Category Archives: Xenophobia

Cultural Bias, Linux TCO, & Android

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There’s a definite bias toward your own small bubble of experiences, and this is true of IT departments as well. If you are in a school environment which is mostly Unix/Linux/Solaris with a smattering of PC/Mac, then the “cool” guys all know that only losers waste time with PC/Mac. When I was a grad student at NC State University (home of Red Hat), there were perhaps a few niches like this among the departments. The reverse situation can also be found on some school campuses and is expressed in equally strong attitudes.

For instance, I also worked at the School of Communication Arts in Raleigh for a while (when it was still pretty small). I taught networking, security, web design, and also helped run the IT department occasionally. However, the majority of the courses taught covered animation, graphics, digital film, and artsy stuff, and so naturally, Mac’s were preferred, and far outnumbered PCs. Networking hundreds of Macs wasn’t easy back then (for me at least), and so at one point I had a huge Mac OSX server shipped to me there, because I was considering allowing all the mac clients authenticate to it (rather than the NT servers). But despite my efforts, I knew that the really mad “props” would always go to the mac guys first, and their creative works.

And now to bring things full circle, I have been working for the last few years at a college on campus at TTU, which is probably like 95% windows, both server-side and client-side. Once again there’s a temptation at times to feel that my underutilized prior experiences (and skills) with Linux and Macs are drifting away like distant memories of some other culture I once lived in. For most people, I imagine this is the case for them too when integrating into a new workplace. It can be very difficult to resist and you are liable to be perceived in slightly negative standing if you do not ‘conform’ or cannot adapt. Some may revere your fierce independence, but ultimately, many more will (unspokenly) see you as stubborn, or inflexible, or XYZ (bad trait). Personally, I didn’t make much effort to resist, and I’ve enjoyed whatever was popular at the time where ever I happened to be, as a new learning experience. That probably had less to do with a desire for improved productivity and was more because I really like playing with new tech stuff.

Beyond the cultural issues, and personal biases, there’s another barrier between the camps that is controversial, murky, and seems to defy authoritative answers. In fact, there have been very few peer-reviewed economics articles I’ve come across which purport or attempt to settle the question of total financial costs and returns. The problem is that traditional business value strategies don’t apply equally well to these unique cultures because they are so very different. Like apples and oranges, these cultures include unique and only slightly overlapping sets of variables which can be compared, measured, and studied. In addition, they typically correlate with radically different kinds of business objectives which might be used to measure success. Nevertheless, I’m fascinated by comparisons of their financial and operational models for internal IT departments, and particularly for those IT departments who are transitioning between these radically different cultures (those moving to an all Linux server side shop).

As I alluded to before, there may be a bias against “foreign cultures”, even when a new (possibly superior) economic or business model will fit for the IT department and context. Often times, this can prevent people from being open to simple numerical measures of actual material facts. For instance, University PC shops might be surprised to learn that as of June 2009, Linux powered 88.6% of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, compared to Windows’ 1.0% (http://tr.im/wAaA) or that in December 2008, Linux powered five of the ten most reliable internet hosting companies, compared to Windows’ one.(http://tr.im/wAaH) Although Windows (and Apple) have spent a lot of money to help market, project, and create their culture, there really is plenty of room for debate over “core doctrines” such as TCO. For perhaps less frequently heard opinions on this, see the below further resources:

In some cases, the cultural barriers are geographic. Each community seems to have it’s own strongholds — Hollywood, for instance, in the case of Apple, and much of Asia in the case of Linux. Like teenagers listening next to a fence, when less and less is heard from opposing camps, they may be too quick to proclaim their “enemy is dead!!”. That was the feeling among many PC users on several occasions during the 1980′s regarding the health of Apple. But then Apple would ‘sneak up from behind’, and each time it seemed with a killer new product (media players, routers, and now the iPhone).

Similarly, if you are in the majority (a PC user) you may have noticed over the last few years decreasing volume level of rabid evangelists proselytizing the superiority and power of Linux. This is most true on the internet where nearly every service, tool, and product now has windows or mac GUI interfaces with giant Tonka Toy buttons and icons. But dare we ask across that fense, whether there could be a comeback? What if Linux could somehow leverage it’s advantages on mobile computing devices and their more limiting hardware platforms? Under such circumstances the importance of the operating system size, memory usage, and speed are still high ranking. This is where Linux could make big inroads — where fat bloated lazy “modularized” code is still having trouble.

