After 6 weeks of teaching and over 2 months in my new apartment, I am making a short escape from NYC to visit my mom and sister in PR. In my Impacts of Technology class, we just finished a week on large-scale and complex technological systems, with a focus on industrial farming. We read a few sections of Micahel Pollan’s fanstastic book, The Ominvore’s Dilemma, which combines the odd qualities of being seductively alluring (thanks to his exquisite writing) and repulsive (thanks to the content, well at least the part on factory animal “farming”). I can’t recommend it enough and look forward to reading the rest, when I find the (magical) time to do so.
Now that I am at the airport, I am struck at how little I know about this place, which is also a large and complex technological system and I bet revealing its technological and cultural innards would provide as fascinating (although not quite as gross) of a story as that of factory animal farming.
There are many questions I would love answered: How exactly is coordination secured and what are the toughest elements to airport coordination? Where are the lines of cooperation and those of competition between airlines? What factors and values go into the design of the airport? (I know that for one thing, in American airports, there rarely seems to be enough electrical jacks; I am now sitting under the telephones, the only place with jacks in terminal 8 at JFK, and the funny thing is that there are a row of 7 unused phones and only one jack and I am sure it would be more useful to have 1 pay phone and a row of 7 jacks, instead). What sorts of airport technologies have put people out of jobs? What technologies have created new job opportunities? What sorts of social hierarchies are there in airports? Like who runs the big show? Is it a CEO? Or is something more like a university provost? What is standardized by the FAA, and what elements are more flexible, and thus different airport to airport? Is there a sense of camaraderie among airport employees, or are loyalties built primarily among employees of one airline or among the classes of workers? Given that unions are quite strong among airport employees and from the top (pilots) down (food workers), what is the political culture of airports/employees like? (I remember once overhearing a group of machinist and ground crew talking about the ugly face of globalization and NAFTA over coffee and I was dumbfounded and pretty psyched too). Are airports one of the few last remaining places in th US that provides for decent job security? Why do so many of the ground crew have such athletic, bulging calves?
Is it a result of the physical demands of the job? Or is it that the type of job ( outdoors with lots of heavy lifting), attract the athletic types? Do they have to pass certain physical standards as to pilots? Was there always first class seats? Or did that come about when flying became cheaper? Are employees trained to deal with irate passengers? In what ways do pilots bitch about the long waits/delays they also have to endure? What can they do when they are waiting, as we did for an hour last night, during the massive traffic jams that are especially noxious in NYC-area airports? Do pilots have any say in the way airports are run? Why do they consistently provide less chairs than are needed in lounges, even in new terminals, as the one I was in tonight? Do air traffic controllers ever meet face-to-face with pilots or do they largely have a virtual relationship? Are programmers who patch, improve, and build traffic control systems housed in the airports, or elsewhere?
Airports are not only fascinating for technological and sociological reasons but I reckon there is a lot of interesting psychological work that must happen in airports. I imagine that during those long, endless waits in the lounge, on the security lines, on the tarmac, people must often take the time to reflect, on where am I going, where am I coming from, and not in the literal sense but the metaphorical one. I know that I have spent many hours in airports letting my mind wander to places and thoughts in ways that don’t happen as easily or often elsewhere. And in many instances, I don’t think that this propensity to indulge in some reflective thinking, is a matter of time, that is waiting. For me at least, it is the fact that many times when I fly, I am moving between worlds.
While I have flown hundreds of times, I never have been shed of the sense of awe I feel about planes and their ability to shrink space and time so quickly. For me, it is less the act of flying itself (that feels boring, tiring, annoying, mostly because of the insane waits and delays and I never seem to get the right amount of sleep the night before) but the visceral contrast it brings. In the morning my life is of a particular tone and rhythm, currently situated in NYC and by evening, I am back at home in PR, surrounded by thick humidity and the loud sound of coquis. Once there, my as currently configured in NYC, has little direct bearing to those around me. Planes don’t just transport, they shift and convert your inner and outer world…
So, if anyone (who got this far) knows of a good social history of the airport, do tell. I would love to read it.
