Negative Possibility and Self-Driving Cars

Probably Not Like This

As a father of an about to start driving teenager (and yes, I'm mostly mentioning this to freak out the colleagues who remember her from take your very small daughter to work days), I've been watching the advent of self-driving cars with strong interest. The eldest has a troublesome commute to her high school, so we've been eagerly awaiting her milestone day, and the subsequent test. While it will be a while before she turns that into solo trips, it's all in an easy to understand process, the same as driver less driving. But while I eagerly dream of a day when I can set and forget my commute and get in an extra half hour of sleep or work, and feel good about the blind and elderly adding to their quality of life, not to mention never paying for parking again...

Well, not so much with those about to drive. Skepticism towards the technology abounds, along with when it might actually be ready and operational, or having trust that it could ever be better than your own eyes and feet.

This makes no sense, right? The generation that can't ever put down their phones is unwilling to give up the wheel. Maybe it's just a matter of them not having enough experience with soul-deadening commutes, or that they are too tied up in the idea of how easily their tech freezes or fails. But honestly, we put our lives in the hands of technology on such a routine basis, from air traffic controllers to traffic lights, from medical records to food safety, from electrical grids to combustible fuels. But since we don't think about those things, and we do think about robot cars, well, fear.

Intellectually, we know this is a whiff. In our lifetimes, we're likely to regard driving cars in the same way that we look at doctors prescribing cigarettes, or never leaving the home without a hat. But in the short run, driving still represents freedom, independence, and lots of other things best sold in a car commercial.

There's also this: as a species, we are all-in for negative possibility, especially when the tech is new. Take a look at your Internet of Things feed, and I bet it's rife with security concerns. (Along with hackers shutting down your self-driving car.) If a loved one tells you about their new romantic interest, you stare them down hard for flaws. You'll never be more on your guard than the first time you try a new restaurant, or more focused then when you eat something you've never eaten before. Especially if it doesn't look a lot like something else you've eaten.

And with that, folks, I'm also hitting the road. It's time for some true time off, complete with significant road miles to coincide with the kids' spring break. Probably the last one where the eldest won't take the wheel for some part of the journey, too. Feel free to read up on the backlog of M&AD posts -- we're up to nearly 150 pieces in the archives! -- and drive safe. We'll be back in April.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

A Brief Moment In Cranky: People Who Threaten To Emigrate

Hitting the Road

In Q1 2005, I put my family of 3.5 (my wife was pregnant with what became our youngest) on a plane for a vacation to New Zealand. We spent weeks driving up and down the North and South Islands in a rented car, avoiding organized tour groups, walking on glaciers, eating like locals, visiting sheep and wool festivals (my wife knits), and learning as much about the Maori heritage and history as possible. Vacations for me are usually just another form of work, because that's just how I'm wired, and I really felt like we learned a ton about the place. I wound up writing a small book about it, punctuated with photographs, and had a dangerous epiphany behind a waterfall, alone and significantly off any hiking path, near sunset in an area near where there's an active volcano. It was the best vacation of my life, and Wellington may be the nicest city that I've ever visited.

I also took several job interviews while there, because I was thinking very hard about leaving the United States. Which, at the time, no one but my wife knew, though I suspect many of our friends and family would not have been very surprised by.

In the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, I had spent my nights and weekends, for nearly six months, talking to strangers in Nevada. (California, where I lived at the time, was never in play, and Reno is just four hours from the Bay Area, so it was a feasible drive and dial.) By the time I was done, we had donated thousands to the Kerry campaign, and I had talked to thousands of people. I wasn't blind to the idea that my candidate could lose. Disinterring an incumbent during wartime is very low in historical precedent, and most of the nation hadn't soured on the Bush Administration (yet, as the approval ratings showed in the second term). 

Bush wound up carrying Nevada by 2 percentage points, or about 20,000 votes, winning five delegates. The state did not matter, in the grand scale of things, because Bush's win in the electoral college was by 35 votes. I was profoundly depressed by the turn in events, not the least of which was the decision of the Kerry campaign to hold back a significant amount of funds for post-election legal challenges that never came. I felt, at the time, like neither of the parties had served my interests, and questioned the wisdom of raising my family under their control. We were still young enough to be attractive emigres, and didn't own a house. I do Internet advertising for a living, which you can theoretically do from anywhere, and I even did a little work for my start up at the time while I was there. 

