Frequent readers of this blog will remember when we delved into the hidden menace of webpage bloat,and how, if we don’t work to stop it, ads and design cruft and big corporations will not only make the ‘Net molasses-slow, but also less democratic.
Well, MIT has come up with part of the solution: a mobile system that picks and chooses between the most important pieces of information on a webpage, and loads them in the most efficient way. Called Polaris, it was developed by a team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
The solution is different from current offerings in that it focuses not on how muchinformation needs to make it onto the screen of your device, but how often your browser goes back and forth ferrying parts of the whole. This includes things like ads:
“‘If it turns out that the ads are very slow, because right now they’re coming super late in the page—which actually happens often, because if I’m CNN and I have an ad, I want it to come later because I don’t care if you see it right away or not—that leads to higher page load times,’ says [project lead Ravi] Netravali. ‘With Polaris, if there are resources available earlier in the page load, and it doesn’t actually interact with other parts of the page, Polaris will say [to the browser] OK, why don’t you get it right now?’”
This means that the most important parts of a webpage – say the opening hours of the shop you’re heading towards – make it first! While stripped-down pages may be trim enough that Polaris doesn’t make a difference, the more bloated sites that the Web is full of really speed up. And Polaris is “browser-agnostic:” the developers are anticipating it can be used everywhere.
I use the future tense because rollout is dependent on something significant: websites will need to start running the add-on on their servers that will catalogue their pages’ information in a way Polaris can “read” and put in order. Keep an eye on the press, as the team presents their paper on Polaris officially at the end of this week. The reactions should roll in – perhaps finally heralding a newer, faster web?
If experts like Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil are to be believed, with every passing day humanity is creeping ever closer to the Singularity — the point towards which technology seems to be advancing, at which it will attain intelligence, and after which human life, as we currently define it, cannot continue.
On that sunny note, researchers have developed a way for computers to recognize if their human users are interested or bored by what they see onscreen. (The better to get offended and shoot us with lasers? Kidding!) This occurs through analysis of small, non-instrumental movements, which are suppressed when a human experiences “rapt engagement,” as study leader Dr. Harry Witchel of Brighton and Sussex Medical School calls it.
The study involved alternately boring (with banking stats) and engaging (with games!) 27 participants who used special trackballs to keep their bodies as consciously still as possible. Their movements were recorded with video motion tracking, which revealed the correlation between stillness and full attention.
“‘Being able to “read” a person’s interest in a computer program could bring real benefits to future digital learning, making it a much more two-way process,’ Dr Witchel said. ‘Further ahead it could help us create more empathetic companion robots, which may sound very “sci fi” but are becoming a realistic possibility within our lifetimes.’”
We already knew that computers were fundamentally changing the way we learn, but this news means they could help us tailor experiences in response to our own unconscious reactions! Until, of course, [insert obligatory SKYNET joke here].
It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone likes nice people: they’re easy to talk to, to get along with, and to work alongside. But, like everything positive, there is a hidden dark side to niceness: sometimes (*thunderclap*) one can be too nice.
Psychologists define the quality of being nice as “agreeableness.” People who are agreeable generally exhibit six traits, briefly: trust, compliance, altruism, cooperation, modesty, and sympathy — at varying levels of intensity. People who exhibit too high a level of one or more of these traits may set off our unconscious alarms about ulterior motives or passive aggression. But a team out of the University of Richmond (VA) now have actually studied how being too agreeable can affect relationships in a real way — and shown how nice is not always the best at work:
“[Researchers] asked 230 senior-level professionals enrolled in an executive Masters of Business Administration (EMBA) program (those with at least a 15-year work history) to participate in a team performance online simulation. […]
The team-related performance behaviors the Kong et al. researchers measured included communication, coordination, conflict resolution, and decision-making. Participants also rated their satisfaction with their team at the outset of the simulation, and completed a questionnaire that measured their own individual levels of agreeableness. […]
The question, then, was whether people who were more satisfied with their team would also perform at a higher level. But this did not emerge from the findings. Instead, team agreeableness became the key factor. Teams low in agreeableness showed a higher relationship between their initial satisfaction and their ultimate performance than did those teams high in agreeableness.”
In short, it seems that having at least one lovable crank on your side at work is helpful in maintaining a sense of perspective on the task at hand, and avoiding innovation-dulling consensus — a sort of “the Emperor has no clothes” situation. As is the case with most human relationships, when it comes to being nice at work, moderation is key; both to interpersonal harmony, and productivity!
It seems like everyone is talking about introversion and extroversion: how to present powerful ideas, how to communicate, and how to help them work together. While each personality type has its strengths, our world — with its focus on interconnection and near-constant communication — is clearly built for the extrovert. According to Michael Godsey, writing for The Atlantic, this can have catastrophic effects on introverts working in extroverted workplaces, especially teaching. These effects can include one of the worst behavioural workplace evils: burnout.
