On unlimited wealth, or the dream of it

March 31, 2010 by Brian Hughes

I have begun reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. One topic I find interesting is Godin’s support of the idea of an “unlimited” market (“Limited or Unlimited,” p. 30). I am always struck by the optimism of this perspective. For on this view, one should not behave as if there is a limited market for goods, but rather as if there is no limit to the money to be made. To me, this seems counterintuitive. I guess I don’t fault Godin’s perspective – that it may be advantageous to act as if a market is unlimited – so much as I am skeptical of the alleged fact itself.

I suspect there are economists out there with some thoughts about this, but I haven’t run into them yet lately. So, let’s run a thought-experiment.

Modernized countries have populations that increasingly rely on the labor of poorer countries. We (my fellow middle-class Americans) buy a lot of stuff, but we’re also thrifty. So, for example, when we’re faced with the choice of expensive paper towels or cheap paper towels, we’ll go out of our way to find the best towel at the best price. (For many of us, this activity takes up a considerably larger amount of our time than we’d like to admit.)

And that’s how we get to the part about American auto-makers shuttering their doors, and whole regions of the U.S. bereft of jobs: production happens in China; consumption happens in America. This seems inherently unsustainable: no sooner do we learn about unions driving jobs oversees than we learn about unionization oversees. (To say that this kind of economic growth is sustainable reminds me of the explanation of how the whole universe rests on the back of a turtle.)

But Godin chimes in and reminds us not to worry – that if we’re good enough, there will be jobs for us. Here’s why I think – even counterintuitively – that he’s right:

There’s lots of wealth in the world. Now you’re thinking, “Of course there’s a lot of wealth in the world, Brian, but the point is that is may not be available to the ever-expanding middle class (especially if the ranks of the lower class grow thin).” But one fact (if true) could turn this worry on its head: that people – especially extremely wealthy people – would be happy to live lives of extreme asceticism if they experienced an equally good kind of social and community life.

Or something like that.

I’m not saying this is the case, but it’s the only way I’ll buy into the vision of “unlimited markets.” On this view, trillions and trillions of dollars that are currently tucked away in capital (of one form or another) could be invested in labor, service, and industry (in the broadest sense). Without interest in widgets and dongles of every kind, that labor could be plied to strengthening good ol’ human interactions… and Godin could claim that his “linchpin” fits nicely within this system.

Perhaps the inner communist in me even hopes it’s true. If so, it certainly casts our obsesssion with material wealth and comfort in a tragic light.

Waiting on moral excellence

March 28, 2010 by Brian Hughes

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on my essay on retirement and moral achievement. Originally, I set out with two goals. Firstly, I wanted to be pragmatic about the purpose of the essay (“It’s for the Baby Boomers”), and write with an appropriate sense of urgency. Secondly, I wanted to settle some philosophical scores by blending normative ethics with meta ethics to arrive at a satisfying kind of self-reflection (on the part of the reader). Unfortunately, this pragmatic aim unravels pretty fast as the reader is left to grapple with the irony that the unfinishedness of life is perhaps only surpassed by the inability of philosophy (language itself?) to surmount it.

I still think it’s a worthwhile project. To make progress, perhaps I need a better focus: either I should work on a more tractable philosophical problem or go more boldly into the charlatanry of “self-help” literature. Alas, these are equally tempting options!

A short overview of the essay:

From a great array of possible lives, we have so far, for better or worse, each arrived at one life. But despite a Romantic (if thin) conception of self, the kind of ethics we live by are likely best described as diverse, fragmented, and incomplete. Why is this the case? And, more to the point, what does it—let’s call it fragmentedness—mean for us? Does it mean we will not be able to be happy, successful, or wise? Or does it mean we may be all those things but that we may be unable to escape the doubt that we are not so? To better understand the experience of retirement, we must first develop a kind of “double vision” of ethics—seeing at once that fragmentedness may be necessary, as well as coming to believe that it is essentially untenable. We will also encounter the deep-seated philosophical problem of whether or not there are such things as “moral facts.”

Pressible is ready for your content

February 1, 2010 by Brian Hughes

We are excited to announce the release of Pressible today! This is a very experimental release, though we are hoping you (the lab) and others hop on board and give it a try! Please see our features page for more details, but in a nutshell:

Pressible is highly “templated” — meaning that users can’t change much about the design of their site. Is this a good or bad idea? (Is it good or bad for Facebook?) In any case, it allows us to try some things out that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Watch for more visual elements in the future.
We think Pressible is a reinvention of blogging as a vehicle for publishing your ideas and work to the web in a fast, intuitive, and powerful way. Will you? Let us know!

