Tuesday, October 31, 2006

This one's for the men and women of the corporation

I want to take this moment to pay tribute to men and women of the corporation.

The book, that is.

Yes, in a couple of months, we'll hit the 30th anniversary of the book, Men and Women of the Corporation. Winner of the C. Wright Mills Award (ooh!). Dubbed "a bank of candles in the dark" by Dust Cover Reviewer #1 (aah!). Written by the Class of 1960 Chair in Business Administration at Harvard Business School (stop, it's too good!). And let's not pay short shrift to Front Cover Top Reviewer: "I cannot think of a better guide to the inner workings of the modern corporation."

Now that we've properly vetted this major work, let's peer inside to find out what people were thinking about the Corporation (its men and women) way back when. Gather 'round, children! Hear what MAWOTC has to say about:

Secretaries:

"The first fact about the several thousand secretaries at Indsco [a pseudonym for an "industrial supply company"] was that they were all women, except for two men at headquarters who were classified as typists."

Their bosses:

"When bosses make demands at their own discretion and arbitrarily, choose secretaries on grounds that enhance their own personal status rather than meeting organizational efficiency tests, expect personal service with limits negotiated privately, exact loyalty, and make the secretary a part of their private retinue, moving when they move - then the relationship has elements of patrimony."

Bosses vis-a-vis secretaries:

"The boss's status determined the power of the secretary...Higher up, secretaries' power derived from control of bosses' calendars."

Rogue secretaries:

"To take initiative without taking over the job, then, marked a fine line the more ambitious secretaries walked. They ran the risk that the more they did or the better they did, the more threatening they became to bosses and Indsco."

Incompetent bosses of secretaries:

"A man who is sloppy will not only expect his secretary to compensate for his sloppiness but will inevitably suggest that her neatness and capacity for organization are proof of a tidy, and therefore limited, mind, while his sloppiness is the sign of unfettered creativity."

Wives (an entire chapter is devoted to this topic):

"Because corporate wives were generally seen to be content to operate behind the scenes and to be ambitious for their husbands rather than themselves and because they made use of social rather than intellectual skills in their hostess role, the image of women that emerged for some management men from knowing their own and other wives reinforced the view that career women were an anomaly, that they were unusual or could not really be ambitious, or that their talents must be primarily social and emotional rather than cognitive."

Sexual fantasizers of corporate women and the wives who love them:

"Several saleswomen at Indsco felt, rightly or wrongly, that they were the targets of the sexual fantasies of male peers. Some said that men used them to taunt their wives, e.g., by making innuendos about going out on a sales call with one of the women. For this reason, may saleswomen felt it important that they establish good relations with the wives, giving women an additional task men did not have. Wives, in turn, not themselves directly participating in the work world, could fear what would happen when their husbands worked with women as peers, such as the Newton, Massachusetts policemen's wives who protested the hiring of policewomen, giving as one reason the sexual potential of long shifts shared by men and women in patrol cars."

Tokens:

"If one sees nine X's and one O:

X X x x X X O X x X

the O will stand out. The O may also be overlooked, but if it is seen at all, it will get more notice than any X. Further, the X's may seem more alike than different because of their contrast with the O. "

And more on Tokens:

"One of Indsco's most senior women...was among the five women celebrated at the civic lunch for outstanding women in business. A series of calls from high-level officers indicated that the chairman of the board of the corporation wanted her to attend a lunch at a large hotel that day, although she was given no information about the nature of the event. When she threatened not to go unless she was given more information, she was reminded that the invitation had come down from the chairman himself, and of course she would go. On the day of the luncheon, a corsage arrived and later, a vice-president to escort her. So she went, and found she was there to represent the corporation's "prize women," symbolizing the strides made by women in business. The program for the affair listed the women executives from participating companies, except in the case of Indsco, where the male vice-presidential escorts were listed instead. Pictures were taken for the employee newsletter and, a few days later, she received an inscribed paperweight as a memento. She told the story a few weeks after the event with visible embarrassment about being "taken on a date. It was more like a senior prom than a business event."

