The social network of driving

An interesting article about the psychology of driving suggests that as cars become more “safer” they allow drivers to take more risks. It’s something that has crossed my mind more than once in my drives up and down the East Coast. Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Driving is perhaps the only social interaction environment where people cannot see each other directly, but can observe and even suffer from their behavior.
If someone cuts the line at the local bakery, that interaction and behavior can be instantaneously matched to the physical appearance of the person. Additionally, there is usually an open channel for communicating one’s own dissatisfaction: “hey, you!” It makes people more comfortable knowing that, perhaps, it isn’t an 80-year old granny cutting the line, but someone they can easily stereotype as one likely to commit the offense. Driving affords no such luxury.

Image courtesy of popcoaster.com

This is likely why people take comfort in stereotyping drivers from different states (New York/Massachusetts drivers being a good example). If honking and cursing inside your own car seems to have no effect, at least it’s comforting to know that there’s a reason to explain poor driving decisions.

2. Driving allows people to be rude without having lasting repercussions, while politeness rarely pays off.
If you’re rude at work or at school, people take note in order to avoid future incidents, but driving allows people to be rude while easily slipping away in traffic moments after committing an offense. Being rude also allows people to take advantage of situations in which they would otherwise not for fear of community reprimands - cutting into a packed exit lane is a good example.

3. Social interactions while driving manifests itself in unique ways.
This is rather obvious. People drive faster when they are surrounded by cars driving fast because there is safety in knowing that many people are breaking the rules. It’s a common courtesy to warn other drivers about headlights/cops/sudden stops. These are interactions that are nonetheless limited by the fact that there is no easy way to observe other drivers, especially their faces. It’s the same sort of limitation that hinders social interaction on the web today: you can’t tell if a person is trying to be helpful, sarcastic or just trying to annoy you. Flashing headlights can mean a) your headlights are off/cops ahead b) you’ve just made a dangerous driving move and therefore I will try to blind you.

4. Driving as it is today is still an inherently social activity, but it need not be.
Driving is an activity in which human effort and time is wasted the most. Somewhere in Tom Vanderbilt’s book “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)” he mentioned that the human brain makes some astonishing number of decisions per second as we drive - the signs on the road, the road conditions, cars ahead, to the left, right and behind of us, the weather, your cellphone, etc. However these decisions require the processing power of the human brain precisely because all the other drivers on the road are human. But if we eliminate the human factor altogether, making car-driving autonomous, not only are we likely to stem human error and hence human casualties, but we are also reallocate our brain processes to something more useful. We aren’t designed to handle so much simultaneous input at the same time, as much as we’d like to fool ourselves into thinking. Computers are much better equipped to do so.

We can always make the case for driving as a recreational activity, but for many people driving is just a very convenient way of getting from point A to point B. The psychological mistake that we make is in thinking that having a car gives us control. To a certain degree, it does, but once you realize that driving is a skewed form of social networking en masse, you begin to realize you really don’t have much control after all.

An Engineer’s Nightmare - Ocean Tower, South Padre Island

Also known as: Faulty Towers, or The Leaning Tower of South Padre Island.

We see this as a great opportunity to get a bargain right now on what will become the finest quality built tower - in the best location - on South Padre Island. The views and amenities are unmatched, and the units are the some of the largest on the Island.

So began the wonderful pitch for the doomed Ocean Tower on South Padre Island in Texas.

The 134-unit skyscraper on a narrow strip of sand just close to the Mexican border began as ambitious project to create 31-stories of unprecedented views over the ocean. It was touted as the “highest structure in the Rio Grande Valley”. Amenities included with each condo were “Italian marble floors, granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, custom cabinets, stainless steel fixtures, over-sized Jacuzzi tub and stand-up showers.”

In May of 2008, however, developers noticed cracks in the columns supporting the parking garage. The official explanation is that the parking garage and the tower were mistakenly built connected, forcing the weight down upon the garage instead of on more solid “expansion joints”. The use of expandable clay, which compresses when weight is applied to it, compounded the issue and allowed the parking garage to remain relatively unsettled compared to the tower itself. Preliminary evaluation showed that the tower’s core had sunk 14 to 16 inches, while the attached parking lot had shifted less than half that distance. By July, Ocean Tower was reassuring investors that while the project will be delayed, the skyscraper would reemerge “stronger and safer than ever”. The news broke on November 4, 2008, with a letter to investors:

We are deeply disappointed to report that the construction of Ocean Tower, which was suspended in May, has been terminated with no immediate prospects for completion.

