emenel

Politics in Canada

I rarely post about politics.. but the events of the federal election in Canada, and the campaigns leading up to it, make me feel like i need to get some stuff out… This is half-baked and rant-y, but I’m compelled to post it anyway.

(originally written as a response to comments on the BlogTO.com election results post)

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People really need to do some research. 

Harper, and most neo-conservative governments (ie. Bush and his predecessors) are actually NOT FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE. They actually spend more than “liberal” (not the party) governments. Our deficit after the Harper Conservatives over the last few years is far higher than it was before. The Conservatives spend just as much, but they tend to spend on military, police, and prisons rather than services that actually help people. Our economy is stable because our financial industry is highly regulated.. regulations that the Conservatives would have done away with had they been in power (some of them tried, and this is what happened in the USA). 

Conservative governments also give away billions in tax breaks to corporations, while actually raising taxes for the majority of citizens. All of this, with no additional services to help normal people. 

That is just the fiscal issue… Harper’s Conservatives have also shown that they don’t care about our system of government and have no respect for Canadians or other view points. They have lied, hidden facts, and abused the system (ie. prorogue twice for personal reasons). 

This is not a political ideological difference. I’m not a social conservative, but would be in favour of fiscal conservatism in many ways. However, if people want to elect a socially conservative government, I might complain but that’s ok. That’s how democracy works… In this case, that’s not what happened. We have elected a party that abuses their power, does not listen to the people, and throws money away on things we don’t need (jets, G8 project funding corruption, prisons, internet surveillance). 

Ask yourself what Conservative policies are actually helping you in your daily life? Which ones could hurt you? What do you think of their behaviour in regards to secrecy, contempt of parliament, and G8/20 funding irregularities and spending? An election is not about voting against the other parties, it’s about voting for a party or candidate that represents your best interests. How does the newly elected Conservative majority do that? I would genuinely like to know. 

I’m not interested in partisan debates. Everybody needs to take a rational, educated, and detailed look at how these parties behave, their policies, practices, and opinions. They work for us, and we need to keep the accountable and honest. If that doesn’t happen we are no longer in a democracy.

There are also system level issues at play here. The party who now has a majority only received 39% of the votes.. That’s actually a minority of support. I’m not sure how to fix this problem with our election system, but something isn’t working. I’d be saying the same thing no matter who won the election. 

AIGA’s One Day for Design - Response

MJ Broadbent posted a link to Frank Chimero’s thoughts on the recent AIGA One Day for Design loosely organized conversation. In his post, Frank outlines what he sees as recurring problems in current design discourse. MJ rightly pointed out that some of these really rung a bell for us at the IxDA because they had also come up often during the Interaction’11 conference in February. 

I posted the following as a response to MJ’s post on the IxDA list. I’m re-posting it here since others might be interested in the conversation. I’d love to hear your thoughts, either in comments here or by posting to the thread on IxDA.org. 

From IxDA.org: ———————————

Thanks for sharing this, MJ.

As you said, a number of these themes emerged from Interaciton’11 (I commented on those on my blog: http://blog.emenel.ca/post/3470157373/interaction11-thoughts-and-themes), so Chimero’s post is very timely for our community. 

I think all of us, as individuals and as a group, are guilty of most of these things at one time or another. That’s probably true of any professional community… There are a couple of his points that really struck home for me:

The self-serving nature of design.

This is so true… so much of what we do is really only for ourselves… a certain amount of this is good. It’s good when we build our own tools, develop methods, and share within our community. But the end goal of our work needs to benefit more than other designers. Some “big” apps are really guilty of this. I’ll call out Flipboard especially, given that it’s only real purpose is to add a nice looking grid to your feed. It’s easy to forget that there are many different types of people when we live in a world of self-selected social networks that easily become feedback loops.

Villainizing criticism.

At the same time as I saw real IxD criticism emerge at Interaction’11, I also saw some prime examples of the fear of criticism. We’re all too willing to pat each other on the back. All opinios are considered equally valid… I think this is a big problem for our community. We need to be critical of ourselves, each other, and all ideas. If all opinions are equally valid, then everybody should have to validate their opinions. Maybe we need a return to Greek Dialog style debating to explore concepts and ideas… we need more rigour and less opinion based solely on personal experience alone.

Undervaluing philosophy.

We saw this one loud and clear when Dick Buchannan gave his keynote… as a communict we are woefully undereducated about our theory and philosophy. This is the foundation of our work, whether you’re designing websites or medical devices or interactive spaces. If you don’t think theory applies to your work then you’re reading the wrong theory or not thinking enough about your work. This is another area where there is opportunity to branch out beyond design specific reading. Lots of general philosophy, art theory, and other subjects will make you a better designer. 

Our cognitive bias towards the uniqueness of our challenges.

Most problems have been encoutered already, in some form… And many disciplines are capable of coming up with great solutions to those problems. Only when we stop trying to “own” things and collaborate fully will the solutions benifit equally from all the possible different approaches to a solution. It is as much our resposibility to learn from other practices as it is to share our practice with others.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I’d love to hear what others thought of this article and how it relates to discussions we’ve been having in and around the IxDA.

Matt

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Breaking the Silence

tktype:

The “Chartwell Explained” post is taking longer than I had hoped. Until then, here are a few samples illustrating a few of the many possibilities of Chartwell. 

I should point out, you can color the values with any color you like. I just happen to prefer the simple b&w style.