You may be laughing at the matter-of-factness of these excerpts, or the obviousness (and in other instances, sheer ludicrousness) of some of the gender relations problems that they encapsulate, but this book was earth-shattering when it came out. And the book now comes with an Afterword focused on "The View from the 1990's," about such challenges as "The Empowerment Problem: The Female Service Army" and "Dilemmas of Diversity" ("But the next step up from tokenism - skewed groups in which several more O's are present although X's still dominate - can create even more problems - backlash, resistance, complaints of 'reverse discrimination.' Research shows that dissatisfaction and tension are greatest in groups in which there are several women or minorities...").

Seriously, the book offers an interesting, Weberish account of the structural determinants of behavior within an organization. Even though some of it is overly deterministic, its insights into how the organizational structures that used to be commonplace for the American worker (hierarchical, vertically integrated, stable monoliths like the pseudonymous Indsco) severely limited opportunities for women were long-overdue when MAWOTC rolled off the presses. So pick up (or, if you're getting a Ph.D. in org theory, dust off) a copy today. You just might learn something. About your sexist piggish self.

Oh, and did I mention that it was written by a woman?

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence

Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Man by the Door Will One Day be Your Boss



I love how subway ad campaigns just drench you in product these days. I was on a subway (sorry; the "T") in Boston and the entire subway train was a series of colorful Tide ad wraps, reminding us how incredibly dirty everything was. I had this desire to strip naked and run about the cars, screaming "There's something in the clothes!" But I refrained.

Now I'm in New York, and the daily ad soak continues. Even the government gets in on the fun - some days, it's all security, all the time. Terrorists, take note: There are 16 million eyes in New York. And if they see something, their owners are going to say something (apparently that doesn't go equally for men who decide to get their grind on with daily commuters when the subway reaches capacity at about 9:45 a.m. - the Village Voice even has a "Best of NY" category entitled, "Best Place to Be Groped"). There's also a common reminder that the MTA has some sort of emergency preparedness video on-line. You can check it if you're bored at mta.nyc.ny.us. And I'm definitely going to check out Front Lines: Rebuilding the Rails After 9/11 at the New York Transit Museum.

But the craziest ad campaign of late goes to u-r-connected, which is really a sneaky set of posters designed to get you to go to a website of the same name, view some intriguing text about how truly linked all of us are ("There is a theory that anyone on the planet is connected to any other person through a chain of six people - no one is a stranger for long"), and then answer a series of survey items (example: I am: (a) my work, (b) the sum of my experience, (c) my future, (d) my contribution). Your selections take you to a page which tells that you resemble one of six main characters on the new ABC drama, Six Degrees.

The ads are interesting. I like the two that span the middle of each car. One of them says, "The Man by the Door will One Day be Your Boss," while the other intimates, "The Girl Across the Aisle is Flirting With You." So not only did TV execs take forever to move past the fact that six degrees has been reworked to death in film and finally exclaim, "fuck it, we're going with a show called Six Degrees," they also had to use it as a vehicle for peddling base stereotypes.

And there is no theory which says we're all connected through six people. When Milgram sent postcards to hand-picked subjects and asked them to return them to a target either in Massachusetts or the Midwest, sure, 80% of the successfully delivered cards were sent through four or fewer contacts, and nearly all traveled through six max. But Milgram's research notes reveal that 95% of the letters FAILED TO REACH THEIR TARGET. Similar results can be found post-mainframe computer, even though success continues to be achieved in six or less most of the time.

There's a phrase for the fact that this misconception, which permeates our culture and influences our behavior, lives on: herd mentality. How apropos for a subway ad campaign.

By the way, I took the survey. My new buddy is Whitney. And I'm pleased to report that I'm two degrees of separation from Osama bin Laden. But I have no idea where he is.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence


Sunday, October 15, 2006

Are you Rapture Ready? (in praise of an index)

As if you needed any further reason to tread lightly on my blog, let me talk to you about religion.

God works in numbers.

We see it in the appearance of fibonacci sequences in nature, such as in the branching of tree limbs or the arrangement of a pine cone. A fibonacci sequence occurs after two starting numbers, where each following number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, as in 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 43, 55, 89, 144. Consider, for example, a bee population: If a female bee lays an unfertilized egg, it yields a male bee. If the egg is fertilized, it hatches a female. Therefore, a male bee (1) has one female parent (1), a female has (2) parents, the mother had two parents and the father had one parent (3), and the two grandmother bees each had two parents while the grandfather bee had one (5).

