Michael Pollan Lecture at Michigan State University

Michael Pollan, author of several books about food, health and nutritionism, gave a lecture at Michigan State University.

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Highlights from from both his talks (He did a smaller Q&A earlier in the day).

• An uncritical worship of nature leaves you vulnerable to pests.
• Its amazing how entitled we feel to get our way with nature.
• Our intelligence is no match for 3 billion years of evolution. There must be way to deal our relation to nature. It’s not a contest or a war.
• Let’s restore Ag to its standing as a solution to many societal problems. Ag may be the most important thing you can do.
• In the whole discussion in the Ag system we worry more about the animals and land than the workers. Its a problem at different levels. And at the same time we still have this agrarian ideal that farmers still have control over their destiny, which is being chipped away.
• Our current situation is the result of our food policy to drive down costs. The cost is to the welfare of the people involved. We have to step back and realize cheap food externalizes costs. The problem is bigger than the food system.
• We need to make food more affordable, rather than cheap. We are subsidizing the least healthy food, which isn’t fresh produce.
• No other industry boasts about the cheapness of products (The focus rather is on quality). We need to (including the Ag industry) focus on the quality of our food, not just the quantity. Yield amount per farmer is amazing when supported by petroleum products. But there is many hidden costs to that model, and quantity hasn’t necessarily worked!
• What about international food? The challenge is not the amount of food, but where it is, who has access and how much it is to obtain it. Free trade regime, may be good for cars; but food is different. You don’t want people’s bellies at the mercy of Wall Street and the White House.
• Urban Ag, specifically in Detroit? It provides local fresh food, also employment. You will be amazed at the yields. The key is labor.
• Genetic engr will prob. have to be dealt with by Supreme Crt. The way patent laws were drawn are mistaken, which allows Monsanto to control. Monsanto & climate change genes? Look closely at what they are saying, there is less there than meets the eye. There model supports a monoculture system, which isn’t sustainable. Plus they haven’t delivered on their miracle gene products. The problem with Monsanto inventing new plants,  they make money the more units of the same thing they can sell.
• We need biodiversity. Going down the path of the targeted solution may not be a good solution. We need to think in terms of resiliency of the whole plant cycle.
• 2 ways to get people interested in farming: Pay farmers higher wages, Change the esteem for farmers. We have mocked farming for decades. Govt. policy wanted more workers in factories and fewer farmers. In the progressive era farmers threatened the powers that be.
• Yet, the prestige of farming is going up. We need to look at farmers as people doing intelligent, important work in our society.
• What is the role of Corps? The cost of fuel will drive us to a regional food system. The regional farmer might become really interesting.
• Water issues? Places where water is located will once again become valuable after small bubble where we were able to be where water wasn’t.
• Enviro movement has made a big mistake not to align with hunters and farmers. Worshipping untouched land doesn’t help us negotiate.
• Human and nature must deal with each other. We have to put our energy into the land we have already changed.
• For some enviros, once the land has been changed, it is no longer interesting for the movement, which is problematic.
• GMO? GMO’s we have is only enhanced for the farmer, not the consumer.
• Subsidies aren’t bad if they mean govt. support for farmers. We do it bc its important (think depression era).
• Our farmers are doing what we ask them too. Overproduction has been too much of a good thing. Reward for crop diversity, or clean water. Farmers will respond. It is up to us to design good incentives. Eliminating subsidies would be a disaster, it is how we craft them that is important.

Protected: Wk 5: Things are picking up

Protected: Who am I to judge?

Best Podcasts of 2009 Shortlist

Here is a list of the shows that have made it onto my best of shortlist for 2009. The final list will be out soon.

• This American Life
• Radio Happy Hour
• Radiolab
• TED
• The Moth
• Bill Moyers Podcast
• Big Ideas
• Search Engine
• Wiretap
• Classic Tales Podcast
• Onion News Network Videos
• Savage Love Podcast
• ReSound
• StoryCorps
• Planet Money
• The Memory Palace
• Long Now Foundation

Draft Statement of Purpose

I am interested in understanding the real and possible boundaries between technology and society, through observation and building innovative systems. I am drawn to the field of information studies for its ability to understand people and their relationship to technology in service to the public good. I distinguish a difference in the approach of the School of Information as one that explores the complex human conditions that have typically been labeled as “noise”. I am also attracted to this program for its ethos of public good and methodologically savvy approach to research

Original research requires feedback loops that allow for the process to change. Conclusions drawn without open access to review remain alchemy. For me, leaning how to do original research is similar to the agile method I use when programming. Through iterative creation steps, the process evolves through collaboration. This collaboration occurs not only with other researchers, but with all affected community members. The process of building, sharing and reevaluating allows the project to evolve with the needs of everyone involved.

Learning how to do original research also means understanding appropriate methods. I value a program, like the University of Michigan’s that brings faculty from diverse departments with mixed methodological approaches to bear on a problem. My background in design, public service, web programming and current coursework has prepared me to contribute to the scholarshop of the School of Information.

During my masters I have taken courses in design, theory, methods and technology. Courses in statistics, focus groups, network analysis and qualitative research methods have been the foundation to different ways of approaching research. Courses in telecommunication theory, computer supported cooperative, and several special topics provided a theoretical foundation with practice. I have also supplemented my core requirements with courses in rhetoric and american culture, which have prepared me to understand more completely the complexity of human motivation specifically in context of computer mediated spaces.

As part of a design and theory class I helped develop OurMichiganAve.org, which seeks to help coordinate policymakes, developers and residents in order for them to find solutions to revitalizetheir community. As both a programmer and researcher my classmates and I were able to build quick prototypes in Ruby on Rails, elicit feedback through focus groups from our stakeholders and redevelop the website quickly. The resulting website allowed people to share stories about their lives on the corridor, map areas of interest, vote on improvement ideas, and keep informed on development news. This project was an example of balancing the implicit needs of a project with the explicit goals. Building this site required learning Ruby on Rails from scratch, as well as quickly understanding the various protocols of Ruby and Subversion. Research also has layers of implicity work in preparation for the expected work. I believe projects like these have prepared me, whether building websites, working with communities of people, or analyzing data.

Balancing what has worked in the past with the potential of what might be was the incentive of my thesis. Rather than simply replicating the successful one-on-one consultations of physical writing centers online, my thesis is a case study that seeks to understand the role of a writing center online asa hub for people writing about writing at Michigan State University. The hands-on opportunity to be a part of the entire research process has been beneficial in preparing to continue at the School of Information. Exploring research that connected asynchronous, remote groupwork of students with the Writing Center required a negotiation between what the web-software allowed and the expectations of multiple audiences.

A significant part of the research process was understanding the best way to study the case itself; This was not an obvious process. I reviewed different ways to design and conduct the study, capture information, analyze and report the findings, as well as different frameworks for building the web interface. My thesis is only the beginning of what I can fulfill at the University of Michigan. I believe it demonstrates a sincere effort not to merely fix a problem, but rather, to find the appropriate means both to understand the situation and move towards a solution.

I admire the the scholarship the School of Information is producing. I am most impressed with the the community information use work of Dr. Paul Resnick and Dr. Joan Durrance. Also the online community work of Dr. Mark Ackerman, and the public policy work of Dr. Steve Jackson. I notice that the diverse topics share the common thread of work in the public interest. When talking with Dr. Ackerman, I sense that this ethos of public good is not just a research goal, but at the core of the program. I belive that my design, theory and research experience, and my background in public service would be a good fit for the School of Information at the University of Michigan.