the world that I am writer. Since 2004, I have written approximately 850 articles that I have been paid for. That makes me a journalist by any reasonable definition, even if one obsessive critic always likes to follow my name with “who calls himself a journalist,” as if to create doubts in people’s minds that I am one.

Say what you like about the purity of amateur writing – or of so-called “indie” publication or what we used to call vanity publishing in a more honest era – there is nothing like having other people pay you and asking you to write for them to make yourself think of yourself as a writer. After the first fifty or sixty publications, the truth starts to seep in. I still get a small thrill at publication, or when a story of mine gets picked up on Slashdot, but not as much as I did six years ago. Largely, I take publication for granted, since in six years I have only had one story rejected, and a couple heavily queried.

Nor do I blog for the ego satisfaction of building an audience. Although my blog sometimes touches on free and open source software (FOSS), the general subject of my professional writing, I usually only blog on FOSS when I have something to say that I could not turn into an article for which I could get paid. I know that I could easily get a couple of thousand visitors a day if I blogged about FOSS, because those are the sorts of numbers that I have when I do. But I don’t mind in the least that this blog lopes alone at one-tenth of those numbers. If anything, I prefer the lower numbers, because I can often tell when friends have logged on.

So why do I blog ? I mean as opposed to writing in general, which is an even more complicated and difficult question to answer.

Partly because I’m writing anyway. Most of my blog posts begin as an entry in the journal that I’ve kept for years. A few journal entries are too private to go out, and remain safely in their password-protected file, but many are transferred directly into the blog.

Those that are transferred to the blog are usually on subjects that I don’t generally get paid to write about – increasingly, on Northwest Coast art. Often, they are warmups at the start of my writing day, or what’s left of my writing energies at the end of the day.

However, there is one great difference in a piece of writing done for a journal and one for eventual blog publication: for a public piece of writing, I am far more concerned with structure. Nobody – I hope – will ever see my journal entries, so they can be unfiltered streams of consciousness, in which I pay little attention to how ideas are arranged. But, when I publish anything that other eyes will see, I feel an obligation – both to myself and to readers – to organize it.

Accordingly, I do not write what most people do in a blog. My blog entries are small personal essays, which is one reason why they are much longer than a typical blog entry. By following this rule, I make a journal entry not just self-expression, but an exercise in structure. By writing blog entries as essays, I force myself to practice the art I follow, and, I hope, become more skilled in it. At the very least, I write more easily because of this rule.

Of course, this orientation sets limits on my subject matter. I rarely write about my partner to preserve her privacy, and there are huge chunks of my life that are unlikely to appear in a blog because I won’t share them.

Yet, even so, I never have any serious problems finding a subject. Writing is one of those things that I do, and this blog, essentially, is for practice.

Read Full Post »

Visiting the Glenbow Museum

Posted in Aboriginal culture, Blackfoot, Bruce Byfield, Calgary, First Nations culture, Glenbow Museum, Indian Culture, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Last Thursday afternoon, when I was not wandering downtown Calgary trying to soak in the atmosphere, most of my time was spent at the Glenbow Museum. I have heard of the Glenbow for years, but that was my first visit. I found the museum disappointing, mainly because it spread itself too thin with its exhibits.

I suppose that a diversity of exhibits is a wise move for attracting the public. However, you can immediately see the problem I am talking about simply by listing the exhibits and permanent displays that the museum was hosting when I was there. It includes “Modernist Art from the Glenbow Collection;” “Many Faces, Many Paths: Art of Asia;” “Treasures of the Mineral World;” “Warriors: A Global Journey Through Five Centuries;” “Kent Monkman: The Triumph of Mischief;” “The Nude in Canadian Art, 1920-1950;” “Where Symbols Meet: A Celebration of West African Achievement;” “Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta;” “The Blackfoot Gallery;” “The Four Directions Gallery” (an overview of four First Nations cultures), and a exhibit of five Blackfoot shirts taken to England in the 19th Century.

