Guidance, Navigation, and Communication

This is the most normal contact I’ve had today.  Thanks for this bit of structure.

 

While this was not how or where I expected this blog entry to start, after a long absence.  However, these comments are especially notable for me, since they came not from one, but two different people in two different online meetings in two distinct research project contexts.  They were notable not because I was doing something uniquely innovative or novel, but exactly because I was doing something relatively mundane: regular weekly meetings with my students, and regularly scheduled project updates with my research team.  Yes, there were a few technical hiccups, as there often are, but for the most part, they functioned as we always expect them to function.

And that, in a nutshell, was what was most appreciated today.  I think it is no exaggeration to say that very few people alive today remember a similar period of rapid shift from normal to unprecedented, with such a sense of vertigo as we collectively stare into a social, economic, and cultural abyss.  But that is not where I want to focus my emphasis in this entry; there are plenty of places to talk about that.  I want to talk more about what we in the lab have been learning this year, which has become unexpectedly one of the most valuable possible lessons for me (and maybe others, but I will let them be the judges of that).

Fall 2019 was really busy.  I was teaching my two courses (Perspectives on Systems Engineering, or PoSE, as well as Work Analysis and Design) with a bit over 200 students in total.  Two students were finishing their dissertations (Megan on Cybersecurity Incident Response Teams, and Jordan on Spaceflight Mission Support Operations Teams), and three more grad students (and an undergrad) were joining—two from a different department with different cultures and traditions of graduate progress.  I was also faculty advisor to the professional society student chapter.  Add that to my normal level of travel (Japan in August, London in September, Washington DC and Seattle on consecutive weeks in October), and our regular habit of individual meetings (written as “1:1” in my calendar) just sort of fell by the wayside.  We were making progress overall, and I was still having (most of) our weekly GROUPER meetings, so no problem, right?

Well, not quite.  New students need orientation and support to start a new program—even if they are simply completing their BS degree and starting an MS/PhD in the same program.  The culture of a lab changes significantly when the “veterans” leave and the “newbies” come in.  If all the veterans are leaving at once (and living in other cities or even time zones as they finish), who is most responsible for managing the communication and socialization of the important aspects of the organizational culture?  The advisor, of course—even if the lab is fortunate enough (as we have been) to have a set of new student “onboarding” documents.  Thus, it was easy enough for me to think, “well, this is just a little schedule shift,” when postponing 1:1 meetings, it’s HUGE for someone just starting on a new path in a confusing feudal environment.

So, among the last gasp efforts of the overwhelming Fall semester, we made sure that we put a priority on making sure everyone had a regular 1:1 meeting, and that such meetings were a priority when possible.  (Sometimes, from February Frenzy through March Madness and April Anarchy, we might not have 1:1 meetings for everyone at their regularly scheduled time, but we know to discuss that with the travel schedule weeks in advance.)  I was even able to welcome a new international visiting student, and within her first week on campus, we had 1:1 meetings for her as well.  Everyone remember to breathe…

Within the first three weeks of the new semester starting in January 2020, the difference was obvious to the students, and to me as well.  Yes, it helped that I wasn’t teaching in the classroom (“A Professor is ALWAYS teaching!”), but each week, significant progress was being made in the crafting and focus on research projects, social and psychological development, and understanding of what I’m looking for and how to get there.  As a result, when I asked for a “Captain Kirk to Scotty” response from the lab, not only could I get one, but the response seamlessly added into the discussions of each individual’s projects as well.

Figure 1.  Scotty: “I need at least three days, Captain.”  Kirk: “You’ve got an hour.”  image from https://movieplus.news/25-false-things-about-star-trek-that-everyone-believed/

Since the lab has been experiencing “distributed operations” for at least four years (remember the students in other time zones part?), we have frequently had at least one member of the lab (including me, when I was working in Washington, DC for a year) “dial in” remotely via Webex, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, ….  It’s not weird, it’s just that not everyone makes it to the same room every week.  So, if there is an illness, or travel, or simply a schedule conflict, “Can we do the 1:1 remotely next Monday?  Sure.”  In essence, regular contact, regular discussion, regular updates had all become… regular.

Back in February, one of our research project teams was having its quasi-monthly meeting.  It’s hard getting people from four universities and a federal agency together for project updates, but we were able to find a mutual window in the schedule: March 23. We don’t know much else about the news and research environment ahead (our project had been already upended by a Sunday morning news story), but we do know that.  As the possible impacts of “shelter in place” and “social distancing” were discussed in early March, GROUPER made a fairly simple decision on March 11, two days before Purdue’s Spring Break: “We’ll just assume all meetings starting March 23, for the first two weeks after Spring Break, will be electronic rather than physical.” At least it seemed simple at the time.

GROUPER studies how people get, share, and use information.  We focus on elements of information sharing, knowledge exchange, and task coordination.  We’ve talked about differences between physical interactions and online communication, and how we manage and moderate our expectations of those online information flows, for over 25 years.  (See here, and here.)  But today, there was an additional value to doing things we do regularly, in a way that we could recognize as familiar and repeated.  And yes, there was a value to me as well.  Guidance and navigation aren’t just for spacecraft, but for explorers of all types; communication is not a luxury, but a human need.

 

 

Origin Story

(This took a couple extra weeks to write and post.  Hey, it’s a busy time of year.)

When I was young I thought of growing old,

And what my life would mean to me…

Would I have travelled down my chosen road,

Or only wished what I could be…

— “Kyrie,” Mr. Mister

 

This spring has been an interesting time of innovation and re-imagination, both locally and more broadly.  Although I will not be taking a flight to Wakanda in the near future, I was obviously very intrigued by the Black Panther “origin story.”  Living out one’s origin story is hard, in part, for one simple reason: no matter how seriously or strongly one feels one’s passion, the subject of the story has to live their lives forward in time.   The movie scriptwriter and director can work backwards based on the story they want to tell (and the events they already know will be important for the story arc).

Figure 1: Flight to Wakanda sign, Atlanta airport (credit: CNN)

Unexpectedly, I have had the chance to consider my own origin story over the past few weeks—not just because of the opportunity to reconnect with history, but the ability to see in the present how pieces of the story fit together to tie present and past (and maybe, to tie past and present to future).

 

Bring to mind, if you will, a moment from your childhood where many things were possible, and you felt that a hero or heroine was speaking directly to you and your imagination of what you “want to be when you grow up”.  I remember begging my parents to let me stay up late on Christmas Eve when I was six years old-not to wait for Santa Claus, or listen for reindeer, but to listen to astronauts speak for the first time from the orbit of the moon.  The following Christmas, one shouldn’t be surprised that I had an Apollo Saturn V model (like this one, shown below) waiting for me on Christmas morning.

 

Figure 2: Saturn rocket model, 1969: photo from http://fantastic-plastic.com/REVELL%20SATURN%20V%20PAGE.htm

 

It’s critical to recognize that things rarely work out this clearly or directly; I meet people my age and older who still ask the question of what they want to be.  (Sometimes, that’s about the awareness that life takes us on different paths; sometimes, it’s an admission that even as our bodies get older, we don’t always feel like we’ve “grown up”.  Wasn’t “grown up” supposed to mean that things made sense, or were more clear, or had resolved all the youthful uncertainty?  Apparently not.)  But, nonetheless, imagine such a moment.  And now imagine that a chance to see and hear that hero appears in your email inbox, in the form of an invitation: come see a panel discussion by the crew of Apollo 8 for a book launch about their mission to the Moon.  The opportunity sells out, as would be expected… but not before I have my tickets.  I’m off to Chicago, to hear about the Earthrise photo and the Christmas Eve message and, and, and…

This is the event that made me, and gave me the life I live today.  This is primary inspiration.

