Better Living through Software

A couple of years ago, much derision met the movie studios’ choice of the name “Hulu” for their video portal, which has since become one of the top sites on the Internet.

At that time, I immediately defended the name Hulu, calling it a “great name”, based on it’s close auditory association with the candy known as Bing Tang Hu Lu.  (Yes, I beat Alex Bosworth to the punch on that one).  Now with the name “Bing”, we have appropriated the other part of that tasty treat’s name.  I can hardly contain my excitement!  Look at pictures of Bing Tang Hu Lu on Bing!

We should call it “Bing Bing” in China.  And we should hire the actress Bing Bing to be the spokesperson.

Some have theorized that the name comes from Groundhog Day’s “Ned Ryerson – Bing!” skit.  Others think it might be a riff on Mitch Kapor’s old project, Chandler.  Or Monty Python.  Yet others have pointed out the possible reference to the bar in The Sopranos or the sidekick in the Lethal Weapon series.  Jon Stewart has already “Disrespected the Bing!”

While the “bada boom, bada bing” reference seems to be hinted in our marketing materials, I believe that the Stallmanesque explanation probably holds some truth: The name is a recursive acronym, “Bing Is Not Google”.  How incredibly geeky.

I am reading about Arthur Machen, who was apparently an influence on Yeats, Pierce, and Lovecraft, and a friend of A. E. Waite.

His philosophy and approach reminded me a lot of Barfield, but I couldn’t find an explicit link. 

Here is an excerpt from a review of his book Hieroglyphics, describing his theory of “ecstasy”:

"Hieroglyphics" is Arthur Machen’s theory of literature, brilliantly exposited by that "cyclical mode of discoursing" that was affected by Coleridge. In it he promulgates the admirable doctrine that fine literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history of particular persons. He seeks a mark of division which is to separate fine literature from mere literature, and finds the solution in the one word ecstasy (or, if you prefer, beauty, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the unknown), with this conclusion : "If ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature, if it be absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, all the talents, all the workmanship and observation and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have a product (possibly a very interesting one) which is not fine literature."

There is something slightly incongruous about trying to rationally explain why great ideas cannot be communicated purely rationally.  This of course hasn’t stopped Aristotle with Poetics, Coleridge on Wordsworth, Steiner on Goethe, Bandler on Erickson, or countless others.  And Machen seems to practice what he preaches.  For example, this passage from Machen’s “Hill of Dreams”:

"Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and further removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself.  Here lay hidden the secret of suggestion, the art of causing sensation by the use of words."

You can easily see the influence on Lovecraft, who went on to influence Neal Stephenson’s “Nam-Shub of Enki”.  Machen’s friend A.E. Waite and Waite’s Golden Dawn colleagues were familiar with the stories of the Golem of Rabbi Judah Loew, which was perhaps the first variant of the “nam-shub” story in print 50-100 years before Lovecraft, and could be seen as a superior predecessor to Shelly’s “Frankenstein”.

Google Books has the full text of Hieroglyphics online.  The opening is delightful; I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

Today my old colleague, Cliff Schmidt, came to Microsoft Research to talk about his current role as director of the Talking Book project.  He recently returned from Ghana, where they have been field-testing the first version of their hardware, which allows rural villagers to share audio versions of educational materials about health, agricultural techniques, and so on.

The project initially started with the goal of creating a low-cost tool for helping people learn to read.  The literacy rate across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Afghanistan is about 60% in urban areas, and as low as 10% in the target areas for this tool.  The goals for the project rapidly adapted to reality as they began researching in the field.  In some ways, the goals and the design became simpler, but also laser-focused on the needs of the villagers in a way that couldn’t really be achieved in any existing devices.

Here is a video interview with Cliff that has a demo.  During the demo today, I was impressed with the audio quality of the device and microphone, and the design of the software driving the interface.  Cliff talked about some of the user experience changes that had been made so far, supported by a very flexible underlying software architecture.

