The Filter (week of March 31) 03 Apr 2006
18 comments Latest by Lawrence Krubner
Some interesting comments posted last week at Signal vs. Noise:
� On It’s a great time to start a business
Chad 26 Mar 06
Just as Jack Welsh quotes in his book “Winning”, pg156.
“In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement the hell out of it.” So true. Why spend so much time crunching numbers and grinding data when this time can be spent getting your good idea to market.
� On Sunspots: The Feng Shui edition
Mark Ostroth 29 Mar 06
Don’t glaze over Don Norman’s point about writing. This is right out of a 1960 essay by Loren Eisley, titled The Long Loneliness:
“Man without writing cannot long retain his history in his head. His intelligence permits him to grasp some kind of succession of generations; but without writing, the tale of the past rapidly degenerates into fumbling myth and fable. Man’s greatest epic, his four long battles with the advancing ice of the great continental glaciers, has vanished from human memory without a trace.”
“Writing, and later printing, is the product of our adaptable many-purposed hands. It is thus, through writing, with no increase in genetic, inborn capacity since the last ice advance, that modern man carries in his mind the intellectual triumphs of all his predecessors who were able to inscribe their thoughts for posterity.”
� On StressEraser and SleepTracker: Tech that can make your life better
Carlo 29 Mar 06
Robert Sapolsky, a professor at Stanford, gave 2 really good lectures about stress, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and Stress and Coping: What Baboons Can Teach Us. They’re free on iTMS.
He says that how you cope with potentially stressful events greatly affect how your body gets stressed. The stress factors are:
- Knowing when stress is coming
- Having an outlet
- Having a sense of control
- Interpreting your situation as getting worse/better
- Having friends
The StressEraser seems to help your sense of control (look, I’m reducing my stress with this device) and provides an outlet (Shoot, I’m so stressed, let me get my StressEraser). I don’t know if it’s worth the cost though. Sapolsky says that having friends is by far the most important factor in coping with stress. Humans are by nature social animals, so that makes a lot of sense.
� Fly on the wall: “serene but unforgiving”
Wilson Miner 30 Mar 06
“A functional spec is a map to a place you have never been. It’s like drawing a map and commiting to a route of a place you have not even set foot on.”
I think that illuminates perfectly the reason functional specs are considered necessary in large companies and considered a burden in small teams. If you’re leading 50 people into an undiscovered country, and you have to convince the entire court of Spain and Portugal to fund your expedition, then you’re going to hire a bunch of guys with sextants to plot out your journey and guess where all the gold is. If you’re 5 guys in a boat, you’re just going to set sail and head west until you find land.
Brooks Jordan 30 Mar 06
Here is a snippet from book three of “The Nature of Order” series that touches on it. Alexander writes:
“When I make something in this fashion [Alexander is talking about how to make something real], this is the unfolding. It is the way that nature works. It is guided by the fundamental process. That means it is guided by a process which creates centers in continuous feedback from the system, and according to the centers which are already appearing there. Since the whole changes constantly, continuous feedback is needed while something is made in order to give it life. That is the essence of all “making” — it is a creation in which the maker responds with feedback, continuously, to the whole that is emerging.”
I think 37signals responds with continuous feedback to “make” their applications. So it is not a question of having a plan or no plan, a map or no map, or a functional spec or no functional spec, small teams or large teams. It is about understanding the creative process.
� The Fordham Spire was approved!
RS 01 Apr 06
I am very disappointed to hear about this.
I’ll quote the Alexander comment mswimm linked above: “High buildings have no genuine advantages, except in speculative gains for banks and land owners. They are not cheaper, they do not help create open space, they destroy the townscape, they destroy social life, they promote crime, they make life difficult for children, they are expensive to maintain, they wreck the open spaces near them, and they damage light and air and view.”
18 comments so far (Jump to latest)
dave rau 03 Apr 06
RS, can you explain the “they promote crime, they make life difficult for children” pieces? What support do you have for these statements? I’d very interested in hearing about this.