I arrive at the Museum of Science and Industry in time to work through the line, and find a seat, before the lights go down.

 

Figure 3: Barrett at the MSI, with NASA SG Jacket

 

The movie director and screenwriter in my head can create a scene for the event, but that’s not really how it works out.  I’m not called out, or accidentally run into Frank Borman in the hallway, or finding myself shaking Bill Anders’ hand.  (As it turns out, I’d already seen and Jim Lovell before, so what does that say about leading a fairly special existence?)   However, is this really something that I can mark as a failure or disappointment?  I am learning more of what it was to them to be an inspiration to the world, as well as the inspiration and impact they felt to see all of human existence out their window in a single frame, knowing that they were the first to do so.  They are telling the story so that the director and screenwriter are stunned into silence.  The crew describes the surprises, and serendipity, and nearly sacred experience, as they experienced it and as they remembered it: living their lives forward, rather than worrying about the director’s intention.

 

Figure 4: Apollo 8 crew

And what about me?  Well, I am wearing my NASA Space Grant jacket, with the iconic “meatball” logo.  Not surprisingly, that gets some attention: a few people ask if I work for NASA; I’m much better now at saying “yes”.  After taking a look (and some picture) at the Apollo 8 Command Module (and a framed and signed version of Earthrise), I am approached by a woman with a clipboard.  Would I mind being videotaped for the Museum about the Apollo 8 event?  Of course.  I’m excited: perhaps too excited to answer the questions smoothly or calmly, I try to express the excitement of being able to be reminded of my origin story…

 

If the director in my head were managing this story, I would probably have finished here.  But surprisingly, there is more.  The very next day, there was an awards dinner for Engineering faculty, and I was awarded the Engagement and Service Award.  I did not expect or anticipate video testimonials describing my effect and impact, through Indiana Space Grant and the senior capstone projects. I am unable to refute the messages or their meaning; I see no reason to reject the story anymore.  And a week later, I am back at the Indiana FIRST Robotics State Championships, watching the excitement and tension of the competition in one of Indiana’s historic high school gymnasiums.  This is new history being made, of course: the students are vying for the chance to represent Indiana at the World Championships in Detroit, where the NFL draft has taken a backseat in an NFL city to the prior commitment of K-12 students and their robots.  A total of 15 teams earn their opportunities that day, including brand new teams and teams of underdogs who have overcome negative assumptions and lowered expectations to win awards of excellence.  It feels like a small thing, for INSGC to offer financial support to help them on their journey.  Who knows which of them will remember this month as part of their origin story, and the events that set them on the path for a life beyond their imagination, and successes not yet dreamed.

Figure 5:  Detroit FIRST Championships, Einstein Round Robin.  There is an origin story being written out here.

Expanding the Territory

Now that I have returned to Purdue, I am back to experiencing some of my past habits and activities as a faculty member.  In my  previous entry, “Crossing Paths,” I mentioned my trip to North Dakota for the Space Grant meeting; last week, the travel was to Austin, Texas for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) meeting.  After being in Washington for a full year, it was both refreshing and curiously strange to be back at an academic conference.  More than anything else, I was able to enjoy re-connecting with colleagues and collaborators and others in a community that I have been an active part for over 25 years, rather than the valuable (but disconcerting) experience of learning a new environment and new norms in an unfamiliar context.

 

A year away from something so immersive as one’s primary research community does permit a new experience and view upon one’s return.  It is not just that my presentations took on a slightly different tone due to the experience of writing for diplomats; I was thinking about the presentations differently, colored by my growing understanding of what it is to speak on policy topics.  I was very glad to see GROUPER alumnae and hear of their successes; I enjoyed watching the current students present well and receive appreciative comments from the audience.  That was much more satisfying in many ways than actually being the one presenting all of the papers.  It’s an interesting expansion of perception and shift in perspective on the territory (dare I say legacy?) of one’s career.  Interestingly, I could also hear it differently this time, aided by the alternative experience of last year.  Where has the influence gone, and how has it traveled from its headwaters?  Does the river notice its impact on the stones as it flows?

 

I recognize that some of what I missed while in Washington was the regular opportunity to work with and mentor people whose personal and professional trajectories could be increased.  What I could begin to notice in Austin was how much influence my past efforts have had on others, even when I didn’t realize previously that what I was doing would affect them in a lasting way.  In retrospect, it’s not surprising, but at the time, I found myself at a loss for words when I was introduced to a promising student by someone who had already been positively influenced by their interactions with me.  I wasn’t actively recruiting new students… but I would be pleased to have such exciting and passionate people to help explore new projects and possibilities.

 

Another area of recognition during the past two months since I returned from Washington was the change in context to describe the applications of our work in the lab.  Yes, it’s easy to excite other space folks about the NASA research on Mars exploration analog projects; pilots often don’t need to be convinced about the value of our aviation weather information studies.   But policy impacts?  Can’t we just leave that to others?  As I have learned, the answer is “no”.  The connections won’t be evident to all, as we’ve already learned from the story of Cassandra and “postcards”.  What is the broader context of connections, within and beyond the communities that already sense the value of what we do?

 

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised about this, but nonetheless, it has taken me a while to process this change in thinking due to my experience in Washington.  My conversations while in Austin did not just cover the next steps for the HFES, but next steps for national science and technology policy.  The research discussions were not just posed in the context of a single principal investigator grant to a directed funding agency call… but possibilities to address broader elements of engineering’s role in society.  What justification would you provide to say that your research was worth funding to people who weren’t specialists in your area, or even in STEM research in general?  (Oh.  This is exactly what is being proposed in the U.S. Senate.)

 

I happen to like GROUPER’s statement of why we exist… however, I’m biased, and I already know what it means to talk about “human processes of information flow, knowledge sharing, and task coordination”.  But what is that good for?  A very similar question was asked by, and of, the National Academy of Engineering (now renamed as part of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM) to explain the role of engineering research and technology development to address 14 “global Grand Challenges” facing society in the 21^st Century.  Speakers at the Global Grand Challenges Summit (GGCS) in Washington in July asked members of the audience to think about how their work might address any of the Grand Challenges: in essence, a call to consider expanding one’s territory of impact.  And when I brought that question to the lab, an interesting insight emerged.

 

GROUPER research addresses seven of the 14 Grand Challenges.

 

Five of these are pretty obvious: PERCH research on brain injury recovery and personalized medicine for chronic care directly touches on “Personalized Learning,” “Reverse-Engineer the Brain,” and “Advance Health Informatics”.  CORAL and SHARK work on secure supply chains and network operations center teams hits on “Secure Cyberspace”.  These projects, together with our STINGRAY work on spaceflight operations, provide examples of “Engineer the Tools of Scientific Discovery,” particularly discovery conducted by interdisciplinary teams of humans.  In addition, there are two more areas that benefit by GROUPER’s ability to capitalize on connections.  It’s not just the individualized brain trajectories and chronic care models, but the discussion of Systems Engineering to support improved information architectures for non-text references, that helps address the push to “Engineer Better Medicines.”  Improved information architectures, improved network operations and event responses, and better cognitive framing for addressing uncertainty in event prediction and response all assist in the effort to “Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure”.

