Like everyone else, I am amazed at the ancient Maya, who designed such an efficient calendar that could trace and trace the movement of the sun and the stars even to point of predicting eclipses.  This is in spite of being a bloody culture of evil gods and human sacrifice.  The most ancient Egyptians built and placed their pyramids in perfect geometric position to catch the first rays of the sun at a given point in their calendar year.  Then the ancient Greeks went on to develop the mathematical and geometric theories that continue to guide us today.

It was inevitable that people would conclude that there was a God-given order to the universe for all things including ethics and morality, politics and the greater public good, economics and even such as to cover all of the social sciences.  The philosophers I have read are pretty good in arriving at considerable insight into all of these areas.   Of course they seldom agree, and often leave us in a state of conflict and confusion.

Ultimately they would presumably say that, just like in math, the formula is there.  We just haven’t found it yet.  Einstein was really close with E=mc2 but I think even that has been refined a bit.  Religions would say, you philosophers will never get close enough to God to know the answer.  That is why you need us to tell you the answers, based on ancient religious writings given to men through divine inspiration.  Unfortunately, when men think they know the answer, through either philosophy or religion, they seem to want to impose it on others through force, and this has been the cause of a lot of suffering throughout our history.

I don’t really care about all that.  I just want some divine inspiration to help me work out a problem where I know part of it but not all of it and I need to know how to use the part I know to get the answer on the rest.  Just as philosophers appear to become lost as they start with one thought and carry it forward through various relationships and metamorphoses, I think about “x” and as I carry it over to relate it to  “y” and “yx”, etc, I forget what “x” was in the first place.  It is all very confusing and very frustrating.

I liked Pascal’s wager because he says right off the bat that it isn’t going to be clear, and your mind can’t follow it through on a rational basis.  We just need to wager that God does exist because it gives our lives a context which makes everything much easier for us.   I think that makes sense.   Some of us, perhaps most of us, don’t have to know for sure that there is a heaven or hell, or all the details.  Certainly we hope there is a place, one or the other, for some of the people we have met in this world.  But what is important for us to understand in trying to function is that we are part of a bigger picture.  Even our education is part of a bigger picture.   My trying to understand all of these philosophers gives me a better sense of all the different ideas that have been part of my human world.   I even tell myself that my little algebra course is just the tip of an iceberg, and if I can just learn enough to pass the course, I will at least have opened a door to be able to look through into the vast field of mathematics.  Is this nonsense?  It isn’t nonsense if it helps me to focus my mind on what I have to know to pass the course.

When I read that Pascal said that something is inconclusive, he was already my man.  I get tired of everyone’s pronouncements that “this is the way it is.”  That applied to philosophy.  Unfortunately in algebra it tends to be, “this is the way it is, and that’s that!”  But Pascal gives me a little breathing room and this has been appreciated.

The vision of beauty and personal appeal promoted by fashion magazines is what people try to imitate because they perceive it as ideal. Society’s idea of beauty is to be tall, slim, and preferably blonde, blue eyed and well dressed.  This belief is not just limited to women. Men are affected as well.  No matter where you are in the world, you will be able to pick up a local magazine and see the women that are beautiful, respected and admired.  These are the people who dress a certain way and act a certain way and they make people believe that they are special. Therefore, when you see a model and he or she looks great and like they are going places, you try to imitate them. Marc-Even Blackman, chair of the menswear design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says “celebrities in Jeans – Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Madonna among others have often contributed to the garments’ popular culture.”

Because the media seems to imply that what the wealthy wear is the ideal, if a person is uncomfortable with their status in life they may pretend through their clothing by dressing a certain way that they are part of an “upper class” so that others give them that status. There is always a search for an “upper class style” and the need to demonstrate that you are classy, admirable, and even desirable with the things you have and the things you do. For example, when it comes to employing people for the best jobs, those who look the part are the ones who make it. We can see a number of people in the media especially on reality television who have gotten where they wanted to be through pretense, but once they were there, they literally became the people of their imagination.  Even when their falsehood was discovered, they kept their positions, jobs and social status. This is because they were good at it, and because, in the end, they really did belong.  As another example, people may try to fit in through meeting a particular image requirement. If a student  is coming from a poor environment, and they are given the opportunity to attend a private school, the first time they come into the school they can find themselves trying to adapt to too many ideas that the people who were brought up in this kind of school already have. The social life within the school could be a bit hard for the student to adapt to because they have different ideas about fashion. The student may feel pressured to start dressing in a way that wouldn’t make him or her look out of place. When the student starts attending the school with the type of clothing that they normally wear, they can find themselves being teased by the other students.  The student would feel that they have no choice but to start dressing like the others and pretend that they are part of the group and that they have the money to belong there.

