Mobile horror / Tuesday-meeting / MIT / Security issues / Entry-level jobs/businesses…

Rainy day, hilarious mood, no hangover. I am full of thoughts and arguments, which I need to write down later today: entry-level jobs, governments and surveillance (cf Schneiders article in IHT), local politics. But writing feels hard today, my brains are a bit stiff still. It must be because of the heated discussions last night.

Mobile horror

We (S, Aaro, Jukka, Olli, Kari, Mikael, Ville, Asko) enjoyed the play quite much. The script is really funny, characters are credible and the acteurs (3) and the actress are skillful and well chosen for the play. The play tells about one week in one start-up IT-company. The first half concentrates more on the business side, while the second half deals more with intra-personal issues, which of course, are the strong undercurrent in all human groups. I bought the script and read it later in the evening and found that it is not so funny by itself. One needs to see the play. The problem with the script is (as S and Mikael pointed out), that it does not develop the business side enough. Some parts of the human-relations side of the play are a bit too predictable and not original. Good play, anyway.

Tuesday-meeting

The rain had scared almost everyone from coming to Sea Horse. In addition to our theatre company, there were only Lassi, PG, and Tappi, but that did not make our evening dull at all. We had interesting discussion about space travel, philosophy, work etc. Lassi posed a good question: why is there no analytic philosophy of culture? Is it impossible? We tried to dig our brains and find out what Wittgenstein has written about this issue, but at least my brains were too hard to dig. I need to start reading Wittgenstein again.

MIT

Having nothing else to do at the office at one time today, I browsed the Wikipedia and found the article on MIT. It seems to be the place to study systems engineering and management. Some characteristics I will certainly cherish are

The school has a powerful anti-authoritarian ethos in which it is believed that one's social status should be determined by raw intellectual prowess rather than by social class or organizational position.

and

truth is a matter of empirical reality rather than the result of popular belief or management directive

It will be so refreshing to study and work in such a culture.

Security issues

Bruce Schneier discusses the proposal of adding RFID (radio frequency identification) chips to passports in US (and of course, later, elsewhere). Even though they might be helpful in spotting terrorists (see also my earlier note), the problem is that they can be read by any suitable reader machine. Furthermore, the reading can happen from quite a long distance: Schneier tells about tested 20 meter distance. Scheier's conclusion is that the government itself wants to have the RFIDs in passports so that it can easily monitor its subject. Now this is interesting: the usual story tells that the republican ideology is for minimal government: the less the government interferes the life of citizens, the better. Actually, the Bush government advocates this view too in social security, pensions etc. But here they are for greated intrusion and surveillance. Scheier writes "this seems like a clear case of the Bush administration putting its own interests above the security and privacy of its citizens, and then lying about it". Of course, we could just shrugs our shoulders and think that this is a problem local to USA, but we have seen that stupidity like this thrives quite well in EU too. (by the way, Schneir's book Beyong fear is really good and helps in putting threats in their proper contexts.)

Entry-level jobs/businesses

What are the entry-level jobs and business in Finland today? I came to think about this this morning in subway. In China, a common entry-level business was selling fruits. I followed how the business of one fruit shop keeper developed over 1.5 years in Hangzhou: first he (with his wife and kids) sold only fruits, the they started to sell mobile phone calls, then cigarettes, then beer and then some preserved food. He seemed to do quite well. It would be fun to travel to Hangzhou after some years and find out how he is doing then. But what about Finland? Are there some simple businesses one can start and the enlarge? I do not know: the conservatives are always saying that we do not have enough small businesses here. But what is the reason? Is our society and economy such that it prevent most from establishing small, entry-level businesses? The only really entry level, thriving businesses I know of are the etnical grocery stores here in Kallio. Hmm, maybe I do not have anything sensible to write about this issue. All seemed so clear in the morning, but now everything is messy.

On economical press in Finland

For some reason I have been reading several business newspapers almost daily for some time now. Now I am getting enough, because the quality of intellectual argumentation in those newpapers is so low. It is as if the journalists were not thinking at all when they type in their stories: most of the stories are concocted from ad-hoc cliches and knee-jerk right-wing thinking. I do understand, that this kind of journalism is their duty (and nature of those newspapers as Thurow describes in Fortune Favors the Bold), but I feel that the low level of business press is dangerous for the future of the Finnish economy. I am afraid, that many rather high level decision makers in both private firms and government/parliament take the arguments and stories seriously. This will lead to a situation where the inexperienced, not-so-clever or educated business journalists use considerable power in our society. This is not in the interests of the society as a whole. However, I do not know how to get better journalists to those newspapers. The only hope I have is that the decision makers would read some other newspapers and magazines and that they would at least try to think things through themselves. I hope my hope is not in vain.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from September to October 2004".