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First Day Debrief

Winter quarter is here, which, of course, means that today was the first day of classes. Today covered PBAF 594 and IMT 580, two very distinct courses.

PBAF 594, otherwise known as Economics of Environmental Management, is shaping up to be quite an interesting course, although the textbook reading is a bit dense. This course focuses on the idea that environmental resources can be evaluated under an economic system. This will be an interesting exercise, since I am certainly not used to the idea of the environment being reducible to a number or a set of numbers. However, Maria Damon, the faculty member teaching the course, seems to know quite a bit about the subject and is quite knowledgeable. This course should not require any mathematics at the calculus level, however, a glance at the textbook makes clear that some mathematical knowledge is definitely going to come in handy. This includes quite a bit of information about being able to actually interpret graphs properly. Normally, this is not something that I’ve actually had a problem with, but it is certainly something that I am a bit rusty at. There will be a lot of reading for this particular course, and a lot of it will be stuff that I am not used to actually reviewing. We’ll see how it goes.

IMT 580, otherwise known as Management of Information Organizations, was taught today by Mike Crandall, the head of the MSIM program. The normal instructor, Jochen Scholl, is currently in Hawaii attending a major conference there. However, since Mike has taught the course before, it really wasn’t that much of a problem — it will be interesting to see the differences between the two teaching styles. This course mostly focuses on the idea of — of all things — management, and how management can effectively change the way the information is handled within an organization. There really isn’t that much to say here, since we didn’t get very in depth. Most of today was simply an introduction to the course. We did get into some of the ideas behind management — such as the basic definition of management — but we didn’t get into anything the text did not cover.

It is becoming quite clear to me that, even though I haven’t had INFO 498 or IMT 530 yet, the amount of reading this quarter may very well end up being ridiculous. Already, I have several readings for all these classes, and quite a hefty stack of papers. I have nothing for INFO 498, however, since nothing has actually been assigned yet. Well, as Mike Crandall made a point of saying in IMT 580 this afternoon, “Hey — welcome to graduate school.”

Sustainability and Personal Freedom

Someone once told me — perhaps in a far more eloquent way — that we should pursue that which makes us happy; that if something fails to make us happy, and should be abandoned.  As I think about this statement, I wonder whether or not this idea is directly applicable to the idea of sustainability.  For instance, we have people who greatly enjoy buying vehicles such as the Hummer, which is one of the lowest rated vehicles for fuel economy on the market — in fact, it is exempt from the EPA fuel economy scale due to its weight.  If sustainability does not make us happy — indeed, if its exact opposite makes us happy — should we pursue sustainability?

The problem is, sustainability is really something focused towards the greater good.  While some people are certainly happy implementing sustainable ideals, this is not globally true.  Nor is it really our responsibility to make it so, since we value the idea of personal freedom.  So what happens when the necessity of preserving a way of life overrides our need for individual freedoms?  We can certainly promote sustainability as a cultural movement, which is entirely appropriate, since there are a large number of people who believe in it.  But to force sustainability upon people who don’t want it is to alienate them from the idea.  This would almost suggest that we should focus on the young, that we have to focus our efforts on people who are growing up around the idea of sustainability, encouraging them to make sustainable decisions.  But then we have the same problem that we had before — we are forcing sustainability on a population that has no choice in the matter.  Yes, we can educate the young to make sustainable decisions, but is that really allowing them their own freedom?

One of the ideas that we must struggle with, then, is that sustainability, while necessary, cannot simply be foisted upon others.  Much the same thing can be said about our energy independence, where alternative energy supporters practically presume that everybody else is wrong and we are right — that we must force upon people the ideas of solar power, wind power, and other alternative energy sources.  While many people are certainly receptive to this idea, one could argue it is a violation of freedom.  So where do we start?  How do we make this an effort that makes everybody happy?  Is this even possible?  Sustainability is yet another field where we deal with this contradiction.  The answer to all of these questions is both yes and no — it simply depends on our approach.

Sustainability as a Point of Conflict

The New York Times wrote recently on conflict between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Minerals Management Service.  In brief, these two agencies plan to implement two different policies that will impact the polar bear population.  The Fish and Wildlife service intends to list the polar bear population as endangered, while the Minerals Management Service intends to open up potentially vital habitat for the polar bear to oil companies.  The energy problems surrounding this notwithstanding, this is a beautiful example of how two kinds of sustainability come into direct conflict with one another.  Which is more important – energy or saving world species?

