Blog – Page 14 – Sonya Ellen Mann

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Fast +/- Cheap +/- Good

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Fast, cheap, and good: these are the positive attributes that services can have. It’s a popular economic meme. As a buyer, you get to choose two. Cheap and good will be slow (or very hard to find, which has a similar effect). Fast and cheap will be crappy. Fast and good will be expensive.

Fast, cheap, and good: pick two. Graphic by BJ Heinley. — Graphic by BJ Heinley.

Of course, the more competition in the market, the better conditions are for the buyer — if you want to purchase a well-written article, for instance, cheap and good won’t be that difficult to find, because there are a ton of smart, eager writers out there. (If you’re looking for on-the-ground reporting, the price goes up.) What I’m saying is that the “fast, cheap, or good” principle lacks this crucial caveat: “relative to the rest of the market”. Maybe that’s obvious. Anyway.

As a seller, you can also choose which segment of the Venn diagram you want to occupy. What criterion will you use to compete? And accordingly, which customers do you want to cater to? Being good and fast seems preferable to me, but there are fortunes to be made in every intersection. If you can nail the middle, you’re golden. Platforms like Amazon can accomplish this. One of the reasons that platforms are so valuable is that they can be fast, cheap, and good.

Obscurity Is the Best Strategy for Privacy

Posted on January 12, 2016June 19, 2016 by Sonya Mann

I wrote the following post for my cyberpunk newsletter, Exolymph. I’m cross-posting it here because the topic is relevant to other subjects that I’ve discussed on this blog.

Facebook versus privacy -- illustration by Alex Strange. — *Facebook Vs. Privacy Remastered (2015)* by Alex Strange.

Keep Your Head Down

Reading about operational security has turned my mind toward privacy rights. Opsec tactics are concerned with shielding information from enemy access — mostly through rigorous, consistent caution. As the Animal Liberation Front put it in one of their direct action guides, “True security culture requires a clear head, a rational mind, and personal self-control.” The assumption made by savvy opsec practitioners is that all data will be compromised eventually. Therefore, they aim to minimize the inevitable consequences.

I used to disregard privacy. My attitude was a classic: “If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide!” (a viewpoint refuted very well by Robin Doherty). The problem is that even people who are acting ethically can run afoul of the law or be persecuted by the authorities. Consider how the FBI treated civil rights activists in the 1960s. Current mass surveillance by the NSA and similar government bodies is equally worrisome, as is the treatment of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning. I’m not naive enough to think that this behavior will stop. People do anything that they are physically or technically capable of doing in order to access power — especially state agents.

Portrait of Edward Snowden by John Meyer of The Spilt Ink; $130.79 on Etsy.

I’m still not convinced that privacy should be a guaranteed legal right, or if so, to what extent. The best way to restrict your own information is simply to be secretive — stay quiet and maintain the impression of insignificance. After all, the vast majority of day-to-day privacy compromises are self-inflicted, simply because most people don’t care. That’s how Facebook and other social networks manage to compile detailed dossiers on their users.

So, what’s the essential takeaway here? I’m not sure. It’s interesting to ponder the consequences of a post-privacy society, until you realize that we already live in one. The results are quite mundane. Feels normal, right?

Exolymph is a cyberpunk newsletter — go check it out.

What I Want from Netflix

Posted on January 8, 2016June 19, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Yesterday I listened to “The Annual Jay & Farhad Company Of The Year Show” and one of the businesses they discussed was Netflix. Blah blah blah cord-cutting, blah blah blah original content — the usual stuff, but funny because of the hosts’ banter. Incidentally, I don’t think cord-cutting will be that big of a deal. Millennials like me who never sign up for cable in the first place might cause a bigger shift. Perhaps “cord irrelevance” is a better term?

Main characters from Peep Show. — I love *Peep Show* with a deep and abiding passion.

Anyway, I agree with them that Netflix is a phenomenal company, and I expect Reed Hastings to keep doing well. Some of their recent shows have hit it out of the park — Master of None and Making a Murderer both got a lot of attention. House of Cards is a brilliant piece of media. That said, it’s really all about binge-watching old shows, and old seasons of current shows. The long tail is crucial! What I want from Netflix is continued access to:

Peep Show
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Law & Order (various flavors)
Malcolm in the Middle
The X-Files (original series)
etc
this is not a comprehensive list of TV shows that I like

Ambition Requires Delusion

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Sonya Mann

“Psychologists say that the illusion of control can be adaptive, in the sense that it encourages a focus on problem-solving behaviors as opposed to emotional response.” — Bob Henderson, a former derivatives trader who lost and made back hundreds of millions of dollars during the 2008 financial crisis.

I think that I can control my life to a much greater degree than I probably can. Logically, I realize that most events are beyond my influence, but I’ve made the choice to ignore that. Why focus on it, right? Better to act like I can change things, because occasionally I can. For example, I pitch editors despite knowing that their inboxes are deluged by emails from people more qualified than me. Once in a while I make it through.

Here’s the equation for success: talent + hard work + perseverance + luck, usually in that order. Domain-related skill is not always a prerequisite, but you’ve got to be good at something, even if it’s just networking, in order to get ahead. Besides that, you have to create conditions for luck. It boils down to this: keep hustling, and stay ready to take any desirable opportunities that arise. In my experienced — admittedly limited, but still — this is a very effective strategy.

"My primary asset is a near-nonsensical belief in my ability to force personal success from the world. As in, extract my own personal success from the world. I just keep trying because I'm convinced it'll work soon." — Sonya Mann (that’s me) on Twitter.

Emotional Labor as Comparative Advantage?

Posted on December 19, 2015June 19, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Emotional labor means putting up with other people. Enduring them, soothing them, and easing social relationships. This work often defaults to women, and jobs that rely on emotional labor are heavily feminized. Nurses are mostly women. Librarians are mostly women. Preschool and kindergarten teachers are mostly women. Even community and social media managers are frequently ladies.

It’s not true in every instance — for example, plenty of support reps are male — but women are especially likely to volunteer for emotionally weighted work in situations where that labor is unacknowledged. HR, a division characterized by listening to complaints and providing succor, is also predominantly female.

I want to view my socialization in emotional labor as a comparative advantage. If I explicitly call out this work and volunteer for it vocally, can that be a means of gaining professional leverage? The expectation that women perform emotional labor more than their male peers is regarded as insidious in part because it is so often unseen — suppose I refuse to conceal my efforts?

Granted, this is predicated on the idea that I’m good at emotional labor, which is debatable.

Labor-focused feminists have called for women to stop performing emotional labor when it is not adequately compensated or acknowledged, or for men to step up and demonstrate the same sensitivity and patience. Perhaps a third approach is to frame familiarity with emotional labor as a competitive advantage.

Communicating any of this is a challenge, of course. One of the types of social/emotional labor that nearly all of us perform is self-diminishment — straightforward confidence can be viewed as distasteful or even obscene. People use techniques like self-deprecating jokes and affected bashfulness to modulate the appearance of satisfaction with their own work, unconsciously performing a social ritual of modesty.

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