Logic’s End

The lifeblood of political community!

Although a wealth of modern technology effects our lives in a myriad of ways, it fails to alter the fundamental nature of who we are as human beings. Futurists and progressives often view the adoption of said technological wonders as cataclysmic events. Thus, the rules of how we live our lives are in a constant state of flux with their philosophical interpretation of the world. Philosophically freewheeling over human nature and the principles that govern our interactions, using the blunt hammer of technology innovation, irresponsibly erodes communities.  With the advent of social media, the wave of innovation has finally broken and rolled back, uncovering a once familiar landscape that has always existed around us: a human political community.

Technological innovation is taking place today as it has throughout history. We invented fire, the wheel, the gun, the abacus, nuclear fission and other “insignificant” advances such as written language. While any of our tools can be employed in ways both beneficial and detrimental to the human condition, it’s worth highlighting they are just tools. Human choice determines how they are employed. Gadgets may be designed in ways to afford certain uses, but they do not make that choice themselves. Just as the hammer and the screwdriver do not build a house, a Twitter feed and a Facebook profile do not make an entrepreneur successful or bolster community involvement. We must choose to leverage them wisely.

If Twitter and Facebook magically manipulated human nature and morphed the principles that govern us and create supportive communities, then the way we use them would be irrelevant. Want to tweet about how many followers you have reading your tweets four dozen times a day? It wouldn’t hurt your social reputation if certain fixed human principles didn’t exist. Feel like harassing your neighbor with tweets about how you’re going to put a golf club through his front window, and then posting the pictures of yourself in the act on Facebook? Why not! After all, with all of this innovation around the rules are (no pun intended) out the window!

Understanding how to use social technology requires first comprehending what it means to live a good life within a community. Folks who live in small towns (perhaps even close-knit neighborhoods within larger cities) have the good fortune of experiencing community life amplified to its highest level. If you were out doing doughnuts in farmer Jeb’s field, you can bet that the whole town will know who did it after you tell three people. Coincidentally, such communities help discourage burglary and other malicious activities, thus fostering the development of better citizens. Life in any small town USA is often as close as one can get to a modern rendition of Aristotle’s polis (a political community that fosters the greatest conditions for human beings).

Twitter and Facebook are helping create a modern polis, right in the midst of where traditional Internet has largely failed. Want to see what’s taking place in Buffalo, NY, on any given Saturday night? Follow the #Buffalo hashtag and you will quickly be in the loop. Heard about a crime alert around town? You can bet that’s on twitter too. Curious as to what the specials are at your favorite restaurant? Chances are that venue has a presence on twitter of its own that you can check on the fly. Community events, thoughts, and opinions can all flow freely over the streams of information that are the social networks.

Indeed, the promise of the social networks is great. They are the next frontier of the digital age, a tome of knowledge in which we’ve only just read the first page. There will be dark chapters filled with misinterpretation and the gross misuse of these new social tools. We should not let that deter us from exploring their potential prudently.

A couple of things to be mindful of:  information overload (reading and producing so much information as to end up not allowing enough time to give it proper consideration and thought), and surrogate technology syndrome (using said open communication systems as replacements for real personal human interaction).

Newspapers, pubs, and town halls were once capable of supporting our political communities in a similar fashion, and they are in fact still quite useful. Twitter and Facebook are not surrogates for them–they are complements. Their use can bolster support and sustain older one-way forms of communication substantially. One skillfully word-smithed tweet may succeed in putting an otherwise obscure newspaper article or announcement right in front of hundreds of new readers. Many citizen tweeters may become educated and inspired enough to speak out at town halls and pubs. All of this while keeping everyone in their political communities honest and informed.

In the end, technology will always be defined us. Our choices make all the difference. Just as we could choose to use the gun for murder or justice and nuclear fission for mass destruction or public energy, we can likewise use social networking for community and thought development or mindless and incessant chatter. In the end the same human principles that have continued to govern and judge our use of the wheel will ultimately guide our use of social networks. Moreover, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Henry V, we each have to deal with the consequences of the choices we make as our tools come of age.

With that, I’m off to visit family in #Minneapolis!

As with all things in life, sometimes we learn the most when we fail. Early success can be a harbinger of bad design. Imagine if the first generation cars America made had never been involved in crashes. Would we have begun crash testing and safety design or just assumed that our vehicles wouldn’t crash? Think about how deadly crashes would be on modern automobiles if we hadn’t failed so many times to date.

When we’re talking about modern products and services, the question becomes: how do we design for failure before our products are ever released to the public? It’s no longer sufficient to rely on the user to fail in order for the manufacturer to learn. All of the testing the airline industry puts into the components of a new jet is a testament to good product development, designing for failure under the worst conceivable conditions.

Computer software should be no different. Too often today, the phrase ”beta testing” is synonymous with “product marketing”. This plays a significant role in forcing underdeveloped prototype products into the hands of unsuspecting users too quickly, and I believe it’s what lies at the heart of our most detested software.