So why didn't we become Kiwis? Well, you go back in time on the Internet when you go to different countries, and that's not always fun or lucrative. New Zealand is lovely, but most of the nation rolls up the sidewalks at 8pm, and I tend to night work and life. Not seeing our parents and siblings outside of a computer screen, and not having our kids interact in real life with their cousins, was too much. We wound up moving back to the East Coast for a fresh job a couple of years later, bought a home and set down our roots, and made our peace that while our country was far from perfect, it was still the best place for us.

The reason why I bring this all up is in answer to everyone in my social feed who feels compelled to discuss emigration every time the election cycle turns. To these folks, I'd like to ask the following questions.

1) Have you donated time or money or both to the campaign that would prevent you from wanting to move, or does your threat end at, well, actual effort?

2) Do you really know anything about the country that you'd like to go to? 

For most of the Bush Administration, Canada was led by a party of similar conservative bent. Most other nations limit immigration from older individuals, or those without attractive and employable skills. For those of the other bent, most other nations are far more controlling on matters like healthcare and gun ownership. And finally...

3) Are you ready to wash your hands of everyone that you are leaving behind? 

I don't regret the time I spent walking, calling and talking to Nevada. It gave me profound insights into the human spirit, made me more charitable towards those who do not agree with me, and was a transformative and educational experience. Had the job interviews and Web climate in New Zealand been better, maybe we would have stayed, and had similar growth. 

But what I wouldn't do then, and won't do now, is treat my word as worthless, and make idle threats. As a marketing and advertising consultant, and as someone who chooses to make decisions for the benefit of my long-term brand, my word is bond. I will do what I say. And I won't say something unless I'm very prepared to do it.

If you oppose a candidate, work to defeat that candidate. If you can't stay in a country in the event of their ascension to power, make plans to leave.

Preferably with a measure of class and decorum. Especially to everyone in your social circle who chooses to stay.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Working Hard, or Hardly Realistic

Part of the job description, when you do consulting for a living, is a willingness to confront some uncomfortable truths. They usually lead you to opportunities, but unless you can live with an awkward minute or meeting, you are in the wrong business. So I'm going to peel back the shade for a moment or two here, and point out something that very few people ever admit, at least out loud.

While I pride myself on my worth ethic and rate, I will never feel that I'm working hard enough, or even that I work all that hard. At most of my positions, for most of my life. Let me go a step further on this, dear theoretical reader... I doubt that you work very hard, either.

Now, let's walk this back and give it its proper context. We do marketing and advertising for a living. Rather than, well, brute labor. We're not on our feet unless we want to be, and finagle a standing desk. We're not dealing with unsafe work environments, likely workplace injuries, wearing special shoes for support, and so on, and so on. If we're worn out at the end of the day, it's because that, on some level, we've chosen to be worn out. Either through a stress story that we tell ourselves as a trigger to self-motivate, or because we've taken on aspects of the job that aren't all that necessary, but seem that way, because a stressful job is an important job. Or we've taken the wrong job, and are trying to make it right. (That never works, by the way. Spoiler alert.)

Perhaps you feel that the entirety of the work you do, when you roll in housework, child or elder care, or uncredited work that's outside of your role, gets you to that magical realm of working hard enough to cast aside all doubt. But even then, I submit to the jury of public opinion that technology, in the form of household appliances, smartphones, improved automobiles and so much more, have all added up to take a lot of the work out of our lives.

To substitute, we work hard on a lot of things... that, well, maybe no one has asked us to work hard on. Social media presences. Hobbies. Workouts. Side projects. Keeping abreast of the spiraling number of entertainment options, training pets, getting granular about food intake, and so on, and so on.

Oh, and another thing: when we are working at our highest level, it's not work at all. We're joyously in the weeds of the details, sweating to make a deadline with exhilaration, working a trade show booth while knee-deep in prospects, seeing the culmination of a lot of prior half-speed work race to a conclusion. I've had days where I've seen the sun come up, and it was a surprise.

Which is why a lot of the people who've shared a company with me are convinced I'm a hard worker. But I know better.

The hardest working person I know, or will ever know, is my mom. She raised three kids as a single parent, while keeping a spotless house, while working nights as a bartender. (OK, maybe I worked at her level when I was in college. But not since. The woman's a machine.)

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.