This is where value judgements enter quite strongly into play, and, much as we might like to ignore the fact, sustainability is in fact a value – more specifically, it’s a personal value rather than a cultural value, since the culture of the United States as a whole has yet to embrace the idea.  Economists would say that sustainability is also a part of a person’s utility, since doing things to assure sustainability increases a person’s well-being.  When that’s the case and sustainability is not prevalent enough on a cultural level, which way do you swing the pendulum?  Do you declare the species endangered to protect their habitat, or do you attempt to increase our energy independence by allowing drilling operations?  Doing both is certainly entirely possible, but one act makes the other inherently more complicated.

I’m not sure there is a right answer here, but there is certainly a more correct answer given the direction of the economy and the overall political environment: declare polar bears endangered and protect their habitat, but allow for drilling elsewhere if it is feasible and can be done in a reasonably low-impact manner.  I acknowledge the relative absurdity of the previous statement, since by definition, no drilling is low-impact, ever, and the likelihood of such drilling occurring anywhere within the lower 48 states is likely to be met with extreme resistance by concerned citizens.  The debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and drilling rights there notwithstanding, Alaska is, plain and simple, an easier state to drill in, since much of its population is concentrated.

One hopes that we can arrive at a sustainable solution for both the problem of habitat and energy independence; indeed, it’s the only thing we can reasonably attempt as a nation.

Potential MSIM Internship

For those of you who may not know, the MSIM program requires an internship of all its graduates. One of the possibilities I came across is with the Washington State Department of Ecology. From what I understand, this would involve working with them on the state’s sustainability measurements, coming up with a better framework that would allow them to produce these reports more effectively.

I talked briefly with the person that suggested this as a internship project: it turns out that the state’s sustainability work actually started in about 2005. The overall idea is that all state agencies collect roughly the same data and report on their consumption. Example measurements include gasoline use, electricity use and the amount of recycled paper used. The state is really quite serious about this effort, so much so that Governor Gregoire has issued a Climate Change Challenge to the state. The Department of Ecology has been responsible for the majority of the organization of this project, though there seems to be some state-level involvement. The sheer scale of this project seems quite impressive, and I would really look forward to being able to do this as a project. Though I was a little doubtful, it sounds as if the MSIM program actually allows for programming as a major part of the internship. It sounds as if I may be well prepared by taking INFO 498 next quarter, since that will introduce me to C# as a programming language, which will be quite an interesting experience, since it will be my first introduction to .NET as a programming architecture.

I am quite eager to see whether or not this will work out as an internship. I’ll keep this blog updated as I get more information.

By the way, I wrote this whole blog post using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which was an interesting experience.

Sustainability in Job Searches

As of late, I’ve had a job search agent working for me on careerbuilder.com, sending me all jobs that match the phrase "sustainability".  I originally intended it to try to isolate jobs that involve environmentally sustainable planning, advocacy, management, and thinking, but that’s not quite what’s turned up.  Here’s a sample of job titles from the most recent alert on January 2nd:

  • Geologist
  • Civil and Structural CAD Technicians
  • Civil Engineers
  • Architects/Architectural Designer
  • Electrical Engineer
  • Mechanical Engineer
  • Regional Sales Manager – Retail

It’s fairly clear that at least some of these have some sort of ties to the environment – architecture and geology have clear ties (and to a lesser extent, so do the engineers).  But why the regional sales management position?

Keep in mind: this is a keyword search.  Thus, it simply matches the word "sustainability" in anything, and will match:

Supports marketing initiatives and ensures successful implementation and sustainability within the Region.

This is an indicator of two things, at least from my perspective as both an information management graduate student and as someone highly interested in sustainability:

  1. It’s all about context. "Well, duh," I can hear you say, but it’s amazing how many people forget this.  Search engines are only as good as the amount of context it has about what you’re searching for.  What does this have to do with environmental sustainability?  Pretty much nothing, until you consider:
  2. While "sustainability" may be synonymous with "environmental sustainability", the reality of the job market would seem to dictate otherwise.  Tying back to my previous post, this synonymy is not universal, though it would seem to be by glancing at the political atmosphere of  a good chunk of first world countries.  My job search might pull up a job that directly has to do with sustainability – my alma mater, The Evergreen State College, recently posted a job ad for a Director of Sustainability, for instance.  But it’s equally as likely to suggest regional sales positions precisely because the meaning of "sustainability" depends upon its context!

