Friday sabbatical

Whatever you’re doing this Friday, I invite you to pause, and take a mini sabbatical.

Stop trying to figure things out. Stop trying to make sense of things, to control them, to steer them, and just watch. Let go of producing outcomes, and simply see what's left in their absence. Consciously look, and see what life feels like, without the rush.

You can live in that place, even if it doesn't make sense. Just ask Winston Churchill:

“The human story does not always unfold like an arithmetical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five, or minus three, and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye. The element of the unexpected and the unforeseeable is what gives some of its relish to life, and saves us from falling into the mechanic thraldom of the logicians.”

Here are five things that stuck with me this week:

1. I've always been frustrated by the game of politics. Specifically I think my beef is that nobody seems to have any genuine opinions or beliefs or backbone of their own, instead simply toeing the party line on virtually all issues. It's difficult for me to believe that our elected representatives are all automatons who cannot think for themselves, but a dispassionate alien watching from one of those recently declassified UFO's could be forgiven for believing just that. So this piece in Rolling Stone, in which climate crusader Bill McKibben flames climate crusader(?) Michael Moore, was instructive for me.

Both of these guys are on the same side, with similar goanextls to save the planet, but McKibben is furious at Moore for essentially breaking with party lines, and releasing a movie critiquing McKibben's work. I have no idea which of these fine gents is in the right here, but McKibben makes it clear in the piece that more important than that is that they're on the same side, and therefore that they should prioritize building their movement (through compromising and consciously adjusting their own perspectives to fit with those of the movement, ostensibly) over having an intelligent, public, inter-movement debate. I get why this is necessary, to project a unified message to the rest of the public who will never dive anywhere close to deep into this topic and really just wants someone else to tell them what to think, but we see in national politics what can happen when people stop thinking for themselves and start compromising to gain followers. There's got to be a counterforce to this type of partisanship, but hell if I know what it is.

2. Marc Andreesen said at one point in advocacy of learning to code, "in the future, either you will tell computers what to do, or computers will tell you what to do." If you're out of work, there might not be a better use of your time during COVID than to learn how to code (national average salary of software engineer: $92k). Unemployment benefits are good right now, but they're not $92k. And Codecademy, one of the leading online resources for people looking to learn how to code, is offering free scholarships for displaced workers (details on AVC.com). If this is you, it's possible that the lights may never again be more green to finally learn how to code.

3. Of course, software engineering as a discipline is also at the forefront of the pay equity movement, which will only increase pay in that sector over time, probably at a rate disproportionate to the rest of the economy. As we as a society move, slowly, many of us kicking and screaming (including me, for a long time), toward pay equity and transparency, those brave souls willing to take the risk first (including not only people like this writer, but also companies like Buffer who transparently pay all employees based on an objective formula) inspire me.

4. I loved this video. Disclaimer: it's a bit cheesy, and comes from the privileged perspective of those not actively affected by or fighting COVID. That said, watching it filled me with hope that amidst all the death and struggle, perhaps, if we are intentional about it, we humans might make some good out of all this. It offers the question: what will you do differently, once restrictions are lifted? Of course you can ask that question at any point in your life, but I'm not sure I've lived through a time in which the answer had as much freedom and leverage.

5. Last year at the NBA Tech Summit, I had the opportunity to see Steve Ballmer, owner of the Clippers, give a demo of Second Spectrum in action. I forgot about it until this week, when I read this piece in Fast Company about how the company's AR tech is positioned to reinvent the way we consume sports. From the piece:

Most of the 18 screens mounted on the wall of Second Spectrum’s small control room were showing versions of that same Clippers game. In one of them, the Xs and Os of the offensive plays that the teams were running were superimposed over the action. On another, the chance that each offensive player had of making a shot, recalculated in real time, was displayed beneath him as he moved around the court. Whenever a player on either team scored or grabbed a rebound, his updated statistics flashed on the screen. A third variation overlaid plays with explosions, shaking baskets, and licks of fire, as in a video game. A fourth combined elements of the first three. It was as if a producer were able to see a minute or two into the future and continuously layer in relevant graphic elements as the game unfolded. No live producer is capable of that, of course. “But AI is.”

I suppose I'm a purist, in that I actually like to watch full basketball games, on a real TV, and even in the stadium if I can. I know that makes me old school in the way that the NBA thinks of their fans, as increasingly they're seeing fans watch primarily highlights, broken down ad infinitum, across multiple screens, while chatting with friends and randoms and gambling in real time over the outcome of the next play. I like to concentrate on the beauty of the game for its own sake, which is probably why I wasn't hooked by the video game demo of the tech when I saw it last year. But then sports stopped, and when it starts it won't have fans, and my perspective is considerably more open these days.

I still think sports are going to feel empty without fans in the stands, but it's clear that smart people are going to try to make us not care. I hope they are successful. I'm imagining myself strapping on a headset and logging into NextVR, paying a tiered fee to login to one of the thousands of 360-degree cameras installed in place of fans in the stadium, and watching a version of the game alongside thousands of other virtual fans from the perspective of that specific camera. I can't decide if that excites me or depresses me, but I wouldn't be surprised if I get to find out soon.

As always, please let me know what you think in the comments, or if you stumble upon something excellent I should be aware of let me know that as well.