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Get With the Program

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My first experience with programming occurred at a Cub Scout meeting. To build our visions of the future, our den leader brought in parents to talk about the work that they did. My father came in with a set of 3×5 cards. We sat in a circle and he handed each of us a card. Following the instructions on the card, we were able to perform an operation of binary logic on two numbers. Believe me, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing, but the insights we gained into the nature of computing sure made us feel smart.

Perhaps forty-five years later, I now go by the airy title of “Software Engineer.” This is actually a fraud. By law, “engineer” is a designation reserved for technologists that have passed a rigorous assessment of capability. No such test exists for software. As one consequence, the lack of reliable practices for predicting cost and schedule for software development is a scandal. At one point, surveys of software projects reported that almost half failed.

Given the importance of software, a number of serious efforts have been made to attack the problem, spanning the full spectrum from machine design all the way up to the executive suites. Methods and tools, team dynamics, and project management were all brought under scrutiny and overhauled. Nothing has worked.

Looking back at that Cub Scout meeting, I must admit to some bemusement, because in fact what goes on in computers is exactly what we did with our 3×5 cards, except on a much larger scale and at incomprehensibly faster pace. It’s just a bunch of 0’s and 1’s flying around, with some conversion going on to allow people to digest the results of the calculation. Why should it be so hard to get a handle on the process?

Among the reasons are those that we might hope would be resolved in the foreseeable future. First is the enormously rapid pace of change in the industry. Moore’s Law meant that the difficulty of the problems that we could address grew by a factor of two every eighteen months over a span of thirty years – compounding the growth, that becomes a million times! In data storage and access, the factors are even larger. No other technology discipline comes even close to boasting these kinds of numbers. The rapid pace of change means that what was important and interesting five years ago is meaningless today. So how can we certify practices at the forefront of technology?

Of course, as has been reported in the technology press, Moore’s Law has progressed to the extent that fundamental laws of physics will impose limits on computing power in the foreseeable future. That may allow the test designers some time to catch up with progress.

A second cause for hope is that pattern processing algorithms are becoming sophisticated enough to effectively interpret human behavior. Some of those algorithms are used for gesture and speech recognition. Some are used to recognize our habits and track our schedule, allowing digital assistants to interpret our gestures and speech as specific instructions appropriate to the context. The near-term impact of this capability will be that more and more of us will become programmers, because the barrier to entry – learning how to “speak” languages understood by computers – will be removed.

But there are certain aspects of computer programming that will remain intractable, the foremost of them being trying to visualize clearly the outcome of a program’s execution.

My father Karl was given a consulting assignment in the ‘60s at a large defense contractor. The president had committed to automation of production operations, and the project was nearing completion. But while the developers were confident that the software would perform as specified, nobody had performed a comprehensive assessment of the impact on current operations. That was the task presented to Karl.

Of particular concern was the production scheduling office. The process transformed his understanding of programming. The walls of the large room were covered with clipboards hanging on hooks. Colored sheets were used to identify time-sensitive assemblies. Written manuals defined the procedures for movement of the clipboards on the walls. In many respects, it resembled the process he guided the Cub Scouts through a few years later. It was a program, and there was no way that the production automation system would be able to replicate its level of sophistication. When presented with the assessment, the president chose to force the scheduling team to use the new software, and production collapsed.

Fundamentally, software is just manipulations of zeros and ones. It is useful only to the extent that we can use the zeros and ones to represent the real world. For most of the history of computing, that meant that the principle role of the software developer was to translate the language of the human expert into terms that could be executed by a computer. When that knowledge was packaged and distributed, it meant that every local expert was replaced by a world’s expert, improving the decisions made by others, who then commissioned software solutions that stimulated improvements elsewhere, all at an ever increasing pace that frustrated the attempts by managers to actually control the end result.

