This is a continuation of the previous post How to work in teams and I will give you some good examples of bad teamwork. Let's say that you already have a team, you formed it by yourself, you were taken as a team member or you just landed there. In university projects as in real life sometime you have to form a team or join a team knowing just a little about your team members. Many teams are build on skills or "politics", politics meaning personal likes or dislikes, or even worse just because they are the only ones who invited you to join, you don't really like them but whatever.
How to work in teams
During my 12 years of experience with teams and working in teams I have worked in many teams, good and bad. There are many theories, some are good just on paper some are good in practice, but each team is unique as its members and what works with one team fails with other. Each team member has a different personality, different aims, different views and different traits. If someone tells you that he will teach you how to have a perfect team and no conflicts is like telling you he will sell you a pink unicorn who poops rainbows.
Targeted advertising - evil surveillance or marketing tool?
Have you ever looked after a product on Amazon and later you see an ad for that product on your Facebook? Or searched online after some things and later you see those things again and again in form of advertising everywhere you go? Well that's targeted advertising, at least a form of it.
Targeted advertising comes in many flavors, some subtle, some annoying and some more obtrusive. I wouldn't go into the direction of conspiracy theory, even if this is the easiest way and the internet is full of that, but I would go more on an analytic view or approach.
Targeted advertising comes in many flavors, some subtle, some annoying and some more obtrusive. I wouldn't go into the direction of conspiracy theory, even if this is the easiest way and the internet is full of that, but I would go more on an analytic view or approach.
(Media) Studies are teaching you just to solve first world luxury problems
I had studied civil engineering so I am a sort of engineer and afterwards I studied Interactive Digital Media followed by a Master in the same field.
During my many years of study I always wondered why we learn only things that solve luxury problems for the first world. Ok, maybe with civil engineering is not the case since you can build houses for the poor and infrastructure, even if in real life they build them by themselves since they can't afford to pay a company, so in the end even with engineering you still solve only rich people problems.
With Media studies is a different world. Since I made my studies at a university of applied sciences the whole study was focused on practice, each subject we studied had also a project attached. This is very well, nothing to complain, nothing is better than hands-on practical stuff. Now comes the part that makes me worry for all those years all the projects I have seen (from my semester, higher semesters and lower semesters) were only useless "first world rich hipster problem solvers".
Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to see save Bigfoot projects, or rain forest or other extreme social stuff. It is not my kind to believe that helping poor african kids by giving them a fish will solve their problem as long as you don't teach them to fish and as long as you interfere with their politics just to keep the money rolling into your NGO.
The thing that scares me is that my colleagues are the ones that will be at one point decision makers, trend setters and will flood the market with this kind of things. All the project I have seen or concepts are futuristic but in a wrong way, in the way that will break your contact with real world and immerse you in the digital world by purchasing gadgets, apps and useless luxury products just for fun or to be cool. I mean ... ambient intelligence for pubs and hotels, augmented reality sport apps, smart fridge, smart kitchen, intelligent car, smart dirty clothes bin, free parking places app, indoor navigation and the list can continue ... but can't we really live without them? Do I need a navigation device for shopping mall? Do I need my fridge to send me email that I need to buy milk? I can see with my own eyes! They are nice to have for fun gadgets but are not necessary, are luxury products that will help out world to become dumb and dependent on electronics.
I contributed at this thing too, was not my thing but you go with the flow, you don't want to be the biggest freak in the class. But all stopped at ambient intelligence where we wanted to combine nature with electronics and we used "real" water and was a big disappointment for everyone that our team didn't made it with digital water, it would have been cool. For my bachelor degree I was the only one to do something useless - a documentary for bikers with bikers. The other were only with augmented reality, intelligent play rooms, virtual reality games, smart elevator full with targeted advertising. This is what is expected to do, to serve the trendsetters, to dream Google glass integration, to dream virtual reality, all for the sake of money.
Why is wrong? You know you learn a lot of things from micro controllers to smartphone apps and you choose to create only things for rich people. Ok, you can't stop poverty or hunger but at least you can try to make more useful things than an app to help revolutions and riots, or a device to help you relax after one day of work that requires a separate room or at least half of it (you can relax at a lake with a book in hands).