It sat abandoned until September of 2009 when plans were unveiled for its demolition. The 376-foot unfinished skyscraper was brought down with a controlled implosion on December 13, 2009. At 55,000 tons, it is claimed that it was the largest implosion of a reinforced concrete structure in the world. With nearly 98 percent of the above-grade materials used to build the tower scheduled for recycling or reuse, the developers hope to recuperate at least some of the losses.

Of the $75 million loan the developers obtained for building the skyscraper, it is estimated that $65 million evaporated in the rubble. They are currently seeking a $125 million settlement with the geotechnical engineering firm Raba-Kistner Engineering and Consulting of San Antonio and structural engineers Datum Engineers of Austin and Dallas.

Owner and developer Antun Domit of Domit Development was quoted as saying:

We did the right thing that we needed to do. You do what you need to do and it was a great project, I wish this would not happen but it did happen.

Sources:

Leaning condos on South Padre Island to be demolished
Faulty Tower’s Implosion Will Set New Height Record
Promotional video for Ocean Towers, SPI
Zachry company building luxury high-rise on South Padre Island (pdf)
Alice Donahue Real Estate, South Padre Island Texas
Ocean Tower Building Crashes Down
South Padre Island’s Ocean Tower to be demolished and recycled (pdf)

iPhone tools and tips reference page

If you have a (jailbroken) iPhone, you might find the following resource page useful. Basically it summarizes my efforts and understandings as a result of playing around with a jailbroken phone, and now that I have both the 2G and the 3G, I’m hoping the tips described there can be useful to some.

http://iphone.rioleo.org

I’ll be expanding upon it as I come across interesting stuff. Hint hint nudge nudge did you know that you could get the TomTom GPS on your jailbroken iPhone for free?

Humanizing Web Professionalism?

There used to be a time when the Internet was such an easy place to differentiate between professional and amateur. Furthermore, it was easy to differentiate one’s own online presence between the front that you presented to others professionally (like when you’re designing websites or coding software) and the front that you present to your friends. There is something reassuring in knowing that the secretary you meet at the front desk of the law offices of Binder & Binder is not quite the same person you meet at the bar at 10pm, for example. At least at one point in the internet’s rich history there was a time where a 15-year old could start up a web design business and no one would be able to guess.

As someone who benefited from that level of trust (so long as I could deliver the product a customer wanted, it didn’t really matter *who* I was), it’s lamentable to think that now there’s really no way to trust someone because there’s always something you’ll find out about them that makes you really wonder about their credibility.

What you see on the left is the twitter feed for a Boston web design firm called MindFire. They’ve done work for NBC, Connecticut Light & Power and Brighams And Women’s Hospital. Once I read that, I have really no idea what to think of them anymore. Is it just one person twittering what they want to eat for dinner? Or is this tweet a one-way window into their private life? Or am I just being paranoid, and being open these days means being transparent about all facets of one’s life? Recent flurry over Zuckerberg’s comments about how privacy is no longer a web-user’s concern highlights exactly this social phenomenon. And the example of MindFire is just one of many I’ve seen in the past few months.

If I don’t have privacy on the Internet, then where else can I be robbed of it?

The emergence of a new world order

Does the map below strike you in any fashion as odd?

In Japan, this is the typical world map you would find in a standard school textbook. Compare this to:

Same earth, same projection, different center of focus.

In the news today I heard about how China has now emerged as the world’s leading exporter, having surpassed Germany. Similarly, its car market surpassed the US market at the same time. NPR did a similar story on it around Martin Jacques’s new book, “When China Rules The World” which re-aired just today. I can imagine how difficult it will be for the United States (and other Western ‘powers’) to realize it no longer can decide what the rest of the world can or cannot do. The mentality that the West is more civilized and more powerful has permeated the annals of history beginning with colonization of Africa and the expansion eastward with trade, along with wars here and there. True, China has a pitiful human rights record and all sorts of corruption, but can any country wipe their own hands clean and say they haven’t been guilty of the same?

One of the interesting things highlighted in the show was that the first area that the West will begin to lose its grip on global affairs is through finance, highlighting that the two western monetary institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, will no longer be relevant in the East once China’s economy overtakes that of the US, which Goldman Sachs predicts to be at or around 2027. Would it be possible to imagine a time when the United States dollar no longer holds any symbolic or even monetary value outside its borders?

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it, or that it should be averted at all cost. It’s another way of seeing the world, like the maps above. Who is to say that the maps we see are the right interpretations? Are we not looking at the same world, after all? Granted, with financial power comes political power (by the way, the United States currently owes China $227 billion) and for the abuses made by the West in the name of civilization, it’s up to our imagination to see what power China can wield over their former oppressors. They have the benefit of hindsight, fortunately, and we can only hope they’ll use it wisely.

The new dollar?

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