Archives
You are looking at the Social Matters archive
Unicorns
I can see unicorns at play in easter-basket-grass fields surrounded by lollipop trees and marshmallow stones. (I’ll explain later.)
Written by Mike Monteiro on July 9, 2008 | 
A simple guide to sharing
The Beacon debate continues. In today’s NY Times Zuckerberg and Co. claim that users will learn to love Beacon once they give it time.
There’s lots of mentions of “sharing” and “volunteering” of information in that article. Enough so that I thought we might need a primer. Here’s my favorite:
“Isn’t this community getting a little hypocritical?” said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. “Now, all of a sudden, they don’t want to share something?”
Somebody didn’t watch enough Sesame Street. Let’s review:
My mom packs me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I see that the kid across from me in the cafeteria has no sandwich. Because I watched enough Sesame Street I offer him half my sandwich. We both get enough to eat, and as Cookie Monster would say “I’ve built a relationship based on shared trust.”
Now let’s say I get up to buy a half-pint of orange drink to go with my sandwich and in my absence the kid without a sandwich says “Can I have half your sandwich?” and I, being out of range, don’t hear him ask. I haven’t said “No.” so he decides that’s permission enough and he eats my sandwich. As Bert and Ernie would say; “You’re building a brand relationship based on mistrust, hostility and deception.”
So you see Chad, it’s not hypocritical at all. The former act is “sharing”, the latter is “stealing”. Whether we’re talking about a PB&J or personal info the effect is the same. Something that was once exclusively mine is now yours. And I never told you it was ok.
Written by Mike Monteiro on November 30, 2007 with 0 comments |
Moral Pygmy-Go-Round
“I do not believe that America’s best and brightest companies should be playing integral roles in China’s notorious and brutal political repression apparatus.”
Yahoo! certainly deserves the ass kicking, but the government that granted China ‘Most Favored Nation’ status hasn’t earned the right to give it.
Written by Mike Monteiro on November 7, 2007 with 0 comments |
Duty.
…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.
It is their DUTY.
Written by Mike Monteiro on July 4, 2007 with 0 comments |
Rotate them 90 degrees and these are STILL the End Times.
What with the recent outrage over the Supreme Court reinstating segregation and President Bush declaring that white people will no longer go to jail for anything; some of you may have missed that Apple introduced a new product. Looks shiny.
Written by Mike Monteiro on July 3, 2007 |
The Web STILL hates women
Last year we spoke about the ridiculous disparity between the amount of women and men speaking at industry events. After writing that post I had the pleasure of speaking to some of the people men who organized a few of those events.
Their defense was that basically, gee, they just don’t know any girls. That’s fair. Girls are intimidating and they smell pretty. So, I pointed them to a list that Jen Bekman put together for just this kind of thing, hoping that the next year’s set of events would be a little more gender diverse.
They’re not.
Jason Kottke has a great run-down of this year’s events. He did math and everything.
Since I’m much more childish than Jason, and he’s already done the smart work, I’ll merely point out, in my charming Eddie Haskel-like manner that this year the ‘Future of Web Apps’ Conference (26 men, 1 woman) went as far as incorporating a penis into its logo. At least there’s truth in advertising.
Written by Mike Monteiro on February 22, 2007 with 14 comments |
Thumb Drives for Africa
Mule, along with long-time cohort Jeff Wishnie, is doing some probono work for a great organization called Inveneo. We're currently working on a redesign of their site.
Inveneo brings information and communication technology to the remote and rural third world by setting up low-wattage solar powered computers and networks with telephones (using voip) so that neighboring villages can communicate with each other. This means that that medicine that's needed from a town 40 kilometers away can be requested over the phone, instead of driving there and back.
Inveneo is also training local IT teams to install and maintain the networks; thereby creating local jobs and helping to stimulate the economy.
On a recent trip to Uganda, a local organization that is bringing computers to schools in rural areas asked Jeff to help supply them with USB sticks for data transfer and storage in the school labs.
Now that we live in the era of 2gb USB sticks, I bet you have some (a whole bunch?) of 16, 32, 64, and 128mb sticks lying around your desk, drawers, and in between your sofa cushions.
Why not donate them for a tax deduction and help out some African computer labs?