While jeans were originally a symbol of the working class, some styles have become a symbol of wealth. The initial idea behind the creation of Jeans was to make a durable pair of pants for people who worked day in and about in rough and physically demanding jobs. Many people still use jeans because of their economical and long lasting value.  However, today jeans are mostly worn as a fashion item because of the way they look, more than for their original purpose. Jeans have become an iconic part of the American culture, and there are many different styles, and textures for jeans. Some which reflect their original purpose and some that reflect their status in fashion. According to Fred Davis, from “the left pole came the practice of jean fading and fringing” to show genuine hard work.  And the right countered by introducing designer jeans to “de-democratize” jeans for the upper classes. There are people that can’t afford expensive clothing but still want to look like they have the money to afford it. To capitalize on the fact that jeans have become a symbol of wealth Bloomingdales  now sells low priced jeans for prices comparable to the Gap, but you can also buy designer jeans for up to $300 dollars a piece.  These have the look of being worn through with rips and holes, so people don’t have to waste time in creating the worn-in look.  In fact, the rips and holes may often provide a revealing sex appeal to the wearer.

Since jeans now show a persons wealthy status in our American democratic age, dressing up has come down to a common denominator where people no longer dress up to go to the ballet or the opera, and men don’t need to wear a tie anymore to go out at night.  This is an example of what Penny Sparke talks about  in her article on Postmodernism,  that while “the strict division between what was considered “tasteful” as opposed to “tasteless” had long served to maintain class and gender differences within western societies,” since the 1960′s this is no longer the case. For instance some students wear their jeans so low, that the cuffs are totally worn out from dragging it on the ground, the crotch is at the knee to prevent proper walking, and when they sit down, they reveal the upper part of their buttocks. This fashion trend may be considered tasteless but people of all classes dress this way because it will make them look “cool” and fit in.  It is possible to go against the mainstream, but there is a price to pay socially.  If you don’t look like the other students, you are considered out of place, perhaps because you are “older”, and no longer “with-it.”

We are all individuals with identities and equal claims to existence. Unfortunately, in this world, and in America as well, we are born into a glorified, beautified cast system.  Pure upward mobility and equal opportunity are only myths.  The fact is we do judge people by their clothes, the way we judge a book by its cover. Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Clothes make the man; naked people have little or no influence in society.”  So it might be said correctly that clothes do “make the man”.  They not only distinguish him from a “savage”, but they also mould his personality for him.  They force people to conform to the expectations of others as to who they think they should be.  Maybe the only place they can really be themselves is at home, which is the only place where they don’t have to wear any clothes at all.

Expedia.com is a website where you can make reservations for different services and destinations. Although they have the words that tell us what services they offer such as Flight, Hotel, Car, Cruise and Activities, to enhance the meaning of those words they use an icon of a plane, a building, a car, a cruise and tickets. Furthermore, on a different section of the same page, there might be an image of a plane together with the symbol of a dollar. Immediately next to it is says “Get the latest prices”, which means that a person will see the available deals that are being offered. By contrast on a similar site, Travelocity.com, they offer the same services but in order to enhance the meaning of the same words, they have actual pictures of people enjoying the activities and services related to the words through out the website. For example, an image of a person driving a convertible is used for car rentals; a picture of a person in front of a castle in some other country is used for travel (flight) information.

Browsing the Internet is easier and clearer with a combination of images and words. “In verbal language, individual signs (words) are combined in a linear sequence that permits analysis in terms of both the meaning of each sign and its position within the syntax of the sequence.” Images move us; images trigger emotions, so setting these images in an interesting way creates the highest possible experience for people who look at them while navigating the web and it gives them a sense of relating to what they see in the computer. When a web designer places an image in a certain way or exaggerates the content of an image, we experience an emotional response that is impossible to avoid. Images that contain blood evoke an emotional response that forces a confrontation with reality; for example, a symbol of a drop of blood on a news website that talks about the war in Iraq. This reality will make us feel as if we are in a particular place, space, time, or location, without regard for any actual physical place.

To add to the visual and emotional experience, the Internet uses “multimedia” which includes sound and animation, such as we can experience in our daily life, reading a magazine or going to a store.  An example of this simple form of interactivity is a presentation much like a slide show. When the viewer is ready to see the next part of the presentation, he or she clicks a button to load the next screen, similar to the way we read a newspaper or a magazine. If you visit an online music store on the Internet, where you can listen to a music clip and then make a purchase, or play an interactive game on the web, you know that it can feel as if you have spent some time and possibly lost track of time, just the way you would at a record store at the mall.

We must appreciate the extent to which we humans see the world through our emotions. For this reason web designers have a tendency to animate objects and things, the way we give personalities to the things we see. Knowing this we can convey more information with subtle variations to the overall image. “Pictorial communication usually presents and interpreters with manifold ensembles of signs rather than sequences, and the interpreters must make their own order out of the presentation, perhaps attending first to the whole and then its parts, or vice versa.” For example, when we are on a website such as Weather.com, we see a symbol of a sun and we know it means that today it will be a sunny day. When we see a symbol of a cloud it means that it will be a rainy day. These conventions have become “common sense” on the Internet nowadays.  Lines are the most effective way to show these personalities. One line may look relaxed while others may look agitated or excited.  These lines can be left for interpretation by the viewer.

The Internet may not be a conventional place; however the existence of the Internet has changed how we define a place. The images and icons which lead us intellectually and emotionally through the Internet give us a sense of traveling, and with the ever higher levels of our interactivity, they become as much a part of our lives as the actual roads we travel on.