What Karl realized in the scheduling office was that programs exist all around us. Some of them we call “habits”, others we call “software”, others we call “symphonic scores.” To realize the intentions of the people that commission the creation of the program, the programmer must describe the actions to be taken in terms understood by the executor of the program – whether a mechanic, a computer or a musician. What is common to each of those situations, however, is the fact that the program only specifies a pattern of execution. A spark plug can be changed in a driveway or in a repair shop. Microsoft Word can be used to write a love letter or a subpoena. A symphony can be performed on period or modern instruments. The result in each case may be subtly or grossly different, but the pattern of the execution is the same.

And there was no good way of representing such patterns. It wasn’t science, and it wasn’t engineering. “Programming” was as good a word as any to use.

Rude is Not the New ‘PC’

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With the Trump campaign only now announcing that they are going to bring in experts to craft policy positions, it is easy to fall into the cant adopted by Hillary Clinton. In a press briefing in New Hampshire today, Clinton observed that “Megan is a strong woman and can take care of herself,” and dismissed the Trump candidacy as “entertainment.”

But it’s far, far more than that. Trump stood up at the Fox debate and threw his money and ego around. The other candidates came off as a coterie in short pants, each one talking over the other as they sniped in the background. The goal was to make Trump sound silly, but it was obvious who had the strongest personality on the stage.

The image that comes most clearly to mind when I think of that scene is a photo of Hitler and his high command that my family came across in the effects of my grandmother’s last husband, who served on Eisenhower’s staff at the end of World War II. In the photo, the warriors are ranged behind Hitler in combat dress, but none of them looked half as tough as the Fuhrer in shorts. Despite the pout and over-coiffed hair, the same was true of Trump on the debate platform.

I’m not going to suggest that Trump is another Hitler. The man seems affable, and genuinely concerned about the “little people.” But he is obviously unwilling or unable to recognize that the jibes and threats he bandies about on the stage are a dangerous model. Every time Trump shoots off his mouth, a team of lawyers scurries in the background, evaluating whether they have leverage to impose his will on adversaries (as appears to have occurred at Fox News today through Roger Ailes), or whether to backtrack, turn on the charm, and make nice.

I don’t think that Trump understands that when he tells a woman “I’m nice to people that are nice to me,” many women in America hear echoes of an abusive boss engaged in inappropriate groping. And of civil servants, covered by a blanket assessment of idiocy, I can’t help but remember Newt Gingrich and his anti-government rhetoric during the Clinton era, rhetoric that morphed into ridiculous tales of “UN Black Helicopters” preparing to enforce a “New World Order,” whipping up hysteria and paranoia among civilian militias that peaked with McVeigh’s truck bomb murder of the children at the Murrah Building day-care center in Oklahoma City.

And as for the claim that illegal immigrants are “rapists” – we’ve heard things like that about minorities before. What was the epithet? “Christ killers?”

Trump is unsuitable for the Oval Office because he doesn’t realize that the President fires the imagination of the public with an authority presumed to be vetted by the federal bureaucracy. People without his sense of nuance and balance are going to emulate his conduct and manner of speaking. Rude men will run with his claims of oppression under the doctrine of “political correctness,” and be emboldened by his use of raw power to intimidate others. They may not have his resources, but they will emulate his conduct, and hurt a lot of other people in the process.

So, no, we shouldn’t consider this entertainment. It is dangerous. Trump needs to learn to control his mouth, or get off the political stage.

Love Works Posted

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Just a note that I’ve uploaded the rest of Love Works. Click on the page link on the banner. The post explains the delay.

The document was originally created in OpenOffice, and the images acquired a grey background in the port to Word. At some point I’ll fire up my old laptop and break it apart in OpenOffice. If there’s an immediate need, let me know and I’ll push it up on the priority list.

Being Boxed In

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The management guru fad of the ‘80s wound itself up just at the turn of the millennium. This may have been due, in part, to the rise of information technology that shifted analytical emphasis away from the personality of the leader toward those directly involved in creating value. That was evident in the last book I read on leadership, which warned managers that knowledge workers would simply walk away from organizations that did not adopt collaborative management strategies.