 

That’s a very big territory.  There’s more to do, not less.  Who else wants to go explore and map such beautiful frontiers?

 

 

 

Fishes and Ponds

Among academic metaphors, it is one of the more popular, even among people who don’t have a pervasive aquatic metaphor infusing their entire lab.  This time of year, it’s considered often, among new grad students, new faculty, and established faculty considering a new position:

 

Do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?

 

Figure 1. Koi experiencing a bit of Japan in Washington, DC

 

(Let me not leap to “big fish, big pond” territory right away.)  In essence, this is a question about “fit”.  Some places are major research institutions, where annual expenditures for the college of engineering or science may be measured in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.  Some places want to be such research institutions, but may have additional emphasis on teaching, or lesser resources available, or just aren’t as committed to the task.  And other places are not research focused at all.  Maybe it’s the lovely undergraduate-only institution where the entire student body and faculty and staff can fit in the lower bowl of the basketball arena of Enormous State University (which may or may not be a major research institution).

 

Unfortunately, this is also a question about ego, and aspiration, and social desirability. What’s a big fish?  Apparently, someone who is successful at “the game” of having a large research portfolio, lots of publications, lots of students.  If there’s a competition, that’s okay with them, since they’ll probably win.  Maybe they thrive on competition.  Maybe they like the acknowledgement of winning the award, or touting their h-index, or their success in amassing whatever it is that counts (as my friend reminded me recently) as the coin of that realm.  As Depeche Mode would sing (as I was first learning that I liked this research thing), “Everything Counts in Large Amounts”.

 

But, let’s be clear.  Not everyone wants that life, or that world, or that type of competition.  That does not make them lesser creatures.  I am considering the story I just heard about a successful research faculty who decided to shift to a small, undergraduate teaching institution.  I am learning about the cultures of university departments where, for whatever reason, tenure is extremely difficult, or moderately straightforward, to achieve.  On the other hand, some folks are learning that the constant pressure to compete for funding, for publications, for attention, is not something that feeds their soul or enhances their quality of life: the extra dollars and accolades are just not worth it.

 

I continue to be amazed, and a little disappointed, at how frequently this issue comes up in questions to me and to my students.  Will I be upset if one of the GROUPERs goes into industry, or to a regional or teaching university, or ***shudder*** has to take a job in government?   For lots of faculty at research institutions, there is only one valid career path… and it just so happens to look like the path they took, to be faculty at a research institution.  I don’t believe in that assumption, and I have said so in some fairly public settings.  Why?  Well, it’s not sour grapes.  I have come to realize, I sit in a fairly unique spot: I have spent my entire academic career at leading research institutions.  But what do we mean by big, or small, and why does it count?

 

A pond, or a lake, or an ocean may be big or small only in comparison to other scales of reference.  If you’re plankton or a piece of algae, does it really matter if you’re part of the water bloom in a tiny county park, or a county-sized bloom in an ocean?  It may not influence much of your daily life in any significant way.  More importantly, one of those may be outside of your range of survival conditions.  If I’m a thermophile animal, what I care about is the hot spring vent, not how big the body of water is.  And this leads me to the second dimension: the ways that different bodies of water differ on not just what are the components for survival, but the sorts of creatures that you might find yourself sharing the body of water with that would make one’s life better or worse.

 

Figure 2. Where are you, and what do you reflect?

 

One of the unexpected lessons of this year in Washington is that the question of fish and ponds is wrong on several major dimensions.  I’m very well known in my professional society, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, or so I’m told; it’s hard for me to spend a day at a conference without seeing 25 people I know from long experience. But we’re a “small society”.  Obviously, the electrical engineers or the mechanical engineers really have it going.  Except… maybe not.  Most undergraduate-only teaching institutions don’t have any engineering departments at all… but if they have any STEM disciplines, it’s more likely to be physics or biology or chemistry.  But, even then, and even in aggregate, that may not be the ecosystem that everyone wants to swim in.

 

I have spent a fair amount of time this week thinking about function allocation and expertise coordination and human-machine teaming… as I have done for much of my career.  And I am in Washington.  For many people, there is no bigger single pond.  To paraphrase a colleague from this afternoon: I am swimming in the pond of the oldest Cabinet agency of the greatest superpower on the planet, so we should be able to have some resources at our disposal.  But how much of those resources are actually from an ecosystem I recognize: folks who thrive on STEM food like I do?  Several people I’ve met have pointed out the same thing: actually, there is relatively little science and technology expertise within the major “halls of power” in Washington.  This is not a new thing.  A recent article describes the general feeling for scientists and engineers from both Congress and the White House, at their respective locales on Pennsylvania Avenue, in these terms: “Officials in Washington don’t have a real taste for hard science, and only hire scientists when they must. ‘It’s like eating your spinach before your ice cream.’” (Note: this description doesn’t even distinguish science and engineering.)  I would say that this is not very flattering, or very appealing.  In one sense, most of what I spend my days thinking about, and most of the people I know of as famous, are not even at the level of side conversations for perhaps 85-90% of the people in my office building.  Not great feeding, in other words.

 

So, am I a big fish, or a small one?   In this pond, my level and type of expertise is fairly unique, and others would be hard pressed to duplicate it.  In fact, this pond doesn’t even know what an h-index is, and doesn’t care to.  Does that make it a small pond?  If the documents we write and review this month affect the policies of 70% of the world’s economy over the next 10-15 years, I wouldn’t say that is a small pond (or an exaggeration of the impact of some of these emerging technologies on the world).  I’m having an effect where I am, in ways that suit me.  Overall, isn’t that the most we should ask of anyone, and the most we can hope to achieve for ourselves?

 

 

Returning to Practice

I’ve been interviewing Millennials for work.

 

In one sense, that is no surprise at all.  Many of the students applying for graduate programs stay in the same age range.  I have, by contrast, gotten older.  Incoming students who were approximately my age (or older) are now the age of my children (or younger).  This is the nature of the cycle of life (cue the music from “The Lion King,” which is now considered “Classic Disney”).  So, why was this experience different?

 

First, and most important, was that I was not interviewing people for work in the Lab.  These were postdoctoral fellows applicants for Department of State positions.  The vast majority of them are still just a few years from their PhD dissertation, experiencing a very different world and context than I did when I was interviewing for my first faculty position.  Well, that suggests another difference: I interviewed for a faculty position, and never seriously considered a postdoc.  I have spent months engaged with discussions of the role of scientists and engineers engaged in Science Diplomacy, and the interplay of innovation and policy—quite frankly, the education I had come to Washington to have in this very interesting and challenging period.  These folks aren’t being recruited to work on my favorite projects, or to have exactly the sort of background I would like a GROUPER to have… but there was still a request from my unit chief for what sorts of people to identify in the stack of resumes and personal statements.

 

Signs of life.