Many people including me are amazed at the ancient Mayan culture. They designed such an efficient calendar that could trace the movement of the sun and the stars even to point of predicting eclipses.  The Egyptians built and placed their pyramids in perfect geometric position to catch the first rays of the sun at a given point in their calendar year.  Then the ancient Greeks went on to develop the mathematical and geometric theories that continue to guide us today.

Inevitably people would conclude that there is an order to the universe for all things including ethics, morality, politics and economics. Mathematics from the very beginning has been considered a perfect science. It was provable as a perfect science. The philosophers I have read are pretty good in arriving at considerable insight into all of these areas.  Of course they never agree. However, they would presumably say that, just like in math, the formula is there. We just haven’t found it yet.

Gödel’s’ Theorem of Incompleteness states that everything isn’t all that cut and dry, as it seems. “All consistent axiomatic systems contain un-decidable propositions.” ¹ Axioms are statements considered to be true. Gödel showed that every proposition base on an axiomatic system, which include simple math, has too many un-decidable propositions therefore they are incomplete.

The Theorem is basically two theories. “Gödel’s First Theorem states that any consistent mathematical theory that includes the natural numbers is incomplete.” ² This one basically talks about how certain aspects of mathematics are based on ideas that can’t be proven with simple mathematics.

“Gödel’s Second Theorem states that such a theory cannot contain a proof of its own consistency; consistency may be provable within some larger theory, but proving consistency within the larger theory would require an even bigger theory, leading to a never-ending sequence of ever-larger theories.” ³ This would take us to a never-ending spiral of ever larger theories that would start somewhere in the cosmos. What this all boils down to is that in mathematics, a theory is only true and holds when there are no contradictions, and is only complete when every possible contradiction can be proven within the same theory.

On the other hand, The Gödel’s Theorem of Completeness “it states, in its most familiar form, that in first-order predicate calculus every universally valid formula can be proved.” ⁴ The formula for this goes like something like; if T is a set of axioms in a first-order language, and a statement holds for any structure M satisfying T, then p can be formally deduced from T in some appropriately defined fashion. ⁵ From my limited grasp of all of this, Gödel appears to be able to take any proposition and develop it along the most clear cut logical lines to end by reaching a conclusion that we know is not right from our own reasonable thought process.

Gödel say that you can prove the correctness of the entity in semantics, but you cannot prove the syntax as being valid for all cases.  The example that made the most sense to me was a sentence which read roughly that, “the fact that a particularly something is false, is in this case a true statement.”  It would seem that building logic upon a series of true statements by themselves, for example, “this is true, therefore this other is also true, etc” works to be ultimately provable.

But if you introduce a negation (negative sign in front), where something false is also true, and this becomes part of your logical building blocks, then you throw off the ultimate provability of your process. At that point you must go outside of your immediate system of logic or logical process to obtain a correct conclusion.

Gödel says that mathematics are incomplete. Blaise Pascal an existentialist philosopher mathematician says reason cannot be used to determine that God exist, but you should wager to that effect since it makes for a better and more reasonable life. ⁶ All of a sudden, the perfect mathematical system, which set the world on a course, thinking that all aspects of life had a greater truth to be discovered, is not that perfect. Here is someone who says that even in math, there are questions that cannot be answered or proven logically within its “perfect” system.   Even going “outside the system”, only creates a new set of questions where there is no proof within that larger universe.

Gödel has established that Mathematics is not a perfect science. As such, it does not predict a perfect order in the universe. Since mathematics is not a perfect science, it allows us to realize that there isn’t a perfect order for any of the other areas of philosophy either. This is a big contribution to our way of thinking about everything.

The actual formulas that are used to substantiate Gödel’s Theorem Of Incompleteness are far beyond my comprehension even though one of the authors said that I only needed a very basic knowledge of mathematics to follow it all.  I would have been happier if he had said that only a genius could keep up with it.

However, I was comforted by the thought that what can be stated in principle mathematically cannot ultimately be proven beyond a certain point, and as such perhaps rational thought can never penetrate to a final ultimate truth. While my capabilities are not up to following the development of the most complicated algebraic equations, it is nice to know that, thanks to Gödel, I don’t have to be so frustrated thinking’s that there is an answer to everything in life.

It has all come down to a common denominator where people no longer dress up to go to the ballet or the opera, and men don’t need to wear a tie anymore to go out at night.  Penny Sparke in her article on Postmodernism says “the strict division between what was considered “tasteful” as opposed to “tasteless” had long served to maintain class and gender differences within western societies.” She continues, to say that this is no longer the case.

The change began in the 1960s.  “What has come to be called the Pop Culture was a spontaneous outburst of expendable forms and materials, bright colors and provocative decoration.  It represents a commitment to pleasure and instantaneity.”

The history and role of blue jeans in our American society makes for an interesting case in point.  “The fundamental mystique of jeans “seems to emanate from populist sentiments of democracy, independence, equality, freedom and fraternity.”  Its ultimate breakthrough, however, was its “identity change from a garment exclusively associated with work (and hard work) to one invested with many of the symbolic attributes of leisure:  ease, comfort, casualness, sociability and the outdoors.”