I find myself in such a situation at this point. When I started my current job, I sat through meetings that devolved into pitched shouting matches. Such altercations were a daily event between some of my peers. When I intervened with the HR staff to bring this to an end, I exposed patterns that dated back to the formation of the company by people that used competition to maintain control of knowledge workers. Circulating to upper management an essay on triangulation and its consequences did not make me a popular person. When I put a copy of “Breaking The Fear Barrier” on my desk, they just stopped coming into my office.

They kept me on because I sat in my office and did what I do best: create a garden in an overgrown software jungle. The application that I manage, which has always been a critical part of the user’s experience of our products, has gone from being something hidden until the sale is complete to an essential part of the sales process. At the same time I have created component libraries and leveraged them to build new applications, algorithms and regression test suites. Having gone eight years without a pay raise, however, it’s time for me to move on to a place that understands and appreciates the principles that I use to understand the needs of my customers and create success for them.

So I’ve been working on my resume and trying to visualize the kind of place that I would find success in. I have a certain sympathy for Microsoft, and went out to the Research site on Saturday to see whether I could put up a resume. The site indicates that researchers are expected to be recognized experts in their field with a substantial body of publications. Well, shoot, most of my career has been spent in top secret facilities or in small companies that use trade secrets to protect their intellectual property. Microsoft Research does have a category for applications developers, but that link led me through to the main Microsoft site.

And so I find myself where I was eight years ago: a really smart guy who was told by an honest recruiter that “if I knew someone starting an R&D program, you’re the guy I would recommend, but you just don’t market well as either a manager or a software developer.” Where most developers focus on coding efficiency and the arcane syntax, most of my effort is invested in understanding the application domain so that I write the right code. Whether it’s produced in JavaScript or C++ or C# is pretty irrelevant – once I’ve established the design, I evaluate and select an implementation platform, read a book, start writing code, and use the web to find answers to arcane syntax questions when they come up.

Most hiring managers don’t have a clue how to evaluate a person like me. They want a known quantity – a specific skill set that will allow someone to come in and deliver value on day one. They’re not willing to take a risk on learning, and don’t know how to evaluate that capability by probing past experience to determine whether a resume represents individual contribution, or simply takes credit for work done by others.

So I’m resolved to find my own opportunities this time – searching the web for job openings and pushing my resume through directly. I’m making culture an explicit issue by declaring that my loyalties lie first and foremost with the customer.

To those of you who have been following this blog, this probably resonates. I’m hard to pin down because I don’t specialize narrowly. Rather, I examine relationships (personal, institutional and intellectual), and advocate for deepening them where others pick a side. But, damn it, I don’t want to be in a conveniently packaged box that can be moved easily around (itinerancy being the biggest problem faced by software companies). I want a home, and I’m willing to meet people where they are.

The Trust Mind

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Hundreds of years before the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the mystics of Greek Hellenismos understood Humanity’s spiritual development as a growth into engagement with certain fundamental natural forces. Aphrodite, for example, was represented as a beautiful woman, but as a god mediated between humanity and the force of attraction, which manifests as much in gravitation as it does in sensual desire. Following the era of the Titans and Olympians, the aim of the mystics was to usher in the age of Dionysius, allowing men to interact directly with the principles. In other words, for us to become gods.

When this truth was first revealed to me, the speaker admitted that in the modern era, we view Dionysius, the “party god”, as an unlikely avatar. We view alcohol as a vice, but the Greeks saw it as a tool. When we are drunk, we “lose our inhibitions.” That may manifest itself in a tendency to orgy, but at a deep spiritual level reflects the loosening of the protective barriers around our souls. We surrender ourselves to trust, and so relate more freely and deeply than we would otherwise. (See this post by Irwin Osbourne for more on this experience.)

The power of this relation can be abused. Megalomania is one pathology. In “Ray”, the film biography of Ray Charles, one scene reconstructs a set in which a horn player stands up to take an impromptu solo in the middle of a number. The man was dismissed, not because he violated the integrity of the rendition, but because Ray recognized intuitively that the man was on heroin. Accused of hypocrisy, Charles’s retort was that he had to be the only one. A second pathology is dependency. In graduate school, a friend shared his experience of a teacher who drank incessantly, and actually could do chemistry well only in that state. It took me a while to figure out how to suggest that maybe the teacher wasn’t doing the thinking at all – that the alcohol enabled him to inject himself into a community of minds that tolerated his needs.