 

I was starting to wonder about what that would look like in this context, and in fact, I was starting to question if my time away from the university had left me cynical or unable to see beyond my own narrow daily priorities.  Maybe it was a broader sense of unease with the sudden transition from a snowstorm in late March to 90 degree days in late April.  Where and how and when was I operating?  (I had come to feel a certain sense of stress and negative anticipation regarding my transition back to Purdue, starting in late March when I was requested to provide new course syllabi for my Fall classes.  There are new opportunities for next academic year, but after eight months here in Washington, I am neither ready to start right back in on the academic world, nor think in terms of another full annual cycle of activity here.)

 

And yet, my unit chief wanted me to not only be involved in the interviews, but to craft a few questions for them.  It was, as I have said before, a bit different to operate in support of others, instead of being my own “Principal,” but that is part of my learning these days.  I’ve also been learning a lot about the differences in cultures of science, and hearing about the distinct experiences of what I have come to call, “Millennial Scholars” (those who may be part of the generation born in 1985 or later, but also have completed their advanced STEM degree programs since 2010).  I’ve even produced a few of those people myself, but I already knew enough not to look for people just like Ashley or Karim or Marissa or Jeff (or those who are in the lab now).  The discussions in the AAAS meetings in Boston and Washington still had an immediacy and curiosity to me: I was meeting so many people interested in a concept, science policy, that I had long thought was an oxymoron.  Why were they interested in this?  What new was going on?

 

What are the challenges and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses, of these Millennial Scholars?

 

This is, in my experience with the lab, a “signs of life” question.  Signs of life it had become a part of my thinking at a time where spring is definitely upon us in Washington.  I’m walking much more around the city again, and over the past few weeks, I have been able to enjoy the cherry blossoms and new plants and warm weather.  In other words, “signs of life returning” was part of my daily experience.

Figure 1. Signs of life: Tulips at the bus stop

 

The answers were also informative, as well as reminders of an earlier age.  There were those who seemed to have trouble thinking about themselves, and their colleagues, in such a comparative context.  However, this compared to several who actually commented about the relative lack of a sense of historical comparison as a weakness of Millennials.  What was another weakness?  There were several comments about the ease with which new information and new activities and experiences were available, leading to a sense of being dabblers in a variety of skills (“jacks / jills of all trades, masters of none”).  In fact, that ease of collecting and novelty even extended to the strengths and weaknesses of networking.  Although the world of embassies and interagency discussions and think tank receptions clearly indicates a value to the work of engaging with others… there is a difference between engaging in an effective, distributed knowledge network, and collecting friends and likes as a way of keeping score.

 

I found myself curiously replaying one conversation in my mind, about the concept that Millennials were more interested in finding ways to align their actions and employment with their passions.  Now remember, I lived in Cambridge, MA and California during the 1980s startup crazes, where people were all about passion.  I heard the Flower Children talking about living a life of meaning and service.  And, most importantly, I have learned how much my career as a professor is actually well aligned with my passion for exploration and sharing what I found.

Figure 2. Albert sharing a sense of passion.  Maybe science diplomacy was never so far from my thinking after all.  (At the National Academies Keck Center, 500 E St NW)

 

Was this really different?  And then I heard an interesting alternative take on this thought.  “Well, if I can’t rely on a pension or Social Security to be around, there is no reason for me to trade boredom for security.”  From that discussion, I was transported back to the first few times I taught the course Sociotechnical Systems at Wisconsin. I had known about two different models of work and income as “covenants”:  income and status as a way of demonstrating success and favor, or work as a demonstration of one’s passion and artisan’s skills.  It took discussion and debate in class for me to learn that there was a large population with a third approach: work was something one does to get enough income to spend the rest of one’s time doing what one really preferred to do.  Apparently, lots of people live that way, whether they’re working second shift at the auto parts store, or vice president of global distribution for the auto parts company.  I have not chosen to live that way, and I can’t really imagine doing something I hate just to have the income to do what I love, later.  Is that what others were assuming we were all doing?  Or were others doing this a lot more than I was ever aware?

 

I felt like I had come full circle in the discussion, and my awareness of my own experience as a young scholar.  I am convinced that there are confusions in each generation, not sensing the range or intensity of experience from when prior generations were young and emerging, like new plants bursting into the sunlight and struggling against snow and wind and dangerous frost.  I can appreciate it much more now, because I have been in both places, and I have come to feel them both.  I am not yet done with the intensity of feeling and learning.  And yes, I am still pleased to take a moment on a Spring day and feel the sensual joy of lamb’s ear as I walk from meeting to office or home.  Because, even after a great enlightenment, a return to practice and repeat of small things still has value.

Figure 3. Lamb’s ear on 19th St NW.  A good reminder of small lessons.

 

 

Weekend Balance #2: Cassandra’s Postcards

Curiously, the concert that I left work to attend last night was something I discovered almost exactly one week earlier (even to the same clock time).  The group I went to see was Black Violin, two classically trained violinists who are a) black, from Ft. Lauderdale; b) insistent on thinking outside of the box; and c) have a strong alternative vision of how the world can be different than it is, beyond existing stereotypes or interpretations.   (Yes, the highlighted words and links are in fact the names of their albums.  Go listen.)  Last Friday, I was on the train to spend the New Year’s holiday in my hometown of Philadelphia with friends.  I had put on the music just for some simple enjoyment, and found myself transformed and emotionally intense and resonant.  (Yes, it’s also when I found out about their concern in Washington, DC last night.)

Black Violin, with the National Symphony Orchestra, Feb 6, 2017

One of my favorite descriptions of my approach to the world was provided by a GROUPER a couple of years ago, during a 1:1 meeting at a conference.  (I can still see the design of the French patisserie / café in my memory.)  The description was that I live part of my existence in the future, but the nice part is that I “send postcards”.  This is a delightful image, but it hides a painful and problematic truth: not everyone can receive “postcards from the future,” or even know that they exist.  I used to think this was a simple problem of better explanation, but I have had to come to the recognition that there is more at play.  An alternative metaphor comes from my son, who once made a surprised and surprising revelation once when watching me dance to a piece of music to which I resonated very strongly.  He admitted that he had thought that I simply didn’t have a very good sense of rhythm.  Then, as he got older and started thinking more seriously about music composition and production as a career, he listened to more music, more often, at a deeper level.  His statement at a friend’s house was with a type of confused awe: “You’re trying to dance to all of the notes, not just the normal beat.”