“America has always had a love affair with blue jeans (Alice Harris “The Blue Jean” –power house books -2002)  “Blue Jeans are modern and classic, American and also very patriotic.” She says all of our recent presidents have been photographed in jeans.

The initial idea behind the creation of Jeans was to make a durable pair of pants for people who worked day in and out on rough and physically demanding jobs. Many people still use Jeans because of their economical and long lasting value.  However,

today jeans are mostly worn as a fashion item because of the way they look, more than for  their original purpose.

Jeans are an iconic part of the American culture, and there are many different styles, and textures for jeans.  According to Fred Davis, from “the left pole came the practice of jean fading and fringing” to show genuine hard work.  And the right countered by introducing designer jeans to “de-democratize” jeans for the upper classes. To capitalize on all of this, Bloomingdales now sells low priced jeans for prices comparable to the Gap, but you can also buy designer jeans for up to $300 dollars a piece.  These have the look of being worn through with rips and holes, so people don’t have to waste time in creating the worn-in look.  In fact, the rips and holes may often provide a revealing sex appeal to the wearer.

Marc-Even Blackman, chair of the menswear design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says “celebrities in Jeans – Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Madonna (among others) have often contributed to the garments’ popular culture.”

Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Clothes make the man; naked people have little or no influence in society.”  So it might be said correctly that clothes do “make the man”.  People follow their celebrities and they wear the jeans to look like the common man, or be more fashionable with designer input.  The pleasure is not so much in wearing the jeans for comfort or good wear and tear, but in watching the positive reaction of others to the image that is conveyed.  The desire to impress others begins to mould a person’s  personality, and the substance of that personality gives way to an image as the first priority.

The Crystal Palace by Charles Paxton was an enormous greenhouse structure that was probably never intended to be a milestone in design when it was in built in 1851.  It was simply a practical response as a temporary exhibition to be placed in the middle of Hyde Park in London.   It was built entirely on the premises and was one of the earliest structures to be constructed from pre-fabricated elements.    Since it was in the middle of a park and there were a few trees within the site, these were simply incorporated into the interior of the very tall structure. As a huge greenhouse, it was essentially made of glass, which brought in the light of day beyond anything filled with plants, and the unobstructed sense of space prevailed throughout.

While the Chrystal Palace had a highly Gothic line in its exterior appearance, the new forward looking 20^th century retained the ideas of open spaces and vast areas defined by glass.  The designs were smaller than the Crystal Palace and for the most part were rectangular.   Walter Gropius broke down all pre-conceived notions, and his Bauhaus buildings in Germany remain models of open space and glass exteriors. In France, Le Corbusier had five basic principles of architecture which went beyond space and glass to include lifting a structure off the ground on reinforced concrete stilts, and adding roof gardens to compensate for the green areas that were overshadowed by his buildings.

In America, Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Eames brought their structures closer to the ground to be virtually made part of their immediate environment. Frank Lloyd Wright practiced what is known as “organic architecture,” an architecture that evolves naturally out of the context of the site.  For example, houses in wooded regions made heavy use of wood, and desert houses had rambling floor plans and heavy use of stone.   Charles Eames and his wife Ray appear to be more widely known for their furniture design, but he pioneered the use of many newly available industrial materials, including prefabricated steel parts.

The sustainability of all of these trends in architecture since the time of the Crystal Palace is the tie to the many industrial innovations which have allowed us to build without walls, and to bring vast quantities of light into our interiors so that we can better appreciate the natural environment around us.

Thirty years ago a company had one person type on the computer, while another one drew a chart; one gave the presentation and another one looked at it and approved it. These days it is normal for a business individual to do multi-tasks within a company. It is a basic requirement for a person in a company to know how to multi-task, be a people person, work on the computer, give presentations, and attend business meetings. Technology has been a major influence on the way companies and their employees do business. Computer software aids significantly in accomplishing multiple tasks.   Furthermore, with email, instant messages, and global positioning systems, information travels at the speed of light. Fewer people are needed to do the job that other people used to do thirty years ago.

Working at Citibank I had to perform many different roles. Not only did I have to be a Financial Associate, but also a sales person to new clients. I had to be a greeter, a manager, and financial advisor to existing clients. In fact, what made these functions easier for me were the computers which helped me analyze each situation. However, with all these roles placed upon me, some days I didn’t see the end of it. At the starting of the day, it seemed impossible to be able to handle the pressure the job had on me. Only perseverance helped me make the best of the day. Citibank is a company that relies strongly on its policies, many of which have remained unchanged from predecessors for more than fifty years. Even though I had all these multiple roles, the company didn’t give me much freedom to exert any judgment in cases where policy and procedures appeared inappropriate to a given situation.

On the other hand, many corporations are approaching businesses differently ever since the success of companies such as Google, Starbucks Coffee, Capital One, Apple and Yahoo just to name a few.  A corporate example on the cutting edge is Capital One, which was ranked one of one hundred best companies to work for in 2006 and 2007. Capital One lets their employees work from the company’s laptops and blackberries, and iPods. Their offices in Boston and Kansas have open spaces without walls where employees can sit down on any couch or in a special “quiet zone” that is designed for them to work without any distraction. That sounds like a good place to work. However the iPods that the employees have is for a good reason. The iPods the employee carries are used to download 10,000 courses of Harvard and other “top schools”, as well as internal company information including the CFO’s updates. ¹ This basically means that employees are studying all the time and most likely taking tests and obtaining the licenses needed in the banking world. Other than that, they can set their own schedules and work from their home, their car, or the couches at their offices.

Moreover, at Google, another company chosen as one of the one hundred best companies to work for in 2007, they work in a college-life environment. Their campus has everything from pool tables, to an indoor swimming pool, a beach volleyball court, and relaxation rooms. They get to bring their pets to work; they even have a gym for the health conscious employee. Furthermore what seems to be one of the greatest things about working at Google is the free food. Gourmet Cuisine free for all the employees at 11 cafeterias and Cafés with a view of the California Mountains. On Fridays they attend weekly parties, participate in charity events or they hang out in an all-organic Cafe on “pajama day”. They also have on-site doctors, personal trainers and they can get a massage, study a variety of languages including Spanish and Japanese. ² Knowing all of this about Google, we quickly realize that their 10,000 employees are basically at work all day. With all the amenities they have who wants to leave the place? Wherever they go within the complex they have access to their work tools. They must always be thinking about work. Whether having fun or not, work is work.

It is true that many employees have a lot demanded of them at jobs these days. We see the average business man walking around talking on his or her cell phone constantly. We see them on the airport with their laptops out keying in the latest report. However companies are starting to see all of this and realizing that their employees do have limitations. Therefore, they are starting to provide them with as much comfort and flexibility as possible. Consequently, employees have to be willing to constantly learn new skills, even in advance of the new technology.

In all of this, the required adjustments take for granted an employee’s own creative thinking.   An active and flexible mind is the best challenge against the feeling that success might be unrealistic and unstable.  The business world has changed, but there are positive aspects to this change, as evidenced by Google and Capital One, and others.  The progress in technology has allowed for unimaginable opportunities, and it is an employee’s obligations as well as a company’s obligation to rise to the challenge in the interest of optimizing all of the benefits this new world of business is offering to us.

According to some of my elder peers whom I asked, thirty years ago a company had one-person type on the computer, while another one drew a chart; one gave the presentation and another one looked at it and approved it. These days it is normal for a business individual to do multi-tasks and work with others together within a company. It is a basic requirement today for a person in a company to be a people person, and work with others in a business environment.

On the other hand, technology has been a major influence on the way companies and their employees do business and work with other. There is a community of practice right there; even thought people don’t always see each other face to face. A corporate example on the cutting edge is Capital One, which was ranked one of one hundred best companies to work for. Capital One lets their employees work from the company’s laptops and blackberries. They can set their own schedules and sit on the couches at their offices and successfully communicate in an almost informal way through technology and somehow it can be consider a community.

In the business world it seems that companies are starting to see all of this and realizing that their employees do have limitations. Therefore, they are starting to provide them with as much comfort and flexibility as possible including making an effort to make them feel that they are part of a community.

However when you work in a company that relies strongly on its policies it’s really hard to create an environment that allows something like this to exist.

I worked for Citibank as a “Financial Associate” a fancy word for sales person. Citibank is a company that relies strongly on its policies, which they have had for more than fifty years. To some extent I was appreciative of the fact that the organization had a series of rigid policies to cover every aspect of an employee’s function simply to keep everybody operating legally and in line. However, these policies were strongly enforced to the extent that you couldn’t do anything with out stepping over the line. Communication between managers and employees is very important. However, in a place like Citibank where there is a lot of money involved, somehow it seemed like there was never enough (money), and it made for a very demanding and competitive environment. Everyone’s responsibilities and the strong sense of hierarchy somehow prevented employees and managers from having any open/informal communication.

Something like Communities of Practice can eliminate the boundaries within the hierarchy by allowing open and comfortable discussions about the job. This can create an environment where employees and management seemingly look out for each other’s interest and reassures everyone that they all are on the same side. Honest operational ideas can reach high-level management with ease and help make the organization whole and not just a series of parts. Without Communities of Practice in place, any ideas in this regard can be seen as nothing more than an employee venting against the organization.  Even if presented in a constructive manner, it becomes irritating to people, and can be risky if people want to hold on to their jobs.  Anonymous suggestion boxes look good, but the contents don’t go anywhere, in my opinion.

I assume that every organization has people that really care.  Higher levels of management are far removed from the front line operational level, and these individuals are the ones that can help fill the gap.  A Community of Practice would bring them together with others throughout the organization.  They would presumably be equal participants in any discussion and could express themselves truthfully on questions of feasibility at the operational level.  They would be inspired to think that their good ideas were being shared with people who mattered, and higher-level management would get to know them as future managers for the organization.

My branch manager at Citibank was a good man who really cared. He was as supportive as he could be trying to motivate all of his employees to relate to each other as family and look out for each other. However, he was completely at the mercy of the next management level above him to meet the goals that were set for him. It is hard to think that a company like Citibank might effectively implement a concept like Communities of Practice.  Managers at the lower levels, at least as evidenced by my Branch Manager, are under such pressure to simply meet their goals or find themselves replaced, that they would not have the time to devote to this concept.  They also have no perspective to think about anything outside of their immediate responsibilities.

In reading the article, it seems to me that the key to implementing the concept successfully is the extent of active higher management support.  Unless a specific budget is mandated, many organizational units in today’s economic environment are simply going to say that they cannot afford to spend their budget on something that has no specific goals of interest to them.  If they are very busy, they will also be reluctant to release their more competent staff.  Since the Communities of Practice are other than a line function, they will run up against a prejudice that only the line positions can have acceptable ideas that are not “pure fantasy.”

It is possible that an ongoing experience, with some meaningful high-level participation, will promote increased interest in Communities of Practice. Extra incentives like fancy business cards or minor perks can help, but they can’t take the place of real management support.  The support that is really needed to promote the concept is management’s willingness to force the implementation of ideas coming out of the Communities of Practice.  Normally these ideas will not be accepted by line positions that are emotionally invested in the status quo.  This is particularly true if they did not participate in the Community of Practice.

J. Davidson Frame in his chapter on Building Teams with Borrowed Resources (p.173) highlights all of these problems as they relate to any effort to build a team. Unfortunately, office teams differ in almost all aspects from sports teams, which we think of when we think about teams.  Frame talks about problems of maintaining momentum when people come and go, and trying to motivate and encourage through team logos, publicizing efforts, and the “personal touch.”  This shows that the same problems have been around for a long time, and it still boils down to the extent of meaningful management support.

None of this diminishes the value of the concept in my view. It represents a breath of fresh air for an organization, in getting at least some people away from their daily tasks to think about the big picture.  It also has a morale function in getting the more creative and committed employees together to stimulate each other and make their jobs not only more interesting but more productive.  On an ongoing project, they may even stay with a company longer.  Additionally, if the process serves to integrate different functional levels, it will add to management knowledge about the front line’s operational functions.  It will also focus management attention on their most dedicated and competent staff members, as a future resource for the organization.

The Community of Practice as a concept differs from other types of team building in organizations that have been around for a long time.  This includes project teams created to accomplish specified tasks and work groups focused on the delivery of a product or service.  The communities of practice differ from these groups in that they attempt to build and exchange of knowledge within an organization to develop shared capabilities.  They may solve specific problems, transfer best practices to other parts of the organization, and also develop professional skills through association among people having different levels or types of experience.

Two anthropologists at the Institute of Learning Research created the actual term over ten years ago.  It came about with the perceived experience of newcomers in a school and how they tended to get together with people of similar skill levels outside of classroom to become established members of particular groups.

Google is an organization that uses this concept informally through allowing their staff extra time to discuss and share experiences as they wish.  At Google they work in a college-life environment. Their campus has everything from pool tables, to an indoor swimming pool, a beach volleyball court, and relaxation rooms.  Furthermore, Gourmet Cuisine is free for all the employees at 11 cafeterias and Cafés with a view of the California Mountains. With all the amenities no one wants to leave the place.  Its employees are basically at work all day. Wherever they go within the complex they have access to their work tools. They have to be always thinking about work, even when they are having fun. Google credits this environment with being responsible for the number of innovations in their products and within their structure of their organization.  There are other companies that are considered to be on the cutting edge of management theory which have similar practices, including Eduard Jones, Apple, and Yahoo to name a few.

The idea of team building continues to have a magical quality for organizations and businesses even though implementing the concept is almost always forced on employees.  People naturally hate working with strangers and in unfamiliar situations.  It is stressful and potentially humiliating.  Just having to give your name and other professional information around a table makes most people uncomfortable.  Facilitators cost employee time and money where there may be other priorities, and management is quick to leave these functions to others.  Team building, under whatever name including Communities of Practice, will always be around, and some theoretical structure is good for people to follow.

However, images alone are not enough. In order to have the maximum projection of what we are trying to inform, it is ideal to have a balance between text and images. For example; advertisers use this combination to associate products with a brand name. This works by making people create an association such as Tropicana which is synonymous with Orange Juice. Another thing that images can do is to confront a person or a community with social issues. When we place the content of an image in a certain way or we exaggerate the content we can create an emotional response that is impossible to be avoided. For example images that contain blood can evoke an emotional response confronting reality.
Tom Peters in his book 10 Design: The “Soul” of New Enterprise talks about how the concept of design has clearly changed over the years. Many people are taking design more seriously than before. This is because we are starting to recognize that everything we have, everything we do, the way we present ourselves, the way we talk, the images we take, are based on a design either by us the individual, or someone else who designed it for us. The article also talks about how the design world is improving by placing designer staff in the appropriate positions. Also, the right things are being done to ensure that designers get the inspiration they need. For example; one of the 17 habits of a Design Driven Company in Peters’ book is having great art on the walls: art that can inspire a team of designers to design great ads and great products.