And you know about the Golden Ratio (1.618), which is the result of the ratio of the sum of two quantities to the larger of the quantities, over the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller. We find it everywhere in nature (from galaxies to the human form to crystals to sea shells) and in man's pursuit of the sublime through his art forms, leading the German intellectual Adolf Zeising to declare the Golden Ratio:

[A] universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.

And let's not forget how the physical constants that govern our existence, 26 in all, seem at least at first glance purposefully tweaked for the emergence of life forms with moral agency. Here's one of many examples: Want a universe populated with stars, the givers of life as we know it? Well, no such luck if the fine-structure constant (a function of electron charge relative to the Planck charge) were different, or if the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger. If that were the case, hydrogen would fuse too easily and diprotons would become stable, rendering the concept of a star unthinkable. While it is true that the argument is tautological and only suggests that life as we are able to imagine it would not have formed, you have to marvel at the precision with which our existence is fine-tuned.

I'm not an intelligent design fanatic. I do believe, however, that if you're going to follow evolution, as I do, then you have to come to terms with the fact that evolution itself is directional. And evolution is the only example in the known universe of a process leading to the emergence of new, more complex, more intelligent, and more organized arrangements of matter, that can increasingly cooperate for mutual benefit. Why the push toward higher levels of consciousness among living things? Is it random?

Something to think about the next time you align your phi-proportioned frame with the earth and hold the phi-proportioned veins in your hand to your phi-proportioned face so that you can gaze past the fibinacci-branching trees with their phi-proportioned leaves, up toward the (scarcely allowed under any circumstances other than our own) sun, and take in the phi-proportioned chemicals which lead all several trillion cells of your body to feel a slight calming effect, and wonder why you feel at home in the universe even though you're just lying on a tiny vessel spiraling endlessly according to the golden ratio in a galaxy of other improbable stars.

Then you can ask yourself why the great books of the creator, if there is such a being, were written in numeric languages such as Greek and Hebrew, and why among many other coincidences, the word for humankind, Adam, equals the number 46. And why 46, the number of Adam, or the number of humankind, equals the number of chromosomes that dwell within the nuclei of the trillions of cells of our bodies.

If there is a God (I lean toward yes as you can tell), and he does work on a universal tapestry with numeric paints, than I bet he's pretty pissed at those who distort numbers in His name for their benefit. Like the clowns over at RaptureReady.com. Nearly twenty years ago, they created a site whose purpose is to let us know that Jesus Christ will be returning soon, there's still time to repent, and that they (the creators of the site) have a good sense that the end times are upon us. Whether Jesus is coming, or even if the "rapture" that the site professes to believe in is real, fantasy, or indeterminate (it's doubtful whether it is even discussed in the Bible), is beyond the scope of my silly post. But the site is very popular (9.5 million hits!), mirroring the staggering popularity of the Left Behind book series, which with the help of Christian bookstores and Walmarts has sold more than 63 million copies. Its primary tool for scaring us into God's loving arms, so that we, too, can avoid being "left behind" when the rapture hits, is the Rapture Index. The index is the result of a crude scan of the week's events, which are translated into a numerical measurement of the confluence of Bible prophecies thought to be linked to the start of the next dispensation and the fulfillment of God's covenants with His chosen people.

The index contains many categories, which I provide for you, Dear Reader, just in case you wanted to be on the lookout (or as President Bush says, "vigilant"): False Christs, Occult, Satanism, Unemployment, Inflation, Interest Rates, The Economy, Oil Supply/Price, Debt and Trade, Financial unrest, Leadership, Drug abuse, Apostasy, Supernatural, Moral Standards, Anti-Christian, Crime Rate, Ecumenism, Globalism, Tribulation Temple, Anti-Semitism, Israel, Gog (Russia), Persia (Iran), The False Prophet, Nuclear Nations, Global Turmoil, Arms Proliferation, Liberalism, The Peace Process, Kings of the East, Mark of the Beast, Beast Government, The Antichrist, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Wild Weather, Civil Rights, Famine, Drought, Plagues, Climate, Food Supply, and Floods.