Godsey writes of his own experience, and of teachers who left the profession mere years after they started in it, after the dangling carrot of quiet nights in marking papers had been replaced by the stick of taxing “professional learning community meetings” and “collaborative overload.” There was support, but the wrong kind for Godsey:
“[T]he district assigned to me a mentor to help orient me — he took me out to coffee, and we just talked about good literature and lesson ideas for an hour. The principal, visibly flustered that we didn’t observably ‘do anything,’ assigned me a new mentor who, among other things, encouraged me to divide my class into cooperative groups and then share the results with my department and administration. The implicit message seemed to be similar to what [fellow teacher Ken] Lovgren said explicitly: ‘A calm and focused teacher is suspected of underworking, and so everybody, regardless of their personality type, is expected to work constantly in groups.’
While teaching can be especially exhausting, Godsey’s tale can be extrapolated to any workplace where an introvert might be in over their head. Did you get bone-tired simply reading the above quote? Well, you may be an introvert, and as such, chances are higher your job may not be the best one for you.
It is a hazard of our economic system that the majority of us (that is, adult humans participating in capitalism) must have a job in order to fulfill certain comforts. We need money for food and shelter, an RRSP or other structured savings for the future — and sometimes, heck, just a reason to get up in the morning.
Some lucky workers find fulfillment in their actual jobs: their “calling” and their career have happily dovetailed. But we at DFC are interested in how everyone can find happiness at work. Part of that involves taking control. But sometimes that is just plain not possible, and we have to look at more unusual ways to be happy.
An interesting recent study shows that there is a connection between an individual’s history of charity donations, and their overall happiness. While having money for yourself doesn’t really make you happier after a certain point, giving it away to others does — and also appears to affect your physical health as well:
“People who donate to charity have lower blood pressure, [project leader Prof. Elizabeth Dunn of UBC] said, even when controlling for factors like income, wealth, age and exercise, which suggests the giving itself is responsible.
Dunn measured people’s blood pressure before and after giving, and found it fell when people gave significantly to other people or causes, but did not change when they spent money on themselves.
The extent to which people feel connected to the cause is also important, she said, with more of an effect when people feel personally connected to the cause to which they are giving.”
So if you’ve done your darnedest to find something fun in your current job, but can’t, you can try making your own happiness by donating part of your income it to a charity that speaks to you. (If you need suggestions, I find the list at The Life You Can Save to be well-vetted and very helpful.) The charity can do its important and necessary work, and you derive the emotional and health benefits of giving. Plus, you can revel in the subversion of using the money you earned through your misery for the greater good — Everybody wins!
During the mid-20th century growth explosion, leading economic experts, including John Maynard Keynes, sought to predict what the trend might mean for the West’s working future — the future in which we are now living. Keynes posited, roughly, that if economic productivity continued its upward trend, working hours would also trend downward. In the future, the average worker would spend a handful of hours a week at his or her job, spending the rest at leisure.
While productivity is higher, this latter point is clearly not the case. A new paper by Harvard economist Benjamin M. Friedman investigates why working hours in the United States haven’t followed their predicted path — after a dip starting in the 1930’s, working hours haven’t budged since the ’70’s — and his theory might have interesting reflections on workplace happiness.
Friedman refutes the idea that today’s humans are more materialistic, and work more to earn money for what they want next. He also complicates the hypothesis that, in today’s hyper-compartmentalized world, workers are more invested in the social relationships they have at work.
What he does find compelling is the increasing gap in equality in workers, and theorizes that most Americans spend more time at work not because they want to, but because they can’t afford not to. Wages have not kept pace with increased productivity, leaving many folks at the lower rungs of industry working as many hours as they can.
But what of the other end of that inequality spectrum — the, dare I say, 1%? Why are they spending long hours at work to, when they don’t have to?
“ [Friedman] theorized that for many top earners, work is a labor of love. They are doing work they care about and are interested in, and doing more of it isn’t such a burden—it may even be a pleasure. They derive meaning from their jobs, and it is an important part of how they think of themselves. And, of course, they are compensated for it at a level that makes it worth their while.”
So, for the majority of American workers, personal economic necessity pushes workplace happiness off the list of priorities. And for “top earners,” happiness is a motivator because the possibility of it exists for them. Keynes’ vision of productivity has come essentially true, but in practice it is skewed by inequality. The process of righting that imbalance should be an interesting one to watch.
There are a variety of theories out there that seek to explain the link between length and quality of nightly sleep, and weight gain. One of the newest involves our old friends, our microbiomes, and how sleeping less than required can potentially hamper their weight-managing talents.
Israel’s Weitzmann Institute has been on the case, and researcher Eran Elinav and team have published their findings in the current issue of Cell. The team found that gut bacteria in under-rested mice and humans had marked trouble processing glucose. In further studies, they mimicked the effects of jet-lag in their rodent subjects. The gut bacteria of the mice, disrupted from their usual routine, went haywire and caused general weight gain. They then tried to see if humans responded similarly:
“[T]he researchers collected bacterial samples from two people flying from the US to Israel – once before the flight, once a day after landing when jet lag was at its peak, and once two weeks later when the jet lag had worn off. The researchers then implanted these bacteria into sterile mice. Those who received the ‘fresh’ jet-lag samples gained weight, while the second group did not.”