A device maybe is never a solution for a poor man but can be for a person in need, for old people, for sick people, for blind people or for deaf people. I don't need a device to tell me how is the weather outside when I get out of bed since I have eyes to look outside and I can see if is sunny or is raining, a blind man for sure will need to know how is outside since the eyes are not helping. But which is the percentage of blind people? How many of them you can target? Maybe 5% of them? As business this is not wise, because if you can target 5% of the world you are rich, if you target 5% of the blind people you need a job.
The studies are preparing you to enter in the business world, to help big companies to go forward and earn more money ... so how can you do this if you are not learned from school to make things only for the rich, useless luxury products. Why they don't teach you about Tesla and to make you curious how to get free energy, or simple basic chemistry to make your own soap and own perfume and detergent? Because you need to produce money. And now if you say "oh, good that I studied social sciences and I help people" let me tell you that you are like me, you help people to remain in the system so you can have a job tomorrow. Social or not social studies are all making the same thing creating jobs and maintaining them by keeping other people dependent to the system and serving the rich by using the poor, and it has to stay like this, you need rich people to make the poor work more dreaming that they will get one day rich, and you need poor to have a working horse eager to spend money on useless stuff in their way of dreaming to be rich.
During my many years of study I always wondered why we learn only things that solve luxury problems for the first world. Ok, maybe with civil engineering is not the case since you can build houses for the poor and infrastructure, even if in real life they build them by themselves since they can't afford to pay a company, so in the end even with engineering you still solve only rich people problems.
With Media studies is a different world. Since I made my studies at a university of applied sciences the whole study was focused on practice, each subject we studied had also a project attached. This is very well, nothing to complain, nothing is better than hands-on practical stuff. Now comes the part that makes me worry for all those years all the projects I have seen (from my semester, higher semesters and lower semesters) were only useless "first world rich hipster problem solvers".
Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to see save Bigfoot projects, or rain forest or other extreme social stuff. It is not my kind to believe that helping poor african kids by giving them a fish will solve their problem as long as you don't teach them to fish and as long as you interfere with their politics just to keep the money rolling into your NGO.
The thing that scares me is that my colleagues are the ones that will be at one point decision makers, trend setters and will flood the market with this kind of things. All the project I have seen or concepts are futuristic but in a wrong way, in the way that will break your contact with real world and immerse you in the digital world by purchasing gadgets, apps and useless luxury products just for fun or to be cool. I mean ... ambient intelligence for pubs and hotels, augmented reality sport apps, smart fridge, smart kitchen, intelligent car, smart dirty clothes bin, free parking places app, indoor navigation and the list can continue ... but can't we really live without them? Do I need a navigation device for shopping mall? Do I need my fridge to send me email that I need to buy milk? I can see with my own eyes! They are nice to have for fun gadgets but are not necessary, are luxury products that will help out world to become dumb and dependent on electronics.
I contributed at this thing too, was not my thing but you go with the flow, you don't want to be the biggest freak in the class. But all stopped at ambient intelligence where we wanted to combine nature with electronics and we used "real" water and was a big disappointment for everyone that our team didn't made it with digital water, it would have been cool. For my bachelor degree I was the only one to do something useless - a documentary for bikers with bikers. The other were only with augmented reality, intelligent play rooms, virtual reality games, smart elevator full with targeted advertising. This is what is expected to do, to serve the trendsetters, to dream Google glass integration, to dream virtual reality, all for the sake of money.
Why is wrong? You know you learn a lot of things from micro controllers to smartphone apps and you choose to create only things for rich people. Ok, you can't stop poverty or hunger but at least you can try to make more useful things than an app to help revolutions and riots, or a device to help you relax after one day of work that requires a separate room or at least half of it (you can relax at a lake with a book in hands).
A device maybe is never a solution for a poor man but can be for a person in need, for old people, for sick people, for blind people or for deaf people. I don't need a device to tell me how is the weather outside when I get out of bed since I have eyes to look outside and I can see if is sunny or is raining, a blind man for sure will need to know how is outside since the eyes are not helping. But which is the percentage of blind people? How many of them you can target? Maybe 5% of them? As business this is not wise, because if you can target 5% of the world you are rich, if you target 5% of the blind people you need a job.
The studies are preparing you to enter in the business world, to help big companies to go forward and earn more money ... so how can you do this if you are not learned from school to make things only for the rich, useless luxury products. Why they don't teach you about Tesla and to make you curious how to get free energy, or simple basic chemistry to make your own soap and own perfume and detergent? Because you need to produce money. And now if you say "oh, good that I studied social sciences and I help people" let me tell you that you are like me, you help people to remain in the system so you can have a job tomorrow. Social or not social studies are all making the same thing creating jobs and maintaining them by keeping other people dependent to the system and serving the rich by using the poor, and it has to stay like this, you need rich people to make the poor work more dreaming that they will get one day rich, and you need poor to have a working horse eager to spend money on useless stuff in their way of dreaming to be rich.
