The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 14

Enjoyed all your comments.

On the Royesque. Thanks but I am technically an `insider`. A corporate employee type. Whereas Roy could anthropomorphize the corporation--demonize it and make it out to have a brain and an evil heart, I unfortunately for me know exactly what the corporation is about. It is the great nothing of the 21st century. A nonentity populated by bossy people. A fishpond. A children`s playground of nasty little ones. There is no evil in a Corporation, other than the rivalry of the people who work in it and who totally loathe each other. A Corporation is, in other words highly over rated and can go the way of the dinosaurs very soon since it is so inefficient. I promise you a whole column on the Corporation.

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 14

``They know those costs can be recouped at any time over the next decades, and those that are willing to put in that much time and effort reap more than a fair share of benefits. And it doesn`t stop there. Just look at all the amount of training dollars spent annually by professionals of all levels/fields on keeping up their credentials, certifications, etc. People are willing to incur debt just to take a few courses that will enhance their careers. Companies today have entire departments dedicated solely to training and professional development for their staff, versus say thirty years ago when HR would be the end-all-know-all everyone bitched about.``

I keep bumping into people who went back for second or third degrees but didnt get the jobs they wanted coz the jobs disappeared. How come almost every new graduate these days has to struggle for a job? The idea that for sure you will get a good job if you have a good degree is no longer true. People are therefore not so sure that sacrificing a few years for a degree will necessarily provide a better job. Trade certifications are somewhat different. Corporations support on the job learning if it complements an existing job and people get to that position over time. However if the pay-off from training is less than outsourcing Corporations will not send people back to school to train them, instead they will be fired.

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 53

Thanks for the reply.

I am not `feeling` pessimistic.

Quite simply, if US is the best place for fresh ideas in the world today, it has a big fight ahead to stay that way. And the government seems least concerned about fluffy goals like freedom of speech, democracy, quality of education, healthcare affordability etc etc.

The state of the US economy is very intriguing.

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 34

:) LOL.

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 19

The love affair with America has many phases. Perhaps you are in the first phase.

Rgds

S

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 21

Re: # 21

The beauty of the American system is that it solves many problems. However I completely disagree that it will automatically readjust to correct itself. Any system has an input, a process, an output. If there are no inputs--things that are outside the loop of economics, then the system will not correct itself. Also, the market cannot anticipate very well. Certain things will be corrected long after the initial damage is done.

Anyway--more perhaps next column.

Regards

Saima

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 25

Dear Samina

I think you have misunderstood the theory I referred to. It is an economic theory, subtly different from social theory-but highly illuminating in understanding the success and failure of new media industries e.g., software.

It is my opinion that academia relies too much on precedence. There is a general paucity of new ideas. In fact the system of academics, the method of research reduces the chances of a fresh theory because, for any theory to be posited it has to be `grounded` in preceding theory. There is a sense of linearity that can be suffocating. That is why academia produces very few radical ideas. Copypaste the metaphor is about not really even creating anything interdisciplinary--the example you gave has a lot more effort. Copypaste is noise where everything sounds alike. It is a metaphor for trade; how we do business and how we produce endless pieces of `information` that isnt really information anymore because it doesnt inform.

OK what does copy cost being zero really mean? It means that for a knowledge producer, who can convince the market to buy makes tons of money since copy cost of information is zero. It means that you dont incur the same costs that you do when you produce loaves of bread or any other physical output. It may be that because of this Internet blogs are devalued mediums since they cost nothing and there are so many of them.

Your questions are very valid. The market cannot place a value on information, that is why it copy pastes and that is why perhaps America is getting dumber over time? worth analyzing no?

rgds

S

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 7

Inquirer

Is it really that simple to fix? So, you don`t think that Bush is the face of what America has become? And that somehow one man because of major idiocy has done this to America? I am not so sure.

And also this article is really not America bashing. It is an attempt to understand just what is going wrong and where. So, I`d say it is America poking :).