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Learning about the evolution of the Talking Book reminded me of the Talking Signs project created by my good friend (and cabal organizer) William Loughborough.  Over the years, as we’ve discussed accessibility and semantic information exchange, he’s always provided a moderating pragmatism.  Geeks like to imagine systems built of RFID and GPS combined with always-on access to RDF, and things like this.  William would gently point out that directional infrared, as low-tech as it is, can be superior for many purposes.  William was the one who first helped me realize that cognitive disabilities and illiteracy are a form of accessibility challenge just like vision impairment or deafness.  Interestingly, Cliff has found that impaired vision is far more common in the developing world, and Talking Books need to be useful for people with these disabilities.

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Lately I have been thinking a lot about literacy and accessibility, as I attempt to pass on great ideas to the next generation.  We run into these issues when we try to teach Shakespeare, Homer, or even Torah or Talmud to children.  Basic literacy is not enough.  And even if you can expand a kid’s vocabulary to the point of having a linguistic understanding of the text, there are many additional dimensions of “literacy” that are required to really appreciate and internalize these works.  All of these works require an ability to imagine and to participate in the works.

Perhaps this is why I’ve been fascinated with George MacDonald, who is considered by Madeline L’Engle and J.R.R. Tolkien to be the grandfather of the fantasy genre.  MacDonald’s stories are much like Homer or Shakespeare, in that he is a master of symbolism, imagery, and stories within stories.  His are the sort of stories which retain their power even if retold in different words.  In fact, MacDonald’s prose skills are not the best by any means, which makes it all the more remarkable that his tales are so powerful.

MacDonald’s stories were written in the late 1800’s, and are now public domain, so you can find them easily online.  However, they are not really accessible to children (or even most adults) today, because of the old style of English used.  I’ve recently worked on translating some of them into contemporary kid-friendly English, and they really don’t lose their appeal.

This, I think, is the power of the whole “fairy tale” genre.  Good fairy tales depend on the story line, and not on the authoring ability of the person recording the tale, or the literacy of the person receiving it.  Today The Guardian ran a story arguing that the whole “fairy tale” genre evolved as a result of the printing press, rather than as a result of oral tradition.  The article quotes George MacDonald a few times, and is worth a read.  One is reminded of Theseus’s line in Midsummer Night’s Dream:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.

Of course, the idea that “fairy tales” originated in 1550 is absurd, unless you take a hopelessly restrictive definition.  Homer himself was a master of the fairy tale, and even if you limit yourself to stories like Cinderella, you must admit that The Story of Sinuhe, written 4000 years ago, is of that genre.

In any case, it certainly was a big deal when talk became books, empowered by the printing press.  But now we have books that become talk.  Great works like the Quran and Homer’s epics were spread primarily by spoken word at first.  How might history have been different if these had been spread as talking books? 

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This was one of the most fascinating things Cliff discovered in his research.  Cliff is primarily trying to expand access to practical information about basic survival needs.  But when given the chance to record their own content to these talking books, Cliff found that villagers would sometimes start recording folk stories.  At first glance, nothing could seem less practical than folk tales, but I believe this is actually very important – maybe the most important type of “book” that can be shared.  And the impulse of the villagers to share this content shows that they know it to be important.  The other information is undoubtedly important.  But perhaps we’ll find that the “talking book” does far more than just virally disseminate agricultural and how-to advice.  Perhaps we’ll see the local fairy tales evolve and disseminate to create deeper shared contextual meaning, and layers of culture from which even better things can grow.

The advantages of objectivity are widely heralded.  The scientific method depends on being able to set aside our subjectivity, step outside of ourselves, and deal with the world as an objective, empirical reality.  This ability to suppress our introspection has led to amazing scientific discoveries and command over the material world, so it is right that we appreciate objectivity.

However, appreciation can turn to slavish religion and the blessing becomes a curse.  In today’s world, the very word “subjective” is often considered synonymous with “untrustworthy”, and this bias is to our own detriment.  I believe that our skewed focus on “objectivity” has led many modern people to vastly underappreciate subjectivity and introspection – and that our failure to appreciate subjectivity is impairing our ability to appreciate reality.

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To understand how, let’s take a look at an experiment performed by behavioral economist Dan Ariely, head of the delightfully named “Center for Advanced Hindsight” at MIT, and documented in his must-read book, “Predictably Irrational”.