Possibly, I have missed a few. Even so, most of these are enormously large topics, and to reduce them to a single gallery cannot possibly do them justice, no matter how well-meaning or intense the effort. The Modernist and Warrior exhibits especially suffered from too large a scope. Usually, the exhibits that seemed most successful to me were those with limited scopes, such as the Nudes exhibit, although perhaps I might have felt that such exhibits suffered same superficiality if I had known more about their subjects.

However, my disappointment was greatest with the First Nations exhibits, which I had especially wanted to see.

The Four Directions Gallery, with its attempt to do cross-cultural comparisons of First Nations group, seemed especially prone to superficiality. Canadian First Nations share a similar experience in relation to the European settlement, but, otherwise, they are so divergent that comparing them makes far less sense than comparing, say, French and Polish culture.

In the case of the Northwest Coast, which I know best, the gallery gave no indication of the unrivaled richness of the cultures. To make matters worse, it emphasized Kwakwaka’wakw artifacts, almost entirely ignoring the three other major cultural groupings of the coast – an organizing principle that seems to have been applied for convenience rather than because it is a natural one.

Yet, even so, granted that the Kwakwaka’wakw and the Inuit both have drums and canoes, are the associations of these artifacts the same in both cultures? The Four Directions Gallery gives visitors no way of knowing, and, given the size of the room, the cultural comparison attempted can only seem lacking.

By far the strongest exhibit is The Blackfoot Gallery. However, it, too, suffers problems – although different ones from the rest of the museum. On one level, the Blackfoot Gallery was a well-meaning attempt to give a sympathetic portrayal of a First Nations culture by working with its descendants. Yet, even so, the exhibit persisted in dividing words in Nitsitapiisinni (Blackfoot) into syllables separated by hyphens, a 19th Century habit that has the effect of making the language seem simple and childish.

Another problem was that having modern Blackfoot organize the exhibit often gave the impression of propaganda, emphasizing those points that modern industrial culture could find admirable and glossing over less attractive subjects.

This impression was especially strong in the seating area where Nitsitapiisinni values were listed. Naturally, all the values were admirable ones, and I was left feeling that I had encountered the Noble Savage myth in modern, mutated form.

Perhaps such propaganda is necessary to counter the negative impressions that persisted in the 20th Century and continue in the media today, but I would much rather have a warts and all portrait of the culture than an exalted or a debased one. The First Nations of the Northwest Coast do not seem reluctant to admit that their ancestors, for all their achievements, were rigidly stratified and dealt in slaves, and I can only hope that the Nitsitapiisinni can achieve the same balance someday in talking about their own past. Meanwhile, the attitude weakened what was otherwise a genuinely informative exhibit.

Even with these deficiencies, the Glenbow Museum is mentally stimulating, and I will certainly return the next time I am in Calgary. Yet I went away wondering if the need to appeal to modern sensibilities inevitably means that museums have to be superficial and leave those wanting deeper information unsatisfied.

I don’t think so. Despite its faults, the Blackfoot Gallery has moments of real depth that could be a model for the rest of the Glenbow. But, too often, the impression I took away was that education was taking a distant second place to entertainment.

Read Full Post »

One warm line through Calgary

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Calgary, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2010| 2 Comments »

Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage,
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
– Stan Rogers

I maintain that you can never know a city until you walk around it and use its sidewalks and public transit. Last year, I didn’t get to see much of Calgary outside of the conference hotel for COSSFest (the Calgary Open Source Solutions Festival), so I was determined to correct my oversight this year, at least a bit. I arrived the day before the conference, and no sooner checked in to the hotel and dropped my luggage than I headed off to catch the C-Train.

The first thing I learned was that Calgary takes a different view of rapid transit than the Vancouver region. In Vancouver, space is scarce, so elevated transit lines, which are both more expensive and environmentally less sound are favored. By contrast, Calgary opted for a mostly ground level system. It It seems to work at least as well as Vancouver’s. And while the highways were crowded enough at rush hour, so were the C-Train cars.