There are other methods to achieve this integration. A young woman can be almost suicidal in her disposition to trust the men that she desires, and when that is manifested in sexual license, she may serve as the pool in which men join. Junger’s book “War” documents the characteristics of men that survive constant threat only by surrendering themselves to trust in each other.

There is enormous power in such melding, but the methods listed above cannot be sustained by our physiology. The licentious woman becomes corrupted by masculine demons, and loses her beauty. Substance abuse drives our metabolism into pathways that destroy our health. And war is a process that no one escapes without harm, even if it is hidden deep in the soul behind a stoic mask.

It is for this reason that everdeepening.org opens with this statement:

Love dissolves the barriers of time and space, allowing wisdom, energy and understanding to flow between us, and embracing us with the courage, clarity and calm that overcomes obstacles and creates opportunities. When we open our hearts to one another, there is no truth that is not revealed, and to those that love themselves, no impulse to harm that cannot be turned to the purposes of healing and creation.

As a Christian, I see the ultimate human manifestation of this truth in the march of Jesus of Nazareth to the cross. And behind that sacrifice, I must see the yearnings of a perfect and unconditional love that invests itself in the realization of that truth in our lives.

But when picking up the Bible, it doesn’t take long to reach contradictory evidence. Taking Eden as a metaphor for a relationship of trust between the source of love and humanity, that trust is corrupted by the serpent, which appeals fundamentally to human selfishness. In God, we were gods, but Eve is encouraged [NIV Gen. 3:5] to “be like God, knowing good an evil.” For this breach of trust, Adam and Eve are dismissed from the garden, and punishments are heaped upon them.

What was so heinous about their crime? Was it worse than the slaying of Abel, for which Cain was allowed a lifetime of repentance? And what is so important about us that God would give Jesus as a sacrifice to the goal of our redemption?

To understand this, we have to understand the nature of thought. We have succumbed in the modern age to scientific materialism, and so hold that thought occurs in the brain. I know this not to be true: I relate frequently to thinking beings that have no bodies and no brains, and so must recognize that my brain is merely an interface to my soul. To facilitate the expression of will through my body, the operation of the brain must correlate completely with the thinking done by my spirit.

Thus I interpret “In the image of God he created them” [NIV Gen. 1:27] in this way: our bodies are a tool through which we manifest the will of our souls and – given the quote above – they operate most effectively when used to express love.

The problem is that every interface is a two-way street. While through our commitment to creative expression, we can bring truth and beauty into the world, the opposite can occur. In the experience of pain and suffering, we project thoughts back into God. In the expression of greed and lust, we corrupt the purity of love. This is articulated many times in the Bible: consider Noah, Exodus and Ezekiel. Rather than being remote and impervious, God suffers from our wrong-doing. The flood is thus a desperate move to rid himself of the irritation, as is the destruction of the Holy City through the witness of Ezekiel. While horrifying to us as humans, we might imagine that so must the bacterium feel when confronting the operation of the immune system.

The error of the Law is to interpret these actions as a judgment, as an evidence of sin. They are not. The effect is to destroy the material manifestations of the success of selfishness, revealing its sterility. They are actions taken to frustrate selfish personalities that attempt to prevent love from liberating and healing their abused captives.

This is “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” that brings death into the world. Lacking appreciation of the virtues of love, we chose not to trust in love. We demanded understanding. But understanding is gained only through experience, and experience requires expression of both good and evil. We are educating ourselves.

In the end, Christ gathers those that chose good into the fold of the perfect love that originates from the divine source. We join our shared memory and wisdom into a single holy mind, and heal the world of the disease of selfishness. Thus I do not interpret the Crucifixion as atonement for our sins. Rather, I believe it should be seen as a surrender to trust in love, a struggle waged most fiercely in the Garden of Gethsemane, and redeemed by the proof of the power of love in the Resurrection. Rather than an indictment of our frailty, it is meant to be an exhortation to manifest our own forms of greatness.

