If you want someone to impress you - give them space

my son just topped the goal scorers table for his league despite only playing half a season.

WHY AM I PROUD?

Because he had to get to this level himself. Because I made him a deal when he was very young that when he was old enough to organise himself to football training etc, if he really wanted to I would support him.

So he never spent (we never spent - I was a single parent with a tough workload and another child I didn't want to get lost under the world of kids soccer) every Friday standing in the cold and rain at the edge of the pitch watching a bunch of knee-high boys get shouted at. He never had his parents sacrifice their sacred weekend time to shuttle him across the county, wash his socks etc. He had to learn himself - he had to get good in the park (we did do that together!) and then get accepted into a team at the age where he was old enough to make his own choices about how he spends his time.

He put in the effort- this is his achievement. There is no part of his story that can place any credit for this at anyone else's feet.

So we reward that with our effort now. We drive him, wash the kits, spend our time etc. Because HE deserves our admiration and our support.

MORE PARENT BRAGGING

 

And here I cross a line. I go too far. I hurt people who have done their best for their kids - I insult them (and their children).

But I want to for all the parents to come - because if there is one thing parenting needs to be it is less competitive, less idealistic, less personal. Our children are not a reflection of our abilities. Putting them under pressure to be better than others or to excel in certain things (football, spanish, maths, piano etc.) especially from a young age - well I think it is a problem And I think that when we do it we do it because we are fearful of criticism that we didn't do enough.

We did enough. We gave birth to them and we love them. We continue to try to create a world in which they can thrive as best we can. We try to create ourselves as role models and resources they can rely on. To provide access to people and places and ideas that they can grow into.

But do we need them to be A* students? To have 6-figure salaries? To master complex Chopin? Do they need to?

I am proud (SO PROUD _ DID I SAY THAT?!!?) of Roo because he did this, and he did it because he enjoys it. He loves it. He worked hard and became good at something he loves doing and has overcome some pretty significant obstacles to keep doing it.

I hope that is something he always feels able to do.

X

#shitmum

The new ethical tech movement and me.

“It isn’t evolving in a random direction … There is a very specific goal in the development of technology and that is to compete for your attention … it become this race to the bottom of the brain stem.”

https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention#t-773574

Tristan Harris, former ethics designer at Google, speaks courageously and frankly about social media design practises that affect us all.  He is essentially a whistle-blower in the spirit of Edward Snowden and talks of putting technology back in the place of being a tool, not as a master of what we think.

Should we kill the machines?

Technology has enormous potential to connect people and ideas, to, quite frankly, get shit done.

My favourite example of this was the women’s march against trump that saw people right around the globe get up, walk outside, shout NO, and then go quietly go home again. No central planning, no drama, and an unprecedented amount of people. Awesome.

So getting rid of technology isn’t the issue.

But making some ethical boundaries are vital. Right now the only people who are winning are advertisers and the platform owners, and they are winning at the expense of our daily lives and our minds.

“I learned when I was young, that the only true life I have is the life of my brain. And as the only true life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day, for their particular use, on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition.”
‘Frying Pan Jack’, quoted here by Utah Phillips in the prelude to his recitation of the poem Bum on the Rod was referencing labour conditions, but it seems to precede Harris' sentiment.

What I cannot unsee?

In the past decade I have worked in the heart of the world’s largest companies as they brought their internal activities online. As a usability designer, researcher and consultant, I have watched the behaviour of employees across the world and at all levels as their daily work activities became increasingly digitised, from file sharing to HR reporting. Very few workers on the planet now have a job that involves no digital interaction.

During this time i and my colleagues at Digital Workplace Welfare have been able to track and evaluate the positive and negative consequences of the technologies in place and their design, and some of the ways in which employees are personally affected by the need to interact digitally to get the job done. Often employee digital services are sub-par compared to the out-of-work experience and have the potential to create considerable stress in the workplace.

Working toward welfare

Innovation and development is happening in public-facing technology, and the employee services sector often seems to lag behind, borrowing or copying non-workplace experiences for internal employee use. We see this in recent developments to integrate social media platforms and apps into the employee experience.

As more and more evidence emerges to support the concerns that Harris and others have about the consequences of handing our attention to social media and app developers for increasing parts of our daily life, we see the scramble among the world’s employers of people to integrate the same technologies and scenarios into the workplace.

The digital workplace has been embryonic for a few decades and now has reached maturity. As this social development embeds itself we will be watching carefully to understand the research around how social media engagement, interface design and hardware are impacting, not just our thoughts but our physical bodies, and help companies and employees to ensure that their digital and physical workplaces remain healthy and effective places to work.