Also, here are some things we think are cool about the project as a whole:

It’s hosted entirely in the cloud — a new experiment for an EdLab application.
It’s built on the back of WordPress. We did kung fu on the data WordPress throws around to create cool results now, and even cooler results in the future.
Right now it’s experimental, but we are hoping it can mature into a fully-fledged software project hosted by the Gottesman Libraries. We think it can become a way to not only serve the TC community (and alumni), but also individuals and organizations around the world.
We hope you break it. Really… we’re ready to learn from our mistakes. So if you do, let us know!

We hope this is the beginning of a new stage in the lab’s exploration of the future of publishing (hey, it may also be the end of the road!), and are excited to invite the lab to join us moving forward. We envision a lot of other features and functionality that did not make this release, and there are probably things we haven’t even considered yet.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for Pressible today and begin your next big publishing project!

Update on March 15th: Only someone with a Columbia University email address can sign up for Pressible without a special invitation.

A Disney-related setback for e-learning?

October 25, 2009 by Brian Hughes

“If you’ve spent money on an e-learning course in the last five years, you’re entitled to a full refund. We now admit that our courses don’t make you any smarter.”

OK, no one has said that yet, but if you’ve seen the recent news, then you know that Walt Disney has taken the bold step of responding to the threat of a class action lawsuit by offering refunds for “educational” materials sold in recent years – Baby Einstein videos.

“The Walt Disney Company’s entire Baby Einstein marketing regime is based on express and implied claims that their videos are educational and beneficial for early childhood development,” a letter from the lawyers said, calling those claims “false because research shows that television viewing is potentially harmful for very young children.”

Of course the real danger isn’t the degradation of a young child’s vision from frequent and extended use of the television. The problem seems to be about “fostering parent-child interaction.”

Having seen Baby Einstein material, I am somewhat shocked that Disney has acquiesced to removing the label “educational” from these products… it seems to acknowledge that products so labeled would literally have to raise a child’s IQ. Doesn’t that seem like a pretty tough new standard for education? (One that, perhaps, most “educational” products would have difficulty achieving? At least it would prove to be a new, hard-to-prove evaluative standard…)

But even more interesting, I think, is the apparent agreement that the videos are more or less worthless as learning tools – that you might as well turn off the tv and talk with your child. Could it be that this same outcome will be demonstrated all the way up the educational food chain?

Publishers as purveyors of education

September 20, 2009 by Brian Hughes

In Post-Medium Publishing, Paul Graham makes the very elegant point that people have never paid for content. He explores this point from a few directions, pointing the way toward a future with low-cost distribution and high-quality “events.”

Publishers of all types, from news to music, are unhappy that consumers won’t pay for content anymore. At least, that’s how they see it… In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more?

If he’s right, it’s amazing how slow publishers of all kinds have come to appreciate this – even as they run their businesses into the ground. (Perhaps they are just being optimistic that they will survive long enough to retire!? Anyone under 60 should probably adopt a different strategy.) The same could be said of academic institutions.

While academic publishers are conveniently tied to institutions with event models, I suspect they will increasingly see “traditional” publishers move to compete in the academic marketplace… offering new and powerful educational experiences. Will they be able to compete head-on with colleges and universities? I suspect they will. After all, they’ve been distributors all along – it’s just a new kind of content.

A virtual exhibition that makes you want more

July 27, 2009 by Brian Hughes

I haven’t been to the MOMA in a while, but I just found the James Ensor Exhibition website which more or less offers a ‘virtual’ version of the show (and serves as a rich online ad). I felt it gave me a ton of information, and also made me want to go to the real thing! That’s not an easy thing to achieve with web design, but art may be well-suited for this since there’s the so-called “aura of the original” that can perhaps best be perceived in person.

I wonder what the equivalent is in education? What is the in-person or social interaction that you would want to have in person even if you could get almost everything of (a practical?) value online?

Note: I did end up going to MOMA and seeing the Ensor show. It showcases a fantastic artist on the cutting edge of his profession… and Modernity as well!

A generic box is the college of the future

March 25, 2008 by Brian Hughes

Acording to this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, new campus is being built to spec in Chaska, Minnesota – that is, they are building it without knowing who the tenant will be, with the intention of leasing/renting space to a variety of schools. Is this what the college of the future looks like?

Perhaps. It’s a slick idea. As we’ve recently seen on Willoby & Himrod, U.S. colleges are exporting education around the world. So why not grow new campuses at home in the U.S.?

This could lead to competition for students, opening up whole new markets for undergraduates and professionals who would like to receive a degree from a distant college, but who prefer face-to-face instruction.

Will remote facilities be able to deliver the goods? Two possible developments, neither of which feels so good: 1) more traveling for star professors, and 2) more adjunct positions using a ready-made curriculum.