Trust in yourselves. Trust in love. Welcome yourselves into the Holy Spirit, the mind formed when that trust is perfected in us.

On Pro-Creation

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Upon realizing that Darwin was half right – that life is the co-evolution of spirit and biological forms – I set out to re-read the Bible front-to-back in preparation for the writing of The Soul Comes First. What I came to appreciate was the enormously disciplined purpose that is manifested in that history. The Earth was provided to us, the angels, as a place upon which to do work on our souls. The hope is that nothing will be destroyed, only repurposed in more functional configurations.

There are formulations in the Bible that still baffle me – one is the “made in his image” concept. As science and engineering has progressed, it is harder and harder to imagine that we could ever emulate the source of this creation. But I am enamored of the idea that we, too, possess the creative spark. We too can be constructive and disciplined in the creative choices that we make.

It is from this perspective that I find the whole framing of the fetal rights debate to be distasteful. In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, the religious right propagated the dichotomy of “pro-life” versus “pro-abortion.” I am offended by the claiming of the former by a community that supports unrestricted gun rights, capital punishment and the destruction of the middle class through the reallocation of wealth to a financial elite. The proponents of parental responsibility, realizing that they had allowed themselves to be tagged with an ugly label, took up “pro-choice.” This is no less tendentious to me: what woman would ever choose to be subjected to such an invasive surgical procedure, except under the most humiliating and desperate of circumstances?

As the years have passed, it is clear that “pro-life” has a powerful emotional force to it. Doctors were assassinated and facilities were bombed. By being recorded surreptitiously, clinicians are made to fear discussing medical procedures with their colleagues. Protesters stand outside clinics to abuse verbally the women that enter them. A local pastor, having felt obligated by his affiliation to attend one such event, admitted to me that he realized half-way through that “this is not how Jesus would address this issue.”

I concur.

What truly offends me, however, is the use of this issue for political purposes. The 2012 Republican campaign came across as offensively anti-woman. The tone being adopted in this election cycle is decidedly more nuanced: candidates are testifying as to the power of the paternal bond that was awakened by viewing an ultrasound, or the joy that they have received as grandparents of a 20-month premie. It is hard to argue that this isn’t the way that it should be. Parents should anticipate joyfully the arrival of a child. Grandparents of means should be committed to the survival of their descendents.

But is that the reality faced by most women seeking abortions? How many of them have a father to share the ultrasound with? And how many of them could have enjoyed a major-college education on the million-dollar investment made on that one baby?

But this is still the wrong tone, because being born into the world is not principally to serve the needs of a parent or a grand-parent. It is to serve the needs of the soul that is bound to the fetus. And here is where things become far more complex. Given that human souls did not exist for the first four billion years of evolutionary history, how does a human soul evolve? Only through the slow accretion of virtues and attributes. As the human population grows, where do new souls come from? Well, from among the spirits of other species. I have encountered bears, wolves, musk oxen and praying mantises, not to mention serpents.

The meshing of disparate body and soul is a fragile process, and sometimes just doesn’t come off well. Sixty percent of all pregnancies abort spontaneously and naturally. A twenty-month miscarriage may be only a more delayed manifestation of a dysfunctional integration. If the fetus chooses not to come to term, who are we to play God with its life?

And so I come back to the original issue: God was, is and will continue to be conscious and incredibly intentional regarding the process of our spiritual evolution. As we have chosen the path of the knowledge of good and evil, so must we. Stop talking about gestation as a mechanical process. Stop using the law to project your experience of life onto others that lack your resources. Start paying attention to the spiritual consequences of being born into a world that denies you comfort and security, where the volunteer in the inner city is told “thank-you for coming down and letting these children just be children for a while.”

Rather than punishing children for the poor choices of their parents, invest in ensuring that every act of conception is consummated with a life that serves to advance the self-creation of the spirit that is brought into the world. Stop judging people that prefer to wait to have a child until they can do a proper job of caring for it, and stop trying to destroy the organizations that provide the services that support their decision making. Choose rather to participate in the divine purpose: be pro-creation.