 

One of my favorite and most inspirational books of my life is called Cyteen, for a number of reasons (including some too complex to go into here).  I am particularly taken by one of the descriptions of a major protagonist’s sense of their life’s work… that, if they are devoted and dedicated to their passion and their gifts and their uniqueness, because of and not simply despite their unique or alternative make-up, they may have the opportunity to someday speak their “Word,” their major contribution to history’s arc.  While Speaking Words to History sounds pretty cool (at least for my sense of doing what I was built to do), it comes at a major, even profound cost.  I am drawn most to the myth of Cassandra, who was cursed for defying the god Apollo (isn’t that usually how things like that turn out?) by being able to see and foretell the future, but being unable to alter it, and being doomed to have others not believe her when she told them.  (I have to hand it to Apollo, though: that’s a pretty exquisite form of sadistic torture.  But really, just because she turned you down for a date?  I mean, you’re a god and all…)

Poor Cassandra.  (From Wikipedia page, public domain image: Cassandra (metaphor)

It’s really hard to explain to GROUPERs the process of finding and sending postcards from the future, and more importantly, I don’t think it’s a proper thing for me to insist that they do so. For nearly all of the students I’ve met, it’s not the right lesson to be teaching, and there are certainly a wide range of valid and important jobs that one can take on without invoking divine curses.  Having someone who can simply receive the postcard, and translate part of it, is worth a lot.   For example, our current experiences of politics, local and national security, and even the nature of honest communication is based on elements of situational context, information cues, and media characteristics of different information and communication technology channels.  We’re asking about tolerance and acceptance of new communications media in various organizations. That sounds like a really great research project, especially when combining new forms of social messaging as various types of an advanced, or evolved, model of email (written electronic communication), or other group interactions (with or without audio and video capabilities).  It might still be considered a bit ahead of the curve, or timely, because we’re in the midst of it now.  But consider a study of organizational acceptance of alternative media channels conducted in 1992, fully 25 years ago.  That’s before there were any iPhones, or web browsers, or T1 lines (or many of my students).  No graphical email or tweets with emojis.  Do the questions even make sense?  For most people, not really.  (At least that’s the memory of reviewer comments for the Taha and Caldwell, 1992 submission to the Human Factors Society conference.)

Back to the train last Friday.  Imagine me trying to dance to all of the notes as the train pulls into (and then out of) Philadelphia as I continue my journey.  The lights of Philadelphia’s Boathouse row are still holiday festive.  I am crying my resonance to the music playing in my ears.  I finally feel like a type of homecoming has occurred, one that I had sought in vain for nearly 40 years.  In the midst of this, an insight.  Normally, I wouldn’t tell anyone, or I’d write it up piecewise in journal papers.  Not this time.  I’m going to show you the postcard here.

 

View #1:  The Spectrogram

A few years ago, Jeremi London (not the actor) and I worked on a model of STEM education based on the concept that what we in fact try to teach engineers in order to be functional, productive engineers is not a single thing, but a large matrix of skills, habits, attributes, and techniques.  Different courses supposedly load on different matrix elements, and different students have different strengths and weaknesses in those elements.  I visualize this as a type of dynamic matrix of peaks and valleys, as you might get in a audio spectrogram.   What we might think of as intelligence or skill or functionality is actually an aggregation of those peaks and valleys across that range of matrix elements: a person’s functionality is, generally, how well their peaks map onto the things they need to do on a daily basis.  Zero functioning is actually hard to imagine, and if most of the population was in fact functioning at zero, we might not even see it as a relevant matrix attribute element to consider.  (If someone had a peak there, would we even think about it as a peak?  Consider the question of tetrachromats.)  For the sake of analysis and comparison, it’s important to both retain the spectrogram as a matrix, and also consider a simplified representation of it.  You could call it IQ or something.  Let’s just describe it as the determinant of the functionality matrix.

 

View #2: The Bowl

Some of you know that I have a deep, longstanding, and personal interest in questions of neurodiversity: creating models of acceptance, encouragement, and tolerance for people with different sets of skills and forms of excellence.  (This isn’t just a “feel good” about diversity and tolerance as a moral issue.  This is about benefitting from excellence where it is found, including functionality peaks due to alternative wiring that represent “signs of life” not common in the general population.  Well, if you’re training PhD students, that’s not a bad thing to look for: higher, and more distinct, functionality peaks than exist in the general population.  After all, not that many folks get PhDs.)

So, the more your spectrogram pattern of peaks and valleys differs from the standard version (not just higher peaks, but peaks in different places), the less “standard” you are.  (Standard, in this case, represents not just the population norm of the matrix determinants, but the modal matrix pattern.)  In an extreme case, someone with a whole lot of peaks in places where standard people are close to zero, and very low functioning where standard people have peaks, would find it exceptionally hard or impossible to communicate with standard folks at all.  (The concept of “communication” here might work as a multi-dimensional convolution integral, or a multiplication of functions against each other.  You don’t worry about that just now, unless you really want to.)  The more non-standard a person is, the further their pattern is from the standard pattern, and the more overall capability and functionality it might take to compensate for the mismatch, and be seen as equivalently functional as the modal, standard person.  If we considered a function where the matrix determinant was the height, and the difference in pattern was a radius (different types of different patterns would be angles, so we’re in polar coordinates), the “bowl” would be a surface of “equivalent perceived functionality,” with an edge being at a place where someone, no matter how many peaks they had or how profoundly high those peaks are, could not interact with standard folks well enough to be seen as functional.   (So, you can’t see in our standard visual spectrum?  Well, we think you’re blind, even if you have a great visual experience of radio waves.  Too bad if you can hear and sing the vibrations of the planet.  We work in 200 – 4000 Hz, thank you, and if you can’t hear or produce in that range, we won’t hear what each other is saying.  Literally.)

 

View #3: The Disk

Another of the elements we have been playing with in the lab gets the shorthand description of “The Six Dimensions of expertise,” with a corollary of “the disk”.  As we described the matrix above, there are lots of different ways we could organize the elements of the matrix of ways people are good at different things.  They may be socially skilled and charismatic; they may be great with tools and interfaces; they may enjoy structured rules and processes; they may enjoy mathematical analysis and quantitative exploration.  There are other ways to slice skills up into different collections, but there’s been a lot of work recently into “four-quadrant” cognitive styles inventories that are used in organizational assessment.  For the purposes of this discussion, all this tells us is where in the spectrogram the matrix elements of your peaks and valleys are likely to be found.  Useful, if we want to do systematic comparisons of different patterns of functioning (and convolutions of functionality for communication or information alignment).  Which is the “right” four-quadrant model?  That’s not a proper question; it’s kind of like asking what is the “right” set of compass directions.  We agree on one for the purposes of discussion, even though there isn’t even alignment between magnetic and geographic compass directions, and it’s even possible that we could have a situation where magnetic south points towards geographic north.

 

View #4 = Function (#1:#3)

What I’ve described for each of the views above is far from a standard description of how we consider psychological concepts of intelligence, personality, functionality, or cognitive diversity.  Lots of researchers toil very intensely in intelligence assessment or engineering aptitude evaluations, or the genetic contributions to Asperger’s syndrome, or refinements of MMPI or Myers-Briggs inventories (to use examples of standard questions in each of the three views).  Mathematically, however, what I have laid out can be combined (although it’s extremely hard to draw the picture in three dimensions).  Imagine the spectrogram matrix (#1) of a “standard average person” (both in terms of normative / neurotypical wiring rather than autistic spectrum, and in terms of average intelligence), where the matrix is organized according to a four-quadrant disc model where different capabilities are ordered within quadrants with respect to their relative frequency and strength in the population.  Take the determinant of that matrix (note that this result should be independent of how you order the matrix elements).  We’ll now define that “value” of the bottom of the bowl as “standard normative functioning in the modal pattern”.

 

Whose Project is This?