S

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 8

Samina Shahid

Copypaste is a metaphor for how information is being created and shared. I referred to a book by Shapiro and Varian called, `Information Rules`. In this the authors have tried to analyze the economics of information.

Here is how I`d break the section down:

The world of ideas is limited--with a dejavu quality (copypaste); and why am I saying that:

Even though many words are being produced, thoughtful analysis and opinion is lacking in the mainstream.
There is incredible reliance on precedence rather than independent questioning.
People are intellectually lazy.
In Business, jargon is produced more often than really new ideas.

Perhaps this has an economic basis; it is easy to regurgitate older ideas since copy cost of information is 0. Businesses are told that their productivity can be so much higher if they just copy what the product that they made for one guy and make it for everyone.

However my pt was as also explained at length that the real cost is Unknown, Unmonetized since it is the opportunity to do something more original.

Changing Radio Stations Hi Yasser,

Nice read. I think people like you can make such a difference. First a trickle then a tide changes the world. There is a similar Chowk in Karachi with the world Allah carved out and quite ironically a Pepsi sign under it. His name may be there but god is quite quite absent from the scene. Perhaps there is some use to these Chowks after all. Not quite in the way intended perhaps. God works in mysterious ways...:)

The American Nightmare: No Exit, No Entry Re: # 2

Quite true. The next decade may let us know exactly what the American dream was about.

I`d be curious to know myself what Friedman would think. No idea. Well. Tom Friedman skipped the social justice angle other than a few hints here and there. He writes after all for NYT, not Utne and we know how neatly divided media can be in the viewpoints it forwards. His subtext was `hey Americans wake up and smell the coffee, there is some competition.` The world is flat because more people than ever before can compete for the same business. He can make that assertion based on evidence that hits one between the eyes.

But if Friedman would ever want to know, a square world is flat selectively. It resembles a table of negotiation, where the guy with the most money always gets the cheapest price. It is a cube because there are inbuilt biases in the global exchange system.

We are all blind people trying to understand the elephant. And sometimes one`s handicap is even worse than blindness say if you are a line segment in a world of spheres.

Revisiting Myself: a Once-potted Plant with a Dictaphone? Re: # 19
``Most of these men go home to humdrum women who themselves are mothers, neither liberated in any sense of the word nor likely to be, and it is more than a job for them, it is a living. What does a woman accomplish by throwing another in a pitiful light, except thrusting those souls even further back into the darkness, from whence their men will never venture to extract them. We talk of liberation, let the freedom bells ring, etc, etc, but what do we really do? ``

wow. Very well put. Me says label `un-professional` (untrained in the art of wifing) `Wives` (read as both adjective and as verb) under a specially designed garb. How bout Sweats and T with a hat proclaiming, `Won`t. Just won`t--be happy or agree to anything.`` Oops. They already do that. The Professional Wives always let their husbands dutifully know just how they lucked out when they agreed to marry them. Me thinks the professional wife knows exactly how to save her marriage. It is the un-professional that needs tips.

Saima

Revisiting Myself: a Once-potted Plant with a Dictaphone? Hi Shandana

The essay is brilliant but I just couldnt get the title too well.

I felt exactly like this for the last 10 years on and off. The frustration drove me insane to put it simply. At different times I contemplated suicide, abandonment--fortunately not for long. It quite amazes me that my son is so well adjusted in spite of a mad and bad mother. I found it so painful to give up my self. I thought I`d never get her back and I had lost me for life. Never to be 25, never to be even 30. I somehow had to juggle work, child, ambition, my hearts desire and being single. All of those all the time. I thought I`d never be able to write again. My memory went, concentration went, I couldn`t hold thoughts together because of the stress. One day, quite out of the blue, I forgave myself. Forgave myself for making mistakes, being imperfect, at fault, overweight, for loss of self, of opportunity of all the might have beens. Though it sounds like an ahaa moment it wasn`t. My liberation matured over time. Simple example, I realised that having memory problems isn`t so bad. You just adapt to it and grin when you lose your keys five times a day, over time you devise methods and reminders. If your son didn`t get a haircut it is ok--it will get done tomorrow.