LA Day of Dance Celebration

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As a special birthday bonus, yesterday I attended the Day of Dance celebration down in at the Civic Arts Center in LA.

I came planning to participate in the workshops, and managed to make it through the “warm-up” routine, but it was hot, hot, hot. The performers were up on a covered stage, and they were complaining. The crowd had only an artsy fabric shade cover, and only about a third were able to take advantage of its shelter.

So I quickly found myself standing in the shadows at the front of the Music Center. As for the rest – they were not about to be deterred. LA apparently has a growing dance movement. Many of the attendees were young people and their parents. The early workshops focused on dance routines that had been posted on the internet, and the personal flair in each interpretation was a joy to watch.

I was expecting to have fun and be inspired, but dance is an ancient practice. As the event rolled into the second routine, the fitful breeze wasn’t keeping me cool, even in the shadows. My thoughts wandered up into the heat. Answering back came a surprised gratitude, and then a deep sorrow. People have always danced this way, in celebration of the light. It didn’t want to oppress them. The sorrow spread, and began to encompass the flora and fauna. This wasn’t the way it was meant to be.

The early morning activities were meant to be accessible. There wasn’t anything done by the performers that I didn’t think that I could do myself, and the attendees were involved in an enthusiastic celebration. I finally broke away at 12:30 for lunch, and when I came back, the tone became a little more serious. The Australian Special Olympics dance team performed, and the music and movement conveyed clearly the struggle and pride they have in achieving independence. But the capstone of the event, for me, was the performance by the Jacob Jones Company. The accompaniment was a meditation of the nature of time. I found myself anchored in this nexus of energy, the celebration of the dance tying the past together with the future. When the dancers left the stage, I had the feeling that the audience had been reduced to humble awe by the power of their evocation.

The Civic Arts Center is conducting a series of Friday dance celebrations this summer. I plan on attending as I am able. For those of you in LA: Hope to encounter you there!

Trump Ratings Soar on Rewrite of Iran Deal

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In a majestic coup that recasts real estate deal-making finesse as international diplomacy, the Donald announced today that his mediation of negotiations between the “First Birther” and “Ayatollah Satani” had brought a “permanent solution” to the political ills of both nations. “Never send a bicyclist up against a camel trader. I’ve tossed that Kerry-on baggage.”

The deal pivots around the repurposing of Iran’s nuclear weapons complex (encompassing all of its nuclear enrichment centrifuges and several ICBMs concealed as Teherani mosque minarets) for creation of a Muslim-themed Kenyan resort complex, “ObamaIslama.” Both Obama and Khamenei have announced their intentions to retire from public life to take on wildlife conservation roles at the facility.

“I hear there are plenty of monkeys in Kenya,” Trump offered, speaking of Mr. Obama. And as regards Khamenei, Trump admitted that “He’s got a somewhat different idea of ‘wild life.’ Anyone know where I can find a steady supply of virgins? Wait – scratch that thought. I’ll talk to the producers of ‘The Apprentice.'”

Trump’s thunderous oration pre-empts the surprise announcement planned for the POTUS visit to Kenya. The White House admitted that an elite Seal squad had been sent to take down the media center at Trump Towers, hoping against hope that Trump would be chastened into honoring executive privilege. Speaking for the President, Josh Earnest credited the sartorial celerity of Trump’s hair stylist. “They just got the announcement off way earlier than we thought they would.”

Republican lawmakers on Capital Hill could not be reached by cell phone.

New Book Out

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For those of you that weren’t aware, I have three books in publication. They’re listed on the blog roll on my sidebar. Trafford just finished the web-site for Golem, which I really enjoyed writing. Its predecessors, Ma and The Soul Comes First are relatively short and extremely dense, reflecting the fact that they each poured out of my fingers in three weeks of evening and weekend writing. Golem was actually written in a normal way (e.g. – character sketches and plotting) over a six-month period, and I had more control over the characters and themes. If you’re at all interested in science fiction and spirituality, please check it out! All three books are available from Amazon and Trafford, in both e-book and printed formats.

BTW: while not the central theme, both Ma and Golem openly celebrate sexuality.