Is this what the lab is currently working on?  My goodness, no.  I would NEVER assign this, in totality, as a project for a student thesis.  It requires significant revisions of three or four major disciplines, as well as some advanced mathematics for the methodologies, and new forms of data collection on thousands or millions of persons on a set of variables we don’t even define well, let alone currently measure or collect.  But, for the first time, I have been willing to describe a panoramic postcard of this type in a public venue.  Why?  For years, I was worried that lots of other people would understand, and jump on the problems, and start working on them, and that my best contributions would be left behind, meaningless and trivial.  Then I started to think that this would be considered foolish and ridiculous, unless and until I took on myself the responsibility of being able to explain it better so that “most people” could get it.  But, Words Spoken to History are not widely understood, even for years or decades, and the measure of the mark on the tree of knowledge is not how many people applaud when the mark is made.  Galileo learned this lesson, as did Leonardo DaVinci, and Marie Curie, and Rachel Carson (and Ariane Emory).  Am I comparing myself to them?  No, not even close.  I’m just trying to Speak my Words.

 

 

 

Thank you, C. J. Cherryh, for the concept of sets, and A-E, for the introduction.

Weekend Balance #1: Learning the Right Things

Approximately 5:30 Friday (yesterday) evening, I told my unit chief that I was headed out for the evening and weekend.  That was not only okay, it was expected; I’d been heading into work 11 hours earlier to work on a very active set of reports from the day’s activity in Japan, which I summarized and sent out to our colleagues.  (Ah, the joy of nearly 24 hour coverage due to time zone differences: the Japanese Embassy in Tokyo starts to wind down about the same time that the first folks in Washington are getting on the Metro to start their work day.)  He surprised me by encouraging me not to think about work for a couple of days as I went to a concert and planned for a quiet time at home.  Well, those who know me will recognize an immediate disconnect: Barrett to not think about work for whole days at a time?

Well, that is a challenge these days, for multiple reasons.  It’s actually something that we discussed in a couple of our (distributed, online) lab meetings last fall, about finding appropriate forms of balance and mechanisms for taking care of one’s internal resources.  Now, it would have rung hollow if I were to take 3-4 hours on Christmas Day to write up a blog entry on work-life balance.  (Don’t worry.  I spent much of the day with a roaring fire, computer games, and lots of cookies.)

When I woke up this (Saturday) morning, I was looking forward to coming out to the kitchen to a waiting blanket of snow, to make some tea and settle in for a quiet day… of typing up notes and responding to Purdue emails and designing new projects.  That is a day off?  Well, it is a day away from reading media reports of Japan – Korea tensions or considering meeting preparations for trilateral engagement.   But on the other hand, the truth is that I have somehow set myself to try to manage two full-time jobs.  How does that really work?

McPherson Square, with the first snow of the season: a good day for learning.

One of the first recognitions is the difference between what I want and what is, and if there is a gap between the two, what do I want / choose to do about it?  The truth is, I specifically chose the Jefferson Science Fellowship opportunity as a unique experience to expose me to activity and opportunity that I could not get in my past patterns at Purdue, with a few grad students and departmental responsibilities and a few obligations to the state of Indiana.  Those aren’t bad things, but there was a gap that needed to be addressed.  (When I return to Purdue, there will be another gap, because for me to return to exactly the set of activities I left this past August would be a waste of this experience, no matter how familiar, or comfortable, or well-prepared I am for them.)

I am seeing this recognition in another context when I think about the experiences of my students.  To be here, in Washington DC, is more than anything an experience of learning.  And sometimes, learning takes up all of my time: it is one of my primary job tasks.  Learning is also a task that takes focus, and discipline, and patience.  I’m not just talking about the process of collecting a bunch of facts for later regurgitation, which is what most students think of in the context of taking a class for a grade.  I mean a deeper learning, about context and discernment and recognizing what aspect of this pattern is important, and real, and valuable for me to integrate into a larger whole.

Well, that can be a process of life discipline, which then applies to everything.  Learning is about noticing how I balance on one leg during morning exercise, or how well I could run through the cold last night to catch the bus or rail, or… how I improve the management of the lab.

It’s often been suggested that I have a casual approach to managing the lab.  Actually, this is not true.  I could insist on clocked hours, minimum amounts of in-person time in the lab, weekly reports, and any number of other rules.  Some people actually have de-selected the lab because I don’t have lots of those rules.  As I experience this year as an immersion in this bureaucracy, I recognize that it’s not that students don’t learn anything if I impose such rules; however, it’s clear that they can easily learn the wrong things.  Did you reflect on the task, or simply put in the time?  Did you embrace the difficulty as a form of instruction, or simply as a burden?  Do you examine the situation as a system with gaps in design or execution of objective functions, or just complain about how “they” don’t care about (fill in the blank with whatever you feel is important from your local perspective)?  Do you even think about what the various objective functions are?

As a result, I now have a much deeper appreciation of what choices are being made when one of the members of the lab considers taking on a full time job at various stages of her/his graduate professional progression.  These are not trivial decisions, and there are various reasons why someone may need to choose to work at a job during one’s graduate career.  And I’m not casual in my feelings about this.  But I need the student to learn the right lessons, and I have learned (with both students, and children, and other organizational participants) that the right lesson comes from a well-designed combination of the teacher, the student, and the lesson (there is an interesting book on this called The Seven Laws of Teaching, originally published in 1884.  Read widely, question deeply.)

One of the lessons is that getting a PhD is about learning to think about questions, and developing answers, that others have not done so.  If you can’t work your way all the way through your own dissertation topic and method and analysis and interpretation, you really don’t deserve the PhD.  Yes, your advisor can help you, but if you need your advisor to give you all of the steps, then it’s not your PhD.  (Thanks, I already have my own, and I don’t feel the need for another.)  Another lesson is that very few people outside of academia, or those who do not have a PhD already, really understand what that first lesson is about.  There is just a different way of thinking and working going on.  Not bad, not good, just different.  So, if you’re used to approaching the world with one set of priorities and tools, and you move to another place where people don’t approach the world that way, you’re going to have to shift back and forth… and most people don’t shift back and forth among ways of thinking that well.

On the other hand, given how much I think about rules and lessons and managing and studying humans for a living, if there is a rule or insight or lesson I try to share, it’s usually not just for the sake of the rule.  (See above.)  That’s not casual either.   If there is a disagreement between myself and a student on a dissertation topic, or methodological approach, or insight available from a course, there is a possibility that the student is right and is operating based on information not available to me.  (In other words, they are good and working in an alternative domain.)  However, one observation of learning the right vs. wrong lesson is when I see students trying to fulfill the letter of a rule, but miss the spirit; or try to avoid the rule because it’s not ideal or fun or convenient (or “fair”?); or argue with me about how my accumulated experience is not relevant for a particular case.  Again, there may be reasons why any of those is correct.  But, to be honest, that’s not likely, and what concerns me more is, what lesson is the student learning or trying to execute?

So, as I move forward through 2017, there are lots more lessons to learn, and quite a few gaps to examine and determine how I might want to resolve them.  I admit that I am nowhere near content with my resolution of how to perform both Purdue vs J Desk jobs ideally.  (One lesson is, I really want to do this J Desk job really well, because that is the priority and opportunity available to, and surrounding, me now.  I care about the Purdue version / job, but it’s hard for me to do that full time too, and still care for my health and sleep and eat properly.  So it slips in priority right now… but I know that’s only for a year, not for an indefinite shift as a career.  That’s a lesson also for the students.)