Fall Quarter Reflection

If there’s one glaring thing missing from my work at the UW, it’s the evaluative process that I had gotten so used to in my undergraduate work at Evergreen.  The lack of that structure makes it fairly easy to forget to look back – hence why this post comes as late as it does when the quarter ended on the 10th.

This quarter, there were four different classes on my schedule – IMT 500, IMT 501, IMT 510, and IMT 540.  I’ll break each class down into a separate section, then try to combine them.

IMT 500 – The Information Management Framework: Since this was an overview course that lasted only the first few days of the quarter, there’s not as much to say here as there might be otherwise.  The major thing that happened for me in this course was the opportunity to give a presentation on SharePoint 2007 as part of an introduction to the course’s final project.  This 30 minute presentation was a general overview of the functionality provided by SharePoint, which I thought went extremely well.  The final paper in the class, which was an assignment designed around seeing how information moves through its lifecycle, allowed me to reflect a bit on how being an “expert user” of SharePoint (at least compared to the rest of the class) influenced my actions while working on the group project.

IMT 501 – Technology Foundations for Information Professionals: I nearly had no business being in this class, seeing as how it was about 95% review.  I’ve done this in the past when I took Computers and Human Reason during my undergraduate work at Evergreen, though that had a twist – not only was it review, but it was review from a very different lens – that of human cognition.  501 was review from a slightly different lens as well in that it took a high-level approach to explaining concepts while touching on many computing essentials, like database design and computer hardware.  My challenge in this class was not so much to learn the material, though I did have the opportunity to fill in gaps and to learn a few new tricks (JavaScript being one of them).  Instead, I used this class as a chance to pass at least some of my knowledge on to my classmates, though this was a somewhat limited endeavor, since it only really occurred in my group (labs for this course were optional, which is a move I don’t understand – barely anyone ever showed up).  However, I did have the chance to try my hand at explaining concepts in an effort to help people apply them properly, which is something I succeeded fairly well at.  While this was the easiest class content-wise, it was still quite worthwhile for the ability to try a new approach to learning some computing fundamentals and for the ability to show others how do think about concepts.

IMT 510 – Human Aspects of Information Systems: Of all the classes this quarter, this one drew the most from the approaches and ideas from the library sciences.  This class focused primarily on some of the psychological and social aspects of how information is used.  One of the most interesting things in this class was the idea of designing interview schedules and how one has to be careful about wording of questions, particularly as it pertains to questions that may be asked of people from different cultural background.  The class also focused a bit on the idea of information grounds – spaces where information is generated and communicated within a group.  I did fairly well in this class, though such a large chunk of the work was group-related that it was occasionally hard to assess my own progress in understanding the material.  My strongest point in this class was collaborating with two other team members to write up the final project report – the end result was so seamless that it was nearly impossible to tell who wrote what.

IMT 540 – Design Methods for Interaction and Systems: This was both the hardest class this quarter and probably the most rewarding.  Focusing on design methods for systems, this class covered everything from brainstorming methodology to usability testing to prototype creation (creating a physical system was outside of the scope of the class).  The group project consisted of designing a mobile system that would be in use in 2020, which meant that the class as a whole had to take a long-term view of what the future might end up looking like for mobile interaction.  My group focused on malls and what shopping might look like in the future, envisioning a system that was a cross between a social application like Facebook, Google Maps, a GPS, and a search engine.  The biggest challenge in the class was the sheer amount of reading required to understand a lot of the concepts, though I appreciated greatly the ability to turn around and put some of those concepts to use, either in our groups or as part of smaller assignments.

General Thoughts: I distinctly remember talking to a former co-worker who went on to become part of the iSchool’s Master of Library and Information Science program – he observed that graduate school really wasn’t that much harder than his undergraduate work at Evergreen.  I have to agree with this assessment, though I think I took enough ass-kicking classes during my undergraduate career that I knew what was expected of me.  Others who graduate Evergreen and who didn’t take a strong set of programs with faculty who were willing to dump loads of work in their student’s laps might not be quite as well off, but this did make my transition relatively easy (even after an entire year off from being a student).  A lot of this also has to do with the type of program and the fact that the MSIM program and the MLIS program share some of the same ideas and some of the same faculty members.  Regardless, I think I had an extremely successful quarter (with a final quarter GPA of 3.75, which is quite a bit above the goal of 3.5 I had set for myself).