Also, cause I love you but I know you're lazy: We've set up an Amazon Wish List for Inveneo chock full of thumb drives. Help is one-click away.
Written by Mike Monteiro on December 12, 2006 |
The Cock-Tipping Point
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out the all-male lineup of the "Future of Web Apps" Conference. I mentioned that they weren't an isolated case, and I was using them as an example of what I see as a remarkable under-representation of women at conferences.
Then last week Tokion did it again. "Creativity Now" announced their lineup last week without ONE SINGLE WOMAN in it.
This unique symposium will bring together top figures in art, design, fashion, photography, film, new media, publishing and marketing.
...by 'top figures' they meant men.
Our friends at the Wooster Collective, who are boycotting the Tokion event, put it this way:
We don't give a shit what their excuse will be (no woman were available?) - How the fuck can you put together a group of speakers that are (according to Tokion) "shaping today's popular culture" and not one of of them be a woman?
Tokion's excuses are bullshit. Basically, they contacted some women and they couldn't come. Lame. Contact more until you get some.
My friend Jen Bekman was livid and decided to do something about it. She has a great conversation about it going on on her blog, which you should go read. After Design Observer linked to it Jen started to get some traction, and has started coming up with a solution by compiling a list of potential women speakers. Go Jen.
Tokion, responded by adding more men to the list. They've since added ONE woman. Tokenism rocks.
Written by Mike Monteiro on October 9, 2006 with 3 comments |
The Future of Our White Male Industry
(This post first took hold over on VOX; and after it inspired some pretty active discourse I've decided to throw it here as well; but it's worth going over there and reading through the comments. I'll repost it here with a little extra gained insight, but no less conviction.)
The preceding image was taken from the front page of "The Future of Web Apps" Conference which recently took place in SF. Fourteen speakers; fourteen white guys. Now, I don't mean to single Carson Workshops out, but they're a good recent example, however they're far from the only ones. I know some of these white guys. They're talented guys, sure, and I don't mean to denigrate them. But there are also some fucking talented women in this industry (I work with FOUR of them!) and I'm tired of them getting the short end of the stick. It's becoming a fucking embarassment.
The industry as a whole will suffer from this exclusion. People generally solve the problems they are most familiar with; i.e. white guys tend to solve white guy problems. I'm sure that by the time Web 2.0 is done with there will probably be a way for my medicine cabinet to realize I am low on Rogaine, call in the order to Walgreen's and send me and SMS when it's ready for pickup. But where does that leave the rest of the world?
The way I see it, design is at the service of culture, it's here to solve problems, and that means problems for everyone. In order to do that it probably helps to get a look at who that "everyone" is, and not JUST give them access, but PULL them into the industry so that they may in turn have access to that problem solving.
Some of my colleagues have stated that there simply aren't enough women to put on these panels; or that they make a token attempt at inviting the two or three they've heard of and they don't come. That's a case of looking at the effect and calling it the cause.
My friend and incredibly brilliant colleague Judith Zissman (who you should invite to speak on your panels) who has organized panels herself, put it very well:
...the people we asked for recommendations of who to invite had not necessarily seen prominent women speakers at other conferences, had not schmoozed and networked and drank with them, let alone actually heard what they had to say about technology. This, of course, is the classic affirmative action argument - an open door is not enough. You actually have to bring people into the door. And an open door that isn't well-publicized beyond an already skewed audience isn't an open door at all.
Yes, this is hard. It's easy to ignore if you're one of the select few. But we stand at an interesting period in history, and it would be in everyone's best interest to open the scope of our discussion to the brightest minds possible. And we should do this BECAUSE it's hard.
From now on anyone speaking at a conference WITHOUT any women speakers will be held JUST as liable to abuse as the organizers. Be the role models the situation calls for.
Written by Mike Monteiro on September 18, 2006 with 5 comments |
To understand and protect our home planet…
Now, I'm not one for mission statemtents in general, but in accordance with President Bush's wishes NASA has altered it's mission statement, which previous read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”
The new statement omits the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."
But the change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists, who say the “understand and protect” phrase was not merely window dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
On September 12, 1962 JFK kicked off the space race with this immortal phrase "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Not so many presidents later it seems that we deal with the hard things by deleting them from the mission statement. It's embarassing really.
Written by Mike Monteiro on July 21, 2006 |