The numbers assigned to each category are adjusted frequently, accompanied by one-line explanations for each change. Examples include "Satanism: In England, Satanists are believed responsible for a series of sickening 'satanic rite' attacks on farm animals," "Debt and Trade: The US federal budget deficit has declined - minus 1," and "Mark of the Beast: The US Patriot Act has failed to get enough votes for extension."

What does the index number (presently holding steady at 154) mean? Dunno. We are told, though, that the index hit a record high on September 23, 2001 (hmm...) and was at a low on December 12, 1993. So I guess you could spend an afternoon googling events of those dates and come up with why the number hit 182 in September, 2001. How arbitrarily frightening! There isn't much of an explanation on the site for that date, other than a few hints, such as "Beast Government: With America knocked out for the week, the EU was left as the acting super state" and "The Antichrist: The major act of terrorism against the US creates perfect setting for the Antichrist to come in and work his magic."

But I do recommend the "frequently asked questions" page, which provides plenty of poorly-worded talking points (e.g., "Is the Pope the antichrist?" [unlikely, because "the antichrist will be accepted by the Jews as their messiah"]; "Will the antichrist be a homosexual?" [possibly; he will have no regard for the desire of women, for he shall magnify himself above all]; "I am afraid of the end of the world: What should I do?" [guess what the answer is?]; "Since Israel controls Jerusalem, is the "time of the Gentiles" over?" [not until the massing gentile armies are defeated]; "Do things like protecting endangered animals and the environment really matter?" [yes!]; and "what makes conspiracy theories so appealing to some folks?").

It's frightening how an evangelical, who must understand the Bible's warning not to place your trust in those who claim to know the time of Christ's return, could promote such an arbitrary and simple-minded tool for the ill-informed. Don't think that a measly index on a single website matters? Why don't you spend ten minutes on the site's Message Board. Read what people are saying every day in response to world events. Take in how intensely giddy or forlorn they get when violence flares or things don't seem to be progressing according to plan. There's an army of Christian soldiers out there, and many of them are already marching as to war to the beat of RaptureReady. And they love it when terror strikes, children die, and soldiers, both uniformed and civilian, mass on borders and in shantytowns across the Middle East. The site makes a mockery of God's work and should not be taken seriously.

At least the site explains why the index is not used to set a specific date for Christ's arrival: "A couple of years back, one participant [on the message board] threatened to kill himself after he thought he'd missed the rapture."

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence



Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Life mimics marketing

Let me take a break from brooding to share a little slice of New York randomness with you. I love this city - the produce store with the gray cat that wanders the aisles, which sits lovingly below my apartment on the corner; the highrise across from me with bars on every window on the 18th floor (Spiderman, be warned!); the beach volleyball court in the middle of Central Park; the lobby of the natural history museum, with the physically impossible display of a sauropod skeleton rearing up on its hind legs to defend her young from an allosaurus attack; the free Wi-Fi in the parks; and even the eerily smart city-bred children (one of them asked her mother this morning "why is the prostitute working when it's light out?" - so cute). Every day, I wake up, knowing only some of what will happen before my very eyes. It's exhilarating. And it's why I could never live in the 'burbs.

But on with the anecdote! It was a late Sunday evening, and I was in midtown, around 53rd Street, at Oxford Cafe, the deli. They were closing, but I was undeterred. So I walked up to the counter, and there before me was a slew, nay, a sea of sandwiches, panini's, quesadillas, and salad ingredients. I was dumbfounded. What do I order? I stood there, and the looming micro-kiloton nuclear test in Korea, President Bush "the decider"'s failure to decide what to do about ten different pressing matters, my headache, and the fact that Imogen Heap has (still!) yet to reply to my open letter (see my September 15th post) faded away. I was about to leap past two billion people on this crazy rock called Earth and join the ranks of the well-fed. And there were options. How do I choose?

Suddenly, I realized that a very kind-looking store attendant (owner?) and a man who might have been her husband were standing in front of me, just past the warm glow of the food display. I apologized, and quickly ordered a chicken parmigiana panini, which the woman began to prepare. As we stood there silently staring at each other, a commercial began to play on the radio. It went something like this:

(upbeat piano licks and steady, 80's-style rock anthem drumming)
"Bud light presents, Real Men of Genius (Def Leopardish singer repeats: Real men of genius)
Today we solute you, Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy (Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy!)
You approach a menu like a CPA approaches an audit
There's not an appetizer, entree, or ingredient that escapes your scrutiny (what's the soup de jure?)
Carpaccio or calamari, halibut or ceviche, these are incredibly important decisions that need to be made, sometime before sunrise (cockadoodledoo!)
No matter, because when the food finally arrives,
You spend the entire dinner wishing you got what everybody else did (I got entree envy)
So crack open an iced cold Bud Light, Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy,
Because today's special, is You (Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy)."