Moreover, Calgary is more systematic about rapid transit. Instead of Vancouver’s confusing system of zones, which can challenge even experienced riders (okay, I mean it can challenge me), Calgary has a flat rate of $2.75 for the entire system. Similarly, where the Vancouver region has designed many of its recent stages as modern art that leaves passengers on the platform in the middle of a wind-tunnel, Calgary provides an area where people can huddle inside until the train comes. The difference, I suppose, is that Vancouver rarely gets truly cold, while Calgary does so regularly. Having been caught in a snow storm on the C-Train, I can testify that shelter is a necessity, not a frill.

The trip downtown was quick and non-eventful, although I noted that my hotel was not far from the zoo. I also observed that Calgary seems to have a thorough system of urban trails, and that people use them. The rivers the C-Train crossed were still frozen along sheltered shore lines, and every now and then the currents would flash an icy green whose like I have never quite seen anywhere else.

Getting off at the Olympic Plaza station, I quickly found my way to the Glenbow Museum for a whirlwind tour (which I plan to write about in the near future). Then, with the station as my anchor, I started looping further away in one block intervals in all directions.

My impression is that Calgary is a brasher city than Vancouver, more entrepreneurial where Vancouver is more activist and artistic. The Olympic advertising excess that left half of Vancouver disgusted (including me) would hardly rate a notice in Calgary; the casual ads I saw on the C-Train and on the streets were blaring by Vancouver standards. Perhaps that is why their Winter Olympics had more support than ours, although the difference in the times is probably responsible as well.

Another difference is that, while Vancouver sometimes seems cursed to be a forest of skyscrapers covered in blue-green glass, Calgary is more adventurous (or insecure) architecturally. Every 20th and 21st Century school of architecture seems represented in Calgary’s downtown. The result could be called a high-rise version of strip malls, with all the different styles tending to cancel each other out, and only an impression of disorder remaining.

This impression is strengthened by the fact that Calgary preserves relative low rises far more often than Vancouver does. I suppose it can afford to preserve its history because space is not at premium, whereas, in Vancouver, the fact that development is squeezed into a couple of peninsulas means that preservation is only practical in limited areas.

But, whatever the reason, the establishing shots you see of Calgary as just another high-rise business center are real only at a distance. When you are actually walking the streets, the difference in building heights is very noticeable. On some streets, you almost get the impression when looking up that Calgary is a much smaller city than it really is, despite the crowds on the sidewalks

I reasoned – correctly – that Calgary would have a rush hour, so I kept an eye out for a place to eat. In Vancouver, in the distance I walked, I could have found a dozen ethnic restaurants, each of which would offer a superb meal in a mellow setting. As a former Calgarian said to me, “Vancouver is one big restaurant.”

In Calgary, though, the ethnic restaurants downtown were less upscale in Vancouver (at least the ones I saw). Most upscale restaurants seem to offer some variant of modern cuisine, and to be overpriced by Vancouver standards. Or such was my impression – I’ll have to verify it on later trips. On this trip, wanting more than deVille Luxury Coffee and Pastries could provide, I settled on the Deli at Art Center, which had a casual atmosphere and reasonable food not that much more expensive than its equivalent would have been in Vancouver.

True to my regional conditioning, I scurried back to the hotel at the first signs of a snow flurry, and unfortunately, I am unlikely to have more time to explore this trip. So I still cannot claim with any accuracy that I know Calgary. All I can really say is that I’ve traced a few paths through it. Most of greater Calgary remains unknown to me.

Read Full Post »

The days before I travel

Posted in anticipation, Bruce Byfield, humor, Personal, travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Maybe early toilet training is to blame (when is it not?). But, for whatever reason, I am all but useless the day before I travel.

I’m not too bad in the morning. If I get an early start and apply self-discipline, I can do a few hours’ work, if I’m lucky. But by noon a restlessness sets in, and I want to up and traveling.

