I just found some of their ads on YouTube, which I feel compelled to post here, if for no other reason than that they contain my name.

Here’s an old black and white ad:

In this one, I fight stains with martial arts:

I have no idea what they’re saying. Maybe one of you out there on the internets will translate the videos for all of us?

Dutch transportation infrastructure is designed in a unique way which supports access to members of every strata of society. In the city, streets are flanked by well-marked bike lanes and sidewalks, complete with three sets of traffic lights — one for cars, one for pedestrians, and one for bikes. While this is a logical extension of American infrastructure, there’s a paradigm shift akin to that in India: the largest vehicle rules the road in any case of confusion. Bikes rarely slow down or stop for pedestrians. In many areas, trams join the party, and their tracks are not remotely grade separated. Within 48 hours, I saw bikers cut across tracks and cars make U-turns in front of moving trams with mere meters to spare. Even so, the equal access system seems to be successful with few problems while granting people many transportation choices to suit their individual needs.

• I finished my freshman year of college.
• I interned with a pretty cool group at Intel and attended Research@Intel Day in Santa Clara.
• I got on a plane and flew to Amsterdam, where I’m posting from now.

When I was originally thinking about starting a “serious” blog, Rajat’s first response was that I needed to define what I would write about. I think that part’s taken care of. There are plenty of interesting things to write on, like what I’m doing in Europe — I just need to sit down and get it all on (digital) paper. Hopefully I can cover all of the backlog with a barrage of posts in the next few days and start blogging regularly again.

Buruma effectively illustrates the shocked response to the murder of Theo van Gogh as a juxtaposition against Amsterdam’s philosophy of pragmatic tolerance. The discussion of this particular incident is supplemented by a narration of many immigrants in Amsterdam, allowing for many sides of the discussion to be seen by readers.

The book did a good job of drawing a picture of the current state in the Netherlands and Europe with regards to public sentiment towards immigrant communities. Since this is very much a current issue, one is left with a sense of incompleteness, as there remains a lot to be said. I learned quite a bit, and would recommend it for anyone interested in the issue.

I chose a few questions related to wayfinding that we might ask in Amsterdam, and found someone in the dorm where I live whom I didn’t know particularly well. This selection wasn’t aimed at someone particularly comfortable with wayfinding, as we will be interviewing students similar to ourselves in our research. I didn’t indicate my subject area of interest before the interview began.

Content wise, I started off with “have you ever” questions, and followed them up with “why?” in order to gain a better idea of the circumstances or intentions at play. This combination yielded two discoveries. First, the interviewee was very eager to share in both instances, and provided a lot of interesting details when asked to describe their experiences and/or intentions. Second, it gave me a clear idea of how long a simple interview could potentially last if not kept in control. As mentioned above, I want to keep interviews both interesting and useful to maximize what we can learn from them, while not wasting anyone’s time, if possible.

I didn’t record or take any notes of the conversation, as the questions were very straightforward and I don’t have a problem remembering the responses I received. Of course, this will not be the same in our research methods, as we’ll have to document and analyze numerous similar interviews.

Questions and answers that came up during the interview are not posted here in order to avoid confounding our research results, as everyone in our research group will likely read this post.

Today’s post brings about three questions:

• What is our study group?
  In order to make the most of our month in Amsterdam, we will need to find a convenient group that is easily accessible, and large enough to draw reasonable conclusions from.
• What questions can we ask of that study group?
  If each researcher has a slightly different research question, how can we develop a cohesive research method that answers all of those questions without being a significant stress on the study group?
• How do we deal with differing levels of technological savvy?
  Granted that this is a research question within itself, a “digital native” will be more comfortable answering our questions than a non-native. Can or should we somehow make the transition easier for people uncomfortable with new technologies?

research, n.¹
1. The act of searching (closely or carefully) for or after a specified thing or person. [oed]

If E-Research is simply the use of the Internet in research methods, it could be any of the following:

• using an online card catalog to find relevant books
• using Google to find relevant web content
• using any number of other webapps for experiment execution or analysis

Unless the object of study is actually the Internet, or some phenomena occurring on it, it doesn’t seem like these tools actually change research methods more than they aid them, by providing unparalleled access to information and analysis of just about anything, whether it be the last hour’s news or an eighteenth-century scientific survey.

On the other hand, E-Research could involve the study of online representations of any subject, through methods such as link analysis and usage studies. This latter definition seems to be what the VKS is focused on.