What’s your idea of how tall a building should be? 10 stories max? 20? What’s the threshold? I’m going to read up on this, it’s piqued my interest.
RS 03 Apr 06
The part about children is straightforward. If a family lives on the 15th floor, kids can’t go outside to play while remaining in sight of their parents. 15 floors down is an entirely separate place. Even six floors down is a totally separate place.
Close enough to remain in contact with the street and surroundings. Alexander has argued for a four floor max.
Daniel, Rogue Connect 03 Apr 06
HRH Prince Charles is a big advocate of ‘smaller buildings’, believing that the higher we go the more humanity they lose. He believes they should all be kept on a human level.
Looking at the Fordham Spire it really comes across as a case of “mine is bigger than yours”.
Alex Cabrera 03 Apr 06
Which is exactly how we won the war.
Seriously, there is a bit of penis complex involved with building these huge skyscrapers; but while some might see it as dehumanizing, I see it as a remarkable testament to what humans can do. Continuously trying to top ourselves is at the very essence of what makes us human. While detached from this utopian notion of inherent equality that seems to be all the rage with bloggers, we are not and have never been equal. The only reason anything that we take for granted today exists - be it cars, computers or, hell, the very freedoms that we consider inherent to our existence - is because one group of people strived to one up another group of people. It’s competition; and competition is the very essence of what makes every single facet of nature continue to evolve.
Anonymous Coward 03 Apr 06
The only reason anything that we take for granted today exists - be it cars, computers or, hell, the very freedoms that we consider inherent to our existence - is because one group of people strived to one up another group of people. It�s competition; and competition is the very essence of what makes every single facet of nature continue to evolve.
AMEN!
RS 03 Apr 06
From Prince Charles’ speech on tall buildings:
“Trying to make [these buildings] ever taller than the other person’s building is surely taking the commercial macho into the realms of adolescent lunacy.”
mike swimm 03 Apr 06
Alex
When I posted the link to the quote the other day that Ryan re-quoted I can assure you that it had nothing to do with a “utopian notion of inherent equality”. That’s ridiculous.
The quote was from A Pattern Language, the phenomenal book that made Christopher Alexander famous 30 years ago. You should check it out.
The book is often described as “western feng-shui” which sounds cheesy but isn’t a bad way to briefly describe it. It talks about how our built environment severely shapes the way we live. Yet he believes, and I agree completely, that we continue to shape our environment haphazardly or “willy-nilly” as he puts it in book one of his new Nature of Order series.
I lived in Chicago for years and had an extremely hard time of it. (No offense to any current residents of course, I still love the city, I just can’t live there all the time.) Anyone who lives there, or in NYC, can tell you the huge buildings downtown have an insane effect on the environment, radically altering light and weather conditions. Like you I can abstractly appreciate them from an engineering standpoint, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t lame places to live or work. Looking at pictures in a book and living with them are two radically different things.
And I don’t even want to begin to think about how insanely inefficient they are. That’s another discussion altogether.
Anonymous Coward 03 Apr 06
And I don�t even want to begin to think about how insanely inefficient they are. That�s another discussion altogether.
You must love suburban sprawl then. Talk about inefficient.
Topper 04 Apr 06
I live in NYC and love it. The views from these tall buildings are amazing, and they create a density of population.
Density of population lowers crime (there’s always someone watching), increases conveniences for dwellers (lots of businesses / restaurants, etc.), and (a lot of times) they are beautiful testaments to what man can do.
Anyone here read Atlas Shrugged?
Topper 04 Apr 06
Not to mention that since you can walk everywhere - there are fewer cars and less pollution.
NYC ranks in the top 10 for most polluted cities - but the rest are all in CA (short buildings anyone?)
Nathan Rutman 04 Apr 06
It’d be interesting to hear if any of these “small-building” lovers would change/lax their rules for different types of zoning. For instance, a lot of those negative points seem to relax or disappear altogether when you think about tall buildings in a commercial zone, where living space isn’t a factor.