Since I can’t travel yet, distractions begin to tempt me. I check my mail with increasing frequency, and visit favorite sites more often than the frequency of their updates would warrant. I wander downstairs to check for the mail. I stop to snack. I wipe a corner of the counter, and gather up the newspapers.

As these distractions multiply in frequency and number, they start turning into packing almost imperceptibly. I begin putting small items aside to pack. I get out my clothes. Then, without any conscious volition, I drag out my bags and start packing.

Never mind that if I iron and fold my clothes now, they will be too rumpled to wear on the trip. A nervous excitement has gripped me, and I’m no longer in control. I pack my socks and underwear and toiletries. I choose books to read on the trip, always putting at least one with my carry-on luggage. Even after I think I’ve finished, I keep remembering small items that I need or at least would prefer to have with me. Often, I have half a dozen after-thoughts.

When I’m done, I may still have fourteen hours or more before I leave. But I don’t care – so far as I’m concerned, I’m already on vacation. I resume my restless prowling around the townhouse, picking up books and putting them down, and starting music and stopping it after a few minutes. I may even nap – and why not? It’s not as though I’m going to manage more than a few hours’ restless sleep that night.

Possibly, I would be calmer if I traveled more often. I don’t think so, though. Even a short, mundane trip, like tomorrow’s to Calgary, leaves me crippled by anticipation. Place the blame on an over-active imagination, work that leaves me under-socialized, or early toilet training, as I said.

I certainly can’t be blamed. I’m traveling tomorrow.

Read Full Post »

Interns and other slaves

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, employers, employment, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 3, 2010| 3 Comments »

I see that some American states are starting to investigate the use of interns as unpaid labor. All I can say is that it’s long overdue.

So far as I’m concerned, most companies that use interns are like John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” in the mid-1700s. Contrary to a popular misconception, Newton did not become a Christian and write the hymn, then turn against his job in the slave trade; instead, after writing the hymn, he remained both a Christian and a slaver for two decades before coming out against the slave trade.

Too often, companies are like Newton on a smaller scale when they hire interns. They may be environmentally conscious and contribute to charities in their communities, but their labor practices make them hypocrites hiding behind conventional business practices.

Understand, I am not talking about programs like Google’s Summer of Code that give small stipends to students who would otherwise be unpaid volunteers. Still less am I talking about companies who hire co-op students at proper entry level salaries, or about genuine apprentice programs. What I am talking about are companies that hire the young and aspiring for full-time work at far below what they would pay a new employee — if they pay them at all — while pretending that they are giving them something special.

The argument used to justify such internships is that those chosen gain valuable job experience. Moreover, because interns are generally untrained, their employers often argue that they require experienced employees to watch over them and redo their work if necessary.

However, the same arguments could be applied to new employees. In most jurisdictions, the fact that someone is a new employee is not grounds for denying them a living wage, so why should the same argument be considered valid for interns? In entry-level positions, new employees are often no more trained than interns are. New employees may receive a smaller salary while on probation, but even so they generally receive enough to live on.

When I was chief steward for the Teaching Assistant’s union at Simon Fraser University, we had a basic negotiating principle: a fair days’ work for a fair day’s pay. That is not the least socialistic (not that there’s anything wrong with that so far as I’m concerned; I can belt out “Where the Fraser River Flows,” “Solidarity Forever,” and a lot of the rest of Utah Phillip’s repetoire). Rather, it’s an insistence that our semi-capitalistic system live up to its own principles. Employees who are producing acceptable work for you deserve to be paid the going rate for that work; if their work is not acceptable, you fire them. The exchange of labor is as simple as that, and there is no excuse for making an exception for interns.