Lessons are, in fact, about resolving gaps—not just gaps of factual knowledge, but gaps of how experience can affect interaction with the world.  I continue to explore how to find the right gaps, and resolve them in good and effective ways, to solve the right problems.  That’s a fairly comforting and happy thought for me as an engineer.  And although we didn’t get as much snow as I might have hoped, I can improve my recognition of what gaps were most important for me to close today.

 

 

Icons and Orbits

Yesterday became a reminder of the special experience that this year has become.  I didn’t really plan on it, but as they say, I was in the neighborhood.  In the nature of adventures, that’s what made the exploration even more memorable and valuable.

On Friday morning, I had the opportunity to watch the launch of the Japanese H-II HTV-6 cargo transfer vehicle to the International Space Station from JAXA’s Washington DC Headquarters.  Of course, this was a special privilege to be able to share the excitement with the U.S. office of JAXA; I was also honored that the staff was able to find a place for me to attend.  I’m not sure they initially understood my enthusiasm for the launch as a rocket scientist, and not just a representative of the State Department, but after some discussions of orbital approach velocities and the functions of the GC, PAO, and PHALCON consoles in the ISS, I think my excitement was clearly interpreted as longstanding and real.  Having completed that activity, and then walking over to my office at the State Dept., it was time for some research.

I’m supposed to finish a book chapter on aerospace human factors, and most of my references are back in Indiana.  So, the thinking went, where’s the next best place?  Although NASA Headquarters is also nearby, it was easy to pick up the bus to take me to the National Air & Space Museum (NASM), where I knew I could take some pictures and take some notes from one of the books in the museum shop.  Upon entering the main hall, though, I was frozen in place. Even now, trying to write up this entry, my emotions threaten to get the best of me.  The voices whispered to me from the ages and the vehicles:

Godspeed, John Glenn.

The children playing at the interactive wall couldn’t hear the voices.  Maybe not yet.

Figure 1: Children at the Air and Space Museum interactive video wall

 

Of course, I couldn’t hear the voices either, the first time the words were spoken into the radio and broadcast.  (I existed on February 20, 1962, but just barely.  I wasn’t born until that September.)  I remember learning them later, as part of the lesson of where bravery and commitment and ingenuity and perseverance could take us.  One of the images on the wall was an iconic photo of Glenn with his Mercury capsule, where he would hear the voice and become the first American to orbit the earth. The New York Times had that iconic photo on its front page yesterday:

Figure 2: John Glenn with Friendship 7, from New York Times story

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/08/us/glenn-obit-1/glenn-obit-1-blog427.jpg

But the power of the moment came a few minutes later, as I realized: it’s here.  Friendship 7, just a few paces away.  Surprisingly, there were only a few people there, providing me more than enough time to feel the prick of tears, appreciate the bouquet of memorial flowers, and recognize the sacred touch to my core.

Figure 3: Friendship 7 at NASM, with bouquets.

 

For years, I had thought that I was supposed to be like John Glenn.  I wanted to be an astronaut, no?  And there he was, not a fictional creation, but a real person.  That’s achievable, right?  That’s the model of what an astronaut can and should be?  Well, not quite. Even the other Mercury astronauts didn’t live up to the image of John Glenn, a story of love and good behavior as an icon that only pushes down further on the scales of history.  That’s not what or who I am, though I deeply honor someone who could be so completely that person: even meeting him years later, well after being Senator Glenn and the crew member responsible for the Space Shuttle moniker “Discovery 7”, I had a sense that he was just being himself.  And yet there is a lesson in there for me, even if I cannot be that person.

In lab meeting this past week, GROUPERs and I discussed the future of the lab, and what would best achieve the goals I have for myself and the remainder of my career.  In essence, my query and fear was over a lack of effect or impact.  And yet, I can recognize that my best work is done when I am most devoted to doing what I am built to do, what lives at the depths of my core.  There is a lot I “can” do, in the sense that I have a range of skills and aptitudes.  But just because I can do it, that doesn’t mean that is what I must do.  For some tasks, not only are there others better suited for it, but I am not ideally suited to do it; it would take away from what I am best designed to do.  I wasn’t really ready for what I heard next (but I want to let you know that I am learning to hear these voices, too).

GROUPER doesn’t recruit in a standard way.  It’s not about ranking applicants on the basis of grade point and GRE scores.  It’s about detecting “signs of life,” as I describe it.  But, from the other side, that of the students who thrive best, there seems to be something else.  It’s about someone who listens, and cares, and is passionately able and willing to alter the trajectory of one’s life.  That is something I love to do, burn to do.  It’s not the most lucrative choice, or the one with the most fame or adoration associated.  How many people have I affected in this way?  All of my estimates are too low.  I undercount my effect in the lab now.  I undercount it among the lab alumni (but maybe I should start coming to visit you, just for a day or two, and have another conversation with you and those who you think might be good for me to talk to), and among the students in class who go about their lives in some different way because of something they saw, or heard, or felt.  In more mature consideration, I realize that the real reward is to be doing what I need to be doing for its own sake, not because of the external acknowledgements or rewards.

Doing what one was built to do, out of a sense of duty to a broader purpose… a passionate life.  Defining one’s work, and one’s job, differently than just being based on an income, but by being able to touch others and having left the world better.  That’s perhaps not a common framing of holding, or doing, one’s job… but common or not, this sense of purpose was part of Glenn’s holding a job.  Doing what Glenn did, because he did it, isn’t the point.  Doing what I do, because it is what I should be doing, is.

 

All the flags are at half staff today.  But I don’t feel like I’ve lost someone.  I feel like I’ve gained.  I welcome the reminders, the tears and the passion, and most of all, the voices.

 

Godspeed, John Glenn.

 

 

 

Now That You’ve Caught the Car…

A year ago, when I finally decided that I did want to do the Jefferson Science Fellowship program, I said I wanted an adventure experience, unlike anything I would likely have back on campus.  I said that I wanted a front-row seat for the challenge and complexity of governmental transition.  I wanted to learn about the language of statecraft.  Well, I hadn’t imagined that it would be like this.  But of course, that is the nature of great adventures.

I came into work today, the day after Thanksgiving, not because I was too work obsessed to stay home, but because we need some coverage at the desk.  For most of the world, this is just another work day.  Who knows what might be happening?  There are news stories about various Asian governments—how do they affect my science and technology portfolio?  Has the President-elect selected a nominee for Secretary?  Are there any more earthquake aftershocks affecting eastern Japan?  Yes, this is exactly what it is to be embedded in a regional bureau of a high-profile international diplomatic alliance.  And whether or not I knew it, that is what I was asking to learn.

The image I’ve had this week is that of a dog, just at the moment of catching the car it has been chasing, suddenly recognizing its success and now forced to ask a fundamental (even existential) question: Now what do I do?  With a little extra time today, I was able to find some versions of exactly that image.  I would like to say that it’s just coincidence that the contexts of the images are cars and politics, but I can’t really promise that.  I do know that one of the nicer (apolitical) images does come from a blog that extols the pleasures of driving Porsches with manual transmissions.

http://pedrosboard.com/read.php?7,40968,40994

I cannot disagree with that philosophy, of course; it’s just that my time driving is limited these days to a few weekend visits back to Indiana.  After years of dreaming and theorizing about it, I really do have the experience of “getting up at home, going to the very familiar home airport, flying a couple of hours, landing at the very familiar home airport, and going home”.  I joked with a friend about “checking on the country manor on my days away from my suite of rooms at the capital, attending to affairs of State”.  Perhaps amusing, perhaps pretentious… but very apt (except that the house in Lafayette is not quite the country… but it feels like it compared to downtown DC).