She smiles knowingly, and I nod my head in repentance. And even though we're from completely different worlds, and our paths may never cross again, for that one moment, we get each other.

Too bad I don't drink.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence

Monday, October 09, 2006

You only hate me because my PDA is black

Did you ever notice how the speaker on the back of a Blackberry is the spitting image of a Decepticon logo? The 8703 in general, with its angular shape and overall boxiness, is very Transformeresque. But what would it become if the machine were to leap from its holster on my belt and actually transform [insert transform sound here]? I imagine it linking with five other Blackberries to form UltraMessage, a towering anthropomorphic figure set to do battle with the evil Treotron.

But seriously, what's with the dirty looks when you walk onto a subway carrying/using a Blackberry? My friend Cyn doesn't think I would get the same reaction scrolling through a PalmOne. Is it a symbol of elitism (even though I didn't buy it; my employer did)? What am I communicating to others when I use it in public? Have some of you shied away from doing so to avoid the stigma?

And what's with Opinionistas eschewing the device when her site presently carries no fewer than three Blackberry ads?

Linking work Blackberries to personal cell phone numbers: thoughts?

Why is the number of Blackberry subscribers the same as the number of people in prison in the United States? Crackberries indeed.

What will homo sapiens look like generations from now, given the trend toward keyboards optimized for "thumbing"? It's interesting how the last major phase of our evolution involved freeing our limbs from the demands of walking on all fours and the emergence of fine motor skills, made possible in large part by the opposable thumb.

Can you believe that they were going to call it a Strawberry? The small keys reminded a branding agency consultant of the tasty fruit. Why Blackberry then? "Straw" was rejected as "slow-sounding."

I firmly believe that Blackberries and other distractions have one clear impact on our society - the death of the public intellectual. You know, people like Lewis Mumford or Jane Jacobs, who were widely read, skilled in multiple disciplines (Jacobs for instance fancied law, poli sci, zoology, geology, and econ), curious about everything and anything, and not afraid to go traipsing about the city in search of their next groundbreaking insight. Do you think the men and women who might walk in their footsteps really have the time to compose massive tomes that span aeons in a quest for truth, when they must incessantly check e-mail and re-enter their PINs as their Blackberries switch to lockdown mode every hour?

Anyway, in my opinion Manhattan is best experienced with the help of GoogleMaps Mobile. True dat (double true!).

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Sheltering in Place (of SOP's and freedom)

Here's what would happen if my office building were successfully attacked by terrorists:

Security is breached. Charges are placed at strategic points where structural integrity is weakest (they did their homework). Explosions ring out from below. Some of my colleagues try to close out their laptops so that they can remove them from their docking stations, just in case everything turns out fine. But we really don't have enough time to think. We have laminated cards that tell us where to meet should we find a way out of the building, but a point of rendezvous seems a bit silly at the moment. One employee is frantically searching for instructions on his Blackberry by scrolling through the text in the "Help" function. I slam open the drawers to my desk, searching for the orange pouch that my employer gave us on our first day. The walls begin to collapse around me...I can't see...and then...hours later...I wake up. Dust, bits of paper, and slabs of concrete and steel are everywhere. I hear the hiss of electricity sputtering from some wires nearby. It is mostly dark, but there's enough light for me to get my bearings. Miraculously, I still have my evacuation kit. I open it. There is a sheet of paper. It reads

"CONGRATULATIONS! On your purchase of the World Prep Personal Evacuation Kit"

Somehow, I don't feel so lucky.