David Crow and Tom Peters have something in common, and that is both know that the visual aesthetics of a work of art or a product is the key ingredient to alter human emotions. One of Peters’ examples that relate to David Crowe is the Strategic Packaging Makeover for products like Listerine and Quaker Oatmeal. Oatmeal used to be eaten by “horses and a few stray Scots” Twenty years later oatmeal became a delicacy. The secret to this transformation, apparently, was the identity created through the container that was designed for it.  According to Thomas Hine, “Packages have personality” “They create confidence and trust. They spark fantasies. They move the goods quickly”

This not only applies to products in a supermarket. This also applies to everything that we experience everyday such as going to a fast-food restaurant or staying in a motel which Peters calls “Packaged experiences”. Here we see the power of images and emotional responses at play. We design things to make sure that we show how beautiful and comfortable things can be. Furthermore design creates an identity for a product which may not have had one previously.

Tom Peters is an expert on design and his approach to it emphasizes that all basic human traits are the key to a successful design. He calls on all enterprises to put designers in the boardroom. “I simply believe that design-per se- is the principal reason for emotional attachment (or detachment) relative to a product or service or experience.”

As a web designer I have to take all of these things into consideration when I am designing a website. Web designers like me look for inspiration in nature, colors, textures, shapes. This is how I put part of myself in what I design. If I am able to channel a little bit of nature into my designs, I think I have accomplished something in conveying a little bit of myself to the audience of the website. This is when I relate to Tom Peters and use my love for nature and my dislike for the inorganic when creating a website. Thus the love and hate relationship with design. So when I look at a piece of advertising, a painting or a product I try to see what earthly feature it possesses. But there are other fundamentals that we have to take into consideration when we make a website or a product. As we have been saying, we humans see the world around us through our emotions. For this reason we have a tendency to animate objects and things. We give personalities to our possessions like, stupid computer, that angry looking car, that deadly stapler. Knowing this we can convey more information with subtle variations in the overall image. Lines are the most effective way to show these personalities. One line may look relaxed while others may look agitated or excited. These lines can be left for interpretation by the viewer or user of a painting or product.

Part of the reason great designers accomplish this is because they put all of them selves into what they are designing. They put their “soul” into it. So the result is a reflection of this. The product reciprocates that love for design to the person who owns it, and that is how these relationships between products and people are born.
We designers can narrow the interpretation to give the viewer a few hints: the beauty of simplicity, and the beauty of the materials these products are made of. As humans, we are going through a phase in which we are trying to connect to nature, and eliminate materialistic feeling. We are looking for a more organic connection with our material objects. This is why these concepts work. This is why designers do what they have been doing since the invention of television and this is why we are exploring it now more than ever. Companies realizing this put their designer in the forefront because they know that we have the ability to get into peoples’ emotions and give people the comfort they need whether it is physical, emotional or mental.

That was one thing that I was able to question. In this paper I present my research approach and how I executed it.  Then I present my findings with the data that I was able to collect, including some unexpected visual effects that I found to metaphorically explain what I saw.  I offer some statistical information from Claritas Marketing Research and Census reports on the area.  I then consider our class readings and try to relate my findings to the community in which I worked, and conclude that my findings supported some of Jane Jacobs’ thinking in The Life and Death of Great American Cities.

I decided to record the complete period of observation by taking 960 pictures, one every 30 seconds from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm on February 14, 2008 Valentines Day.  I got the idea from my uncle who took pictures of American road scenes from the ground and at the same exact location from the sky for a book that he is publishing.  I figured the pictures would give me a record to build my case and provide me with other interesting information.  I made a classroom presentation, and this paper provides some background information on how the presentation was developed.

One issue became where to put a video camera.  I wanted to take the pictures from above.  Clearly I could not take pictures on the street standing in front of strangers because it might offend them.  Because it was cold, I also thought an indoor location would be better, and I ended up in a corner of the Adam & Sophie Gimbel Design Library on the second floor overlooking 5^th Avenue and 13^th Street.  One major problem was being somewhat further away from the subject matter, where individual faces would not be as clear. I had no idea what was going to be recorded and what I was going to observe.

What resulted from my observation follows.  The result of when the pictures were converted to a video for the presentation and condensed to one minute and thirty six seconds, at ten pictures per second, was a beautiful sense of people movement that just went on and on like a symphony. But then, looking at it more closely, the shadow on the street looked like it was giving the first coat to a painting.   The changes in the shadows also documented the time of day as the video progressed.  The next noticeable observation was the movement of individuals and groups of people, looking like continually shifting lines of greater and lesser widths up and down, left and right across this canvas, almost as if it were a moving work of art.

Could this be all there was to it?  There were occasionally the outfits of students, but there was otherwise only one pattern which made it-self obvious.  Quite a few women, primarily, were wearing bright red.  It may have been because of Valentine’s Day or because red appears to be one color that is in fashion for women this winter.  So here is this white and gray shadowed canvas, with dark, almost black, lines running through it in and out, and here and there a little red figure, showing up almost as a red dot.  This, then, formed the basis for the presentation to the class.