The real reason for underpaying interns — as if anyone couldn’t guess — becomes obvious when you notice that many companies delay filling full-time positions until after the interns have left at the end of August, or hire more interns than full-time staff. Such cases make clear that interns are simply a cheaper (or free) pair of hands. When you keep this reason in mind, all the the pious claims of helping interns by giving them experience becomes the modern equivalent of claims that 19th Century slaves were housed and fed better than in their homelands, or benefited from exposure to Christianity. All these claims are simply excuses for unethical business practices that conventional morality chooses to ignore because they are convenient.

True, some companies eventually hire the best of their interns. But only a handful of interns are ever so lucky. Besides, companies might as well ask new employees to pay a premium for their position, because, by giving a company cheap labor, that is basically what interns are doing when they are later hired as regular employees. No matter how you look at it, the fact that some interns are hired full-time doesn’t justify internships any more than the fact that diligent slaves were sometimes freed justifies slavery. Interns may be better off than slaves (although, considering what I’ve heard about certain gaming companies, I sometimes wonder), but the scope of the ethical dodginess doesn’t change the basic situation.

Low-paying internships would be objectionable under any circumstance. However, what makes them worse is the pretense that they are anything other than a cost-saver. At least if companies would say, “We hire interns because we save money that way,” an honest discussion could take place. But, instead, they hide what they are doing by claiming that they are the benefactors rather than exploiters.

This claim is an ethical dodge that Newton would have understood. But at least he eventually saw his own contradiction. There are few signs that, left to themselves, companies that exploit interns ever will.

Read Full Post »

Why I support Document Freedom Day

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Document Freedom Day, FLOSS, FOSS, Free Software, Free Software Foundation, KOffice, open source, OpenOffice.org, Personal, Tommy Douglas, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2010| 1 Comment »

Today is Document Freedom Day, a promotion of non-proprietary standards like Open Document Format. Around the world, small groups of free and open source software (FOSS)users are holding events to educate others about the importance of this issue, and The Free Software Foundation has launched a campaign to encourage supporters to politely refuse attachments sent in proprietary formats like Microsoft Office’s. And, inevitably some people are saying these efforts are useless – and proving that they miss the point.

In circumstances like these, the critics’ usual argument goes something like this: Campaigning against something does nothing to stop people using it. They say that a street protest against Apple’s so-called Digital Rights Management technology will do nothing to stop the sales of iPads. Nor will promoting Open Document Format stop the majority from using Microsoft’s .docx format. So, they ask, why bother to take a stand?

Perhaps in the narrowest sense, they have a point. Document Freedom Day will not stop large number of users from entrusting their documents to Microsoft Office formats. Nor will very many switch to Koffice, OpenOffice.org, or any other office application that uses Open Document Format.

However, what the critics fail to appreciate is that ultimate success is not what these promotions and campaigns are really about. Yes, their organizers talk as though persuading everybody to their cause is the point, but they are neither stupid or naive. If you press them, they will admit that they do not really expect that millions of computer users will suddenly flock to their side.

So what is the point? I can think of at least three:

First, while such campaigns do not win millions of supporters, they can win dozens. Each time FOSS advocates staff a table on a university campus, or hand out pamphlets on the street, a few people stop to ask questions and become convinced. Others may not immediately support the cause, but they at least learn (often for the first time) that alternatives exist. Even if they are not ripe for switching to free software today, they may grow more critical of proprietary software and eventually start investigating free software some time in the future. These are the kinds of small victories by which FOSS has always spread, and they should not be overlooked.

Second, these campaigns are a way of encouraging existing supporters. When you hold a minority viewpoint, you get tired of seeing opposing views around you. You become accustomed to holding your tongue because you don’t want to bore your friends. You don’t want a reputation as an obsessive who is more concerned with what others consider side-issues than with getting on with the task at hand. When you are accustomed to restraining yourself, standing up and expressing what you actually think and feel is a refreshing relief. Doing so reaffirms your beliefs, and renews your commitment over the long-haul. In a sense, these campaigns are celebrations of the existing community – a way of keeping existing supporters as much as gaining new ones.