In summary, the researchers gave students a task which would earn money, divided the students into groups with varying levels of ability to cover up any misdeeds, and tempted the students with the opportunity to cheat.   When asked to predict how much the students would cheat, people predicted that the students with more opportunity to cover up the “crime” would cheat more.  But empirical testing showed that students all cheated exactly the same amount, regardless of whether or not they could easily cover their tracks.

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Dan Ariely’s career has contributed impressively to our understanding of human nature, and his book is a masterpiece.  I felt that every experiment and conclusion were reasoned with impeccably disciplined judgment – except for this one example.

In the book, the results of experiment are used to argue that we cannot trust our intuitions (since nobody predicted the outcome).  But then Ariely resorts to introspection in attempting to explain why the results were what they were.  His explanation “after the fact” isn’t all that bad, and might even be correct, but that isn’t the point.

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If you wanted to know why students cheated the same regardless of opportunity to hide it, you’d probably start by asking someone who actually predicted the outcome.  You might congratulate him or her for being right, and then ask, “how did you know?”  It’s possible that the explanation offered would be pure rationalization, but it would certainly be less suspect than an “after the fact” rationalization by someone who got the answer wrong in the first place.

This search can be performed even after the experiment has been completed.  In essence, you are looking for people who have a good understanding of human nature, who have not been exposed to the experimental evidence.

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I believe that there is good reason that Dan Ariely did not find anyone who could predict the results in advance, and thus lend credibility to the explanation – he didn’t find these people because he didn’t look for them.

This is no surprise, because the empirical mindset assumes that any predictions made without hard experimental evidence are, essentially, random.  Why spend any significant effort looking for something which you don’t believe is there?  Incentives were offered for cheating, but there was no credible incentive offered for making correct predictions.

The question was posed to people at a university, operating in a context where a tendency to think subjectively and empathically would have been suppressed long ago.  If you are a student, scientist, or engineer, introspection is probably an unused muscle, and you’re not likely to spend much time exercising it to make a prediction – especially if there is no serious reward or punishment offered.

Furthermore, the question was posed in a moral context, where a perverted emphasis on objectivity could easily lead a person to mistrust the applicability of introspection beyond themselves: “Well, I don’t think that *I* would cheat much, but I cannot predict what *other* people would do.”

I have found that young children are generally better at answering questions like these, because they are naturally introspective, have better imaginations, and do not hesitate to project onto others.  We literally have to indoctrinate this superior ability out of children, and the retention of these skills seems to be negatively correlated with education.

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The point here is that this is a perfect example of something which can be understood via introspection, and which should be understood via introspection.  Introspection, when well-trained and exercised, is far faster and more enlightening than empirical experimentation. 

Yes, introspection can lie.  But this is not a reason to distrust all introspection.  This is a reason to train people to use introspection wisely and honestly.  It’s smart to use objective methods to test the subjective conclusions, but don’t completely abandon subjectivity as a tool.

Last week, I read Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther”.  It is fairly short, and I read the entire book on the plane ride from Seattle to visit the Grand Canyon.  Though short, the story is a near-perfect allegory and overflowing with insights.  As always, I took many notes, which I typically keep to myself.  However, to prove that I read the story, and in honor of having read it during Passover week, I’ll share one particular slice of the story – I will explain how the story parallels the traditional Passover telling of the Haggadah.

The Story

The story is about a young man named Werther who becomes obsessed with a woman he knows to be taken, and he eventually destroys himself over his inability to possess her.  It was partially based on Goethe’s real-life obsession with a woman he met, and the story became wildly popular during Goethe’s lifetime. 

It has widely been seen as a celebration and of the tortured and passionate “romantic” spirit, based in large part on the readers’ appreciation of Goethe’s genius and the autobiographical nature of the story.  The entire “romantic” movement in Western European literature owes a large and well-chronicled debt to this story, as do many obsessive lovers to this very day.  However, I believe that this particular popular interpretation is exactly wrong.  The story is in fact a cautionary allegory about pride and will, and Goethe creates Werther explicitly as a caricature to drive home this point.