A study of wayfinding practices like the one we are planning can easily incorporate all of the above. In the first context, online research tools can be used to find previously published information in helping to design and substantiate a research plan. That plan can in turn incorporate an online component, such as a study of how people use some technology to aid their wayfinding behavior.

In Murder in Amsterdam, Ian Buruma suggests that second generation immigrants become isolated and thus make extreme alliances because of an alienation from both Dutch culture and that of their parents. I have trouble accepting this line of thought. Conflicting cultures won’t necessarily result in a resort to extremism, though that is a definite possibility in the case of deliberate rejection by one’s peers. Beyond simply promoting assimilation, I think this issue is more a question of how we tolerate and respond to other cultures.

The question of how we should tolerate, like most interesting questions, brings up many more:

• Should we be tolerant of concepts we know are incorrect? There is significant evidence backing the existence of global warming and evolution, yet our society continues to cultivate the unscientific opposing viewpoints. Maintaining this marketplace of ideas is critical in supporting free speech and general progress.
• How do we compromise between the need to promote plurality of ideas versus the need to protect potentially dangerous information? The rapid production of knowledge and the Internet’s infinite capacity for storing it allows easy access of practically any idea to anyone (unless they’re in certain countries). If that information happens to be sensitive, offensive, or dangerous, what do we do?
• Can we be tolerant of intolerant opinions? When extremists promote ideas of prejudice and or violence towards others, how should government arbitrate?
• If the stakes change, can (and should) we violate our ideals of freedom in exchange for other protections? The USA PATRIOT Act comes to mind.

Thoughts? Answers?

How someone might see me:

Subject: Student
Sex: Male
Age: 18-20, partially based on the expected age of an undergraduate student.
Race: Indian
Religion: Not apparent, though a string around the right wrist might suggest something.

Clothes: Subject wore pants, shirt, and a jacket. The clothes fit fairly well. The pants were a pair of blue denim jeans, fairly standard for an American college student his age; they were not torn or distressed. The shirt was long-sleeve black t-shirt, with Google’s logo written across the chest in full color, covered in part by a somewhat worn Columbia Sportswear fleece jacket. The jacket was unzipped, indicating that the subject did not find it chilly, but not warm enough to go without the jacket – on the other hand, it could indicate a compromise for personal comfort in exchange for a public display of the bright logo.

Hair was cut short and combed forward, without any visible signs of styling gel or other artificial products. No hair accessories present.

The only bodily accessory visible was the previously mentioned string around the subject’s wrist. No jewelry or piercings visible. Shoes were laced and tied brown suede sneakers, with the Reebok logo visible.

Given the numerous visible logos and fairly stereotypical clothing for an American male college student, the subject was apparently participating in the current fashion standards for his gender and age.

The Backstory:

This outfit was not intricately planned, as I was in a hurry that morning, but what I wear is generally chosen by the events I expect to encounter on that day. This specific day was to be occupied with a few classes on campus, hence the casual clothing and comfortable shoes. It was cloudy when I looked outside in the morning, so I chose to wear a jacket and long-sleeve shirt. As one could expect, the combination of Pacific Northwest weather and school has resulted in a fairly consistent uniform of a t-shirt, fleece jacket, and jeans.

If I wanted to taken more seriously, say, for an interview, I might have worn a button-down shirt, khakis, and some nice shoes, but that’s not what I set out to do in the morning.

The shirt happened to be a freebie American Apparel t-shirt from Google’s on-campus tech talk during fall quarter, while the jeans were a pair I bought from Aeropostale last summer.

Seattle is probably a good example of a city currently undergoing that shift. As a city that began with the goal of becoming a great trading port, and rose to that status through an economy focused on lumber and shipbuilding, it has become a place where people “come for the jobs at cutting-edge companies such as Microsoft and Amgen” and thus the best-educated city in the United States.

As Castells outlines, this change has significant consequences on the urban structure of a city. Corporations such as Microsoft are well suited creating their own world in the suburbs, given that they need relatively little face-to-face business interaction with entities in Seattle. At the same time, many of the well-paid employees at these companies are moving downtown, leading to the rapid development of condos, coffeeshops, and restaurants.

If this shift to an “informational city” is in fact reshaping the urban and suburban areas of our cities to serve the wants and needs of the upper middle class, our society needs to answer the question of how it will serve those who aren’t educated and/or rich.