However, even if the campaigns had no other purpose, they would still be worthwhile in the same way that spoiling your ballot or voting for a minority party in an election is worthwhile.

In this sense, I am reminded how Tommy Douglas, the founder of universal medical coverage in Canada, explained why he stood by his social democratic beliefs when most of them had no chance of being widely accepted:

You say the little efforts that I make will do no good; they never will prevail to tip the hovering scale where justice hangs in balance. I don’t think I ever thought they would, but I am prejudiced beyond debate in favor of my right to choose which side shall feel the stubborn ounces of my weight.

In other words, sometimes you need to stand up for what you know is right, regardless of consequences, simply out of self-respect. Campaigns like Document Freedom Day give the opportunity for such self-reaffirmation, and I would support them for that reason alone, even if more practical reasons did not exist as well.

Read Full Post »

Learning competence with free and open source software

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Free Software, linux, open source, Personal, teaching, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A few moments ago, I changed the flapper tank ball on the toilet. That would be an unpromising beginning for a blog entry, except for the unwarranted satisfaction I took from the job. Not that the repair needed a plumber, but I grew up thinking that I wasn’t the least bit handy. The fact that I am now in any way competent at home repairs I attribute largely to over a decade of using free and open source software.

So far as I remember, nobody ever told me I was clumsy in so many works as I was growing up. But, with one thing and another, I certainly received that impression. For one thing, I am left-handed, and, while like many lefties, I am necessarily more ambidextrous than the rest of the population, to the average eye, I looked clumsy. More importantly, I usually had to reverse any demonstrations I was given, an effort that few young children can successfully make, no matter how bright they happen to be. Consequently, I was a long time learning to tie my shoes or swim – which only justified everybody thinking me clumsy – including me.

Probably, I wasn’t helped, either by the fact that I tried to compensate for my clumsiness by being energetic and aggressive when I played sports. These traits gave me a rough and ready ability, but I wasn’t initially chosen for the school soccer team in Grade Six, or as one of the Saturday morning players tapped for going into the premier division a few years later. I only learned the skills a soccer player needs to control the ball or work with a team a few years later.

Besides, I was bookish and liked academic subjects in school. Naturally I wasn’t supposed to have any physical skills as well. That would have been against all the laws of stereotyping.

Consequently, between one thing or another, I grew up thinking myself uncoordinated – a self image that, unsurprisingly, often made me just that. Whenever I tried anything new, I expected to do it poorly, so often I did.
Once, when I called myself a slow learner, a teacher replied, “Yeah, but I bet than when you do learn, you don’t forget it.” But that was not much compensation.

It was only when I became a university instructor and later a technical writer that I realized another source of my clumsiness: Most people are terrible teachers, even when they teach for a living. Few have the patience to work with beginners. Even fewer can remember the days when they were beginners. Inevitably, they leave out important steps when they try to instruct, or fail to mention what to do in unusual circumstances. Probably, the main reason why I taught English and wrote manuals successfully is that I tried to give students and users the instructions that I would need myself.

But the real revelation came as I started using GNU/Linux as my main operating system. Like everybody else, using Windows had taught me how to be helpless. The default resources discouraged me from exploring Windows, and the information I needed was mostly lacking.

GNU/Linux, though, is different. It is designed for users to poke about and configure. If you run into trouble, help is only an Internet search away.

Without making any conscious decision, or being aware of what was happening, slowly I started to learn how to troubleshoot. I learned that very little I could do would harm my installation, much less cause the motherboard to belch flames, as I half-feared. All I had to do was observe, take a few precautions, and work systematically, and I could do far more than I had ever imagined when I was a Windows user.

Gradually, I transferred this same mind-set to other parts of my life. To my surprise, I found that it was usually just as applicable to home repairs as those on the computer.

I won’t say that I have any particular talent for handiwork. But, somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking of myself as clumsy. I no longer approach every new physical task with the expectation of failure, and, far more often than not, I succeed at it. Even on those occasions when a real expert is needed, I often understand what the problem is . A surprising amount of the time, I just lack the tools or the parts to do the job myself.