The Haggadah

There are many ways to demonstrate my point, including Shakespeare, or Werther’s beloved Homer, but in honor of Passover, let’s use the tradition of Haggadah, which would have been quite familiar and important to Goethe, and was directly alluded in Werther.  Every year during Passover, millions of families around the world read Haggadah: the story of the Exodus from Egypt, embellished with commentary.  The story itself is foundational to Jews, Muslims, and Christians.  Even for the non-religious, the story is central to many civil rights and liberation movements.  Some families see the story as being an accurate chronicle of history faithfully recorded by the story’s protagonist, while many see it as being more or less embellished; just as with the readers of Werther.  Despite the divergent opinions about how strictly autobiographical the story is, these families all agree that the story is full of profound insights.

Different families may choose to focus on different parts of the story, and may emphasize different conclusions from the story.  This diversity is part of the beauty of the story.  The story as told in the book of Exodus is rather short, but the inspired Haggadot could fill many volumes.

Enter Pharaoh

Werther’s genius is that it focuses on only one part of the story – a part which is normally glossed over and misunderstood – and does so with exquisite clarity.  In short, Werther is Haggadah seen from Pharaoh’s perspective.

When most people read the story of the Exodus, they typically focus on the themes of redemption and deliverance, from the perspective of those delivered from bondage.  We gloss over the fact that there were many other actors in this story: the Hebrew slaves who chose to stay in Egypt, those who were unfaithful and died (or were killed) along the way, the Egyptian people who were punished and in some cases died, and the Pharaoh himself. 

To the Pharaoh and many others, the story is not a story of redemption and deliverance – it is a story of condemnation and destruction.

To ignore these other characters is to do a grave injustice to the story, and turns the story into a children’s fable with little credibility or depth.  It is easy to identify with the gratitude of the slaves who were delivered from bondage, but we convince ourselves that it is more difficult to understand the supremely powerful leader who would throw himself to destruction.  After thousands of years, we have grown into the habit of treating these characters, and especially the Pharaoh, simply as cartoonish cardboard props.

Goethe shows us that this assumption is dangerously false.  In fact, the Pharaoh’s attitude is all too believable, and the condemned were perhaps the most human and least remarkable characters in the story.  Indeed, Goethe’s portrayal of Pharaoh’s motivation is so impeccable that two centuries of readers have unwittingly identified Pharaoh as the true hero and role model of the story. 

It was not Goethe’s intention to make Pharaoh out to be a role model – in fact, it was quite the opposite.  Goethe wanted to show just how dangerous it is to flirt with these attitudes, and how easily they become a slippery slope.  The fact that so many have identified with young Werther, and use him as an excuse to glorify a “romantic” attachment to sensuality and self-destruction, is a testament to Goethe’s epic genius, and shows that Haggadah remains sympathetic to the modern human condition.

Werther as Pharaoh

When attempting to understand Pharaoh, we are faced with a number of questions.  Moses and Pharaoh were raised together from childhood as brothers, so we wonder how Pharaoh’s heart could change so dramatically, replacing these fraternal bonds of love with self-destructive hatred of his brother.  Why was he so possessive and unwilling to cede control?  And why did he ignore so many vivid signs foretelling his own destruction?  We find all three questions examined  in Werther: selfish and possessive will, vivid warnings ignored, and a thorough hardening of the heart.

Although Werther learns in the very beginning that Lotte is promised to another man, it becomes clear that he does not care about Lotte’s wishes or that of anyone else.  (Lotte represents Moses and the Hebrew people – her name sounds like “Lot”, the protagonist of the first great story of deliverance.)  Werther repeatedly compares her to a sister, admitting that their many hours together allow them to understand one another.  But this closeness does not deter him from wanting to force his desire upon her.