But you aren’t likely to hear this ‘sneak attack’ unless you get closer to the fence. One place to look for these sorts of developments is at the conferences where “Platinum Sponsors” seem to increasingly include telecoms and computing corporations, side by side. With the LinuxCon 2009 (Sept. 23-29) just days away now, I would personally really like to see who else sees what I see. Netbooks, PDAs, and cell phones are ripe for Linux. Although the Platinum Sponsors currently show HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, QualComm, and Dell, I am left asking myself why Android isn’t more prominent? Doth these behemoths not know that Google art full of smart cool guys?

RESOURCES:
Linux Adoption (Wikipedia Article): http://tr.im/wA8J
Linux Conferences (Wikipedia Article)http://tr.im/wAel
Android OS (Wikipedia Article) http://tr.im/wCze

Diversity Ed: Stripping Individuality from Teacher Clones

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Does the US Education system pressure teachers to conform, thereby stripping them of individuality, while forcing them to “teach” diversity?

A useful analogy here might be the “social contract” (http://tr.im/n2PN) harkening back to Hobbes and Locke.  In order to reap the benefits of goods and services which have been commoditized, we agree to cohere to the laws of our society, though we may also exercise our rights to participate in the evolution of those laws.  That teachers “preach diversity” without really having any clue about it, is both common, and a travesty.  Much the same as the racist white-trash faculty who have not hired a SINGLE black tenure-track professor in some areas, they are ignorant despite their “education”.

Diversity is about respecting and trying to understand the culture, beliefs, and values of people who are different from you under certain circumstances.  This includes “appropriate” expression of those beliefs and values, and particularly when protected by law.  It includes many other circumstances too, such as EEO laws.  It doesn’t mean that you are expected to change who you are, although I would argue that most folks don’t really know who they are as an individual.  In my opinion, my race, my culture, and my geographic origin only partly identify who I am today, which is also the result of my own adult intentional choices, both in experiences and what I have learned and read.

I believe that institutionalizing the practice of teaching ‘diversity’ means opening up communication.  It means keeping an open mind and willingness to discuss things that might make you uncomfortable, particularly if you still have bigoted/prejudiced attitudes and feelings.  The most common problem I see here is that these kinds of ignorance are more a reflection of the heart than the mind, which is why so many highly respectable, well educated people still cling to them defensively.  I am sure I could drag every racist through a course in genetics, and it wouldn’t change their heart one tiny bit.  I could virtually prove to them that genes partially encode intelligence, risk-taking propensity, and other broad personality traits, but NOT morality, but it wouldn’t change their heart.

Most folks MENTALLY already recognize that having well-developed and highly functional frontal lobes is correlated with REASONING about morality and ethics (and intelligence), but as the myths of the bible teach, Satan quoted scripture with the best of them (recall, he was no. 2 in heaven).  Certainly, in many religions, we learn of highly intelligent demons.  Furthermore, these demons and Lucifer himself certainly MUST believe in Jesus, though they hate him.  That you believe in Heaven and Hell as a reality, also makes little difference whether you are a despicable waste of human DNA, or a virtuous kind and empathic person.  For many folks (like Adam and Eve), having the knowledge of good and evil is not enough to keep them from evil.  They have the truth, but it just doesn’t matter to their heart.

I think the problem with teachers who teach diversity while remaining clueless about what diversity really means is that they have at some point simply ‘sold out’ to conformity, rather than really tried hard to understand or reasoning through deconstructions of their own beliefs and values.  It’s not the raving lunatic KKK freaks, or the Nationalist “white-devil” haters who are the biggest problem today.  It’s all the sell-out cowards (Thoreau’s “mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation”) and uncle Toms who lack the courage to expose themselves, voice their opinions, and enter mature, honest, communication about their beliefs and values – and who pass on their subtle “living room only” opinions to future generations.  It’s all the immature cognitively lazy adults who don’t really have any desire to learn, but somehow chose that field as a career – faculty at Universities and K-12 teachers.