Groups that campaign for free technology, like the Free Software
Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tend to be
supported primarily by technologists. Both groups have struggled to
communicate their messages to non-geeks. I have written an article
and helped create a new weblog, both called Revealing Errors, that
attempt to address a root cause of this issue in what I hope is both an
insightful and entertainingly manner.
Geeks support groups like the FSF and EFF because, as people who
understand technology, they understand just how powerful technology is.
Geeks know that control of our communication technologies is control
over what we can say, who we can say it to, and how and when we can say
it. In an increasingly technologically mediated age, control over
technology is not only the power to control our actions; it is the power
to limit our possible actions. Our freedom to our technology is our
freedom, full stop.
This message fails to resonate with non-geeks but it does not fail
because non-geeks are happy to hand over their freedom. It fails to
resonate simply because the vast majority of people do not understand
that technology, and control over it, is powerful enough to impact their
freedom. Most people fail to see the power because, quite simply, most
people fail to see technology. While we all see the effects of
technologies, the technologies themselves are frequently hidden. We see
emails but not mail transport agents. We see text messages but not the
mobile phone network. Before one can argue that such systems must be
free, one must reveal their existence. Technologists are keenly aware
of the existence of these systems. To everyone else, they are completely
invisible.
Marc Weisner of Xerox PARC cited eyeglasses as an ideal technology
because, with spectacles, "you look at the world, not the eyeglasses."
When technology works smoothly, its nature and effects are invisible.
But technologies do not always work smoothly. A tiny fracture or a
smudge on a lens renders glasses quite visible to the wearer indeed.
Similarly, people see their MTAs when messages bounce. They see Windows
on their ATM or phone when the system crashes. Technological errors are
moments when usually invisible technology becomes visible. They are, in
this sense, also an educational opportunity.
I have recently published an article in Media/Culture Journal
from the University of Melbourne within a special issue called Error. If
you are interested in learning more about what I'm trying to do or
looking at some examples, please read the article.
With support and ontributions from Aaron Swartz, I have also created
a new weblog, Revealing Errors, that reveals errors that reveal
technology by posting descriptions of errors with commentary on what the
error reveals. I've posted a few examples there already and I will be
updating it regularly. The goal is to help explain the power and
influence of technology in the service of broadening the base of people
who can get excited about freedom to technology.
Eventually, I hope to be able to communicate this message to a less
technical audience. With that said, I hope that even seasoned
technologists will learn things about their technological environment
through the analysis and interaction. I hope readers of this blog will
subscribe to it and, if possible, comment on and contribute to the
project as it moves forward.
Top posters in a few Debian-related Planets:
While bumbling about on a search engine,
I found slides from a talk I gave in 2001
and these 2005 consultation submissions to
I was quoted in 
Apologies to Daf if he is embarassed by my public acknowledgement of his
contributions in this endeavor.
For once, 
I don’t buy everything he says, but in the case of DSA, the part where he says “you cannot have a functional and respectable subgroup if it maintains autonomy like that” is a real problem.
The leadership problem I mentioned is real. And it can theoretically be solved by undelegating one of the problematic side of this DSA-internal dispute. But which one? Given the unwillingness of Joey to discuss the problems, he makes an easy target… which would leave DSA up to Ryan, James and Phil.
But is that a desirable thing? If DSA is perceived as being an “autonomous” group which is not involved in Debian’s main discussions and which is somewhat disconnected from Debian’s day-to-day life, it’s largely due to the behavior of James and Ryan. E-mail communication with them is very difficult as they’ll respond only if they really care about something. And despite the setup of the request tracker, they have barely been able to make proper usage of it… the idea was to use RT tickets to track everything that DSA does but they don’t use it as such. For example, James setup a “wikiadm” group and he never reported anything to the 