Like Pharaoh, Werther considers himself the supreme author of this narrative, and is incapable of considering any will but his own.  Goethe underscores this point brilliantly by creating the tale as a series of letters written by Werther.  By crafting the tale as a series of letters, Werther deposes the narrator and takes full control of the story.  None of the other characters are permitted to speak for themselves, they are given life only through Werther’s pen.  Just as Egyptian history was written by the Pharaoh, Werther feels that he alone can write Lotte’s heart:

“Oh, dare I utter the words, those words that contain all heaven for me? – I can feel that she loves me!  She loves me! – And I have grown in stature in my own eyes, – I can tell you this, you who understand such things – I worship myself, ever since she loves me!”

This exchange comes early in the book, when Lotte most certainly does not love Werther.  It’s a remarkably self-centered declaration, which demonstrates that Lotte is merely a prop which Werther uses to feed his narcissism.  Several passages attest to Werther’s belief that his obsession with Lotte – whether she returns his feelings or not – is the source of his powers to create.

Goethe goes to great lengths to demonstrate how one-sided and possessive this obsession is, and the entire story is littered with allusions to Werther’s high opinion of his own power and will.  Once, when reprimanded by his friend, Werther replies:

“Forgive me then, if I concede your entire argument and still try to find a loophole between the either and the or.”

He pretends to be concerned about obtaining his friend’s forgiveness while simultaneously demonstrating that he cares only about his own desires – selfish will masked as concern for others which is Werther’s modus operandi throughout the story.  In fact, he sees it as something of a game:

“if I indulged myself in the sport, I could compose an entire litany of antitheses.”

It is clear that he takes great pride in his strong will.  For example, he is offended when he is complimented for something so trifling as intellect:

“I am disturbed that he values my mind and abilities more highly than my heart, which is my only source of pride, and indeed, of everything, all my strength and happiness and misery.  The things I know, anyone can know – but my heart is mine, and mine alone.”

The wording Goethe chooses here is very unambiguous.  By “heart” and “passion”, Werther is talking about the selfish will.

So we begin to see how the slippery slope begins.  Not only does Werther resist and avoid coming to terms with the wills of others, he takes great pride in having a dominant will.  Far from seeing this prideful will as a source of potential trouble, he sees it as the source of his happiness.  Soon, we learn more:

“And yet, whenever she speaks of her intended, speaks of him with such warmth and love, I feel as if I had been stripped of all honor and rank and had my sword taken from me.”

He uses his fantasies of illegitimate dominion over Lotte to sustain his ego, but when he is forced to face the fact that she is promised to another, Werther’s ego is crushed.  He speaks as if he has been victimized and humiliated, and his very identity is imploding.

Likewise, Pharaoh spent his entire life assuming that he was destined for dominion over his brother Moses and the Hebrew slaves.  We can imagine the demands to “let my people go”, cutting like a knife.

Ultimately, Werther stops pretending to care about whether he is right, and honestly speaks his resolve to get his way no matter what the cost.  His climactic declaration could just as well have been spoken by Pharaoh:

“What use is it if I repeat over and over to myself that he is a good and worthy man?  It is tearing my heart in two; I cannot be just.”

The Warnings

Just as in the story of the Exodus, there are repeated and vivid warnings of the fate to come.  And just like Pharaoh, Werther at first admits his wrong and appears to turn back from the path of destruction, but is ultimately sucked in.  At the beginning of the story, Werther in fact takes the role of moral instructor and declares himself to be above the sort of error which later befalls him. 

First, Werther relates to his friend the story of a young woman who became attached to sensual things, made poor choices in love and became so emotionally distraught that she committed suicide.  Werther lucidly explains to his friend how such situations are to be avoided and escaped.

Later, Werther encounters a person who has “ill-humour”, which is the “human evil” which Werther “despises above all others”.  Werther confronts this person and condemns him for not having better command of his emotions, and for making others unhappy.  Werther, still relatively lucid, narrates his observations about maintaining good humour.

As his condition deteriorates into the very diseases he has condemned, he has a flash of clarity.  The very letters and journals he has been using to create his own reality are now the evidence that might cause him to come to his senses:

“Today I happened upon my diary, which I have been neglecting for some time, and I am astounded to see how I went ahead in all this, step by step, in full awareness of what I was doing!”

Alas, like Pharaoh, Werther’s sense of remorse is short-lived, soon to be suppressed by the will.  The Warnings become even more pointed and explicit.