Ever wonder what's inside one of those emergency pouches? Well the secret is out:

1. A whistle (Made in USA!) that warns you "this is not a toy and should be kept out of reach from children." Sitting amidst the rubble after an attack, it's heartening to know that "this whistle is very loud and confined use may cause hearing loss - use ear protection"

2. A Mainstay emergency drinking water bag (4.225 fluid ounces) that's "Easy to use...Anytime...Anywhere - bus, auto, home, marine." Be sure to field test the bag before use by squeezing it. "If air or water escape, replace." Brought to you by Survivor Industries (Bottled who knows where)

3. A May Day emergency survival blanket that "retains 90% of body heat" and gives "complete thermal protection from rain and snow" (Made in China)

4. A Light Stick by Northern Lights, Inc. that boasts "exceptional quality and value" but is also a "choking hazard." "Do not drink," we're told (Made in Taiwan)

5. A COBY CX-7 AM/FM radio, complete with Dynamic Bass Boost System to really bring out those funky basslines while you're waiting for help to arrive (Made in China)

6. A heavy duty aluminum flashlight (Made in Taiwan)

7. and a NIOSH-approved particulate respirator. Two, actually (N100 and N95), so make an educated guess at the diameter of the particles that you're breathing in and don the more appropriate mask. (Point of manufacture unknown - probably made by 3M)

8. food. Just kidding! No food. Not even a PowerBar.

Considering my evacuation kit, our escape plan, and our nation's security efforts of late, I oscillate between thoughts of comedy and tragedy. But one thing is clear: the response to 9/11 gives us a case study of how crises will lead those in positions of authority to define a problem in a certain way and then develop standard operating procedures (SOP's) to deal with it. Somewhere along this path, the average citizens or the "non-experts" of our society are locked out of the decision-making process, and left to simply follow the newly-minted SOP's. It's usually too late to question or tweak these emergent SOP's, once they're set in motion.

Think about how much of your life is carried out without thought - traveling to work, what route you take, preparing food, the routines that you follow throughout the day at work, the forms you fill out, what you consider entertainment, how you go about interacting with certain people in certain settings. Yes, a good portion of your existence could be lived out nearly unconsciously. This, in one respect, is a good thing: we need to save cognitive energy for the moments that are unexpected, and for our efforts to creatively shape the future in a way that will give us more life and a better chance of finding meaning and fulfillment in it. But regulatory organizations such as those charged with keeping us safe operate the same way - much of their behavior is habitual - they exhibit similar patterns of behavior when faced with a given stimulus, without explicitly selecting them over other possible responses. The scary thing about this is that these institutions, or groups of ideas that were meted out long before we had a say about the decisions made or even the objectives that drove the decisions, point to a less democratic future as SOP's accumulate. And the habitual behavior of, say, a federal agency, is not governable by rational deliberation.

Think for a moment about the Department of Homeland Security, a sprawling heap of 22 federal agencies charged with keeping us safe. It's fighting a war, not on terrorism, nor against Islamic fundamentalists, but "terror." Such a concept is about as far as you can get from our real situation. For while our reactions to what our enemies might carry out in the future are far more powerful than anything that they can dream up in a bunch of pimped out caves, "terror" has an infinite number of root causes. Many of which fester solely in our own minds. But no matter. We're fighting a war on terror. And how? With bureaucracy. SOP's. Many of which we have very little understanding. But they're in place, and occasionally, during a drill or random bomb scare, or following our government's receipt of "credible evidence," we see bits of them in action. Like the Homeland Security Advisory System. Each threat level (red, orange, etc.) triggers an endless array of actions by federal and state agencies. For example, a given threat level may result in systemic forced searches of all vehicles near airports without probable cause. The constitutionality of most of the actions triggered by this system has not been tested in court. And we really wouldn't know where to begin in challenging such a web of SOP's, most of which still exist only in the shadows.

Even Tom Ridge believed when he left his post that the threat levels were essentially without merit. And many other elements of the Department's response have been laughable to date, such as its failure to spend R&D funds on airport screening methods (and actually rerouting funds for explosive detection to cover budget shortfalls). And we all know about the Department's Katrina response. But bureaucracies are not about being effective. They're about self-perpetuation. Their formal structures are ceremonial in nature, designed to ensure legitimacy in the eyes of the general public rather than effectiveness. And the primary tool for their self-perpetuation is the expansion of SOP's. The organizational theorists Meyer and Rowan describe the process of bureaucracies seeking legitimacy, or "confidence in structural elements," as occurring through "avoidance, discretion, and overlooking. Others are delegation, professionalization, goal ambiguity, elimination of output data, and maintenance of face. They contribute to an aura of confidence within and outside the organization. They maintain the assumption that people are acting in good faith." And while the general public is led to believe that the Department is acting in good faith, what are we told to do? Do we have an active role in helping to protect our homes? No. We are told to "go about our lives," even to "shop." We are essentially told to remain passive. Let the SOP's self-execute. Like a veritable Paul Klee painting of a twittering machine. Stay put. Don't question. We're from the government and we're here to help.

Why should we be so concerned about the homeland security SOP's that have been thrust upon us? The institutionalized responses to "terror"? Well, there are places in America that have had decades of experience with disaster, and for whom the SOP's of emergency response have solidified to a frightening degree. Take Norco, Louisiana, for example.

Due to a lack of zoning controls, the residents of Norco lived less than ten yards away from a petrochemical plant and two refineries. Accidents at these plants take place several times per month. When an accident occurs in a town like Norco, a series of routine responses are set in motion. The politics of risk management and communication in Norco proceed according to distinct ritualistic acts by government and industry officials. Information available to the public is limited. The Parish did not release a disaster plan detailing worst case scenarios for its facilities until January, 1999. By 1997, Saint Charles Parish had established three ambient air monitoring sites to collect measurements of air pollutant concentrations. However, these facilities are located far away from such facilities as the Shell Norco manufacturing complex (in Destrehan, Hahnville, and Luling), and measure a severely limited range of pollutants (only PM10 and ozone). None of the toxic pollutants that are produced by petrochemical plants or that would be of concern to residents during an accidental release are monitored by state or federal agencies. Nor are there any existing requirements under the Clean Air Act for monitoring toxic air pollutants. The Parish does not even play a role in environmental enforcement and compliance and is reliant on the state Department of Environmental Quality for such actions. Citizen complaints are forwarded to an Emergency Operations Center, which sends information to the state police who in turn work with appropriate state and federal agencies. So what happens during an accident? Below are two accounts of a recent accident in Norco, Louisiana:

Shell's account:

0800: over-pressure of a small vessel occurred at the resins unit at Shell Chemical
0815: event declared unusual and on-site emergency response team activated
0827: event upgraded to an alert level, which tells the DEQ and parish officials to assemble their personnel
0827-0850: nearby schools told to shelter in place due to the potential for flying debris from a rupture. State police notified. DEQ director called for a rerouting of busses to a high school outside the potentially impacted area. DEQ informs schools schools next to plant to shelter in place.
0935: state police arrive at plant
0945: a message is sent over an automatic phone line to Norco residents.
1005: DEQ officials arrive to take air samples and are informed that there was no release. DEQ officials decide not to take air samples.
1052: event is downgraded to an unusual event.
1140: an all clear is declared.
1500: fliers are distributed throughout the community

Norco resident's account:

8:30 a.m.: a cloudy mist descends upon residents of Washington Street in Norco, LA.
9:35 a.m.: a representative from Shell travels into the community warning residents to keep their doors and windows closed and to stay inside.
3:30 p.m.: another representative passes out fliers announcing that the emergency was over and there were no chemical releases to the community

There are subtle differences in the descriptions of an uncontrolled reaction in a batch resins unit at Shell Chemical by company officials and a resident. The militaristic set of responses in the first account is used by Shell officials to suggest that emergency response SOP's in place with the Parish and State worked as planned. It included steps taken to change the designation of the accident, escalating and de-escalating from "unusual" to "emergency" to "under control" and finally "all clear." A series of notification steps were taken to comply with regulations governing the facility's use of hazardous materials. DEQ officials responded to one of these calls, and declined to take canister air samples based solely on Shell claims.

While procedures were undertaken and documented by the relevant authorities, residents experienced roughly six hours of uncertainty, fear, and silence. What role were residents given during this time? As is standard practice under such circumstances, they simply responded to instructions given to them one hour after a "black cloud" was seen "walking" across lawns of the homes on Washington Street at 8:30 in the morning. "Shelter in place," they were told: seek the nearest building, seal off potential sources of air, shut your windows and doors, turn off your air conditioner (if you have one), and wait. The "duck and cover"-like qualities of this approach to emergency planning are striking. In a low-income community consisting of aging, dilapidated, wooden-framed homes, residents are given the impossible task of sealing themselves inside, and the disempowering task of remaining completely reliant on the assurances of officials, whose common refrain is to give an "all-clear" announcement or siren several hours after the start of an accident. Do nothing; wait for the signal; be passive.

