Archives for September 2021

Ed Wasserman: As If By Design

September 19, 2021 By Mark Leave a Comment

Paying close attention for almost six years to administrative machinations at the university I attended in my youth proved to be perpetually dispiriting, but as a compensating balance I also became aware of the individual academic and educational contributions of members of that community. One such example is a book which was published earlier this year by UI Professor Ed Wasserman, titled, As If By Design: How Creative Behaviors Really Evolve. Situated like a traffic cop at the crossroads between cultural narratives and behavioral evolution, Wasserman’s book not only reveals the concept of a eureka moment to be unfounded in many celebrated instances, but fills in critical context which was excluded over time to bolster the romantic concept of individual inspiration.

Although Wasserman is a professor in the University of Iowa’s Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, and as such is certainly familiar with statistics and the rigors of the scientific method, his book is accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds. In fact, if you’re in secondary or undergraduate education, and looking for a text that will not only spur discussion but engage your students, you would be hard-pressed to find a better current example — and that’s particularly true if you are located in Iowa. (There are a number of Iowa-centric examples which will be broadly familiar to residents of the state, yet for those who believe they are in the know that only makes the missing details that much more compelling when Wasserman fills out the story.)

To be clear, you don’t have to be from Iowa to connect with Wasserman’s examples, many of which will be familiar to most Americans. Personally, as an Iowan I found the section on Iowa’s blackout license plates to be both hilarious and absurd, but if I had to pick a favorite vignette it would unquestionably be the section on Florence Nightingale. Although I already knew a great deal about Nightingale’s importance to the practice of medicine and profession of nursing, I knew nothing about her contributions to what we now call data visualization.

In short, an enjoyable and informative read, and an important corrective on the all-too-human tendency to create and celebrate idols.

— Mark Barrett

John Podlasek’s ‘Game Dev Advice’ Podcast

September 12, 2021 By Mark Leave a Comment

A long time ago in another life I spent a decade-plus working in interactive entertainment, more commonly referred to as the computer games biz. From the mid-1990’s until deep into the 2000’s I had a front row seat as the industry changed from a relatively small, creative-driven marketplace into a massive industry dominated by gaudy global corporations. Although Microsoft and Sony — with the Xbox and Playstation 2, respectively — did everything possible at the turn of the millennia to reduce computer gaming to a proprietary console monopoly, the fact that plucky Nintendo continued to shine, despite annual predictions of doom, was an important reminder that everything does not have to be reduced to cynical crap in order to be profitable.

Not only did I enjoy the work I performed in that new medium, including wrestling with complex theoretical issues underpinning the very concept of interactive entertainment, but I met a number of talented and genuinely decent people who were on that same journey. In an industry that has since become synonymous with bad behavior, if not a launch point for some of the worst ills in modern American society, it was both enjoyable and reassuring to find camaraderie in the pursuit of something new, and as a relative outsider to be welcomed into what was, early on, a close community. (In those early years the computer game community was also ahead of the cultural curve in its acceptance of transgender and LGBTQ individuals, at least until the corporate cowboys and graphics companies decided they could drive more business by focusing on realistic breast animations.)

In terms of my work experience, I can also honestly say that the only time I had a problem was with one of the multinational corporations referenced above, but that’s another story. In every other respect the producers I worked with were both professional and personable, and that includes John Podlasek, who I worked with over long hours in a recording studio on more than one occasion. (Recording studios are a lot like submarines. You learn who people are real fast because there is nowhere to hide.)

Not only does John’s background include music and the visual arts, but over decades in interactive entertainment he has worn every hat a producer can wear, yielding a formidable combination of experience and perspective. And yet at root he is a genuinely humble and often hilarious person, and if you have any interest in interactive entertainment I would suggest you make a point to listen to John’s ‘Game Dev Advice‘ podcast. You could talk to dozens of other industry veterans for days at a time and not get the kind of grounded and holistic insight that John passes along in a single episode.

— Mark Barrett

Picking Up Where I Left Off

September 3, 2021 By Mark 1 Comment

Six years ago to the day the corrupt Iowa Board of Regents announced the illegitimate appointment of an unqualified and belligerent crony boob as president of the University of Iowa. At the time that appointment came as quite a shock, but as the weeks, months and years passed it became clear that the university and indeed public higher education in Iowa had been and has been fundamentally compromised by politics. While that illegitimate president finally left office three and a half months ago — and that’s a good thing — we just learned from the Gazette’s Vanessa Miller that the university ignored a rape report that was filed with the Iowa City Police Department three weeks before the former president unexpectedly announced his intention to resign last October. In fact, had there not been a series of campus protests over the past few days about that reported rape, it is likely that report would never have come to light — much like similar events which took place at the university in 2018, also under the permanently blind eye of the former UI president. (Likewise, today the Gazette’s Miller also reported that after an earlier unexpected defeat, and the subsequent political packing of the council which delivered that initial rebuke, the Iowa Board of Regents just secured the right to build a massive new hospital complex in North Liberty, after intentionally falsifying the size and nature of that project to the crony-packed council which gave its foregone approval.)

Although the initial shock of that corrupt presidential appointment was disorienting, in retrospect the timing could not have been better. In the summer of 2015 I had been verging on contacting UI about an issue that might prove mutually beneficial in an academic and medical context, but given what I now know those thoughts were grossly naive. Over the intervening six years I learned what I could about UI specifically and higher-ed generally — and along the way probably met the equivalent criteria for a master’s and doctorate in one academic discipline or another — and what I learned was almost universally dispiriting. (As regular readers know, I grew up in and have lived most of my life in Iowa City, where UI is located, so I was not oblivious to the usual problems on a major college campus. But I honestly had no idea how pervasive the corruption is in the ranks of academic administration and by governing boards.)

That said, what a dispiriting six years it has been across the board. The state of Iowa slipped into cultural collapse and is now controlled by arch conservatives and fundamentalists — who, without irony — helped put a degenerate con artist in the White House, then conspired to overthrow American democracy in service of their delusions. Throw in the COVID-19 pandemic and Iowa’s determination to expose as many young children as possible to the virus, even though vaccine approval is on the horizon for kids between five and twelve years of age, plus the ravages of global warming, and a conniving abdication of responsibility by the United States Supreme Court in support of Texas’s subjugation of women, and gosh-golly what’s next?

In that context it has been interesting watching my mind slowly disengage over the past three and a half months from the singular pursuit of tracking events at the University of Iowa. Not that there still isn’t plenty to read, as attested to above, but I no longer feel an obligation to jot it all down and make sure I have the supporting documents and videos, because the narrative arc I was following finally did come to a close. (I’m sure there will be future revelations about the illegitimate president’s tenure, but for now UI is just another bummer in the news.)

What that mental space has given me is a chance to go back and look at old draft posts I was working on in 2015, as well as catch up on clerical and administrative chores I either dropped at the time or subsequently neglected over that six-year span. And as you might imagine, it feels good to be thinking about something other than failed human beings, and to be reconnecting with the positive pursuits I was focused on lo those many years ago. So…where was I?

— Mark Barrett