A big part of next quarter will be my exposure to the ideas of environmental economics in PB AF 594, which I’m looking forward to, since I think it will serve to advance my work in sustainability quite well.  INFO 498 will also be quite interesting, since it will give me a chance to touch base once again with my computer science background and get into some programming.  I’m not sure on IMT 530 and IMT580 – I’ve ordered all my textbooks for all four classes, so hopefully that’ll give me some hints on what’s going on with each of them.  I’ll update more as I get more information about each class.

We Don’t Disambiguate Anymore

The thing that’s perhaps most interesting about the sustainability movement isn’t so much that it exists, though that in and of itself is certainly an accomplishment.  The recognition that we need to live in harmony with our surroundings is nothing new – Native American culture, to some extent, mirrors these exact values (though Alan Weisman in his book The World Without Us makes the point that Native American culture, too, hasn’t completely lived by this credo in the past).  What is new is that sustainability has somehow become synonymous with the environment – so much so that when we say sustainability today, it’s assumed that we’re talking about environmental sustainability.

Why does this make a difference?  Consider the many different contexts of the word:

  • Business sustainability, usually referring to whether a business or a business model can survive or not
  • Information sustainability, referring to how information is kept alive
  • Cultural sustainability, referring to whether a particular culture can survive
  • Ecosystem sustainability, which is a subset of environmental sustainability referencing a particular type of environment

Environmental sustainability is huge – it interweaves itself in and through our culture, our values, our economic system, our way of life.  So what does it mean when simply saying the word "sustainability" is almost a given reference to the environment?  There are four reasons that pop to mind:

  1. It is a recognition of the current "fad" that is getting governmental attention, though to call it a fad is to grossly understate the urgency of understanding our relationship with our surroundings.  This particular position is not one I agree with for exactly that reason, though it is held by various people.
  2. It is an acceptance of the idea that we must change our way of thinking about our daily lives.
  3. It is an encapsulation of many of the fears we have about the future and provides a focal point for our efforts to better understand and support the world around us.
  4. It is a tacit recognition that we have ignored the environmental impact of a consumerist society.

The tricky part about the entire question of sustainability is that its many different spheres – environmental, cultural, and all the rest – are all so enmeshed that changing our way of thinking about one type of sustainability can drastically weaken or strengthen the rest.  For example, the state of Washington (and every other state in the Union, for that matter) has strict policies on how long particular records must be kept by public organizations for audit purposes.  If you change those rules, you immediately impact three types of sustainability:

  • environmental, because you’ve changed how the information must be stored and how the media must be preserved (which could require special material treatments, additional infrastructure, etc.);
  • cultural, because you’ve changed the rules on how long records must be retained and thus have required the people responsible for those records to adjust their practices (note that this is a smaller example of cultural sustainability than what I was referencing above); and
  • information sustainability, because you’ve changed the length of time that that information must exist.

What happens, then, when we begin to think sustainably about our environment?  Our way of being changes.  This is not only essential; it’s required.  That’s why the word "sustainability" must be linked in people’s minds to the environment: to not do so is to put us all in grave danger of forgetting that we have to change.

Starbucks: Lethal? Not exactly.

I stumbled over an article published today about how Starbucks can actually help mom-and-pop coffee shops by opening stores nearby.  However, in reading the article, it becomes quite clear that the author has never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

But closures like this have been the exception, not the rule. In its predatory store placement strategy, Starbucks has been about as lethal a killer as a fluffy bunny rabbit.

Give the bunnies a chance!

Holiday Raisin Couscous

This is part of a larger recipe for Chicken with Lime Sauce and Raisin Couscous, which originated at some point from the Food Network web site (I’ve been unable to locate any further information on it or to find the original entry, so I don’t have any proper credit beyond this).  This is only for the couscous part, which I make during the holidays.

1-3/4 cups chicken broth
1/3 cup raisins (adjust to taste; I usually go for more like a half cup)
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup couscous

In small saucepan, combine chicken broth, butter, raisins, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Boil 2 minutes over high heat.  Stir in couscous, cover, and remove from heat.  Let stand five minutes, fluff with fork, and serve immediately.