Look to the places in our country where the SOP's of emergency response have been given decades to solidify. See how those who live there are stripped of any role to play in decision-making or in protecting their loved ones. Realize that we must question the legitimacy of bureaucratized response to crisis. And consider Tom Ridge's suggestion that in the event of a chemical attack, we should use duct tape in order to "shelter in place" a wake-up call for us all.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

The secret life of skyscraper penthouses

The Gathering


I work on the 40th floor of my building (that should narrow it down for you a bit!). My window overlooks much of midtown in two directions. This has given me ample fodder for a post. Here are some of the post topics that were considered and discarded outright: (1) Bird, it's a window, not the open air; (2) What could possibly splatter across half of my window up here?!; (3) Dear wind, be kind today; (4) Stealing bandwidth - it's lonely up here; and (5) Thunder: It really is God bowling a strike. But what really passes the time is gazing across at some of my skyscraper brethren and wondering what's the deal with the top handful of floors in each of them? You know, the ones that ask for a special key in the elevator, when they're even listed on the panel.

The first thing you notice at this altitude is how similar the landscape is to ancient Egypt. First, there's the Chrysler Building, the world's tallest brick structure (break out the champagne!). I always marvel at how buildings like this emerged so quickly on the NY skyline. In the case of the Chrysler building, we're talking four floors a week! But here's one for ya - the Empire State Building was built in TWELVE MONTHS. Think about that the next time you see a prefab Chipotle crawling to its feet in a parking lot near you. Anyway, the building's chrome spire is art deco, which was influenced by the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922. The interior is decorated with Egyptian motifs (such as lotus flowers in full bloom on the elevator doors as well as hieroglyphics). But it's under the building's top floors, shaped like a stepped metal ziggurat, that things get interesting. The floors were first designed for Walter Chrysler's personal use. During prohibition, the Cloud Club took over the space, and opened its doors to invite the power elite into its smokey jazziness. People came up with mad ideas up there, like, hey, let's have a magazine and call it "Life." This was before that other building stole some of the Chrysler's thunder, so people really did feel like they were on top of the world. There was even a mural in the club showing NY as it would look from some perch in the clouds. And then of course the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White used to crawl onto one of the gargoyles that jutted out 800 feet above the earth to take pictures. I mean, people got crazy up there. Now, they've removed the decor from the club and public observatory to make way for new tenants - who are these people and what do they want with our vantage point?

There's actually a cacophony of pyramidal styles and structures at the top of buildings near my office - who knows why...or what purpose they serve. And let's not forget the Four Seasons Hotel, which at 54 stories has been described as a "gigantic Temple of Dendur."

Then there's 275 Madison Avenue, a 40+ storey, glazed white brick building with a three-storey penthouse just a couple of blocks away (but it all looks close from up here). Called the "shadowless skyscraper" due to its sleek form, its penthouse was actually designed for shadowy executives of Philip Morris, who rode a separate elevator to their very own private greenhouse where they could brainstorm how to sell death to our children (and increasingly, the youth of other nations). But not anymore. Who, then, are the new phantasms hovering over New York as they move through the penthouse corridors? Laypeople like you and I aren't privy to this information.

Nearby is the Sony Building, its post-modern flare at the top in the form of a gigantic, curved cutout space that sometimes lets off a bit of steam. I like to imagine the structure as an endlessly churning amusement park ride for the citizens of the heavens. But underneath it are massive windowpanes covering several floors set apart from the rest of the building. The mounting mystery of these secret spaces is reaching a fevered pitch.

Then I spot another skyscraper, this one just in front of the Sony Building and adorned with a glass pyramid. On one side just below the pyramid, a large slab of the building has somehow been lifted, tilting at an impossible angle. Alas! From my window I can't tell what's inside. I stare at that building endlessly, half expecting that one day, an escape pod will emerge, jettisoned from its depths, possibly carrying the new illuminati to inhabit the structure's upper reaches. I watch in quiet wonder as it careens along the banks of the river Nile, past the brick and stone monuments to the dead, to whatever lies beyond.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence