Google That!

We’ve returned from vacation, and with reliable internet, blogging will once again become regular. In the meantime, here is my upcoming IBJ column.

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My husband and I just returned from a month visiting various parts of Europe–the sort of vacation that becomes possible only when your children are grown and gone. This trip afforded us the luxury of time for observation and reflection that shorter ones rarely did; I even had time to read some of the books I’d optimistically loaded on my IPad.

So what did I learn on my summer vacation?

One thing that immediately struck me was how homogenized citizens from western industrialized countries have become—how much we all look and dress alike. Thirty years ago, on our first trip to Europe, cultural differences expressed in clothing and mannerisms made it fairly easy to spot Americans. Over the intervening years, that has changed. Today, we dress alike, drive the same cars, watch the same television programs and listen to the same (mostly American) music. IPhones, IPods and IPads (and their various clones) are ubiquitous, as are Facebook and Google. Evidence of the globalization of culture—at least pop culture—is everywhere.

But beneath the surface similarities, there is evidence of quite a contrary trend; as Eli Pariser documents in his recent book, “The Filter Bubble,” the internet technology that promises (and delivers) so much is moving us into what he calls a “mediated future”—a future in which each of us exists in a personalized universe of our own construction.

In an effort to give each of us what we want, sites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are constantly refining their algorithms in order to deliver results that are “relevant” to each particular searcher, and they have more data about our individual likes and dislikes than we can imagine. As a result, two people googling “BP,” for example, will not necessarily get the same results, and certainly not in the same order. Someone whose search history suggests interest in investment information may get the company’s annual report, while someone with a history of environmental interests will get stories about the Gulf spill. Similarly, Facebook delivers the posts of friends and family that its algorithm suggests are most consistent with the member’s interests and beliefs, not everything those friends post.

Pariser calls this the “filter bubble,” and points out that—unlike choosing to listen to Fox rather than PBS, for example—the resulting bias is invisible to us.

Little by little, search by search, individuals are constructing different–and disparate–realities. At the same time, traditional news sources aimed at a general audience—the newspapers and broadcasts that required reporters to fact-check assertions, label opinion and aim for objectivity—are losing market share. How many will survive is anyone’s guess.

The implications of both these changes—globalization and individuation—will be especially profound for our political structures. We are already seeing the dysfunctions that result when we elect people with radically different views of reality.

At SPEA, where I work, our mission is to teach aspiring public managers how to govern. This used to mean classes in budgeting, in cost-benefit analysis, in urban policy and human resource management. Today, we face more daunting questions: How do public servants govern effectively when there is no commonly accepted role for government? How do public managers communicate with citizens who do not—in any meaningful way—occupy the same country (or in some cases, the same planet)? (We have just introduced a new major—Media and Public Affairs—in an effort to prepare our students for these unprecedented challenges.)

We’ve globalized commerce, and everyone wears tee-shirts and jeans. But personalization and social fragmentation is also global, and we can’t Google the future.

Leaving Croatia

Tomorrow we fly to Rome, for a couple of days at the same little pensione we stayed at when we first visited the city twenty-five years ago. From Rome, we will fly home. It has been a long vacation, and filled with impressions that will take some time to sort out.

We took a boat to Trogir today to tour extensive Roman ruins–yet another World Heritage site. Everywhere you look in Croatia, it seems, is another amazing landscape.

A few unconnected observations I haven’t previously noted:

Several of the old churches here depict the Madonna and Child as black. I am not sure why, or what the history of such representations is, but I do get a chuckle when I consider how disconcerting those depictions would be to some of our homegrown “Christian” politicos…

As I’ve previously noted, people continue to live in apartments carved into thousand year old walls of the central cities. It’s a reminder that in much of Europe, wealthier people live in the center cities, and poorer folks must settle for what we would call the suburbs. I’m not sure why Americans have inverted that pattern, or when and why density–having neighbors–became something to be avoided. It is density that makes so many services economical, and I have always preferred living in genuine neighborhoods…It’s a puzzle.

Everywhere we’ve gone on this trip we see people wearing English-language t-shirts: everything from Motown to sports teams to University logos to “I heart NY.” And in virtually every case, as the person in the shirt passes by, s/he is speaking German or Italian or French or some other language. For that matter, it is impossible in most cases to tell where people are from. It used to be that you could tell which passersby were Europeans and which Americans with some degree of accuracy; those days are gone. The whole world, it seems, wears jeans and flip-flops, uses IPhones and IPods, and has a Facebook page…

Unless my gaydar is badly malfunctioning, Croatia is a very gay-friendly country…especially the islands. (I will admit to being a bit surprised by a tee-shirt in a local souvenir shop that said–in English–“Just Do It” over a very graphic graphic of male same-sex sex…).

We took a sightseeing bus yesterday, and the guide told us that Croatia is 90% Catholic and 10% atheist….No Protestants, no Jews, and presumably no Muslins, although she didn’t mention them…

I don’t know what my connectivity will be in Rome, but in any event, I will be back in the USA on Friday–air travel permitting–and these posts will revert to the policy and politics subjects that continue to piss me off.

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Of Debt and Taxes

I haven’t written about the congressional impasse (polite word for food fight) over the debt ceiling, because really, what could I say that hasn’t been said many times by many people? But being here in Split, surrounded by evidence that human efforts at civilization have persisted over thousands of years, I’ve grudgingly recognized that our species has persisted through many periods of collective craziness, many characterized by even more self-destructive psychosis than now.

In other words, humans will survive the current capture of Congress by unreflective fanatics who believe God has instructed them not to raise the debt ceiling. (To be honest, I’m less sanguine about our ability to survive the climate-change deniers….previous generations haven’t had the means to destroy the Earth.)

But even though my brain–such as it is–tells me we’ll get through this crazy time, I have a lot of trouble understanding the emergence of the Tea Party. Not their existence; we’ve always had strains of malcontents–anti-social or anti-intellectual or white supremacist or other odd movements–but their ability to make resentment of taxes a rallying cry and a focus for so many people’s anger. And not anger at a particular tax or tax policy, but at the very idea of taxes. They have somehow convinced otherwise reasonable citizens that taxes levied for the general welfare are somehow illegitimate.

During this trip, the things we’ve most enjoyed are the products of just such taxes–great public transportation, preservation of historically significant sites, museums…Do these troglodytes think such services are supported by magic? Let alone police and fire protection, garbage collection, etc.? Are they really willing to forego the very things that make us civilized–trade with other cultures, which depends upon confidence that we will pay our bills, the myriad services that make our common lives easier and more pleasant, any sense of common purpose–for gated communities and personal gun collections?

Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve met lovely people who are not remotely anti-American but who are mystified and worried by what is happening to our political system.

Me too.

We have another day and a half in Split, then two days in Rome before we head home. I wonder what we’ll find when we get there.

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Split

Our week on the Atlantia ended this morning. A minibus picked us up in Omise (??) and drove us the short distance to Split, where we parted company with the other passengers–hugs all around and promises to email. We really lucked out–the crew was exceptional and the passengers were uniformly great companions!

The old city of Split is more extensive than we anticipated, and no taxis or cars are allowed; it is entirely pedestrian. Our minibus left us on the edge of the old city, and we wheeled our luggage past the dock and into a labyrinth of structures that had once been the huge, sprawling castle built by Diocletian. A couple of questions of helpful passersby and we found it.

We are staying at the Vesibul Palace, a sleek, contemporary, 11 room hotel carved out of the walls of Diocletian’s palace. So far, Split is spectacular. We wandered through tiny, winding “ways” lined with cafes and shops and bars; unlike the islands, where one or two places might have Internet, hot spots are–incongruently–everywhere in this nearly 2000-year-old city.

And like everywhere we’ve been in Croatia, it is stunningly beautiful.

Not only is the country physically magnificent, we are repeatedly impressed with the people. One illustrative example: I went into an Internet cafe yesterday, and prepared to pay, when the owner noticed that I had my IPad and needed only wifi. “It will be better for you to go to cafe” he told me, motioning to one down the street. “with a coffee, wifi will be free as long as you need.” This sort of thing has happened over and over. Tips elicit seemingly heartfelt thank-yous.

If you are reading this and come to the conclusion that we really, really are impressed with Croatia, you’re right.

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

This is the last full day of our cruise, and it is raining–something that distresses Tom, who tells me that climate change has affected weather patterns in Croatia. He insists it never rained two days in a row during the summer season until very recently. (We have had rain on this cruise, but so far, at night or a brief shower.)

Tomorrow, we go to Split, where we will have three days before heading home via Rome.

Bob and I are both glad we came to Croatia. There may be a more beautiful place somewhere on the planet, but somehow I doubt it. Certainly, there can’t be one with nicer people.

This has been our longest trip ever. So–as our adventure nears conclusion, what have I learned on my summer vacation?

Well,  first, there is the obvious: people in Europe are much thinner, and if looks can be trusted, much healthier. They are also far more likely to be bi or tri-lingual, probably as a result of living closer together, and the demands of tourism and commerce.

Then there are more impressionistic lessons, with the caveat that the plural of anecdote is not data, and the people with whom we interacted cannot be assumed to be representative.

Unlike in the US, we have encountered no one who expressed contempt for education; no one who sneeringly dismissed expertise or intellect as ‘elitist.’ I have also been struck by the nature of informal political discussion and debate–I have heard lots of “these people make a good point, but those who disagree also have a point”–arguments employing much  less name-calling and much more consideration of the merits of competing arguments and points of view.

Then there were the issues we were questioned about repeatedly: American gun laws, the large numbers of people who reject evolution and global climate change, and America’s incomprehensible lack of a universal medical system. These aspects of American culture do not evoke admiration, to put it mildly–although people are generally too polite to criticize  directly. Instead, they ask questions, trying to understand why we haven’t joined the rest of the western world.

These questions have reminded me once again that ‘American exceptionalism’ originally referred to our outlier status, to sociological distinctiveness– not to some assumed superiority. Heretical as it may seem, there is the possibility there are some things we could learn from others.

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