Life throws a million frustrations towards us every moment. To stay true to ourselves we must create a special place in our minds where we just don`t think about what is going wrong and what might have been or what we just lost. Instead we move further towards what we really want. Practically speaking, meditation really helps me--coz I get to rest my negative thoughts and usually get some clue on how to deal with practical problems. It ends the agony of adaptation for a few minutes and shows me what is really important.

I guess one has to be a friend to oneself. Be kinder to ourselves--suppressing the naughty child within just doesn`t work. More and more parents want our children to be so mainstream. We want our kids to be the front row perfect child which we never were. This perfect mother idea is outrageous in the amount of sacrifice it demands and quite often that sacrifice becomes a permanent sort of frustration going right to the core of the personality. The loss of self that you feel is the sacrifice that you make to be a parent, you want instant reward for that, but if you feel that way you won`t be able to fake it for long.

As for smoking being an integral part of you. Well I dont think that smoking, alcohol or any substance reliance can give what people really need it for. The emotional needs under these have to be addressed--if you were a social rebel, than that`s you. You don`t need a cigarette for that--just the guts that made you smoke a cigarette. After becoming a parent, the rebel must mature into a leader.

It is a bit sad that growing up we never want to grow up, but the moment we have children, we want them to just grow up yesterday. I catch myself these days. Is this blaming, nagging, complaining woman me? Is this who I was at 13? no. Then why did I start that in my 20s/30s?--This my way of complaining against life. But, who is registering my complaint? who can do something about all the 100s of things that didn`t go as I wanted them? no-one. We must get in touch with our authentic self and stay in touch.

At around this time, we also catch up with reality and realise just how ludicrous some of our ambitions were. So it is double trouble, not just children but our own realization of our mediocrity, and sheer inability to change certain things about the world around us. So it isn`t just the kids, but our own fear that we are giving up on our true selves, our true dreams. And that we may never be able to do the things we wanted to.

Life needs much more courage than we ever expected it to need.

Apologies if this sounded like a lecture--I just intended to share my own cycle of frustration, realization since your writing touched a chord.

Great to see you writing.

Saima
ps: Daycare sucks here for different reasons. It is hard to write on a schedule. My best ideas come while I am doing the dinner thing in the kitchen, then there is homework, lecture time, play time, bath time, bed time. There are so many if only`s and no dictaphone when you need it.

Echoes Re: # 31

Scout, quite obviously I used the word democracy in a different sense. Chowk is a democratic forum--the design encourages two way dialogue and other elements of what constitutes. The publishing industry has a different way of finding an editor than a government. Over time as the size of a publishing house grows, the methods also changes. Anyway, I am sure you understand. I am wholeheartedly grateful to Chowk publishers who have provided a wonderful service to all of us. This space is for suggestions--so I will go back to a relevant comment.

Chowk Staff, you don`t get too many thank yous. We are all so spoilt. But I just wanted to say thanks for carrying on inspite of it all; thanks for unflinching idealism.

Regards
Saima

Nostalgia, Inc. Very nice. Resonates much.

Echoes #25, #3

I doubt that there is any chance of Chowk becoming any kind of site other than what it is. Here is what I think:

1. When Chowk started back in 1997, it was a one of a kind place for opposite viewpoints.
2. Over 8 years, Chowk has strongly set a precedent for fairness--each viewpoint will feel a loss if the other is gone. For Chowk to be Chowk we need all those opinions. Chowk without polar opinions is unthinkable. Just try and imagine Chowk without controversy. Unthinkable?
3. I expect Chowk to get even stronger. The Mullah must have his Pandit after all. So, I expect that all identities of Chowk will be stronger.
4. No one can really tamper with Chowk`s democracy--just look at the design of it.