This personal change is one of the biggest reasons that I am committed to free software. Using Windows only reinforced my belief in my own incompetence at fixing or improving things. By contrast, free software proved to my that I was capable of far more than I had ever imagined.

Read Full Post »

A column, not a totem pole

Posted in aboriginal art, art, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Coast Tsimshian, column, crest pole, first nations, First Nations art, Henry Green, indian art, k'an, Northwest Coast Art, northwest coast history, Personal, pts'aan, Sm'algyax, totem pole, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 23, 2010| 4 Comments »

The more I learn about Northwest Coast art, the more the term “totem pole” bothers me. For years, I’ve been looking for a better term, and now I think I’ve found a couple.

“Totem pole” bothers me for two reasons. To start with, despite what the Europeans believed when they reached the northwest coast of North America, the artifacts that the term refers to are not totems. A totem is a supernatural guardian of a group of people, often their mythological ancestor – a minor deity comparable to the local spirits of the ancient Greeks. However, so-called totem poles classically did not depict totems, but hereditary crests and the occasional allusion to both historical and mythical accounts of the family that uses the crest.

In other words, when the European settlers destroyed the artifacts in the belief that they were destroying false gods, what they were really doing was the equivalent of smashing and defacing the coats of arms depicted on government buildings and the houses of the rich in Europe.

In addition, the popular term has also given rise the idiomatic expression “low man on the totem pole.” This expression suggests that the most important figures were always at the top, when, in reality, no such convention in Northwest cultures. In fact, in some cultures, such as the Tsimshian, the most important figure was placed on the bottom, and figures of secondary importance at the top, according to master carver Henry Green.

You could use “crest pole” instead, as I have occasionally seen. But the trouble is, I also object to the word “pole.” True, “pole” is technically accurate, being a word that describes a round object made of wood, and it is often used today in place of “totem pole.” However, it greatly understates the magnificence of many of the artifacts to which it is applied. You might as well call the Arc de Triomphe a gateway or a slab.

My first hint of an alternative came when Henry Green referred to a pole he is doing using the Sm’algyax (Coast Tsimshian) word “pts’aan.” Seeing this word was a bit of a revelation, because I realized that I had never heard the word in any First Nations language for a pole. It seems to me that, if we are starting to use the original name of cities and countries, pronouncing the capital of France as “Paree” instead of “Paris” and using “Suomi” instead of “Finland,” then we might also consider using the proper names for important cultural institutions and artifacts.

Apparently, though, “pts’aan” has an even more exact meaning. According to Green, it refers specifically to a pole that is hollowed out and flattened at the back. By contrast, a pole that is left fully rounded is a “k’an.”

Seeing these words, I asked Green what he might suggest for an English translation (assuming that we need one). He emailed back, referring to both a pts’aan and a k’an as columns. Perhaps you could call a pts’aan a half-column and a k’an a column in English? If other Northwest Coast cultures have additional terms, then “column” could be further qualified as needed.

This change of terms, I think, could have a powerful effect on how the Northwest Coast cultures are regarded. Regardless of whether you refer to a totem pole, a crest pole, or just a pole, a pole sounds like a simple, utilitarian object. A pole, after all, is something you use for fishing, or to hang a light from.

However, call a pts’aan or k’an a column, and you are making it the equal of Trajan’s Column or Nelson’s Column. Suddenly, by using “column” instead of “pole,” you realize that you are talking about an object of major importance to its culture – something that required considerable effort and artistic skill to create, and celebrates something important. You are forced to confront the fact that the cultures that made such things are not primitive (assuming that this word actually refers to anything these days), but as complex and as rich as any in Europe. Just by changing the word, your entire perspective changes.

Probably, “totem pole” is too entrenched to be replaced easily. However, I am seriously thinking of trying to promote the use of “column” as a replacement. It simply seems more accurate and precise.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »