New Scientist has published a widely-linked article (via Kottke) this week called "The Shock of the Old," about how the world's population is aging. Author Fred Pearce is perhaps a bit too optimistic about what that means, but it's nevertheless a worthwhile read. It reinforces something I've written about before. As Pearce puts it:
We should be proud that for the first time most children reach adulthood and most adults grow old.
But old doesn't mean what it used to. I regularly hear news reports about an "elderly" person of age 70. But that's how old my parents are, and they don't seem at all elderly to me. Yes, my mom retired some years ago, but that doesn't seem to have slowed her down. My dad is still running his own business and driving to service calls almost every day. He'll happily climb a ladder to the roof of the house to clear out the gutters.
And of course, these days they're both in better shape than I am, at age 40.
I think societies like Canada's, where our population is aging rapidly, will have to adjust, to support people based not on the number of years they've lived, but on the capabilities they have. In some ways, we already do that—I'm receiving Canada Pension disability benefits, for instance. I don't know what that adjustment will look like, and I may not even live long enough to see the change, but it's coming.
Labels: age, canada, death, history, magazines, work
Deep in the notes at the back of philosopher Daniel Dennett's 2006 book Breaking the Spell, there's a funny little story:
John Searle once told me about a conversation he had with the late Michel Foucault: "Michel, you're so clear in conversation; why is your written work so obscure?" To which Foucault replied, "That's because, in order to be taken seriously by French philosophers, twenty-five percent of what you write has to be impenetrable nonsense." I have coined a term for this tactic, in honour of Foucault's candor: eumerdification.
The word is much nicer in French, since in English it would be something like shittifying. So here's the definition:
I love that. I suspect there's some eumerdification in this article I reformatted several years ago.
Labels: editing, education, humour, work, writing
After high school, there are any number of specialized programs you can follow that have an obvious result: training as an electrician, construction worker, chef, mechanic, dental hygienist, and so on; law school, medical school, architecture school, teacher college, engineering, library studies, counselling psychology, and other dedicated fields of study at university; and many others.
But I don't think most people who get a high school diploma really know very well what they want to do after that. I certainly didn't. And it's just as well.
At the turn of the 1990s, I spent two years as student-elected representative to the Board of Governors of the University of British Columbia, which let me get to know some fairly high mucky-muck types in B.C., including judges, business tycoons, former politicians, honourees of the Order of Canada, and of course high-ranking academics. One of those was the President of UBC at the time, Dr. David Strangway.
In the early '70s, before becoming an academic administrator, he had been Chief of the Geophysics Branch for NASA during the Apollo missions—he was the guy in charge of the geophysical studies U.S. astronauts performed on the Moon, and the rocks they brought back. And Dr. Strangway told me something important, which I've remembered ever since and have repeated to many people over the past couple of decades.
That is, when he got his physics and biology degree in 1956 (a year before Sputnik), no one seriously thought we'd be going to the Moon. Certainly not within 15 years, or probably anytime within Strangway's career as a geophysicist. So, he said to me, when he was in school, he could not possibly have known what his job would be, because NASA, and the entire human space program, didn't exist yet.
In a much less grandiose and important fashion, my experience proved him right. Here I am writing for the Web (for free in this case), and that's also what I've been doing for a living, more or less, since around 1997. Yet when I got my university degree (in marine biology, by the way) in 1990, the Web hadn't been invented. I saw writing and editing in my future, sure, since it had been—and remains—one of my main hobbies, but how could I know I'd be a web guy when there was no Web?
The best education prepares you for careers and avocations that don't yet exist, and perhaps haven't been conceived by anyone. Because of Dr. Strangway's story, and my own, I've always told people, and advised my daughters, to study what they find interesting, whatever they feel compelled to work hard at. They may not end up in that field—I'm no marine biologist—but they might also be ready for something entirely new.
They might even be the ones to create those new things to start with.
Labels: biology, education, memories, moon, school, science, vancouver, work
This month, February 2010, marks three fricking years since I first went on disability leave for cancer treatment. (And, incidentally, since we got our Nintendo Wii.) This got me thinking about all the jobs I've had in my life, starting back when I was still in high school.
It turns out that I've worked for 13 organizations, if you include my own company when I was freelancing. I did not enjoy every job, but each taught me something:
| Year(s) | Job | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| 1985? | Graveyard-shift self-serve gas station attendant | Don't be a graveyard-shift self-serve gas station attendant. Also, burnt coffee smells really bad. |
| 1988 | Park naturalist | Science is fun, five-year-olds aren't patient, but summer jobs are a great place to meet your future wife. Also, avoid flipping your canoe. |
| 1989 | Science centre floor staff | Science is fun, but you'll spend most of your time telling people where the bathrooms are. |
| 1990 | Student handbook editor | Choose your fonts carefully, and people never get things in on deadline. |
| 1991 | Student society admin assistant | It's a long way to pick up your printouts across campus when you type them on a mainframe computer. |
| 1991 | English conversation coach | Japanese girls definitely interested in learning English; Japanese boys (who smoke like chimneys), not so much. |
| 1992–1994 | Student issues researcher | Creating your own job is great, but it sure would be nice to have an office with a window. |
| 1994–1995 | Full-time rock 'n' roll drummer | Playing live music onstage is often awesome. Everything offstage, however, usually sucks. |
| 1995–1996 | Magazine advertising assistant | No matter how nice your co-workers, a bad boss can ruin the whole experience. |
| 1996–2001 | Various software company jobs, from developers' assistant to webmaster | Even if you know almost nothing about how to do it, when someone asks you if you want to run a website, it's still worthwhile to say "sure!" |
| 2001–2003 | Freelance technical writer and editor | The paperwork to run your own business is immensely boring. |
| 2001–2003 | Semi–full-time rock 'n' roll drummer | Rock is more fun when you mostly stay in town and get paid better. |
| 2003–2007 | Communications Manager, Navarik | Working with friends can be a good thing, especially when they have good ideas. Oh, and a decent extended-health plan is really, really important. |
In the late '80s, I also helped my friend Chris install alarm systems in people's homes and businesses, but while I got some money from it, it wasn't quite a job in the same way. It was more like when I helped him repair cars and resell them around the same time. Though in those cases, I did learn that I dislike crawling around in fibreglass-filled attics running wires, and that I'm not too fond of all the grease, gunk, and rust involved in auto work either.
Labels: anniversary, band, cancer, editing, ego, memories, navarik, neurotics, nintendo, wii, work, writing