There is even a broader political version of this question that grips Washington.  I don’t really want to spend my time engaged in national politics, but I do like the cartoon.

https://thewiddershins2.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/dog-catches-car/

Although I did say I wouldn’t do politics, I do want to describe something very wonderful and remarkable that has sustained me over the past fortnight.  Every day, as I come to work, I get on the (public transit) bus with a number of other government workers.  The security guards are just as friendly and engaging as they check my badge.  I walk to my office, and there are still all of the elements of bureaucracy and statecraft on Nov 25 as there were on Oct 25.   Some of the questions I field, and media reports I read, are very different because of ecstatic elephants rather than dancing donkeys in the neighborhood.  But some of my colleagues remind me that this level of continuity would not have been the case in other places where they have worked.

Admittedly, there are protests and disillusionment and frustration; I think this would have been true even with the dancing donkeys outcome.  I have managed to miss the protests that are active a few blocks from my apartment—not because I’m uncaring, but because I need to have something constructive to do in the face of confusion and disorder.   My something to do is very concrete and actionable: support the science, technology and innovation elements of the U.S. – Japan alliance.  Living in Washington as an engineer focusing on the social context of technology development and innovation does give me a dual view of the world.  Understanding how technology works does change one’s view of how context matters, and how the stories that are told influence whether some innovation is considered a source of wonder or woe.  I am also challenged by what seem to be violations of my empirical approach: I have a theory about the way I want the world to work.  I have a set of data that conflict with that theory.  I will now try to force the data to fit my pre-existing theory, rather than try to come to a broader understanding of the world (and develop an improved theory) based on the data I have observed.

Maybe I would have enjoyed history and social science classes in high school and college more if I could have learned more about triangulation and context description and system dynamics.  But I don’t regret having this perspective, or even the sense of disorientation I feel when reading the news reports.  There is some very pretty math emerging about developing the right configuration of dynamic applications of inertial policy to enable critically damped responses to geopolitical challenges using an optimal steering strategy (which Norbert and Jay might have called Cybernetic Statecraft).  I have a close-up view of ways it’s working, and ways it is very poorly implemented (both now, and in the past).  More importantly, I need to be able to explain this to people who *are* historians and policy studies and language majors.

Well, that’s a pretty clear view of what I need to do next, and why it’s good for me to be here, right now, doing it.  Woof.

Back to School

The Labor Day holiday weekend is drawing to a close, and I have finished up my second week of the Fellowship.  Even though the start dates of the semester and my tenure here in DC were the same, I have gotten to notice how much the routines differ between the two environments.  Unlike my academic routine that can adapt and adjust based on the day of the week and the differences between class and no-class, committee and research schedules, things feel distinct here.  There is a bus I catch, most days, between 8:14 and 8:40.  On Wednesdays, there will usually be lunch with the other Fellows.  There are Monday and Thursday morning “huddle” meetings.

 

However, that is not what I notice the most from the past two weeks.  I admit that I have developed a particular appreciation for my manager.  Each day, there is a specific new thing I have to learn.  How do I send a particular type of email?  What is the formatting for this kind of documentation?  Who do I contact for this activity?  Of course, he’s seen this all before, but it’s my first time.  And it’s not like I have had 3-4 weeks of easing into the situation.  I’ve already worked on international memoranda, and meetings between embassy staff and local representatives, and sat in on planning discussions with the offices of some folks whose name might appear on someone’s bumper sticker.  (But notably, the importance of the office is communicated by an acronym, or even a single letter; the people whose names are used are names I don’t recognize, and even those names go with acronyms.)  The most appropriate phrase for this experience is one that I learned during my first few weeks as an undergrad at MIT: “Drinking from the firehose.”

 

In that environment, where I’m supposed to come up to speed quickly, it seems like a luxury to have someone check in with me as many as 3-5 times per day to help me with one task or another.  In truth, some of the help sessions seem a bit remedial, teaching me things I do already know.  But he doesn’t know that.  And more importantly, I don’t always know when something I think I know how to do isn’t exactly how this organization does it.  So, I find myself learning to be more patient when being taught, and listening all the way through the lesson.  I even have a guiding document for goals to achieve over the next month or so—distinct from a to-do list of tasks, and an in-process list of assignments.

 

One of the things that surprises me most about this firehose experience is a new-found empathy and appreciation for the situations that confront new students in the lab.  We’ve been working on SoS and PoSE conceptualizations of ICT use in the SHARK and DOLPHIN and PERCH* streams for years—why are you nodding blankly at me?  Of course.  I’ve been doing it for years.  You just got here.  I just used a bunch of acronyms—shorthand for me, incomprehensible jargon for you.  Even when we get to time for a thesis outline, or a prelim draft, or a set of PhD defense slides, it does take some reminders to recognize that two dozen years of practice and 75 or more iterations don’t get transmitted easily to someone who is experiencing it all new and in an intense, nervous state.

 

I would like to hope that this lesson comes back to Purdue with me next Fall.  For a new student, or new faculty member, each new item can be part of an overwhelming onslaught of novelty and complexity.  Maybe it won’t stay that way for long, but it feels like that now.  In the senior capstone design course I teach, I remind the students to take the time to capture those initial moments of novelty and first attempts at processing and decision making, because it will be really hard to recall those feelings (and assumptions, and senses of confusion) again later.  I can tell them that, but it was a long time since I have felt that at the level I feel it now.  It’s good to be reminded of what the first few, chaotic weeks of new experience feel like.

 

Photo of Little Kern Golden Trout by Middleton and Liitschwager (1988), hanging in the C Street entrance lobby of the National Academies.

 

 

*Acronym decluttering:

SoS: Systems-of-Systems. or a description of complex systems engineering settings where individual components of an overarching system represent complex systems in their own right (such as individual aircraft, with pilots and co-pilots, in the airspace over Washington, DC while Marine One is traveling across town).

PoSE: Perspectives on Systems Engineering.  This is a course that I developed to teach about four distinct traditions of systems engineering, ranging across systems thinking, cybernetics, component-whole relations, and project management.  Only in its second iteration as a hybrid distance / on-campus course, it is one of the most subscribed courses in Engineering Professional Education (and I’m not even teaching it this semester).

ICT: Information and Communications Technology.  When I first started as a faculty member, most computers had line-by-line display screens in single colors of amber or green; email and word processors and bulletin board chat groups were the most sophisticated information exchange tools available.  Even with all of the changes in capability, it’s still important to recognize that the point of these technologies were, and are, for humans to communicate.

SHARK, DOLPHIN, PERCH:  These are designations of project areas within the research lab, referring to knowledge sharing architectures, information flow delays, and applications to healthcare delivery improvement, respectively.  Check them out at https://engineering.purdue.edu/GrouperLab/streams/.