Eventually, Werther comes across a man who has gone mentally insane over unrequited love of Lotte.  Like many readers of Goethe who sympathize with Werther, Werther fails to take this man’s insanity as a warning, and instead begins to sympathize with him.

The most vivid warning comes in the death of a peasant named Hans who Werther met at the very beginning, and who he has grown to respect and esteem almost as a son.  Hans has been rejected in his bid to love a certain widow, and one of the widow’s other jilted lovers murders him.  The scene mirrors the final sign to Pharaoh – the death of the firstborn of Egypt and the events of the Passover:

“To reach the inn, where the body had been carried, he had to pass the linden trees, and now he felt horror for the place he had loved so dearly.  That threshold where the children of the neighborhood had so often played was splashed with blood.  Love and constancy, the most beautiful of human emotions, had been transformed into violence and murder.”

The symbol of Passover is the blood splashed on the threshold of the homes of the children.  And while this sign symbolized redemption to the protagonists of Haggadah, it symbolized violence and murder to Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

Just as he sympathizes with Hans’s romantic obsession, Werther sympathizes with the romantic obsession of the man who killed Hans.  Blurring the men together, he attempts to save the murderer.  His failure to save the man is symbolic of his powerlessness, and foreshadows his inability to save himself.

Lotte’s Faithfulness

Throughout the story, Lotte is compassionate and respectful toward Werther, but remains firm in her obedience to her commitments.  It is not the purpose of this Haggadah to examine the motivations of the chosen onese, but the following passage is a good example of how the story portrays the same “compassionate but firm” orientation that Moses held with his brother:

“One thing is certain: that she was quite determined to do everything she could to remove Werther from her presence; and any hesitation was due to her heartfelt wish to spare her friend, since she knew how much it would cost him, and indeed that he would find it well-nigh impossible.  Yet during this period she was under increased pressure to be firm … she felt all the more need to prove by her actions that her feelings were worthy of her husband’s respect.”

Hardened Heart

We have already seen how Werther, like Pharaoh, grew successively more stubborn and unyielding after ignoring several warnings.  In the story of the Exodus, this is described as “hardened heart”.  In fact, the story of the Exodus makes a very important distinction in telling this tale – at first, it is reported that “Pharaoh hardened his heart”, but at some point the locus of control is changed, and the record then says “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”.

This linguistic twist has been subject of many intellectual exegeses over the past two thousand years.  Did Pharaoh freely disobey, or was his disobedience orchestrated by God?  Do humans operate in a sphere of free will, or under predestination?

This question is the central theme of Werther.  Werther begins by celebrating the power of free will, and ends by submitting to cruel destiny.  Every major event in the story combines the tension of free will with predestination.

Goethe’s answer to this apparent paradox is most lucidly expounded in the very beginning of the story, with Werther’s narrative of the romantically obsessed young lady.  Werther describes how the freely made alliances with physical or sensual things become a slippery slope, and eventually free will is lost.  Werther makes it clear that freedom to seek redemption can be sacrificed before death – that there is a “point of no turning back” which can be passed well before the actual moment of death.

This insight about Pharaoh’s “point of no turning back” is triumphantly underscored in the very structure of Gothe’s story of Werther.

At the point when Werther is no longer hardening his own heart – at the point where there is no longer any possibility for him to change course – the story abruptly stops being narrated by him.  Although he is still alive, and there are many pages left in the story, the rest of the story is narrated by others.  The roles are reversed.  No longer are the other characters at the mercy of his pen; no longer is Werther the author of his own story.  Now Werther is being interpreted and defined by the pens of those who will ultimately survive him, and this transition is introduced with an acknowledgement of the subjectivity now being introduced into the portrait of Werther.

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This narrative inversion at the end is awe-inspiring genius, and standing on its own could justify Goethe’s reputation.  But it would be wrong to think that Haggadah is the only theme in Werther.  The use of the silhouette is worth an essay of its own, as would be an examination of the role of self-fulfilling expectations.  However, these are all beyond the scope of this post, and I doubt I will make a habit of sharing literary exegeses.