Society

We got to point were old way of urban development is not sustainable and it’s clear that cities will have to find new ways to grov and to accomodate more and more people. Loud and impatient voices ask for radical changes to be done overnight, let’s get rid of all the cars and build bike-paths all over the place.

The metro is a fast and convenient way to get people fast from point A to point B, and it does not hinder the traffic, the cityscape, you don’t hear it, you don’t see it, but it’s there and it’s hard to beat. The problem with underground metros is the price of building the network, it’s very expensive to build a km of metro line and because of this, cities usually go for cheaper solutions.

I wonder if the place of the metro would be reconsidered, if it would be perceived as more than just another way to transport people, and in paralel, to be used for transporting goods? The bill of developing new metro lines would be split between the passengers and the freight companies. There would be fewer trucks on the road and the metro line could be used at its maximum capacity.

This solution might be too crazy to be realistic, but the main idea behind it I think should be considered. The idea come to me from the French word for “public transportation”, which is “transport en commun”, that could be translated as “joint transportation”. As people can share the same vehicle, why couldn’t they share it with goods too?

Balance is about Canada, about Quebec, about multiculturalism, about the difficulty to keep the right balance in order to advance and avoid falling in chauvinism, racism or xenophobia.

From my personal experience, as a new comer to Canada, I was surprised by the openness of people here, how easily they accept that I come from somewhere else.  How easy it is to feel home in Canada, in Quebec, in Montreal.

The only thing I’m still struggling with and the only thing that shatters my illusion of a harmonious society is the relationship between certain Francophones and Anglophones.

It’s an extremely touchy subject, that makes interaction with locals difficult. I got Francophone friends, I got Anglophone friends and they are all open minded people with a lot of respect for other cultures (I’m avoiding bigots), but there are times, especially when elections are near, when poison is in the air. Poison spread by political parties without a serious platform and cheap journalism that tries to sell a few extra papers by steering up the spirits.

I’m looking forward to the time, when the Red will recognize the importance of Blue in creating a unique richness and when Blue will stop focusing on a pessimistic interpretation of its past and start focusing on its future.

Now that the ordeal in Toulouse has ended in the death of the al-Qaeda-inspired gunmen, Nicolas Sarkozy came out as a decisive leader, who doesn’t hesitate to take action. I’m expecting that his popularity will go up and he might even win the upcoming elections.

But not all is smooth for him, there will still remain some difficult questions to answer, as in this Haretz article.

The attacker happens to be a Muslim, and this could raise the popularity of Marie LePen too, the candidate of the far right, so Sarkozy had to show that he would go even further to stop terrorists, by imposing the same sentence on repeated visitors of websites that promote terror as on the visitors of child pornography websites, meaning sentences of up to two years in prison and €30,000.

What makes me wonder about the wisdom of his intention, apart from consolidating his image among  his electoral base, is that monitoring visits to websites that promote terror won’t be an easy task.

In the case of child pornography, it’s easier to set up rules, images of models under the age of 18, will be flagged, hence visiting such a website is punishable, but what about terror websites? It’s quite unclear, when does a website will become flagged? What does it mean repeated visitor? How many time a person has to go on such a website to be considered a repeated offender?

Will the law enforcement keep just as a close eye on Neo-Nazi websites and forums as they will on Islamist sites? After all, Anders Behring Breivik was not an Islamist, still he’s the author of the worst terror attack in Scandinavia.

My other question is how will jailing visitors of Islamist websites will be prove to be effective on the long run?

The Toulouse killer was a small time crook that became radicalized while doing time. Sending people to jail, who already seem to be attracted by extremist ideologies, will mean that they get a bursary to the best universities of crime and terror. If they won’t come out from jail more radical than ever, for sure they will have plenty of opportunity to recruit others for their cause.

I find St-Patrick’s day to be the coolest holiday of the year. What can bring more joy than the celebration of the arrival of spring, soaked in beer and accompanied by bagpipe music?

I still remember our first St-Patrick’s Day parade, it was just a few weeks after our arrival to Montreal.

As new immigrants, we thought on a Sunday, we should go to a Romanian church, maybe we’ll get introduced to the Romanian community and we could make some connections that would help us in our integration.

At the time, we lived in DDO, in the West Island, to get to downtown, where the Romanians were renting a church, we had to take two busses than take the metro, change lines, etc. It was a long trip and it took a lot of determination to go there on a Sunday, especially for us, not your typical church goer type.

From the time we got on the first buss, we noticed there we a few people wearing strange stuff, funny hats and a girls face was painted in green. We thought, they’re going to some party and we tried not to show we’re new comers, so we would just look elsewhere. On the second buss there were even more pople, with even stranger hats and the metro was unusually packed, all with people dressed in green. We realized that this must be something bigger than a weird party and we became so curios to see where everyone is going dressed like this, that we dropped the plan to go to church and we just followed the crowd.

As we got out on St-Catherine street, at Peel metro station, the sidewalks were occupied by a huge crowd and in the middle of the street there was the St-Patrick’s Day parade.

Everyone shouting “Happy St-Patrick!”, bunch of drunk people, kids, cops, bagpipes, clowns (it was later that I learned they’re the Shriners), etc. The parade went on and on and on, and we forgot completely about our plan to go to church. We were happy because we were part of something special, something Canadian and we felt more integrated into our new home, than we would ever feel by going to any Romanian church.

The parade left on me a lasting impression, I even made a painting that you can see here and I try to never miss it. Every year we would go with my wife and celebrate the coming of Spring. Today was no different, especially that we had 20 degrees Celsius, we went again to have a beer and shout “Happy St-Patrick” to strangers.

OK, so today is Flag Day in Canada!  CBC, together with other partners, commissioned a survey to see what Canadians think are the characteristics of a good citizen. The result shows that immigrants are just as good citizens as those born here (sic.). They also tend to be more proud to be Canadians, 88% of immigrants vs. 81% of those born here, which is not a huge difference, but it’s still a difference.

Although the poll is not specifying it, let me guess, the lion share of those that are not proud Canadians, are from Quebec and this percentage can only get worst with the Harper Government.

Yesterday, the English language media got overly excited, because Justin Trudeau declared Sunday on Radio-Canada that he can understand the desire of Quebec to separate from Steven Harper’s Canada.

Trudeau’s opinion resonates well with how I feel about Canada. It was yesterday that we celebrated with my wife February 14th, which besides  being Valentine’s day, it is also the anniversary of us becoming Canadian citizens. I still remember how proud we were to take the oath of citizenship, how proud we were to cast our first vote and how proud we were to see our picture in a Canadian passport.

I think it would be a huge mistake by Canada’s Government (a.k.a. Harper’s Conservatives) to take these feelings granted. They should keep in mind, that not every immigrant that comes to Canada is desperate to come here. Moving to a new country, is a big thing and people shop around before taking a decision. Before deciding to come Canada, we had the choice to apply to other countries too, but we chose Canada, because of its reputation and its values, that we felt it would make us proud to be part of.

Unfortunately, day after day, when I look at the news coming from Ottawa, I feel that the reputation of Canada and its values that we cherish, are slowly eroded and replaced with a far right ideology imposed onto all of us, by a 40% minority (percentage that won’t reach 18% if we take in account the entire population of Canada).

I still have hope. I hope that next time, people will take more seriously their duty, to go out and vote and won’t let Canada sink into this swamp of backwardness.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa - Ukiyo-e by Katsushika Hokusai

The extent of the damages, caused by the earthquake and tsunami, are slowly being revealed. As I’m writing these lines, the outcome of the Fukushima nuclear power plant failure is uncertain and there are less and less optimistic voices.

The reaction of the outside world to all these events is quite different compared to other recent events of this magnitude. Let’s just think back to the tsunami of December 2004, or the more recent earthquakes of Haiti and Chile.

The Canadian Red Cross has collected far less money for the Japanese disaster relief than during the Haiti quake. People are hesitant to donate, after all Japan is a rich country, a G7 member and it’s probably the best prepared nation to face earthquakes and tsunamis.

There is another factor too that can have a big impact on the donations the Red Cross or other NGOs are receiving, the media with is TV and photo cameras are covering differently this event. While in Haiti the news were filled with images of people in tents, even weeks after the quake every night the evening news was almost entirely all about the victims of the earthquake, the people.

In Japan, just few of the images are showing people, mostly focusing on the spectacular shots of the tsunami and the explosions at Fukushima. We won’t see women crying, kids screaming and men rioting, instead we are shown soldiers and rescue workers in uniforms working tirelessly to find survivors, clean up the mess or being busy to sacrifice their own health to cool down melting nuclear reactors. We’ll also see man in suits discussing in Vienna how to handle the PR coup the nuclear industry just got, or finance ministers trying to get back the market to green.

When I hear in the news that soldiers at Fukushima had to stop working because the levels of radiation is too high, I wonder where the technological miracle of Japan and the Western World in general is? To what good is to have robots able to play a violin or play soccer if during a nuclear crisis, human beings have to be sacrificed? Where are all the wonder robots, the transformers and remote controlled gadgets? Why can’t we leave music, painting and sports for to humans to do it? These are all activities that need soul, while going close to a melting reactor should be rather left to robots.

Why engineers have to work on building drones to kill people, instead of building tools to save lives? Imagine a drone that could be used for aerial firefighting, it could work non stop for days and could go to places you wouldn’t send anyone. I’m sure there are brilliant engineering minds that could come up with many other solutions to build a better World, why are they employed to do the wrong gadgets?

In Japan our entire civilization shook and now it’s melting, so don’t hesitate to do the right thing by helping.

When was the last time you learned a new word?

For me it was Saturday at the TEDxConcordia, where several of the presenters were using the word serendipity. I was initially puzzled, I didn’t knew the meaning, but the dictionary app on my iPod saved my face. It means good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries… Learning a new word is serendipity.

Serendipity doesn’t have an equivalent in Hungarian, Romanian or French, the three languages I’m most efficient with. Apparently it’s in the top ten hardest words to translate, and many languages, because of its use in Sociology, have imported it.

Serendipity is exactly what TED is all about, discovering new and unexpected things, that will open your eye to new ideas and enrich your spirit. It’s a state of the mind, where you let yourself be taken to unknown territories, to meet new people, to talk about new ideas and learn new things.

I think TEDxConcordia succeeded in putting together all the necessary ingredients to achieve this. Just as most the presentations were amazing, and I would loose the sense of time while listening to them, the breaks were great opportunities to meet brilliant people. I really enjoyed this open atmosphere, where it was OK to talk to strangers or join discussions and I met people from various backgrounds, that all had one thing in common, they would all be thirsty for serendipity.

I wonder, do we really need events like TED to experience serendipity, to learn new things, to meet new people? When was the last time you experienced serendipity?

Disclaimer

I’m not a member of any political party and I don’t have the intention to join, or be affiliate with any of them

My MP’s answer

A few weeks ago, Canadian Internet users were terrorized by a CRTC decision to approve Usage Based Billing of the Internet. At that time I expressed my concern by all means I could: I tweeted about this, posted stories on Facebook, I signed the petition, blogged about it and I even wrote an email to my MP.

I did not used the template offered by Open Media, I preferred to send Stéphane Dion a personalized message.

Over the days, the number of petition have grown with speed and, our MPs’ inboxes were flooded with emails asking them to stop the CRTC. Our politicians have listened and unanimously asked the CRTC to reconsider their decision.

To my surprise, I got today an email from the Administrative Assistant of Mr. Dion, with two PDF documents, with the following content:

Canada Coat of Arms
The Honourable Stephane Dion, P.C., M.P.

Saint-Laurent, February 9, 2011

Mr. Adam Sofineti

adamsofineti[a]gmail[.]com

Dear Mr. Sofineti,

Thank you for your email concerning usage based billing for the Internet.

Today, the Liberal Party of Canada issued the following statement regarding the CRTC’s decision on usage based billing.

We do not agree with the CRTC’s decision on usage-based billing, and we will bring the fight for an open and innovative internet environment to Parliament,” said the Liberal Industry, Science and Technology Critic Marc Garneau.

Canadians who want to take action and join the Liberal opposition to the usage-based billing decision can get involved through the Liberal Party website at http://lpc.ca/ubb.

Citizens’ groups and small telecom providers are upset that the CRTC has allowed usage-based billing to go ahead, which allows large internet service providers to raise rates and reduce download limits for consumers.

The CRTC’s decision limits competition and choice for consumers, said Liberal Consumer Affairs Critic Dan McTeague. Places like Ontario will now face 25-gigabyte (GB) download caps, compared to the U.S. which enjoys caps of 250 GB.

The CRTC decision will limit Canadians’ ability to use services like Netflix or watch the news streamed over the internet. This shows yet again that under a Conservative government, CRTC has come to mean ‘Consumers Rarely Taken into Consideration.’”

The second document is signed by Jocelyn Decoste, Riding Executive Assistant:

Liberals believe in more internet competition, not less,” said Liberal Heritage Critic Pablo Rodriquez. “Canada needs more investment in high-speed internet and we believe more competition will increase that investment. We are calling on the government to review this decision.”

In 2009, Liberals joined with the Consumer’s Association of Canada to call for the federal government and all parties in the House of Commons to support measures that will increase cell phone and internet competition, such as net neutrality.

I hope that the above clarifies the matter for you.

It did clarified it, and even more. Yesterday, apart from celebrating St-Valentines as everyone else, we also celebrated our fourth anniversary of becoming Canadian citizens. I feel lucky and proud to live in a country, where as an ordinary citizen not only I can speak my mind, but I might even find a listening ear and a politician willing to take action.

BREGUET Marie-Antoinette Grande Complication pocket-watch ~ N°1160 (© WatchPaper.com)

I’m fascinated by fine watches, it doesn’t matter if they are powered be mechanical or automatic movement. My fascination stops at an outside contemplation of these timepieces, since I can’t afford most of them. Something I can live with, after all, how many of us can afford a Picasso, but we wouldn’t mind stopping in front of a painting hanged in a museum to admire it.

As a graphic/web designer/photographer, I was always attracted to mediums where creativity and technology would meet. Watchmaking is one of these mediums,  a craft that molds together knowledge of mechanics with aesthetics.

Just look at this Breguet pocket watch, with more than 800 components, priceless… Believe me, you can’t afford it.

There is this question that bugs since quite some time, why luxury is good for people in general? Are there benefits to the luxury industry, that are less talked about?

Social Media answering

I decided to go and ask around using Social Media. I asked on Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn and on LuxurySociety.com, what are the benefits of luxury for people in general? I was curios to investigate how luxury has benefited everyone. I was not interested in personal benefits, like driving a super car would give a person more prestige, and I was not interested neither in the record earnings of LVMH, or Richemont.

Twitter is not good for asking questions that need a complex answer, while on Quora, to my surprise, there was nobody who would give an answer.

On LinedIn, Daren Jones wrote:

Mainstream Luxury by definition cannot benefit everyone, it is exclusive not democratic.

It also works only in relation to the ordinary

Its primary asset of luxury (ignoring any utility or extra-function which luxury rarely offers over conventional solutions) beyond the temporary experiential nature of any sensual pleasure it delivers, is its ability to allow the owner to identify themselves with something that elevates their perceived social status and individual value in the minds of others. Therefore it is relativistic in nature and cannot exist alone as such, and therefore has little lasting intrinsic benefit beyond egoism.

It also requires a collective Societal belief in the ability to create and raise individual status and value (in relation to others) through attachment and association to objects and organisations. It is fair to call this a collective delusion that benefits very few.

It does not answers my question, I post it here, just to show how difficult it is, to think about luxury beyond individual self gratification.

On LuxurySociety, I got a very interesting answer from Benjamin Berghaus, a true eye opener for me:

From my point of view, there is much potential for social / community gain in the general concept of luxury production while I would doubt that individual examples for social activities today are carried out in completely unselfish, altruistic manner leaving public relations and marketing effects out of sight – for good economic reasons. Even though I’d be very happy to learn otherwise!

First and foremost, virtually all luxury brands with significant heritage developed out of individual, very high quality workshops employing craftsmen with considerable skills. Developing these skills with their workforce was the central competitive advantage of these producers allowing many to become suppliers to noblesse and beyond but also empowering their workforce, raising standards. For most product groups with most producers, this will not be feasible today anymore – of course, that always depends on the definition of the dimensions of the luxury market.

Second and third, from a socio-economical standpoint, luxury helped to foster two great advances in tandem (at least in the western world): democratization of societies and fueling the economic progress brought along by the industrialization. The democratization came to pass as luxury goods enabled (sufficiently rich) customers of lower standing to emulate the symbols of higher classes – the general model of the aspirational customer today. This emulation tended to be so popular that it did not only help society to overcome rigid class barriers but also, en passant, to fuel (by the standards of the time) mass production of high quality products that were of a certain value.

So you see that there are many more advantages that luxury consumptions brought to humankind (even though all of these points are somewhat contended, always depending your interpretation of history). Today, luxury production still has great potential for “doing good”. As Arnault said: Only in luxury, there are truly luxurious margins. With the stock market fights between the major players of the market within the past years and even today, it is quite safe to say that the financial vantage point of the managers are still prevalent. But: The changed market atmosphere, especially in Europe, might lead to new demand of “considerate consumption” that will lead to a more socially conscious identity as key to successful luxury brands.

My answer

I would add two things to Benjamins observation: innovation, and the safeguard of traditions.

Often innovation comes at a premium price, but with time and the advancement of technology it could benefit larger segments of society. For example, think of the technology that goes into electric cars. You still need to cash out quite a lot more for an electric car. The Nissan Leaf is a luxury Versa, but with time its technology will become mainstream and will benefit not just those that drive such a car, but everyone, because of less pollution.

When it comes to tradition, I’m thinking of crafts, that in the post-industrial economy are surviving because there are still people who are willing to pay extra for goods that are hand made, with tools and techniques unchanged. Protecting these crafts, means respecting our cultural heritage and avoiding the fall in oblivion of priceless knowledge.

Art?

I wonder can we put art in the same basket with luxury? In some cases, I think we certainly can. Paintings, buildings, operas and concertos were created at the order of affluent people. In order for art to strive, it needs the comfort of patronage, and thus becomes luxury, but in the same time, it benefits large dimensions of society.

I stumbled upon an interview with Douglas Rushkoff, a media thinker, who also writes about contemporary Judaism. Here is an excerpt that I find interesting:

Is increased reliance on new technology coming at the cost of spirituality?

Well, the rabbis promoting the oral tradition asked this about the written law, right? New mediating technologies always cost us our intimacy and direct social contact. The less Judaism is about being in a room or under a tent together, the less real it becomes. It’s not that technology costs us spirituality. It’s that the misuse of technology compromises the spiritual components of real life.

This question pops-up everyday and there is always someone to forecast the end of civilization because of the new technologies. Nothing new under the Sun, as Rushkoff points it out, writing has diminished the importance of oral tradition. Since the early forms of writing, someone could sit down and read on his own, get informed, without the need of another human presence. Information could be transfered more easily and more accurately. With the appearance of the printing press, information became cheaper and more accessible. Renaissance and Reformation are all direct results of this technological invention.

Later comes the telegraph, the telephone, Radio, TV, etc. and now we get to use the Internet under its many forms. Social media is among the preferred targets of the naysayers, this week it was the turn of Montreal journalist Pierre Foglia with Expliquez-moi ce rien to express his dislike of Twitter. He complains about the low value of messages that float around the twittersphere, naming the tweets of a humorist, an MP and francophone singer. I won’t try to reply to him here, it was already very well done by the grand dame of Quebec social media, Michelle Blanc on her blog.

My first reaction was, why on Earth someone thinks it’s cool not to get what social media is all about. Than on a second thought, especially after reading some of the comments on Michelle Blanc response, I came to the conclusion that it’s maybe a question of generations. Maybe older people miss those social interactions that were the norm at the time when they were young and now maybe because of the technology, or maybe because of their age, they become more isolated. This gave me the idea of thinking of tools specially built for seniors to initiate them in the usage of social media. There are many seniors who are already present and active on Facebook or Twitter, but for the rest a properly built tutorial would be helpful.

How should this tutorial be built? Should it be a PowerPoit, a PDF or a YouTube video?