How we survived until tech era?
Sometime I wonder how the heck did human civilization survived for thousands of years until the discovery of ABS, iPhone, iPad and Facebook.
If you look at any product review that is a bit outdated is obsolete, is a crap is the latest junk you can possibly buy or have. How did our parents survived without them?
I search now for a bike, tried on ebay but see here why I can't find things on ebay that worth the buck. Got over a Decathlon bike and trying to find out what people think about it I stumbled upon this question ... "how the heck we survived until now?" ... really, we have a problem "has no disk brakes" - no shit is half price of the cheapest merida bike that also has no disk brakes.
Do we need disk brakes? Really!?!? No shit! Think about Tour de France before carbon frames, aluminium frames and disk brakes, how the hell they even manage to ride 2 km? Maybe back then things were more harder to achieve but the satisfaction was maybe at least ten times bigger.
Why the satisfaction was bigger? Think about Mount Everest, really, now is full of old dudes full of money who can afford to pay the guys who carry their luxury (and yes, they are human too, not animals but are used like animals), latest outdoor equipment that cost more than a penthouse in London and other things to help them get on the roof of the world. But when was the first time someone on the top? 1953, that's right, 1953! They were not the first to attempt but was the first confirmed success.
If you look at any product review that is a bit outdated is obsolete, is a crap is the latest junk you can possibly buy or have. How did our parents survived without them?
I search now for a bike, tried on ebay but see here why I can't find things on ebay that worth the buck. Got over a Decathlon bike and trying to find out what people think about it I stumbled upon this question ... "how the heck we survived until now?" ... really, we have a problem "has no disk brakes" - no shit is half price of the cheapest merida bike that also has no disk brakes.
Do we need disk brakes? Really!?!? No shit! Think about Tour de France before carbon frames, aluminium frames and disk brakes, how the hell they even manage to ride 2 km? Maybe back then things were more harder to achieve but the satisfaction was maybe at least ten times bigger.
Why the satisfaction was bigger? Think about Mount Everest, really, now is full of old dudes full of money who can afford to pay the guys who carry their luxury (and yes, they are human too, not animals but are used like animals), latest outdoor equipment that cost more than a penthouse in London and other things to help them get on the roof of the world. But when was the first time someone on the top? 1953, that's right, 1953! They were not the first to attempt but was the first confirmed success.
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 - Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hillary_and_tenzing.jpg
This was way before goretex and other tex and the other tex. Those were balls!
Let's return to the bikes, my grandfather had a bike with only one brake, no cables, just pure metal levers and the brake was not even V-Brake, was applied straight on the tire, and he made the country tour. Take one of today's so called sportsman to do this.
Motorcycles, disk brake is a standard, you have an older model with rear drum-brake? Then you should sell it! I had one with drum brakes front and rear, according to the vast majority was a piece of junk but according to history was one of the models used on Paris Dakar race. Again, pun one of the current teams to ride a bike like that, no way.
Guitars, I had a guitar from 70's, junk compared to the current ones but those guys could make music with that "crap".
Other examples are:
library - for idiots, you got wiki;
books - what!?!? you got e-readers;
cars - without assisted steering and traction, ABS and other sensors half of the population will die in an accident;
nature - that's right, how many of you can pitch a tent (old school one) and start a fire just with two matches!?!?
having fun without the world of electronics - actually get a life and stop to see how is your neighbor;
play - analog, not digital, I see less children playing outside, on streets, in forest, they have a playstation;
spending quality time with your significant other - most young couples are very busy with their smartphones even when they are together.
The list can go endlessly and everyone knows that if is older than two years is a crap. Sorry dudes, I still live in my world where is fun to achieve something with a steel bike with v-brakes (btw I can do downhill too with a crap bike, not for competition but for fun!), read books on the porcelain pony, go out and jump in the mud, repair my motorcycle because is too old for the guys from service and they have no idea how to service it without a computer, spend days with my lady while the smartphone remains untouched, get in the forest and make my own gasoline free camp fire, make my own bone rings and other "crap stuff".
The question remains ... how the heck did we survive until iPhone?
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