Timothy King – Page 17 – Mechanical Sympathy

The New Literacy

I recently became the head of Computer & Information Technology at my high school. To many this might cause confusion, not many schools appear to have a head of digital technology. When recently asked to join up with the other two heads of Comp/Info tech in our region I discovered that there aren’t any, I am the sole head of digi-tech in my area.

A day in the life of that rare creature: the head of info-tech

I was supposed to be meeting up with them to plan our upcoming PD day. Being the resourceful fellow I am, I started putting together ideas for the pd on prezi. In thinking it through, I want to go after three ideas: how we administer computer studies, how computer studies are presented in ministry curriculum (and the problems around that), and what the future of computer studies holds.

The general response I get from teachers around digital technology is that very few know anything about it, but they’re all expected to be comfortable with it. The other response is that the digital natives won’t learn anything from us because they already know everything.

The myth of the digital native is just that, a myth. Student digital fluency is pretty much the same as the general population, except they spend a lot more time doing the same, limited activities in digital space. The digital native is, in many cases, actually the digital serf.

After working my way through thinking about computer studies and how it’s taught in my school (and board), I want to try and change the way computer studies are delivered. The current state of curriculum is that of a still maturing discipline, hogtied to its past. In talking to other computer teachers, they find themselves (variously) under math or business headships as a sub-department. On top of that computer studies are divided into two sections: computer engineering (hardware) which falls within the tech department (along with carpentry and automotive repair amongst others), and computer science (programming), which tends to get swallowed by business or math.

It’s common for computer science teachers to have nothing whatsoever to do with computer engineering teachers. This makes it tricky to develop coordinated curriculum, share resources, plan field trips or even just advocate effectively to hire the vanishingly few qualified computer teachers there are out there.

As I mention in the prezi, this is the equivalent of us teaching music by having a course on maintaining, tuning, building and repairing musical instruments, and then having a completely different course on how to read and write music; theory separated from mechanics. In the case of music, an ancient discipline that has evolved over millenia, we recognize an obviously unified course of study. Computers do not have the benefit of these years of evolution. We need to start unifying these skills.

The division of the discipline results in crushingly small numbers in computer science. When I was in computer science in the 1980s, we ran six sections of senior computer science a year… on card readers! Last year my high school (roughly the same size as the one I attended back in the day), ran a single, mixed (academic/applied) section of computer science at the grade 12 level, and it wasn’t full. Did computers hit a high point in the 80’s and become a less relevant part of modern life? Why on Earth would we teach fewer people how they work now?

Computers are a part of everyday life in 2012. We have come to expect a level of competency in our population equivalent to the universality of literacy or numeracy, but we don’t teach to this need, and it is largely unmet. We are instead producing graduates who teach themselves bad habits on computers and then we fear their apparent familiarity; we wouldn’t dream of teaching literacy or numeracy like this.

A coherent push to unify computer studies would reduce staff technology fears, improve digital pedagogy, build digital fluency in both staff and students and actually prepare people for the digital world that is being built around them. Failure to do this is sending our students into the future without addressing an increasingly urgent and important skillset.

Last Light of the Sun

I’m thinking about a final trip before the snows fly. I did Georgian Bay early in the perilously short Canadian motorcycling season, but now I’m thinking about a circumnavigation of Huron to end it. I’ve never been to Northern Michigan before and I’d be passing right past where Hemingway spent his summers as a child.

It’s an epic sweep worthy of Hemingway!

The trip is roughly 1600kms. If I struck north out of Elora I’d aim for the 1:30pm Chicheemaun Ferry out of Tobermory but instead of heading right around Georgian Bay I’d swing left toward Sault St. Marie. Overnighting in the Hemingway-esque Petosky puts me about half way around. I’d strike south through Northern Michigan the next day before coming through Sarnia and cutting back across Southern Ontario to home.

It’s ~776kms to Petosky, or about eleven hours of riding. A normal departure and then the 1:30pm ferry puts me in Manitoulin at about 3:30pm. That would get me into Petosky well after dark, which isn’t the way to do it. There is an 8:50am ferry that puts you on Manitoulin just before 11am. That would put me in Petosky around dinner time. It’s a nicer fit, but it would mean a 5:30am departure, which would be brisk. On the upside, the only riding I’d be doing in the dark would be in Southern Ontario on familiar roads, and once I’m on the ferry I could catch up on the sleep I missed.

After overnighting in Hemingway’s summer retreat, it’s a straight shot with no ferries back to Ontario. The ride back from Petosky could be done in six and a half hours and 673kms. The 8 hour version with a few hours next to Huron would be the preferred route. A nine to six day with an hour lunch would get me home well before sunset.

Doing it backwards might work better. After spending the night in Petosky, I’d be aiming for a 3:50pm ferry to Tobermory where I’d be riding south on the Bruce Peninsula at 5:50pm. I’d need to be on the road from Petosky by 9am to make the Ferry. Backwards might be better… You’re looking at 7:20am sunrises to 6:20pm sunsets in mid-October around here, so the last bit home would be in dusk and dark.

The temperatures are on their way down in October. With some luck I’ll have a weekend that is precipitation free to make this run on. Night temperatures are dropping toward freezing by the end of the month, but with some luck I’d be riding into some amazing fall colours.

I don’t mind riding in cool temperatures. The Concours is built for it with a good fairing, and sitting on it is like sitting on a volcano. With proper kit even single digit temperatures are easily dispatched.

The trick will be to get a couple of days free to go ride through Hemingway’s Michigan the way he’d have done it himself nowadays, on a motorbike. I couldn’t find any motorcycle specific quotes, but I know he’d approve of the method of transport…

The write up on this trip would be damn right hilarious!

Lots of time for self improvement while riding a motorbike

… practically written for riders!

There is a physical challenge to riding that does make you stronger

I think I’ll bring along some Hemingway to read during breaks in the ride…

Indianapolis MotoGP: It’s happening!

After roughing it out we’ve finalized plans to ride down to Indianapolis to see the practice day of the Indianapolis MotoGP race. It’ll be a chance to see a legend like Valentino Rossi in the flesh doing what he does. It’ll also be an opportunity to wander the paddock and watch everyone setting up their machines. I’m aiming to come away with a Sam Lowes t-shirt and some Rossi paraphernalia.

We couldn’t do the whole weekend due to other commitments, but hitting Indy on the Friday means it isn’t as busy and costs almost nothing (twenty bucks to get in!). We’re going to ride down Wednesday and Thursday and then stay in a Hampton Inn by the track on the Thursday and Friday nights before heading back on Saturday. We should be home Sunday afternoon.

Motorcycles on Meridian looks like a good time!

Since we’re in town Thursday and Friday night we’ll be looking for some bike related magic happening around the day at the track. Downtown Indy’s Motorcycles on Meridian is happening on Friday night and we’ll be there. I’m looking forward to a brief wallow in American motorbike culture before heading out on Saturday morning.

I’ll watch the qualifying and the race when I’m home the week after, but I’ll also know what these bikes sound and smell like, which is magic!

The 2014 Indy highlight reel

My son Max and I are all set to go on my ’94 Kawasaki Concours, but it got me wondering about what I’d take out of the new batch of Kawasakis, so here’s a list!

Old Concours New Concours

I have a ’94 ZG1000 Concours. The new ones are monsters by comparison, but it’d be interesting to ride a team-green bike down to the MotoGP race, even if they aren’t involved any more. The new Connie is a massive 1354cc machine. It would be interesting to see what Kawasaki has done with my beloved Concours over the past twenty years.

What do you say Kawasaki Canada, got a new Concours you’d like ridden?

Ninja Redux

A small part of me misses my Ninja. Riding two up down to Indianapolis means looking for a Ninja that can handle Max and I, fortunately Kawasaki makes just such a Ninja!

The Ninja 1000 is a capable long distance sport touring bike with the emphasis on sport. It would have no trouble getting Max and I down to the Speedway, and it would do it in MotoGP fashion.

Versys Variations

Last year I test road the old version of the Versys 1000 and really enjoyed it. The new Versys is supposed to be better in every way.

My buddy Jeff (a Yamaha Super Ténéré rider coming down with us) would take to this bike like a duck to water. If Kawasaki Canada were to set us up with a pair of these they might convert a Yamaha faithful!

We’re more than ready to head south on my trusty Concours, but it’d be interesting to ride something green and new into the MotoGP at Indy and make the place a little greener.

T-minus one week until we’re on our way south!

New Mobil 1, everything checked and cleaned up. Connie is ready to do some miles down to Indy

There and back with minimal repetition

When Your Learning Space is a Loud Close Talker

Originally published Sunday, 21 April 2013 on Dusty World

Tools provided and time to practice the theory learned. Skills are expected to be demonstrated.

A couple of weekends ago I went to Conestoga College and took my motorcycle training course. Other than about an hour on a dirt bike a year ago I’d never ridden a motorbike, but it has been a lifelong dream to do it; I was pretty pumped. Learning to ride was a pedagogically charged process for me, going from near zero to basic competence in a single weekend.

This weekend I’m at the Ontario Google Summit. I’m an advanced digital technology user and I’m attending this conference to look at ways to manage technology and ease adoption for beginners. This isn’t a learning challenging situation for me, but I love the subject area (I teach it) and I’m a trained professional in information technology. I’m keen to see technology use improve in education.

I’m finding myself comparing the two learning experiences. Bike course and Google Summit are both expensive in terms of time and money: both demand your time on a weekend and neither are cheap: motorbike: $18.33/hr, Summit: $17.83.hr. This kind of time and money commitment suggests an intensive, impactful learning opportunity for motivated students. Unmotivated students wouldn’t spend the time and money to attend these things. With that as a foundation I couldn’t have had more different experiences at these two events.

At the motorbike course there were six expert instructors for 26 students for a better than 5 to 1 student/teacher ratio. They moved logistical mountains to provide working technology for all students: over thirty bikes tuned, fueled and ready to use every day along with safe space to use them and a fully equipped classroom with digital media to cover theory. Because a 1:1 student/technology ratio was guaranteed, the focus was all small group, intensive hands-on instruction with lots of one on one instructor feedback. This was vital because the bike course had a theory and practical (road) test at the end, both clearly defined and focused on throughout the course. If you were unable to demonstrate what you knew by Sunday afternoon you just spent over four hundred bucks without getting the license or insurance discount. Attendance was absolutely mandatory, you got dropped for not showing (one guy got dropped Sunday morning after showing up nearly two hours late). You had to bring your own safety kit but the most expensive technology (the bike) was provided, and it got used roughly and dropped by a number of students. You also had to provide your own food and drink and there was time time given to consuming it (we ate during in-class sessions). Intensive, focused and hands on with lots of expert help. A number of of people learned that they shouldn’t be riding motorcycles by the end of the weekend and left very disappointed, but safer for it.

At the end of the weekend you knew what you knew (or didn’t) and had demonstrated qualitative improvement (or hadn’t), resulting in the license and savings. On a more pedantic level, you were provided with the room you needed to learn. You had desk space in a large classroom for learning theory. You had acres of pavement outside for developing hands-on skills in a closely watched and personally assisted learning intensive process. It was a pedagogically credible, physically and mentally challenging process that made demands on you in order to see improvement. My taking the course will probably save my life at some point, as well as saving me money. I left that course having a very clear idea what I’d paid for and no question as to the value of it.

Lecture time! Sit and listen! The ‘educators’ are remarkably lazy about pedagogy. The technology doesn’t seem to be helping.

The Google conference is lecture driven (a necessity of the 100:1 student:teacher ratio). The keynotes have been excellent and the audience response very positive. I’ve greatly enjoyed the keynotes. It’s fallen apart for me in the ‘learning’ sessions though; I’ve been unable to attend the sessions I’ve wanted to because the venue (a high school they presumably got access to for nothing) has classrooms designed for thirty odd students. These rooms often had upwards of fifty people jammed into them, sitting on the floor, standing around the edges, all breathing on each other (yes, I have issues with that). I didn’t have the space I need to be comfortable let alone to learn. The provided internet is the best I’ve experienced at a tech-conference, so that’s in place, but the physical space, other than the auditorium I’ve been in all weekend, isn’t remotely up to the task of learning. As I consider the lecture based, knowledge (rather than experience) learning focus of this GAFE Summit, I’m left wondering why educators do this to each other, and how we hope to improve educational technology when we continue to teach it like a poorly designed academic class instead of a set of demonstrable hard skills.

What is it about professional development that has teachers punishing other teachers in order to learn? Ironically, we spent time talking about the Third Teacher and how the learning environment plays such a vital role in learning. We then demonstrate how not to do it in vivid detail with overcrowded rooms and people sitting on floors in order to desperately hear a bit of knowledge out of the mouth of a sage on a stage who are part of a company that wants to radically decentralize and democratize knowledge for everyone… or just squeeze education for some certification money.

There has been a lot of opportunity for learning at this conference for me. The back channels and keynotes have been very engaging. Oddly, the learning sessions haven’t been where learning has happened. Had this been the bike course, I would have spent that weekend sitting on the floor, jammed between other people, watching someone else riding a bike before I went and rode around on my own without any feed back; not the ideal way to learn is it? You’d think teachers would know better.

note: this is six months later, right after the ECOO13 conference (not a summit?) not to mention EdcampHamilton. My feelings about GAFE have only intensified. GAFE is a money grab, designed to funnel teachers into a branding process with Google. After speaking to others at ECOO I’m more than ever convinced that it is a teacher’s professional duty to not brand themselves and offer their students an unbiased access to any and all technology currently in use. Anything less is a limitation to students and irresponsible on the part of the technology educator.

emotional intelligence

How we remove life experiences from life

I’ve had a tough week. Whenever I thought about a parent dying, I figured I would rationalize my way through it. It turns out you can’t do that at all. The emotional journey I’ve been on has been as rich, complex and valuable as any rational mental exercise I’ve ever experienced, and it’s only just begun. Not having a rational solution has made me realize how much we’re driven to that single mode of thinking. No where is that more evident than in education.

Emotional intelligence is more than ignored, in fact, it’s actively discouraged in school. Curriculum and bureaucratic process do everything they can to take the personal, emotive elements out of education; the fact that we teach kids in factory-like rows demonstrates clearly the singular approach we take to learning. Emotionality is an embarrassment when it happens; it certainly isn’t a a form of human knowing we develop and nurture in modern education. In fact, about the only time we do acknowledge emotional intelligence is when students don’t demonstrate it, then we tend to suspend them.

I went in to school last week for a day in between trying to sort out cremations, services and Byzantine government requirements, not to mention storms of crying, because a senior academic class of mine where contacting me directly asking for clarification on year end assignments. Empathy wasn’t something that could (or should) have been expected. If students aren’t expected to develop it in school, we shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t display it.

The class I was most worried about, a primarily applied level media arts class, were fantastic. They responded to my request for them to get their work done on their own and were empathetic to my situation. Their response seemed genuine and we all felt better for the talk. The academic classes sent condolences, but weren’t, for the most part, willing to help me by helping themselves. The game they’ve learned to play so well is between them and the system, and their teacher is just the delivery man who should be delivering, regardless of what might be happening to him.

If we defined learning effectiveness in terms of emotional intelligence, I wonder what schools would look like. I suspect a number of teachers wouldn’t be teaching. I suspect a number of teachers who found themselves in trouble for being too passionate in school wouldn’t be suspended for it. I suspect a number of academically proficient students would find themselves disadvantaged. I suspect student engagement wouldn’t be a problem.

Unions are terrified of emotive responses in teachers, and actively discourage them because students aren’t the only ones to lack a developed emotional intelligence. We’re developing a society that is emotionally bankrupt while entirely focusing on rationality. We want students to engage, but be impartial with the process, then we complain when they don’t seem to care enough. We want learning to happen, but we don’t want to let it be messy. We want rational control over emotional engagement.

Boards come at it from the other side, driven by lawyers to reduce lawsuit visibility with their employees. The whole affair is sat upon by societal expectations that press teachers to hold to professional standards (code for do everything at a distance) in all aspects of their lives, whether at work or not. And ultimately to uphold that pinnacle of modern thought: rationalism. If it can’t be measured or calculated, it has no real value, and is dangerous. Modern society won’t create any Picasos or van Goghs or Shakespeares, we’re too busy building data and temples to it, like Google and Facebook.

The whole thing leaves me feeling like, as a teacher or even just a human being, I’m left unable to express my grief, or even expect basic levels of dignity when I try to take time away to deal with my loss. Between the needs of my students, some of those same students yelling at me while I sit grieving in my backyard trying to write a very difficult eulogy on a Friday night, and the calculations of grief in my absences, I feel exhausted by my professional obligations. I can’t even respond as a person when rudely interrupted.

All sides go on and on about the power differential, about how you as a teacher have all the power. I don’t see it. I’m a minor paper pusher in a massive bureaucracy that seems intent on minimizing any professional latitude I once had, and diminishing any opportunity for emotional development with students in order to ensure a clinical and generalized success. Students are distanced from their learning, I can’t blame them for treating me like a thing, they are encouraged to see me as such.

Education has, like everything else, passed through industrialization and been changed into a Tayloresque production line. What used to be a master/apprentice form of learning that was intensely personal and developed over years has turned into a bureaucratically driven production line focused on getting as many people through it in as antiseptic a manner as possible.

Every one of us will face death in our lives, yet everyone seems profoundly uncomfortable with it… like a room of children being expected to figure out calculus. Shouldn’t education be a key part of learning empathy? And anger? And grief? And then learning how to best express it? Emotion ignored doesn’t disappear.

Infecting The System

If the internet is the nervous system for a new global
culture, should it be artificially limited by human
self interest?

Cory Doctorow ended a harrowing editorial on artificially limited computing in WIRED this month with the observation that the internet isn’t simply an information medium but has, in fact, become the nervous system of the Twenty First Century.

Doctorow begins by questioning why we shackle computers with controls that users can’t overpower, and in many cases don’t even know exist. He uses the example of the Sony rootkit, that would install viral software on machines whenever a consumer would run one of their music CDs. The idea was to curb pirating, the result was creating a blind spot in millions of customer’s machines that immediately got exploited by hackers.

Whenever we build a computer that is subservient to anything other than the user, we’re creating blind spots that hackers can exploit. Whenever our software or hardware is artificially limited to satisfy human values, whether they be government or business or even educationally motivated, we are creating a machine that is flawed.

There is a simple honesty to computing that I find very appealing. When we’re building a circuit or working with a computer or coding, students will often say that they didn’t change anything but got a different output, or that they did everything exactly right and it doesn’t work. The subtext is always that computer is up to something. Whatever the computer is up to, you put it up to it. Computers don’t make mistakes, humans do. This is why it’s vital that computers are not controlled by remote interests. When remote interests dictate computer outputs, you end up with confused users who start to blame the machine.

… because someone programmed HAL to kill.
Machines don’t make mistakes, unless people tell them to.

I’ve long said that computers are merely a tool, but many people see them as intelligent entities with hidden agendas. If we allow institutions to hard code their interests into our computers then we are intentionally allowing our flaws to infect one of the most honest expressions of human ingenuity. We’re also creating that confusion around computers as entities with evil intent (we provide the intent).

What goes for our personal devices also goes for our networks. Unless we are going to continually battle for net neutrality and efficiency over self interest, we’re going to find ourselves with hobbled machines on near sighted networks, seeing only what vested interests want us to see. In that environment computers and the internet can very quickly move from democratizing force to Orwellian control. Keeping computers free of human influence is vital to human well being.

I’ve been uneasy about the nature of the modern internet as distraction engine as well as the branding of edtech. Both examples reek of the infected human influence that Doctorow refers to in his editorial. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we, as a species, were on the verge of building a more perfect machine that allows us to move beyond our short-sighted selves, but instead of building that wonder we infect it with our own shortcomings and end up using it to create a kind of subservience never before imagined?

I see it every day in machines so locked down that they barely function as computers, with limitations on virtually everything they do. This is done for ease of management, to satisfy legal paranoia and, ultimately, to ease the burden of digitally illiterate educators, but this approach has me watching whole generations growing up in an increasingly technology driven world having no idea what is is or how it works. As a computer technology teacher this is difficult to swallow.

The only restriction on a computer should be the laws of physics and the state of the art. Efficiency and user empowerment should be the machine’s and our only focus. Everything should be up to the user otherwise these magical machines aren’t empowering us, they’re being used to create dangerous fictions. Is it difficult to teach students how to use computers like this? Perhaps, but at least we’d be teaching them a genuine understanding of what digital technology is, and how to wield that power responsibly. All we’re doing now in education is feeding the infection.

Complete Connie

Thanks to the kindness of CoG, some much needed bits and pieces from Murphs Kits, parts from my local Kawi dealer Two Wheel Motorsport and an awesome Givi box and windshield from A Vicious Cycle, the Connie is finally back on her feet!

The parts I needed consisted of your basic filters and fluids, some clutch lever bits, a number of rusty connectors, a speedo gear housing (the cable got replaced too), and replacement levers for the rusted out old ones. At a CoG suggestion I looked at Murph’s and found a full set of stainless replacement fasteners. The bike was missing a number of them and the rest were in various states of disrepair. I now have a pile of spares and new ones on the bike. They look great and the whole deluxe set was less than seventy bucks. Murph also had stainless replacement clutch and brake levers for only twenty bucks each, so I picked those up too.

The nicest surprise was the Concours Owners Group (best membership fee I’ve ever paid for!). When asking about aftermarket options for the master cylinder covers I broke getting rusted bolts out, one of the moderators offered to mail me up a spare set from Florida in exchange for an adult beverage at some future time. If you own a Connie, COG is a must do. I get the sense that even if you don’t have a Concours, COG is still something special.

With everything back together she hummed around our cul-de-sac in fine form. No leaks, controls feel sharp, I think she’s ready for a run at a safety. If she passes I’m going to semi-retire the Ninja and put it up for sale and spend the rest of the season seeing what the Connie can do. Once the snow closes in I’ll break it down again and do the body work so next spring it looks as good as it runs.

Carrying Ninja

Getting a hard case with a back rest. The goal:

To be able to carry the basics and keep them dry while out and about.

To offer a backrest to make it easier for my passenger.

FZ-series Monorack is designed to add a Givi Monokey or Monolock topcase to your existing tailsection. Rugged black finish.

All hardware needed to mount the Givi rack is included. Installs quickly using simple hand tools. No welding or cutting of existing frame or body parts required. Tough black enamel finish with some gray fittings or hardware as applicable.

Select a Monolock(M5M) or Monokey(M5) top case mounting plate that will be used on the FZ445 when ordering for the related products. No Plate is included you need to add it to the cart.

The Givi FZ445 toprack may be used alone or with the Givi PLX445 side rack (for PLX sidecases ONLY).
$80 http://aviciouscycle.ca/MainPages/productpage.aspx?productid=1211

Designed for scooters and low-powered motorcycles.

Capacity of 30 liters, enough to hold a full face helmet.

It comes with a universal plate and mounting kit.

Maximum load capacity of 3 kg.

Note: Notice the body of the case does not change colour. It is just the lid section that will have the colour change.

$99 http://aviciouscycle.ca/MainPages/productpage.aspx?productid=4190

Turn your E300 Tour Case into a comfortable rest spot for your passenger with this Givi E103 Backrest.

Made of thick polyurethane, this backrest will hold up in the elements and provide comfort to all motorcycle and scooter passengers.

Sold each.

Long lasting material.

$45 http://aviciouscycle.ca/MainPages/Productpage.aspx?productid=4191

Items	Quantity	Price	Subtotal
Givi-E300 Monolock Case, 30 Liter		$CAD 98.99	$CAD 98.99
Givi-Backrest for E300 Monolock Case		$CAD 44.99	$CAD 44.99
Givi-Topcase Rack (Kawasaki Ninja 650R / ER6F, ’06-’08)		$CAD 79.99	$CAD 79.99
Rebate Coupon:
Total : $CAD 223.97

http://aviciouscycle.ca/mainpages/Default.aspx

Horse Power

This is Butch, he’s kind of a jerk.

While in Arizona we went out horseback riding for a couple of hours. I hadn’t ridden a horse since I was a kid (almost forty years ago – back then they were tiny prehistoric horses). I got Butch, who liked to eat a lot and thought it a good idea to stick his nose up the horse in front’s ass to get it back to the paddock early for lunch. He managed to piss off half a dozen horses doing this.

I ended up with mighty sore knees because I kept weight on the stirrups for the entire ride. Partly because it was suggested and partly because it took weight off the horse’s back.

Working with an animal is a very different process than inhabiting a machine. I imagine that developing a longer term relationship with the creature eases the guilt I was feeling over using the animal. If I knew that Butch enjoyed taking people out and going for a walk I’d have been a lot happier with bothering him with it. His habit of rushing the other horses suggested that he wasn’t enjoying hauling my heaviness around though.

How different is riding a horse from asking a taxi to drive you somewhere? In both cases you’re paying an organization to provide an animal that will transport you (one a horse, the other a machine assisted human). In the case of the taxi driver you can at least communicate with them and get a sense of their willingness to do the work. You can probably do that with the horse too, but the non-verbal communication takes longer to figure out.

I don’t worry about my largeness (6’3″ 240lbs) hurting a motorcycle but it was on my mind with the horse, even though they gave me one of the biggest ones they had. My animal empathy is overdeveloped, no doubt, but even with a machine I still sympathize with its situation, it’s one of the reasons I take care of mine so diligently. With an animal I’m unfamiliar with I’m not clear on our relationship. If the animal doesn’t want to be there it sours the experience. Put another way, I’ve never met a motorcycle that wasn’t eager to be ridden – it’s their purpose. We might have domesticated horses but their reason for being isn’t to carry people around.

While machines may have their problems they have also offered us an opportunity to stop using many animals as chattel for our own ends.

I enjoyed the horse ride and I’d do it again, but it would be nice to better understand the horse and their situation. Knowing that a horse was excited to see me and go out would go a long way toward enjoying the ride more in the same way that taking out an excited dog for a walk is a positive process. Two days before our rental horse ride I took a rental motorcycle out for the day and didn’t have anything like the same moral quandary, though perhaps I should have.

It’s wonderfully quiet out on a horse in the desert.

Mechanical Empathy & Human Expression

I’ve enjoyed machines since I was a child. My father is a mechanic and engineer and his fearless approach to maintaining, repairing and operating machines amazed and intrigued me. With that fascination I always found it easy to empathize with machines, not necessarily in the anthropomorphic give them a name and talk to them kind of way many people do, but to suggest a machine has personality expressed in how it operates isn’t strange to me.

In the last post I talked about how a MotoGP rider was a much larger piece of the equation than a Formula 1 driver is. That expression of skill through machinery is what interests me about motorsport, the high tech frills are just that, frills. What I want to do this morning (it’s 5am and the world is silent and dark, the people are all asleep and the mental static is at a minimum) is to unpack what machines are and why they are worthy of empathy.

Machines are our thoughts given substance. When I get on the Ninja and go for a ride I’m experiencing a confluence of thinking, dozens of engineers and designers who pieced together a rolling sculpture that best expresses their ideas of efficiency, beauty and inter-connectivity. You seldom get to experience the mind of another person is so intimate a way as you do when operating a machine that they have created. It’s little wonder that many engineers and designers feel that the mechanical devices they produce are like their children.

You can approach this from a couple of interesting reads. Matt Crawford’s Shop Class As Soulcraft focuses on the understanding you develop from laying hands on your machine yourself. As a treatise on the value of hands-on mechanical experience and the development of that mechanical sympathy Guy Martin mentions above, it is priceless.

Melissa Holbrook-Pierson’s The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing comes at it from the riding experience and how motorcycles in particular can reach into you and animate you in a way that many other machines cannot.

A deeply personal look
at how motorcycling
can emotionally
charge you

There is a virtue in motorcycles that is also why so many people don’t partake of them. They demand so many inputs from the rider that they make driving a car seem like running a washing machine; merely the operation of an appliance. This is so endemic to driving a car that every opportunity to interact with the vehicle is being diminished, from manual transmissions to parking. In a few years many will flock to self driven vehicles and become forever passengers. The vast majority of people have little interest in how a machine works or how to express themselves through it – perhaps because they have nothing to express.

That motorcycles are so demanding is a virtue from the point of view of a mechanical empath. The more interaction you have with the machine, the more possible it is to inhabit it with human expression. There is something pure in the mechanical simplicity of the motorcycle, it is bare, naked, not covered in sheet metal designed to conceal and contrive; its function is obvious.

That this naked machine demands so much from its rider creates a giddy kind of connection in those willing and able to make it. This machine connects to your hands, feet and whole body. It demands inputs from every one of your limbs as well as your entire mass. Being naked on the road, the rider’s mind isn’t isolated from their activity and is as engaged as their physical body. Inhabiting a machine this completely is an intoxifying experience.

The thrill of inhabiting a machine isn’t limited to motorcycles, though they are one of the purest expressions I’ve found. The satisfaction in fixing, maintaining or operating any machine well offers some degree of satisfaction. In inhabiting the machine it empowers us, giving us abilities that would seem magical to non-technological people. We can cover ground at great speed, communicate across the world with the push of a button, fly, even slip the surly bonds of Earth and touch the sky, but not if we don’t inhabit the machines that enable us.

When machines serve humans instead of enabling them

If we remove ourselves from this equation machines become limitations rather than a means of expression. The thought of a human being interacting with a responsive, demanding and complex machine offers us a future that is bursting with opportunity for growth. The alternative is stagnation and ignorance. You can guess which approach appeals to a consumerist culture intent on selling to as many people as possible.

That a machine should place demands on us isn’t a bad thing, especially if it leads to a nuanced awareness of our own limitations. The machine that can overextend you, challenge you, stress you, is a machine that can teach you something. We fool ourselves into stagnation when we design machines that do more and ask less from us.

When I see human expression through a machine, the machine becomes a magnifying glass for their achievement, how can that not deserve empathy? The only time it wouldn’t is when the human is a pointless addition to the equation. When this happens machines become oppressive rather than enabling forces in our lives.