With the proper amount of requirements, documentation, and planning the time required for beta testing can be reduced. Nonetheless, even the designs of Leonardo Davinci and a software programmer with the foresight of Sun Tzu couldn’t possibly predict how every single user is going to interact with today’s complex software applications. Testing software will always be a necessary part of development.

So if testing is so critical, how should it be carried out? I would argue that it ought to be a controlled, continuous, and iterative process. You cannot have a handful of your test users sit down at any given time, test for an hour, write down their suggestions, and leave. Nor can you test with all of your users at once, as that would overwhelm your team’s capacity to evaluate and implement their suggestions.

If the US Constitution were drafted and ratified with the involvement of every member of every state government sitting in a giant meeting hall, we’d likely have no Constitution and no country at all. Moreover, if it were created behind closed doors solely by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, we’d have arrived at the same result. Planned, iterative, and controlled development is a reasonable and prudent process.

Therefore, my software testing solution at present is to bring in groups of users and continually increase the size of the test group as changes are implemented and testing is carried out. Representatives from your group of critical stakeholders, the people who have the most to lose from a poorly designed application, are the first to test. After that, I increase the size of that group and add in a few non-critical users. The third and final phase is to open the door to all users for testing with the most refined and development prototype of the software at hand.

It’s important to note that users need to be encouraged to actively participate. Often they tend to wait until the last testing date and submit everything at once. Also, prior to opening the system up to all users, it’s beneficial to get the word out about your product. Much like the Federalist Papers did for the Constitution, you have to create an argument for your product and explain it to the least familiar and most opposed of your users.

Coupled with good planning, good testing can create some of the most innovative and user-friendly software in the computer industry. The developer can fail often and do so before the product arrives in the public’s hands. What this process amounts to is the re-humanization of computer software design. It forces the developer to adapt applications to people naturally, instead of forcing people to adapt to the applications.

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

—St. Thomas Aquinas

For months I’ve kept that quote on my Facebook profile in honor of Saint Thomas Aquinas, my most admired theologian. I’ve rarely given much thought as to what it really means or how it defines and shapes my life online and off. Having read and analyzed much of his most storied work, The Summa Theologica, his work has continued to focus and shape my thoughts and actions.

Reason, for Aquinas, is a unique human characteristic that allows us to understand and contemplate the greater meaning of things. Through proper application of reasonable thought, actions and words can help propel mankind toward its most fully developed state in nature: the greatest good or its Summa Bonum.

How does one determine if a habit or action propels a man toward the greater or greatest good? Reason and prudence are the lenses through which the habit in question must be examined. One has to ask if following such a course will overall provide for a more full, just, and generally happier human condition in practice. This is not to say that some things can be unreasonable, nor that reason itself can be manipulated to determine the greatest evil.

Take for example, the application of reason to traffic law. Is it not reasonable to drive on the right-hand side of the road in America today? Why is it reasonable? Is it simply because the law tells us what is right or wrong? If so, does that imply that the British are unreasonable because they chose to drive on the left-hand side? No. Humans are creatures of habit, and as such they all choose a side on which to drive. Driving on that side means you are less likely to crash and injur yourself, thus it’s a reasonably safe practice of habit. The law is reasonable because it recognizes that habit and reinforces it.

How then, does reason apply to technology and its multitudinous applications? Is a technology reasonable just because it exists? Take blogging for example: is it reasonable to create a blog about hacking government servers just because the technology is there for you to do such a thing? While I’m on that thought, I could highlight the nature of security technologies too. Is it reasonable to track the movements of every individual throughout the country just because we have the technology that allows such a monumental task? I would say that it is not. The way technology is impacts people’s everyday habits and lives is the true measure of its reasonableness. 

If a man is passionate about improving the process of computer programming, then it is reasonable that he blog about that subject to reflect upon and refine his thoughts. If he’s motivated to bring community groups together both online and offline, then it’s reasonable for him to blog about topics that concern his community. Whatever one uses the technology for, it’s reasonable insofar as it recognizes a common, just, and well-established human habit that leads to a greater good for mankind.

So how, specifically, are computer programming, internet marketing, social media, and blogging reasonable then? Are they then rendered unreasonable because they are fundamentally new activities? Have I proven myself false? The truth is quite the contrary. All of those things are digital expressions of human habits that have existed for countless centuries, well before the technologies that form them were a glimmer on the distant horizon.

One could trace computer programming back as far as the invention of the Chinese abacus. Internet marketing, fundamentally the act of selling a product or service, has been around as long as time has been recorded. Social media, the act of forming groups of friends and close-knit communities, is a centuries old human process too. How about blogging then? The distillation and development of thoughts and ideas with a keyboard and monitor differs very little from the use of paper and pen at the end of the day.

As reasonable habits, the prudence of their use can be understood and evaluated. In practice one must determine if they hold true to producing a greater good for society. One could form a social media hate group, a marketing scam, or an anarchy blog. Any of those things would produce a greater evil or state of decay rather than a greater good.