For example, the point about children could actually be turned on its head since it would seem to me that tall [non-residential] buildings can give children an appetite for adventure, looking out over the city/landscape. Crime could actually be minimized in a commercial district with tall buildings, since: (1) it’s probably safe to assume most crime involves the ground level, which makes a smaller area for law enforcement to protect, (2) it can space buildings out rather than cramming smaller buildings together to maintain business density (i.e. how many businesses can occupy a block, square mile, etc.).
It also needs to be maintained that several of the “evidences” to why high buildings have “no genuine advantage” are pure preference. I don’t happen to agree with “destroying the townscape” because I enjoy the look of large buildings. As far as damaging “life and air and view,” you don’t have to be strolling through a large grid of tall buildings long before gusts come down between the blocks of the grid in a way that I’ve never felt in nature — I love it! I also enjoy the shadows the buildings make across the streets and across each other. So while Alexander is certainly entitled to his own opinion, I would hope he would also entitle me to mine.
Alex Cabrera 04 Apr 06
He’s just feels inadequate.
Mike Swimm 04 Apr 06
I am a big fan of reasonable population density.
There are thousands of beautiful towns and cities all over the world that are blend of various size buildings with strong downtowns full of people moving around on foot and bicycle.
To suggest that you have either gigantic skyscrapers or suburban sprawl is really shortsighted.
Also if you are interested please pick up a copy of A Pattern Language. You can often find used copies for far less than the $65 it will cost you at Borders. Alexander is a brilliant writer who will certainly make you appreciate his point of view even if you are reading it from the 26th floor of your Van der Rohe Lake Shore Drive apartment.
Nathan Rutman 04 Apr 06
Mike,
Of course it’s possible. The question is, if you have a downtown area that people really want to get into (which is how I’m assuming most cities result—masses wanting to enter the same space), how are you going to sustain the demanded population density. You seem to assume that the architects and city planners have free reign with how to build the cities. I’m coming from the other direction, assuming that if enough people want to be in a given area, they’re going to find a way to get there. That posses problems with happily wanting a “reasonable population density.”
Of course, I don’t know which model has been more historically accurate (yours or mine). Do you?
Anonymous Coward 06 Apr 06
We’d rather not moderate, but off-topic, blatantly inflammatory, or otherwise inappropriate or vapid comments may be removed. Repeat offenders will be banned from commenting. Let’s add value. Thank you.
Tim 10 Apr 06
OK, so this thread is a bit old. But, Mike Swimm suggested that tall buildings are inefficient. This triggered a memory of an excellent New Yorker article I read called “Green Manhattan. Why New York is the greenest city in the US”. It’s a fascinating examination of population density and resource consumption. Logically it makes much sense, but I’ll let you be the judge.
http://www.greenbelt.org/downloads/resources/newswire_11_04GreenManhattan.pdf
Lawrence Krubner 11 Apr 06
“The only reason anything that we take for granted today exists - be it cars, computers or, hell, the very freedoms that we consider inherent to our existence - is because one group of people strived to one up another group of people. It�s competition; and competition is the very essence of what makes every single facet of nature continue to evolve.”
That’s a narrative that’s currently popular in America, but there is no reality behind it. Look at human societies and mostly you’ll see co-operation. The moments of competition stand out glaringly because they are so rare and unique.
We co-operate by driving on the right side of the road. We co-operate with our partners to raise children and create the next generation. We co-operate with our children to raise them well. We co-operate with strangers by obeying the law. We co-operate with friends by going to social gatherings - which is where most of us find new jobs and new intimate relationships. We co-operate with both friends and strangers by conversing and freely sharing ideas, both online and off. We co-operate with our bodies by eating well and getting enough sleep. We co-operate with nature by (we hope) intelligently channeling our wastes. We co-operate with teammates at work for the greater benefit of all, including the company and the customer.
We don’t notice co-operation for about the same reason that fish don’t notice water. We do notice competition because it is unique and rare. But if we make a fetish of competition, and build a national narrative/self-identity around it, then we are at risk of a serious self-delusion.