These findings indicate that disruptions to sleep routines of all stripes can play havoc not only with your mental health, but that of your gut! A sleep-debt-induced weight gain can’t be worth the extra hours at work, in front of a computer, or otherwise burning the candle at both ends. It’s one thing if you agree to it — but think of those poor, defenseless bacteria.
Before we get down to work, about work, I need to vent. I hate the word “lifehack.” It’s too jargon-y, and most applications of it are so far removed from the original definition of “hacker,” it just makes me mad. (Are you gaining unauthorized, back end access to the computer system that is your life in order to cause mischief? Is getting up thirty minutes earlier and writing down the things you’re grateful for the direct equivalent of phone phreaking? I’ll stop…)
Definitions aside, lifehack.org can be a source of interesting info amongst all the content. And a significant amount of its contributors seem concerned with the problem of happiness — especially when at work.
Unfortunately, many of us have jobs that do not spontaneously bring us joy. But, thanks to the University of Warwick, we now know the quantified connection between happiness and productivity. And writer Adam Maidment, citing a 2008 report by the American Psychological Association, links being yourself with being happy. Therefore, being comfortable enough to be authentically you at work should equal greater productivity! 
But, how do you be you at work? Maidment presents several strategies, in three categories. My personal favourite is “Don’t aim to please:”
“It’s okay for people to disagree with your opinion from time to time – it’s your opinion, not theirs. Having an opinion means you have a voice. Even if people decide not to listen, you will ultimately feel proud that you at least spoke your mind and shared your feelings. Don’t be brash about it. Be sure to respect other people’s opinions and even company culture, but don’t be afraid to share your thoughts.”
Many of us aren’t lucky enough to work in places where we even have space to voice our feelings. But the sentiment is a solid one to keep in mind, wherever we happen to be… Even if exercising it requires a little creative — (fine) — “hacking.”
I thought it was my devices getting rickety — crankily refusing to load pages, making online video and audio stutter. But no: websites everywhere are getting unwieldy, stuffed full of megabytes worth of info that enhances form but drags down function.
Maciej Cegłowski has distilled an impassioned talk he gave at the Web Directions conference in Sydney, Australia, into a simple, streamlined webpage. In its form, it sets a great example for the future of the web; in its content, its a diatribe against the current plague of “page bloat.”
Page bloat is demonstrated to reduce user engagement with the web. It can be caused by the actual things you’re there to access (presentation slides from a distant conference that are only available as a giant PDF), the structure of the page itself (hidden menus that slide in from nowhere), or the accoutrements of web use today (a huge autoplaying ad for a luxury car). Corporations like Facebook and Google have recognized the problem, and have rolled out “fixes” like Instant Articles or AMP; but, Cegłowski maintains, these only appear to solve the problem:
“[…T]he page describing AMP is technically infinite in size. If you open it in Chrome, it will keep downloading the same 3.4 megabyte carousel video forever.
If you open it in Safari, where the carousel is broken, the page still manages to fill 4 megabytes.
These comically huge homepages for projects designed to make the web faster are the equivalent of watching a fitness video where the presenter is just standing there, eating pizza and cookies.
The world’s greatest tech companies can’t even make these tiny text sites, describing their flagship projects to reduce page bloat, lightweight and fast on mobile.
I can’t think of a more complete admission of defeat.”
Ultimately, this page bloat problem says something disturbing about the current and future web: that its democracy is just an illusion; that it will take the fastest and most up-to-date device and an expensively solid connection to access any information; and, most damagingly, that only professionals with programming and design certifications can, andshould, put anything up on the web.
I support Cegłowski in asserting that this cannot be allowed to happen! The internet can be an immense force for change, and it’s up to us to resist the corporatized slow-down that is becoming the accepted standard. Re-harnessing the web’s true purpose shouldn’t take too much bandwidth at all.
The other day I wrote about experiments in productivity where working for a longer time doesn’t necessarily mean accomplishing more in a relative sense. So if you don’t spend all your time working, what else is there to do…?
Here’s a thought experiment of our own: Subtract 20 from your regular 40-hour workweek. That’s still 20 whole hours to accomplish anything you need to keep the balance in your life. In a perfect world, in which you get everything done work-wise in merely 20 hours, how would you spend the rest — in the following ways, proven to increase happiness?
– volunteering or donating to charity
– spending time with family and friends
– Exercising or just getting some fresh air
– Learning something new or retrain your brain to see the happiness around you
– Brewing and enjoying a cup of tea!
Or maybe there’s been something that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time but just have been able to find the time…..I’d love to hear more ideas from you!