Of course, I had to determine what my recorded observation might say about the community where it was filmed.  Of the two books read for this project, Outside Lies Magic by John Stilgoe and The Life and Death of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, it is Jacobs who gave me some good grounds for analysis.  To Jacobs, the life and death of a community (as part of a city) may be a seen in the types of buildings and businesses, but it can be determined more directly by the types of people who come and go there.  The life of a community comes from its diversity.  It is this diversity which supports community activity at all hours of the day, keeping the streets alive and active, and most important, safe for everyone.  There needs to be families, outsiders who use and enjoy the commercial establishments which bring money into the community, and people of many types who add interest and color to the community environment.

The area around 5^th Avenue and 13^th Street is one block away from a major transportation corridor in downtown Manhattan.  Fourteenth Street is the last express stop until Canal Street for every subway going south and the final stops for a subway line coming east from Brooklyn.  Union Square is a big park two blocks east, and Washington Square Park is a major destination for people, a few blocks to the south.  The area around Washington Square is occupied by the many buildings of New York University, and the far few buildings of Parsons New School of Design occupy the immediate area around 5^th Avenue and 13^th Street.  East of 5^th Avenue is an area of many moderately trendy restaurants.  Fourteenth Street has a few up scale grocery stores, and some large computer stores, which people from all over Manhattan patronize.

There are approximately 100,000 people living the greater area, as determined by the 2000 US Census report for zip codes 10003 and 10011. ¹ The specific character of the immediate area as shown by Claritas Market Segmentation is complicated by the fact the zip codes of 10003 and 10011 are divided almost evenly by Fifth Avenue where the pictures were taken.  ² However both zip codes report much in common in the sense that the population is primarily White, Asian and Hispanic as a mix, the education is at the graduate level, employment is at the professional level, and the income is upscale.  There are approximately 9400 undergraduate and graduate students at The New School, including Parsons The New School of Design. ³

In analyzing the people that show up on camera at 5^th Avenue and 13^th Street, it should be noted that the camera was too far away, at 200 – 300 feet, to see many details.  For example, I could not see the actual faces of people to know their age, or the quality of their apparel which would tell me the level of their income.  In order to calculate the total number of people appearing in the video, I counted the individuals in the pictures and came up to an average of twelve people per picture, or 11,520 in total.  I personally counted 302 people wearing red, and one little dog wearing red, seven people wearing orange, and three wearing pink.  However, with the help of the video, I determined that there were actually 310 people wearing red.

There were very few children, either in baby carriages or on backpacks, or holding the hand of a parent.  As an approximate percentage of the total population observed, children amounted to less than 1%.  Students as determined by their accessories amounted to about one third of the total.  The ratio of women to men varied around 50%, and about 40% of the men were dressed in what appeared to be dark, formal overcoats.  The rest had more informal dark black, blue or brown outer wear that could be appropriate for either the city or its suburbs.  Women were also largely dressed in dark colors, but there was a lot of red and occasionally other colors.  Not many people had shopping bags in their hands of the kind given out by department stores and boutiques in midtown Manhattan.  About 5% appeared to have plastic bags of the kind issued by grocery stores.

What all this might suggest is that the area is basically an office environment but not a financial area nor one where people are expected to dress formally.  It was surprising that there were not more students, with backpacks full of books or art materials.  Additionally, there appeared to be few briefcases in sight.  The lack of children was no surprise, and there were few homeless people with shopping carts full of their possessions, or standing on the street asking for a handout.  Seldom were people seen hailing taxis, and only occasionally was it observed that people were just standing and talking to each other or saying goodbye to each other.  People just kept moving as if they clearly had somewhere they were going.

There wasn’t much else to observe from the observation point.  What was seen did not appear to meet the requirements of Jane Jacobs for a truly vibrant and diverse community.  The observation was stopped around 6 pm, since darkness would prevent taking good pictures.  However, my experience is that there are not a lot of people on the corner of 5^th Avenue and 13^th Street during the evening or later hours, and the week-end is also quiet.  It is not as bad as Jane Jacobs describes the Wall Street area after hours, with everything closes down, but there is a clear tendency in that direction.  There is a hub of activity around Union Square on week-ends because of outdoor markets that are set up for the sale of crafts and produce.  Also, a long block away at 6^th Avenue and 13^th Street, there is an entirely different and very residential area.  This is the West Village.

Overall, the data obtained was greatly aided by the use of video and photography. The findings actually support statistical information from the Census reports and available marketing surveys on the community.  The findings did appear to show that this is a community that has limited diversity.  There are few families, and the focus is on students and on low scale commercial activity. It might be said that it didn’t require eight hours of photography and observation to determine what anybody who has some business in the area could have said in two minutes.  Yet it was an interesting experience that served to acknowledge the truth in the title of John Stilgoe’s book that Outside Lies Magic, and to maintain an ongoing awareness of much of the substance of Jane Jacobs’ book, The Life and Death of Great American Cities.